Why are undead inherently evil?

[Cyclone_Joker]

If you want me to quote examples of explicitly non-evil liches, I can. I created a few of them in print.

Sure, I'll see and raise you half a dozen example characters who don't qualify for their classes. But, hey, why not? Go ahead. I mean, they'll be nice and Evil again within five minutes of not going on a suicide rush into the Hells.

Also, the BoED also seems to think that magical forced torture to alter someone's alignment to good is a perfectly good act, and poison that causes horrible suffering is bad unless it's a ravage that only affects evil people... so yeah, probably not the best source on determining if something is evil or not.

Yes, I know. I do believe I've made my opinions on the alignment system clear. I hate it. I loathe it. I detest it. I despise it with an endless, burning fury otherwise only reserved for Wesley Crusher, Crow, and whatever jackasses at FOX keep cancelling sci-fis. That doesn't change the fact that the rules state that Liches are Evil, and unless the OP tells us to deviate from that standing, the only thing I can go by is the idiotic alignment rules.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Also, the BoED also seems to think that magical forced torture to alter someone's alignment to good is a perfectly good act

Take out the magic, and torture to change someone's 'alignment' is a foundational element of our society. It's called punishment. Its merits are debatable, but this is hardly an idea the BoED invented.

 

[VelvetViolet]

That is your belief. It is not shared by many major religions.

What? The D&D rules specifically state that the soul has moved on.

EDIT: I would like to bring up the Planescape faction the Dustmen. They created a system where people could donate their own corpses to be raised as skeletons and zombies that the dustmen would use for manual labor, and developed a truce with all undead. They are explicitly a non-evil, playable faction.

Ummm... Create Undead creates ghoul, ghosts, mohgrs, and mummies. All of which are intelligent undead. Which do have souls according to the Magic Jar spell. And Create Greater Undead allows for spectral undead which are souls.

Funny thing about that... Dragon 313 has an anecdote where a woman became a ghoul while pregnant, and her child survived (though it became half-undead). When she gave birth as a ghoul, she did not eat her child, but cared for and protected it (even to the point of attacking and eating the other ghouls that were with her).

Deathless are part of one world (Eberron) and hardly common, and were created far after the decision to make undead evil. I wouldn't use them to set the rule.
Plus morality is a litte fuzzier in Eberron at the best of time. It's more of a suggestion than a hard rule.
And one could argue that Deathless are good not because of their connection to the elemental plane but because of the culture, and sacrifice asked of those who become Deathless.

Deathless are originally from BOED.

 

[Mistwell]

What? The D&D rules specifically state that the soul has moved on.

No, he's saying he disagrees with this part of what you said, "The body is literally nothing more than a lump of lifeless meat. It's no more "rude" to the former inhabitant than digging through their garbage bin." He's saying that might be your belief but a majority of the religions of the world disagree with your view on that, and this is a topic that is inherently tied to divine magic (religion).

 

[VelvetViolet]

No, he's saying he disagrees with this part of what you said, "The body is literally nothing more than a lump of lifeless meat. It's no more "rude" to the former inhabitant than digging through their garbage bin." He's saying that might be your belief but a majority of the religions of the world disagree with your view on that, and this is a topic that is inherently tied to divine magic (religion).

I'm talking about the D&D rules, not real life. But I'm pretty sure most real world religions don't believe that the soul literally stays inside of the corpse. Otherwise, why aren't people protesting the entire institution of archaeology as glorified grave robbing and putting grave goods and mummies on display as sacrilege and blasphemy that keeps the souls of the deceased from moving on? Why aren't we demanding that all murderers, even accidental ones, be executed so that their victims can rest in peace? Isn't the whole point of the afterlife to be a place for souls to go after dying? Being trapped in your own rotting corpse for eternity would a horrible hellish nightmare (assuming you could still feel it, since your nerves are all rotted); at that point, being reanimated as a zombie wouldn't make any difference to the deceased if their existence otherwise consists of feeling themselves rotting forever and unable to move.

But I digress... we're talking about D&D. Not real world religions.

 

[Cyclone_Joker]

No, he's saying he disagrees with this part of what you said, "The body is literally nothing more than a lump of lifeless meat. It's no more "rude" to the former inhabitant than digging through their garbage bin." He's saying that might be your belief but a majority of the religions of the world disagree with your view on that, and this is a topic that is inherently tied to divine magic (religion).

The issue with that argument is that this is knowable. People can and do in any setting with even moderate-leveled casters what happens to a soul upon its death. There's no question. In D&D, any religion who says that the body matters to the soul after death is wrong. Likewise, anyone who undead aren't Evil are wrong because of idiocy of objective morality and how it is equally knowable.

 

[Jester David]

What? The D&D rules specifically state that the soul has moved on.

And?
Most major religions here believe the exact same thing, but desecrating a corpse is still desecrating a corpse.

EDIT: I would like to bring up the Planescape faction the Dustmen. They created a system where people could donate their own corpses to be raised as skeletons and zombies that the dustmen would use for manual labor, and developed a truce with all undead. They are explicitly a non-evil, playable faction.

After 40 years and thousands of products there will always be exceptions to the general rule. Some will be kept and some will be ignored or retconned. But the general rule is still a constant undead = evil.

Funny thing about that... Dragon 313 has an anecdote where a woman became a ghoul while pregnant, and her child survived (though it became half-undead). When she gave birth as a ghoul, she did not eat her child, but cared for and protected it (even to the point of attacking and eating the other ghouls that were with her).

That's nice. But exceptions to the rule are still exceptions.

Deathless are originally from BOED.

I'll take your word for it. Just means Eberron salvaged a tacked-on idea and decided to make it a part of the setting.
Or, since Eberron would have been written before BoED hit the shelves, it means someone saw the idea and decided it was cool. Given James Wyatt was involved with both, I'd say it was him really liking his idea of positive energy "non-dead" and deciding to give it a place in Eberron.

(Oh, and in 1e and 2e, Mummies were also positive energy undead. The jury is out if this was intended or an accident that survived the edition change.)

 

[Shemeska]

Archliches IIRC. And they're particularly rare. The exception rather than the rule.

Yeah, archliches and baelnorn as specific subtypes of lich aren't evil. Exceptions yes, but against the claim that all liches are evil, all you need is an exception.

I don't have a problem with non-evil liches being super rare -frankly I think they should be for a variety of reasons- but I just don't like the straitjacket of trying to tie all liches (or all undead) as evil when there are lots of examples otherwise (even if they're much less common).

 

[Jester David]

The issue with that argument is that this is knowable. People can and do in any setting with even moderate-leveled casters what happens to a soul upon its death. There's no question. In D&D, any religion who says that the body matters to the soul after death is wrong.

The knowing is irrelevant.
Knowing for a fact the soul departs and believing very, very strongly that the soul departs are functionally identical. The body is not tied to the soul in most Abrahamic religions but defiling the dead is still a sin.

 

[Cyclone_Joker]

The knowing is irrelevant.
Knowing for a fact the soul departs and believing very, very strongly that the soul departs are functionally identical.

No, they aren't. One is fact, the other isn't. If it's provable that the soul leaves the body, then once it leaves the body then the body is then a meaningless hunk of meat. Necromancy is a completely logical move.

In fact, in a setting I was writing, I had what amounted to Skullstone(Without the Silver Prince, of course)(And this was before I'd ever heard of Exalted) in a desert that was a massive economic and cultural powerhouse because of animated corpses doing pretty much all unskilled labor.

The body is not tied to the soul in most Abrahamic religions but defiling the dead is still a sin.

Not going to go down this road with you.