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.)

 

[Charlaquin]

Not wanting players with evil PCs doesn't really have anything to do with alignment. It's that I don't want to listen as someone roleplays a gross fantasy of slowly murdering a woman by choking her to death while watching the light die from her eyes, and worse. Making light of desecrating the dead may not be as bad as that, but it's on the spectrum.

Been there, done that, won't do it again.

I don’t want to do that either, but I don’t need alignment to prevent it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Who gets to decide? Unless you change the rules, the necromancer is creating a monster that will attack and kill whoever is close the moment it's not commanded to otherwise. It's reckless endangerment at best.

Then the recklessness can speak for itself when someone gets bitten. Or, if you don’t want PC necromancers, you can just say “no PC necromancers in my game.”

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Not wanting players with evil PCs doesn't really have anything to do with alignment. It's that I don't want to listen as someone roleplays a gross fantasy of slowly murdering a woman by choking her to death while watching the light die from her eyes, and worse. Making light of desecrating the dead may not be as bad as that, but it's on the spectrum.

Been there, done that, won't do it again.

Yeah, I get not wanting the former. The latter though... eh. The game is already full of mildly gross things. A character animating fallen enemies in order to save the lives of innocents seems perfectly fine to me. In fact, I have a soft spot for characters who are edgy and transgressive but still do the right thing when it counts. And if it takes creating some zombies to get that kitten out of a burning building then so be it! I really don't care if some judgmental jerk paladin would rather let the kitten to be burnt to death. That's right, why are you guys siding with the people who want to let the kittens to die?

 

[Cadence]

This discussion really is saying the quiet part loud on alignment and its use as a social bludgeon.

Even with no mechanical consequence, for some it is still necessary to us the social weight of labels to express Judgement against a player who does not conform to the DMs ideals.

That’s why there will never be agreement on the utility of alignment (or lack thereof). The people who say it still serves a useful purpose despite having no mechanical implications any more are still using it like it has mechanical implications, changing characters’ alignments if they think the player is playing them in a way that doesn’t conform to their idea of the alignment they chose. Sometimes even taking away class abilities because of it.

At some point I think the misuse of words would just annoy me enough to not want to be around the other person IRL and so would make continuing the game hard. "My character's eyes are the color of the mid-day sky --- red." "My character walks across the pool -- doing the breast stroke." "My character is deathly afraid of water -- I go do laps in the pool again." "My character is a dwarf -- 5'6", pointy ears, medidates instead of sleeps." "I'm playing a character that's as close to real life Samurai as I can get -- I cast fireball." "My character is a devout worshiper of the sun god. I go desecrate another of his temples." "My character is good --- I go murder all the orphans again."

I'd be just fine if they told me they didn't want to use alignment to describe their character.

---

As an aside, does it say anywhere in the rules that the players normal walking movement has to involve their feet actually touching the ground? Could they just be hovering slightly above as they move?

 

[Vaalingrade]

At some point I think the misuse of words would just annoy me enough to not want to be around the other person IRL and so would make continuing the game hard.

And that's why we stop using highly subjective, emotionally charged words as weapons against each other in a game.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Also, if we want to talk about spectrums and desecrating corpses, let's discuss looting bodies, AKA, the International Adventurer's Greeting.

 

[Seramus]

As an aside, does it say anywhere in the rules that the players normal walking movement has to involve their feet actually touching the ground? Could they just be hovering slightly above as they move?

The rules do not say what SLEEP is. They say you need to do it for X amount of hours to get a long rest, but never do they mention what it involves. "Do the thing, Zhu Li!"

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Not wanting players with evil PCs doesn't really have anything to do with alignment. It's that I don't want to listen as someone roleplays a gross fantasy of slowly murdering a woman by choking her to death while watching the light die from her eyes, and worse. Making light of desecrating the dead may not be as bad as that, but it's on the spectrum.

Having LG on their character sheet does nothing to prevent a player doing that.

 

[Charlaquin]

As an aside, does it say anywhere in the rules that the players normal walking movement has to involve their feet actually touching the ground? Could they just be hovering slightly above as they move?

Generally the game conforms to real-life physics except where a rule creates a specific exception, so a rule isn’t really required to prevent this. Again, the rules are exceptions-based and say what you can do, not what you can’t do. That said, I could be convinced to allow a character to do this. We might have to discuss what happens in some weird edge cases.

 

[Cadence]

Generally the game conforms to real-life physics except where a rule creates a specific exception,

Do they? It feels like there are a bunch of threads where the argument is that there is no reason they need to.

If a player knows all the pieces for making explosives or toxins, can their character if the parts are easy to find? Do germ theory and evolution work like IRL? Should electricity really mess with psionics given brain activity is electrical? Do all the animals without the ridiculously low movement rates and jumping distances from the rules run and jump as fast as the real world counterparts?

Anyway, I've drifted us a long way from alignment and raising dead.