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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6330229" data-attributes="member: 58197">This sums up the issue pretty well.There are a ton of spells, from dominate person to the trusty fireball, that are used to mess with other people in nasty ways. Yet animate dead gets called out as inherently evil, while those other spells do not. Mere "disrespect" doesn't explain that. It's inherently evil to hang puppet strings on a corpse, but it's not inherently evil to make a corpse by roasting somebody alive, or to rip a person's free will away and turn him or her into a slave?So, if animate dead is inherently evil, there needs to be a reason. My preferred reason is to link undead to the Abyss and say that any time you create an undead creature, the powers of darkness gain influence in the living world. Not only that, but they go through you to do it--you are exposing yourself to the Abyss's corrupting touch every time you cast the spell. So even if you're doing it with the best of intentions, you're causing harm to the world, and if you keep doing it you will eventually succumb to the dark side.Agreed. There's a word for creatures animated by positive energy: "Living." The spell to take a corpse and animate it with positive energy is called resurrection.</blockquote>