Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dragom 03-24-07, 03:38 AM	Animate dead, a hard to explain spell sometimes. The primary method of creating mindless undead. But what does it really do? It must effect an actual corpse and the result is a mindless creature. How does a mindless creature function? What can it do? The target must be a corpse because the corpse was once alive and therefor has a residue of the soul or life force that once inhabited it. The soul of the dead remains in Dolurrh your just borrowing what's been left behind. A skeleton or zombie is proficient with the weapons it was proficient with in life. The training is left behind in the bones and/or tissue. The skeleton or zombie can walk or run, again something the bones and tissue remember. It is powered with negative energy concentrated sufficiently to represent and fullfill a basic human fear. The dead arising with malice. It could probably mime eating and sleeping very well, though almost certainly anything else would be lost. Now in creating an Intelligent Undead one forces a soul from Dolurrh back into the body you have prepared for it. This undead will remember more of it's self. It will most often be brutally traumatised and reduced to an almost animalistic state. This is represented by it's loss of class levels. Even in it's newly emerged state it may if only momentarily remember thing of it's past. A Ghoul for example might be distracted from it's hunger by a pretty flower painted on a wall. It might even look sad for a moment. This of course is not the case for Vampires. Lich's are a curious exception. They actually chose to become undead. Now we move onto the deathless. Positive energy powered, undead. What makes them so very different? In this instant consent of the soul to be bound into rotting flesh is key as are respect and *cough* love for the deceased. One binds the soul by pouring so much positive energy into the two that a semblance of life emerges in defiance of mear physics. A deathless must have been a good person in life to create a good creature in death, where an undead is evil regardless of their alignment in life. I want to say that a deathless should be free of control and able to do what it thinks to be right. Though this is in defiance of the Control Deathless spell and rebuke Deathless ability. To be honest I think one should require the Leadership feat to aquire a deathless companion. In addition I really don't see how an unintelligent Deathless can exist. A semblence of life in defiance of mere physics without the soul. And how do you get the consent without the soul to give it? How do you get a creature that wants to do the right thing, if it has no way of knowing in even a very basic and simple way (Like a Celestial Dire Lion) what right is?
Yadot 03-24-07, 07:36 PM	IMO I never saw the point of Zombies and Skeletons having the NE alignment when the PHB states that unthinking beings or creatures with 2 or less INT cannot make moral decisions and thus have the Neutral alignment. Furthermore I disagree with the [Evil] tag on the Animate Dead tag when Negative Energy is Neutral (and needed to conteract too much Positive Energy) and you are creating a creature that can't make moral decisions of any kind without your ordering. K wrote up a very detailed and excellent Tome on Necromancy that I thought was worth the read, I'll try to find and link it...here it is, I'm using the Playing with fire option.
Darth Syntax 03-24-07, 09:29 PM	Animate dead, a hard to explain spell sometimes. The primary method of creating mindless undead. But what does it really do? It must effect an actual corpse and the result is a mindless creature. How does a mindless creature function? What can it do? I must agree with Yadot here that mindless undead are functionally more like constructs that anything else. Mindless undead are programmed (for lack of a better term) to perform certain tasks and are set to them. Now, supposedly undead run off of negative energy, but said energy is never defined. What if negative energy isn't anything at all, but a lack of something? Undead then are a bit like black holes, they suck up what is around them. Moreover, the undead make use of this stolen energy to function. Really, its not all that different form how we function, we have to consume to live, undead just consume a different sort of 'food'. The target must be a corpse because the corpse was once alive and therefor has a residue of the soul or life force that once inhabited it. The soul of the dead remains in Dolurrh your just borrowing what's been left behind. That's assuming that the soul is something worth while. It might be the case that the 'thing' that goes to dolurrh is actually some kind of waste product of sentient beings. Dolurrh then is a kind of cosmic toxic waste storage and clean-up facility. The reason that corpses are used in the creation of undead is that they are convenient. In the case of mindless undead, a corpse is useful because it's already articulated in a manner that makes it a useful tool. It has hands and legs, so it can manipulate objects and get around. Undead save time. Sentient undead function because the stolen energies they run off of artificially keep their minds and bodies working. A skeleton or zombie is proficient with the weapons it was proficient with in life. The training is left behind in the bones and/or tissue. The skeleton or zombie can walk or run, again something the bones and tissue remember. It is powered with negative energy concentrated sufficiently to represent and fullfill a basic human fear. The dead arising with malice. The fact that people are scared of undead is because they are often grisly reminders of our mortality. That and the fact that the whole rotting flesh never looked good on anyone. It is our fear of death and of the dead that makes the undead repulsive, their is no necessary malice in the walking dead. It could probably mime eating and sleeping very well, though almost certainly anything else would be lost. Now in creating an Intelligent Undead one forces a soul from Dolurrh back into the body you have prepared for it. This undead will remember more of it's self. It will most often be brutally traumatised and reduced to an almost animalistic state. This is represented by it's loss of class levels. Even in it's newly emerged state it may if only momentarily remember thing of it's past. A Ghoul for example might be distracted from it's hunger by a pretty flower painted on a wall. It might even look sad for a moment. This of course is not the case for Vampires. Lich's are a curious exception. They actually chose to become undead. The 'soul' might remain on Dolurrh, and the body would still be capable of thought. The apparent 'evil' of sentient undead comes from either the fact that the brain might not be all there after death, or from the mental strain of becoming immortal. Undead are often crazy. Liches often suffer from time-based insanity. The stress on the mind from living so many years beyond a natural existence would be immense, so it's no wonder they're more than a little nuts. That and the whole ritual of becoming a lich nearly requires one to be more than a little down the road to Bedlam. Now we move onto the deathless. Positive energy powered, undead. What makes them so very different? In this instant consent of the soul to be bound into rotting flesh is key as are respect and *cough* love for the deceased. One binds the soul by pouring so much positive energy into the two that a semblance of life emerges in defiance of mear physics. The main difference between the Deathless and the Undead might be vaguely analogous to the difference between plants and animals (or fungi). Undead must consume in order to stay functioning, the Deathless effectively make their own 'food'. Like plants, the deathless need a proper environment, and their need raw materials. This is why they tend to hang around in Irian manifest zones, they are to the deathless what the sun is to plants. A deathless must have been a good person in life to create a good creature in death, where an undead is evil regardless of their alignment in life. I want to say that a deathless should be free of control and able to do what it thinks to be right. Though this is in defiance of the Control Deathless spell and rebuke Deathless ability. To be honest I think one should require the Leadership feat to aquire a deathless companion. In addition I really don't see how an unintelligent Deathless can exist. A semblence of life in defiance of mere physics without the soul. And how do you get the consent without the soul to give it? How do you get a creature that wants to do the right thing, if it has no way of knowing in even a very basic and simple way (Like a Celestial Dire Lion) what right is? The same could be argued in reference to the undead. How can something without sentience be either good or evil?
Dragom 03-25-07, 07:27 PM	True the NE tag for Unintelligent undead is less then rock solid, however Negative Energy is as far as game terms are considered the bread and butter of all things truely evil. It is the fact that they are infused with evil, and represent in and of themselves a defiled corpse, that makes them evil, not their own intention. Their existence is an expression of negative energy, like an open flame is an expression of heat energy. And like an open flame can be controlled by a person with the know how to do so. Fear = evil = fear of an animate skeleton is much like the heat = combustion = heat of a flame, with much of the stranger extra effects tagged along. Also a Construct has to have an elemental essence bound into it inorder for it to have access to knowledge of moving around in a 3 dimensional environment. A corpse, in addition to being pre-articulated, has a history of moving around and doesn't require a bound elemental force in order to understand things like being able to walk on a carpet and not having to walk around it. (Yes I am refering to the inherent problems in programing a robot to move across a furnished room, bane of programers since the late 50's)
Darth Syntax 03-25-07, 08:14 PM	The only problem with the whole negative energy = evil bit is that the beings composed on pure negative energy (whatever that means) are Neutral, just like their positive energy counterparts. Something that is composed entirely of a substance that is supposedly evil isn't going to be Neutral, it just doesn't follow. Also, I don't agree with your assertion that fear = evil. Fear is (like all emotions) without any moral or ethical component, it is the actions that one takes as a result of emotions that have the appropriate alignment components. For example, I am mortally afraid of dogs. However, I don't consider my reaction to them to be the result of some innate evil in dogs (ok thats debatable, but when I refer to dogs as evil, I am mostly joking). The dog isn't out to cause me to panic and freeze up, it's just being a dog. So I avoid dogs, and when I do come across them I steer clear of them even as my heart rate goes up. Neither the fear they cause me nor my reaction to it could be classified as evil. The fear they case me is alignmentless and my actions are probably neutral. The same is true of any random undead (especially the mindless sort), we find them frightening because of what they represent and because of our cultural hangups involving the dead and possible the belief in the sacredness of the soul. Now, if a vampire uses the fear it is likely to cause as a weapon to control people or some such, that is going to be evil in some sense, but then a big hulking brute using its apparent strength to control people is certainly no different; and no one makes the argument that being a large, physically imposing fellow is evil.
Dragom 03-25-07, 09:01 PM	Also, I don't agree with your assertion that fear = evil I'm not saying fear is the same thing as evil, merely that many forms of fear produce environments highly condusive to evil. Like your fear of dogs, If it left you unable to assist someone being attacked by a feral or rabid dog, or if it convinced you to kill all the dogs in your neaborhood, it would be allowing or leading to evil. And I'm trying to draw a line between percieved evil, evil magic and evil creatures.
Darth Syntax 03-26-07, 01:24 AM	I agree with you that people in fearful environments might be more prone to acting irrationally, selfishly, and possibly in a manner that might be described as evil. However, I don't think you analysis on my inability to save someone due to my inability to overcome my fear of dogs is quite correct, unless you ascribe to the privation theory of evil, which can get us into rather tricky ground. Say that evil is defined as the absence of good, this being the classic privation theory of evil. Then any action that is not specifically good is then evil in some respect. This quite quickly become a rather absurd notion as there are a whole host of actions that cannot be seen as necessarily good, say eating an apple or going for a stroll in the evening air, but are not evil either. Similarly, my being rendered incapable of rendering assistance to a person being attacked by a dog isn't really evil but rather unfortunate. If the fear is debilitating then it follows that I am incapable of rendering assistance regardless of what I would like to do. Essentially then any time someone fails to save someone due to a lack of ability becomes an evil act, even if they wanted to act in an altruistic way. Is the healer who arrives too late evil? What about the little kid who cannot help their friend who has fallen from a cliff because they are not strong enough to pull up said friend? Now, if I used my fear as an excuse not to help someone when it was in my power, that might be considered evil, but it is because I had an available choice that my act becomes evil. Once the will is inhibited, it becomes harder and harder to classify an act according to any alignment. You say that my fear might lead to an allowance of evil, and it might, but it is not a necessary consequence of said fear. Fear can be a motivating force for good as well. Say a group of halflings is afraid of the horrible beasts in the woods, fear might paralyze them and thus make them easy prey, but it might also motivate them to band together and set up defenses and so forth. It might also lead them to warn others passing through the area of the presence of said horrible beasts. Moving back to the topic of the undead and fear: In a culture that doesn't consider the rest of dead to be sacred or that has no particular fear of dying, attitudes toward the undead might be quite different. Look at the Blood of Vol. They don't consider the undead to be figures of fear and harbingers of ill omen. Rather they see them as, well, sacred figures who have transcended death. The same is true of the Aerenai and the Undying. In both cases the living dead are not seen as fearful, so the evidence in the world clearly seems to indicate that attitudes toward the undead (in whatever form) are, at least partly, products of culture. Essentially, what I am trying to get at is that there is no reason to consider any nonagentive entity to have any sort of alignment, not even neutral. Good, evil, neutrality, law, chaos, all become nor more meaningful than color terms such as green, purple, taupe, blue, and maroon if they become little more than the properties of objects or of forces. As descriptions of patterns of behavior on the other hand, the terms have some use, but only if the being exhibiting these behaviors has control over their actions.
Dragom 03-26-07, 02:53 AM	Fear can be a motivating force for good as well. True active energizing fear that drives you to act and deal with the things the frighten you is a good and highly essential thing. Fear that paralizes, forces you to abandon or betray or even lash out at the people around you is the brand I'm trying to describe. It's hardly my fault that I'm typing in a language that fails to describe the two effects with different words. Essentially, what I am trying to get at is that there is no reason to consider any nonagentive entity to have any sort of alignment, not even neutral. Good, evil, neutrality, law, chaos, all become nor more meaningful than color terms such as green, purple, taupe, blue, and maroon if they become little more than the properties of objects or of forces. As descriptions of patterns of behavior on the other hand, the terms have some use, but only if the being exhibiting these behaviors has control over their actions. I will admit the only reason mindless undead are tagged as evil is because they are "coloured" evil, and because most people playing clerics would scratch there heads in confusion, until their scalps where bloody and raw, if a Holy Smite failed to injure mindless undead. However possession of the quality of evil has some precedence among non-sentient objects. Cursed diamonds and curses of some famous mummies tome, evil japanese combs, that drawer that always steals my pens... Not to mention various evil artifacts and magical items. So as an creation of an evil person for evil purposes mindless undead do have some cause for being labelled evil. Mind you a dozen Skeletons raised by a Neutral person to extinguish fires in his/her neighborhood... Does kind of put the whole dealy into question.
Darth Syntax 03-26-07, 03:15 AM	I will admit the only reason mindless undead are tagged as evil is because they are "coloured" evil, and because most people playing clerics would scratch there heads in confusion, until their scalps where bloody and raw, if a Holy Smite failed to injure mindless undead. Truer words have never been spoken. Of course, this comes from the guy who played a cleric who refused to turn undead and was incapable of healing (by choice mind you). Evil objects are a bit confusing when you think about them. How is an object, with not thoughts, no emotions, doing evil anyway? Somehow all I'm getting is an image of an 'evil' desk; it's probably the one with the pen-eating drawer.
Dragom 03-26-07, 03:23 AM	To describe an Evil object to a person who plays D&D. The dice, that allways rolls a 1 when all absolutly need it to do something else, even a 2 would do. Maybe it's weighted wrong, maybe it's possessed by a spirit that disaproves of you in some way or maybe it's just plain unlucky. So an Evil object has a stronger basis in supersition then in philosophy.
Ellorin 03-26-07, 07:14 AM	Truer words have never been spoken. Of course, this comes from the guy who played a cleric who refused to turn undead and was incapable of healing (by choice mind you). Evil objects are a bit confusing when you think about them. How is an object, with not thoughts, no emotions, doing evil anyway? Somehow all I'm getting is an image of an 'evil' desk; it's probably the one with the pen-eating drawer. So, it all comes down to whether you accept the Aereni theory, as depicted in the Elves of Aerenal, part II dragonshard, or not. To the elves of Aerenal, the study of necromancy is as much a philosophical voyage as a quest for power; the wizard's ability to strike down his enemy with a ray of enfeeblement is a side benefit of his work, not the point of it. The one path that the Aereni avoid is the creation of negatively charged undead: vampires, liches, wraiths, and the like. The Aereni believe that these creatures are anathema to life. According to Aereni lore, the deathless are sustained by the energy of Irian and the devotion of their descendents -- energy that is freely given. Negative undead take the energy they need to survive -- siphoning away the life energy of Eberron itself. Karrnathi necromancers scoff at this belief, but the Aereni take it very seriously. ...which at least makes some sense-the thoughtless, emotionless zombie is a projection of the mildly evil-aligned plane of Mabar, albeit a very small one. Yoy don't "program" it to attack and devour the living when you cast animate dead, it's included in the whole package. Of course, it's only a theory, and Darth Syntax's arguments are, as usually, powerful. Still, I think I shall stick to it...for now:) .
Darth Syntax 03-26-07, 10:20 PM	By all means, stick to what works for your interpretation of the world. Its what makes the game fun. I just enjoy pondering the philosophical implications of things, and I relish a thoughtful and highly entertaining debate. And as to the world, I would much rather have the sort of debates that are exemplified by the Karrnathi/Aerenai example than have everything in a nice little box with a bow.
androkguz 03-28-07, 03:05 PM	Well people, remember that in DnD (at least in the standard) evil/good/law/chaos is not a point of view, not a way of behaving but the forces that define the universe. So then, evil beings do evil acts because they are evil and not the other way around. This means that things that can't choose can be evil because evil is a force. A zombie is then powered by evil and negative energy but can't do evil acts on its own because it has no mind. Yet, I must say that I'm not a fan of this way of explaining this stuff and I really think that it doesn't apply very well to Eberron.
OnusBone 03-28-07, 04:38 PM	These style of explanations prevent seeing the forest for the trees. Why create a convoluted answer to a question already dealt with by simple game mechanics? If a player gave me this as an in-game writing, I would give him 500 xp. If a DM provided me this as a house rule, I would tell him to relax and let the rules do the work.
Cifer 03-29-07, 06:44 PM	Well people, remember that in DnD (at least in the standard) evil/good/law/chaos is not a point of view, not a way of behaving but the forces that define the universe. So then, evil beings do evil acts because they are evil and not the other way around. This means that things that can't choose can be evil because evil is a force. A zombie is then powered by evil and negative energy but can't do evil acts on its own because it has no mind. Yet, I must say that I'm not a fan of this way of explaining this stuff and I really think that it doesn't apply very well to Eberron. Eberron has mostly done away with good and evil as objective forces. Their only remnants lie with the paladin and the Alignment descriptors of spells, although the latter can just as well be described as "the deity doesn't like that one". Regarding the paradoxon of the negative energy, I propose a solution: Not the energy itself is evil, but rather the contamination of normal matter with it. Since most spells with the [Evil] descriptor don't apply the energy into a void, but rather influence something with it, they force it into contact with things and beings not composed of it, thus creating a synthesis which may be considered unnatural. Now, positive and negative energy might not be quite as opposed as most people believe - for example, while negative energy almost always hurts (material plane) creatures, it takes a massive overdosing of positive energy which can only occur in a place saturated with the stuff to harm a normal creature. Thus, deathless don't have to be quite as opposed to undead either.
androkguz 03-29-07, 08:26 PM	Eberron has mostly done away with good and evil as objective forces. Their only remnants lie with the paladin and the Alignment descriptors of spells, although the latter can just as well be described as "the deity doesn't like that one". Syrania is strongly good aligned. Xoriat, Risia and Fernia are middly evil aligned. In Shavarath, paladinhood confronts tyranny and both confront destructive anarchy. Daanvi and Khythri are the extremes of order and chaos. Khyber is obviously a place of evil, plus the Rakshasas are undouptly the material manifestation of evil itself in Eberron. Alingment is still true in Eberron but works kind of different. Not much to add right now. Regarding the paradoxon of the negative energy, I propose a solution: Not the energy itself is evil, but rather the contamination of normal matter with it. Since most spells with the [Evil] descriptor don't apply the energy into a void, but rather influence something with it, they force it into contact with things and beings not composed of it, thus creating a synthesis which may be considered unnatural. Now, positive and negative energy might not be quite as opposed as most people believe - for example, while negative energy almost always hurts (material plane) creatures, it takes a massive overdosing of positive energy which can only occur in a place saturated with the stuff to harm a normal creature. Thus, deathless don't have to be quite as opposed to undead either. Well, fire and cold both kill, that doesn't make them any less opposed. But I do think that not all undying should be good. After all, it's Eberron, everyone is ploting to conquer the world.
goblin_pride 03-31-07, 08:39 AM	Since most spells with the [Evil] descriptor don't apply the energy into a void, but rather influence something with it, they force it into contact with things and beings not composed of it, thus creating a synthesis which may be considered unnatural. Not to nitpick, but unnatural isn't necessarily evil either. A Warforged is unnatural and they manage to run the full range of alignments. Celestials could be said to be unnatural on Eberron as well, would that make them evil? A necromancer might use negative energy to power the animation of a skeleton, but that doesn't make them evil. An animated skeleton is a tool, nothing more. The source of it's motive power wouldn't cause something with no ability to grasp the concept of good and evil to make the choice to be one or the other. Good and Evil are choices, an animated undead doesn't have the liberty or the ability to make those choices. Without the ability to make the choice between good and evil, mindless undead aren't one or the other. Sure, the foreign energy that powers a mindless undead might send the Pallydingaling into convulsions, but it's more likely because the deities that grant the ability to create the mindless undead are usually a bit on the dark side.
Cifer 03-31-07, 09:54 AM	A Warforged is unnatural It is? From what do you infer that? Celestials could be said to be unnatural on Eberron as well Celestials are still composed purely of the stuff of one plane. I was mainly using the word "unnatural" for lack of a better term describing "that which doesn't belong together and is tortured by this fact so much that it will often try to distribute the pain to others", which is what seems to happen if you infuse negative energy into the bodies of beings usually powered and healed by positive energy.
Edymnion 03-31-07, 03:18 PM	It is? From what do you infer that?Uh, they are artificially constructed beings that are found nowhere in nature. If they are not from nature, they are not natural, hence they are unnatural.The target must be a corpse because the corpse was once alive and therefor has a residue of the soul or life force that once inhabited it. The soul of the dead remains in Dolurrh your just borrowing what's been left behind.Not true. Casting Stone to Flesh on a statue specifically says it creates a corpse, and Animate Dead specifically says it requires a corpse. You could have a good aligned necromancer that only animates zombies and skeletons from statues, for example.
Darth Syntax 03-31-07, 03:55 PM	Uh, they are artificially constructed beings that are found nowhere in nature. If they are not from nature, they are not natural, hence they are unnatural.Not true. Casting Stone to Flesh on a statue specifically says it creates a corpse, and Animate Dead specifically says it requires a corpse. Just because they are the product of sentient, agentive, construction does not imply unaturalness. Sentient beings are, and I think we can probably agree on this, natural beings and as such any product or creation of said natural beings is also inherently natural. If this is not the case then we would have to call into question such things as termite mounds, beaver dams, and bird nests. Are these unnatural? So what if sentient beings are more diverse in the sort of things they make, the difference is a matter of degree and not of essence. To put it another way, anything that exists is inherrently natural. This is what has always bugged me about certian portrayals of Druids, they are always harping on civilization but you never see them knock down a termite mound. However, the idea that all that exists is natural does not preclude sects like the Gatekeepers. Effectly what they are attempting to do is prevent invasive species from getting a hold on Eberron. You could have a good aligned necromancer that only animates zombies and skeletons from statues, for example. Of course, then we get into the issue of destruction of property and theft, which might not be all that 'good'. ;)
goblin_pride 03-31-07, 06:08 PM	Just because they are the product of sentient, agentive, construction does not imply unaturalness. Sentient beings are, and I think we can probably agree on this, natural beings and as such any product or creation of said natural beings is also inherently natural. If this is not the case then we would have to call into question such things as termite mounds, beaver dams, and bird nests. Are these unnatural? By that same token then, wouldn't the skeletal minions of a necromancer therefore be natural as well? The alignment of the minion would mirror the alignment of the creator* or be neutral simply because of an inability to make the subconscious choice between good and evil or law and chaos. A blanket statement that all undead minions of a necromancer are evil because negative energy is their source of motive power is at best a pigeon-holing of necromancers being evil due to their advanced study and use of decayed or decaying corpses in their work. *Imagine the utter and absolute shock on a player's face when encountering the gravedigging skeletons that the local church has used as a form of penance for executed murderers. Even more shocking would be the fact that because the creator of the skeletons was lawful good, they can't be turned by the paladin or cleric of the host or the silver flame in the party. This would also allow for the control of undead by a cleric or paladin of good pantheons or religions as nothing more than direction of "penitant corpses".
Edymnion 03-31-07, 06:22 PM	Of course, then we get into the issue of destruction of property and theft, which might not be all that 'good'. ;)Not really. You can buy statues fairly cheaply as long as you don't mind what they are made out of, and you can always take ranks in Craft (Sculpting) to make your own.By that same token then, wouldn't the skeletal minions of a necromancer therefore be natural as well?By that token, they are *MORE* natural than the Warforged. They are the results of naturally occuring creatures, animated by magic. As opposed to the WF, which are scattered pieces of material that were either never alive in the first place, or were inanimate, and then animated by magic. WF are more unnatural than zombies and skeletons by a wide margin. Especially considering how many undead are not the product of intent, but created by natural forces (in Eberron, having Dolurhh become coterminus could cause zombies and skeletons to spontaneously animate, for example), while a WF can *ONLY* be created by intentional effort.
goblin_pride 03-31-07, 07:00 PM	It would seem then that we've come back to the same point. Undead creatures' alignments are based on the selfish or selfless intentions of the creator rather than some inherent maliciousness in the animated bodies themselves. Congratulations, boys and girls, we've established a means by which to create legions of undead in Karrnath without making the country a sinkhole of evil purposes. Defending one's home would be a good act and a priest of any religion that has access to a graveyard and the spell Animate Dead could contribute to the defense of Karrnath* and never falter in his lawful good alignment in any way. *substitute your nation of choice here but the point is still the same, a good priest could easily mobilize the fallen from previous campaigns to defend the villages the dead protected and defended in life. They could also be used in things like digging wells and harvesting crops if need be.
