Why is Animate Dead [Evil]?

[s/LaSH]

Here's a quick fix for the situation:

Undead are animated by fiendish spirits that use negative energy to power their hosts.

There, that was quick.

Anyway, a soul is just a lifeforce, an animatory power easily filled by negative energy. It's the entirely different spirit that is the important part of you. But that's theology, not gameology, and people tend to ignore the source material, so I'll shut up about that.

The other possible reason undead are evil is because they're animated by death energy (there's no better word for it, is there?). Something whose very essence is death is eventually going to start inflicting death on the world around them. That sounds pretty evil to me. A golem, on the other hand, is animated by elemental energy, thus not inclined to destruction unless it goes berserk, which is a special case.

 

[Grishnak]

Undead rule and you shall all agree with The Kender or ill animate you all!!!!! muwahahaahaa. Sorry the all the evil talk and big words got to me there.
I've always asked the question about animate dead and I know they're only computer games but Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 along with Neverwinter Nights a good cleric can cast animate dead without any penalty to his alignment. Now the spells are required for some of the larger battles but there are the summoning spells and natures allies for that.
I personally think it will be a house rule for the situation, I personally think that some campaigns of mine animate dead will be classified as evil and others neutral, never a good act!!

 

[Number47]

People tend to consider magic spells as "I wiggle my fingers and say nonsense words." But with clerics especially, they are calling upon the gods of the game world to intervene on their behalf. A good cleric that asks evil deities to intervene on his behalf is committing an evil act, no matter how evil the corpses or how much for the greater good it might be. If you are more interested in doing the expedient thing than the right thing, you probably weren't good to begin with. Being good is allow about having limitations that you respect and do not question, and triumphing through virtue and faith.

 

[Zhure]

Religious taboo makes Animate Dead evil. Since the 'Evil' descriptor only applies to divine casters (Sorcerers and Wizards can Animate Dead to their hearts' content), then it's not a universal cultural taboo. The D&D deities and divine powers have decreed Animate Dead to be of an evil nature, but only evil enough to sully the spirit of divine casters.

Using real world examples, it's like marriage isn't allowed for Roman Catholic priests, but they encourage it in the laity. Ok, weak example.

I can see campaigns where religious institutions of nominal good status will try to make the animation of dead bodies to be a criminal act. Many arcane casters would chafe against this proscription, I'd imagine.

Greg

 

[LoneWolf23]

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.

The flaw in your reasonning is that traditionally, the Egyptians never created undead, or ever intended to. Mummification was intended to preserve the body so that the departed's spirit would be strengthened in the afterlife. If the Mummy's spirit came back to animate the mummy, it was largely regarded as a sign of something being wrong.

...If you look at the entirety of Human Culture, people generally considered that, after death, the spirit went on to the afterlife, but was still somehow tied to his body. If the dead spirit was somehow restless, he would return, either as a ghost or by animating his corpse to haunt the living.

Similarly, magics that reanimate the dead to create zombie or skeleton servents are considered horrible because they temper with the cycle of life and death, enslaving the corpses of often innocent people to do the Necromancer's bidding.

Yes, it is a cultural taboo, but it's one that's common to just about every human society on earth, right alongside cannibalism. You just don't disturb the dead...

 

[Will]

Easy Solution...

Create a variation of 'animate dead' called 'create construct.'

It functions much like animate dead, but with a broader class of targets. Scarecrows, suits of armor, and various other objects can be used, so long as they have something resembling a functional 'body.' Corpses can be used.

The result may look like a skeleton or zombie, but it functions as a construct of an appropriate size, and has the minimal 'programming' of a construct. The spell does nothing to the soul or energies of the person, and spells like raise dead/communicate with dead and so on work normally. Note that if a construct-corpse is raised, the construct animation dissipates. A 50gp diamond (instead of onyx) is placed in the center as a magical 'heart' to animate the object.

Create Construct is a Transmutation, Sor/Wiz only, and has no alignment restrictions. Though animating corpses might get you talked about.


There. Better?

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Call me crazy, but I'm willing to say categorically that raising the corpses of the dead to do your bidding, thus treating mortal remains as mere natural resources, is degrading to whatever shreds of human dignity there are and in evil in its own right.

I don't care if we're talking about "negative energy" or what happens to the deceased soul or any of that. It may (or depending on your world-view, may not) be just meat, but treating it as just meat is inconsistent with a moral compass that respects the dignity of our fellow people.

It's really not a subtle issue.

 

[GhostInTheMachine]

Ahh, but it is a fiendishly subtle issue. Even in the real world, corpses aren't quite so sacrosanct as some people would like to think. Autopsies are frequently preformed on newly dead. Old tombs are opened and explored in the name of science and history. Organs get donated (if that's not a real life euphamism for flesh golem, I don't know what is) cadavers get sent to medical schools for teaching purposes, etc etc etc.

The point I'm trying to make is that in real life, it's not so much as what happens, but as why. I can't think of anything that's unequivocally, categorically, always wrong. D&D, of course, doesn't work that way. The question that should be asked is not "Is it right or wrong to animate the dead?" but "Would I want non-evil creatures animating the dead in my game, and would it throw things out of balance?" My feeling on that is if you want someone to be able to animate the dead, go for it!

 

[Goobermunch]

Ahh, but it is a fiendishly subtle issue. Even in the real world, corpses aren't quite so sacrosanct as some people would like to think. Autopsies are frequently preformed on newly dead. Old tombs are opened and explored in the name of science and history. Organs get donated (if that's not a real life euphamism for flesh golem, I don't know what is) cadavers get sent to medical schools for teaching purposes, etc etc etc.

The point I'm trying to make is that in real life, it's not so much as what happens, but as why. I can't think of anything that's unequivocally, categorically, always wrong. D&D, of course, doesn't work that way. The question that should be asked is not "Is it right or wrong to animate the dead?" but "Would I want non-evil creatures animating the dead in my game, and would it throw things out of balance?" My feeling on that is if you want someone to be able to animate the dead, go for it!

You've left out an important part of the post-death treatment of the dead. NONE of those things happen without the consent and blessing of the family. You can't have an autopsy without consent, you can't have organ donation without consent, you can't use a cadaver without consent.

That tends to mitigate the violation of the cultural taboo.

And if you want to know why animating the dead is evil, it's cause Stone Cold Pelor sez so!

--G

 

[Umbran]

Why does the spell Animate Dead have the [Evil] tag anyway?

In the traditional myths and legends from which D&D spawned, mucking with the dead is bad mojo. The "energy is energy, neither good nor evil" and "the corpse is just meat" are modern thoughts.

And somehow, I think that if the dead started clawing themselves out of their graves and shambling after us trying to claw us to pieces, we'd quickly abandon that modern view for a more traditional one

When designing a game, one must make some choices. In D&D, the designers made a choice to follow the traditional line.