Why do so many people these days seem to get butthurt when I

File: fontaine-6.jpg (281KB, 834x992px) Image search: [Google]

281KB, 834x992px

Its your game, Anon. Play it however you want.

>>48240666
Well I have never understood how something mindless can be evil.

>>48240702
it is not in and of itself evil, it's just doing evil shit. but that's fucking semantics, and you know it.

File: 876.jpg (22KB, 600x338px) Image search: [Google]

22KB, 600x338px

>>48240714
>but that's fucking semantics
EXCUSE ME

DEPENDING ON YOUR VIEW OF ETHICS, WHETHER IT'S DEONTOLOGICAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR VIRTUE ETHICS, THE CONTEXT OF THE WORD "EVIL" CHANGES QUITE A LOT.

>>48240666

Is it evil if the person donated their body to magic?

I mean, making a golem involves enslaving an elemental spirit. An animate skeleton just has some negative energy making it go. The slavery sounds more evil. Wraiths and shit I'll agree with being evil, though, since those are pretty clearly souls.

1. Nobody wants to believe they're the bad guy.

2. They're failing to disassociate their modern view with the perspective of some one who lives in a fantasy realm.

3. They fail to grasp that evil done for a good cause is still evil and don't understand that it can make a complex narrative.

4. They want all the tools available to them without any of the repercussions.

5. They like sitting on their ass arguing pointless arguments on the internet about how a zombie slave labor utopia would totally work, but utter disregard setting and lore and blanketly apply their conclusion to all games, settings and circumstances.

6. They're losers, which is why they're wasting their time on the internet arguing about their power fantasies instead of actually playing because they're insufferable and nobody wants to play with them.

>>48240702
Yeah, I have trouble with that too. When I play in a setting like D&D where undead are explicitly evil, I just think of evil as a cosmic force aligned with the negative energy plane - and that all undead, even mindless ones helping to rebuild a barn or whatever are allowing a small pocket of negative energy into the world and weakening its fabric. I don't think that's particularly canonical, but its helps me rationalize the rules of the setting.

>>48240666
What about honored ancestors who come back from the afterlife to aid and assist their descendants?

Why do they have to be evil?

>>48240761

The whole negative energy pollution from undead was from one horror themed book in 3.5 and it works if you want your campaign to be horror themed but otherwise it leaves me wondering why other schools of magic don't affect the world similarly.

Say dropping a bunch of fireballs opens a rift to the elemental plane of fire or summoning a demon threatens to open a portal to the abyss and at least the rules would be consistent.

>>48240743
>I mean, making a golem involves enslaving an elemental spirit.

even if we're assuming D&D, that's not how golems work anymore. the elemental spirit that is "enslaved" isn't even sentient. like, not even dog-tier sentience, it has no thoughts or feelings.

>>48240761
It's that way because that's how popular culture goes.

Think about it, whenever undead spontaneously arise in your game what do Zombies do?

Do they just mill about? No, they attack the living. Undead are inherently hostile to the living. Many sentient undead subside on living as well.

D&D is a game of "Cosmic Forces" where good and evil are not simply philosophical issues, but physical tangible energies. Not all settings act in accordance with this exactley, like for instance Golarion is more concerned with Positive and Negative not being inherently good or evil, but things often work in such a way because that's how the setting has been ordained to be.

It's people who try and press the issue when there's really no substance to the decision beyond "that's how we wanted it to work" it get's annoying because the only right answer is the GM's opinion.

>>48240743
Undead are evil (in D&D) because they are animated using negative energy. It has nothing to do with the moral implications of desecrating dead bodies.

>>48240820
And undead=evil isn't how undead worked for a long time, or is entirely dependent on setting.

So what's your point?

>>48240827

The negative energy plane was neutral in the edition that I played, did that change after 2nd edition?

>>48240827
Why is negative energy inherently evil?

>>48240827
The spell literally has the evil descriptor and it specifically states that casting the spell is worth an atonement spell.