KidChainsaw 03-31-07, 07:05 PM	Keep in mind, undead are powered by -negative- energy, a powersource that is associated with destruction and decay. It could be said that a mindless undead isn't deliberately evil (can't be, doesn't have a brain) but the energy that keeps it upright is predisposed towards destructive acts that most people on Khorvaire would consider to be evil. This would also explain why uncontrolled mindless undead can be dangerous as their natural inclination, while mindless, is to destroy. It would also explain why Karnath hasn't retooled it's undead legions into construction/farming equipment and why most good religions have a problem with the walking dead. The deathless, on the other hand, are powered by positive energy, a powersource associated with healing, preservation and creation. It isn't too small a leap to see why the Deathless are the pillars of Aereni society. Of course, this is just my take on why the undead are the way that they are in Eberron, where alignment means so little.
goblin_pride 03-31-07, 07:43 PM	Keep in mind, undead are powered by -negative- energy, a powersource that is associated with destruction and decay. Correct me if I'm wrong, physics isn't my strong suit. Electricity is negative energy if I recall correctly and by your logic, the computer that you're sitting in front of reading this would, in your terms be evil because it's negative energy that allows it to function. I realize that this argument is flawed in the fact that we're talking about game mechanics over real-world physics, but the principle point is that negative energy itself isn't the cause for the evil in undead. An undead is simply a tool capable of being used for good or evil by it's creator. The evil of an undead is derived from it's creator, not the source of it's power. The fact that it's creator is evil may cause an undead minion to appear evil for all intents and purposes as a reflection of the creator more than the undead itself. Mind you, we're talking about undead that are mindless and specifically created by an individual.
goblin_pride 03-31-07, 07:45 PM	The deathless, on the other hand, are powered by positive energy, a powersource associated with healing, preservation and creation. It isn't too small a leap to see why the Deathless are the pillars of Aereni society. Again, healing, preservation and and creation all require electricity of some form in the real world and electricity is both negative and highly destructive.
KidChainsaw 03-31-07, 08:04 PM	Yeah, but I'm basing my ideas on the fact that you -take- damage if you run around unprotected on the Negative Energy plane and -heal- damage rapidly on the Positive. I'm also hammering a square peg into a round hole with how everything in Eberron doesn't have a default alignment yet the undead, even mindless varieties, are reviled particularly by societies that should know that they aren't inherently evil. Makes sense to me and my players and it dovetails nicely with the rest of the core materials (non-Eberron 3.5 books) and how undead are treated both rules and fluff wise. So I'm sticking with it. Still, the idea of beating swords into plowshares as it applies to the Karnnathi military does bring a bit of a chuckle.
OneWinged4ngel 03-31-07, 08:34 PM	Animate dead, a hard to explain spell sometimes. Indeed. The question occasionally arises "How the **** do I fit a ****ing piece of onyx bigger than the person's head in their eyes?" Thanks, D&D economy! ;) The primary method of creating mindless undead. But what does it really do? It must effect an actual corpse and the result is a mindless creature. How does a mindless creature function? What can it do? The target must be a corpse because the corpse was once alive and therefor has a residue of the soul or life force that once inhabited it. The soul of the dead remains in Dolurrh your just borrowing what's been left behind. A skeleton or zombie is proficient with the weapons it was proficient with in life. The training is left behind in the bones and/or tissue. The skeleton or zombie can walk or run, again something the bones and tissue remember. It is powered with negative energy concentrated sufficiently to represent and fullfill a basic human fear. The dead arising with malice. It could probably mime eating and sleeping very well, though almost certainly anything else would be lost. Now in creating an Intelligent Undead one forces a soul from Dolurrh back into the body you have prepared for it. This undead will remember more of it's self. It will most often be brutally traumatised and reduced to an almost animalistic state. This is represented by it's loss of class levels. Even in it's newly emerged state it may if only momentarily remember thing of it's past. Clearly doesn't apply to all intelligent undead, and I daresay not even most. There is a great variety of ways by which intelligent undead are created, and indeed many don't quite seem animalistic (This would be rather out of theme for, say, a vampire or lich in the context of how Eberron typically presents them.) A Ghoul for example might be distracted from it's hunger by a pretty flower painted on a wall. It might even look sad for a moment. This of course is not the case for Vampires. Lich's are a curious exception. They actually chose to become undead. Now we move onto the deathless. Positive energy powered, undead. What makes them so very different? In this instant consent of the soul to be bound into rotting flesh is key as are respect and *cough* love for the deceased. One binds the soul by pouring so much positive energy into the two that a semblance of life emerges in defiance of mear physics. A deathless must have been a good person in life to create a good creature in death, where an undead is evil regardless of their alignment in life. A bit of a conundrum indeed for intelligent undead. In Eberron, I would guess that there would be some leeway on this matter, because of the concept that minds are individualized, and so long as something is sentient it can be of any alignment. Additionally, the "Always" alignment descriptor doesn't apply so much in Eberron, and even in the case of the Monster Manual, the MM specifically notes that there are some notable exceptions to the Always notation; just that the average group won't be dealing with it. Saying that an intelligent undead is automatically evil no matter what seems to be a bit counterintuitive to Eberron's themes. However, it may be possible that its *energy* force is evil, much like an Evil Cleric's, and thus a Deathless always is Good (positive energy force) and a negative Undead is always Evil (because it radiates a negative energy force). This would also explain how a mindless creature can be Evil, contrary to WotC's comments that creatures with an int less than 3 couldn't be anything by D&D's moral standpoints. Essentially, the same way a Good cleric of an Evil deity still radiates strong Evil.
Edymnion 03-31-07, 09:20 PM	Keep in mind, undead are powered by -negative- energy, a powersource that is associated with destruction and decay.Yeah, you gotta love that source of destruction and decay, which actually does the exact opposite when creating undead. Not only does it restore functionality to the body, but it STOPS the body from decaying. Unless you can find me anywhere in the books that says when a zombie rots away into a skeleton?The deathless, on the other hand, are powered by positive energy, a powersource associated with healing, preservation and creation.Of course, if you go to the positive energy plane, your head explodes. Literally.
Dragom 03-31-07, 09:30 PM	A Vampire doesn't have to evil, but with the craving and need to feast on blood they have a hard time not being evil. Especially if unable to control themselves in their early decades of unlife. One could make a strong arguement that a vampire is almost by neccessety more animalistic then the being it once was. And things with a lot of HD usually have nice big eye sockets. Electricity is most often a modulating negative/positive cycle. Except for batteries with the Positive and Negative heads. Those are a kind of stored imbalance that runs out of power as it "normalizes." So electricity is a neutral force. PS, I'm almost certain that there is no such thing as Natural honey, and beaver dams aren't Natural either. Kind of a funny word natural is, if you actually apply it to to things created by natural things you loose all possibility of the word having any meaning.
The Fireballed Mage 04-01-07, 02:00 AM	Yeah, you gotta love that source of destruction and decay, which actually does the exact opposite when creating undead. Not only does it restore functionality to the body, but it STOPS the body from decaying. But by not decaying the undead works to break the 'circle of life' by simply existing. Its flesh, its bones do not break down and replenish the soil, do not get used by nature to return new life to the world. Instead it traps the body, imprisons it in a static existance that denies rebirth and steals food away from the next generation. So it may not be natural decay, but it is entropy.
androkguz 04-01-07, 02:58 AM	Ok, let me see if I can explain myself... There is evil, and evil does evil thing. You are not evil for doing evil things... you do evil things if you're evil. This means that if you can't do things that has nothing to say with your alingment. You can have an evil door, which would essentially be a door. A zombie is evil before it can make choices, it's powered by evil. Evil is not destruction, decay, pain, greed.... But evil is destructive, causes pain and is very greedy... In short, evil is an entity, think of it as some kind of supergod. Everthing that acts "evil" is caused by Evil or is alowing Evil to touch it.
OneWinged4ngel 04-01-07, 12:44 PM	A bit more concisely, if no one wanted to read my long last post: Mindless undead are evil in Eberron the same way that a Good cleric of the Fury registers Evil on the detect-o-meter. That doesn't mean the creature actually does evil things morally... but the force keeping them animated has an "evil" aura. This extends to intelligent undead as well. Pretty simple rationalization.
goblin_pride 04-02-07, 02:47 AM	Mindless undead are evil in Eberron the same way that a Good cleric of the Fury registers Evil on the detect-o-meter. That doesn't mean the creature actually does evil things morally... but the force keeping them animated has an "evil" aura. It's not the force keeping them ambulatory that's evil. Undead minions created by evil beings pop up as evil because of their creator. A lawful good necromancer's use of the bodies in a cemetary to keep the roads in repair, dig wells, rebuild the village, refortify the walls for the common defense, and so forth would cause the undead to register as lawful good because of the necromancer's alignment and his motivations when animating the bodies. Think of it this way, an undead minion holds an impression of their creator when they're first animated, the motivations, the desires and the driving force of the creator is what you read when you detect the alignment of mindless undead. If the creator of the undead is full of malicious intent, if he's a twisted evil person bent on dominating the world for his own reward, the minions wear that malicious selfishness in their alignment. If the creator of the undead is using the corpses for the benefit of the greater good, those undead would, in this rare example, show that purpose in their alignment which would be good. Necromancy isn't evil in and of itself, but rather the lure of such power tends to draw the vilest, most reprehensible sort to it. It's the lust for power, the drive to dominate in the necromancers that flavors the vast majority of undead. A cleric of the silver flame, when faced with overwhelming odds could go to the village's cemetary to raise an army of skeletons to defend the village from an outside threat, knowing that they'll reflect his motivation and as a cleric serving good he can command them back to their proper rest when the need for them passes.
OneWinged4ngel 04-02-07, 06:28 PM	It's not the force keeping them ambulatory that's evil. Undead minions created by evil beings pop up as evil because of their creator. A lawful good necromancer's use of the bodies in a cemetary to keep the roads in repair, dig wells, rebuild the village, refortify the walls for the common defense, and so forth would cause the undead to register as lawful good because of the necromancer's alignment and his motivations when animating the bodies. And where are you getting that from? As far as I know, the rules don't support this idea, while they do correlate frequently, in a variety of instances, to what I described. Necromancy isn't evil in and of itself I never claimed it was morally evil, but instead said that negative energy carries an "Evil" aura. This is why a Good cleric who channels negative energy registers on the Detect Evil-o-meter as a powerful Evil. A cleric of the silver flame, when faced with overwhelming odds could go to the village's cemetary to raise an army of skeletons to defend the village from an outside threat, knowing that they'll reflect his motivation and as a cleric serving good he can command them back to their proper rest when the need for them passes. He could, but by the rules those skeletons would still detect as Evil. The fact that they're actually morally neutral (because they are mindless) doesn't factor in to that at all.
goblin_pride 04-02-07, 08:03 PM	He could, but by the rules those skeletons would still detect as Evil. The fact that they're actually morally neutral (because they are mindless) doesn't factor in to that at all. That's the problem right there. The alignment of undead is wrong. Undead without selfish or malicious intent should be neutral in the first place. Vampires feed off the life energy of others to support their own immortality which is selfish, therefore a vampire should be evil. A skeleton, nothing more than a construct created from some form of mortal remains should register as neutral as far as alignment is concerned. The shift in the most recent editions of the game of healing spells from necromancy to conjuration is partially to blame for the rigid line of thinking that necromancy in itself is evil, when in fact, it's the motivations of the caster that determine evil rather than the spell itself. Necromancy, despite it's obvious abilities to remove life and it's name is still the source of the bulk of the restorative magics in the game. Necromancy isn't an art of merely death, it also deals with life, because the two are undeniably linked.
Edymnion 04-02-07, 08:21 PM	That's the problem right there. The alignment of undead is wrong. Undead without selfish or malicious intent should be neutral in the first place. Vampires feed off the life energy of others to support their own immortality which is selfish, therefore a vampire should be evil. A skeleton, nothing more than a construct created from some form of mortal remains should register as neutral as far as alignment is concerned.Actually, I liked the take Libris Mortis had on this topic. That *ALL* undead feed off of life energy, in one way or another. The vampire and the ghoul do so directly, by literally eating their victims (or parts of them, like the blood). Undead that do not directly feed off of the living absorb life energy from the environment around them, meaning that a zombie in a verdant field would slowly wither and die as the zombie sucks the life out of it.
RogueElement 04-02-07, 08:44 PM	Keith mentioned an even more sinister scenario that the Aerenal hunt all undead because their very presence is causing Mabar to move closer to the material plane. But the share holders of zombie-making factories strongly proclaim that there is no direct evidence linking zombie emissions and global cooling.
yrogerg 04-02-07, 09:46 PM	Of course, if you go to the positive energy plane, your head explodes. Literally. Not in Eberron, it doesn't. Iriarn has the Minor Positive trait, not the Major one :P Personally, my view is this: like *most* undead, mindless are animated by a voracious, hungry, murderous force, an energy that's anathema to the very vital essence of life, an energy that manifests itself in other undead as a maddening hunger and outsider-like tendency towards Evil. The way this interacts with mindlessness is that mindless undead *aren't* completely mindless: given an ambiguous command, they'll take the course of action that's most violent, that destroys the most life. If rendered uncontrolled, they're likely to attack the nearest living creature they can sense, but if controlled, and uncommanded, they remain largely idle. Yes, they are a tool, but a dangerous one, one that the controller needs to exert sure control over. As for the creation of undead, and the Negative Energy vs. Fire argument, it bears pointing out that if undead are powered by a connection to the Negative energy planes, this is a bit different from burning things with a Fireball. I would generally consider Negative Energy instantaneous-effect spells (such as most other necromancy, or those Evocations in the Planar Handbook) to be too instantaneous to have major bad effects, whereas creating undead is much more like opening a small (and permanent) portal to Mabar, putting it in a body, and letting it walk around. [/incoherence]
yrogerg 04-02-07, 09:51 PM	That's the problem right there. The alignment of undead is wrong. Undead without selfish or malicious intent should be neutral in the first place. Vampires feed off the life energy of others to support their own immortality which is selfish, therefore a vampire should be evil. A skeleton, nothing more than a construct created from some form of mortal remains should register as neutral as far as alignment is concerned. What about Lemures? Should they be Neutral?
ArcTan 04-03-07, 01:02 AM	That's the problem right there. The alignment of undead is wrong. Undead without selfish or malicious intent should be neutral in the first place. Vampires feed off the life energy of others to support their own immortality which is selfish, therefore a vampire should be evil. A skeleton, nothing more than a construct created from some form of mortal remains should register as neutral as far as alignment is concerned. Er, okay. You can houserule this if you want. It's not how the game works. [Evil] spells are like Dark Side powers in Star Wars d20. They draw on forces that are, *themselves*, intrinsically evil. They *feel* evil. They corrupt your brain and make it slightly more evil. They're evil even if you use them entirely and totally for good purposes. The shift in the most recent editions of the game of healing spells from necromancy to conjuration is partially to blame for the rigid line of thinking that necromancy in itself is evil, when in fact, it's the motivations of the caster that determine evil rather than the spell itself. This is your OPINION, not a self-evident fact. Part of the point of magic is that magic itself is quasi-sentient and molds the intentions of the caster according to its own "will" -- see the wish spell, or, hell, the fact that you have to "cast spells" at all rather than just saying what you want to do and doing it. This is implied to be true in every campaign setting -- see books like Complete Mage and their high-flying rhetoric about how "magic is alive" -- and is explicitly true in Faerun, where magic is "the Weave" spun from the will of the goddess Mystra. (It's less explicitly true in Eberron, but Eberron still has two gods of magic who wrote magic's rules and control magic from behind the scenes.) So I don't see why it's inherently wrong for D&D to have the idea of "corruption" and for [Evil] descriptor of spells to be like drawing on the Dark Side or putting on the One Ring -- a form of power that tempts you to use it for good but will always slowly pervert you toward evil. Of course, D&D's alignment descriptors are very bland, uninteresting ways of addressing this theme. Much better are Heroes of Horror's Taint mechanic or d20 Call of Cthulhu's Insanity. But the concept itself is not intrinsically flawed or useless, even if you yourself find it morally unacceptable (but isn't part of the point of playing games to explore ideas most of us don't accept, like polytheistic religion?). Necromancy, despite it's obvious abilities to remove life and it's name is still the source of the bulk of the restorative magics in the game. Er, no it's not. The bulk of the restorative magics in the game are Conjuration Healing. I'm not a huge fan of this change either, but the change is a fact. (What gets me slightly creeped out is people who talk about the D&D world as though it objectively existed outside the D&D rules, so that the D&D rules were capable of somehow being "wrong" about the world of the game.) I myself would create a new, larger school and make "necromancy" and "healing" two subschools of that school. Necromancy isn't an art of merely death, it also deals with life, because the two are undeniably linked. ...And here you're stating your opinion as fact again. Things can be "linked" while also being opposed or separate. It's pretty clear that D&D wants us to think Necromancy essentially deals with twisting or blocking the natural channels of life while Conjuration (Healing) enhances those natural processes.
ArcTan 04-03-07, 01:07 AM	That's the problem right there. The alignment of undead is wrong. Undead without selfish or malicious intent should be neutral in the first place. Vampires feed off the life energy of others to support their own immortality which is selfish, therefore a vampire should be evil. A skeleton, nothing more than a construct created from some form of mortal remains should register as neutral as far as alignment is concerned. Another response -- there *is* a difference between the aligned energies wafting around your body and your own, personal alignment. After all, detect evil detects evil spells, which have no real consciousness at all. Just as Clerics radiate the alignment of their deity, not their own, personal alignment -- and in Eberron these can be radically different -- so a Vampire radiates Evil because the energy animating him is Evil. He, himself, can make a valiant effort to be Good, and even succeed for a time, though it will be very difficult, but his alignment still shows as Evil. (Yes, it's possible to have Forever Knight or Angel in D&D, but hard.) The energy that keeps him animated is Evil and this Evil manifests as the desire to drink blood, even if he tries to curb it and really has a Good attitude at heart. Similarly, skeletons don't have Evil thoughts, but they're animated by an Evil force. This may or may not manifest in an unconscious urge toward entropy and destruction, as yrogerg has suggested -- I do like that idea, particularly with the semi-sentient Karrnathi undead in Eberron -- but it's there all the same. They are leaking negative energy onto the Material Plane and causing it to decay.
ArcTan 04-03-07, 01:11 AM	Yeah, you gotta love that source of destruction and decay, which actually does the exact opposite when creating undead. Not only does it restore functionality to the body, but it STOPS the body from decaying. Unless you can find me anywhere in the books that says when a zombie rots away into a skeleton? Er, the point of undeath is that you decay other things to keep yourself from decaying. The presence of a horde of skeletons in an area for a long time causes it to begin to go barren, according to core D&D flavor. This is part of the explanation for why modern Karrnath is the way it is. Of course, if you go to the positive energy plane, your head explodes. Literally. As others have pointed out, this is not actually true in Eberron. Also, blowing up into a sea of light and color is different from being wasted away into dust and bones. You yourself are no longer alive in the way you remember it, but you're "dead" in the sense that you've been made into pure life that's no longer recognizable as a material, individual being -- a being, after all, made of the melding of life and death in biological processes. In any case, even though the core D&D Positive Energy Plane is lethal to stand directly in, that doesn't change the fact that when it gets closer to the Material Plane the Material Plane has more life and energy and growth. In Eberron this is made even more evident because Irian is *not* lethal and because Irian manifest zones are observable and have observable effects, like that big one that powers the whole Aerenal civilization.
ArcTan 04-03-07, 01:25 AM	Correct me if I'm wrong, physics isn't my strong suit. Electricity is negative energy if I recall correctly and by your logic, the computer that you're sitting in front of reading this would, in your terms be evil because it's negative energy that allows it to function. You are wrong, in that what you're talking about makes no sense. The names "negative charge" and "positive charge" for kinds of electric charge are there mostly by coincidence, and have nothing to do with the idea of "positive" and "negative" in the sense that D&D uses them. There is, in real life, no such thing as "positive energy" or "negative energy". Energy is energy. Electric current is one means of transferring energy, and electric current is the movement of *both* positive and negative charges. The moving electrons themselves are negatively charged, but that doesn't mean there aren't positive charges in the current -- the positive charge consists of voids where the electrons aren't. I realize that this argument is flawed in the fact that we're talking about game mechanics over real-world physics, but the principle point is that negative energy itself isn't the cause for the evil in undead. It's not just that -- it's that positive and negative energy are clearly *imaginary concepts* intended to make a fantasy world with a certain theme. Yes, in real life, there is no such thing as energy that's inherently "positive" or "negative" in a spiritual sense, at least so far as science can test, but human belief systems are rife with this idea, and part of the point of fantasy games is to have fun by pretending that things in religion or superstition are real. Which, yes, means kinds of energy or technology that are inherently good or evil, and, regardless of the wielder's intentions, serve to quietly ennoble or corrupt whoever uses them.
RogueElement 04-03-07, 06:24 PM	Agreed. The only reason skeletons and zombies are Evil is by definition. Someone decided they're Evil, so they're Evil. They don't do anything Evil, or emit any kind of Evil Thoughts or Evil Odors, they just obey your every whim. I can't understand why every home wouldn't want a skeleton to do their laundry and housework. I'm just about finished making my Artificer and I just don't see a reason to have any constructs. Skeletons and zombies can do a better job for a fraction of the price. They're like Russians. They just aren't welcome in town. Also like Russians. For example, I can have a flying fire breathing undead dragon with a score of massive-damage attacks for the same price as a crappy yappy iron defender! I'm not sure, but I think I'll be the first Necroficer who has a horde of undead instead of constructs.
Vharuck 04-03-07, 06:32 PM	I think that skeletons and zombies, when left alone, attack living things on sight. Not to feed or anything, just to kill. Seems evil to me.
RogueElement 04-03-07, 09:10 PM	I think that skeletons and zombies, when left alone, attack living things on sight. Not to feed or anything, just to kill. Seems evil to me. That's a nice house rule, but not in the rules. Skeletons and zombies that you create with Animate Dead do what they're ordered to do, nothing more, nothing less. Personally, I would like a house rule that required the creator to make periodic Chr-based checks to prevent the skeletons/zombies from becoming uncontrolled. It would give the Animate Dead a much more sinister flavor and add some balance (as well as explain why it's an Evil spell). Animating the dead is all fun and games until your 19HD dragon zombie escapes your control and eats your brain.
Dragom 04-03-07, 11:39 PM	There are two many ways to very easily control mindless undead for a Charisma based roll to maintain control to very essential. A clever Necromancer is one that invests in wand of Control undead. Cause getting jumped by a Devourer who steals your minions is very annoying.
Evilmonster 04-04-07, 04:02 AM	It's 1:39 in the morning whe I began this, so please bear with me if my spelling gets wierd. These are all my points of view and can be taken or left as you see fit. First, I think we should leave all the science at teh door. We're talking about magic here, and it dosn't bother with physics all that much. Second, undead are suppost to be creepy, that's what they're here for. Also, they are a bad thing, the very exestance of even one zombie should be a stain on the world. Third, a good necromancer is playing with fire. Necromancy is the blackest of magic. I think it should be treated that way anyway. With this in mind here are some of the things I beleve one should include when including undead in a game. All undead torture the soul of the dead. Vampires and Lichs have the tattered remains of their souls bound into thier bodies and it's a nightmare for them. Even mindless undead have a connection to thier souls and that connection torments the soul for as long as the undead exist. A good necromancer will be torturing the sould of the dead for as long as the zombie is running around and shuold really weigh that aginst whatever goal he's working toward. Vampires and other thinking undead can force themselfs to be good, but it's very rare because it's aginst their nature. Mindless undead are evil without a choise, because they can't decid anything. For creepy points have that "trusted" zombie you have watching ofer your stuff kill a kitten wandering past for no reason. Or use extream force in attacking a foe, like tearing into the body long after the enemy is dead. Necromancy, more than any other school of magic, shouldn't be treated like science too much. Things should go too far too often and only the blackest hearts should be able to live with the results. Vampires, or any other thinking undead, are not just people with fangs. Even if your cleric's beast friend comes back as a vampire that friend should have something otherworldly about them, and as time passes thier goals should become very different than they had in life. And even the one in a billion vampire paladin should still be very scairy to even its allies, its only one slip away from ruining all it's hard work and falling into blackness. Anyway, those are just somethings to think about.
goblin_pride 04-04-07, 08:07 AM	An animated skeleton is nothing more than a bone construct. It doesn't have a "tortured soul" or any semblance of the life the body once had. The spell is called Animate Dead, it does just that, it creates a mindless (also read soulless) puppet to be controlled at whim. An animated skeleton is just a skeleton, it's no more a tortured soul than the skeletons doctors use to study medicine, just in this case a necromancer has it doing the tidying up. Undead that have minds are not the same in any fashion to the mindless undead, for them the desire to wreak havoc and cause harm would indeed be evil. Vampires feed off the life of others to sustain their immortality, that's an entirely selfish act and therefore evil. Liches trap their souls in their mortal remains in order to become more powerful than they were in life, that lust for power is selfish and therefore evil. Skeletons and zombies are created by an individual caster as minions in a similar fashion to an artificer's hummunculi or constructs, therefore the alignment of the mindless undead in this case should mimic the caster's, just as it does for constructs.
yrogerg 04-04-07, 09:52 PM	An animated skeleton is nothing more than a bone construct. It doesn't have a "tortured soul" or any semblance of the life the body once had. The spell is called Animate Dead, it does just that, it creates a mindless (also read soulless) puppet to be controlled at whim. An animated skeleton is just a skeleton, it's no more a tortured soul than the skeletons doctors use to study medicine, just in this case a necromancer has it doing the tidying up. Undead that have minds are not the same in any fashion to the mindless undead, for them the desire to wreak havoc and cause harm would indeed be evil. Vampires feed off the life of others to sustain their immortality, that's an entirely selfish act and therefore evil. Liches trap their souls in their mortal remains in order to become more powerful than they were in life, that lust for power is selfish and therefore evil. Skeletons and zombies are created by an individual caster as minions in a similar fashion to an artificer's hummunculi or constructs, therefore the alignment of the mindless undead in this case should mimic the caster's, just as it does for constructs. I think you're missing the point, though: just because the end result is mindless doesn't mean that every part is. Golems actually are the best example of this: according to the descriptions, golems are animated by non-Mindless Elementals. In particular, the ones animating Flesh Golems have the tendency to break loose and go berserk. What I argued above is actually rather similar: even if the rest of it is inert, mindless, and without moral agency, the force *animating* the skeleton could still be fundamentally Evil, causing said skeleton to a) Radiate Evil, b) *BE* Evil on some fundamental level, c) Act Evil, albeit in a limited manner that's filtered by their Mindlessness, or d) Several of a, b, and c. Again, I'm going to ask whether you think it's reasonable for the Mindless Lemures to be Evil, or whether they should also be Neutral.
goblin_pride 04-05-07, 05:23 PM	Again, I'm going to ask whether you think it's reasonable for the Mindless Lemures to be Evil, or whether they should also be Neutral. That's comparing apples to oranges. Lemures are planar and born to and from the stuff of the planes and therefore should have the alignment of the plane itself. And before you try to use that to solidify your argument, remember, Animate Dead would be conjuration if it summoned a malignant force from the negative material plane to occupy the animated skeletons. It uses arcane energies to animate the skeletons, not creatures. So therefore if they go stray, it's because the caster was working beyond his skill. A skeleton isn't any different than a golem or an animated object, there's no malignant force directing it to do evil. And even if there was, wouldn't the same rule apply as with Charm spells and alignment?
yrogerg 04-06-07, 12:08 AM	That's comparing apples to oranges. Lemures are planar and born to and from the stuff of the planes and therefore should have the alignment of the plane itself. Be that as it may, they have both the subtype and the alignment to match, despite the fact that, as you point out, mindless creatures aren't supposed to be moral agents. See, the thing is, the argument you're giving explains why they'd have the subtype, but doesn't really explain why they have an alignment other than neutral. And before you try to use that to solidify your argument, remember, Animate Dead would be conjuration if it summoned a malignant force from the negative material plane to occupy the animated skeletons. You mean like how Cure Light Wounds is a Conjuration, but Inflict Light Wounds, though still flavored as its antipode, isn't? Look, 3.5 Necromancy is a messy school that consists of things that are largely either conjuration-like or evocation-like, that fact doesn't really disprove any of my suggestions. I mean, if Necromancy spells can't summon malignant forces, then how do the more-powerful Create Undead and Create Greater Undead work? A skeleton isn't any different than a golem or an animated object, there's no malignant force directing it to do evil. 1) I referenced the flavor behind Golems *myself*, if you'll note. Fact is, they're *not* supposed to be animated by "arcane energies". They're animated by elementals, in flavor. And, incidentally, are still mindless. 2)Unlike golems, animated objects, or even summoned creatures, only a *certain number* of undead can be controlled at a time. What are *your* explanations of why, from a flavor perspective, if mine are so lousy? And even if there was, wouldn't the same rule apply as with Charm spells and alignment? Err, what rule is that? I'm not sure what you're talking about here.
goblin_pride 04-06-07, 12:33 AM	Honestly, I don't care. Make necromancy the stuff of pure evil if you want. I'm not twisting your arm, I was just pointing out that a skeleton shouldn't have an evil alignment as a default according to the rules regarding alignment. If Lemures also fit that mindless mold, make them neutral as well. I just find it terribly amusing that you're defending the addition of the [evil] tag to a spell that managed to survive without it for 3 other editions of the game. I rule zeroed that in my own game a long time ago because it seems silly that casting the spell itself is inherently evil. Evil is determined by your intentions not the action itself.
