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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bedrockgames" data-source="post: 8571211" data-attributes="member: 85555">Keep in mind, the post of mine you quoted, was about how I think alignment systems should be made, not about how I think D&D does or ought to handle animate deadOn animate dead the rules aren't hugely far, at least in 1E, from where you are. It describes it as evil, yes, but it also says a good cleric would need to think before using the spell (so its implied there are situations like saving lives, where it is more important than concerns about the problem of animating a corpse: I don't think the text sees it as mere social taboo though-----more like being the lesser of two evils in that case).And I am not saying your argument is wrong. "But why?" is a perfectly valid response to "You ought not animate the dead in this world".In terms of whether or not there are cosmological reasons in D&D for not doing this: I am not so sure. Part of the issue is D&D has many different worlds and those don't always align (especially across editions) and the other problem is a lot of this stuff is often glossed over. I don't know for sure that there isn't a religious commandment against desecrating the dead. I do know that they included it in the list of evil acts worthy of a powers check (both animating dead but also desecrating the dead) when they enumerated the rules (again something I think took away from the system personally). There were, I think, heavily implied cosmological reasons for that. A lot of it is I think, like real world physics that aren't clearly laid out in D&D, a lot of real world cosmology is just assumed. And I think violating the resting place of the dead, violating the bodies of the dead, is assumed to be morally bad in most D&D universes. Also, in Ravenloft at least, using any kind of necromantic magic was considered to be something that could attract the attention of things like the dark powers. So it was a bit like playing with fire. This is also one of those cases where I suspect people could pour through the monster manual, the DMG and other books and find implied cosmological reasons in some entries for why animating dead is evil or dangerous. Again, much of that might also depend on the edition.But I think the more important reason for why something like this is labeled evil in D&D, is simply because Gary assumed most people reading the book would think animating a dead corpse would be an evil thing for a PC to do (or at least have a lot of potential evil in it). That doesn't mean people get angry when it happens in a game, or rebuke a player personally who does so, but they might think it is a little odd for a character who is Lawful Good, Neutral Good or Chaotic Good to go around animating corpses without any thought put into the act. And I think if you play with a broad cross-section of people, the majority reaction to it is going to be 'this seems evil'. I can easily imagine if it hadn't been labeled as such, you'd probably have a number of people commenting on it.Now I get that we are dealing with cosmologies and those can serve as thought experiments. If D&D were  a more niche game, it could easily play through all the moral thought experiments implied by its cosmology....but generally speaking it doesn't. Things are usually framed in terms of real world morality. I think that is just because it doesn't assume most players will have an easy time separating their own views on something like desecration and the views that ought to exist inside a cosmology where desecration wouldn't be a problem. Now full disclosure, personally I don't see this stuff as mere social taboo either. So maybe my own biases are creeping in. I think there are reasons beyond social convention that we a respectful of the dead.</blockquote>

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