>>48240849
Because narrative device with quasi-religious origins. Please stop looking for deeper substance than that.

>>48240827

So if you animated some non-undead construct using negative energy it would be evil, but making one with positive energy would be good?

That's weird. I mean, too much negative energy withers you, but too mych positive energy makes you pop.

File: 1419847602459.gif (4MB, 344x203px) Image search: [Google]

4MB, 344x203px

>tfw houserules
Eat my taint OP

>>48240849
>Why is negative energy inherently evil?
Tautology.

>>48240666
Post-modernism, anon.

If you're having a shitty day because people keep assaulting your intelligence with rhetorically and logically contradictory statements that, if you're sane, are impossible to suss out, you have been raped by post-modernism.

If you are told that a clearly superior ideology, technology, or line of thinking is no better than any other and that all ideologies, technologies, and lines of thinking are equivalent to some degree, you know the drill. Post-modern rape.

Just stop putting yourself into those situations and you'll be fine.

>>48240834
>So what's your point?

i don't know, what was your point talking about golems? if you wanted to say "depends on the setting" you should have said that from the outset.

>>48240871
Some of the source books I read a while back for Pathfinder talk about how some cultures also take issue with constructs and imprisoning elementals.

Undead get the nearly universal evil treatment because they're a common element of horror. A looming evil presence is a very common component of the genre. Zombie flicks always have the undead kill the living, vampires prey upon humans, werwolves cannot control their beastial bloodlust and so on.

There's also things like Frankenstein where the monster wasn't actually inherently evil, but it was an abomination that shouldn't have existed and it became evil due to it's circumstances and the prejudice it faced.

>>48240927
I wasn't talking about golems, so what is your point?

>>48240834
The only undead I remember not being evil off the bat are like 3 flavors ghosts and deathless.

Deathless get a pass because there is no negative energy and people willingly give themselves to the process. This along with them being from a specific setting that threw out the alignment rules.

>>48240978
I think his point was that he sees it a contradiction of golems not being evil, but undead are.

Think a lot of players these days don't understand that such things are supposaed to be these mysterious creations of powerful wizards who don't care for petty morality of common men.

When I GM and I always consider how the commoner would react in their setting. A golem while not radiating evil would probably freak out most people and only be reserved for defending kings or tombs and such.

>>48241025
In Pathfinder there's ghosts who can be good aligned, since ghosts are just basically souls with a semi-tangible form. And at least one sentient alchemical zombie who's not actually evil aligned despite being undead from one of their early modules.

>>48240849
I think it varies by edition.

One of the reasons I've heard around /tg/ is that negative energy destabilizes the material plane, so every zombie summoned is literally one more step towards the end of the world.

I guess that would cause issues with most Good aligned factions.

>>48240908
>that same faggot that completely misunderstands post-modernism in every thread where posts about it.

I'm sorry. I couldn't understand you over all the dicks in your mouth.

If there are souls and an afterlife, messing with that for your own ends can be evil in itself. How you like to die, go to heaven, and then get dragged back to get enslaved as cannon fodder for a creepy old spellcaster?

>>48240820
I don't think a corpse have thoughts or feelings

>>48240666
I hate the 'depends on setting' meme, but it really does. DnD/PF just makes a mess of things though, by claiming that negative energy isn't evil, but undead are evil for being powered by negative energy, while having non-evil ghosts in their published adventures.

There are certainly ghost stories about non-evil ones, either trying to help their living relatives or just wanting someone to lay them to rest. Even corporeal undead can be non-evil. Most in this case are those cursed to ruse without rest, and may be grouchy about it but mostly just want to break the curse and return to the grave. Others may be more like revenants, undead that rise for vengeance against their murderers. Could claim they're evil, but who wouldn't want some payback on a guy that killed you? One in particular was a tale from the american south, regarding a murdered man who rose after hearing his murderers speaking near his grave. They planned to target his daughter next in some plan to get their property. So the man dug himself out, went home to his frightened girl and called the police. He thrashed the killers when they arrived before the cops but left them alive to be arrested, wished his daughter a wonderful life, and crawled back into his grave. Undead justice.

