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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 6182829" data-attributes="member: 37579">The flippant but short answer is because author of the game decided it was Evil (with a capital "E", as the Rules of the universe decree it to so). And said author was influenced by the general view of necromancy as black magick, or the blackest of black magick. Any other answer is hand waving at best and fan wanking at worst, a justification for how the world works.But I'll play ball. Why are undead evil? You hit on most of the arguments, but present them very one-sided. So let's start by looking at those. People in a D&D world have solid proof for an afterlife, which also means they have solid proof their bodies are the creation of god(s) and they have tangible knowledge of the existence of the soul. So animating the dead is desecrating the creation of a god and being rude to the vessel of a soul that is not yours. There's no reason they wouldn't want to treat bodies with respect. We treat bodies with respect because we believe they had a soul. Why would knowledge negate that?This is an iffy one. Presentation of the Negative Elemental Plane is spotty at best. The argument that without negative energy things would not be able to die is... questionable. Death is arguably the absence of positive energy not the presence of negative energy. And the NEP typically represents "unlife" more than "death". It's anti-life.This is the big one.First, arguably decay is caused by the positive plane as microorganisms are alive. But that's likely a side topic on how death and decay works in a magical world...Second, resurrection magic has been presented as "unnatural" on more than one occasion and more than one Death god has been anti-resurrection. But, at its worst, raising the dead just delays the natural order. And most resurrection magic explicitly cannot be used on somewhat natural deaths (old age). And you cannot raise an unwilling creature, so it's not forcing someone to come back (no dragging back a soul like in Buffy). Raising the undead is a continual violation of the natural order. It's a continual slight against nature. You overlook ghosts and the like. Spectral undead are tortured souls being denied a peaceful afterlife (or escaping their just punishment). And while liches are not tortured, they're very much the exception. Not everyone chooses to be a vampire: most vampire spawn are victims, potentially still with a soul that is slowly being corrupted and tainted with years of unnatural hunger. The same could be said for ghouls.The reasons are also not exclusive. A vampire is both #3 and 4, which makes it worse than just raising the dead or torturing a soul. An unmentioned reason is that many undead infect others with undeath spreading their curse to innocents. Wraith, specters, shadows, ghouls, and mohrg create spawn.</blockquote>

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