Why is Animate Dead [Evil]?

[LoneWolf23]

Dissecting bodies (or even just touching them) is still a touchy issue. It takes an emotionally strong and stable individual to actually go around touching, cutting open and feeling around dead bodies. While most of us get disgusted by the sight of a corpse, your typical forensic examiner can actually eat a healthy lunch

And those individuals who do take on professions that deal with death are generally considered pariahs at some level. I mean, you can hardly kill a conversation more quickly then by opening up and saying "I'm a forensic examiner" unless the people you're conversing with are either in a similar profession, or have some fascination with the field.

After some consideration, I must admit that yes, it would very much be possible for a Necromancer to be of a neutral or even good alignment, but even then, he would not be well-regarded by the general community.

There's just too much of a Taint associated with Death for people to consider Necromancy a nice, healthy profession in a normal society.

 

[Horoku]

New user here! Been lurking for months, decided to post.
So far we've discussed traditional fantasy and modern examples pretaining to whether "Animate Dead" is evil. What about weirder situations, though? And where better to find weirdness than in Planescape?
In the city of Sigil, the Dustmen faction is known to pay a berk if they'll just sign a contract permitting the Dusties to use their corpse as cheap post-mortum labor in the form of zombies. This doesn't seem inherently evil, since they have permission, and you get used to the countless zombies wandering around in the Hive. It's not like they hurt anybody... usually. =\
What do you guys think?

 

[Staffan]

One of the last things that got released for 2e was a three-book series about the island of Jakandor, about the size of the UK torn between two warring cultures (well, not so much an open, organized war as it was neither side considering the other one really human).

One of the sides were the Knorr (which I groaned at, since that's what we call a pig's tail in Swedish - a real pig's tail, that is, not the hairstyle). The knorr were "noble barbarians", highly religious, and many were part of totemic warrior societies. They were rather suspicious of wizard magic - they had some wizards in their society, but they were pretty much shunned. They were also rather adamant about the sanctity of a corpse - the remains of the dead were NOT to be disturbed unless it was to bury it, or something like that.

The other side were the Charonti, a once highly powerful and advanced society that ruled most of the world, and had all their major cities connected by gates. However, they had been mostly wiped out by a magical plague a few thousand years ago, and were still trying to rebuild. The Charonti considered the reanimation of corpses a holy act - they placed very great value on serving their people, and being reanimated after death was just considered another way to serve.

Needless to say, these two cultures did *not* get along well... but it does provide an example of a culture where reanimating the dead would not be considered Evil.

 

[Voadam]

Animate dead has the [Evil] descriptor. This means it detects as an evil spell regardless of what purpose it is used for.

Detect evil detects specific things, but evil actions are not one of them, only evil supernatural things.

Undead always detect as evil, see the spell. This means regardless of actual alignment so neutral zombies and good balenorn liches detect as evil.

Undeath just detects as evil. All spells creating undead gain the [Evil] descriptor.

Moral use of creating undead or what happens to the souls of creatures when you make them undead is a separate question.

Under core D&D animate dead is an [Evil] spell and detects as evil, the cosmic supernatural force of evil, but that does not necessarily correlate to moral good and evil.

 

[Mark Chance]

Animate Dead is [Evil] because the negative energy to animate the corpse doesn't come straight from the Negative Energy Plane. Rather, the negative energy passes through the Ebon Heart of the Lord of the Undead, and is thus corrupted into [Evil] negative energy. Every undead creature carries at least a bit of the Lord of the Undead's horrible shadow, and he gains strength from the activities of undead creatures.

 

[Agback]

G'day

Why does casting a Raise Dead spell require the destruction of a diamond worth 500 gp? It is not a moral judgement of the game designers that only the rich ought to be allowed to live out the spans of their lives.

The game designers thought that they would prefer the world consequences of a set of rules that allowed the evil to muck around with the undead and moved the good to dislike and abjure them. So they set the game up that way.

So the descriptor need not be seen as a moral judgement on the act of reanimating the dead. It is a statement of mere fact about the D&D world that in that world you have to be evil to reanimate the dead. Good people cannot do so, any more than poor people can raise the dead.

Regards,



Agback

 

[Privateer]

But here's a question—why is animating the dead not evil if you need permanent guards.[/i]

Someone else earlier mentioned instead of raising undead one could just hire guards, and because you could just hire guards calling someone's dead daddy back became evil. (As I look back, now, I can't find who said it. Don't I look silly now, eh? Maybe I'm just blind, or hallucinating...)