>>48240849
Because D&D's cosmology deals in absolute morality as arbitrated by Gary Gygax.

D&D "Evil" isn't as wishy washy and subjective as real world "Evil" - makes smiting villains a little less of an innately dubious prospect in your fantasy land.

File: mlzh3tMogAc.jpg (115KB, 609x1024px) Image search: [Google]

115KB, 609x1024px

>>48240827
Why can't I animate a corpse using energy of FIRE?

>>48240810
I make a distinction between ancestors which intervene in a ghostly way or suddenly incarnate, (which are good) and the type of ancestors which shuffle around underneath a shrine or in the basement, which are evil but the villagers won't admit it.

There's no real logic behind it, I just like the two styles to be distinct.

>>48240818
That would be a neat setting which would have interesting consequences from wizards abusing there power.

>>48240702
The only reason mindless undead are evil in 3.5 and friends is so that paladins can Smite Evil them and it work.

>>48240752

/thread

>>48240908
>>48241120
not 908, but wow...there it is. 120 validates 908.

>>48240702
Because Evil is a literal physical element in D&D setting. It's not just some spirtual subjective mumbo jumbo. Evil is a palpable thing, and demons devils, undead are chock full of it. It's not the same as real life, and it's not supposed to be.

>>48240908
>>48241599

>thinks wanting to be the good guy nomatterwhat is post-modern

wew

>>48241619
Doesn't make it any less stupid though.

>>48241148
agreed, this is my thought process of why the creation of undead is evil, and i guess the undead themselves are evil because they serve the wicked person who created them

>>48240666

I am the person you hate, more or less, I think.

I fought against it for quite a while with my DM. I made the point that DnD has moved away from arbitrary absolutes, and that clinging to them isn't really the best.

If you consider the morality of burning someone to death ala immolation or using energy to resurrect a skeleton with no feelings and no spirit, it seems kind of silly.

What I ultimately realize is, it doesn't matter what the "objective truth" of the DM's world is. My character is probably the most noble, giving, and self-sacrificing of the group, and he uses skeletons every day.

Maybe Kelemvor hates him, whatevs. I hate Kelemvor anyway for being a shitter.

>>48240666
Why do so many people get butthurt when I say that undead--and especially mindless undead--aren't evil?

>I'm sick of these people who get all pissy because they want the evil undead raising without any of the consequences.
What consequences? Having an undead army?
Even if raising the dead is evil, why would that make the dead themselves--who are by definition mindless--evil? That's getting into territory where you might as well say children of rape are always evil, or that if your parents were Evil you're evil. Then again, in D&D there *are* plenty of Always Evil races, so clearly inherited sin is a thing. But if you commit no evil on your own behalf, how are you evil? It requires a mind to be evil.

File: artwork_arakkoa.jpg (357KB, 1200x843px) Image search: [Google]

357KB, 1200x843px

>>48240666
I know the feel OP, though it is understandable why people have such a hard on for morally grey necromancy.
>Necromancers are cool
>players want to play necromancers
>Most games are good aligned
>The few games that are evil usually suck
>Players do not normally get to play necromancers
It's like holding fruit over their heads while chopping off their legs, denying an entire branch of magic because it's "evil."

I houserule that necromancy costs life to wield, your's or another's.
That way, good necromancers are careful to use their powers and evil ones are truly evil, undead by themselves have no alignment.

>>48241829

And on the note of "It's just evil, mkay?"

That's fine, I'm certainly past getting frustrated over it. Each refinement of DnD has stepped further and further back from constricting character and ability. If my DM took my character sheet, erased true neutral, and replaced with neutral evil, whatever.

