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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8572192" data-attributes="member: 6779196">This isn’t really a case of specific conflicting with general. Let’s say I’m playing in a game you’re DMing (and assume you are using alignment in this game). I decide to play a neutral good wizard, and I take Animate Dead as one of my spells. Taking Animate Dead doesn’t constitute using it frequently, so I’m sure we can at least agree that wouldn’t make my character evil. Now suppose, during the course of play, a situation comes up where I think it’s necessary and appropriate for my character to cast Animate Dead. Again, I’m not exactly doing it frequently, it was just the once, so my character is allowed to stay Neutral Good, right? Now let’s suppose this happens several more times. Perhaps to the point where it can reasonably be said that my character casts it frequently. What actually happens as a result? Does my character’s alignment change? At what point does the change happen? How does this change of alignment actually impact my character and gameplay? The rules are entirely silent on this matter. At this point, my Neutral Good character can be said to have cast Animate Dead frequently, so it can’t really be true that in all cases, characters who frequently cast Animate Dead are evil.We can do a similar thought experiment on a druid character who ends up in a situation where they feel it’s necessary and appropriate to wear metal armor. And in that case, we actually have precedent in Sage Advice for what happens: nothing, really. Someone makes a joke about the character exploding, and there are no actual consequences, short of the DM making a house rule to cover the situation.It shouldn’t matter. Any rule that relies on being able to correctly guess a violator’s intentions is a poor rule, since that’s impossible to do with certainty.It does require action on the part of the DM though. See my above thought experiment. If we take the statement that only evil characters cast spells like animate dead frequently as a prohibition against non-evil characters doing so, the only way to enforce it is for the DM to make a judgment call about what constitutes casting it frequently, and make up a house rule about what the consequence is for doing so.I don’t think there is, but the rules do say how the dice rolling procedure is supposed to work, and fudging or re-doing rolls isn’t part of it. Of course, groups are free to set their own social contracts and table rules.Right, which is the subject under discussion here. Are necromancy spells inherently evil? Not according to the rules of D&D 5e.Right, which is a statement players are literally capable of contradicting, and the rules provide no guidance for such a contingency. In the other case of such a weirdly worded “rule,” Sage Advice says, it doesn’t actually matter if you follow this “rule,” it’s basically flavor text, but feel free to set any house rules about it you want to.The “rule,” if you interpret it as such  is the opposite of objective. It requires DM judgment to even determine if a violation has occurred, and then a home-brewed consequence for such a violation.Right, it doesn’t matter at all, except in a handful of edge cases, all of which are either conversions or reimaginings of classic modules written for an edition where it did matter.</blockquote>

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