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.)

 

[Cadence]

But it literally can happen. I could make a good character and cast raise dead lots of times. The DM could rule that my character becomes evil, but that’s not what the “rule” says. It says only evil characters do, which by making a good character and then doing it, I have proven false. Now it falls on the DM to decide what to do about that.

<snip>

Except, a player can make a druid character, and then declare that this character is putting on metal armor. It then falls on the DM to determine what happens as a result, since the rules don’t. Maybe the character loses their druid levels, maybe the armor transmutes into wood, maybe the DM kicks the player out of the game, maybe nothing happens at all. But the “rule” is inarguably violable by players, so it’s lack of specified consequence makes it an incomplete rule, if it’s a rule at all.

Are the rules about fudging die rolls and bonuses, or arbitrarily adding gold or equipment, or not marking off spells similarly incomplete? (Do the rules ever say what the DM is supposed to do if those things happen?)

 

[Charlaquin]

Perhaps, but I've always seen it as more spectral and - dare I say - organic. A NG character, for example, who is a shining beacon of Goodliness is probably going to be affected by Evil things more noticeably than a NG character who is barely above the pure N line.

In practice this means we often describe alignments using big and small letters; the two characters above would be NG and Ng respectively. Or brackets. For example a character who's just a little bit Chaotic and a little bit Good but not far off pure Neutral might show as N(cg) or cg{n}. (had to edit in the funny brackets as it took the first try to be an emoji)

So what you’ve effectively done is broken it into more than nine categories. But again, in practice there must come a point where a character crosses the threshold from one category into another.

And those rules don't have to be exhaustive - hell, it'd fill three books if they were. Just some very basic guidelines in the PH (so every one gets the same info) would be a great start.

For sure. I mean, even a rule specifying that the DM can decide to change a character’s alignment if they think the character’s actions generally reflect a different one than they have written would be more than currently exists

Er...OK...whatever that is...

It means I care about consequences, or if you like, outcomes, over motivations. To put it very simply, if you step on my foot, I can’t know if you meant to step on my foot or not, but my foot got stepped on by you either way, so an apology is in order even if it wasn’t intentional. The outcome is what matters.

There are plenty of other schools of thought surrounding ethics, and most people don’t really have a coherent ethical framework, they just rely on intuition. But I am a pretty hardline consequentialist, so we aren’t going to be able to agree on whether or not motivation matters more than outcome.

 

[Charlaquin]

In a REAL game (assuming alignment is being used for the hypothetical) I would probably treat it like a video game.
1 Step towards Evil for casting Animate Dead.
4 Steps towards Good for saving a bunch of children and denying payment.
2 Steps towards Chaotic for breaking into a home, regardless of suspicion of guilt.
1 Step towards Evil for casting Animate Dead.
3 Step towards Lawful for reporting your evidence of crime (from the home) to the authorities, and cooperating with them.
1 Step towards Evil for casting Animate Dead.

That kind of mental tallying. It could definitely end up with a predominantly good character who casts Animate Dead a lot, but it would make the process a lot harder to achieve/maintain depending on frequency of casting.

Great, that’s a perfectly fine way to house rule it. It isn’t what the rules actually say to do though (because the rules don’t say anything on the matter).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But it literally can happen. I could make a good character and cast raise dead lots of times.

Except, a player can make a druid character, and then declare that this character is putting on metal armor.

No. These are not situations allowed by the rules. I can declare I add my proficiency bonus to damage instead of strength, I can declare that my character jumps over a house, I can declare all sort of things that are not allowed to come pass according the RAW. It still isn't going to happen.

"X won't do Y" is the rule. If You declare your X doing Y, you're breaking the rule. The RAW is not complicated at all. Sure, it is a stupid way to formulate rules, and in case of 'frequent casting' so ambiguous that it makes it useless.

It straight-up says ask your DM if you want your druid character to break the taboo. In other words, it’s not really a rule. It’s a statement about an in-setting taboo informs the setting and relies entirely on the DM’s judgment to determine what (if anything) happens if a player doesn’t want this character to observe the taboo.

No. It says that the rule exist because of the taboo, and you can ask GM about omitting the rule. But GM can of course omit any rule. I just let our bard learn revivify, doesn't make revivify not being a bard spell a non-rule.


I really don't think this RAW angle is helpful.