It would have 0 effect on how my character played out.

Interestingly, I don't care if people THINK that undead are objectively evil. That's completely totally understandable. I've scare the shit out of a ton of peasants with my skeletons, and a lot of people have refused to deal with my character because of them .

TL;DR the alderman and gygaxian tenets of "objective" truth in a given setting are fine if people all like the idea of them I guess. But most people prefer the nuance and shades of grade afforded by shucking off that philosophy. It's equally stupid that it's "Lawful Good" for a paladin to summarily execute criminals or creatures.

File: 1467381262413.png (676KB, 693x720px) Image search: [Google]

676KB, 693x720px

>>48240737

>>48240702
Well, it's like fire. It's not evil by default, it's all about how it's used. And in the case of mindless undead, it's usually used for evil, and may even be powered by evil (ie. Evil or negative evil.)

>>48241947
>*negitive energy

>>48240666
Nice trips, Satan. So basically you want the soul of anyone who raises undead, eh?

>>48241845

It basically requires an inherent structural goodness to the game universe. There are rules, magic, souls, etc, overseen by a benevolent natural law. DnD started out Law vs Chaos, not good vs evil. Deviation from the Law is usually an evil thing. Raising the dead is unnatural, goes against Law, thus is minimum Chaotic, and usually evil as well.

Its evil because living and then dieing is what mortals are suppose to do, as dictated by the Gods/etc. and fucking with that is automatically bad if your universe is structuralist.

You can go amoral ethics if you want, but then claiming that your actions are Good is tricky. It'll be good for some, evil for others necessarily, rather than just one or the other. Doesn't really work with the alignment system.

>>48241230
because its burning hot, you can animate skelingtons with it

>>48240666
Why should non-sentient corpse you've built and ordered to stand guard over a tomb to be evil, while a robot that you built to stand guard over a tomb is not?

Are Flesh Golems evil, but Stone Golems are not?

Is the difference here the fact that one is made out of flesh and the other is not, and that the flesh itself is tainted with evil. To construct something from meat and bone is to construct something that is evil? Are humans naturally evil because they too were constructed of meat and bone?

>>48240743
> An animate skeleton just has some negative energy making it go.
> just has some negative energy making it go.

Negative energy is a force that tries to remake worlds into inversions of themselves. Making a undead is taking a small amount of that energy and anchoring it to your world.

Does it now make sense will it is evil? This was spelled out in 2e & 3e splat books.

>>48241180
>>48240702
>>48241619
>>48241845
Negative energy is naturally opposed to positive energy, so things powered by it are inclined to kill anything powered by positive energy, and will always do so unless stopped by magic or an intact mind that retains its old morals. Indiscriminately slaughtering the living is an evil act, so undead happen to be evil.

Sure, they COULD be used to make a shiny utopia where manual labor is obsolete and an ever growing army defends the peace, but only because magic is forcing them to do exactly what you want in spite of their natural urges. Its like using an enslaved succubus to teach theater. They'd be fucking amazing at it, but the risks are so high that paladins would be justified in stabbing you to stop it.

>>48242323
If the default setting of every single robot ever no matter who built it was "eviscerate children", they would get pegged as evil too.

>>48242323
How many ghost stories end up being about a spirit that can't rest because its corpse was desecrated? It's not just "flesh", it used to be somebody, and they're not necessarily gone just because they're dead.

>>48240847
They took the Ravenloft supplement point of view on the matter and made it baseline in 3e. The negative energy plane is neutral but putting energy from that plane to other places is a very bad idea. Read the Libris Mortis.

>>48240666
Alignment is stupid and you're stupid.

Evil and good are defined by equally arbitrary ethical frameworks. This does not depend on the setting.

>>48242555
What if the ghost was okay about it? What if he's content with the idea that his corpse is being used to construct a flesh-golem that will crush the thatched-roof cottage of his dickass neighbor Wilhelm who never returned that scythe he borrowed?