Just another user 04-06-07, 04:36 AM	IMO I never saw the point of Zombies and Skeletons having the NE alignment when the PHB states that unthinking beings or creatures with 2 or less INT cannot make moral decisions and thus have the Neutral alignment. Furthermore I disagree with the [Evil] tag on the Animate Dead tag when Negative Energy is Neutral (and needed to conteract too much Positive Energy) and you are creating a creature that can't make moral decisions of any kind without your ordering. K wrote up a very detailed and excellent Tome on Necromancy that I thought was worth the read, I'll try to find and link it...here it is, I'm using the Playing with fire option. In AD&D 2nd edition zombies and skeletons were, actually, true neutral and I personally think it was better that way, necromancy was more interesting then, it was the only kind of arcane magic with some kind of healing magic but with 3rd edition one of the design choice was to make necromancy "Evviiiilllll" and such zone of moral gray had to be removed, or at least this is how things went IIRC.
Just another user 04-06-07, 04:37 AM	Er, the point of undeath is that you decay other things to keep yourself from decaying. The presence of a horde of skeletons in an area for a long time causes it to begin to go barren, according to core D&D flavor. This is part of the explanation for why modern Karrnath is the way it is. Sources?
goblin_pride 04-06-07, 07:39 AM	In AD&D 2nd edition zombies and skeletons were, actually, true neutral and I personally think it was better that way, necromancy was more interesting then, it was the only kind of arcane magic with some kind of healing magic but with 3rd edition one of the design choice was to make necromancy "Evviiiilllll" and such zone of moral gray had to be removed, or at least this is how things went IIRC. Careful mate, you're talking about the old canon, these young whippersnappers will want to burn you at the stake for such heresy. Although I miss the moral gray areas myself.
yrogerg 04-07-07, 12:16 AM	Careful mate, you're talking about the old canon, these young whippersnappers will want to burn you at the stake for such heresy. Although I miss the moral gray areas myself. You know, I've never heard "moral gray areas" used in this sense before; usually, people refer to situations where it's easy to commit a little bit of evil to promote a greater good, or cases where evil and corruption are pervasive enough that *everyone* seems to compromise their morals, but I've never heard the phrase 'morally gray' used to refer to something that seems icky, but is objectively Not Evil.
goblin_pride 04-07-07, 10:02 AM	You know, I've never heard "moral gray areas" used in this sense before; usually, people refer to situations where it's easy to commit a little bit of evil to promote a greater good, or cases where evil and corruption are pervasive enough that *everyone* seems to compromise their morals, but I've never heard the phrase 'morally gray' used to refer to something that seems icky, but is objectively Not Evil. Necromancy is morally gray because at lower levels you're simply animating dead bodies but at higher levels you can create truly malignant undead that are capable of great evil on their own. All the while as you grow in power you gain the ability to inflict great harm or reverse harm done by creatures that have fully succumbed to the lure of easy power that necromancy often carries. One of the reasons I never really understood the evil tag for animate dead is because it is a cleric spell in a domain that most of the gods of death in any campaign would have access to, and most gods of death are neutral unless their purview includes the cause* of the inhumation as well. For the most part, Animate dead is an ick factor spell while the more powerful ones tend towards a more evil creation. *as an example a god of death and murder. If the cause of the death is also in the dominion of the god they tend towards a more evil bent. A god whose area of influence is merely death or the dead usually has a more neutral alignment because in the end, death comes to all things alike. Priests of a death are often like druids when death is viewed as separate from the evil deeds that can cause death.
yrogerg 04-07-07, 12:32 PM	Necromancy is morally gray because at lower levels you're simply animating dead bodies but at higher levels you can create truly malignant undead that are capable of great evil on their own. All the while as you grow in power you gain the ability to inflict great harm or reverse harm done by creatures that have fully succumbed to the lure of easy power that necromancy often carries. I'm still not sure how this makes it "gray". Sure, it makes necromancy seem more like a corrupting art, but that hardly makes it look *less* Evil. One of the reasons I never really understood the evil tag for animate dead is because it is a cleric spell in a domain that most of the gods of death in any campaign would have access to, and most gods of death are neutral unless their purview includes the cause* of the inhumation as well. But don't Create Undead and Create Greater Undead, spells in the same domain, break that anyway? Besides, AFAICT, the possibility of more benign Death gods was the reason WotC created the Repose (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/domains.htm#reposeDomain) domain. In my personal experience, most non-Evil death religions that I've seen in D&D have the druid-like focus on the sanctity of death as an important life event (as you mentioned), and this often makes them extremely *hostile* to most (if not all) undead, who subvert and undo this natural process. Which, again, wouldn't make the Death domain a particularly reasonable choice, due to those latter two spells. Yes, the Dustmen set precedent for such a view where mindless undead aren't seen as anathema, but I can't really picture a Dustman "cleric" taking the Death domain, either. For that matter, I don't think the "...but mindless undeath is okay" caveat would necessarily hold true for all D&D religions of this sort, either. But, this is all an issue of YCSMV, which is fine. My only point in this thread was to attempt a fairly reasonable flavor justification of the default RAW as they exist.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:05 PM	An animated skeleton is nothing more than a bone construct. It doesn't have a "tortured soul" or any semblance of the life the body once had. The spell is called Animate Dead, it does just that, it creates a mindless (also read soulless) puppet to be controlled at whim. An animated skeleton is just a skeleton, it's no more a tortured soul than the skeletons doctors use to study medicine, just in this case a necromancer has it doing the tidying up. You're either houseruling or introducing your own flavor again. It's a perfectly fine *opinion* to have about undeath -- that all the stuff about necromancy being evil is just hooey -- but it is, still, just an opinion, and one that contradicts the canon. Undead that have minds are not the same in any fashion to the mindless undead, for them the desire to wreak havoc and cause harm would indeed be evil. Vampires feed off the life of others to sustain their immortality, that's an entirely selfish act and therefore evil. Liches trap their souls in their mortal remains in order to become more powerful than they were in life, that lust for power is selfish and therefore evil. Skeletons and zombies are created by an individual caster as minions in a similar fashion to an artificer's hummunculi or constructs, therefore the alignment of the mindless undead in this case should mimic the caster's, just as it does for constructs. Constructs don't mimic their creator's alignment -- they have no alignment at all, because the magic animating them is a neutral force. Undead are evil regardless of what they *do* because the magic animating them is inherently evil. What this means is up to you -- whether undead are unnecessarily brutal at everything they do, or whether they simply exert a subtle tainting influence on everything close to them over time -- but by RAW, this is how undead work.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:08 PM	Honestly, I don't care. Make necromancy the stuff of pure evil if you want. I'm not twisting your arm, I was just pointing out that a skeleton shouldn't have an evil alignment as a default according to the rules regarding alignment. You're *making things up*, though. You're prioritizing some rules over another and claiming this as absolute fact for the way things "should" work. That's what I don't like. The rules *say* undead are Always Evil. Those rules are just as much the rules of D&D as the rules that say that mindless creatures are TN. Clearly there's a contradiction here, but I would say the specific case overrules the general, which is usually how these things work. Remember that according to the rules of D&D, plenty of things can be evil. A place can be evil (evil-aligned planes, places with unhallow cast on them, Heroes of Horror's Tainted places), a spell can be evil, a nonintelligent magic item can be evil and corrupting, etc. "Evil" is a *force* in D&D, a kind of *energy*, not just a moral standard by which to judge actions. Morally evil actions are a product of evil energy, which is itself a kind of substance, a *thing*. That's how it works in D&D by default. If you don't like it, feel free to change it, but don't talk like your changes are the "real" rules and the actual rules of D&D are somehow inferior. I rule zeroed that in my own game a long time ago because it seems silly that casting the spell itself is inherently evil. Evil is determined by your intentions not the action itself. ...Which is your own moral ruling and not the way things work in D&D. Hell, it's not clear that that's how things work in real life (can you always separate means from ends so cleanly?). I wouldn't mind playing in a game that used Heroes of Horror's variant rule that *every* act of physical violence, for whatever ends it was intended, bestows Taint, or that gave you Taint for ever casting any kind of magic spell.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:13 PM	Sources? I don't have my books here at my parents' house, so citations will have to wait, but I'm pretty sure the DMG, Heroes of Horror, and Libris Mortis all have notes on the nature of negative-energy undead and how they drain life away from places they've been too long. Sure, it's flavor text rather than an actual rules effect, but still. It's essential to the flavor.
goblin_pride 04-07-07, 07:15 PM	Constructs don't mimic their creator's alignment -- they have no alignment at all, because the magic animating them is a neutral force. You might want to take a closer look. A homunculi's alignment is that of it's creator according to the canon. Undead are evil regardless of what they *do* because the magic animating them is inherently evil. What this means is up to you -- whether undead are unnecessarily brutal at everything they do, or whether they simply exert a subtle tainting influence on everything close to them over time -- but by RAW, this is how undead work. Where are you getting the "tainting influence" from, I have yet to see any canon source that says skeltons corrupt the area around them. Animate Dead was changed to [Evil] in the WotC editions of the game because it would appear that their main audience is incapable of understand the simple concept that it's not the tools but rather the intentions that make something good or evil.
goblin_pride 04-07-07, 07:18 PM	I don't have my books here at my parents' house, so citations will have to wait, but I'm pretty sure the DMG, Heroes of Horror, and Libris Mortis all have notes on the nature of negative-energy undead and how they drain life away from places they've been too long. That's not in the DMG. The only magic I've ever seen that did that was the defiling magic from the now-defunct Dark Sun setting.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:20 PM	Necromancy is morally gray because at lower levels you're simply animating dead bodies but at higher levels you can create truly malignant undead that are capable of great evil on their own. All the while as you grow in power you gain the ability to inflict great harm or reverse harm done by creatures that have fully succumbed to the lure of easy power that necromancy often carries. And there's not a hard line between the two -- whatever you believe about the soul, creating intelligent undead is just an advanced form of the same techniques used to create mindless undead. D&D never draws any explicit line between the two. In Eberron, the line is blurred further by the Karrnathi technique used to create sentient versions of ordinary mindless undead. It really *doesn't matter* if creating undead is an "evil act" as such -- it's *tainted* by evil. It's too close to doing something evil. It has the smell of evil all over it. It should make a good-aligned character uncomfortable in the same way wearing a Nazi uniform and saluting a swastika would in our world. Doing it too often will turn you evil regardless of whether or not it *is* evil -- just as reading books and watching films glorifying violence and murder and rape will have a slow and steady deteriorating effect on your moral integrity, even if watching such a film is not in and of itself an "evil act". (Yes, this is a commonly disputed argument, and I'm not fully taking one side on it, but it's a valid argument.) Much like the Star Wars RPG, no, it's not intrinsically wrong to electrocute someone with Force Lightning to stop them if they're a criminal. But the act of creating Force Lightning itself involves *evil forces*. It isn't possible to do that kind of magic without thinking evil thoughts and entering an evil mindset, even if the intention and action themselves are entirely good. This is how corruption happens -- drawing on evil forces for a good cause, without the awareness that some energies are *inherently evil*. One of the reasons I never really understood the evil tag for animate dead is because it is a cleric spell in a domain that most of the gods of death in any campaign would have access to, and most gods of death are neutral unless their purview includes the cause* of the inhumation as well. For the most part, Animate dead is an ick factor spell while the more powerful ones tend towards a more evil creation. As yrogerg pointed out, this is why the Repose domain exists. The Death domain as such doesn't involve an acceptance of death's place on the wheel of existence -- which would, after all, accept that death is only one small part of the wheel of existence and always followed by rebirth -- but involves a creepy obsession with death as an end goal in and of itself, a place that's supposed to be *inhabited* rather than merely seen as a faraway endpoint of the journey of life, which is where our habitation should lie. Animate dead is a gateway toward the more powerful spells. Using animate dead involves the same evil energies that create greater undead uses. It's addictive -- it whets your appetite for darker things. Really, can the Dark Side metaphor from Star Wars be any stronger? Of course you don't have to believe the world actually works that way, but is it so bad to have a fantasy world that *does* work that way, for the sake of the story?
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:23 PM	Where are you getting the "tainting influence" from, I have yet to see any canon source that says skeltons corrupt the area around them. Have you read Libris Mortis? Or Heroes of Horror? Animate Dead was changed to [Evil] in the WotC editions of the game because it would appear that their main audience is incapable of understand the simple concept that it's not the tools but rather the intentions that make something good or evil. Well, fine. Then the game they wrote, to target their main audience, is a game in which tools are intrinsically good or evil, regardless of intention. Why is this so hard for you to accept? You may not like it, but it *is* canon that casting animate dead makes you slightly more Evil. Why dispute it so hard? Does D&D ever say that it's supposed to be a game where free-willed intention is the sole judge of morality? It seems to me that the whole idea of whole planes filled with nothing but Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic beings gives the lie to that idea.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:25 PM	That's not in the DMG. The only magic I've ever seen that did that was the defiling magic from the now-defunct Dark Sun setting. Dark Sun's defiling magic had a *rules effect*. I'm really damn sure there's a quote from the core books about how a place where undead have lingered a long time becomes "cold, gray and leached of color", though since it was flavor text it was removed from the SRD.
goblin_pride 04-07-07, 07:28 PM	I'm really damn sure there's a quote from the core books about how a place where undead have lingered a long time becomes "cold, gray and leached of color", though since it was flavor text it was removed from the SRD. Umm, the book on my shelf here isn't the SRD. When I say that it isn't in the DMG, I mean that it isn't in the DMG.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 07:32 PM	Umm, the book on my shelf here isn't the SRD. When I say that it isn't in the DMG, I mean that it isn't in the DMG. Okay. Is it in the PHB or MM? If not, I know there's a whole damn *chapter* about it in Libris Mortis. It doesn't matter anyway. If the core rules say that casting [Evil] spells is an Evil act, and the core rules say animate dead is an [Evil] spell, those are the rules. Your own flavor of skeletons being just a kind of bone golem and therefore Neutral is just that -- *your own flavor*. I'm just saying that it's your own assumptions getting in the way of saying how something can be an "Evil act" even if we, in the real world, would not judge it to be morally evil, and how the *point* of a fantasy setting is sometimes to talk about the idea of Good and Evil being physical substances rather than merely a kind of moral intention. I mean, like it or not, the *fact* is that undead are Always Evil. You seem to have a problem accepting that because you won't let go of your own presuppositions about how morality works to play a fantasy game.
goblin_pride 04-07-07, 08:15 PM	It doesn't matter anyway. If the core rules say that casting [Evil] spells is an Evil act, and the core rules say animate dead is an [Evil] spell, those are the rules. Your own flavor of skeletons being just a kind of bone golem and therefore Neutral is just that -- *your own flavor*. First off, there is no such thing as an evil spell. In order for a spell to be evil, it has to be able to think for itself. That is according to canon. A spell doesn't have an alignment any more than a table does. Alignment comes from the ability to choose between good and evil and a spell is just energy, there's no conciousness, no intelligence therefore, no alignment. If you make the assumption that the spell itself is energy ripped from the greater evil as you have said, it would lose the evil in the theft and therefore would again have no alignment because the alignment belongs to the greater evil, not it's energy. As to the alignment of skeletons, again the canon contradicts itself. A skeleton doesn't think for itself. A skeleton has an intelligence too low to have an alignment according to the canon. Taking that into account a skeleton according to the canon should have a neutral alignment due to it's inability to think or choose a moral direction. The [Evil] tag on the spell is just a convenient way to make the alignment of a skeleton fit without having to actually devote any real thought to what makes it that way. Earlier editions of the game had a thing called flexibility in alignment, things that are called outright evil in newer editions were viewed according to the mitigating circumstances previously. The spell Animate Dead was one of the gray areas where alignment could suffer if used in a greedy or selfish manner. The bulk of the material pertaining to good and neutral necromancers comes from the second edition and I invite you to come use my library if you would like to examine the material from the older edition's canon. Heck, you can go ahead and look through all four editions that I have here if you'd like but before you start pointing out that I'm wrong because "the canon says so", you'd better make sure I haven't used previous incarnations of the rules and actually have a basis for my thinking. Rewriting and tagging spells in the newest edition doesn't alter the age-old arguments about the good and evil aspects of creating undead that have been circulating* since before you were born. *before the internet, we used to do this face-to-face in game shops and in places like GenCon between sessions.
OneWinged4ngel 04-07-07, 08:40 PM	First off, there is no such thing as an evil spell... See, what it just comes down to is that the rules disagree with you, Goblin, and you're just presenting your ideas on houserules in a manner as though they were canon for the setting (Which... they are not). As a general rule, the specific case overrides the general, so even though the creatures say mindless things are neutral, the specific case of a skeleton says that it's Evil, which supersedes the general rule. Additionally, it's not that hard to justify why, say, a skeleton might have the Evil descriptor, as has been demonstrated in this very thread. Again, Good and Evil don't necessarily represent *your* opinions on moral standards and practices with relation to how a person thinks and acts. In fact, that view seems a bit skewed if that's going to be a universal defining force that actually affects things in the world. The easiest explanation, and one that fits with previous info offered by the setting, is that skeletons and zombies and the like radiate Evil for the very same reasons that a Good cleric of an Evil deity reads not only as Evil, but as a STRONG Evil. The actual energy force detects as Evil. It's an easier explanation than just about everything you've been suggesting. If the alignment of clerics was purely determined by their own thoughts and practices, that Good cleric wouldn't detect as a powerful Evil, yet according the physical laws of Eberron (basically, the rules in canon) that's what happens. Again according to the rules of *EBERRON*, which is the world we are talking in the context of, casting an Evil spell is an Evil act. See page 35 of the ECS. If you're going by the second edition rules or whatever the heck you're doing... the *reality* is that those are not the rules for Eberron, and that's not how the world of Eberron works according to canon. You're free to houserule for your own game, but you have to realize that that is what you are actually doing. You are changing the way things work in the world to suit your own views, as opposed to things actually being that way.
ArcTan 04-07-07, 10:25 PM	First off, there is no such thing as an evil spell. In order for a spell to be evil, it has to be able to think for itself. That is according to canon. Er, no. The [Evil] descriptor is, after all, canon. A spell may not be Evil in the *same way* that an Evil-aligned creature is Evil, I'll give you that. So? A spell doesn't have an alignment any more than a table does. Alignment comes from the ability to choose between good and evil and a spell is just energy, there's no conciousness, no intelligence therefore, no alignment. If you make the assumption that the spell itself is energy ripped from the greater evil as you have said, it would lose the evil in the theft and therefore would again have no alignment because the alignment belongs to the greater evil, not it's energy. That's your assumptions coming to the forefront, based on one general statement about mindless creatures being TN in canon that goes on to be contradicted several times by canon. As to the alignment of skeletons, again the canon contradicts itself. A skeleton doesn't think for itself. A skeleton has an intelligence too low to have an alignment according to the canon. Taking that into account a skeleton according to the canon should have a neutral alignment due to it's inability to think or choose a moral direction. Which means that skeletons are an exception, which a reasonable person might try to roll with rather than immediately deciding is a horrible decision that must be reversed instantly. The [Evil] tag on the spell is just a convenient way to make the alignment of a skeleton fit without having to actually devote any real thought to what makes it that way. Earlier editions of the game had a thing called flexibility in alignment, things that are called outright evil in newer editions were viewed according to the mitigating circumstances previously. The spell Animate Dead was one of the gray areas where alignment could suffer if used in a greedy or selfish manner. ...Yeah, and this edition's different. So? I admit that this view of alignment can be annoying if you really think of alignment in terms of real-world "morality", but the best uses of it, like in Planescape, test the idea of what an individual thinks of as "right and wrong" coming to clash with these ultimate, inhuman ideals of Good and Evil. Heroes of Horror has fun with this concept. The whole Star Wars universe has fun with this concept. The bulk of the material pertaining to good and neutral necromancers comes from the second edition and I invite you to come use my library if you would like to examine the material from the older edition's canon. Heck, you can go ahead and look through all four editions that I have here if you'd like but before you start pointing out that I'm wrong because "the canon says so", you'd better make sure I haven't used previous incarnations of the rules and actually have a basis for my thinking. I'm not talking about older editions. The point of a newer edition is that it overrides older editions. Rewriting and tagging spells in the newest edition doesn't alter the age-old arguments about the good and evil aspects of creating undead that have been circulating* since before you were born. Yes, but these arguments are pointless if you're trying to find an *objective* answer to them, because these are arguments about something that doesn't exist in real life. I mean, I'll give it up to you, right now -- I don't think "good" or "evil" forms of energy exist in real life, and therefore if you found some way to make a skeleton walk around in real life, I might be creeped out by it but I wouldn't think of it as fundamentally evil. That has nothing to do with whether it's Evil in 3.5 D&D.
RogueElement 04-08-07, 09:53 AM	Er, no. The [Evil] descriptor is, after all, canon. A spell may not be Evil in the *same way* that an Evil-aligned creature is Evil, I'll give you that. So? Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but isn't the whole point of this thread that the Evil descriptor on Animate Dead doesn't make any sense? You keep saying "that's the rules! that's the rules!" but the OP is saying that the rule doesn't make any sense and that's what this discussion is about. Also, you keep saying that the rules say that undead are Always Evil, but I don't see that rule anywhere. In fact I see two big excepts to that "rule" in Ghost and Necropolitan right off the top of my head.
WerTwist 04-08-07, 04:55 PM	I think the problem for some of us "oldtimers" is that we have, through the editions, grown up with the ruling that mindless undead are neutral. It's been that way from 1e till 3.0e, and then they changed that with 3.5e without a real reason... hell, they even contradict themselves now (mindless = neutral... oh, except undead, because... yeah, well because!) Believe it or not, some of us are still playing ongoing campaigns that started with 1e, and it irks us that such changes happen without a real reason. Regarding negative energy = evil... I don't agree. I don't think it's more evil than fire (energy). If it was the case there wouldn't be a single non-evil Dread Necromancer, since they are "filled" with negative energy. They can use it all day long if they wish, but that wouldn't change their alignment one bit, since nowhere in the RAW negative energy has an [evil] descriptor. Just my :twocents:
ArcTan 04-08-07, 05:40 PM	Sorry for pointing out the obvious, but isn't the whole point of this thread that the Evil descriptor on Animate Dead doesn't make any sense? You keep saying "that's the rules! that's the rules!" but the OP is saying that the rule doesn't make any sense and that's what this discussion is about. It's one thing to say "I don't think the existing canon makes any sense, and this is how I am *changing it*." The problem I have with the way goblin_pride is talking is that he's saying things as *fact* -- as official canon -- that aren't, and assuming that his houseruling obviously makes more sense than the canon and therefore we are all to accept it. The idea that "skeletons are just a kind of construct made of bones", "undead have the alignment of their creator", "alignment only comes from intention and isn't an objective force" -- all of these are goblin_pride's houserules that he's presenting as superior to canon or obviously implied by canon, which they aren't. My position is that the [Evil] descriptor *does* make sense -- at least, in a fantasy game it makes as much sense as anything else, and choosing to get rid of it is a matter of preference. It is *not* an established fact that "evil" is a label that only applies to sentient beings making free-willed decisions, and it can make perfect internal sense to think of evil as something like a slimy substance that attaches to things that has very little to do with what we think of as moral choice. D&D is set up this way, so that a succubus paladin still has the Evil subtype because she's *made of Evil*, regardless of what her choices in life are, and even if you use animate dead to save an orphanage you're using Evil to do it and therefore become tainted by Evil. Heroes of Horror even provides rules for dragging this out even further, to the point where all magic is inherently Evil (or Tainted) or all violence is inherently Evil (or Tainted). Also, you keep saying that the rules say that undead are Always Evil, but I don't see that rule anywhere. In fact I see two big excepts to that "rule" in Ghost and Necropolitan right off the top of my head. Ghosts and Necropolitans aren't Always Evil. Skeletons and zombies are.
