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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8571080" data-attributes="member: 85555">If I recall the wording the original spell for 1E was something like it is largely evil so good clerics should consider long and hard before animating the dead. I can't remember the precise wording. But I think it was trying to say something like there is something inherently evil about animating a dead corpse, yet there could be circumstances where using such a power is balanced out by the good it can do. That said, I think good and evil in a game like D&D isn't really like good and evil in philosophy or theology. Gygax and the other designers who came a long are speaking much more casually and they aren't, I think, laying out a rigid moral philosophy step by step. This to me seems to be an example that is just based on a a general sense that desecration of corpses is a bad thing. Maybe that does or does not carry easily into the thought experiment of the D&D cosmology (I find D&D often doesn't get into the finer details of the religions that would help address that kind of concern), but I think a lot of times we carry our own morality into the game when we talk about good and evil (and that makes sense: if a PC murders a small child you don't stop and have a debate about why that act would be evil in this particular cosmology, you all just agree it is evil). With desecration of the dead, that seems like one that most of us probably have some taboo about. Just ask yourself, would you be okay with someone else going into a cemetery and digging up a body and affixing it with robotic gadgetry so they can control it remotely? Would you be okay with them doing that if they found a body in the countryside? (and even assume there are no laws against such acts for this example). I think most of us would feel that is wrong for some reason. Our reasons might be culturally engrained, or perhaps they are something people just innately feel about the dead (I am not sure how universal this sort of thinking is). There is something inherently bad and disrespectful about the act. Now you can make all kinds of arguments why there is nothing inherently wrong with this in the absence of good cosmological reasons, but I think it is pretty deeply ingrained for most people and you are going to find yourself in an uphill battle trying to persuade anyone. I am not saying that animate dead needs to be inherently evil. I just think it isn't like this is a big surprise that designers would label it such. Most readers probably come across that spell and think 'yeah, that seems inherently evil'. You don't even need to reference an alignment system to reach that conclusion. But I do think the original entry had a common sensical approach: it acknowledged there were times it could be warranted. Just like you wouldn't go cutting open a corpse, but there might be medical or scientific contexts where it feels like the knowledge one is gaining is appropriately beneficial that it is permissible (such as an autopsy). Or it has enough sanction or is part of ritual for dealing with the dead (such as the embalming process or cremation). I think the point is roughly that there is something about just treating human corpses as objects and means to an end, that seems wrong. This is why we probably laugh in movies like Total Recall when he uses the body of a bystander as a shield for gunfire (it is outrageous, and we know he is doing something you aren't supposed to, and the character is doing it in a way that he doesn't even seem to acknowledge that line is being crossed: he is just treating the body as something to be used like any other potential shield from gunfire).</blockquote>

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