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<blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6330179" data-attributes="member: 6677017">This pretty much sums it up.A couple of additional considerations:How does the animation work? Is it merely created as a magical puppet with neutral magical energies? Then we get into the situation of debate about cultural taboos and such. While I would consider it on the bad sad, a reasonable argument can be made for the other interpretation.But what if the cosmology of D&amp;D itself defines the energy used to animate the dead as, essentially, a profane thing? Something that warps any living creature that comes in contact with it (such as the caster)? Something that actually makes the skeletons and zombies animated via it into inherently evil creatures, imparting traits such as irrational malice and hatred of life? That seems to be what they have been doing since 3.5e.It seems difficult to me to claim that in the second case it isn't evil (though I'm not sure anyone is making that case).Personally, I think the second case is a better fantasy scenario than the first case, so I approve of that direction. My DM has the same understanding. I believe he got it from Ravenloft, but I'm not sure which edition.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sword of Spirit, post: 6330179, member: 6677017"] This pretty much sums it up. A couple of additional considerations: How does the animation work? Is it merely created as a magical puppet with neutral magical energies? Then we get into the situation of debate about cultural taboos and such. While I would consider it on the bad sad, a reasonable argument can be made for the other interpretation. But what if the cosmology of D&D itself defines the energy used to animate the dead as, essentially, a profane thing? Something that warps any living creature that comes in contact with it (such as the caster)? Something that actually makes the skeletons and zombies animated via it into inherently evil creatures, imparting traits such as irrational malice and hatred of life? That seems to be what they have been doing since 3.5e. It seems difficult to me to claim that in the second case it isn't evil (though I'm not sure anyone is making that case). Personally, I think the second case is a better fantasy scenario than the first case, so I approve of that direction. My DM has the same understanding. I believe he got it from Ravenloft, but I'm not sure which edition. [/QUOTE]

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