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.)

 

[Micah Sweet]

D&D cribs from, and is inspired by, fantasy literature that often does uses aspects of medieval society. My point - and the point many posters have made - is the OP's question is best answered in the context of culture, not RAW.

It's just medieval trappings though (or, more often nowadays, Renaissance trappings). D&D cultures resemble the modern world far more closely than any historical roots, especially in recent editions.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Liches are kind of interesting in D&D's progression.

They are typically evil immortally undead spellcasters. But they originally did not require any predatory maintenance like a vampire or draining hunger like a wight, so they mostly were underground doing their research or were just powerful undying bad guys doing their individual thing.

This sort of led to different trends in D&D, making good versions and making them necessarily more evil.

If they are non-predatory immortals the question becomes why necessarily be evil, sounds like a good way for a good or neutral wizard to continue past a normal lifespan.

You get things like the Forgotten Realms Baelnorns where these non-predatory liches are actually good immortal magical defenders of things elven. In Eberron you get the positive energy deathless elves as well.

Alternately you get development of liches to be evil. So the ritual of creating them when fleshed out in a dragon article requires evil actions and icky components to explain the evil alignment and to back up the genre tropes. Sometimes this gets developed in D&D to require evil sacrifices.

This trend eventually leads to the 5e lich requiring regular sacrifices of souls to power their state with failure to do so leading to devolution into a demilich state.

An AD&D lich could be technically evil but someone who just putters around now developing magical stuff in their lair. A party could encounter one in a dungeon and it be essentially just a magical weirdo.

In 5e if you encounter a lich out of the MM they are definitely an active villain, they have sacrificed souls and will continue to do so.

Yeah, I really hate the soul requirement 5e liches have an always remove it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Indirectly though...

Imagine a setting where everyone who dies by violence comes back as a ghost of some flavor.

Now I can't stop imagining it.

 

[Baron Opal II]

"I don't want to be immortal through my work. I want to be immortal through not dying." - Some auteur more famous than me.

It says a lot the we always think the dead will want to hurt us if they rose.

Indeed, most stories and warnings center around vengeance- everyone has been done wrong. If the dead are restless there is someone who is at risk, and sometimes the dead are not choosy about settling with the right target. Other times it is not the dead themselves, or more rightly who they were, that are angry. But, rather, an evil spirit or entity that finds opportunity to inhabit and raise the body to commit mischief. Then there is the original necromancy, disturbing the dead to interrogate them.

There is also concerns about robbing the dead of their due. If you disturb them and they rise, are you taking them out of Paradise, or at least a well-earned Rest? How could that be moral?

I don't know what the spell states specifically, but I can see that animating a cadaver can be a morally neutral act but culturally subversive. Much like utilizing cadaver's teeth in the past or cadaverous tissue for ACL repair today it is usually easier to accept if you don't know the donor. I'm doubtful of it spurring a major change, but mostly because of the presumed fragility of the labor. The bodies of zombies and skeletons would break down quicker than a living worker in the job. However, I am also reminded of Roman slaved working hamster wheels in mines to pump out the water. That was a horrible task- a zombie could do just fine in that lightless, air poor environment.

Making sentient undead always ends poorly. Does it need to? Well, I would think so if there is any kind of accepted afterlife where the good are rewarded, or at least given respite, and the guilty punished. They are denied their just desserts in the next life, although that might be desireable from a certain point of view. In literature they are almost always predators of humanity. At the most neutral they become alien and remove themselves from society. Means of immortality that don't receive social condemnation are those that usually involve some sort of divine boon, or faerie interference; which, again, usually ends up removing the person from society.

The main person who gains immortality and is actually happy is Nicholas Flamel. After he legendarily discovered how to make the Philosopher's Stone he said goodbye to his friends and he and his wife disappeared. Then there's the Slavic fairie-tale of the man with the magic bag. Death is afraid of him, Hell doesn't want him, and he isn't good enough for Heaven.

 

[Kor - Orc Scrollkeeper]

If we’re talking about 5e here, it isn’t “inherently evil.” Some characters would probably consider it evil for any number of reasons, but there are no actual game rules connecting any particular spell to any particular alignment.

This is correct. From a completely impartial viewpoint there is nothing wrong with it.

In most current day cultures, the desecration of corpses is considered taboo and this is further reinforced by many religious beliefs and practices.

In a fantasy world where cultural beliefs and religious practices may vastly differ, there might be nothing wrong with this act of re-animating the dead and/or repurposing their dead, lifeless husk.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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.)

