D&D 5E Why is animate dead considered inherently evil?

[Tolerable Tyrant]

I'm having a troublesome time understanding why the animate dead spell is considered evil. When I read the manual it states that the spall imbues the targeted corpse with a foul mimicry of life, implying that the soul is not a sentient being who is trapped in a decaying corpse. Rather, the spell does exactly what its title suggests, it only animates the corps. Now of course one could use the spell to create zombies that would hunt and kill humans, but by that same coin, they could create a labor force that needs no form of sustenance (other than for the spell to be recast of course). There have also been those who have said "the spell is associated with the negative realm which is evil", however when you ask someone why the negative realm is bad that will say "because it is used for necromancy", I'm sure you can see the fallacy in this argument.

However, I must take into account that I have only looked into the DnD magic system since yesterday so there are likely large gaps in my knowledge. PS(Apon further reflection I've decided that the animate dead spell doesn't fall into the school of necromancy, as life is not truly given to the corps, instead I believe this would most likely fall into the school of transmutation.) PPS(I apologize for my sloppy writing, I've decided I'm feeling too lazy to correct it.)

 

[cbwjm]

Interesting that neither the spell nor item write-up specifically mentions grappling, which to me has always been the whole point of Free Action: you can't be grappled.

I always felt that the point of free action was as a foil for hold person spells.

 

[Fifinjir]

My position remains the same: making raising undead too safe and clean takes away what makes it cool in the first place.

 

[James Gasik]

You can keep your creepy, evil undead. Me? I'm putting skeletons to work in the fields to provide food for the living.

 

[Steampunkette]

I've said it, before, and I'll say it again: It's about possession.

There's tons of cultures throughout history that give high reverence to the dead. And there's cultures that give minimal reverence to the dead. There's no reason for there to never be fantasy settings where the dead are given no reverence because it's a husk, a shell, a pile of meat since the spirit left. For every culture and religious practice in a setting to somehow align with heavily christian-influenced western society is kinda weird.

But. Our bodies are "Ours" and our family's in the end. It's why Organ Donation requires you to opt-in rather than taking what is needed from a useless hunk of dead tissue that is going to be discarded, anyhow. Western culture has a strong idea of possession of the body even after one is dead.

Which is why last wishes are almost always respected.

ALMOST always.

See, once you're dead, your body is no longer -entirely- yours. While the hospital has to follow culture-specific laws about organ harvesting, your family is under no legal obligation to respect your wishes. You wanna be buried in a New Orleans graveyard but your family balks at the price? Enjoy being cremated and scattered in the bayou to get you "Close Enough".

Your body becomes your family's possession to do with as they like, essentially.

So a necromancer animating your body is stealing it. Same for the resurrectionist in the 1800s stealing your body for scientific study. "Desecrating" a corpse is just a really high highfalutin way of saying "Vandalism", in the end, with a heavy religious overtone to try and add weight to it. Same as "Desecrating" a church or a graveyard. And since your corpse is someone's property, that's also unacceptable.

I say go all in with it. Have a society where it's wrong to animate dead. Have a different society that doesn't give a darn what happens to the body after death. Have a different society play hard into possession of one's remains result in families selling dead loved ones to necromancers (or have them stolen in a body black market). Heck, take it a step further and have a society where undead aristocrats routinely buy fresh corpses as "Possession Puppets" for their ghostly butlers and servants to possess so they can turn down bedding instead of having their ectoplasmic hands pass through stuff.

Get real -weird- with it. After all, on Earth we've got societies where corpses are dug up once or twice a decade for family gatherings. Or left on mountaintops in open-air burials so birds get a nice meal. Or they get hung from the sides of mountains in tiny coffins all curled up like they're sleeping. Heck, for a massive portion of human existence, endocannibalism was the appropriate way of dealing with a dead person.

Also yes. Enchantment magic is skeevy AF. Always has been. Most people just didn't consider the implications of stealing another person's free will or the inherent invasion involved in taking direct control over their body until recently. Probably has something to do with a greater societal understanding of the importance of consent in everything from drug use to relationships.

