Why is Animate Dead [Evil]?

[Jhyrryl]

Neutrals can cast evil spells too.

...a cleric should still be able to cast it without having to be evil.

A cleric doesn't need to be evil to cast animate dead, she simply can't be good. That being said, a player who purports that her character is neutrally aligned with respect to good/evil, but who is constantly animating creatures, probably isn't playing the character right. The DM should consider enforcing an alignment change in a situation like that.

A good-aligned character who casts a spell with an Evil descriptor, on the other hand, should immediately incur an alignment change to neutral. But a second casting wouldn't necessarily force her alignment to evil.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

But the thing is, if we go that route, than all magic becomes innately evil. Fireballs ain't exactly part o' the natural order, either...

Hi, Coik. This is a fair point, but a fireball, in and of itself, although not natural, doesn't violate the natural order. I'll hold by what I said here. I mean, a fireball may not be natural, but it could be in the right circumstances (powderkegs could create a roughly similar effect, if lit); an animated corpse is wholly unnatural—aside from fuddling around with the dead and casting spells on other people's corpses, you really aren't going to get zombies. There's just no way. My opinion, of course.

It's probably the same exception that makes B&E, murder, and theft against those races morally okay.

Yeah, fair enough. I think I'd still draw the line with animating their corpses. There's enough wiggle room with the B&E, murder, and theft to at least claim that the actions may not be evil, but messing around with the dead is pretty vile any way you cut it. At least given D&D's default assumptions. Naturally folks can alter their campaign worlds any way they want.

Best,
tKL

 

[Crothian]

2. Undead are EEEVVIILLLL!!!!
The Skeleton & Zombie are both listed as having the Neutral Alignment in the Monster Manual

Intelligent undead are evil, those two are not intelligent undead.

 

[Privateer]

What about Golems?

Using some of the justification here, the creation of a Golem should be evil, too. You're imbuing something with a sentient being (a spirit from the Elemental Plane of Earth) against its will.

Even if the binding wasn't against the spirits will, would it make creating undead not evil if you got the reciptiant's permission?

To counter two previous posters, I'd say you could just hire people instead of creating a golem (unless you need a permanent guard, in which case Animate Dead becomes not evil, as well) and I think imbuing stone or iron with movement and limited sentience is most certainly against the "natural order."

And both use the power of a neutral plane.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Originally posted by Privateer
To counter two previous posters, I'd say you could just hire people instead of creating a golem (unless you need a permanent guard, in which case Animate Dead becomes not evil, as well) and I think imbuing stone or iron with movement and limited sentience is most certainly against the "natural order."

Yes, if we're going to argue about violations of the "natural order," then we can probably throw golems into a rather hazy moral area, but I'd say that (excepting flesh golems), it's not evil. Part of what makes the animation of the dead evil, IMO, is the violation of a rather strong and fairly universal cultural taboo—no respect for the dead and what not. By creating a flesh golem, you're essentially doing the same thing—those body parts have to come from somewhere. So I'd agree that animating dead bodies and creating flesh golems are both reasonably evil acts.

On the other hand, the binding of a spirit to a different (non-flesh) golem may be against the natural order, but it doesn't necessarily violate any sort of taboo. It might be sketchy, dodgy, reprehensible, whatever—and, no, the elemental spirit probably isn't too excited about it, but it's not evil in the same way raising Uncle Jed as a zombie is. That's taking things a bit too far, I think. (My bit about the natural order was directed specifically at animating the dead, but you and Coik are both right in that it tends to muddy the waters and make things less clear than I would ideally have them.)

But here's a question—why is animating the dead not evil if you need permanent guards? I think the act of the animation is evil, regardless of intent. I mean, you can animate zombies and have them give out flowers to little girls and groom puppies, but it doesn't change the fact that you're screwing around on the wrong side of the tracks from the start—it's still a major no-no.

As for whether or not the animation is evil if the participation is willing, I'd say that it is if the culture deems it so (and the default D&D setting does). It'd be less evil, but the problem's not with permission or lack thereof, it's with the actual deed.

Best,
tKL

Edit: Changed a "they're" to an "it's."

 

[crater]

Fireballs ain't exactly part o' the natural order, either...

You could probably find a whole lot of mages who would argue that magic is an elemental force of nature, and therefore its effects are natural. They would say that its just a science, like alchemy, or leeching. To them a fireball might be as natural as a thunderstorm, just a bit more predictable. The more liberally minded ones amongst them would probably say the same for animate dead. Mages are a strange bunch, after all.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I've chimed in on the "game logic" discussions of why animating undead is evil before but I've realized that it's rather pointless. This thread seems to pop up a couple times a year on D&D message boards. Much the same questions are raised and much the same answers are given about the internal moral coherency of the D&D core rules. I don't think that internal moral coherency has much to do with it though. I believe that the game really judges animate dead to be evil because in the archtypical literature and myth, zombies animated dead, and those who animate them are generally seen as evil.

