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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shemeska" data-source="post: 6182561" data-attributes="member: 11697">It's interesting, because the animating source of undead (negative energy, and the negative energy plane itself) has --never-- been evil in any edition of (A)D&D (can't say about basic D&D, know nothing about it, and can't speak for 4e which has its own completely different planar continuity going on). Every edition has placed Negative Energy as explicitly neutral, and likewise it's the same thing in Pathfinder.Yet you still have sources (like the 3e BoED) that have this bizarre notion that positive energy is awesome and pure and good, and negative energy is icky, gross, and evil. Which is completely contradictory to any mention of the energy planes themselves.That said, most undead being evil relates not to what they are or what animates them, but the way in which they died, the means by which they were dragged back, etc. A lot of those involve horrible agony, loss, anguish, or willing debasement of themselves into something inhuman. Negative energy is not and never has been evil, neither is fire, neither is water. The trick is the way in which that energy is used. Lighting a fire to burn down an orphanage with locked doors and people inside is evil. Lighting a fire to stay warm is not. Using negative energy to heal yourself if you are sustained by negative energy, not evil. Using negative energy to pollute the positive-energy based soul of your dead cat and create a wraith kitty, that's misguided at the very best, and a very slippery slope descending down into evil if it's used that way.Metagame-wise, non-intelligent undead only became evil in 3.5 because the design team wanted paladins to be able to smite them apparently. Those rules filtered down into Pathfinder, and as a result while PF still has that going on, it has an in-game rationalization for that (which works even if its positive and negative energy planes are neutral - if populated by xenophobic jerks and equal-opportunity antimatter 'anti-positive-energy-and-that-includes-undead-too' creatures respectively). The PF rationale is that under most (but not all circumstances) undead are evil as a result of the methods and rationale behind their creation and an inherent twisting of the path of the mortal soul - damaging the mortal soul being among the worst things out there. James Jacobs has discussed the reasoning behind the PF stance before, and I'd suggest looking at his answer on the topic for a fuller answer.And let's agree not to talk about "positive energy undead".</blockquote>

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