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.)

 

[Mort]

If they wanted it to be a choice, they could have said, "most" or "some" druids. As has been said, it is poorly written.

Sorry, to nitpick but it is not poorly written, it is poorly explained.

The wording is "druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal" that is about as clear as it gets.

BUT there is no explanation on this and more importantly there is no what happens when they do... (since it doesn't say can't, it says won't). Or even if they accidentally wear metal (there are plenty of "you don't know exactly what this is made of..." moments in 5e)

I suppose poorly explained is a TYPE of poorly written - so maybe it's not even a nitpick.

 

[James Gasik]

Oh man, the lance discussion. Closely related: the bastard sword and what the heck kind of weapon is it anyways?

 

[Mort]

Depends on the person. I found 4e's presentation extremely tedious.

Yeah, me too and I like the edition. I found the magic item section particularly dry - which was just odd because the artifact sections was very well written and interesting too.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I'm guessing you don't have a lot of law enforcement/cop-esque D&D characters

Nope.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Yeah, me too and I like the edition. I found the magic item section particularly dry - which was just odd because the artifact sections was very well written and interesting too.

The magic items were mostly very bad.

Much as I love 4e, magic items and feats were waaaay too watered down when they should have been allowed to be as awesome as class powers.

 

[Baron Opal II]

As for crazy rulings, I vaguely recall a discussion on Freedom of Movement where someone asked if a person under it's effect jumped in a pool of water if they would immediately sink to the bottom and take falling damage because water does not hinder your movement under the effect of the spell!

I remember that...

That came about when Living City: Raven's Bluff was a thing (AL in the 90s). A ring of free action was in a module and then a small but significant number of characters had one. It was explained to me about the "logical consequences" of the magic, but I also know that this was made to have some kind of downside to the ring. Too many characters were able to ignore certain traps, webs, and the like.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Depends on the person. I found 4e's presentation extremely tedious.

Which I actually think was the biggest reason for its downfall. A lot of the underlying mechanical concepts were rather decent, they were just presented in incredibly dull and unevocative manner. There of course were other issues too, but this seriously affected the first impressions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I loved the 3.5 PHB/DMG/MM precisely because it felt like reading a text book. Like this was real serious naughty word. It felt cool and official. The game took itself seriously.

I know this might seem a fine distinction, but a history or literature textbook is to me quite different from an engineering or physics one. I'm just not that into the hard sciences.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hm, hey let's do that! Next time you see a sleeping Druid, put metal armor on him to see what happens!

As for crazy rulings, I vaguely recall a discussion on Freedom of Movement where someone asked if a person under it's effect jumped in a pool of water if they would immediately sink to the bottom and take falling damage because water does not hinder your movement under the effect of the spell!

The armor will just stop before you get it over their head.

 

[James Gasik]

The first time I saw a 4e rulebook, my reaction was "what the heck is this? 1 [W] damage?".

My first play experience was kind of weird too, since I was used to 3.5. "Wait, so reach weapons don't threaten at reach now? Why?"

After the game was out for awhile though, I gave it another chance, and I'm glad I did. Every level up felt like I had real choices to make, characters were able to handle challenges out of the box, no "5 minute adventuring days" because your non daily resources were up every fight- and once they started printing more powers, the "everyone works the same" feeling was gone.

I loved the tactical focus on combat, and my goodness, DMing has never been easier for me. "Man, I need a goblin that's scaled up for my party. Oh wow, done!"

Sure the game had cracks. My attempt to run White Plume Mountain in 4e made me sad, because the game was terrible at non-combat exploration, and WotC's answer was "don't track actions and movement- make it a SKILL CHALLENGE!" Bleh.

Plus some of the later content was not edited well at all. And Stealth was a complete mess...but it usually is.