ArcTan 04-08-07, 05:43 PM	I think the problem for some of us "oldtimers" is that we have, through the editions, grown up with the ruling that mindless undead are neutral. It's been that way from 1e till 3.0e, and then they changed that with 3.5e without a real reason... hell, they even contradict themselves now (mindless = neutral... oh, except undead, because... yeah, well because!) Believe it or not, some of us are still playing ongoing campaigns that started with 1e, and it irks us that such changes happen without a real reason. It's not fundamentally different from ruling that a fully intelligent, free-willed creature can still somehow be Always Evil, though. Intelligent devils and demons actually challenge my own view of real-world morality than the idea that you can have an Always Evil mindless undead. Regarding negative energy = evil... I don't agree. I don't think it's more evil than fire (energy). If it was the case there wouldn't be a single non-evil Dread Necromancer, since they are "filled" with negative energy. They can use it all day long if they wish, but that wouldn't change their alignment one bit, since nowhere in the RAW negative energy has an [evil] descriptor. Just my :twocents: It's not Evil itself, but it's associated with Evil. Bringing negative energy into the Material Plane is generally an Evil act, and the majority of [Evil] descriptor spells are flavored as Evil because they involve bringing negative energy to the Material Plane. Does that, in and of itself, *make* you Evil? No. You can use Evil powers for Good ends, and it can balance out to you being Good. But it's a constant struggle. (As Libris Mortis points out, it's theoretically possible for a Vampire or Ghoul or other creature filled with negative energy, as part of its very nature, to nonetheless overcome that nature and be Good by trying to devote its life to accomplishing Good goals for Good ends. It's very hard, though.)
goblin_pride 04-08-07, 09:06 PM	The idea that "skeletons are just a kind of construct made of bones", "undead have the alignment of their creator", "alignment only comes from intention and isn't an objective force" -- all of these are goblin_pride's houserules that he's presenting as superior to canon or obviously implied by canon, which they aren't. You'll find that if you read the whole thread that Yadot and Darth Syntax posted the same thinking early in the life of this thread. This isn't a canon argument, we're not looking for clarification of rules as written. What we were doing was comparing notes from our own campaigns and brainstorming in regard to the subject. The OP was trying to explain the spell Animate Dead and it's a subject that alot of us oldtimers have had hundreds of hours of arguments over in our many years of playing this game. Before you start blasting away at others' posts you really should start reading the whole thread. Your rules-lawyering would find you quickly ejected from any game I play in or DM but I can understand your point only in this regard it was unwarranted and unwanted. We've gone off the edge of the map here, boyo. Here there be dragons.
ArcTan 04-08-07, 09:56 PM	You'll find that if you read the whole thread that Yadot and Darth Syntax posted the same thinking early in the life of this thread. This isn't a canon argument, we're not looking for clarification of rules as written. What we were doing was comparing notes from our own campaigns and brainstorming in regard to the subject. The OP was trying to explain the spell Animate Dead and it's a subject that alot of us oldtimers have had hundreds of hours of arguments over in our many years of playing this game. Before you start blasting away at others' posts you really should start reading the whole thread. Your rules-lawyering would find you quickly ejected from any game I play in or DM but I can understand your point only in this regard it was unwarranted and unwanted. We've gone off the edge of the map here, boyo. Here there be dragons. Er, the beginning of this thread consists of people talking about how to "understand" animate dead, with a lot of different opinions being thrown around. If the idea is "Let's come up with a single consensus from which to operate by which to create the alternate goblin_pride/Darth Syntax/Yadot campaign setting", fine, but that's not what this thread was originally about. I'm not "rules lawyering" in the sense of trying to gain any particular advantage for any character of mine. I am pointing out that there are points of view other than your own on this matter, and that flat-out statements like "Objects, spells or energy being Evil makes no sense" are inaccurate. It's perfectly plausible to have a campaign setting or cosmology where Evil is an objective force and spells, items, and mindless creatures can be Evil. The way *I* would explain animate dead, as other people were, in fact, doing at the beginning of this thread, would be to say that "Invasion of negative energy into material objects automatically creates a disruption of the natural order of the material world, and will always generate Evil around it regardless of the intentions of the channeler of negative energy", much like the Dark Side in Star Wars. I think this makes plenty of sense for a fantasy setting and, if anything, the repeated flat-out rejection of this idea on your part is what I see as inappropriate and unwarranted. It's a perfectly legitimate argument to say that negative energy is somehow inherently evil, in a fantasy setting, and when people were bringing that up earlier in the thread you kept on slapping them down *as though there were an objective real-life answer to the question*. That's what I'm objecting to. Even worse is saying that DMs or gaming groups that like to use the "Alignment as energy field" interpretation of alignment are somehow incapable of "understanding" that morality derives from intention, instead of *deciding*, for the sake of their games, that morality doesn't derive from intention but from some sort of physical substance, which is a perfectly reasonable decision to make. The current D&D rules are supposed to imply that necromancy is inherently tied to Evil, and so is how necromancy is treated in most current D&D settings, and there's nothing "wrong" about this, even if you don't like it. Like I said, I'd be interested in playing a campaign where any use of magic whatsoever (for example) inflicts Taint on the user, regardless of the intentions behind it. Or one where all violence is inherently evil and taints the user, regardless of intention. Heroes of Horror has fun rules for dealing with this, and it by no means is a fundamentally morally incoherent idea. (Violence *does* taint and corrupt the user, even if undertaken for a good cause. The ends don't always purify the means, even if they're used to justify the means.)
Soltares 04-09-07, 12:59 AM	A necromancer might use negative energy to power the animation of a skeleton, but that doesn't make them evil. An animated skeleton is a tool, nothing more. The source of it's motive power wouldn't cause something with no ability to grasp the concept of good and evil to make the choice to be one or the other. An animated skeleton or zombie could be put to hundreds of *benevolent* uses. Building shelters for refugees, tending crops, repelling bandits, hunting down vermin spreading plague through the sewers, etc. A Magic Missile is only for killing stuff. You can't even target objects with it to shut a door across the room. It's purely a weapon for hurting and killing. Shouldn't it be many times more [Evil] than Animate Dead? The problem is that whatever design philosophy went into the decision to give mindless Undead the Evil alignment, and also decided to make the Animate Dead spell [Evil] did *not* follow through and make the Negative Material Plane, creatures from the Negative Material Plane, or other uses of Negative Energy (such as Inflict Wounds spells) evil-aligned. Which leaves it up to the DM to decide if they want to keep the rules 'as is,' despite the inconsistent and contradictory design philosophies, or to pick one of these design philosophies and edit the rules to make them consistent for use in their own setting. The DM can go one way, making even mindless undead 'tainted' with corruptive forces, and the Negative Material plane at least mildly-evil-aligned, and toss the [Evil] descriptor on Inflict spells *or* go the other way, and make mindless undead into 'mindless constructs of bone' and the Animate Dead spell an unaligned spell, determined by it's use and not it's casting, just like a Fireball, which can be used to clear fallen trees, or blow up an orpanage, but isn't inherently good or evil. The *game* is inconsistent in it's depiction of Negative Energy. It's up to the DM to choose which way to take it, or just to leave it alone and say, 'It's contradictory, but I don't care.' From one standpoint, making it un-aligned, and, as pointed out on this thread *far* less unnatural than creating Warforged, is interesting from a role-playing perspective, as it creates conflict between the use of morally neutral magic and violating deeply held spiritual and cultural beliefs about the sanctity of the dead. From another standpoint, having Negative Energy be inherently tainted and corruptive, 'leaching the lands of color and life' or whatever, also sounds thematic and evocative, particularly if running a more Heroes of Horror / Ravenloft style campaign, where mechanics like Taint and Corruption are already a integral part of the setting. In such a campaign, adding the [Evil] descriptor to Negative Energy magics (like the Inflict Wounds spells) would be a necessary evil, to bring the game rules in-line with the taint/corruption theme.
ArcTan 04-09-07, 01:44 AM	An animated skeleton or zombie could be put to hundreds of *benevolent* uses. Building shelters for refugees, tending crops, repelling bandits, hunting down vermin spreading plague through the sewers, etc. A Magic Missile is only for killing stuff. You can't even target objects with it to shut a door across the room. It's purely a weapon for hurting and killing. Shouldn't it be many times more [Evil] than Animate Dead? No, because it's animated by neutral magic and not evil magic. *shrug* The problem is that whatever design philosophy went into the decision to give mindless Undead the Evil alignment, and also decided to make the Animate Dead spell [Evil] did *not* follow through and make the Negative Material Plane, creatures from the Negative Material Plane, or other uses of Negative Energy (such as Inflict Wounds spells) evil-aligned. It's called the Negative Energy Plane in 3.5. And I think the logic is pretty clear, myself. When it's on its own plane doing its own thing, negative energy is neutral. Bringing it onto the Material Plane is an Evil act, though. Just as death itself is a neutral fact of the world, but causing people to die is an Evil act. Which leaves it up to the DM to decide if they want to keep the rules 'as is,' despite the inconsistent and contradictory design philosophies, or to pick one of these design philosophies and edit the rules to make them consistent for use in their own setting. I don't consider them inherently inconsistent unless you have certain other presuppositions. From one standpoint, making it un-aligned, and, as pointed out on this thread *far* less unnatural than creating Warforged, is interesting from a role-playing perspective, as it creates conflict between the use of morally neutral magic and violating deeply held spiritual and cultural beliefs about the sanctity of the dead. The problem being that you're still in a world where alignment exists, and now detect evil constitutes proof that your "deeply held spiritual and cultural beliefs" are arbitrary and have no connection to the objective forces of Good and Evil. Of course, there's no reason why you should care about the objective forces of Good and Evil, necessarily, and may craft your own definition of right and wrong to be completely separate from them. In order for a whole nation to be Evil-aligned, this is necessary. But in that case there's nothing wrong with having the spells be Evil in the first place -- you see nothing wrong with becoming Evil because to you Evil isn't evil. (Which is why I try to consistently use the capitalized and uncapitalized versions separately.) From another standpoint, having Negative Energy be inherently tainted and corruptive, 'leaching the lands of color and life' or whatever, also sounds thematic and evocative, particularly if running a more Heroes of Horror / Ravenloft style campaign, where mechanics like Taint and Corruption are already a integral part of the setting. In such a campaign, adding the [Evil] descriptor to Negative Energy magics (like the Inflict Wounds spells) would be a necessary evil, to bring the game rules in-line with the taint/corruption theme. Enh. I think the "negative energy is evil if brought onto the Material Plane" thing makes sense. Negative energy represents entropy and decay, which, as it stands, is a natural part of life and a neutral force, but it is still somewhat close to the definition of Evil to try to accelerate the process of entropy and make things go bad faster.
Soltares 04-09-07, 04:36 AM	but it is still somewhat close to the definition of Evil to try to accelerate the process of entropy and make things go bad faster. Which is *exactly* what you do when you set something on fire. Entropy wins, order breaks down and the heat-death of the universe gets that teensy step closer. And yet fire is not evil or [Evil], and neither is the Elemental Plane of Fire (or the Negative Energy Plane) and neither is bringing fire into the material plane via a Fireball, or bringing negative energy into the material plane via Inflict Critical Wounds. The game treats the two planes, and their energies, exactly the same. Morally neutral, but capable of being used to work great evil, like any tool. Only *some* applications of 'bringing negative energy into the material plane' are [Evil]. Using Inflict Wounds to zap babies to death isn't [Evil], but it's sure little 'e' evil. Using Animate Dead to cause the residents of the towns graveyard to rise up and defend their families from an Orcish slaughter *isn't* an evil action, but casting the spell *is* [Evil]. Paradoxically, in this case, an Evil Cleric is better able to mobilize a force to hold the Orcs at bay and protect the villagers, while the Good Cleric gets to watch them get slaughtered, despite his Prayer spell, but gosh, at least he didn't violate his alignment by 'fighting fire with fire' and doing something that might actually save those people! Just as firefighters start controlled fires to make firebreaks, good Clerics are allowed to kill evil foes with Negative Energy (Inflict Wounds or Harm). Negative Energy isn't evil. The Negative Plane isn't evil. It's residents aren't evil. Bringing Negative Energy into the material plane isn't evil, as evidenced from the Inflict Wounds spells and their morally neutral nature. It's an obvious inconsistency. 1) Either the designers meant for Negative Energy and the negative energy plane to be evil, tainting and corruptive, which is evocative and fine, but *forgot* to make the Negative Energy Plane and it's denizens evil, and *forgot* to include other spells that bring Negative Energy into the material plane, like Inflict Wounds (which, unlike Animate Dead, *only* hurts and kills people with negative energy, and can't be used as emergency labor to build a dam to stop flooding from wiping a village off the map). or 2) The designers failed to consider that the Negative Energy Plane, and it's inhabitants, were *not* in any way Evil or unnatural (in a world filled with dragons and wizards, anyway) and said, 'ooh, undead, icky, gross.' Either way, a mistake was made in not being consistent. Either 'bringing Negative Energy into the material plane' is evil, or it's not, and yet the core rules show it being treated as evil *sometimes* and yet not evil at other times. It can't be both, because, as you say, a simple Detect Evil reminds us that evil is a tangible thing in the D&D universe, not some abstraction. The Taint / Corruption rules in Heroes of Horror are flavorful campaign *options,* and to force every single campaign to abide by the flavor text in that book is no more accurate than for me to say that only the manner in which Necromancy is treated among the Aerenal elves of Eberron is valid. The core rules conflict. The text of one campaign setting or thematic optional rule isn't useful here, as these elements are not Core. Please understand, I *like* the evil tainted corruptive notion, and would fully support a setting where the Negative Energy Plane is EVIL, and the Positive Energy Plane is GOOD, and the use of Inflict spells is bad and the use of curing spells is good (boy, wouldn't that *suck* for Evil Clerics, being forbidden from using Healing, as it is bringing the forces of life and love and goodness into the material world, just as the good priest can't invite the nasty, corruptive life-hating negative forces!!). And that's what it would require to be consistent. If the Negative Energy Plane is evil, the Positive Energy Plane, it's polar opposite, becomes good. Good Clerics cannot Animate Dead, or Inflict Wounds, and Evil Clerics cannot Cure Wounds or Raise the Dead. Neutral Clerics would walk a moral tightrope, unwilling to cast too many healing spells, as channeling all of that goodness through themselves might start to fill them with compassion, just as casting a bunch of Inflict spells might taint them with too much corruptive negative energy. It would be a very neat setting, much like Ravenloft, where many spells require 'powers checks' to avoid attracting evil forces. Tapping into the Negative Energy plane would allow for potent effects, with spells like Harm, Slay Living or Horrid Wilting, or the creation of deathless life-hating armies of minions, but would have a much more marked cost. In any event, the mindless undead would need an Intelligence score. They can't be malign and life-hating without some form of intellect, even if it is bestial and primitive. Evil is defined by actions and choice, and a mindless object like a glop of mud or pointed stick can't perform actions, nor make choices, leaving it quite unsuited to a life of evil. In a setting where Negative Energy = Evil, 'mindless' undead would be animated by malign sentiences from the Negative Energy Plane, dimly intelligent, hating all life. When not commanded, or left to their own devices by an inattentive creator, they destroy living things in their presence. If they see animals or people, they'll butcher them. If alone in a forest, they'll start hacking at stuff, as even living plants will offend them (although they'll always choose animals or people first!). They might only have an Intelligence score of 1 or 2, but it will be adequate to sustain a hatred of all living things. While a neat setting concept, it's not the Core setting. Yet. Perhaps Manual of the Planes 3.5 will come out and make the Negative Energy Plane evily-aligned, and an update will add the [Evil] descriptor to the remaining negative energy spells such as Inflict Wounds. To be consistent, the Positive Energy Plane would then become good-aligned and Cure spells gain the [Good] descriptor and become forbidden to evil Clerics, while 'mindless' undead would gain a minimal intelligence score. It would be the completion of what was started when they chose to make mindless undead evil in 3.5. Right now, the changeover is incomplete, and it's up to the DM to decide if he wants to go all the way, or stick with 3.0 and the neutrally-aligned Energy Planes.
yrogerg 04-09-07, 11:04 PM	Which is *exactly* what you do when you set something on fire. Entropy wins, order breaks down and the heat-death of the universe gets that teensy step closer. And yet fire is not evil or [Evil], and neither is the Elemental Plane of Fire (or the Negative Energy Plane) and neither is bringing fire into the material plane via a Fireball, or bringing negative energy into the material plane via Inflict Critical Wounds. The game treats the two planes, and their energies, exactly the same. Morally neutral, but capable of being used to work great evil, like any tool. But again, this could be simply an issue of *scale*. Note that Clerics significantly connected to the Negative Energy Plane that they have the ability to *spontaneously* Inflict, or to channel Negative Energy through their bodies, still have a substantial Evil Aura, regardless of their *actual* alignment, intentions and whatnot. Perhaps that instantaneous burst of Negative Energy *isn't* significant enough to constitute an Evil act, but creating a vessel that channels Negative Energy directly into the world, constantly, *is*. <snip>Using Animate Dead to cause the residents of the towns graveyard to rise up and defend their families from an Orcish slaughter *isn't* an evil action, but casting the spell *is* [Evil]. No, the spell *itself* is [Evil], it just so happens that casting it is also an Evil action. Whether it's little-e evil depends highly on the surrounding flavor. My point, and I believe Arctan's, as well, is that little-e evil and Big-E Evil are only as inconsistent as you allow them to be. Paradoxically, in this case, an Evil Cleric is better able to mobilize a force to hold the Orcs at bay and protect the villagers, while the Good Cleric gets to watch them get slaughtered, despite his Prayer spell, but gosh, at least he didn't violate his alignment by 'fighting fire with fire' and doing something that might actually save those people! Right, because Clerics don't have any other (more useful) spells, Good Clerics can't help people by, say, spontaneously healing them, and because there's something keeping a Good Cleric from compromising his morals every so often, come to think of it. Also note that in order to use Animate Dead to marshal a force, you'd first need to exhume lots and lots of bodies. I kinda suspect that, given the same time to make other preparations, this isn't actually a *more* effective tactic than, say, using that time to make scrolls of Magic Circle vs. Evil, or Enthrall, or Summon Monster N, or some such. Just as firefighters start controlled fires to make firebreaks, good Clerics are allowed to kill evil foes with Negative Energy (Inflict Wounds or Harm). Negative Energy isn't evil. The Negative Plane isn't evil. It's residents aren't evil. Bringing Negative Energy into the material plane isn't evil, as evidenced from the Inflict Wounds spells and their morally neutral nature. It's an obvious inconsistency. 1) Either the designers meant for Negative Energy and the negative energy plane to be evil, tainting and corruptive, which is evocative and fine, but *forgot* to make the Negative Energy Plane and it's denizens evil, and *forgot* to include other spells that bring Negative Energy into the material plane, like Inflict Wounds (which, unlike Animate Dead, *only* hurts and kills people with negative energy, and can't be used as emergency labor to build a dam to stop flooding from wiping a village off the map). or 2) The designers failed to consider that the Negative Energy Plane, and it's inhabitants, were *not* in any way Evil or unnatural (in a world filled with dragons and wizards, anyway) and said, 'ooh, undead, icky, gross.' Either way, a mistake was made in not being consistent. Either 'bringing Negative Energy into the material plane' is evil, or it's not, and yet the core rules show it being treated as evil *sometimes* and yet not evil at other times. Again, the PHB *says* that channeling Negative Energy is Evil, describes spells and class abilities that operate by *opening and maintaining* a channel to the plane as Evil, and also happens to present spells and effects that are instantaneous bursts of Negative Energy that go away after the spell's cast, and they're *not* Evil. In other words, what inconsistency? In any event, the mindless undead would need an Intelligence score. They can't be malign and life-hating without some form of intellect, even if it is bestial and primitive. Evil is defined by actions and choice, and a mindless object like a glop of mud or pointed stick can't perform actions, nor make choices, leaving it quite unsuited to a life of evil. A better thing to compare them to than inert objects (which, since they're not self-aware (no Wis or Cha scores), are *objects*, rather than *creatures*) would be Golems. Golems *can* perform actions, and some of them can even go berserk, descending into a completely uncontrolled, destructive rampage. Why? Because their animating force -Elementals, in this case- is far closer to sentient than the resulting amalgamated creature. In a setting where Negative Energy = Evil, 'mindless' undead would be animated by malign sentiences from the Negative Energy Plane, dimly intelligent, hating all life. When not commanded, or left to their own devices by an inattentive creator, they destroy living things in their presence. If they see animals or people, they'll butcher them. If alone in a forest, they'll start hacking at stuff, as even living plants will offend them (although they'll always choose animals or people first!). They might only have an Intelligence score of 1 or 2, but it will be adequate to sustain a hatred of all living things. Please explain Lemures, then. Also, Vermin and Oozes, which manage to act intentionally and without being commanded, despite being Mindless. Clearly Gelatinous Cubes and Monstrous Scorpions also need to have minimal Int scores, right?
WerTwist 04-10-07, 02:55 AM	But again, this could be simply an issue of *scale*. Note that Clerics significantly connected to the Negative Energy Plane that they have the ability to *spontaneously* Inflict, or to channel Negative Energy through their bodies, still have a substantial Evil Aura, regardless of their *actual* alignment, intentions and whatnot. They have the ability to spontaneously use inflict spells, because their god grants this ability to them, not because they have any connection to the neg. energy plane. Same is true for their aura (p. 32 PHB): "A cleric of a chaotic.... deity has a particulary powerful aura corresponding to the deity's alignment." An evil cleric (or neutral cleric of an evil deity) isn't connected to the neg. energy plane any stronger that a good cleric is, they're just especially proficient at wielding neg. energy (p. 33 PHB), which is a big difference. Again, the PHB *says* that channeling Negative Energy is Evil Where? I couldn't find that part in the PHB. Please point me to it. Please explain Lemures, then. Also, Vermin and Oozes, which manage to act intentionally and without being commanded, despite being Mindless. Clearly Gelatinous Cubes and Monstrous Scorpions also need to have minimal Int scores, right? Lemures are made from the souls of evil mortals sent to the nine hells (an evil aligned plane) and are devils which all have the evil subtype (on contrary to undead). I don't think you're really grasping the term "mindless". A mindless creature acts purely on instinct: eat, sleep, reproduce, self-preservation. And you will surely agree, that these are notions totaly unknown to a mindless undead being.
Soltares 04-10-07, 03:21 PM	Note that Clerics significantly connected to the Negative Energy Plane that they have the ability to *spontaneously* Inflict, or to channel Negative Energy through their bodies, still have a substantial Evil Aura, regardless of their *actual* alignment, intentions and whatnot. Not according to the PHB (p 32-33) they don't. A Cleric of a chaotic, good, lawful or evil diety, or who chooses the Chaos, Law, Good or Evil Domains *does* have such an aura, regardless of alignment. [Tangent, a Cleric of Istus, from Greyhawk, can have the Law and Chaos Domains! He'd detect as both lawful and chaotic! That's awesome.] What sort of energy you channel, positive, negative or fluffy white marshmallow spread, has no effect on your 'aura.' Check it out, you just made this up right now. It's not in the book. A LN Cleric of Wee Jas channels negative energy, spontaneously casts Inflict spells and Rebukes / Command undead, but she doesn't have an evil aura. She *does* have a lawful aura, because she worships a Lawful god (and may also have chosen the Law domain, and be extra-special Lawful). But a Neutral Cleric of a Neutral god who can channel negative energy and has access to the Death, Destruction, Suffering, Trickery and Being Mean to Puppies Domains doesn't radiate evil unless he's actively being mean to puppies. (Assuming one can find Neutral gods with access to these morally suspect Domains, like, say, Wee Jas, Kelemvore, Ilmater, St Cuthbert, Olidammara, etc.) Pick up some Extra Turning feats and Channel that negative energy all the live-long day. It's not evil, Evil, [Evil] or [Mermaid-man] EEEEEVVVVVIIIILLL!! [/Mermaid-man] My point, and I believe Arctan's, as well, is that little-e evil and Big-E Evil are only as inconsistent as you allow them to be. As *I* allow them to be? How is it *my* fault that the not-Evil act of summoning not-Evil energy from a not-Evil plane is considered to be [Evil] *sometimes* and not-Evil the rest of the time? Here I am trying to *not* 'allow them to be inconsistent' and you don't seem to want me to do that, defending the inconsistency... I'm all for consistency. Nice round firm textures all around. If it was 'consistent' it would either be; 1) Negative energy, and the negative energy plane, and the channeling of negative energy, is evil. Tainting, corruptive and nasty, negative energy leaches the color out of butterflies and contributes to infertility in pandas. To be *consistent* with that, positive energy should be as proportionally good, life-affirming and happy joy-joy. Under this 'flavor,' Inflict spells are [Evil], 'cause, negative energy (and promoting suffering, misery, pain and death, which is not very nice), and Cure spells are [Good] because they spread light and life and positive energy into the world. or 2) Negative energy (and positive energy) are neutral forces, like elemental air, earth, fire and water. They can be put to good or evil uses, but are inherently 'neutral.' Good Clerics can Inflict, Evil Clerics can Cure. Death Knell, the act of sacrificing another creatures life for a 'power-up' remains [Evil] 'cause, duh, it's EVIL, no matter what color energy you are using to do it! Animate Dead? No more [Evil] than Beget Bogun, Animate Object or making a Flesh Golem out of a bunch of dead bodies (which may in fact *be* evil, depending on where you got the bodies...). Also, Vermin and Oozes, which manage to act intentionally and without being commanded, despite being Mindless. Clearly Gelatinous Cubes and Monstrous Scorpions also need to have minimal Int scores, right? Total tangent, but yes. Bees, which are Vermin, and thus 'mindless' and 'untrainable' are easier to train than *cats,* which have an Int score of 2, according to the rules. Having trained animals as a farm-kid, I have no idea what the heck the developers were smoking when they came up with some of their notions about critters and varmints, but that's a completely different quibble. Every time I read another description of Drow training spiders, or some new spell that allows a caster to 'control' otherwise 'mindless' critters, I roll my eyes, 'cause hey, apparently the writers don't really read the rules. (Or, more likely, they happily ignore them when the rules are dumb and stand in the way of a cool visual, like a Drow riding a spider.)