>>48240849
>Why is negative energy inherently evil?

Its not, BUT it causes very bad side effects to happen when it gets put places in the long term that it is not meant to be. To the level that making undead ( which are powered by trapped negative energy) can be viewed as a evil or immoral action because of those side effects.

>>48242555

So what if you cast speak with dead first and make sure the former owner of the body is cool with it?

>>48242769
Well now he's evul because Piazo and the WOTC can't into anything but very simple yet stupidity complex morality that usually leaves the players and GMs to just drop it and write up their own set of morality rules, like what happened in the game I'm in.

>>48241148
In some settings this causes the souls to die a slow and agonising 'death' too.

>>48242725
Except the ones that it does, you fuck

>>48242974
>the soul is energy for the corpse puppet
>skeletons are short-lived minions, since their soul energy burns off quite quickly
>the soul evaporates and the individual it belonged to is denied a heaven or hell
Now you can have wandering necromancers without the cliche tide of zombies.

The morality is dubious, if you get a good person you're doing wrong, if you save someone from hell you're doing right. Or are you?

>>48242738
Depends what the rules are for spirits and their remains. Golem creation may cause enough discomfort that permission would be hard to come by. As an analogy, what if I asked your permission to cast a spell that would give you a persistent, throbbing headache for the next ten years?

>>48241120
He's actual correct, and you're either a post-modernist or an idiot, or both.

The problem with post-modernism is that it has no basis in anything with basis. It doesn't purport to have or need one, necessarily, but if you get into an argument things often boil down to academic hand-wringing—Lacan this, Derrida that, "play", "performance". It's the Wile E. Coyote of philosophical schools. A branch off of modernism, wholly in modernism, without any sort of connection to ideological lineage—like building a bridge of 2x4s off a cliffside and reusing the same few boards as you make your way.

It simply has nothing to stand on, and if you attempt to poke any holes in it the whole system falls apart. Then people retreat to it being a tool, not an ideology, yet it fuels almost all modern ideology, meaning most modern ideology has no basis.

It's the critique of the critique of the critique of the critique. It's so far up its own ass it no longer remembers one could breath without smelling shit.

Post-modernism is philosophy for normies. It's feel good, easy to use, and everyone who uses it gets to feel superior-yet-equal. So yes, you're either a post-modernist or an idiot, or both.

In a world where the dead can be raised by magic there is literally no reason not to use them as a labor force besides lazy worldbuilding.

>b-but muh desecrate the dead

Doesn't trump the ethical value of a mass automated workforce

>b-but muh DARK MAGICS!

The risks still don't outweigh the benefits of a mass automated workforce

If it is possible to raise and command the dead in your setting and most major nations aren't using the literally infinite hordes of zombies who need no pay, shelter and minimum food to mass automated their workforce you are a lazy worldbuilder afraid to let magic influence your setting in a realistic way

>>48243505
>The risks still don't outweigh the benefits of a mass automated workforce
Oh yes they fucking do, you moron.

In most games, undead are default evil by nature regardless of how you raise them. In the most popular ones, they are also capable of self-will, even if they are mindless. The only thing 'mindless' means to the undead is that they revert to their basic instinct - evil.

As an example, undead in D&D have a wis score, and a cha score, meaning they are self aware and aware of that which is not self, and possess will to act. That they are mindless means they act of the default instinctive attribute - which for them is to act on the impulses they do have. Since they are evil they destroy that which is not self - I.E. everything that moves around them is not self, and must be destroyed.

That's why animate dead is an evil act - you are creating an immortal killign machine that seeks to destroy everything around it that lives, and is held in check only by the will of the caster - as long as he is alive and in control, which is never guaranteed. Because sooner or later something WILL go wrong. You know, like Chernobyl, a natural disaster like a tsunami that kills most of the living population and leaves hundreds or maybe thousands of undead masterless, or somethign as simple as the necromancer choking to death on a fishbone.

