Playing with dead things

[FoxWander]

There are two parts to this post, the "evilness" of necromancy and a call for help in creating more useful undead things. First the philosophy part. If you don't like that stuff, skip ahead to the twisted ideas.

So my new favorite character is a practical necromancer. What I mean is he's not evil, he just has some loose morals and the pragmatic point of view that simple undead (skele-bones and zombies) can be really useful tools. As in- why haul all the treasure out yourself when you can animate the monsters who were guarding it to haul it out for you. That kind of thing. He doesn't have any agenda of raising an undead army or even pursuing immortality thru undeath himself. He's just using the creatures that were mostly trying to kill him to make his life easier. With all of this I could justify that he wasn't evil in that simple undead were mindless, neutral creatures and he didn't really use them for evil purposes himself. But now in 3.5 simple undead are neutral evil. What I want to know is- why? They are mindless- they have NO intelligence score. How can something that is mindless technically even HAVE an alignment? The word, by definition, means you're thinking is aligned a certain way- good, evil, law, chaos. If you do not think, how can you have tendencies one way or another? Let's put it this way- if I animate the bodies of the dead orcs that razed a village and have the zombies rebuild the houses of the survivors- is that evil? If zombies are inherently "evil" somehow, then it would be. But if I were to animate a skeleton and give it no commands whatsoever, it would simply stand there until it eventually crumbled to dust. If it's supposed to be "always neutral evil", as in the new MM, then shouldn't it go on a murderous rampage for lack of anything better to do? But it won't- it's mindless. It won't do anything unless I command it to. What are your thoughts on the new "evilness" of simple undead? Notice I'm not getting into whether it is evil to animate dead bodies in the first place, that would be a whole other post (maybe I'll do that later)- I'm just concerned with what I consider to be the stupid "evil alignment" as of the new D&D.

Now unto the twisted ideas. Like I said, my necro is a pragmatic guy- and maybe a little lazy. So I'm trying to think of ways to make undead critters more useful in everyday life. One of my first thoughts was on a mundane disguise for them. I figured skeletons are best cause they don't stink. But walking around with a skeletal valet tends to make the town guards nervous. I can throw a robe over him but that doesn’t hide the skeletal look really. So my necro learned tailoring and taxidermy. Then I made kind of a padded muscle suit to go over the bones. I painted and dyed it to look like a large marionette and gave it a silly leather mask. Now it just looks like I’ve got a big walking puppet- no hassles from the guards. That started a trend of disguising the undead to look like animated stuffed animals or large toys. I’ve got what looks like a toy baboon as a backpack. It’s a baboon skeleton with a backpack inside its ribcage. I reach down its throat to get my stuff. Now I don’t have to wear a heavy pack either, it just walks beside me. And by attaching a ring to it’s reinforced skeleton I can tie a rope to it and have a never miss “grappling hook”. He’s learned the “Attune Gem” feat and combined it with a “Shrink Item” spell to fire a pack of skeletons into a fight with his crossbow. Use Shrink Item (cloth option) on a pack of skeletons, wrap the cloth around an Attuned Gem “arrowhead” with Animate dead, fire the bolt at the feet of your enemies, watch the mayhem. Squirrel skeletons with bells make good intruder alarms around your campsite at night. I’ve got several more ideas along this line, but I was wondering what kinds of stuff the brilliant folks on this board could come up with. Come on- share your evilness with the world.

 

[Moe Ronalds]

Does animate dead work if you use bones from more than one creature and use said bones to craft something together?

Because if it does, a walking skeletal throne (maybe zombie if you use strips of flesh and muscle to tie the bits together) would be quite cool.

 

[randomling]

First thought: ew!!

Second thought: cool!



On the philosophy side of things, though. The reason for making undead evil, I guess, is that you're messing with the mortal remains of dead people - and possibly with their immortal souls, too (depending on the spell). That's not nice and you're not supposed to do that.

I see your point however about a supposedly NE zombie or skeleton standing there forever unless somebody commands it. Seems to me that it's the act of creating them - ie, messing with innocent dead people - that's evil. Thus, the creations are evil too.

That's how I rationalize it, anyway.

 

[FoxWander]

I suppose I can buy that explanation. The undead itself isn't necessarily "evil" but the inherent evilness of the animation spell gives them an evil aura. I can live with that. I'll still consider my necro non-evil though cause he mostly uses the spell on the remains of evil creatures (in cities he has specifically dug up the remains of murderers and rapists) and considers it kind of a punishment. Of course the squirrels and baboon don't fall into that category. I guess he's sliding that slippery slope.

Also the throne is a cool idea- just a little too "necro" for this character. But I'll have to look into the idea of those kinds of undead constructs. An auto-loading bone crossbow seems pretty cool.

And if you really want to go for the "eww" factor- how about an animated cloak of undead flesh!

 

[dave_o]

Maybe you could rule that a zombo or skeletron that you find just, around, is neutral evil.

But if you create 'em - they're neutral.

 

[Severion]

It depends on the DM. If i were running a 3.5 game and you approached me with this, i would allow it (although the undead would detect for mild evil). I love your other ideas, talk to your DM, he may go for it.

 

[Goobermunch]

Here's part of an idea I had for a council of Wyrms character. Animate the dead to till fields. Turn uncle bob into a zombie. He can work the fields and fertilize them at the same time!

--G

 

[Nifft]

One of the things that struck me as [Evil] about Animate Dead was the non-consensuality of the effect.

If there were some ritual you could do to a willing person, which they triggered on their death, I'd allow that person to become a Neutral undead.

Alternately, if you did the Shamanistic thing and contacted a specific spirit, I'd allow you to call it just like a Planar Ally spell. Of course, it might not be a standard undead when it manifested -- perhaps it would manifest as some sort of elemental or powerfully templated animal.

-- Nifft

 

[Wombat]

You might want to look at the SSS Supplement Hollowfaust -- it's about a whole city run by necromancers, none of whom are inherently evil.

Might give you some interesting food for thought.

 

[RangerWickett]

While this is never something I'd consider doing in real life, the ideas are interesting for potential creepy NPCs.

One thought I have is, why call them undead. If D&D offered a modest-level Animate Object spell with a long duration, you could just as easily call those critters Constructs, and not worry about the whole alignment issue. Better yet, you could make them out of wood instead of bone.

My question is, why is animating the dead and cursing their souls to torment so much easier than making a manequin stand up and walk?

In The Elements of Magic, which I'm working on revising now for it's re-release, you'll be able to make constructs just as easily as you could make undead. But making constructs out of bone is still creepy.