ArcTan 04-10-07, 03:30 PM	Which is *exactly* what you do when you set something on fire. Entropy wins, order breaks down and the heat-death of the universe gets that teensy step closer. From a D&D perspective, this isn't true. D&D doesn't operate according to real-life physics. Fire represents change, but not necessarily entropy. And yet fire is not evil or [Evil], and neither is the Elemental Plane of Fire (or the Negative Energy Plane) and neither is bringing fire into the material plane via a Fireball, or bringing negative energy into the material plane via Inflict Critical Wounds. The game treats the two planes, and their energies, exactly the same. Morally neutral, but capable of being used to work great evil, like any tool. Only *some* applications of 'bringing negative energy into the material plane' are [Evil]. Using Inflict Wounds to zap babies to death isn't [Evil], but it's sure little 'e' evil. Yeah, because the negative energy isn't infecting the Material and staying here, it's appearing for an instant and then vanishing, no differently from the tiny bit of negative energy added to the multiverse when anything dies. Using Animate Dead to cause the residents of the towns graveyard to rise up and defend their families from an Orcish slaughter *isn't* an evil action, but casting the spell *is* [Evil]. Paradoxically, in this case, an Evil Cleric is better able to mobilize a force to hold the Orcs at bay and protect the villagers, while the Good Cleric gets to watch them get slaughtered, despite his Prayer spell, but gosh, at least he didn't violate his alignment by 'fighting fire with fire' and doing something that might actually save those people! Yeah, it's ironic, isn't it? I actually think these little ironies are cool and interesting, not something worth being booted out of the game. It's much like an old-school WEG Star Wars game where you *know* you could beat the BBEG if you'd called on the Dark Side and gained a Dark Side point -- but is it worth it to sacrifice a little bit of your soul for the greater good? Just as firefighters start controlled fires to make firebreaks, good Clerics are allowed to kill evil foes with Negative Energy (Inflict Wounds or Harm). Negative Energy isn't evil. The Negative Plane isn't evil. It's residents aren't evil. Bringing Negative Energy into the material plane isn't evil, as evidenced from the Inflict Wounds spells and their morally neutral nature. Bringing it to the Material Plane *to stay* is [Evil]. You could say the same, in reverse, about the deathless, if you like that concept (some people don't). Using cure critical wounds or heal to heal your minions isn't [Good], but creating a deathless creature is, even if you command that deathless creature to do Evil things, because the deathless creature is *in nature* Good even if you force it to go against its nature. And yes, forcing the deathless to do Evil is a *net* Evil act, just as making the undead do Good is a *net* Good act. Which is why it's interesting and ironic that there are some Good goals that a Good-aligned Cleric is unable to undertake because he can't stain himself with the use of undeath. It's an obvious inconsistency. 1) Either the designers meant for Negative Energy and the negative energy plane to be evil, tainting and corruptive, which is evocative and fine, but *forgot* to make the Negative Energy Plane and it's denizens evil, and *forgot* to include other spells that bring Negative Energy into the material plane, like Inflict Wounds (which, unlike Animate Dead, *only* hurts and kills people with negative energy, and can't be used as emergency labor to build a dam to stop flooding from wiping a village off the map). or 2) The designers failed to consider that the Negative Energy Plane, and it's inhabitants, were *not* in any way Evil or unnatural (in a world filled with dragons and wizards, anyway) and said, 'ooh, undead, icky, gross.' *shrug* You could even imagine a world where the planes themselves don't come into the story much -- which, in fact, in most campaigns they don't -- and just say that the idea was "ooh, undead, icky, gross, Evil". Which is evocative and fine. I don't see why it's so offensive that in D&D making skeletons walk is inherently corrupting the way making lightning come out of your fingers is inherently corrupting in Star Wars. Either way, a mistake was made in not being consistent. Either 'bringing Negative Energy into the material plane' is evil, or it's not, and yet the core rules show it being treated as evil *sometimes* and yet not evil at other times. It's Evil when you create a permanent or lasting connection between the Material Plane and the NE Plane. Spells that have nothing to do directly with undead but are [Evil] include curse water, desecrate, and deathwatch, all of which have this flavor and this flavor only in common -- you're bringing negative energy or the "powers of unlife" or something similar into the world. It can't be both, because, as you say, a simple Detect Evil reminds us that evil is a tangible thing in the D&D universe, not some abstraction. The Taint / Corruption rules in Heroes of Horror are flavorful campaign *options,* and to force every single campaign to abide by the flavor text in that book is no more accurate than for me to say that only the manner in which Necromancy is treated among the Aerenal elves of Eberron is valid. The core rules conflict. The text of one campaign setting or thematic optional rule isn't useful here, as these elements are not Core. I'm saying that if you don't use the Taint rules, they still at least provide a flavor understanding of how the core flavor works. The core flavor is not self-contradictory or bad even if you only use it as flavor. Please understand, I *like* the evil tainted corruptive notion, and would fully support a setting where the Negative Energy Plane is EVIL, and the Positive Energy Plane is GOOD, and the use of Inflict spells is bad and the use of curing spells is good (boy, wouldn't that *suck* for Evil Clerics, being forbidden from using Healing, as it is bringing the forces of life and love and goodness into the material world, just as the good priest can't invite the nasty, corruptive life-hating negative forces!!). This would be unbalancing in many ways. As it is, it already works fine -- Evil Clerics can *use* cure spells if they want, but don't have the natural connection that lets them spontaneously cure the way Good Clerics can, and vice versa for Good Clerics and inflict spells. Curing and inflicting is too basic to be inherently [Good] or [Evil], but being Good still makes it *easier* to cure and being Evil makes it *easier* to inflict. And that's what it would require to be consistent. If the Negative Energy Plane is evil, the Positive Energy Plane, it's polar opposite, becomes good. Good Clerics cannot Animate Dead, or Inflict Wounds, and Evil Clerics cannot Cure Wounds or Raise the Dead. Neutral Clerics would walk a moral tightrope, unwilling to cast too many healing spells, as channeling all of that goodness through themselves might start to fill them with compassion, just as casting a bunch of Inflict spells might taint them with too much corruptive negative energy. It would be a very neat setting, much like Ravenloft, where many spells require 'powers checks' to avoid attracting evil forces. Tapping into the Negative Energy plane would allow for potent effects, with spells like Harm, Slay Living or Horrid Wilting, or the creation of deathless life-hating armies of minions, but would have a much more marked cost. So right now we have a middle path, where not *all* uses of negative energy or positive energy are that restrictive for Clerics, but the long-lasting ones that leave a permanent mark on the world are. In any event, the mindless undead would need an Intelligence score. They can't be malign and life-hating without some form of intellect, even if it is bestial and primitive. You're still missing the point about the "evil energy" thing. Evil is defined by actions and choice, and a mindless object like a glop of mud or pointed stick can't perform actions, nor make choices, leaving it quite unsuited to a life of evil. In some moral systems, yes, but not all. In a setting where Negative Energy = Evil, 'mindless' undead would be animated by malign sentiences from the Negative Energy Plane, dimly intelligent, hating all life. When not commanded, or left to their own devices by an inattentive creator, they destroy living things in their presence. If they see animals or people, they'll butcher them. If alone in a forest, they'll start hacking at stuff, as even living plants will offend them (although they'll always choose animals or people first!). They might only have an Intelligence score of 1 or 2, but it will be adequate to sustain a hatred of all living things. This is interesting, but not necessary. In D&D things *can* just be Evil even if they just sit there and don't do anything, because Evil is a force, like negative charge. Evil is a kind of energy that *causes* Evil intentions and actions in sentient beings, but can exist independent of all sentience, which is why you can have lingering evil auras that are detectable by detect evil where no sentience exists, and why nonsentient planes can nonetheless be Evil-aligned. Undead aren't themselves Evil in the sense of Evil intentions and actions, but they detect as Evil, and in some small way sentient beings who remain in contact with them over time become more Evil. While a neat setting concept, it's not the Core setting. Yet. Perhaps Manual of the Planes 3.5 will come out and make the Negative Energy Plane evily-aligned, and an update will add the [Evil] descriptor to the remaining negative energy spells such as Inflict Wounds. To be consistent, the Positive Energy Plane would then become good-aligned and Cure spells gain the [Good] descriptor and become forbidden to evil Clerics, while 'mindless' undead would gain a minimal intelligence score. It would be the completion of what was started when they chose to make mindless undead evil in 3.5. Right now, the changeover is incomplete, and it's up to the DM to decide if he wants to go all the way, or stick with 3.0 and the neutrally-aligned Energy Planes. While I can see how this change might be "incomplete" in some way, I don't see why the existing system is an inherent contradiction.
ArcTan 04-10-07, 03:40 PM	They have the ability to spontaneously use inflict spells, because their god grants this ability to them, not because they have any connection to the neg. energy plane. Same is true for their aura (p. 32 PHB): "A cleric of a chaotic.... deity has a particulary powerful aura corresponding to the deity's alignment." An evil cleric (or neutral cleric of an evil deity) isn't connected to the neg. energy plane any stronger that a good cleric is, they're just especially proficient at wielding neg. energy (p. 33 PHB), which is a big difference. Er, negative energy comes from the Negative Energy Plane. Being better at channeling negative energy implies a stronger connection to the Negative Energy Plane. (We can argue about what this means day and night, but there isn't any "natural" source of negative energy that isn't the Negative Energy Plane.) Where? I couldn't find that part in the PHB. Please point me to it. Even if a cleric is neutral, channeling positive energy is a good act and channeling negative energy is evil. (From d20srd.org, under "Neutral Clerics and Undead".) A Neutral Cleric who chooses to channel negative energy (i.e. picks Rebuke Undead rather than Turn Undead) must struggle against the Evil corrupting his soul if he wants to remain Neutral. Same for a Neutral Cleric who chooses to Turn Undead -- the more he does it the more drawn to the ideals of Good he is. Lemures are made from the souls of evil mortals sent to the nine hells (an evil aligned plane) and are devils which all have the evil subtype (on contrary to undead). Well, they're also mindless. Int --. Look it up. I don't think you're really grasping the term "mindless". A mindless creature acts purely on instinct: eat, sleep, reproduce, self-preservation. And you will surely agree, that these are notions totaly unknown to a mindless undead being. Lemures have no problem being the very basis of Lawful Evil despite being mindless. You can, in fact, be animated by a pure alignment principle without the intelligence to carry it out -- it's just highly uncommon for natural beings on the Material Plane to be animated by such a principle. *Ordinary mindless animals* like insects or oozes are True Neutral because their animating principle is the ordinary animating principle of life -- eat, reproduce, grow -- which is, in D&D, True Neutral. Constructs are True Neutral because they have no animating principle other than what their creator specifically and intentionally gives them, which puts all alignment questions directly in the creator's court and not the golem's (even though a golem following the order "Kill all babies in the area" is acting in an Evil manner, the Evil devolves onto the creator and not the golem, because of how extraordinarily lacking in any will the golem is). But in our hypothetical "undead mindlessly try to cause pain and harm" example, undead could be mindlessly Evil in exactly the same way that lemures, which have Int -- but mindlessly serve the machinations of the Nine Hells, are Lawful Evil.
ArcTan 04-10-07, 03:54 PM	Not according to the PHB (p 32-33) they don't. A Cleric of a chaotic, good, lawful or evil diety, or who chooses the Chaos, Law, Good or Evil Domains *does* have such an aura, regardless of alignment. [Tangent, a Cleric of Istus, from Greyhawk, can have the Law and Chaos Domains! He'd detect as both lawful and chaotic! That's awesome.] A cleric’s deity influences his alignment, what magic he can perform, his values, and how others see him. A cleric chooses two domains from among those belonging to his deity. A cleric can select an alignment domain (Chaos, Evil, Good, or Law) only if his alignment matches that domain. (emphasis mine) It's completely tangential to the main point, but by default D&D RAW, the Cleric you're talking about is an impossibility. The writers of the Greyhawk setting are free to change things around as they like, but in the existing rules, you, personally, have to be Lawful in order to have the Law domain. What sort of energy you channel, positive, negative or fluffy white marshmallow spread, has no effect on your 'aura.' Well, not if you're a Neutral Cleric who chooses to channel negative energy but commits enough Good acts to retain neutrality. I'll quote it again: Even if a cleric is neutral, channeling positive energy is a good act and channeling negative energy is evil. Check it out, you just made this up right now. It's not in the book. A LN Cleric of Wee Jas channels negative energy, spontaneously casts Inflict spells and Rebukes / Command undead, but she doesn't have an evil aura. She *does* have a lawful aura, because she worships a Lawful god (and may also have chosen the Law domain, and be extra-special Lawful). But a Neutral Cleric of a Neutral god who can channel negative energy and has access to the Death, Destruction, Suffering, Trickery and Being Mean to Puppies Domains doesn't radiate evil unless he's actively being mean to puppies. (Assuming one can find Neutral gods with access to these morally suspect Domains, like, say, Wee Jas, Kelemvore, Ilmater, St Cuthbert, Olidammara, etc.) Pick up some Extra Turning feats and Channel that negative energy all the live-long day. It's not evil, Evil, [Evil] or [Mermaid-man] EEEEEVVVVVIIIILLL!! [/Mermaid-man] Check the quote. It most certainly is an Evil act. Do it all day without doing Good to compensate (such as trying to use your negative energy channeling for Good purposes, like rebuking the undead and telling them to go away and save drowning kittens) and you will eventually be Evil. As *I* allow them to be? How is it *my* fault that the not-Evil act of summoning not-Evil energy from a not-Evil plane is considered to be [Evil] *sometimes* and not-Evil the rest of the time? Here I am trying to *not* 'allow them to be inconsistent' and you don't seem to want me to do that, defending the inconsistency... I'm saying that sometimes it is inconsistent, and I find that interesting. Personally, I think if you want to shore up the idea of "Bringing NE onto the Material Plane *on a large scale* or *on a permanent scale* is Evil but not otherwise", go ahead, but that idea is itself pretty consistent. There's no need to make it so extreme as to say "Any contact with negative energy whatsoever is Evil", although that *would* be an interesting campaign concept (as would be the campaign where all magic is Evil, or all violence is Evil). I'm all for consistency. Nice round firm textures all around. To keep going with the Star Wars stuff, I think the idea of a Dark Side Jedi who starts calling on the Dark Side because he's trying to do the right thing -- or, conversely, a meticulously Light Side Jedi who's nonetheless a hidebound ass and not a very good person at heart -- is a very interesting idea to toy with. Total tangent, but yes. Bees, which are Vermin, and thus 'mindless' and 'untrainable' are easier to train than *cats,* which have an Int score of 2, according to the rules. Having trained animals as a farm-kid, I have no idea what the heck the developers were smoking when they came up with some of their notions about critters and varmints, but that's a completely different quibble. Every time I read another description of Drow training spiders, or some new spell that allows a caster to 'control' otherwise 'mindless' critters, I roll my eyes, 'cause hey, apparently the writers don't really read the rules. (Or, more likely, they happily ignore them when the rules are dumb and stand in the way of a cool visual, like a Drow riding a spider.) Well, spells by definition break the rules for Handle Animal checks. They're magic. The whole point of undead and constructs is that you can control them despite -- or because of -- their mindlessness. As far as bees go, "training" bees really doesn't fall under the Handle Animal check at all, because such training doesn't consist of actually being able to take the bees with you in combat and command them to do things verbally or with gestures, unless you're in some kind of movie. As far as training cats, the rules don't take personalities of different species or of individual animals into account, which is unfortunate but perhaps necessary for a fantasy setting (who wants to tell someone that they can't ride a zebra if they really want to?). The main thing is that cats having Int 2 isn't that unrealistic -- cats that *are* trainable are just as capable of learning complex tricks and actions as dogs are. Most cats are too ornery to be trainable, but not all. (I have personally witnessed a trainer tellng a bunch of obedient cats to sit, roll over and play dead.)
Soltares 04-11-07, 03:57 PM	As the SRD is contradicting the 3.5 PHB, the SRD probably wins out, as it has been updated more recently than my 3.5 PHB. So, *this week,* channeling negative energy has become evil, although it wasn't back when 3.0 turned into 3.5 and the PHB was written. According to the PHB (p 32-33), the evil (good, lawful, chaotic) 'aura' comes only from serving an evil (good, lawful, chaotic) god, or having the Evil (Good, Law, Chaos) Domain. Perhaps by 4.0, they'll finish making the negative energy plane consistently evil. At which point, it would make sense that the positive energy plane should be good, being the opposite of evil. This would be unbalancing in many ways. As it is, it already works fine -- Evil Clerics can *use* cure spells if they want, But they shouldn't! If Good Clerics aren't supposed to be bringing negative energy, which has become evil, into the world, then Evil Clerics shouldn't be bringing positive energy, the polar opposite to negative energy, into the world. It's not *unbalancing,* it's actually *exactly* balancing. Good Clerics can't do X, Evil Clerics can't do Y. Perfect balance. Oh sure, Evil Cleric players might be a little pissy about not being able to heal, but Good Clerics already have stuff *they* can't do, so it's just sauce for the gander. Fair is fair, after all. And as long as the neutral energy planes are being aligned, perhaps the elemental planes should be aligned as well? All Fire spells becoming [Evil] would make for a logical progression, as well as all Shadow sub-school spells, as both planes are dominated by evil creatures and destructive life-destroying forces. Technically, the Plane of Shadow is *more* associated with evil than the Negative Energy Plane, so Illusionists, particularly those Shadowcraft Mages, would be more evil than even Clerics of the Dragon Below, as they willfully bring evil forces into the material realm.
Evilmonster 04-12-07, 04:50 AM	Rules aside for a moment. Every DM makes the world what they want it to be. It's all a matter of what they find cool. For me, undead should be very creepy. From zombies to lichs they should give everyone the heebejeebees. I also like the idea that creating undead, and necromancy in general, barring maybe undieing stuff, is a sin aginst the world. An undead with a mind could possably choose to stay the strate and narrow, but will always feel the temptation of giving in to the urges it's state comes with and that stain on its soul will always shine like a black sun under Detect Evil. Every undead is cursed in a way. But that's only how I feel and how I run my game. Rules or not I just find that to be cool. It's all about preferences. Maybe we should talk about our opinions and try to explain why their cool rather than run around the rules like crazy?
ArcTan 04-12-07, 07:27 PM	As the SRD is contradicting the 3.5 PHB, the SRD probably wins out, as it has been updated more recently than my 3.5 PHB. So, *this week,* channeling negative energy has become evil, although it wasn't back when 3.0 turned into 3.5 and the PHB was written. According to the PHB (p 32-33), the evil (good, lawful, chaotic) 'aura' comes only from serving an evil (good, lawful, chaotic) god, or having the Evil (Good, Law, Chaos) Domain. Well, if you personally are Lawful Evil but the deity is technically Lawful Neutral (as happens a lot with folks like Wee Jas), you'll just have an aura of Evil based solely on HD as an "Evil creature" but have an aura of Law based on Cleric class levels as "Cleric of a Lawful deity". So a level 9 LE Cleric of Wee Jas has a faint Evil aura under detect evil and a strong Lawful aura under detect law. A Cleric of Wee Jas who chooses to rebuke undead rather than turn undead, and who rebukes undead a *lot* and really enjoys it, is *likely* to be Evil, though there aren't any strict rules on this (as there shouldn't be). But they shouldn't! If Good Clerics aren't supposed to be bringing negative energy, which has become evil, into the world, then Evil Clerics shouldn't be bringing positive energy, the polar opposite to negative energy, into the world. Both can bring it into the world for an *instant* without doing harm to their alignment. Neither can bring it into the world on a long-term basis without violating their alignment -- Good Clerics can inflict but not animate dead, Evil Clerics can cure but not hallow or bless water. It's not *unbalancing,* it's actually *exactly* balancing. Good Clerics can't do X, Evil Clerics can't do Y. Perfect balance. Oh sure, Evil Cleric players might be a little pissy about not being able to heal, but Good Clerics already have stuff *they* can't do, so it's just sauce for the gander. Fair is fair, after all. "Unbalancing" as in hard to play. A Good Cleric who can't ever hurt people with inflict critical wounds or harm isn't much fun to play, but has options. An Evil Cleric who can't ever heal his party with cure critical wounds or heal is actually pretty badly nerfed. It's balanced right now, in the sense that -- at least in Eberron, whose boards we're on -- both deathless and undead exist, and making undead is Evil and Good Clerics can't do it, and making deathless is Good and Evil Clerics can't do it. There are a few other annoying imbalances, like deathwatch being Evil, but nothing major. And as long as the neutral energy planes are being aligned, perhaps the elemental planes should be aligned as well? All Fire spells becoming [Evil] would make for a logical progression, as well as all Shadow sub-school spells, as both planes are dominated by evil creatures and destructive life-destroying forces. Technically, the Plane of Shadow is *more* associated with evil than the Negative Energy Plane, so Illusionists, particularly those Shadowcraft Mages, would be more evil than even Clerics of the Dragon Below, as they willfully bring evil forces into the material realm. Are you going for a reductio ad absurdum? There's no reason to say that because there is an alignment effect *associated* with a plane that means the whole plane should become aligned in that way. I don't actually have a problem with the energy planes themselves remaining Neutral, and saying that the Good and Evil effects come from their *interaction* with the Material Plane. (The PE Plane is the source of all healing on the Material, but if you go to the PE Plane itself you explode.) Also, by D&D flavor, "Fire" represents all energy and heat and change, not just literal flames that burn things up. Call it the transition between PE and NE and vice versa, if you like. But there are Good-aligned fire entities just as much as Evil-aligned ones -- the Efreet have an opposite number in the Phoenix, for instance.
ArcTan 04-12-07, 07:29 PM	Rules aside for a moment. Every DM makes the world what they want it to be. It's all a matter of what they find cool. For me, undead should be very creepy. From zombies to lichs they should give everyone the heebejeebees. I also like the idea that creating undead, and necromancy in general, barring maybe undieing stuff, is a sin aginst the world. An undead with a mind could possably choose to stay the strate and narrow, but will always feel the temptation of giving in to the urges it's state comes with and that stain on its soul will always shine like a black sun under Detect Evil. Every undead is cursed in a way. But that's only how I feel and how I run my game. Rules or not I just find that to be cool. It's all about preferences. Maybe we should talk about our opinions and try to explain why their cool rather than run around the rules like crazy? Yes, but this thread quickly became dominated by people saying why "Undead are Neutral" was *correct* and should be the standard for people's games because "Undead are Evil" is *wrong*, and that got my goat. Sure, a campaign where necromancers are merely misunderstood, not evil, would be really interesting to me. I really liked the Ghostwalk book, for instance, because of its new and greatly changed idea of what ghosts are and how they work.
Soltares 04-12-07, 07:45 PM	A Cleric of Wee Jas who chooses to rebuke undead rather than turn undead, and who rebukes undead a *lot* and really enjoys it, is *likely* to be Evil, though there aren't any strict rules on this (as there shouldn't be). A LN Cleric of Wee Jas doesn't get a choice. They *always* channel negative energy. A LN *or Lawful Evil* Cleric of St. Cuthbert *always* channels positive energy, but never 'turns good' because of it, because the Cleric wasn't designed around this new 'channeling is always good / evil' rule. This is on PHB (3.5) p. 32-33. LE Clerics of St. Cuthbert always channel positive energy, which, per your SRD quote, is now always a good act. I wonder how long they last before they explode? Both can bring it into the world for an *instant* without doing harm to their alignment. Neither can bring it into the world on a long-term basis without violating their alignment -- Good Clerics can inflict but not animate dead, Evil Clerics can cure but not hallow or bless water. And yet, you just quoted the SRD as saying that channeling negative energy is always an evil act. So if the LN Cleric of Wee Jas Rebukes undead (which is not the same as Commanding them, she's pretty much just 'turning' them), she's commiting an evil act, *and is not bringing negative energy into the world on a long-term basis.* Similarly, a LN Cleric of St. Cuthbert turns undead, which is automatically a good act, *and is not bringing positive energy into the world on a long-term basis.* I do understand what you are saying about 'fast use' like Inflict Wounds and 'long term use' like Animate Dead, but Rebuking Undead, per the SRD quote, is now evil, and it is a temporary use. Your logic, while interesting, has no bearing on the official game rules. It's just a rationalization to try and make sense of the inconsistencies, and, the rule you quoted to me happens to invalidate your own rationalization about long-term vs. transitory channeling of negative energy. Further, channeling / turning, using negative or positive energy, are now evil or good acts, respectively, *despite their effects being temporary.* Curing wounds with positive energy, or Inflicting them with negative energy are *not* temporary effects. The use of positive energy (or negative energy) with a Cure (Inflict) spell *does not* go away in 10 rounds, like a Turn / Rebuke effect. It's most definitely 'long-term' and causes a lasting change in the body of the person affected.
