No Animate Dead?

[robertliguori]

Animating the dead is only evil if the society and civilization, aka culture, believes it to be evil.

Err...OK.

You know, for reference, when discussing on a forum dedicated to a particular topic, when using a word that has a specific definition as a term of art in reference to said topic, it's often helpful to specify that you are using the world differently.

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.

 

[Grabuto138]

Animating the dead is only evil if the society and civilization, aka culture, believes it to be evil.

Philosophers and theologians have been arguing this for thousands of years. Who would have thought this eternal question has finally been answered. And on a roleplaying game discussion board no less!

 

[ProfessorCirno]

"Thank GOD alignment is out of 4e!"
"So why can't I summon undead?"
"Because you can't be evil in 4e."

...What?

Edit: I know that's not the actual reason. It's not a comment against WotC. It's a comment aimed at some of the responses here.

 

[entrerix]

anyone who has never played a campaign where the PC's are evil villains doing everything in their nefarious power to thwart the schemes of another, competing group of evil villains is really missing out on a ton of fun. My players rarely play neutral or good PCs, they want to be villains for most games we play and it works really well

instead of raiding the dungeon to kill the kobolds, they go through the dungeon capturing, torturing, and subjugating until they dominate the tribe and then use it to their own end - like raiding supply caravans to silverymoon so that further down the line they can challenge the ultimate enemy of the game, Alustriel etc

Or playing a game where the PC's goal is to gain power so that they can overthrow an evil god and take his place, so they are seeking out and destroying the followers of that god wherever they can (or their might be a prophecy where one of the PCs was foretold to overthrow said god, and so evil god sends assassins and whatnot to prevent the prophecy from occurring)

lots of fun stuff, and I'm really surprised that some people think EVIL is for NPCs only... a little too narrow minded for my taste

I'm assuming they left out the fun evil PC stuff so they can make a book dedicated to being bad, where the necromancer and other such classes might make an appearance

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Whatever happened to the good old fashioned neutral evil character who had good intentions but ultimately felt the ends justified the means? Their ends, to be specific.

 

[entrerix]

Also a good one (above character idea that is)

 

[Ruin Explorer]

so that further down the line they can challenge the ultimate enemy of the game, Alustriel etc

Any game that has Alustriel as the ultimate enemy is a good game, I say.

robertliguori - You're spot on, but I'm not sure Hussar is quite capable of understanding what you're explaining, because he's so completely caught up in the idea that casting a spell (even with no effect whatsoever) is somehow a moral action that he can't grasp that the very fact that's the case is what renders the morality invalid.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

Whatever happened to the good old fashioned neutral evil character who had good intentions but ultimately felt the ends justified the means? Their ends, to be specific.

That was how I played my n/e wizard/frost mage. In a party with a paladin and l/g cleric. It was fun walking a tightrope between gaining ultimate power without tipping off the goodies.

 

[Voss]

Nope. You missed the point. There are two separate distinct events occurring here. One is the action of casting the spell and the second is the results of that spell.

Take fireball. Fireball has no alignment attached to it. I can cast fireball all day long and it will have no effect on my alignment. However, if I kill orphans, regardless of how (in this case, using a fireball spell), I have committed an evil act.

Now Holy Word, OTOH, has alignment attached to it. If I were to cast Holy Word all day long, I would actually be performing Good acts. However, if I kill orphans, regardless of how (in this case, using a Holy Word spells) I have committed an evil act.

In the case of Animate Dead, it has the Evil descriptor. Casting Animate Dead is an intrinsically evil act, in and of itself. Regardless of what I do with my zombie minions afterwards, casting Animate Dead is an evil act. If I then use my zombie minions to save a burning orphanage, I have then performed a good act, but, that does not retroactively change my original evil act of animating dead.

Ah, yes. A good example of how the alignment system is inherently self-contradictory and should have been dropped with extreme prejudice.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Even the pantheon agrees with this as the god of undeath is "evil" and the Goddess of Death makes it one of her tenants to seek out and destroy undead as they are an abomination against the natural order.

Tenets = basic principles of faith or belief

Tenants = people who rent their homes

I can't help it... my mother was an English teacher AND a Spanish teacher.