Fundamentally, that answer is going to be Doylist: D&D wants to have the general trend of playing into fantasy tropes, and those are going to include the big bad nefarious necromancer and their army of undead minions being the villain against which the PC heroes will tend to fight. There will of course be campaigns where the PCs are the traditional 'bad guys' (and yes if all they do that is 'bad' is use an army of skeletons and you don't see that as evil, they may be 'bad in name only,' but you can still probably recognize the theme). Likewise, there might be a game world (cough, Eberron) where undead and their use aren't inherently evil, and hopefully some level of examination of what that would mean to a society. Those are always going to be the alternative interpretations in the same way that all other subversions have to be (ex. your 'what if the things that look like angels are actually the bad guys and the things that appear to be devils are the good guys?' story only works if that is a violation of the expected).

If you're looking for an in-system answer, you're going to run into multiple problems. The first is that D&D ethics and morality has always been absolute hash. Good and evil are generally 'you know it when you see it' and when it's really not clear whether something is or isn't one or the other, the actual rules have never been great guidance (especially if you are also trying to marry it to any real world ethical framework). Given some of the stuff that has been put down (be it Gygax's position on orc babies or killing surrendered foes, or the 3e alignment books Book of Vile Darkness and Book of Exalted Deeds), sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone, or to impute your own preference instead of relying on the books with regard to alignment.

Even beyond that, real world ethical frameworks (by which I mean either the spectrum of ethical schools of thought generally lined up as running from pure deontology to pure utilitarianism and everything in between; or the broad brush categories of beneficence, non-malfeasance, respect of autonomy and justice) also kind of struggle to explain why something like this would be evil. Especially inherently, and super-especially if you put in enough contrived qualifiers like Aunt Gertrude wanted to be useful after she was gone and there's a social system in place such that this isn't a way for the mob to dispose of murder victim bodies and so on and so forth.

D&D is this weird place where independent adventurers wander around with the power to level villages, inject themselves into situations where they often act recklessly and without complete information, and generally are still considered more trustworthy than a political ruler or society that is using traditionally evil tropes like undead or lycanthropy or whatnot for benign purposes (and more often than not they are right, because it makes for a more compelling adventure that the town with the undead workforce is secretly about to be devoured/about to go to war with their neighbors).

A murderous bucket with arms and legs that will try (hilariously) to murder you when inevitable oversights happen.

After Scruffy rejected her, she went on to do the only thing left that gave her existence meaning--murder!

 

[MGibster]

It says a lot the we always think the dead will want to hurt us if they rose.

When something exists by defying the laws of god and nature we tend to take a dim view of its existence.

Because our fiction is geared toward forcing acceptance of death as always the correct choice without examining how murdering death is the big project humans have been working on for our entire existence. Nope: longevity, transhumanism and by extension necromancy are evil because coping mechanisms are more thematically interesting than progress.

Likely because death is a universal part of the human condition. But in real life, we've certainly enjoyed the benefits provided to us by vaccinations, improved medical care, sanitation, and clean water which has improved both the quality of our lives and our life expectancy. And in shows like Star Trek, human beings seem to live far longer and in better physical condition and most people don't seem to have a problem with that.

 

[MGibster]

An AD&D lich could be technically evil but someone who just putters around now developing magical stuff in their lair. A party could encounter one in a dungeon and it be essentially just a magical weirdo.

In 5e if you encounter a lich out of the MM they are definitely an active villain, they have sacrificed souls and will continue to do so.

Not entirely true for 5E. Without spoiling it, you can encounter a lich in one of the more popular 5E campaigns that is essentially a harmless dude puttering around the dungeon being a magical weirdo. He won't take any aggressive actions against he PCs unless they try to steal his spell book (I think).

 

[Vaalingrade]

When something exists by defying the laws of god and nature we tend to take a dim view of its existence.

This is a very odd take considering we're talking about a game about 80% of the character options being all about exactly that thing.

Also, we're currently talking or each other by shooting lightning through either space or undersea, shark besieged cables. Defying the laws of god and nature is what we do.

Likely because death is a universal part of the human condition. But in real life, we've certainly enjoyed the benefits provided to us by vaccinations, improved medical care, sanitation, and clean water which has improved both the quality of our lives and our life expectancy. And in shows like Star Trek, human beings seem to live far longer and in better physical condition and most people don't seem to have a problem with that.

They still had to find a way around teleporter buffer immortality. Because No Transhumanism allowed.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, good and evil are based on societal norms in many philosophies. What D&D considers is moral is mostly based on western European/American cultures, mixed with mythology and folklore.

True; but the formula [messing with the dead = evil] goes way beyond just Euro-American cultures. It's one of the very few societal-religious-cultural tenets that's almost universal among human beings.