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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 1756172" data-attributes="member: 19675">Re: Objects being evil & principle of contagion.Contagion is all over the D&D magic system.  That is how spells like Object Read and the aformentioned communicating with the dead spells work- you are magically sensing things that have happened to or around the object being magically read.Re: Evil Planes- I'll grant you Ravenloft, but that plane is often described as having a will, and thus, in some sense, an intellect.  I don't own the MoP, so I'll have to defer on that.Raven- I do realize that many cultures ascribed motives to natural forces.  This principle of animism, though, presupposes that these things are, in some sense, alive and intelligent.  If it is alive and intelligent, then it has the capacity to make moral decisions, and thus the capacity to do evil or good.  Ergo-this dosn't damage my argument in the least.As for:No.  Anything can damage you, be it good, evil, or even non-aligned, in the right circumstances.  The point of the fire/negative energy comparison is to illustrate that the capacity to do damage to someone is not a sufficient cause to call something evil.  And there have been several people who have used a similar rationale along the path of this thread.  However, by that logic, the entire arsenal of damaging spells and even weapons could be considered evil.  But since they are obviously tools, we know this is not the case.Also, as some have pointed out, there are negative energy spells that are not evil.  If the mere use of negative energy isn't evil 100% of the time, then negative energy cannot be pure evil.  Otherwise,  by that interal logic, you could use pure evil to do good and pure good to do evil.So, if negative energy isn't evil because it does damage, and it obviously isn't considered evil to use it for some spells and it is for others, and it is possible to have dealings with the dead without it being evil...there has to be another rationale behind making undead evil.  What is left is the "Undead  = Evil" as a simple game design tool, and even THAT has been shown not to be universal within WOTC's own products.I mean, they may say that the Eberron Deathless are not undead because undeath is a mockery of life, but the Deathless aren't, but it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, its a duck.  Description aside, the Deathless are good-aligned undead!====Primitive Screwhead, I'm arguing from RW religious theory, mythology, legends, and fiction, just like everyone else.  After all, those are the sources for the game in the first place.</blockquote>

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