No Animate Dead?

[Graf]

you need to read up on basic 4e theory.

Go to the wizards site and find the economy of actions article. It explains why this edition doesn't have leadership/monster summoning/animal summoning/ undead raising stuff.

 

[Graf]

it just isn't a "you must be good thing" people who are posting that that's the reason are either ignorant and/or spoiling for a fight. Don't feed them and they won't come back.

 

[WalterKovacs]

The ritual is limited to "bad guys" because a bad guy would have done it while you weren't around and that is where the Zombie minions come from. At the moment ... outside of some conjuration spells ... you aren't allowed to "add" characters to the party.

Summoning/raising/cohorts basically meant "you now have twice as many actions every turn". That's assuming a SINGLE summoned monster/raised dead ... by the way.

That wasn't something they wanted for the core classes, thus it's not in the book.

The conjuration spells basically allow the player to spend actions to keep around their conjured object. So they can spend certain types of actions to keep the Spiritual Weapon up and attacking in ... so they aren't "creating" new actions by having a seperate creature, they are just able to trade 1 type of action for another. It keeps a limit on number of actions for a players, even if some of those effects can turn minor or move actions into attacks.

A raise undead would be entirely out of place in the book ... the wizard [and cleric] have had their magic limited so other classes can have niches without being "wizard light". 3e gave wizards everything ... so most classes were variant wizards. They saved necromacy [at least quite a bit of it] or Necromancers. Charms and Enchantment for bards and psionics. And things like that.

so, it doesn't fit the classes, it doesn't fit the "base" allignments, and it doesn't fit the balance of "no summoned creatures" that pervades the core books.

EDIT:

There are no familiars. There are no animal companions ... the "undead minion" is basically in the same vein ... a 'sidekick'. Since the core books have for the most part left out the "having a less powerful NPC that follows you around" as a 'normal' thing ... it makes sense that the ritual for a non-core class wasn't in, when stuff that would have made sense for the core classes isn't there.

 

[Sitara]

Actualy the wizard or the warlock do get an undead servitor type of spell. Basically they kill someone with the pwoer then that creature reanimates with 10 hp and under your command. Forget the name, but its a power and its there in the PHB.

 

[VannATLC]

Graf is completely correct.

The issue is surrounding the economy of action baseline that they've set. Not one of ethics.

 

[Byronic]

you need to read up on basic 4e theory.

Go to the wizards site and find the economy of actions article. It explains why this edition doesn't have leadership/monster summoning/animal summoning/ undead raising stuff.

I can't find that article at all. Can anyone else find it?

 

[skullking]

Those in the PHB are the rituals that the players need to be concerned with. The only rules the players need be concerned with in regards to the undead is how to attack them.

I am a player and I want a ritual for animating the dead. I want to be able to ceate a character that can control and create undead just like I could in AD&D, 2nd Ed and 3rd Ed.

I find 4th edition's move towards good or 'evil-lite' only characters to be a worrying trend, I don't like having the nature of my games dictated in this way.

 

[Hussar]

Gods are against the natural order so they must be evil as well then.

This why I liked the fact they were getting rid of alignments only to be disappointed that the crappy things were still in.

If messing around with corpses was inherently evil then there will be allot of medical students going to hell.

If animating dead matter is evil then there are allot of robot manufacturers going to hell.

Gods are against the natural order? Buh? Considering they created the natural order (sort of), how can they be against it?

If medical students were imbuing corpses with necrotic energy to give the dead a semblance of life, then, yes, they would be going to Hell.

Why do I have to be a child-murdering, town-smashing evil guy if I want to reanimate skeletons to fight evil?

I had a LN cleric of vengeance in 3.5 (a gnome, actually), and since he was smaller in stature than most all of his opponents he often animated zombies of rather large creatures to protect him while he used his single bard level to condemn the enemy and bolster allies, and then started in with the buffs, healing, and flame strikes.

I didn't just make skeletons and "lol", I used evil's dead as fuel for my engine for the destruction of said evil.

Just because it isn't YOUR idea of what a hero would do doesn't mean that everyone should be banned from doing it. In fact, the DM often said "your character would be LG if it wasn't for the undead thing, because of the way he acts." And that was fine with us.

In 3e, animating dead by RAW was an evil act. Full stop. You can try to argue it around all you like, but that whole [Evil] tag on the top of the spell name made using it an evil act. It wasn't morally ambiguous in 3e, it was 100% evil.

But, Graf is also 100% correct. The removal of animate dead is the same reason as summoning - economy of actions.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

In 3e, animating dead by RAW was an evil act. Full stop. You can try to argue it around all you like, but that whole [Evil] tag on the top of the spell name made using it an evil act. It wasn't morally ambiguous in 3e, it was 100% evil.

This is why arguing RAW is a waste of time and utterly pointless. Anyone that relies RAW as a basis for their argument automatically fails, imo. Creating undead is only evil if the citizens of the campaign setting view it as evil. As with most things dealing with alignment, it's all relative. Animating the dead may very well be a requirement by Imperial Law in some empire. Once the "soul" has gone on to the afterlife, the body is put to use for the greater good of the Empire. Lawful and Good in their views. Evil by the views of their enemies or those who have different beliefs concerning the soul, the afterlife and what remains behind.

 

[Graf]

I can't find that article at all. Can anyone else find it?

When I quote something I usually link, but I haven't got access to a proper computer over the weekends.

Since the article was so discussed when it came out I'd assumed it was basic knowledge. (Just put in economy of actions into the enworld.org search bar and you'll see people mentioning it all the time).

Honestly the article is so good I'm not going to try to summarize it.

But seriously, this whole wotc-is-against-evil-thing is just silly.
4 edition features an entire class where you sell your soul to the devil for power, Teiflings are a PC race now, Orcus is on the cover of the Monster Manual, etc etc.

Really. It's just not a convincing argument, when they've been going on and on for months about how they're dropping summoning/pets/undead servants due to a fundamental design policy.