Murphy's Law trumps everything.

>>48243505
Yes, nothing could possibly go wrong with an automated workforce of easily programmed mindless undead in a world where magic exists. No one could possible take advantage of such a thing and use it to completely destroy all trust and value of such an incredibly useful thing. That would be totally unrealistic and absolutely lazy worldbuilding to presume that something could actually go terribly wrong.

After all, it's never happened in the history of the technological age, right?

>>48243505
Life is short, eternity is forever. Stealing someone's afterlife may be literally worse than murder.

Don't try to hide behind materialism in a setting where necromancy works.

>>48243843
>Don't try to hide behind materialism in a setting where necromancy works.

So either 1) you simply pull the soul back from floating around in the air(the existence of souls and necromancy does not prove the existence of an afterlife, be they desirable or not) and into a body. Thus the workers can just be 'immortal' and continue their lives from where they left off.

Or 2) you're just puppeting corpses with or without the soul's consent. Explain how this option would affect the soul's afterlife, when the soul is residing in an entirely different plane. Assuming, of course, reincarnation isn't a thing, in which case 2) matters even less.

>>48243926
Grant any sort of supernatural phenomena, and the idea of an afterlife gets a lot less far fetched, no?

File: dean12.jpg (21KB, 474x328px) Image search: [Google]

21KB, 474x328px

>>48241230
>tfw your character can actually do this

The biggest problem is that most of the body will burn away and you'll just end up with a walking torch.

Scares the fuck out of the other guys, though.

>>48244115
Not really. If you have can commune with souls and most don't even mention heaven or hell...

Then there's the part where gods exist and you realize,...only a handful have anything planned for their followers. Even then it may not necessarily be something you have access to or want.

>>48244429
I like the idea that gods are cannibals. No one ever talks about or can prove the afterlife because their gods are eating their souls.

>>48244166
What system?

>>48241191
This.
Gygax took a wargame and just added depth to it. Complex moralities and motivations were never supposed to be part of it and came later.
Also, when original dnd was made there wasn't any post-modernism around to question or judge its ideas.

>>48243505
Almost Droaam

>>48240666
Checked. Undeads as a subject and trip 6.

> Why do so many people these days seem to get butthurt when I say that undead, and especially mindless undead are evil?
Why is something without intent "evil". A mindless skeleton / zombie awaiting orders cannot commit evil acts of its own volition. It cannot muster intent. It cannot choose to forgo its own morals to achieve its goal.

Assuming someone's evil because the action to create it is evil, ESPECIALLY if the transformation was unwilling is by itself callous and intolerant.

That said, it's not because it is not evil that you should not destroy it, especially if it is under the control of someone or something with evil intents.

>>48240666
Ultimately it comes down to a lack of in setting justification for declaring the act evil. This is why I intend to have any mindless undead in games that I'm GMing seek to attack the living and make it easier for other forms of undead to form in their presence.
This allows me to say that there isn't any absolute morality but still keep undead as a bad thing.

>>48240714
>Use undead for manual labour
>doing evil shit

>>48244541
It's all just homebrew.

Frankly if the DM didn't keep track of all his shit I wouldn't use the system, but he's good at coming up with things on the fly.

>>48241947
>usually

>>48240821
> Think about it, whenever undead spontaneously arise in your game what do Zombies do? Do they just mill about? No, they attack the living.
TBF, I've had at least 3 campaigns where undeads were used as cheap labor, one of them by a PC. They were doing dangerous yet simple jobs that nobody wanted, like cleaning the sewers, piling manure, working the fields and so on.

Heck, one player went mystic theurge, made a militia, covered them in so much plating that you wouldn't recognize them as undead at a glance and kept doing good deeds with them.

So, for the mindless undeads, we treat them like we would robots. We destroy them (or attempt to take control if able) when they try to destroy us and we employ them in ways that profit us.