ArcTan 04-12-07, 09:46 PM	A LN Cleric of Wee Jas doesn't get a choice. They *always* channel negative energy. A good cleric (or a neutral cleric who worships a good deity) can turn or destroy undead creatures. An evil cleric (or a neutral cleric who worships an evil deity) instead rebukes or commands such creatures. A neutral cleric of a neutral deity must choose whether his turning ability functions as that of a good cleric or an evil cleric. Once this choice is made, it cannot be reversed. This decision also determines whether the cleric can cast spontaneous cure or inflict spells. Whether you interpret the original restrictions on turning/rebuking as being consonant with this is up to you. As the rules stand, what you say is inaccurate -- an LN Cleric of Wee Jas can pick, and an LG Cleric of Wee Jas *has* to turn rather than rebuke. A LN *or Lawful Evil* Cleric of St. Cuthbert *always* channels positive energy, but never 'turns good' because of it, because the Cleric wasn't designed around this new 'channeling is always good / evil' rule. It's not that "new" a rule, and you don't "turn good", necessarily, by doing lots and lots of good acts. That's not how it works -- I can give a copper piece to a beggar a million times in the course of my life and still be a horrible evil PoS. We're not playing Neverwinter Nights. This is on PHB (3.5) p. 32-33. LE Clerics of St. Cuthbert always channel positive energy, which, per your SRD quote, is now always a good act. I wonder how long they last before they explode? *shrug* The fact that something is an Evil act doesn't mean you can't do it as a Good person, much less something being a Good act means you can't do it as an Evil person. An Evil person can probably give thousands of gold pieces to charity and not explode. Hell, he'd probably still be Evil. If you want to rule that LE Clerics of St. Cuthbert always turn undead (because Cuthbert is really a LN(G) deity instead of pure LN), then this is an explanation for why LE Clerics of St. Cuthbert are not that common and, flavorwise, probably associate themselves with basically Good ideals on the surface -- because the church of Cuthbert has the veneer of goodness over it, hence the association with PE. Just like Wee Jas' church will always be sinister and dark, even if there are maverick LG Clerics in it. And yet, you just quoted the SRD as saying that channeling negative energy is always an evil act. So if the LN Cleric of Wee Jas Rebukes undead (which is not the same as Commanding them, she's pretty much just 'turning' them), she's commiting an evil act, *and is not bringing negative energy into the world on a long-term basis.* She's bringing negative energy into her body or her spirit, and the effect lasts one minute -- it's not an instantaneous burst of NE, it's NE suffusing her being for the duration of the rebuke check. Either way, turning/rebuking is more "intimate" than casting a spell -- it involves actually "channeling" the energy instead of just casting a spell that brings it into the world -- and it's not instantaneous. Similarly, a LN Cleric of St. Cuthbert turns undead, which is automatically a good act, *and is not bringing positive energy into the world on a long-term basis.* I do understand what you are saying about 'fast use' like Inflict Wounds and 'long term use' like Animate Dead, but Rebuking Undead, per the SRD quote, is now evil, and it is a temporary use. Your logic, while interesting, has no bearing on the official game rules. It's just a rationalization to try and make sense of the inconsistencies, and, the rule you quoted to me happens to invalidate your own rationalization about long-term vs. transitory channeling of negative energy. Even if you think one minute is too transitory to matter, channeling is also more serious an action than casting a spell. as evidenced by the fact that only Clerics can do it at all. Further, channeling / turning, using negative or positive energy, are now evil or good acts, respectively, *despite their effects being temporary.* Curing wounds with positive energy, or Inflicting them with negative energy are *not* temporary effects. The use of positive energy (or negative energy) with a Cure (Inflict) spell *does not* go away in 10 rounds, like a Turn / Rebuke effect. It's most definitely 'long-term' and causes a lasting change in the body of the person affected. Er, a dead body doesn't have negative energy *inside* it just because it's been killed by negative energy. And a living body doesn't *contain* positive energy just because it's been healed by it. PE and NE are specific things that have the *effect* of building things (reversing entropy) or decaying things (accelerating entropy), but the important thing is that it's bad to bring raw negative energy *itself* into the world, not the "effects" of negative energy. (Arguably all age, decay and death are the "effects" of negative energy in its long-term form as the Negative Energy Plane, if you buy the flavor for what the Energy Planes are.)
Soltares 04-13-07, 12:36 PM	As the rules stand, what you say is inaccurate -- an LN Cleric of Wee Jas can pick, and an LG Cleric of Wee Jas *has* to turn rather than rebuke. Well then, as I stated, p 32-33 of the 3.5 PHB says otherwise. You're arguing to me that there isn't an inconsistency, and that nothing has 'changed,' *and then quoting the inconsistency as proof!* Pick up the 3.5 PHB, p. 32-33, and see how the text is quite different from the SRD you are quoting. It's the last two sentences of the section on Spontaneous Casting, starting on p 32, and ending on the top of p 33. The last sentence reads, "All Clerics of St. Cuthbert (god of retribution) and all nonevil Clerics of Obad-Hai (god of nature) convert prepared spells to cure spells, not inflict spells." Two sentences before this, it clarifies that this also determines whether the cleric turns or commands undead. So the rules in my hand disagree with the rules you are pulling off the internet. And yet you argue that they are completely consistent and that nothing has changed...
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 12:47 PM	So the rules in my hand disagree with the rules you are pulling off the internet. And yet you argue that they are completely consistent and that nothing has changed... It's been my observation that most people that quote the SRD rather heavily don't even bother to buy the books. Another thing I've noted is that they're usually the most venomous when it comes to discussions of the application of rule zero. I wonder if the SRD even includes the most famous of D&D rules, the one rule that has never changed in all four editions of the game.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 03:24 PM	It's been my observation that most people that quote the SRD rather heavily don't even bother to buy the books. Another thing I've noted is that they're usually the most venomous when it comes to discussions of the application of rule zero. I wonder if the SRD even includes the most famous of D&D rules, the one rule that has never changed in all four editions of the game. Rule Zero is a great rule. It's the rule that says that I like the rules for undead and you don't, and that you're not any more correct than I am -- merely that I'm, y'know, in agreement with the rules. I mean, if you want to Rule Zero that undead are actively *Good* and that ordinary life is, in fact, Evil and a stain on existence and the goal of all magic-users should be to wipe out all life and replace it with the undead, go right ahead. I'd like to play in that campaign. But stop with the talk about how undeath being a completely True Neutral force is the most "logical" way to work things, and that people who are okay with the Undead = Evil thing are "wrong" -- or worse, "immature" and "don't understand that alignment is based on intention". (Why is it that whenever something like this comes up there's, like, three concurrent threads about it all over the place?)
ArcTan 04-13-07, 03:27 PM	Well then, as I stated, p 32-33 of the 3.5 PHB says otherwise. You're arguing to me that there isn't an inconsistency, and that nothing has 'changed,' *and then quoting the inconsistency as proof!* Pick up the 3.5 PHB, p. 32-33, and see how the text is quite different from the SRD you are quoting. It's the last two sentences of the section on Spontaneous Casting, starting on p 32, and ending on the top of p 33. The last sentence reads, "All Clerics of St. Cuthbert (god of retribution) and all nonevil Clerics of Obad-Hai (god of nature) convert prepared spells to cure spells, not inflict spells." Two sentences before this, it clarifies that this also determines whether the cleric turns or commands undead. So the rules in my hand disagree with the rules you are pulling off the internet. And yet you argue that they are completely consistent and that nothing has changed... I don't know the history here, but the SRD incorporates errata and such that the PHB doesn't -- as I stated in another thread, I don't have access to my books right now. In any case, earlier editions did make it relatively clear that St. Cuthbert is a LN(G) god rather than a just plain LN god (makes his home on Arcadia rather than Mechanus, etc.), so if we use the rule about his Clerics using Turn Undead all the time, that makes sense -- Cuthbert's church is a church that leans toward Good. Just like Wee Jas is pretty clearly LN(E), not just plain LN. FWIW, I never said there was anything inconsistent about being a Lawful Evil member of a Good-leaning church and therefore having to do Good acts to fit in. If you think that being LE yourself and channeling Good powers will inevitably "make your head explode", that's your problem, not mine.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 03:28 PM	Rule Zero is a great rule. It's the rule that says that I like the rules for undead and you don't, and that you're not any more correct than I am. Exactly. And now that we've cleared that up, can those of us that think the rules are a bit inconsistant get back to trying to find a working way of adjusting them without you quoting chapter and verse to us?
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 03:35 PM	...Yeah, and this edition's different. So? I'm not talking about older editions. The point of a newer edition is that it overrides older editions. In any case, earlier editions did make it relatively clear that St. Cuthbert is a LN(G) god rather than a just plain LN god (makes his home on Arcadia rather than Mechanus, etc.), so if we use the rule about his Clerics using Turn Undead all the time, that makes sense -- Cuthbert's church is a church that leans toward Good. Just like Wee Jas is pretty clearly LN(E), not just plain LN. Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 03:38 PM	Exactly. And now that we've cleared that up, can those of us that think the rules are a bit inconsistant get back to trying to find a working way of adjusting them without you quoting chapter and verse to us? *shrug* We already had that discussion. To me, if you really think the big inconsistency is PE and NE being Neutral, then change that. Make the PE plane a major good-dominant plane and the NE plane a major evil-dominant one. Make the (relatively few) PE and NE Outsiders from these planes Good- and Evil-aligned. Why not? This actually matters very little, because the actual PE and NE Planes rarely come in to most people's campaigns. Everything else, as far as I can tell, is consistent. Undead always detect as Evil under detect evil; Good and Evil Clerics match up regarding Turn Undead and Rebuke Undead; cure and inflict spells are *associated* with Good and Evil but are acts too minor, on their own, to qualify as Good or Evil acts (or be absolutely barred from Good or Evil Clerics, as opposed to being able to cast one spontaneously and not the other), etc. To me, the real inconsistency is just between the core rules for undeath and [Evil] spells and the description of the Energy Planes in the 3.0 Manual of the Planes -- which is, after all, a 3.0 publication and now to be taken with a grain of salt. If the explanation that "Negative energy only becomes Evil when pulled onto the Prime" bugs you, then it's easy to change the Negative Energy Plane. Changing it so that undead are *not* intrinsically linked to Evil requires a lot more shifting everything around in Core -- you'll have to remove that thing about undead in detect evil's desc, you'll have to change the alignment descriptors for undead (not just the mindless undead -- if you really embrace this concept, isn't it unfair that there are *so few* sentient undead that aren't Always Evil?), and chuck out the Deathless Type, which now really has no point to it. The Aereni in Eberron are now just people whose undead happen to be socially conscious folks who were raised in the right culture, not people who are using a fundamentally different kind of energy from the Qalbarin. You'll have to adjust the stuff for Good and Evil Clerics so that anyone can Turn Undead or Rebuke Undead at their leisure, or else go through the rules for each deity and come up with a justification for whether they Turn or Rebuke that isn't based on "cultural superstition". Look, to me, the game is already really heavily based on the idea that Undead are Evil, the use of undeath is Evil, and so forth, theoretical stuff about negative energy notwithstanding. The game *is* a game about moral absolutes based on metaphysical realities. Archons are always Lawful Good, their own free will be damned, and Yugoloths are always Neutral Evil. Evil is a thing, a stain, something that sticks to physical objects and infects them. Unholy swords, nonsentient lumps of metal though they may be, somehow know what side you're on and bias themselves toward one side in the war of morality. Being a Paladin means your powers themselves come from being a *particular kind of person*. In the midst of all this, why is it a problem if the game decides using undeath is just plain wrong, in the same way that a LotR game would say using the One Ring is just plain wrong, or a Star Wars game would say shooting lightning from your fingers is just plain wrong? If it's inconsistent that it says some things are *not* just plain wrong -- that, for instance, Xeg-Yi are TN -- then why not change *that* inconsistency to fit (Xeg-Yi become Always Evil) rather than throwing out the idea of things being just plain wrong?
ArcTan 04-13-07, 03:40 PM	Mr Pot, meet Mr Kettle. Er, okay. So what? The SRD is newer than the original 3.5 PHB is newer than the 3.0 PHB, so my first point about the Neutral Clerics getting to pick still stands. If you want to argue about older stuff, big whoop, St. Cuthbert's Church biases itself toward Good even though he's technically LN. So what? That's not a "contradiction" in my eyes. The stuff about him being on Arcadia *bolsters* that, but if you throw out the 3.0 MotP entirely, again, so what? Some LN gods are biased toward Good and Turn Undead, some LN gods are biased toward Evil and Rebuke Undead. Unless you think the rule is that Lawful Neutral Clerics who happen to themselves be Lawful Evil can never commit Good acts, which I think is ridiculous, there's no contradiction here at all. In order to follow a LN code of an LN religion the LE Cleric is already having to do some things that aren't as Evil as they would be if he were an LE Cleric of an LE religion, even purely mundane things like take up a collection for the poor in his neighborhood. Big deal. If you want my opinion, I like the SRD ruling better than the PHB "special exceptions for special gods" ruling, and if using the SRD to make up my own setting I would use the SRD's rules for dealing with this rather than the PHB's. But what the PHB says in no way actually contradicts the idea of "Turning Undead is a Good act".
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 03:53 PM	Changing it so that undead are *not* intrinsically linked to Evil requires a lot more shifting everything around in Core -- you'll have to remove that thing about undead in detect evil's desc, you'll have to change the alignment descriptors for undead (not just the mindless undead -- if you really embrace this concept, isn't it unfair that there are *so few* sentient undead that aren't Always Evil?), and chuck out the Deathless Type, which now really has no point to it. Did you read anything of what I wrote before attacking it? I was talking about only the mindless undead. Undead with sentience are driven by their own alignments. If a lich was good before, it's doubtful that the greedy act of extending his existance beyond death would permit him to maintain that alignment long. The same holds true with Vampires, their greedy feeding to keep themselves alive would mean that a good vampire should be extremely rare. Ghosts are the result of the spirits of the malicious dead and therefore would remain evil beyond the grave. Skeletons, as I said are not intrisically evil due to the fact they have no motivation towards good or evil, they just are. The alignment of a skeleton should be neutral unless it's creator was evil enough to leave a taint of evil on it's minion, much like the artificer does on his constructs. Thus a good priest could use the completely benign spell to create a skeleton for a task and the resulting skeleton should reflect the priest's good alignment. Inflict spells do harm to another. If I recall, that would force an alignment issue more than the mere animating of a skeleton to do the cleaning up. The rules are botched in regard to Animate Dead, even more so since the WotC editions added the [Evil] tag to spells. We were quite happy to be able to decide for ourselves what constituted good and evil before, why did it suddenly become so important that they had to tell us which spells they thought were good and [Evil]?
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 04:00 PM	Er, okay. So what? If you didn't understand what I meant any further discussion is pointless. And more likely than not going to get the thread locked.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 05:03 PM	If you didn't understand what I meant any further discussion is pointless. And more likely than not going to get the thread locked. What, that I brought in a 3.0 source to *illustrate* a point about what the 3.5 PHB meant by saying St. Cuthbert always Turns even though he's LN? Okay, fine. Drop the MotP reference. That's actually what I said in my post. I was only using it to illustrate a point, not prop it up. My post pointed out how even if you ignore that reference, there's nothing inconsistent about saying that Cuthbert is an LN(G) deity, and that many post-3.5 references reinforce this impression.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 05:13 PM	Did you read anything of what I wrote before attacking it? I was talking about only the mindless undead. Undead with sentience are driven by their own alignments. If a lich was good before, it's doubtful that the greedy act of extending his existance beyond death would permit him to maintain that alignment long. The same holds true with Vampires, their greedy feeding to keep themselves alive would mean that a good vampire should be extremely rare. Ghosts are the result of the spirits of the malicious dead and therefore would remain evil beyond the grave. Ghosts are actually Alignment (any), FWIW. Skeletons, as I said are not intrisically evil due to the fact they have no motivation towards good or evil, they just are. The alignment of a skeleton should be neutral unless it's creator was evil enough to leave a taint of evil on it's minion, much like the artificer does on his constructs. Thus a good priest could use the completely benign spell to create a skeleton for a task and the resulting skeleton should reflect the priest's good alignment. Okay, see, how come you're willing to accept that *becoming* Undead as a sentient being always makes you Evil but being a *mindlessly* Undead being doesn't, nor does being the sentient being who *makes* mindless Undead? A more consistent way to rule this would be to say that all undeath is Neutral, and that you can be a Good-aligned Lich if you really want to and find a way to do it. Forgotten Realms does this with the Baelnorns. The way it does it isn't my cup of tea -- yeah, let's give the Elves more special things they can do that break the normal rules for how things work without much flavor or background justifying it -- but I'm not going to argue if you want to start dropping these things willy-nilly into your game. An interesting thing about Eberron, after all, is that the Blood of Vol considers its sentient undead -- Vampires, Wights, Ghouls, Liches -- to be "good", to have taken on the mantle of undeath for the sake of the faith -- despite, near as I can tell, the fact that the BoV is itself a Lawful Evil religion and the rules for Vampires being Always Evil have not changed. Which means that there are Evil people who are aware that they are Evil but do not consider themselves *evil* -- that is, they disagree with the universe about right and wrong. I consider that interesting and flavorful (the whole "rage-against-the-gods" thing). But I could easily see changing that and making the BoV Neutral and all their undead Neutral, too. It would, however, be a *change*. Inflict spells do harm to another. If I recall, that would force an alignment issue more than the mere animating of a skeleton to do the cleaning up. Well, yes, killing someone is always an alignment issue regardless of whether you did it with inflict critical wounds or fireball or a blunt hammer to the head. There's a distinction between Evil magic and *doing something Evil*, though. Using a lightsaber to kill someone and using Force Lightning to kill someone both leave the person equally dead, and the death would be equally justified or unjustified either way, but only the latter grants you a Dark Side point. The rules are botched in regard to Animate Dead, even more so since the WotC editions added the [Evil] tag to spells. We were quite happy to be able to decide for ourselves what constituted good and evil before, why did it suddenly become so important that they had to tell us which spells they thought were good and [Evil]? Because there's *always* been this thing with Turn Undead and undeath, and (IIRC) detect evil and undeath, and the *implication* that undeath meant Evil that touched everything except the specific game mechanics you're complaining about (right down to the "Why is Lichdom inherently Evil?" thing -- honestly, in real life, a life-extension technology that sacrificed certain bodily functions for extended duration of life wouldn't seem inherently "Evil" to me). So they chose to make it a little more explicit. So... what? Like you said, Rule Zero. People who choose to reject the idea of alignment being physically intrinsic have all kinds of things to object to in the game. If you want you can throw away the Evil subtype and say that Succubi and Vrocks are just misunderstood people who've been raised by Evil authority figures and can be redeemed if spoken to correctly, and that a reformed Succubus is *not* subject to holy smite, and all this other stuff. I would put that in the same category, of trying to convert D&D's rules about alignment to run a game where alignment really only meant intention and personal ideals. (Although then I'd start to think alignment as a stat wasn't necessary for the game at all.) Again, [Evil] spells are not saying that "The outcome of this spell will be a bad outcome and an Evil act". The *reason* for [Evil] spells is to say that "Using this spell is an inherently Evil and corrupting form of magic, no matter what ends you put it to", specifically so that there *is* a conflict between Good and Evil as moral ideals and Good and Evil as abstract sources of energy. ("I *could* use holy word to kill everyone here, and it would be Good, but would it be *right* to kill so many without giving them a chance to repent?" "I *could* see what to do by filling my body with negative energy so I can cast deathwatch, but even if it's the *right* thing to do, could I live with myself after coming in contact with such foul energies of unlife?")
RogueElement 04-13-07, 06:07 PM	If a lich was good before, it's doubtful that the greedy act of extending his existance beyond death would permit him to maintain that alignment long. Huh? Extending your existence beyond death is Evil? And how about all those "greedy" bastards on heart-lung machines? Does performing CPR on a heart attack victim make you lose your Paladin status?
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 06:42 PM	Huh? Extending your existence beyond death is Evil? And how about all those "greedy" bastards on heart-lung machines? Does performing CPR on a heart attack victim make you lose your Paladin status? No, in those cases you're preventing death, not continuing to exist after your body has succumbed to it's final end. In all the cases you mention another prevents your death by trying to return you to life. All things die eventually, by doing something that could allow you to die but continue to exist would be considered somewhat selfish, couldn't it?
ArcTan 04-13-07, 07:00 PM	No, in those cases you're preventing death, not continuing to exist after your body has succumbed to it's final end. You do realize that a defibrillator is a device for bringing someone back from what, in older times, would've certainly been called their "final end" (cardiac arrest), right? In all the cases you mention another prevents your death by trying to return you to life. So building my own respirator and putting myself on it makes me Evil, automatically? All things die eventually, by doing something that could allow you to die but continue to exist would be considered somewhat selfish, couldn't it? ...No? What if I plan to offer everyone else who wants to and is capable of it the chance to become a Lich, too? What if I plan to spend my entire undead existence as a Lich planting trees and petting kittens and giving to charity? There's nothing from a real-life perspective you can argue to say that the act of extending one's life beyond its natural limits is *itself* Evil from a modern, utilitarian perspective. It's Evil in a fantasy world because in a fantasy world there are clear, bright lines enforced by magic that say what the "natural order" is -- in real life it's not so simple. And in a fantasy world, it's Evil because it's Evil, because anything that messes with the boundaries of death in a certain way (based on negative energy) has the taint of Evil on it, and Liches therefore have Alignment: Always Evil in their stat block. You don't have to be okay with that. But there's no particular reason this is more okay than mindless Skeletons being Always Evil.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 08:23 PM	Again, just for the cheap seats, What part of liches aren't mindless undead is too difficult for you to comprehend? We were talking about the spell Animate Dead, liches aren't made by that spell. Every argument you've made concerning mindless undead so far has been circular reasoning. "They're evil because the rules say they're evil" is an ad hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy when we're questioning the rule that you're quoting. I was particularly impressed when you discounted earlier editions wholesale and then promptly referred to an earlier edition to make a point.
androkguz 04-13-07, 08:30 PM	I must agree with Arctan that the rules themselves as they are are not really contradictory and are in fact interesting because of some ironies and all that stuff. By the way, St. Cuthberth DOESN'T alow LE clerics!!!!!!!!! What are you talking about??? no cleric of St. Cuthbert can channel NE. Oh, and pleeeaseee everyone: we are talking about Eberron, the planes are Mabar and Irian not the NE plane nor the PE plane (damn, Mabar and Irian are shorter names)
ArcTan 04-13-07, 08:39 PM	I was particularly impressed when you discounted earlier editions wholesale and then promptly referred to an earlier edition to make a point. I'm not discounting other editions entirely. My point was that I'm talking about what's true in this edition, and assuming that things they changed in this edition they changed for a *reason*, not airily dismissing 3.5 as a mistake. As it is, the fact that Undead have always been turned by Turn Undead and Turn Undead has always been associated with Good Clerics and that Undead have always been detected by spells that Detect Evil and that from the very early days of 1st Edition the message has consistently been "UNDEAD = BAD!", making mindless Undead Evil made more sense than anything else. It was actually inconsistent that an overzealous interpretation of "mindless = TN" made Skeletons and Zombies non-Evil yet treated as Evil by the game in most respects. Goblin_pride, you mentioned the idea of Good-aligned Necromancers being able to make un-Turnable Undead? That's never existed, in any edition. The mechanics have always suggested a strong basic link between Undeath and Evil regardless of the intent and context, right back to OD&D with little skeleton guys who were always on the side of Chaos and whom you were always supposed to fight. If you want to *change* the rules to make Necromancy purely Neutral and make Turning solely a feature of individual alignment, go right ahead. But I don't think it's necessarily better. If you want to argue about it being better, you can also go right ahead, but that's really, I think, a different argument. (For one thing, "The Negative Energy Plane is Neutral!" has nothing to do with whether making the use of Undead intrinsically Evil is a *good idea*.)