 

[Oofta]

I've said it, before, and I'll say it again: It's about possession.

There's tons of cultures throughout history that give high reverence to the dead. And there's cultures that give minimal reverence to the dead. There's no reason for there to never be fantasy settings where the dead are given no reverence because it's a husk, a shell, a pile of meat since the spirit left. For every culture and religious practice in a setting to somehow align with heavily christian-influenced western society is kinda weird.

But. Our bodies are "Ours" and our family's in the end. It's why Organ Donation requires you to opt-in rather than taking what is needed from a useless hunk of dead tissue that is going to be discarded, anyhow. Western culture has a strong idea of possession of the body even after one is dead.

Which is why last wishes are almost always respected.

ALMOST always.

See, once you're dead, your body is no longer -entirely- yours. While the hospital has to follow culture-specific laws about organ harvesting, your family is under no legal obligation to respect your wishes. You wanna be buried in a New Orleans graveyard but your family balks at the price? Enjoy being cremated and scattered in the bayou to get you "Close Enough".

Your body becomes your family's possession to do with as they like, essentially.

So a necromancer animating your body is stealing it. Same for the resurrectionist in the 1800s stealing your body for scientific study. "Desecrating" a corpse is just a really high highfalutin way of saying "Vandalism", in the end, with a heavy religious overtone to try and add weight to it. Same as "Desecrating" a church or a graveyard. And since your corpse is someone's property, that's also unacceptable.

I say go all in with it. Have a society where it's wrong to animate dead. Have a different society that doesn't give a darn what happens to the body after death. Have a different society play hard into possession of one's remains result in families selling dead loved ones to necromancers (or have them stolen in a body black market). Heck, take it a step further and have a society where undead aristocrats routinely buy fresh corpses as "Possession Puppets" for their ghostly butlers and servants to possess so they can turn down bedding instead of having their ectoplasmic hands pass through stuff.

Get real -weird- with it. After all, on Earth we've got societies where corpses are dug up once or twice a decade for family gatherings. Or left on mountaintops in open-air burials so birds get a nice meal. Or they get hung from the sides of mountains in tiny coffins all curled up like they're sleeping. Heck, for a massive portion of human existence, endocannibalism was the appropriate way of dealing with a dead person.

Also yes. Enchantment magic is skeevy AF. Always has been. Most people just didn't consider the implications of stealing another person's free will or the inherent invasion involved in taking direct control over their body until recently. Probably has something to do with a greater societal understanding of the importance of consent in everything from drug use to relationships.

Personally I still consider it evil like I posted on the first page. Because ... zombies.

But despite my personal campaign world and preferences, there are many options here. A cast of society that reveres the dead bodies, when someone dies they remove all the flesh and engrave the bones before animating. I've read multiple stories where the skulls of the dead retain the wisdom of the ancestors, etc..

But a real drawback is that the typical undead is that they don't think for themselves, they follow orders blindly. They're like a robot that does exactly what you tell it to do. Tell the undead to dig a tunnel and they'll continue digging forever until physical deterioration means they can no longer dig. Even if it that means undermining other structures or hitting a pocket of poisonous gas that will leak out and kill people. Tell them to keep a room clean and they may interpret "clean" as anything that wasn't there when the order was given including people.

Then of course there's the question of what happens if you don't maintain control. In my campaign, they typically become an empty vessel just waiting for a new tenant (almost always hostile to the living) to move in. Of course the rules may change if you're doing something other than the standard animate dead, which is quite limited.

 

[ad_hoc]

The evilness is inherent in the essence of the magic.

It requires a once living body.

This isn't a spell that animates objects. If the caster created a facsimile of a body out of regular materials the spell won't work.

There must have been a life involved. The magic works based on the cosmic idea that life has a special quality that is more than just an object.

 

[Steampunkette]

Personally I still consider it evil like I posted on the first page. Because ... zombies.

But despite my personal campaign world and preferences, there are many options here. A cast of society that reveres the dead bodies, when someone dies they remove all the flesh and engrave the bones before animating. I've read multiple stories where the skulls of the dead retain the wisdom of the ancestors, etc..

