Why does Undead=Evil

[Majoru Oakheart]

The question THEN becomes why are some evil and not others- why is the equation not true? As I have stated before in previous posts, I believe that is because of the will of the creature becoming undead.

One thing you should consider is that in 3.0, all the mindless undead were all neutral. The designers felt as you did, they didn't have enough will to be evil, they couldn't decide to be.

However, I believe players were complaining about the fact that their spells that smited evil, did more damage to evil, etc. didn't work on skeletons and zombies. Paladins everywhere were wondering why, when the classic fight in literature was the being of good against an army of mindless, walking dead, did their smite evil not work on them.

Osiris and the greater mummy are both pretty much exceptions for the same reason: There still is a lingering concept (part of the reason this thread exists) of undead that are that way for a holy purpose. When the BoED came out, someone decided to solve this by making the deathless type so that they could keep undead evil. I believe this likely applies to the gravecrawler as well, but I can't remember.

Yes, because of issues beyond the bounds of the books themselves, there are problems with the logic at certain points. When you have 4 different people who are writing a book, one of which may believe as you do and a couple more who believe as I do, then you tend to get parts of books that were written by one person ending up one way, and others ending up another.

A good example of this is the planes. They used to have a unifying reason for being there. Each campaign world in second edition was part of the cosmology. Some information about some of the old D&D worlds still being in existance in the 3rd Ed cosmology were there, despite the fact that they aren't supposed to anymore. This was discussed by Erik Mona from Dragon Magazine recently. He mentioned that there was unlikely to be any more references to the Spelljammer, despite the fact that one slipped into the Manual of the Planes. It was one authors attempt to make D&D more like he wanted it than the "default" setting.

What it comes down to right now, is due to game balance reasons(and likely disagreements between designers), the designers didn't make everything that used negative energy evil. But they instead HINTED at in being evil, as things that used it were generally evil. Monte, when he wrote the BoVD said that for the books to make logical sense, one would have to turn the spells that used negative energy ALL to use the [evil] descriptor. Of course, I'm guessing there was enough disagreement amongst others at WoTC that it didn't make it into 3.5 edition.

I understand wanting some logic. Really, there are only two or three solutions to make it internally consistant:

Say that EVIL exists and that negative energy is a form of it. Then, you'll have to change the rest of the spells that use negative energy to have the [evil] descriptor and probably give the negative energy plane a evil alignment as well. You'll also need to change all undead to evil aligned from older books.

Another possibility is that negative energy isn't evil at all, and since mindless undead can't commit evil acts, that puts them firmly back in the neutral alignment. You can also likely remove [evil] from Animate Dead.

The last choice is that the mismatch of rules somehow makes sense and it is only because zombies and skeletons are evil that creating them is evil. Perhaps it is because their soul is being enslaved or any other number of reasons not written in the book. It could just be that the gods have their own, highly subjective and politcal reasons why one thing is innately evil and another isn't.

It isn't a matter of no logic existing, just no logic being written in the book. Being creative, I can come up with a number of different reasons (all logical) WHY the book can be right AND make sense.

 

[Tuzenbach]

I think Sejs is absolutely right. I dislike this lack of logic though.
Illogical things are tough to relate too since they make no sense.

Zombies are mindless, they do not choose to kill innocents, the ones who orders them does. They are the evil ones here not the body with no choice.

I doubt I will care what happens to my body after I'm dead since I'll be gone.

Don't they need to eat, though? Even friendly/neutral zombies get hungry, yes?

 

[neelum]