Also, my arguement was not that binding a spirit to a golem went against the natural order, but that binding a spirit to a golem is no better then binding a soul to a body -- both are taking a sentient being and forcing it to your will.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Someone else earlier mentioned instead of raising undead one could just hire guards, and because you could just hire guards calling someone's dead daddy back became evil. (As I look back, now, I can't find who said it. Don't I look silly now, eh? Maybe I'm just blind, or hallucinating...)

Also, my arguement was not that binding a spirit to a golem went against the natural order, but that binding a spirit to a golem is no better then binding a soul to a body -- both are taking a sentient being and forcing it to your will.

Fair enough. You aren't hallucinating about the idea of hiring guards; I think I recall seeing that in there, too. Unless, of course, we're both hallucinating, but that'd be just plain odd. I'm not necessarily buying that argument, though—it's kind of amusing, but animating corpses isn't evil because you could just hire the living. It's evil because you don't muck around with corpses. I see your point about the binding of a spirit, but that's (for me, at least) not a concern. It's all about bringing the dead back as undead.

Best,
tKL

 

[LoneWolf23]

Someone else earlier mentioned instead of raising undead one could just hire guards, and because you could just hire guards calling someone's dead daddy back became evil. (As I look back, now, I can't find who said it. Don't I look silly now, eh? Maybe I'm just blind, or hallucinating...)

Also, my arguement was not that binding a spirit to a golem went against the natural order, but that binding a spirit to a golem is no better then binding a soul to a body -- both are taking a sentient being and forcing it to your will.

I believe I was the one who said that. The point I was trying to make was that Animating the Dead, at some level, isn't about practicality. For the expense of the gem that goes to animating a corpse, you could hire a good-level guard for a month's work, or hire a number of workers for that same amount of time.

The only "cheap" thing about Undead is that after they're animated, they need zero upkeep. However, they need constant supervision, because neither Skeletons nor Zombies are capable of indepentant thought.

Next, there's simply the matter of the darn-near universal taboo concerning the Dead: In just about every society on Earth, once you're dead, people hurry to round you up, have a ceremony to honor and mourn you and put your spirit at rest, then either bury or incinerate you. The last thing that goes through peoples' mind is the idea that you can raise the dead to make them do your dirty work. That kind of talk will generally raise either fear, disgust or anger (or all three).

Heck, at first the idea of simply using dead bodies to dissect for anatomy classes was abhorrent to society, which lead to a black market in the trade until social conventions slackened a little. But even then, it's one thing to use corpses stored in certain facilities for teaching purposes. It's quite another to make the dead rise up and walk in public to do tasks.

Finally, there's the corruptive element that comes with Necromancy. It's essentially having power over the Dead, raising them against the will of the gods themselves to do your bidding. Simply being willing to consider actually doing it takes a mindset that's unconventional at best, and truly disturbed at worst.

And while you might originally be willing to work with little more then salvaged corpses at first, pretty soon, it will run across your mind that animating corpses of people you killed or had killed yourself is easier then scouring cemetaries looking for the right-sized corpse.

...And don't get me started on the temptations of Immortality and Lichdom.

 

[Coik]

This is a fair point, but a fireball, in and of itself, although not natural, doesn't violate the natural order.

Well, at the very least, if violates the nature of causality.

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);

Except that gunpowder *is* a refined substance, and even if it wasn't it probably wouldn't naturally congregate in barrels...

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.

Celestial conjunctions, comets, pissed off people re-inhabiting their bodies through force of will...the world of B-movies offers a plethora of options.

Originally posted by s/LaSH
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.

Hmmm. Thing about that is that those things whose essence is life energy seem pretty good at killing things, too. Would procreation therefore be an act of evil?

Originally posted by LoneWolf23
The only "cheap" thing about Undead is that after they're animated, they need zero upkeep. However, they need constant supervision, because neither Skeletons nor Zombies are capable of indepentant thought.

Well, they don't *really* need constant supervision...just tell 'em to go down into a basement or something and wait there pending further orders.

It's essentially having power over the Dead, raising them against the will of the gods themselves to do your bidding.

Which gods, and why do they have a say in it in the first place? The gods don't have any right to go around bossing mortals (though, of course, like any bullies they're certain to try). Really, who made *them* the dictators of morality? I can understand them saying that the power they happen to bribe people into becoming clerics with can't be used for certain things, but to try to make universal claims about something like that...

Of course, that's just the prude gods who try to run peoples' lives for them. If we're talking the quote unquote "default pantheon," Pelor and St. Cuthbert are good examples of them.