>>48244904
It implies you're desecrating the corpses of random people in order to use them as slaves with magic, so maybe not "evil" but it's definitely unpleasant

>>48245003
They're just corpses. The person is long gone. You're just telepathicaly moving meat around.

>>48243505
Yes, nobody could possibly have a problem with destroying the natural order or burning the souls of your own ancestors for fuel. Or with creating monsters that hate the living then hoping nothing goes wrong.

>>48245028
Good fucking luck telling that to their families and friends. Scientists IRL struggle to get even non-sentient barely-formed fetus corpses for research that could eventually turn large chunks of medicine in general on its head.

>>48245028
Lets just ignore the fact that in plenty of settings their soul is sitting right in the corpse being tormented.

>>48245102
Also, this is without mentioning religious concerns and if it's actually just a corpse or if you're doing some sort of spiritual damage to its owner's spirit, which depends on the setting

File: fanart-0969-full.jpg (245KB, 797x1001px) Image search: [Google]

245KB, 797x1001px

>>48245028
That depends entirely on the setting.

For example, an undead in Warcraft is a person who has been forcefully reanimated and bound to a necromancer's will.

Even if they manage to break free of the necromancer's control, their existence is misery. They're not capable of feeling happiness and can feel their bodies rotting around them.

This isn't the only setting to treat necromancy like this, either.

>>48243632
>>48243700
And the actual arguments that make sense are as usual, completely ignored by the idiot "necromancy is all good" posters.

File: Worm.jpg (167KB, 403x552px) Image search: [Google]

167KB, 403x552px

>>48244829
>A mindless skeleton / zombie awaiting orders cannot commit evil acts of its own volition.
WRONG.

Vermin are mindless, but they act of their own volition and can attack creatures. Why?

Because wisdom is the stat of willpower and intent. Charisma is the stat of self awareness and awareness of others. Both vermin and undead have wisdom and charisma. That means they can act, and have awareness of self and others.

In other words, a mindless undead acts on the only instinct it has - evil - because all undead are evil regardless of how they were created. When they are created they are evil, it is in the statblock as such. So yes, uncontrolled mindless undead have the will to act on impulses agaisnt things that are not themselves. Vermin act on the impulse to feed. Undead act on the impulse to kill.

a) Necromancy is based on capturing and deforming/torturing souls that could have been in a better place - evil
b) Necromancy threatens some kind of world balance, but is a powerful tool - mostly evil
c) Necromancy just allows getting cheap as dirt workforce or immortality if necromancer is good enough to create sentient undead - necromancy is good.

I guess necromancy became viewed as good because christian shit meme "don't try to prolong your life against god's will" finally started dying en masse.

>>48243505
>>48244904
Undead in most settings are not comparable to conventional automation. If the manager of some workers has a heart attack, nothing bad happens. If the operator of a machine has a heart attack, the machine might hurt someone, possibly lethally, but that depends on several circumstances.

If a necromancer controlling an undead workforce loses control, they *will* actively try to kill people, livestock, pets, and anything else within reach. If safety regulations were sloppy enough or non-existent, they might kill another necromancer and free his undead too, who might kill another necromancer...

Anyone smart enough to plan a magic revolution is probably smart enough to realize almost everything you can do with the extremely dangerous pollutant that is the undead can be done with other, much safer forms of magic.

>>48245646
>cheap as dirt workforce
Where did the meme that a fucking rotting corpse is capable of doing heavy labor come from anyway?

>>48246082
Zombies used to till Haitian farms. It's an exceedingly old story.

>>48240737
Deontological ethics a shit.
Combination of virtue and consequential ethics is where it's at.

Making zombies is not an evil act (unless you're harming people to make them), it's what you do with those zombies that matters.