OK, first off, there are a bunch of things going on here both RL and fantasy. Int the fantasy realm, there are several occurrences of non evil, even good undead. TV gives us eternal Knight, D&D gives us Jander from I, Straud, and also in second ed. monster manual (not sure of what version or addendum it was in) there was an undead gaurdian, Elf no less, that would sacrifice his life for the protection of some ancient treasure or some such. What this gives us is the premise that among undead, good tends to be the major minority, not nonexistant.
not only that, but how many times in fantasy and other fiction is it pointed out that the tool or power is not evil, but the intent with which it is used?
Although he might have used a blanket statement, which by my general principle is incorrect, he was considering a valid point.
in real life how many people do you think see a goth kid, dressed in black, all pale and looking al gaunt and somber, and assume things like "i bet that is one of those kids that tries to be like a vampire and drink blood like those freaks I read about a few years ago"? How about racists, age or sex discrimination? (all examples of taking superficial looks and generalizing into bad reactions thoughts etc. OK, now for in game examples. I was running a game in which I had a paladin, druid, rogue, bard, and a psychic warrior. The paladin was using his detect evil power while they were in a city walking down the street or some such. He detected a charater, who by the way was lawful evil, that happened to be a gaurd and wanted to do something about it. In the game the gaurd was a corrupt one, accepted bribes, abused his powers as a gaurd and such. The rest of the party said he is a gaurd, a good guy, you are wrong (all a paraphrase mind you), because they don't have the benifit of just knowing the way he does. Further, there was another time when I had them come up against a character who was Stalking around in the woods along a road btween two cities wearing all black a hood and cape and such. The party approached him when they heard, search, and found him. He gave them a story, which was true, about setting somrthing up as a surprise for a noble who was to arrive in the morning or next day. The party believed this to be a lie, even though the Pally said he wasn't evil. So, it is possible, even with the proper tools to make an errored judgement, after all.
I think that in the end I would determine his characters nature on his reasons and deeds accomplished, but my characters might not, depending on how I thought their perceptions were. This also holds true with the commoners in a world. They would Probably think a man who rode into town on a skeletal horse an evil man. (And if he also had two goblin skeletons as protectors or something, oh my!)

 

[Sejs]

Probably think a man who rode into town on a skeletal horse an evil man.

An evil man with really good balance and buns of steel. Skeletal horses just -can't- be comfortable to ride on.

 

[Bronn]

Don't they need to eat, though? Even friendly/neutral zombies get hungry, yes?

Why in hell would a thing with no metabolism need to eat?

I can understand people shunning you if they know your a Necro.
But evil is always relative because it depends on our upbringing.

If you were raised in a community that used the dead to help them you would most likely not see it as evil. You would know that your body would be preserve through necromancy to help the community after your death.

Making them evil with no reason other then to make bad guys you can slaughter without remorse is just dumb.
The ends justifies the means in one case but not the other.

 

[dcollins]

But evil is always relative because it depends on our upbringing.

This is precisely the opposite of how D&D is set up. From the PHB chapter on Alignment:

Good and evil are not philosophical concepts in the D&D game. They are the forces that define the cosmos.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

But evil is always relative because it depends on our upbringing.

As dcollins points out, this is real-world morality, not D&D morality. In our arguments regarding undead, we need to remember we are arguing the point in the D&D universe, not the real-world. That is to say, we aren't speculating on whether undead would be evil were they created on Earth a la Resident Evil. We're arguing about undead in the D&D universe, where Good and Evil are quantifiable forces.

I think that several individuals in this discussion are giving too much weight to the fact that there are non-evil undead. Consider the Angel TV show. Does the fact that Angel and Spike are "good undead" disprove the assertion that vampires=evil? No, they don't. They are the exceptions that prove the rule, not the average vampires that disprove it.

A few examples of good undead have been put forth in this thread, and there's no doubting that "good undead" do exist. But to say that their existence means that Undead /= Evil is incorrect. Rather, those undead who are not evil are the exception to the general rule.

 

[Tuzenbach]

Why in hell would a thing with no metabolism need to eat?

I can understand people shunning you if they know your a Necro.
But evil is always relative because it depends on our upbringing.

If you were raised in a community that used the dead to help them you would most likely not see it as evil. You would know that your body would be preserve through necromancy to help the community after your death.

Making them evil with no reason other then to make bad guys you can slaughter without remorse is just dumb.
The ends justifies the means in one case but not the other.

LoL! So, unlike "Resident Evil", zombies don't eat people? LoL.

 

[Bronn]

LoL! So, unlike "Resident Evil", zombies don't eat people? LoL.

They can try but it won't work without a working metabolism.

 

[Bronn]

They are the exceptions that prove the rule, not the average vampires that disprove it.

That has to be a sophism.

Exceptions can only prove that rules are not absolute.