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Message: <blockquote data-quote="VelvetViolet" data-source="post: 6182930" data-attributes="member: 6686357">The soul has  moved on. 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. And I would argue that mind-control, tattoos,  non-vanilla sexual proclivities, or dozens of other things could be  considered "desecrating the creation of a god." D&D morality doesn't  make much sense to begin with, since it tries to be both objective and  follow progressive/liberal societal mores, and instead ends up creating  bizarre and offensive situations like a gay half-elf paladin angsting  about being mixed-race and gay while happily slaughtering and looting  goblin villages (while ignoring the fact that he can just use magic to  change his race and sexual orientation as easily as he changes his  clothes).Despite being  "anti-life," undead are little different from living creatures aside  from various immunities. You can use positive energy to create the exact  equivalent of undead (immunities and all), and somehow its not  considered evil or unnatural despite being identical in every way but in  energy type. I'd hazard a guess that there are probably dozens of  planets in the D&D verse that are otherwise normal aside from all  the life using negative energy instead of positive, where paladins and  good clerics channel negative energy, and evil clerics and anti-paladins  channel positive energy and creatures powered by positive energy are  considered evil and unnatural.Reanimating corpses doesn't affect the soul and the  various create undead spells cannot create undead with souls like liches  or vampires. Creating a golem is arguably evil because you're enslaving  an elemental spirit. Saying it's unnatural makes no sense because  negative is natural. It's the classic appeal to nature fallacy.Only some spectral undead actually retain  their souls, and are generally undone if they're unfinished business is  fulfilled, while others are just impressions of emotions bound with  negative energy. The intelligent ones retain their living alignment and  are good or evil like normal people. A vampire's soul is not being  corrupted over time: they were shifted to evil as soon as they arose,  and killing and resurrecting them turns them back into the creatures  they used to be with no side effects. Furthermore, vampires can  hypothetically retain their good alignment (remember Jander Sunstar?),  and by the Monster Manual do not need blood to survive (barring the  sustenance rules from Libris Mortis, and it's not like they  can't just feed on animals or evil humanoids). The best you can argue is  that certain types of undead are evil because they were evil while  alive or became evil because their wills were overcome by an evil  undead, but not that all undead are inherently evil.</blockquote>

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