ArcTan 04-13-07, 08:42 PM	I must agree with Arctan that the rules themselves as they are are not really contradictory and are in fact interesting because of some ironies and all that stuff. By the way, St. Cuthberth DOESN'T alow LE clerics!!!!!!!!! What are you talking about??? no cleric of St. Cuthbert can channel NE. Oh, and pleeeaseee everyone: we are talking about Eberron, the planes are Mabar and Irian not the NE plane nor the PE plane (damn, Mabar and Irian are shorter names) It bears pointing out that in Eberron, the number of Evil entities who make their home on Mabar goes up sharply, despite the fact that Mabar itself doesn't bear the evil-dominant trait. Similarly, all the native inhabitants of Dolurrh listed are Evil, despite the fact that Dolurrh itself, similarly, lacks the evil-dominant trait. Things can attract Evil or be associated with Evil without being themselves Evil, is my point. The Material Plane doesn't suddenly become evil-dominant when night falls, and yet various Evil undead are allergic to sunlight and gain power at night.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 08:55 PM	Again, just for the cheap seats, What part of liches aren't mindless undead is too difficult for you to comprehend? We were talking about the spell Animate Dead, liches aren't made by that spell. Okay. Let's go through this step-by-step: 1) If alignment were based solely on intention, Liches wouldn't be Always Evil, because there's nothing about being a Lich *itself* that's particularly Evil. The argument about "selfishness" is dumb -- in real life, a person might want to extend their lifespan for any number of reasons, many of them unselfish. 2) Therefore, there's something about necromancy in D&D itself that makes you Evil, that's inherently Evil in the way it works. It even says this when it says to become a Lich you must do horribly Evil things in order to craft your phylactery (*What* Evil things? Why do the laws of magic require you to do Evil things to do something that's basically a form of using negative energy? Who knows?) 3) This means that Evil is its own thing, separate from intentions. I can want to become a Lich so I can fight for eternity to better humanity, but it doesn't matter. Lichdom is intrinsically Evil. Doing the things you have to do to become a Lich will make me Evil, no matter what my original intentions were. 4) Alignment transcends intention and choice. It, in fact, *corrupts* and *overrides* intention and choice. A Good person who gets bitten by a Vampire and rises, rises as an Evil creature (Vampires are Always Evil). 5) This means that there isn't any real contradiction in saying that a creature that lacks a mind and lacks intention can have an alignment, because alignment is this force that doesn't have much to do with intention. Spells, in D&D, are Evil. *Items* enchanted by Evil spells will detect as Evil. *Places* that have had unhallow cast on them can be Evil. Even some planes are Evil. By the way, I don't actually see the clause "Creatures with no Int score are always TN" in the rules. It says that Animals are always TN, but Animals actually *have* an Int score, and Undead creatures are not Animals (and by nature are opposed to the natural state Animals represent), so this is moot. In any case, I see Liches as *bolstering* my point, not undermining it. Liches and Vampires and whatnot are proof that undeath turns you Evil if you weren't Evil before, thanks to how it works. It actually bothers my real-life sense of morality *more* that a free-willed, sentient being can be "turned" Evil by some kind of magical force than that said magical force can make something wholly nonsentient that just is Evil without any conscious choice in the matter.
yrogerg 04-13-07, 09:05 PM	Pick up the 3.5 PHB, p. 32-33, and see how the text is quite different from the SRD you are quoting. It's the last two sentences of the section on Spontaneous Casting, starting on p 32, and ending on the top of p 33. The last sentence reads, "All Clerics of St. Cuthbert (god of retribution) and all nonevil Clerics of Obad-Hai (god of nature) convert prepared spells to cure spells, not inflict spells." One thing worth noting here is something stated in the entry for St. Cuthbert, page 108: Clerics of St. Cuthbert cannot be Evil. Clearly, St. Cuthbert cares about alignment. That said, this isn't the main boards, and this certainly isn't the Greyhawk Boards, so the specific proclivities of the individual deities of the Greyhawk pantheon shouldn't actually be relevant to a discussion of clerics and positive and negative energy in Eberron. Based on that *alone*, I'd hazard to say that the SRD's language on the issue is *far* more pertinent than the PHB's language, which necessarily implicates the gods presented in the PHB.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 09:08 PM	The point is that if undeath doesn't automatically imply some kind of evil force animating something, why are Liches Always Evil? That would be the caster and the lust for power that drove them into their own undeath. (Actually, is the rule that no Int score = TN actually in the rules? I don't see it anywhere. It does say that *animals* are always TN because they don't make moral choices, but mindless Undead are far from being natural animals. As are Lemures.) Well, look at that. Looks like another hatchet-job in the revamp. You're right, it's not there in 3.5. It actually makes a great deal more sense to me -- in real life terms -- that a mindless being can be mindlessly Evil because of the force that animates it than that a free-willed entity can have their will inexorably turned to Evil because of some magic they've come in contact with. In real-life terms, Mr "It's a fantasy game, real-life doesn't apply"? The fact that undeath can turn Liches Evil is *more* evidence of the idea that mindless Undead can be Evil, not less -- alignment is something that corrupts, overrides and destroys free will, not something dependent on free will. (Again, look at Lemures, or the whole concept of Outsiders with alignment subtypes in the first place -- beings who have no choice but to be Lawful or Good or Evil or Chaotic from the moment they pop into existence.) That always tag on alignments is also a recent addition. Sheesh, it's not "circular", okay? There *is* no objective truth outside the rules. It's pointless to argue about what's "really" true about undeath when no such thing exists. See above, Mr Kettle. What you've been saying is that the rules are "illogical", presumably because you can't think of any flavor for them that works, or something. I'm presenting flavor that works with the rules as they are. No, you're quoting chapter and verse and ignoring any possibility that there may be any way the rest of us might actually want to think about this matter. There's nothing illogical about it. You may not like it, but disliking it is not the same as saying it "doesn't work" and "should be changed". Continuity in the rules is logical or illogical. The discussion was over the [Evil] tag on the spell when other necromancies don't carry it. All should have it or none, to make the rules uniform and therefore logical. My likes or dislikes are irrelevant in this regard and so are yours. *shrug* It wasn't necessary for my point. If you want me to retract it, fine. Retracted. You score lots of points. Dingdingding. Your point was irrelevant, we were discussing possible alternatives to the RAW. your point of quoting the RAW was moot. Now if you don't mind, there are certainly more points that could be made that don't involve quoting the rule we were discussing.
yrogerg 04-13-07, 09:13 PM	No, in those cases you're preventing death, not continuing to exist after your body has succumbed to it's final end. In all the cases you mention another prevents your death by trying to return you to life. All things die eventually, by doing something that could allow you to die but continue to exist would be considered somewhat selfish, couldn't it? Eberron has Deathless. Deathless, first presented in the BoED, are undead powered by positive energy and posessing the Always Good alignment descriptor. None of these things have been changed for the inclusion of Deathless in Eberron. Therefore, your argument above has *nothing* to do with the alignment of undead in Eberron. After all, if continuing your life after death *was* fundamentally selfish, in Eberron, at least (we *are* still in the Eberron boards, right?) the Undying Court would be a LE force in the world.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 09:24 PM	After all, if continuing your life after death *was* fundamentally selfish, in Eberron, at least (we *are* still in the Eberron boards, right?) the Undying Court would be a LE force in the world. I was referring specifically to liches. The holy grail of Arctan's argument why undead are wholly evil and Inflict spells are apparently perfectly safe for good clerics to cast liberally. He asked why liches are evil and I was trying to point out that it could just be they were evil before undeath.
yrogerg 04-13-07, 09:34 PM	I was referring specifically to liches. The holy grail of Arctan's argument why undead are wholly evil and Inflict spells are apparently perfectly safe for good clerics to cast liberally. At the point you started making more general statments about "the greedy act of extending his existance beyond death", you weren't talking solely about liches anymore; you were talking about the conscious choice to extend one's life beyond death, a choice which is *not* presented as Evil by definition, at least not beyond the specific means taken to do so.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 09:34 PM	One thing worth noting here is something stated in the entry for St. Cuthbert, page 108: Clerics of St. Cuthbert cannot be Evil. Clearly, St. Cuthbert cares about alignment. Yeah, heh. Serves me right for trying to argue without my books, or I could've shot this down very quickly. So, to refresh my memory, basically it means that St. Cuthbert can have LG and LN Clerics, while a just plain LG deity like Moradin can have LG, LN or NG Clerics. In other words, while Cuthbert is technically LN himself, his church turns out to just be a Lawful Good church that's more Lawful than Good. Makes sense to me. That said, this isn't the main boards, and this certainly isn't the Greyhawk Boards, so the specific proclivities of the individual deities of the Greyhawk pantheon shouldn't actually be relevant to a discussion of clerics and positive and negative energy in Eberron. Based on that *alone*, I'd hazard to say that the SRD's language on the issue is *far* more pertinent than the PHB's language, which necessarily implicates the gods presented in the PHB. Yes. Of course, Eberron is all about the fact that Evil people can do Good things and vice versa. At least Clerics can, if not Paladins. Cardinal Krozen can, in fact, Turn Undead all day and still be Evil because of the fact that he is an evil bastard. Just as he can give thousands of gold to orphans every day and still be Evil because of the fact that he is an evil bastard. (I wouldn't be surprised if he spent his life doing exactly that at various points in the story.) Just as Turning Undead, in core D&D, doesn't make up for the fact that an LN Cleric of St. Cuthbert is kind of a judgmental ass.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 09:35 PM	I was referring specifically to liches. The holy grail of Arctan's argument why undead are wholly evil and Inflict spells are apparently perfectly safe for good clerics to cast liberally. It's not a holy grail, just an example. Detect evil might be more of a holy grail, except that, conveniently, any part of the rules that refers *specifically* to undeath being linked to Evil in general you immediately lump into the set of rules you're trying to "question", which, after all, means that this is something that becomes impossible to argue for based on rules.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 09:40 PM	At the point you started making more general statments about "the greedy act of extending his existance beyond death", you weren't talking solely about liches anymore; you were talking about the conscious choice to extend one's life beyond death, a choice which is *not* presented as Evil by definition, at least not beyond the specific means taken to do so. And unless the Undying are greedy, selfish beings, their alignment wouldn't be evil, would it? When they adopt the undying mantle, they're doing it for the good of their people, culture and society. That kind of self-sacrifice isn't exactly common among the people that tend to make themselves into liches.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 09:51 PM	Detect evil might be more of a holy grail, except that, conveniently, any part of the rules that refers *specifically* to undeath being linked to Evil in general you immediately lump into the set of rules you're trying to "question", which, after all, means that this is something that becomes impossible to argue for based on rules. No, that's where you would be wrong. Detect Evil would work just fine on the evil cleric or necromancer that was using animate dead to raise an army of skeletons for evil purposes. It would even pick up the trace of evil that the caster left on his minions. But the skeleton that a good cleric animated to help bury the bodies of plague victims wouldn't, because the caster was good and his intentions were good when he cast the spell. Detect good would register that one though. Sure they both use the same energy, but it's not the energy that makes the alignment, it's the circumstances of the animation. This started out as a discussion about possible alternatives to the traditional* rules concerning Animate Dead and alignment. *sort of. The [Evil] tag was added in the newer editions of the game and in my opinion was not one of their better changes.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 09:51 PM	That would be the caster and the lust for power that drove them into their own undeath. *shrug* See, I'd actually rather say that the magic itself is Evil than make blanket statements about how the magic itself logically implies doing Good or Evil things, when it doesn't. I would, in other words, say that alignment either has to be this metaphysical thing that's based on worlds of folklore and legend where things can have intrinsic moral properties, or else throw it out completely. D&D alignment aligns very poorly with a modern relativist or subjectivist or even absolutist utilitarian view of morals. Well, look at that. Looks like another hatchet-job in the revamp. You're right, it's not there in 3.5. If by "hatchet-job" you mean "consciously chosen change in the rules", sure. Are we going to bring up edition wars nonsense again? I'm not saying that older editions are *inferior* to this edition. I'm saying that things that were true in older editions are *no longer true* in this edition, which is why they're older editions. You can houserule them back in if you like. It doesn't make you automatically right. In real-life terms, Mr "It's a fantasy game, real-life doesn't apply"? Yes, because you're the one who keeps arguing about how things the game actually *says* can't be true based on real-life logic. If you're going to make fun of me for trying to meet you on that ground, then I can just go back to quoting "chapter and verse" at you. I'm saying why, even from my own, real-life persepective, the idea of Always Evil *mindless* beings actually makes far more sense to me than that of Always Evil sentient beings, even though I accept both exist in D&D. And I find it backwards that you seem to find mindlessly Evil beings to stick in your craw so strongly -- isn't it *more* of a deviation from what we'd expect in real life to talk about sentient beings who are automatically Evil than non-sentient ones? That always tag on alignments is also a recent addition. ...So? It's there now. See above, Mr Kettle. That's actually my point. There's this weird creepy aura over this thread of arguing about what's "really" true and what's "really" not true, which I think it'd be best to abandon. If you *like* what older editions did better than what the current edition does, then fine, use those older rules. But the fact that older editions and the current edition contradict each other does *not* mean that the current edition "makes no sense". Indeed, I actually see it as them trying to clear up vaguely contradictory things in older editions, like undead consistently reacting the way evil things would to Good Clerics' clerical abilities despite supposedly being "neutral". No, you're quoting chapter and verse and ignoring any possibility that there may be any way the rest of us might actually want to think about this matter. Dude. Look. The rules say a certain thing. I find that it isn't logically contradictory, and that it implies a certain kind of flavor that I like. You don't like it. Fine. However, this thread quickly got taken over by people who also don't like it saying that the existing flavor is WRONG or ILLOGICAL or CONTRADICTORY, all things I take exception to. If you want to *make up* a setting or houserule supplement based on undeath lacking any alignment classifications, then go right ahead. I will point out to you that in order to be truly consistent you'll have to change things that have been part of the game since the beginning, like Clerics' ability to Turn Undead or the alignment descriptors on sentient undead (at least, that's what I'd change to make it consistent from my POV). But stop telling me I'm "wrong" and that I don't have enough "evidence" to "prove" my point. Continuity in the rules is logical or illogical. The discussion was over the [Evil] tag on the spell when other necromancies don't carry it. All should have it or none, to make the rules uniform and therefore logical. My likes or dislikes are irrelevant in this regard and so are yours. Nonsense. Why is it the case that if one spell is Evil, that means every spell in the *school* should be Evil? Since when is the school the unifying element for all spells? Schools are huge, and just give vague descriptions of what kind of thing a spell does. The other primary source of alignment descriptors, Conjuration (summoning) or (calling) spells, explicitly violates this rule. The *same spell* can have a different descriptor depending on what kind of creature you summon with it. (NOT what use you put it to -- you can easily summon a Celestial Badger and have it strangle a baby.) I think the explanation I gave -- "Evil Necromantic spells are ones which channel negative energy onto the Prime Material plane for longer than an instant, or on a very large scale" -- works. It's completely consistent with which Necromancy spells are labeled [Evil] and which ones aren't. You may think that that statement is *wrong* and that that *shouldn't* be true, but it's nonetheless *consistent* with what the rules are. Your point was irrelevant, we were discussing possible alternatives to the RAW. your point of quoting the RAW was moot. Now if you don't mind, there are certainly more points that could be made that don't involve quoting the rule we were discussing. You were discussing possible alternatives to the RAW and saying that the RAW were *wrong* and *inconsistent*. This is the problem -- the OP was actually looking for people to help him *understand* the RAW and what kind of internal logic they make in the game world, and the thread started with people gamely trying to explain the existing game rules. Then it quickly drifted to people saying the game rules were irredeemable and instead coming up with their own explanations and touting them as fact -- the worst offender being you, since the post I originally replied to was one stating -- AS A FACT -- that skeletons are just "a kind of bone construct" and that undead take the alignment of their creator. (At a point in the thread in which the existing rule that skeletons are Always Evil hadn't yet been broached.) If all you want to do is discuss houserules, I'm perfectly willing to join in on that. We *have* brought up several sets of houserules in the thread already. What annoys me is people saying that their particular set of houserules is *right* and should replace all the others. ...And, okay, it particularly annoys me in this instance because there's an undertone of real-world moral condemnation to it, to saying that if I want to play in a game where Necromancy is inherently "black magic" I don't "understand" that morality derives from intention, as opposed to simply wanting to play a game where that isn't true.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 09:57 PM	No, that's where you would be wrong. Detect Evil would work just fine on the evil cleric or necromancer that was using animate dead to raise an army of skeletons for evil purposes. It would even pick up the trace of evil that the caster left on his minions. But the skeleton that a good cleric animated to help bury the bodies of plague victims wouldn't, because the caster was good and his intentions were good when he cast the spell. Detect good would register that one though. Sure they both use the same energy, but it's not the energy that makes the alignment, it's the circumstances of the animation. This started out as a discussion about possible alternatives to the traditional* rules concerning Animate Dead and alignment. I'm saying that detect evil as it is now is a "holy grail" in the sense that the rules as they are now make it pretty clear that detect evil detects undead, regardless of the undead's own alignment (if it's sentient) and regardless of who made it. If you want to change that and make undead a kind of homunculus, go ahead. (Although if I were houseruling this way I'd just fall back on skeletons being TN, because really, homunculi's alignment in the current game only makes sense because they're literally a piece of the creator given consciousness. A purely "bone construct" skeleton would be just as TN as a golem is, unless you give them that whole familiar-like link that homunculi have. Moreover, saying "time of creation" creates the troubling implication that I can make a bunch of skeletons in my carefree Chaotic Good youth, become corrupted to Evil later on, and my skeletons will still detect as CG while I'm ordering them to tie up the civilians and behead them. You'd probably rather have the skeletons change alignment as I change alignment, if that's what you want to do, and that would require that kind of empathic link.) *sort of. The [Evil] tag was added in the newer editions of the game and in my opinion was not one of their better changes. Okay. In my opinion they were just labelling something that the main game materials had always kind of tacitly assumed, stuff players did with it notwithstanding. Hasn't it always been the case that gods like Pelor and St. Cuthbert really loathed the undead and nasty folk like Vecna, Orcus and Erythnul were all over it?
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 10:06 PM	...And, okay, it particularly annoys me in this instance because there's an undertone of real-world moral condemnation to it, to saying that if I want to play in a game where Necromancy is inherently "black magic" I don't "understand" that morality derives from intention, as opposed to simply wanting to play a game where that isn't true. Dude, this is Eberron. I may be completely off-base here, but this is a game world where the old Voudoun magical rules should find a place more than any other game world out there. One of the principal rules of Voodoo is that you reap what you sow. A character animating a body to serve isn't evil in itself unless the motivation of the caster makes it that way. That was the point I was trying to get across. With eberron, I would even go so far as calling that simple 3rd level necromancy neutral and the others good or evil. It gives that whole "fork in the road" moral choice later when the possibility of making thinking undead is there. Making undead or undying should be aligned. Animating a skeleton, that's just a parlor trick. Although it is a pretty powerful parlor trick.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 10:08 PM	I was referring specifically to liches. The holy grail of Arctan's argument why undead are wholly evil and Inflict spells are apparently perfectly safe for good clerics to cast liberally. He asked why liches are evil and I was trying to point out that it could just be they were evil before undeath. One last addendum: Okay, what about Wights? They're the best example -- you don't have to *do* anything Evil to be killed by an enervation spell, and yet once you are, you rise as a really unfriendly guy who feels the need to go around energy draining other people to death and generally being nasty and Chaotic Evil. Same deal with Vampires, Ghouls, etc. Blaming it on the "hunger" doesn't mean anything in particular. It just specifies the *mechanism* by which being undead tends, generally, to make you an Evil person who hurts people. The Evil still spreads as an *infection*, not because of any choices you make. (As does Evil in the form of a Werewolf's bite, or Good in the form of a Werebear's.)
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 10:12 PM	If you want to change that and make undead a kind of homunculus, go ahead. (Although if I were houseruling this way I'd just fall back on skeletons being TN, because really, homunculi's alignment in the current game only makes sense because they're literally a piece of the creator given consciousness. A purely "bone construct" skeleton would be just as TN as a golem is, unless you give them that whole familiar-like link that homunculi have. The caster can control their own undead so there is a bit of a link there. I would still make them mirror their creator in alignment just for the simple fact that it makes it easier.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 10:14 PM	Dude, this is Eberron. I may be completely off-base here, but this is a game world where the old Voudoun magical rules should find a place more than any other game world out there. One of the principal rules of Voodoo is that you reap what you sow. A character animating a body to serve isn't evil in itself unless the caster makes it that way. That was the point I was trying to get across. If you want to houserule that, go right ahead. It'd be interesting. Although Keith Baker did say that Eberron was not intended to actually replace any of D&D's rules about alignment except the ones specifically noted -- and, indeed, it doesn't. With eberron, I would even go so far as calling that simple 3rd level necromancy neutral and the others good or evil. It gives that whole "fork in the road" moral choice later when the possibility of making thinking undead is there. Making undead or undying should be aligned. Animating a skeleton, that's just a parlor trick. Although it is a pretty powerful parlor trick. Skeletons, under existing rules, are Undead, though you could make a Deathless version of Skeletons that were the same except Good-aligned. At least you're open to the possibility of things being intrinsically aligned actions instead of intention and results deciding all. (Like, what if I'm a TN Artificer who happens to stumble across a scroll of create greater undead along with a scroll of control undead, and making a Wraith is the only way I can think of with the resources I have to get into the locked room where the BBEG is right now, about to activate the eldritch machine and kill everyone?) I mean, it's pretty obvious, no matter what, that the *end result* of killing the BBEG is a Good act. The question is whether you accept that making the Wraith is itself also an intrinsically Evil act.
RogueElement 04-13-07, 10:18 PM	No, in those cases you're preventing death, not continuing to exist after your body has succumbed to it's final end. In all the cases you mention another prevents your death by trying to return you to life. All things die eventually, by doing something that could allow you to die but continue to exist would be considered somewhat selfish, couldn't it? That is actually incorrect, there are many life forms in real life that do not suffer from deterioration due to aging and are effectively immortal. No one ever dies of "old age": you die from specific causes such as heart failure, stroke, trauma, or organ failure. What we call "aging" is just the accumulation of malfunctioning biological processes. In D&D there are many, many creatures that are immortal and many of them are pure Good. Liches are not Evil because they become immortal.
goblin_pride 04-13-07, 10:23 PM	Skeletons, under existing rules, are Undead, though you could make a Deathless version of Skeletons that were the same except Good-aligned. There's the rub. Animate Dead doesn't instill a soul, spirit or whatever into the bones. It just makes the body get up and walk around. The fact that it only does what you tell it to makes me think that it shouldn't be intrinsically evil any more than an animated table should. The reason it got the [Evil] tag is because for some reason the mindless undead got lumped into the undead category when they could just as easily have been lumped into the same category as other animated objects.
ArcTan 04-13-07, 11:49 PM	There's the rub. Animate Dead doesn't instill a soul, spirit or whatever into the bones. It just makes the body get up and walk around. The fact that it only does what you tell it to makes me think that it shouldn't be intrinsically evil any more than an animated table should. The reason it got the [Evil] tag is because for some reason the mindless undead got lumped into the undead category when they could just as easily have been lumped into the same category as other animated objects. Well, now, you can't blame 3.5 for that. Skeletons and Zombies have been Undead as opposed to Constructs for as long as D&D's been around. Was there any edition that made animating Skeletons a different *kind* of magic from creating greater Undead servitors? That's the thing -- I don't think it would've been "just as easy", it would've been a major shift in D&D to make Skeletons creatures of the Construct type. You would've definitely heard an outcry had that change actually been made. Just because they have Int -- doesn't mean, in my mind, that they have no "soul, spirit or whatever" -- indeed, the presence of a "soul, spirit or whatever" is what justifies their being Undead at all, to me. And to me the whole deal about what happens to the soul of a Skeleton when it's animated is very shaky. Yeah, I know we have rules in the SRD talking about how petitioners are created and there's no explicit rule saying that petitioners *are* affected by animate dead, but that's just because it doesn't talk about Undead at all. Take it literally and create greater undead or rising as a Vampire *also* has no effect on the petitioner, meaning you've got a dude hanging out in the afterlife here and a sentient being, seemingly come out of nowhere, over there. If you accept, as most people do, that sentient undead *do* have their original soul bound to them, then that means there *is* something that interrupts the normal process of being a petitioner for such dead souls. And who's to say it doesn't apply to mindless undead as much as sentient ones? (It's not like there isn't precedent for being made to animate a being with different mental ability scores from your own. Elementals are Int 3 but the Golems they animate are Int --. Many Undead templates change your mental scores when you acquire them, including the core Ghost, which bumps up your Cha -- Ghosts are more forceful and imperious than the people they were in life.) Ultimately the rules and the flavor are silent on the matter -- nothing's been said about petitioners, AFAIK, since the 3.0 Manual of the Planes. The fact is that even true resurrection can't resurrect you if there's an undead version of you moving around, even a Skeleton or a Zombie (and it has nothing to do with the body -- true res is completely independent of bodies). That means *something*. Even if the petitioner *isn't* literally bound into the Skeleton, *something* important of the petitioner is bound there that prevents him from reattaining true life so long as it's bound. (Remember that a petitioner loses a great deal of its original life when it becomes a petitioner, dropping down to a low-level Outsider.) Which makes sense, after all. There's got to be a *reason* that making bones move around is possible with such a low-level spell but making wooden or stone replicas of bones is not. Why animate objects can sort of do the same thing, but requires far more magic and is far more difficult to make permanent. You *can* cast animate objects on a corpse, and it will make an animated corpse, but the resulting 2 HD Construct creature is a lot less effective than a Skeleton -- tellingly, the Skeleton keeps a lot of the characteristics that were only properties of the Skeleton when it was a living thing, like its racial hit dice and its Str and Dex scores. This *doesn't make sense* if the Skeleton is just a kind of construct that the magic makes walk around. The magic doesn't care what the Str score of the corpse was when it was alive -- now that the corpse is dead, it doesn't *have* a Str score (especially as a Skeleton with all the muscle tissue gone). It doesn't *have* HD. As the OP points out, Skeletons somehow "remember" their old weapon proficiencies, which would be impossible if the Skeleton was just a lump of stuff being moved around by magic, with nothing to do with the living individual. Indeed, animate objects gives an animated corpse stats consistent with a big lump of stuff that can be moved around, abilities solely determined by the magic that animates it, retaining *nothing* from the base creature other than size, shape, and hardness -- but not animate dead. Zombies and Skeletons *retain* something from the previously living creature, and that's where the whole "It's inherently tapping into the cycle of life and death and perverting it with negative energy" thing comes from. You have to take that into account if you're going to change it -- right now, Skeletons are *not* Bone Golems, and making them so would involve changing or at least dealing with inconsistencies in the way they work.
