D&D 5E Observations on the Monsters in the Starter Set.

[tuxgeo]

My thought was that it potentially prevents people with guilty secrets from taking those secrets to the grave with them. Seems like invasion of privacy.

 

[Olfan]

I've never even heard of a game played by anyone where skeletons, zombies, necromancy, and animating corpses wasn't unarguably pure evil. Are you telling me people actually argue that it's not?

 

[Stormonu]

Zombies and skeletons with intelligence? Not sure I like the sound of that, I've always enjoyed the "mindless" undead. Can you tell me what the Int scores are?

Also, can anyone give a spoiler list of the monsters in the Starter set? Just names would be sufficient for helping me to determine whether I want to buy in this or go with the monster list from the last playtest.

 

[Charles Wright]

Yes they do. Google "White Necromancer".

Tuxgeo - I don't see "being nosey" being on par with "animated a corpse".

 

[tuxgeo]

Charles - being "on par" is a matter of degree. Evil is more like a direction, and there are greater and smaller degrees of going that direction.

 

[Falling Icicle]

I've never even heard of a game played by anyone where skeletons, zombies, necromancy, and animating corpses wasn't unarguably pure evil. Are you telling me people actually argue that it's not?

Yes, and I'm one of those people. Animating a corpse is a far less morally questionable act than dominating someone, stripping them of their free will, melting their face off with acid arrows, turning people permanently into farm animals, or summoning and enslaving innocent elemental or other beings from other planes. Any type of magic can be used for good or evil, including necromancy. A tool or weapon is neither good nor evil, it's how you choose to use it. A sword can be used to murder, or to protect the innocent. A necromancer might animate the dead in a graveyard to save a village from invading goblins, or animate the corpse of a dead ogre so that at least its body might do some good in death that it refused to do in life. Simply creating undead doesn't have to be evil.

A corpse is an empty shell, its soul has moved on and, despite many people's attempts to deny or halt the process, in the end its going to decompose and be worm food either way. Animating skeletons and zombies neither harms nor enslaves anyone. It's as morally neutral as animating a chair or other inanimate object. It's just creepier and defies certain cultural taboos. But then, so do many things. Even in real life, different cultures have very different ways of treating the dead. Some cremate them, some bury them, some leave them out for predators to eat, some even eat them. To one culture, such practices would be seen as abhorrent, while to another, they're sacred. In any case, they aren't evil.

 

[Charles Wright]

Tuxgeo - And I disagree with you that "invasion of privacy" is an act of evil on any level.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I agree with Falling Icicle, in D&D animating a skeleton is not inherently evil. But I want it to be evil, thematically it fits for my world view.

As to spelling some one up for a chat being evil, don't agree at all. Zero on my evilometer

 

[tomBitonti]

A set of examples:

Taking a bear corpse, using taxidermy to preserve it, then putting inside some machinery. Not generally considered wrong. (Considered wrong by some, but not by the majority.)

Doing the same with a human corpse. Considered wrong by most cultures. Arguably wrong in the abstract by devaluing / disrespecting a corpse. But, not too far off from experiments on a cadaver. How do we distinguish these cases?

Then:

Taking a human corpse. Using energy from a realm inimical to life to animate it. In almost all cases considered wrong. Perhaps permissible in extremis, say, setting off a necromantic bomb in a base filled with evil necromancers and their minions. But, harrowing to any who go this route, giving them terrible nightmares and fragmented personalities. Arguably wrong in that the knowledge of how to animate the dead almost invariably undermines a soul, leaving a depraved shell.

Then:

Taking a human corpse. Using necromantic energies to animate it, and to bind a once living soul to it, leaving the soul in a living hell as it is twisted in perverse and unspeakable ways. Hard to think of circumstances where the result is not wrong: Even as a punishment, an undead with a bound soul is a creature with unspeakable cravings, yet intelligent and able to set in motion the most evil of plans.

Thx!

TomB

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Undead also hate life and unless something controlling them tells them not to they will kill any living creature they detect.