No Animate Dead?

[Reynard]

And, in 3e terms, there is no relative morality. Morality is absolute. You can have beings which, regardless of any action they take, are inherently Good or Evil (angels and demons). A LG demon is still Outsider [evil].

Alignments are forces, analogous to elements. An [evil] creature is one who is infused with the [vil] force; same goes for a spell, item or whathaveyou. Morality doesn't factor into it at all, when talking about descriptors. For example, the SRD has this to say oin the subject of [evil] creatures:

Most creatures that have this subtype also have evil alignments; however, if their alignments change, they still retain the subtype. Any effect that depends on alignment affects a creature with this subtype as if the creature has an evil alignment, no matter what its alignment actually is.

This is a clear indictment of typing "elemental" alignments to moral alignments. The game just doesn't work that way. And [evil] creature need be "evil" no more than a [fire] creature need be "hot".

 

[Hussar]

Alignments are forces, analogous to elements. An [evil] creature is one who is infused with the [vil] force; same goes for a spell, item or whathaveyou. Morality doesn't factor into it at all, when talking about descriptors. For example, the SRD has this to say oin the subject of [evil] creatures:



This is a clear indictment of typing "elemental" alignments to moral alignments. The game just doesn't work that way. And [evil] creature need be "evil" no more than a [fire] creature need be "hot".

I think you're agreeing with me.

 

[Hussar]

Why I don't like the idea of tying Cause and Effect.

RobertL - the reason I'm not going along with your definition, is that you have tied cause and effect together to determine alignment. However, that's not entirely accurate to do in a 3e context.

Take an unaligned action, like casting Fireball. I can cast fireball all day long and it has no alignment affect. However, if I cast fireball on a vampire, does that make Fireball a good spell? If I toast villagers, does that make it an evil spell?

IMO, no. The spell, in and of itself, has no alignment. The action of killing the Vampire, however achieved, is a good act and killing villagers an evil one. Putting it another way, does a sword become aligned depending on use? How about arrows?

However, certain spells are, in and of themselves, aligned actions in 3e. Anything with an alignment descriptor is intrinsically that aligned action. It doesn't matter who I cast Holy Word on, Holy Word, as a distinct action, remains a good act. Killing villagers is evil, but that is separate and distinct from casting the spell.

In exactly the same way that the act of swinging a sword or casting Fireball is unaligned, regardless of target.

 

[pemerton]

Yes. We are in agreement. Animating dead is evil. Evil can trivially turned towards harmlessness and be beneficial for all sentient life. Holy Word is good. Good can be trivially turned toward the callous murder of innocents. Ergo, the planar energies of good and evil do not necessarily correspond to actual moral action. It is certainly true that in most cases, Good magics lend themselves towards morally desired actions, and that Evil magics lend themselves towards morally undesired actions, but most cases is not sufficent to make blanket statements.

<snip>

So, yes, in the D&D-verse, you get moral spells; you also get a lot of people looking at what an absolute, arbitrary morality actually implies about the universe, and marking off the various aligned planes as potential post-mortem retirement homes as such a consequence.

Animate Dead is Planar!Evil. This is not a statement that is generally disputed. But if you want to actually discuss what this means in terms of conventional morality and not sound like a crazed Raptoran cleric going on about disloyalty to the elemental force of Air, you need to tie Planar!Evil to Conventional!Evil.

I think this "tying" of Planar to Conventional Evil can be achieved, but only if certain genre assumptions are in place (eg we don't pay attention to the fact that the Good clerics could save many more lives by casting Create Food and Drink every day rather than going out and fighting the odd Night Hag).

I think that the 4e alignment system is more upfront about this. By using the Unaligned tag rather than the Neutral tag, it makes it clear that there is no intention that the alignment system be a total scheme for the moral classification of conduct, but rather that (within the genre) only Planar/"team" related actions are salient objects for moral judgement.

A campaign that wanted to use the 4e rules to play a more gritty game (eg one in which the PCs engage in a heroic struggle to free the world from the unhappy influence of conceited and indifferent gods) would do well to drop alignment altogether, as it would have rejected the genre assumptions that make 4e alignment workable.

I think one of the genre assumptions that informs traditional D&D is the evilness of animating the dead. Again, a game that wanted to explore this with more subtlety would probably do better to abandon alignment altogether.

In D&D, there is objective morality. It's Good to use effects from the Good bucket, even if your society says otherwise.

Now, in addition to the objective definition of morality, there are individual cultural mores. Drow society values different things than dwarven society. It is likely that drow and dwarves agree on what is good and evil; it's just that the drow don't see good as desirable.

This is itself a problem, as "That's good but not desirable" is, if not self-contradictory on every occasion of utterance, nevertheless replete with tension.

 

[robertliguori]

Why I don't like the idea of tying Cause and Effect.

RobertL - the reason I'm not going along with your definition, is that you have tied cause and effect together to determine alignment. However, that's not entirely accurate to do in a 3e context.

Take an unaligned action, like casting Fireball. I can cast fireball all day long and it has no alignment affect. However, if I cast fireball on a vampire, does that make Fireball a good spell? If I toast villagers, does that make it an evil spell?