yrogerg 04-14-07, 12:12 AM	nm
Soltares 04-15-07, 03:28 AM	ArcTan - I think the explanation I gave -- "Evil Necromantic spells are ones which channel negative energy onto the Prime Material plane for longer than an instant, or on a very large scale" -- works. It's completely consistent with which Necromancy spells are labeled [Evil] and which ones aren't. Except, say, Death Knell, which is instantaneous, and only affects a single creature, but is still oh-so-obviously evil. It doesn't fit your criteria, and yet the idea of casting a spell to suck out a dying creatures life-force for a quick pick-me-up is really obviously evil. How about Bless Weapon? 1 minute / level, certainly 'longer than an instant' and it's totally alignment free. Perhaps the SRD will correct these inconsistencies as well. I'm an old fogey and still purchase the rule-books, which will apparently always put me at a disadvantage against those who rely on the free internet copies. Maybe they'll do something about Deathwatch, while they're at it. That's about the least 'evil' [Evil] spell in existence... (Apparently, *diagnosing* who needs healing most urgently is an unconscionable act. Who knew?) I've noticed that you've added yet another qualifier ('or on a very large scale') to your 'explanation' rationalizing the changes and why they might make some sort of consistent sense, which you are bravely attempting to do in the absence of any actual rules to the effect, and in the face of a few annoying inconsistencies in implementation. It might indeed by a fine Rule Zero, but it's not stated anywhere that I can find in the rules. [Ironically, 1st Ed Mummies were creatures of *positive energy,* under the notion that the life-generating positive material plane was more suitable as empowering force for a creature that *generating life within itself.* Nowadays, through the Mummy, or the Contagion spell, the life-inhospitable, energy-draining negative plane can *create life!* Since positive energy can also kill, via the infamous 'death by awesome,' I guess that follows.] ArcTan - In any case, earlier editions did make it relatively clear that St. Cuthbert is a LN(G) god rather than a just plain LN god (makes his home on Arcadia rather than Mechanus, etc.), Oh no, if you can summarily dismiss anything I say from 3.0 that *hasn't been updated and replaced* in 3.5, then I feel very comfortable summarily dismissing anything from 3.0 that you bring up that *has been replaced.*
ArcTan 04-15-07, 04:13 AM	Except, say, Death Knell, which is instantaneous, and only affects a single creature, but is still oh-so-obviously evil. It doesn't fit your criteria, and yet the idea of casting a spell to suck out a dying creatures life-force for a quick pick-me-up is really obviously evil. How about Bless Weapon? 1 minute / level, certainly 'longer than an instant' and it's totally alignment free. Death knell gives you temporary HP. And it's actually quite clear and consistent that temporary HP from energy drain or similar effects involves negative energy -- given that all the creatures who can do it are negative-energy Undead. The spell effect itself is instantaneous, but you've got negative energy in your body as long as you've got those temporary HP. This, by the way, is the obvious (to me) reason why death knell is [Evil] but enervation and mass inflict spells aren't -- those spells may use negative energy to deal damage, but the negative energy doesn't linger in your body afterwards. (And it's interesting that it doesn't -- the Energy Drain special attack that enervation and energy drain mimic almost always gives temp HP when you see it on an Undead monster, but the spells don't -- a factor they probably decided to keep in order to keep the spells Neutral.) And I see bless weapon as an example of the scale thing we were talking about with cure and inflict spells. You'll notice that the Paladin's next highest bless weapon-like spell, holy sword, *is* [Good]. Perhaps the SRD will correct these inconsistencies as well. I'm an old fogey and still purchase the rule-books, which will apparently always put me at a disadvantage against those who rely on the free internet copies. Maybe they'll do something about Deathwatch, while they're at it. That's about the least 'evil' [Evil] spell in existence... (Apparently, *diagnosing* who needs healing most urgently is an unconscionable act. Who knew?) We've been over this. [Evil] spells have nothing to do with Evil acts. If the point were that something were an Evil *act*, it wouldn't need the spell descriptor at all. Using telekinesis to drop a stone block on an orphan is clearly Evil, and using it to drop a stone block on the Nazi who's going to kill the orphan is clearly Good. Using animate dead to use a skeleton to kill an orphan is Evil, and using it to kill the murderer is Good. None of this has anything to do with the *magic* involved, which can be Good or Evil regardless of what you use it for. The idea of inherently Good or Evil magic is not exactly something foreign to fantasy. In the Wheel of Time, saidin is tainted and turns you bloodthirsty and insane even if you use it to heal babies and make crops grow. Using the Dark Side to fight bad guys and save the world does not make using the Dark Side okay, in Star Wars. And so on. Also, I have a lot of books, that are at my house on the other coast of the country right now. If we can stop with the ad hominems about people who don't own books, I'd appreciate it. I've noticed that you've added yet another qualifier ('or on a very large scale') to your 'explanation' rationalizing the changes and why they might make some sort of consistent sense, which you are bravely attempting to do in the absence of any actual rules to the effect, and in the face of a few annoying inconsistencies in implementation. It might indeed by a fine Rule Zero, but it's not stated anywhere that I can find in the rules. *sigh* Well, if it comes right down to it, what's so bad about saying that "Some spells are Evil because the Laws of Magic and the gods all say so"? Or "It's an observable empirical fact, long noted by the sages of this world, that someone who casts these particular spells all the time will slowly slide into Evil behavior"? I'm perfectly fine with saying either of those. It is my *opinion* that if you look at the spells they chose to put the [Evil] descriptor on, the correlation is that [Evil] spells tend to use lots of negative energy. If you reject that, fine. [Ironically, 1st Ed Mummies were creatures of *positive energy,* under the notion that the life-generating positive material plane was more suitable as empowering force for a creature that *generating life within itself.* Nowadays, through the Mummy, or the Contagion spell, the life-inhospitable, energy-draining negative plane can *create life!* Since positive energy can also kill, via the infamous 'death by awesome,' I guess that follows.] D&D doesn't have to follow real-life understanding of what disease is, y'know. The medieval view of disease was that diseases were malign spirits or forces that existed only to suck out and destroy the real life-force of real living things -- the idea that disease germs are living things in the same way that we're alive would've been laughable to them. ...And hey, in real life they were wrong, but in D&D they're *right*. How about that. What a terrible sin, for a high fantasy game based on medieval tropes to occasionally treat a medieval idea as true. Oh no, if you can summarily dismiss anything I say from 3.0 that *hasn't been updated and replaced* in 3.5, then I feel very comfortable summarily dismissing anything from 3.0 that you bring up that *has been replaced.* You mean the St. Cuthbert/Arcadia thing? Go ahead and dismiss it. It was my fault for forgetting what yrogerg brought up -- your hypothetical LE Cleric of St. Cuthbert DOESN'T EXIST, so that entire point is moot. ...And what, exactly, did I "summarily dismiss from 3.0 that hasn't been updated and replaced"? Does replacing "Neutral" with "Always Evil" on the stat block for Skeletons and Zombies not count as updating and replacing? Because that's the only thing I've "summarily dismissed" -- insofar as I'm treating them changing that as an intentional change, and not some horrible mistake snuck in by communist spies while the Good and True D&D Designers were napping. And since when has MotP been "updated and replaced" for 3.5? Planar Handbook is not a "replacement" of MotP in any sense. Planar Handbook is to Manual of the Planes as the Player's Guide to Eberron is to the Eberron Campaign Setting. In any case, if they ever do publish a 3.5 supplement that says "St. Cuthbert doesn't have a Good bone in his body, and he lives on Mechanus, not Arcadia, and the fact that his Clerics Turn Undead rather than Rebuke Undead is completely arbitrary", I'll acknowledge that my point doesn't stand. Unlike people who keep saying that the designers just must've been drunk or high or something when they wrote "Always Evil" in the Skeleton stat block, and neglected to actually say "Mindless creatures are always True Neutral" in the 3.5 MM.
yrogerg 04-15-07, 08:42 AM	How about Bless Weapon? 1 minute / level, certainly 'longer than an instant' and it's totally alignment free. Umm, what about it? What does Bless Weapon have to do with Positive Energy? I've never seen that mentioned anywhere in its description. Heck, most Undead have DR X/Magic, not DR X/Good.Maybe they'll do something about Deathwatch, while they're at it. That's about the least 'evil' [Evil] spell in existence... (Apparently, *diagnosing* who needs healing most urgently is an unconscionable act. Who knew?) Well, as you point out, it definitely doesn't make sense for Deathwatch to be Evil on its own merits (and, hey, I honestly am in the camp whom would have no problem houseruling it out of Evilland). Thing is, the next step -even before houserules, IMO- is questioning it: why did the designers make it Evil? Does there exist a fairly consistent design reason (flavor or mechanics) for why it could be Evil? Does it affect game balance? (And finally,) Given all those things, do I agree with the designer's decision? By simply saying, "It's inconsistent, I reject it" you're kinda jumping past those first three questions and answering the last one first. I've noticed that you've added yet another qualifier ('or on a very large scale') to your 'explanation' rationalizing the changes and why they might make some sort of consistent sense, which you are bravely attempting to do in the absence of any actual rules to the effect, and in the face of a few annoying inconsistencies in implementation. It might indeed by a fine Rule Zero, but it's not stated anywhere that I can find in the rules. 1) That qualifier's been there the whole time, going back at least to my first post in this thread. 2) It's not a Rule 0 if it only affects the world of flavor. In that case, it's called "Elaboration of existing flavor", since it doesn't actually affect the mechanics of the game. This is important, because it is you who are arguing for Rule 0 and against RAW here; Arctan and I are both arguing that the RAW *can* be taken as self-consistent, if you don't mind elaborating on the non-rules flavor a little bit. By contrast, saying "It doesn't make sense for Animate Dead/Deathwatch/Clerics that channel negative energy to be Evil, so I'm going to reject all of those, and everything relating to undeath and negative energy are all neutral now" *IS* an example of exercising Rule 0. [Ironically, 1st Ed Mummies were creatures of *positive energy,* under the notion that the life-generating positive material plane was more suitable as empowering force for a creature that *generating life within itself.* Nowadays, through the Mummy, or the Contagion spell, the life-inhospitable, energy-draining negative plane can *create life!* Right, In RL, decay and disease are caused by microbes. Fortunately for the D&D rules, D&D is not RL, and there's no reason to assume that microbes exist. Since positive energy can also kill, via the infamous 'death by awesome,' I guess that follows.] And again, it bears noting, since we are still on the EBERRON boards, that "death by awesome" can't happen in Irian.
ArcTan 04-15-07, 05:55 PM	Umm, what about it? What does Bless Weapon have to do with Positive Energy? I've never seen that mentioned anywhere in its description. Heck, most Undead have DR X/Magic, not DR X/Good. Well, holy sword is a [Good] spell, and most spells that refer specifically to alignment do have the alignment descriptor, like protection from evil. However, I have no problem with either saying bless weapon is too weak an application of "Good energy" to not matter, or else saying one should houserule bless weapon to be [Good]. Well, as you point out, it definitely doesn't make sense for Deathwatch to be Evil on its own merits (and, hey, I honestly am in the camp whom would have no problem houseruling it out of Evilland). Thing is, the next step -even before houserules, IMO- is questioning it: why did the designers make it Evil? Does there exist a fairly consistent design reason (flavor or mechanics) for why it could be Evil? Does it affect game balance? (And finally,) Given all those things, do I agree with the designer's decision? By simply saying, "It's inconsistent, I reject it" you're kinda jumping past those first three questions and answering the last one first. Yeah. My problem is and always has been with the kneejerk nature of this disagreement, not the disagreement itself. There's genuine *anger* being directed at the idea of Undeath = Evil, to the point of accusing people who like that idea (including, presumably, the 3.5 designers) of having a shallow view of morality in real life, and I don't see what the point of that is. 1) That qualifier's been there the whole time, going back at least to my first post in this thread. 2) It's not a Rule 0 if it only affects the world of flavor. In that case, it's called "Elaboration of existing flavor", since it doesn't actually affect the mechanics of the game. This is important, because it is you who are arguing for Rule 0 and against RAW here; Arctan and I are both arguing that the RAW *can* be taken as self-consistent, if you don't mind elaborating on the non-rules flavor a little bit. By contrast, saying "It doesn't make sense for Animate Dead/Deathwatch/Clerics that channel negative energy to be Evil, so I'm going to reject all of those, and everything relating to undeath and negative energy are all neutral now" *IS* an example of exercising Rule 0. Yes. See, in my mind, actually changing the mechanics to reflect everything goblin_pride has said would involve changing *tons* of things. Resurrection spells would no longer be affected by whether your body had been raised as a Zombie (eliminating one of the more fun tricks Necromancers used to be able to resort to to prevent an enemy from coming back). Undead would no longer have their own category in the detect evil spell. Turning and Rebuking would now be something *any* Cleric can pick at will regardless of their or their deity's alignment. If the [Evil] descriptor goes away entirely, that changes the spell list of a lot of Clerics in the game. It begs the question of what we do with the clearly alignment-linked spells, like holy word. (Keep in mind that, despite what has been claimed, holy word is no more automatically useful for a Good *purpose* than any other spell -- it can be used to murder Neutral villagers en masse, for instance.) The fact that almost all sentient Undead are Evil now becomes *inconsistent* with the "Undeath is merely Neutral" flavor. The distinction between Deathless and Undead becomes pointless and should just be removed. If goblin_pride is really right about Skeletons and Zombies being a kind of Construct, then they don't retain *any* properties from their base creature at all. Etc. By contrast, even if you think the current rules *are* inconsistent, it's *so much easier* to Rule Zero the other way. The one, single example we've gotten of "inconsistency" is that the NE and PE Planes are Neutral -- well, just change that, then. Slap "minor good-dominant" (or "major good-dominant", if you prefer) on the PE Plane and "minor evil-dominant" on the NE Plane. Who cares? How often do your players go there, anyway? Remember that those planes being Neutral is an artifact of the *3.0* Manual of the Planes, which, as we've been reminded several times, has not yet been updated to a 3.5 version. To me, this is a much smaller, less blatant houserule than removing the [Evil] descriptor. This, plus cleaning up the lists a little bit, maybe, if you insist, adding enervation and energy drain to [Evil] and taking away deathwatch, retains consistency just fine. FWIW, I like that deathwatch is [Evil] when it comes to balance purposes -- to me, the point of this is that the default campaign setting of most worlds assumes that the "civilized world" is largely Good, in name if not in deed, and so people who openly embrace Evil deities or Evil philosophies will be shunned and persecuted. In return they get the benefit of greater personal power than Good folks have access to, with some nifty nice-but-not-necessary spells to beef up their Clerical spell list. Deathwatch is a good example of a nice-but-not-necessary spell (really useful basic utility spell, but you can get by without it), whereas by contrast preventing Evil Clerics from ever casting cure spells just becomes a backhanded way of saying "Don't be Evil", just like LA is a backhanded way of saying "Players aren't allowed to be Mind Flayers". Right, In RL, decay and disease are caused by microbes. Fortunately for the D&D rules, D&D is not RL, and there's no reason to assume that microbes exist. Especially since the MM entry for Mummy Rot specifically says that Mummy Rot is *really* a "powerful curse", not a disease as such. And again, it bears noting, since we are still on the EBERRON boards, that "death by awesome" can't happen in Irian. Also, that Eberron's NE Plane, Mabar, has a huge imbalance toward nasty Evil fiends who would live in the Hells or the Abyss in core D&D, yet the plane itself is Neutral -- something of an inconsistency in my view, though YMMV.
Soltares 04-19-07, 02:35 AM	This, by the way, is the obvious (to me) reason why death knell is [Evil] but enervation and mass inflict spells aren't -- those spells may use negative energy to deal damage, but the negative energy doesn't linger in your body afterwards. Again, must be an SRD update thing. In my copy of the 3.5 PHB, Enervation lingers in the body for caster level in *hours* (maximum 15), which means that it's definitely a 'long-lasting' manifestation of negative energy, and thus eligible for your definition of 'evil.' Certainly longer-lasting than Death Knell's temporary hit points! But I'm sure an SRD quote is around the corner telling me that this too has changed, and your theory is yet again flawless.
Dragom 04-19-07, 03:14 AM	Necromancy from the Voodoo Zombies of Jamaicha to the grave robbing Doctor Frakenstien to the detail less Necromancer refered to in Tolkiens "The Hobbit" is largely accepted as an evil act or acts of evil people. And we do have good necromancy in Eberron, but that is the domain of the deathless and their sicophants. As you brawl over things I would like to gesture towards the key points. An acceptable answer as to how undead function. And Mindless Deathless? Possible from a flavour standpoint? I'm not saying stop bitting and clawing at each other. Just try a little over to the left.
yrogerg 04-19-07, 07:40 AM	Again, must be an SRD update thing.A lot of it might have to do with the fact that the SRD includes the latest errata, but your copy of the PHB doesn't. In my copy of the 3.5 PHB, Enervation lingers in the body for caster level in *hours* (maximum 15), which means that it's definitely a 'long-lasting' manifestation of negative energy, and thus eligible for your definition of 'evil.' Certainly longer-lasting than Death Knell's temporary hit points! I hit you with a sword, and the "effects" last for hours, as well. *Please* tell me you can see the difference between this and what Arctan was talking about?
yrogerg 04-19-07, 07:42 AM	Well, holy sword is a [Good] spell, and most spells that refer specifically to alignment do have the alignment descriptor, like protection from evil. However, I have no problem with either saying bless weapon is too weak an application of "Good energy" to not matter, or else saying one should houserule bless weapon to be [Good]. Err, okay. My main point is that Bless Weapon has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion of scale as it applies to the alignment of positive or negative energy. Y'know, since Bless Weapon uses neither. It's a bit of a non-sequitor.
Evilmonster 04-19-07, 02:55 PM	All the arguments have been made and any mind that hasn't already been changed probably isn't going to be. But you now, I was thinking. This thread is very Eberron in it's own way. In Eberron magic has always been around, but it hasn't always been something that lends itself to lightning rails or everbright lanterns. It's slowly become something that's akin to science there. For the Artificers necromancy, negitive energy, and undeath (all magic really) is just like steam or gun powder. It's just something you can use to generate a specific effect. Negitive energy isn't any more evil in and of itself than a sword, it can do harm but it can also be used for the greater good. And artificers get annoyed with wizards and clerics who insist that there's more going on with it even if there's no real proof. The religious orders of the host or the flame believe that there is in fact something very evil about necromancy in general. Even if one raises an army of zombies to help build a temple or a road the creatures are still a sin aginst life and that the souls of those people who are rizen as the undead suffer torment for the magic placed on thier bodies. Reguardless of the intent, these people believe, no lasting good can come from necromancy and it will all end in tears. The wizards on the other hand accept that necromancy is dangerious and there are great risks involved in it. But if one is mindful of one's actions and takes care to avoid the pitfalls of the art then death magic can be harnessed for the good of the world. The zombies that are building that road are the heart of evil, but there are no lasting reprocussions of thier existance outside of the actual actions they take. In Eberron any one of those could be true, but the final answer shouldn't ever be clear. A player necromancer could face persucution from the church, be asked to present their theories to a class at Morgrave for some up and coming artificers and be warned by several respected wizards to take care with the power they call up all in the same week. Heck, the PC might even just be a witness to a heated argument between all three of these points of view in a local park, along with people arguing the morality of binding elementals and creating living constructs.
TLD777 04-20-07, 02:11 AM	Ok, so 'team jeff' uses 'blue A juice' for go power and wear blue uniforms. 'Team jake' uses 'red Z juice' for go power and wear red uniforms. 'Team jeff' knows that 'red Z juice' is very bad for any member of 'team jeff'. 'Team jake' knows that 'blue A juice' is very bad for any member of 'team jake'. That's just how the rules work. Any time a member of 'team jeff' needs more go power, 'blue A juice' is just the ticket. Likewise, any time a member of 'team jake' needs more go power, 'red Z juice' is just what the doctor ordered. It's just the way of things. It's commonly known though that there are some grey areas with 'blue A juice' and 'red Z juice'. For example: a member of 'team jeff' can throw around enough 'red Z juice' at members of 'team jake' and make them do things for him. The members of 'team jake' might be acting on behalf of 'team jeff', but they still wear the red uniforms of 'team jake'. In fact, if a member of 'team jeff' throws around too much 'red Z juice' in this fashion, it will stain his blue uniform red. Once a member of 'team jeff' has a red stain on his uniform many of the other members start to wonder who's team he's really on, regardless of why he was throwing around 'red Z juice' in the first place! Now of course, a member of 'team jeff' can use 'red Z juice' for other things. Most of the time when you use 'red Z juice', you don't need to use a whole lot so it won't stain your blue uniform. Let me tell you though, if you're on 'team jeff' and you want to use 'red Z juice' to boss around members of 'team jake', it's going to take a lot of 'red Z juice' and eventually, you're going to stain your uniform. And that's how necromancy works. (for the record, I use red Z juice for go power) Much Love, TLD
ArcTan 04-20-07, 03:53 AM	All the arguments have been made and any mind that hasn't already been changed probably isn't going to be. But you now, I was thinking. This thread is very Eberron in it's own way. In Eberron magic has always been around, but it hasn't always been something that lends itself to lightning rails or everbright lanterns. It's slowly become something that's akin to science there. For the Artificers necromancy, negitive energy, and undeath (all magic really) is just like steam or gun powder. It's just something you can use to generate a specific effect. Negitive energy isn't any more evil in and of itself than a sword, it can do harm but it can also be used for the greater good. And artificers get annoyed with wizards and clerics who insist that there's more going on with it even if there's no real proof. Spells like detect evil throw a wrench in this, but do not invalidate it, since there are a million possible theories for why being "evil" in the mundane sense is associated with "evil" energies that don't necessarily impose a Good Cleric's POV on it. (To the Blood of Vol, for instance, "Good" is just the forces of the Sovereign Host's tyrannical domination of the universe, and anything "Evil" is anything that opposes it -- so their version of "good" is "Evil", though not all "Evil" is "good". I.e. they do oppose the Good Clerics who say that death is a natural part of life and that it's more important to live a good life in this world than conquer death. But they also oppose psychotic Cultists of the Dragon Below who really do want everyone to die right now. And they regard the fact that they and the CotDBers are both lumped into "Evil" by Clerical detection magic and by Paladins as signs of the unfairness of the cosmos.)
yrogerg 04-20-07, 12:02 PM	Ok, so 'team jeff' uses 'blue A juice' for go power and wear blue uniforms. 'Team jake' uses 'red Z juice' for go power and wear red uniforms. 'Team jeff' knows that 'red Z juice' is very bad for any member of 'team jeff'. 'Team jake' knows that 'blue A juice' is very bad for any member of 'team jake'. That's just how the rules work. Any time a member of 'team jeff' needs more go power, 'blue A juice' is just the ticket. Likewise, any time a member of 'team jake' needs more go power, 'red Z juice' is just what the doctor ordered. It's just the way of things. It's commonly known though that there are some grey areas with 'blue A juice' and 'red Z juice'. For example: a member of 'team jeff' can throw around enough 'red Z juice' at members of 'team jake' and make them do things for him. The members of 'team jake' might be acting on behalf of 'team jeff', but they still wear the red uniforms of 'team jake'. In fact, if a member of 'team jeff' throws around too much 'red Z juice' in this fashion, it will stain his blue uniform red. Once a member of 'team jeff' has a red stain on his uniform many of the other members start to wonder who's team he's really on, regardless of why he was throwing around 'red Z juice' in the first place! Now of course, a member of 'team jeff' can use 'red Z juice' for other things. Most of the time when you use 'red Z juice', you don't need to use a whole lot so it won't stain your blue uniform. Let me tell you though, if you're on 'team jeff' and you want to use 'red Z juice' to boss around members of 'team jake', it's going to take a lot of 'red Z juice' and eventually, you're going to stain your uniform. And that's how necromancy works. (for the record, I use red Z juice for go power) Much Love, TLD I think this is possbly the best summary of necromancy ever.:tiphat:
Evilmonster 04-20-07, 03:48 PM	Spells like detect evil throw a wrench in this, but do not invalidate it, since there are a million possible theories for why being "evil" in the mundane sense is associated with "evil" energies that don't necessarily impose a Good Cleric's POV on it. (To the Blood of Vol, for instance, "Good" is just the forces of the Sovereign Host's tyrannical domination of the universe, and anything "Evil" is anything that opposes it -- so their version of "good" is "Evil", though not all "Evil" is "good". I.e. they do oppose the Good Clerics who say that death is a natural part of life and that it's more important to live a good life in this world than conquer death. But they also oppose psychotic Cultists of the Dragon Below who really do want everyone to die right now. And they regard the fact that they and the CotDBers are both lumped into "Evil" by Clerical detection magic and by Paladins as signs of the unfairness of the cosmos.) Ya, something like that. A logic minded Artificer who is a product of the Modern Magical Age who uses a scroll of detect evil on a zombie will most likely assume that 'evil' is only a polarity of magic anyway. An evil person is just more in touch with the negitive energies of the world and not a bad person because he's touched by evil, but because bad people tend to gather that sort of energy about themselfs. A cleric of the Flame on the other hand knows there is such thing as Evil (with a big E) in the world and that this person has chosen to be evil and as such his very soul is tanted and that's what the spell shows. Same with undead, if the spell says it's evil then it's Evil. A cleric of the Blood probably dosn't put much stock in Good -vs- Evil in the first place and the only reason that there is a distinction at all is bacause the gods enjoy pitting mortals aginst mortals. A wizard might assume that detecting evil on a zombie means that the power that animates it is evil in some way, but that dosn't nessassarly mean that useing evil as a source of power is bad automaticly. Comoners (except maybe in Karnath) are just plain creeped out by undead and fear them reguardless of what the artifacer or wizard says and if this person is of the religious bent then he probably wholey believes the cleric. People from Sarlonia (sp) think all magic is bad anyway and distrust a flying carpet just as much as they do a zombie. And all of Korvaire (sp?) wonder about the elfs who do this to their own people as a way of revering them.
RogueElement 04-20-07, 04:57 PM	D&D is based on fairy tale logic: all pretty things are Good and all ugly things are Evil. Nymphs, unicorns, and angels on one side; hags, liches, and demons on the other. The average grownup still thinks like that. Wanna know who gets elected next year as president? It's always the one that looks the best and sounds the best and can push your buttons emotionally. Abraham Lincoln was a weird-looking stick figure and you would think that he was the exception, but look at who he ran against: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas. People have been voting for the best looking leader since Alexander the Great. That's why zombies are Evil...they're fugly.
ArcTan 04-20-07, 05:56 PM	D&D is based on fairy tale logic: all pretty things are Good and all ugly things are Evil. Nymphs, unicorns, and angels on one side; hags, liches, and demons on the other. The average grownup still thinks like that. Wanna know who gets elected next year as president? It's always the one that looks the best and sounds the best and can push your buttons emotionally. Abraham Lincoln was a weird-looking stick figure and you would think that he was the exception, but look at who he ran against: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_A._Douglas. People have been voting for the best looking leader since Alexander the Great. That's why zombies are Evil...they're fugly. Of course, D&D is a fantasy game, and the point of fantasies is to literalize and simplify things that aren't literal or simple in real life -- at least from one perspective, anyway. (China Mieville might disagree and say this attitude contributes to the degeneracy of the fantasy genre, and he has a point, but really, when I want to crack open a beer and enjoy some entertainment, I don't mind not meeting China Mieville's standards of moral responsibility.) D&D *starts out* as a game whose purpose is to indulge an impulse that real life denies -- to give you a world where killing the bad guys is the best and easiest way to stop evil from being done, where a great deal can be accomplished by one good person picking up a sword and whacking at the evil people until they're all gone. In reality this is rarely a helpful attitude, but it *comes* from things that are an inherent part of who we are as people, and fantasy helps us indulge that impulse in a safe, imaginary place.