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

[kiness]

Zombies and skeletons make excellent porters. Just strap some backpacks on them and
you can get them to follow you in the dungeon. And you have cannon fodder for the big
bad monsters. I think its a lot about intent. The corpses aren't using the bodies...

 

[kiness]

Best answer... Orc zombies! Make your former enemies your servants...

 

[beej]

Where are you located? I can grab an extra copy at the store tomorrow and ship it over?

Oh hai!

Thanks for the offer, but I already ordered it through our new FLGS. It takes two months, but it's coming. Eventually. D:

Anyway, carry on with talking about Turn Undead.

(2 coppers: I think it's meant to make fighting undead easier by design. So far it's working as intended, IMO. Things get dicey, though, when a lich/strong undead monster above your level becomes easy to beat, too. We'll know if when we see lich stats, I guess.)

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Anyone concerned about the mistreatment of the dead should go back and read the Necromancer rules in the very first play test pack -- it was truly appalling, in which a soul of a combat victim was captured and used up in exchange for a single advantage roll. In a fictional world where we know souls and gods exist, it represented an incredible violation -- the annihilation of another soul -- for the most minor benefit.

Yeah, I really disliked that. From some of the livestreams, it seems like the new warlock has an ability to suck out a soul and grant himself temporary hit points. That bothers me too. For one, if it really is consuming the soul, then anyone who dies to this shouldn't be able to be brought back by raise dead. That's a pretty powerful ability for a 1st-2nd level character to be packing.

My take on things like this (regardless of the format--I apply it to soultrap in Elder Scrolls games too) is that it isn't the soul itself that is being consumed, it is a certain type of "spiritual energy." The soul may or may not be attached to that energy when you first grab it, but once you use the energy, the soul is definitely free to move onto the afterlife (thought it probably didn't have a pleasant experience, if it is capable of memory).

Sure, that may not be design intent. But it lets me keep enjoying the game. And in D&D, I can just about guarantee that if the raise dead issue gets brought to the designers they will somehow explain it in such a way as to say that the warlock isn't actually destroying the soul, because a low-level warlock ability isn't supposed to invalidate raise dead.

Not necessarily. At least in my explanation, it is not the use of negative energy that makes animate dead evil, but the connection to the Abyss (Orcus in the official cosmology).

Think of it like this: Negative energy, as such, is neither good nor evil. It exists in nature just as positive energy does, causing death and decay, destroying the old to make room for the new. However, negative energy as an animating force is profoundly unnatural. Negative energy does not animate. It stills; it silences.

To turn negative energy into something that can cause motion and mimic life, you have to violate the order of the cosmos, and that requires calling on forces who exist to destroy that order--to wit, demons. That's why all undead are linked to a demon lord. Channeling negative energy can cause pallor, melancholy, and fondness for heavy metal bands, but invoking demons is what corrupts your soul.

See, I think this is a really good way of looking at it and it doesn't even need demons or the Abyss--just intentionally using energy the wrong way. I think it's a great way of harmonizing negative energy not being necessarily evil, with animating the dead through negative energy being an evil and corrupting act.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Yeah, I really disliked that. From some of the livestreams, it seems like the new warlock has an ability to suck out a soul and grant himself temporary hit points. That bothers me too. For one, if it really is consuming the soul, then anyone who dies to this shouldn't be able to be brought back by raise dead. That's a pretty powerful ability for a 1st-2nd level character to be packing.

If this is so, I would be very disappointed. Thanks for the warning.

 

[Falling Icicle]

You also forget that dead bodies and skeletons spread disease and plague. Willingly keeping a bottle deadly disease walking around waiting for someone to get too close and get sick is pretty evil in itself.

They do? I don't recall seeing anything about zombies spreading disease in their rules. Even if zombies can carry disease, I don't see why skeletons would. They're just bones. Plenty of people use bones as tools, decorations, etc. and don't get plagues from them, as far as I know.

Anyone concerned about the mistreatment of the dead should go back and read the Necromancer rules in the very first play test pack -- it was truly appalling, in which a soul of a combat victim was captured and used up in exchange for a single advantage roll. In a fictional world where we know souls and gods exist, it represented an incredible violation -- the annihilation of another soul -- for the most minor benefit.

We're past this, but we still lack a consistent set of necromancy rules. Falling Icicle's take is completely consistent, even if it differs form the real world attitudes to the dead (where the existence of souls and gods lacks the same degree of external proof that exists in the fictional setting).

The way I understand it, creating things like zombies and skeletons doesn't have anything to do with a being's soul. It simply imbues the corpse with necrotic energy, a necromantic analogue of a soul. Some undead certainly do have souls, like wraiths, and I would agree that creating those is certainly not a good act. That said, even when creating an undead creature does involve the dead being's soul, I don't see why it deserves the "evil" tag, but things like dominate person or the creation of golems don't (creating golems required the enslavement of innocent elemental spirits).

 

[Kobold Stew]

The way I understand it, creating things like zombies and skeletons doesn't have anything to do with a being's soul. It simply imbues the corpse with necrotic energy, a necromantic analogue of a soul. Some undead certainly do have souls, like wraiths, and I would agree that creating those is certainly not a good act. That said, even when creating an undead creature does involve the dead being's soul, I don't see why it deserves the "evil" tag, but things like dominate person or the creation of golems don't (creating golems required the enslavement of innocent elemental spirits).

That was my point: the early low-level Necromancer ability was far more unquestionably evil than raise dead.

 

[the Jester]

I know this is like 7 pages late, but:

"Speak with Dead" would seem a likely candidate to be evil, as well.

Why is that?

There is a great take on this in an early issue of DC's Arion, Lord of Atlantis series from the 80s.

Arion was an uberpowerful mage. At one point there's a scene where he uses a spell to speak with the dead minions of his equally powerful and entirely evil stepbrother, Garn. The animated spirits' first words are "It hurttssss...."

Not saying that it works like that in all D&D games, but if you want speak with dead to be evil, that's a pretty easy way: you're causing the dead guy's spirit pain.

 

[CM]

Yeah, I really disliked that. From some of the livestreams, it seems like the new warlock has an ability to suck out a soul and grant himself temporary hit points. That bothers me too. For one, if it really is consuming the soul, then anyone who dies to this shouldn't be able to be brought back by raise dead. That's a pretty powerful ability for a 1st-2nd level character to be packing.

OMG, are you saying 5e is World of Warcraft?


On a more serious note, there were plenty of "vampiric regeneration" type abilities players could get in 2e and 3e which worked in a similar manner (vampiric touch spell is also an old favorite). There's no reason it has to utterly destroy a soul.

 

[the Jester]

Some folks (myself included) found the Undying Court to be too jarring and don't accept the underlying formulation: Undead animated by positive energy? While I play in an Eberron based campaign, I keep my thoughts away from the Undying Court. It just doesn't make sense to me.

The thing I found jarring about it was the attempt to create a new monster type for "good undead". I thought that was really silly.

Mummies have already been mentioned, but I swear I have a vague memory of other positive-linked undead in either 1e or 2e. I thought it might be the heucuva, but I skimmed my 1e Lords of Darkness and my 2e Monstrous Manual, and couldn't find a reference in either one.