IMO, no. The spell, in and of itself, has no alignment. The action of killing the Vampire, however achieved, is a good act and killing villagers an evil one. Putting it another way, does a sword become aligned depending on use? How about arrows?

However, certain spells are, in and of themselves, aligned actions in 3e. Anything with an alignment descriptor is intrinsically that aligned action. It doesn't matter who I cast Holy Word on, Holy Word, as a distinct action, remains a good act. Killing villagers is evil, but that is separate and distinct from casting the spell.

In exactly the same way that the act of swinging a sword or casting Fireball is unaligned, regardless of target.

OK, so casting Holy Word is planar!good, regardless of targets, and Animate Dead is planar!evil, regardless of targets. This has never been in dispute. But, if a society or cosmology cares more about the planar!alignment of an effect then whether it happens to be saving babies or slaying them, then said society or cosmology can officially be ignored as an actual!moral authority.

There's no real way to go from "This is Evil." to "This is undesirable." or "This hurts people." in D&D. Specific Evil actions are often both, but animating the dead happens to be neither. So, given this disassociation between planar!morality and actual!morality, why should the fact that the wizard's casting of Animate Dead be an Evil act draw any more attention than the fact that it's a necromantic act, or a fourth-level act, or an arcane act?

This is itself a problem, as "That's good but not desirable" is, if not self-contradictory on every occasion of utterance, nevertheless replete with tension.

Indeed; this is the exact reason I suggest making a clear distinction between 'aligned' or 'planar!good' and 'morally correct' or 'traditional!good'.

 

[Hussar]

So, given this disassociation between planar!morality and actual!morality, why should the fact that the wizard's casting of Animate Dead be an Evil act draw any more attention than the fact that it's a necromantic act, or a fourth-level act, or an arcane act?

But, in the context of the rules, there is no difference between what you call Planar!Good and morally correct.

The reason for Animate Dead to be evil is pretty much irrelevant. At least in the context of the game. It's evil because it has the alignment tag. Opening up the can of worms of trying to give moral direction to spells beyond that is asking for a lot of trouble.

After all, why isn't Poison an evil spell? The act of poisoning someone is pretty much universally considered an evil act. It's one of the few things all real world nations could agree on. Yet, in 3e, I can cast Poison, and it has no alignment repercussions.

Why does Animate Dead? Well, it's drawing on negative planar energy (considered evil in 3e) to create Neutral Evil abominations. Not too hard to call evil.

I simply don't care about "traditional!good". That's entirely subjective. What you or I consider to be "tradional!good" can vary very widely. The mistake 2e made with alignment was to try to allow this sort of sliding scale for alignment.

 

[pemerton]

But, in the context of the rules, there is no difference between what you call Planar!Good and morally correct.

I think that this is right but also that (as I believe 4e has recognised) this only makes sense if certain genre presuppositions are in play.

 

[mlooney]

Regardless of what the book says, alignment is not ABSOLUTE. It is impossible for alignment to be absolute by its very nature. Alignment is 100% relative, no matter what the rules say.

No, it's not. In a universe that has Gods that can create effects on the mortal plane, Good and Evil are not relative terms.

 

[Falling Icicle]

The thing is, nothing about animating mindless corpses makes it necessarily evil, by the book's definition of evil. Enslaving intelligent corpses, souls, etc could certainly be considered evil, but a mindless corpse is no more evil than a golem. The [evil] tag on 3e animate dead was purely arbitrary, and was only there because skeletons and zombies had an evil alignment. But that didn't make any sense, since they're mindless. How can a mindless automaton have morality of any kind?

This really shouldn't be an argument about whether or not alignments are absolute. It should be an argument about whether or not creating mindless minions from corpses is always an evil act. In my opinion, it is not. Some cultures may frown on the pracitice, seeing it as defiling the remains of the dead, but that's a cultural view, not a moral one. I would argue that animating a corpse is not evil because:

1) The corpse of a dead creature is just an object, even if it is creepy. The soul has abandoned the body, leaving it an empty husk. A corpse would just rot in the ground, why not put it to good use? If you're going to argue that using a corpse as a tool is evil, you'd be effectively saying that native americans are evil for using the bones and hides of slain animals for tools and clothing and their flesh for food. And don't say it's evil just because it is human remains. A corpse is a corpse. It's worm food either way. And if you are going to make that argument, would you still consider animating dead evil if I only create animal zombies?

2) You're not creating a sentient being, so there's no slavery involved.

3) Even though animated undead can be used as a weapon, weapons aren't inherently evil. How can one argue that using a corpse to attack someone is evil, but charring their flesh with fireballs and acid storms is not?

4) Animated undead can save the lives and health of living people by doing hazardous or strenuous labor for them. Isn't it better to risk a corpse that would have rotted in the ground anyway, rather than risk a living person?

 

[BeauNiddle]

1) The corpse of a dead creature is just an object, even if it is creepy. The soul has abandoned the body, leaving it an empty husk.

Is that true? I thought the rules for resurrection said you couldn't res a body if it had been made into undead. This also applies to True Res which doesn't require the body.

The inference is that making something undead ties it's soul to it even if the soul has no power over the resulting 'object'