 

[Maxperson]

I'd say Occam's Razor probably suggests that instead of adding in a DM oversight and changing a PC's alignment mechanic that the DM just does not sweat tracking a PC's roleplayed alignment to the one on their sheet.

That's not Occam's Razor!

You're talking about how to respond to the issue, rather than which is the simplest explanation of what they said.

D&D has cosmic alignment forces and some optional mechanics for alignments and aligned outer planes.

There are only very limited circumstances where PC alignment would come up. Going to an outer plane. If said "LG" paladin who ran around constantly increasing the amount of evil in the world by frequently animating the dead ended up in an upper plane, he would get the heebie jeebies as he experienced the dissonance of being evil on a good plane. I wouldn't even bother with his alignment until he hit something in the game that required me to look. Until then, the world would simply react to his evil as appropriate for the world. Said paladin would also take 8d6 radiant damage if he ever picked up a Talisman of Pure Good.

 

[Charlaquin]

Are the rules about fudging die rolls and bonuses, or arbitrarily adding gold or equipment, or not marking off spells similarly incomplete? (Do the rules ever say what the DM is supposed to do if those things happen?)

A player who does these things is not correctly following the gameplay procedures described by the rules. A player who declares that their character puts on a set of metal armor or frequently declares that their character casts animate dead, is correctly following the gameplay procedures described by the rules. They’re describing what they want to do, and the DM is then supposed to describe the result (possibly calling for a die roll first). The druid armor “rule” and the evil necromancy “rule,” such as they are, don’t tell the DM how to fulfill their role in this procedure, they just incorrectly state that it won’t come up. Well, it came up, now what?

 

[Maxperson]

Not at all. “Western Morals (TM)” are not a single coherent set of rules, and “Westerners (TM)” disagree about them ALL THE TIME. Even if you specify Judeo-Christian morals, there are countless denominations of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam precisely because the followers of those belief systems frequently disagree with each other on interpretations of those moral systems.

Yes and no. All of them would have an issue with desecration of the dead. All of them would have an issue with adultery. And so on. The disagreements would more stem from what the punishment for the various sins were and/or what constituted the issue in the first place(say action vs. thought when it comes to adultery), but the issue itself would be fairly consistent through all of the groups.

To bring this back to D&D since I'm not going to discuss religion, the play group is going to be almost entirely on the same page with some minor variation that can easily be resolved(if there's some longshot alignment issue which I haven't seen since 3e) since there are almost no mechanics associated with alignment in 5e.

 

[Maxperson]

Really very similar.

Both are a piece of flotsam flavor text designed to appeal to an older, D&D orthodox audience that ultimately means nothing and serves no one.

Druids have been able to wear metal armor since 1e. There were just mechanical consequences for it in the older editions. 5e? Not so much. No mechanical consequences at all for violating the voluntary taboo.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes and no. All of them would have an issue with desecration of the dead. All of them would have an issue with adultery. And so on. The disagreements would more stem from what the punishment for the various sins were and/or what constituted the issue in the first place(say action vs. thought when it comes to adultery), but the issue itself would be fairly consistent through all of the groups.

To bring this back to D&D since I'm not going to discuss religion, the play group is going to be almost entirely on the same page with some minor variation that can easily be resolved(if there's some longshot alignment issue which I haven't seen since 3e) since there are almost no mechanics associated with alignment in 5e.

We are literally disagreeing about this on this thread! No, not everyone is going to be on the same page!

 

[Cadence]

A player who does these things is not correctly following the gameplay procedures described by the rules. A player who declares that their character puts on a set of metal armor or frequently declares that their character casts animate dead, is correctly following the gameplay procedures described by the rules. They’re describing what they want to do, and the DM is then supposed to describe the result (possibly calling for a die roll first). The druid armor “rule” and the evil necromancy “rule,” such as they are, don’t tell the DM how to fulfill their role in this procedure, they just incorrectly state that it won’t come up. Well, it came up, now what?

It sounded (post 540) like you were referring to the "incompleteness" of the rules in regards to the player doing something, where incompleteness is where the rules don't tell the DM how to address it. Is that true?

If so, do the rules tell the DM how to fulfill their role in the procedure if they suspect a player is fudging their dice rolls, or not marking down spells memorized, or not marking down spells cast, or changing their equipment lists?