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]

Which negative plane?

There's only one by default. It's called........................the negative plane.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Like noted, the neutral lizardfolk would happily do this.

But this indeed highlight the weirdness with the pearl-clutching about this. At the point where you are contemplating what to do to the bodies, the most morally questionable part has already occurred. Let's not pretend that in a normal D&D game the characters do not go around killing piles of sentient beings. So it seems rather hypocritical worry about the family of the hobgoblin you just killed being upset about the customary hobgoblin burial practices not being followed. Like sure, they might be upset about that, but they'd probably be way more upset about you killing their family member in the first place! That of course assuming you already didn't slay the whole hobgoblin family due the racist assumption that the hobgoblins are evil monsters.

Sure.

I mean, after all, in real life, we totally think that there is no moral difference between killing someone ... and killing someone and then doing unspeakable things to the corpse afterwards. I'm quite positive that this never is an issue. Ever.

I don't know how many more times this how to be pointed out to you. You're wrong on the rules. And you know that. You can make the rules whatever you want, after all, that's what people do. But since you know that you're wrong, you keep trying to inject "real world" morality into this.

Your continued demand that other people accept your moral belief that in real life people just accept messing around with corpses is beyond the pale. People can keep telling you that there are law against this (criminal and civil). They can tell you that this is a topic that has come up at their tables and made people deeply uncomfortable (like other topics, such as sexual assault) because someone has just lost a family member, and you have a person gleefully raising corpses. They can tell you this over and over, but you're just not going to get it.

One last time- if you need to have your undead pets, knock yourself out! You clearly don't care about alignment. But please stop trying to tell other people about real-world morality. It's not a good look.

 

[Maxperson]

people 'being upset' at your actions does not constitute an evil act, perhaps with the exception that the act was taken with the explicit intention of causing emotional distress, and not to include any circumstance where the person or their loved ones gave permission for their body to be zombiefied, or they were some good-for-nothing bandits who actively made every other people's lives worse, or a long forgotten skeleton found in a cave that nobody would be able to identify,

and as i mentioned in an earlier post, in a world where the afterlives are an explicitly known thing would death and sanctity of a corpse be viewed the same as in our world? or are we just projecting our beliefs and values because we don't concieve of a different perspective.

Yes it would most likely be viewed exactly the same as it is viewed here. As of 2010 80% of Americans believed in some sort of afterlife. The overwhelming majority of those 80% oddly enough view it the same as in our world.

 

[payn]

I think the larger issue with alignment is how folks view morality and consequentialism. Take for example the necromancer with the existential village crisis. The assumption is the necromancer must raise dead to save their village, its the only tool they have. So, it means ultimately they are really good as a result because of the outcome. It's the opposite of the paladin must fall scenario. The part that really blows peoples minds is the fact that an evil necromancer can produce good outcomes. That does not make them good or neutral. You can sub in anything like for example an assassin that only kills tyrants. Still very much an evil dude, but can produce good outcomes.

In other words, good does not equal correct, and evil does not equal incorrect.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Hey those guards are happily in the afterlife now so enjoy your dinner.

Not there's a better moral conundrum for D&D.

If you know 100& sure that good people get an awesome paradise with a daily Olympics and dog angels and bad people get endless bureaucracy and torture when they die, murder is more of a means of expediting universal justice than like... murder.

 

[Maxperson]

But not all undead are evil and many things that are not imbued with such energy are evil.

You keep bring up the weird exception as if that somehow invalidated the rule. Once again, D&D is an exceptions based game. Exceptions are exceptions to the rule, not something that invalidates the rule. The energy is still evil. The overwhelming number of undead types are evil because of it.

MM Undead
1: Banshee: Evil
2: Death Tyrant: Evil(has a negative energy cone that creates evil zombies)
3: Death Knight: Evil
4: Demilich: Evil
5: Dracolich: Evil
6: Flameskull: Evil
7: Ghost: Evil
8: Ghast: Evil
9: Ghoul: Evil
10: Lich: Evil
11: Mummy: Evil
12: Mummy Lord: Evil
13: Shadow: Evil
14: Skeleton: Evil
15: Specter: Evil
16: Vampire: Evil
17: Vampire Spawn: Evil
18: Wight: Evil
19: Wraith: Evil
20: Zombie: Evil

Not only is the MM not overflowing with non-evil undead, but there isn't even a single example of a non-evil undead in the core game.

 

[James Gasik]

You keep bring up the weird exception as if that somehow invalidated the rule. Once again, D&D is an exceptions based game. Exceptions are exceptions to the rule, not something that invalidates the rule. The energy is still evil. The overwhelming number of undead types are evil because of it.

MM Undead
1: Banshee: Evil
2: Death Tyrant: Evil(has a negative energy cone that creates evil zombies)
3: Death Knight: Evil
4: Demilich: Evil
5: Dracolich: Evil
6: Flameskull: Evil
7: Ghost: Evil
8: Ghast: Evil
9: Ghoul: Evil
10: Lich: Evil
11: Mummy: Evil
12: Mummy Lord: Evil
13: Shadow: Evil
14: Skeleton: Evil
15: Specter: Evil
16: Vampire: Evil
17: Vampire Spawn: Evil
18: Wight: Evil
19: Wraith: Evil
20: Zombie: Evil

Not only is the MM not overflowing with non-evil undead, but there isn't even a single example of a non-evil undead in the core game.

You should read your MM again- Ghosts can be any alignment, and Revenants are Neutral.

 

[Maxperson]

You should read your MM again- Ghosts can be any alignment, and Revenants are Neutral.

Fair enough. I missed revenant completely and ghost would then be one of these extreme minority of exceptions.

I will note, though, that both of those are the actual souls of the deceased and not animations powered by the negative plane.

 

[Mind of tempest]

look 90% of undead are evil in dnd so they can be hard-coded hostile, if it is its tomb it would fight you over it property or for the property of it master.
to me evil is just irrelevant to the topic.

as soon as you make anything pure evil it stops the possibility of other uses.
besides human morality from the real world makes no sense in dnd you have non-humans everywhere and the list of different cultural factors would be so divergent that outside the most generic or broad options, it would rapidly be unrecognisable.

why should undead be inherently evil it makes no sense past the fiction made to justify the position in the first place.

 

[Maxperson]

look 90% of undead are evil in dnd so they can be hard-coded hostile, if it is its tomb it would fight you over it property or for the property of it master.
to me evil is just irrelevant to the topic.

as soon as you make anything pure evil it stops the possibility of other uses.
besides human morality from the real world makes no sense in dnd you have non-humans everywhere and the list of different cultural factors would be so divergent that outside the most generic or broad options, it would rapidly be unrecognisable.

why should undead be inherently evil it makes no sense past the fiction made to justify the position in the first place.

I mean, that applies to most fiction. Plenty of stories can be told in the solar system, so warp drive didn't make sense in Star Trek past the fiction needed to justify the position in the first place. Shuttles can transport folks, so same with transporters.

In D&D this is the fiction that we have. You are free to change it, but it makes perfect sense within the established default fiction of the game.