But a real drawback is that the typical undead is that they don't think for themselves, they follow orders blindly. They're like a robot that does exactly what you tell it to do. Tell the undead to dig a tunnel and they'll continue digging forever until physical deterioration means they can no longer dig. Even if it that means undermining other structures or hitting a pocket of poisonous gas that will leak out and kill people. Tell them to keep a room clean and they may interpret "clean" as anything that wasn't there when the order was given including people.

Then of course there's the question of what happens if you don't maintain control. In my campaign, they typically become an empty vessel just waiting for a new tenant (almost always hostile to the living) to move in. Of course the rules may change if you're doing something other than the standard animate dead, which is quite limited.

While I recognize your problems... several don't require Necromancy to cause problems.

For instance, the most classic example most westerners are exposed to of "Magic gone wrong" relies on a lazy spellcaster not taking careful control of the magic they're using resulting in a catastrophe that he is powerless to stop... even with violence which only winds up making it worse.

... yup.

And more than a few religious traditions believe that working ANY magic at all invites evil entities and curses into your life, too. That you limit it to animate dead is a perfectly reasonable choice... but that's also you creating a reason for it to be evil in your setting.

But I think my explanation of possession/ownership covers the reason that socially, out of game though rarely articulated out loud, that animate dead is considered evil. The amount of "That was MY family member!" or "Imagine YOUR loved one" as an explanation for it being evil shows ownership and possession. And as I said desecration is just vandalism with religious overtones and that word has been bandied about a lot, too.

 

[Clint_L]

Not evil. A dead body is just organic material. Animating it is not inherently more evil than animating anything else.

Evil is always contextual. Human (or other sentient being) remains are likely to have a lot of emotional, cultural, and possibly religious resonance. So IMO the evil would not be in animating the remains, but in causing emotional harm and trauma to others by doing so.

But yeah, animating a random skeleton that no one knows or cares about? No more evil than animating a broom.

The wider context is that I don't use alignments because I think that anything being objectively, or inherently, good, evil, etc. is incoherent. Those are always subjective values. As evidence, I point to thousands of years of philosophers trying, and failing, to come up with a logically coherent definition of "good."

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As someone who started with 1E, I kind of love that we've now gone from enchanters being the good wizards and necromancers being the evil ones to enchanters being creeps with magic roofies and necromancers being pragmatic recyclers.

TBH, depends on method and technique.

Good enchanters use magic to avoid killing people, and do their best not to cause other, similarly horrible forms of harm. Wicked enchanters turn the minds of others into their playthings, forcing them to dance to whatever tune strikes their fancy. Both use a power that may fundamentally violate another's mind, but the former does so only with care and out of a desire to avoid other, irrevocable evils; the latter does it eagerly, cruelly, not because it is needed but because it is powerful or gratifying.

Perhaps we can make the same argument about necromancy. Any form of necromancy which actually controls souls or transforms existing sapient beings is pretty clearly a horrific violation. Likewise, intentionally creating any whole-cloth undead that are infectious (like vampires or shadows), or which inherently damage the living world purely by their presence through corrupting auras or the like, is pretty clearly doing something evil. If, however, you have a necromancer who respects the dead, making deals with them or using only non-sapient remains or the like and emphatically never creating the really nasty types, then sure, I think they could fall into the morally-grey area of "pragmatic recycler" rather than "horrid corrupter." Especially if, as with the above, it is undertaken (heh) only with appropriate forethought, pursuing a relatively noble end.

Both, I think, are clearly getting up to some Dirty Business that should raise some eyebrows for more squeaky-clean party members (assuming there are any), but not enough to cause a group rift over it unless someone has a very specific belief or prohibition against either thing.

 

[CreamCloud0]

i can understand the angle that animating a corpse may prevent the person from being revived, or that someone who needs and uses corpses to animate is therefore likely to go out and make some corpses but in a world where the afterlives and souls are a confirmed and known thing to exist what happens to the body after death may be a lesser concern.