The long and the short of it is that animating the bodies of the dead is evil in the game for precisely the same reason that murder is considered evil in the game: because it is generally considered to be evil in our common cultural mythology.

One can house rule an alignment rules system where animating dead is not evil. One could also house rule an alignment rules system where animating dead is actually good. It would be equally possible to houserule a system where Bane gets the "good" label and murder is [good]. The primary difference between the two is the relative strength of our general inclination to judge the change in the rules a perversion of the real meaning of good.

Why do some people who otherwise believe that good has a non-arbitrary meaning and that it would be wrong and perverse to house rule murder to be a [good] act think that there is no justification for animate dead being [evil]? I believe that it is because many modern people have difficulty conceiving of going beyond any set limit--except perhaps the utilitarian limit of not harming another person unless it is for a greater good--as being evil. At least the shared moral language of the West is very contractarian in nature and has difficulty explaining why anything all parties agree upon could be wrong. It hasn't always been that way and, in fact, moral language may only be an illusion under contractarian presuppositions. Many more ancient societies believed in an order of the world in which actions were right or wrong by virtue of their intrinsic nature or fittedness with the purpose of the universe and intersubjective agreement was irrelevant. (The D&D core rulebooks seem to lend more support to this ancient view of good and evil than the modern view but I think that a nuanced contractarianism or (especially) utilitarianism could fit within the core rulebooks).

The question of whether animating dead is good or neutral or evil in a campaign world will depend upon the assumptions that that particular campaign makes about the natures of good, evil, and magic.

Animating dead would be evil in a utilitarian moral universe if it damaged or caused pain to the souls of the departed. It could be evil in a non-utilitarian moral universe even if it had no effect other than to sever the tie of the soul to the body--that could be an evil act whether or not it caused pain or prevented pleasure.

A technological model of magic is also necessary for animating dead to not be evil. If all magic is simply another power of nature to be harnessed like gravity or the power of the atom then it's as good as the purpose to which it is put. This model of magic appears to be what is at work in the Harry Potter novels and it is almost certainly what one finds in most D&D inspired fiction. If, on the other hand, magic involves the manipulation and invocation of spirits and powers that, by their nature have moral qualities, then it is much more feasible for a spell to be [good] or [evil]. Technology would not be an appropriate metaphor for magic under this understanding. It may be that some spells (those with the [evil] descriptor) are only possible through the invocation of malign entities or energies.

In any case, a more coherent and comprehensive system of ethics and metaphysics than the D&D rulebooks offer is necessary to justify the labelling of certain spells and actions as [evil]. And for those DMs who set out to create such an ethical and metaphysical system, the rules and [good], [evil], etc. descriptions may be used either as evidence that the final system needs to explain or as prima facia claims that may be either validated or invalidated, ultima facia, by the system that is developed.

 

[Malin Genie]

an order of the world in which actions were right or wrong by virtue of their intrinsic nature or fittedness with the purpose of the universe and intersubjective agreement was irrelevant.

This is to my mind an excellent, concise summary of DnD 'good' and 'evil'. Not 'bad' and 'good' in the sense that one mortal might judge the acts of another, but intrinsically determined.

So you can certainly imagine a society in which animation of the dead is considered 'right' and 'noble' - such a society would be evil under the DnD alignment system, no matter how convincing their arguments and rationalisations are.

 

[Magus Coeruleus]

Assuming you're willing to generalize to creating undead of any sort, rather than just skeletons and zombies with Animate Undead...

Standard D&D cultural taboo makes it evil, but that is a gross oversimplification which is great if you want chocolate vs. vanilla campaigns. You can go with the MM, which says mummies are the product of "dark desert gods" and have a lawful evil alignment, or you can go with some real-world cultures, where some mummies (or other sorts of undead) are used to guard and protect something of value to the culture, are not "evil" to them, and might be considered lawful neutral since they function pretty much as automata. To those cultures, "evil" is how you describe the paladin and his other opportunistic grave-robbing mavericks (euphemistically-called "adventureres"). The undead in this scenario are at worst golem-like guardians and at best noble warriors who are serving beyond their mortals spans.

 

[Malin Genie]

To those cultures, "evil" is how you describe...

...is exactly the kind of thinking the DnD system doesn't allow. Well, to be precise, it does allow evil dead-reanimating cultures to think that they are doing the right thing and that paladins are "evil" - but what members of such a culture think doesn't matter. Well-rationalised evil is still Evil. The paladins criticised by the evil priests for their 'immorality' are still Good.