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.)

 

[Maxperson]

"Druids won't wear metal armour." Super clear mechanics and a druid wearing metal armour would clearly be breaking that rule.

What mechanic? Wearing something or not is not a mechanic. I think we've found the issue. You don't understand what a mechanic is.

Putting on plate mail(not even talking druid here)? Not a mechanic!!
Plate mail giving disadvantage to stealth checks? A mechanic!
Losing 10 feet of movement if you don't have that 15 strength? A mechanic!

 

[lingual]

Just agree to disagree here. No one gonna convince anyone anyways. While I think druid metal is a rule, there is a significant amount of ppl who think otherwise - so I get it that there is ambiguity and accept other positions.

Unless we play at each other's tables , it doesn't really matter.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

What mechanic? Wearing something or not is not a mechanic. I think we've found the issue. You don't understand what a mechanic is.

Putting on plate mail(not even talking druid here)? Not a mechanic!!
Plate mail giving disadvantage to stealth checks? A mechanic!
Losing 10 feet of movement if you don't have that 15 strength? A mechanic!

There are mechanics for donning armour and armour descriptions tell which armours are made of metal. There is a rule for what druids won't do and that action if defined under mechanics. The rule is clear.

 

[Maxperson]

There are mechanics for donning armour and armour descriptions tell which armours are made of metal. There is a rule for what druids won't do and that action if defined under mechanics. The rule is clear.

Wearing the armor or not is not a mechanic. Time frames for putting it on would be a mechanic yes. Being made of metal is also not a mechanic. Metal armors being vulnerable to heat metal is a mechanical aspect of heat metal, not the armor. The metal object having specific AC and hit points would also be a mechanic.

There is no mechanic associated with the druid taboo.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Wearing the armor or not is not a mechanic. Time frames for putting it on would be a mechanic yes. Being made of metal is also not a mechanic. Metal armors being vulnerable to heat metal is a mechanical aspect of heat metal, not the armor. The metal object having specific AC and hit points would also be a mechanic.

There is no mechanic associated with the druid taboo.

OK. This has gone on far too long. You can continue to declare rules to not be rules for all you like, thankfully it is not my problem.

 

[Maxperson]

OK. This has gone on far too long.

Agreed

You can continue to declare rules to not be rules for all you like

And you can continue to invent rules that don't exist for your game all you like.

, thankfully it is not my problem.

Ditto.

And we're done.

 

[Seramus]

How about this as a classification:

"Setting information that is true unless a setting says otherwise."

 

[TheSword]

Another interesting point in this discussion is that a zombie suffers total mental command despite being an intelligent creature. That’s a nasty slavery dimension there which didn’t exist when skeleton and zombies were mindless.

You could argue conjure elemental is the same. But then elementals are specifically called out as being friendly to you in a way that undead are not.

 

[James Gasik]

So 3e have mindless undead as neutral because it actually followed its own rules for how monster alignment worked.

But then the actual Animate Dead spell had the [Evil] tag, which allowed it to interact with things like the Evil domain and certain magic items. Some people decided that having the tag made the spell an act of that tag (So Fireball is a Fire act and should move your alignment toward Fire, you see).

There were many arguments about this and on the WotC boards, some handsome and dashing individual called out a designer on this (without knowing they were a designer at the time). Then magically 3.5 came out and mindless undead were evil despite being mindless and thus neutral by the rules still in the 3.5 MM.

Finally, the worst official D&D book ever penned, the Book of Vile Darkness, came out and declared undead creation is evil because it being Negative Energy from the Negative Energy Plane (canonically a Neutral plane in the MotP and 3.5 SRD) into the world.

So in short, Go home, D&D, you're drunk.

I don't think they ever fixed Ghosts though, who could be of any alignment.

 

[Vaalingrade]

I don't think they ever fixed Ghosts though, who could be of any alignment.

No, ghosts have continued to be treated competently.

Excepts in 3e, where there were Deathless ghosts, AKA Diet Ghosts.