>>48240849
It's not iirc
But it's tied to a lot of things that are evil/unnatural

>>48246082
Not heavy. 24/7 and no need to eat or sleep. That's how magical zombies and skellies work in most settings

>>48243114
>Be creator deity
>Notice souls are becoming trapped in limbo from mortal actions and that they're being denied punishment or rewards for mortal deeds rendered
>The cycle of birth, death, judgement and reincarnation is being broken
>Decide to speak to paladin's and clerics in their dreams and tell them to seek out and punish the one responsible for this

Still gonna get smited, it's still evil.

>>48243505

The thing is undead are inferior to human labor.

The components to animate them are more expensive than hiring cheap labor. They can never aquire new skills or perfect existing ones. They require intense micromanaging or super simple tasks that beasts of burden or machines can do. If you animate too many the extras start murdering people.

Ignoring the whole morals debate you're wasting time and money by employing undead. You're better off sticking serfs in the long run.

>>48240666
Uncontrolled mindless undead will default to exterminating any life they come upon

Controlled mindless undead are neutral with a slight aspect towards their controller

Intelligent undead have a tendency towards evil because their mental switches are flipped towards 'hate living', but they retain all free will.

>>48240666
>666
You can't fool me, Satan.

>>48240666
In the world of Diablo Necromancy is practicioned by neutral people.

The way I treat necromancy is that it's an inherently cruel school.

Some spell like false life are not evil, but rather practical spells. But spells like en enervation cause an extreme amount of pain and torture their victim.

Imagine being hit with a fireball, your flesh burns and you might be torn apart. That's scary, but burns can heal, especially if there's magic in the setting.

Enervation doesn't just hurt you, it causes your body to be torn apart on the inside. Muscles split, sinew and tendon tear apart, blood vessels explode and the very life force of your body is flayed from your being. You're not just weakened, you're left looking like a body builder who just repped 800 lbs. And the pain never stops until you're healed.

It's horrifying, but at the same time not inherently evil because evocation magic and charm magic can be used just as brutally in self defense. But necromancy spells tend to be a bit extra tortuous.

>>48246215
And Haitians still are afraid of zombies IRL.

File: bikeybile.png (718KB, 800x600px) Image search: [Google]

718KB, 800x600px

>>48240666
>Why do so many people these days seem to get butthurt when I say that undead, and especially mindless undead are evil?
The "Why" is pretty simple... players want to play something powerful (in this case a necromancer or liche) or something special-snowflakey (same), and want to enjoy all the benefits with none of the downsides.

The fact is, in most settings, undead NEED to be evil, or at least deeply unnatural, or the whole setting falls apart. With most PC's in most settings being human or human-like, death as-we-know-it is kinda important part of how the world works. You take that away, and things get out of hand quickly. So necromancy and its associated persons/nonpersons have to fall on the evil side of the spectrum.

Now if you're playing some wacky setting like Planescape or something, then by all means make undead of whatever alignment you like.

>>48248659
The usual argument I see to that is that reviving the dead should be just as evil.

But then if you read the spell it specifically says that resurrections are per deity approval and are exceptions to the rules, at a very high cost.

>>48240666

A generation raised on Twilight.

>>48248620
Blacks in general are still very superstitious, even in America to an extent.

>>48240702
I try to represent it as mindless undead being as unknowingly malicious and cruel as possible.

If you tell your zombies minions to kill a person, they will do so in the most painful, brutal way possible. They won't just beat the man to death, they'll eat him while he's still alive, even though you never said to eat him. Skeletons will stab and wound as much as possible before taking a life and drag the death out.

An undead told to stay in a room will destroy anything in the room with it for no other reason than to break things that are beautiful. Unless told otherwise, it will try and kill anything that comes into the room, even insects and rats and it'll collect the bugs in a little pile and rip the rats inside out and smear the blood all over for no discernible reason.

I always try to present mindless undead as being barely controlled. I describe how they gaze at their controller with blank maliciousness and hate like they would just as soon tear you apart as the things you tell it to attack.

You have to be careful because mindless undead will interpret anything in the most foul way possible. If you tell it to carry a captive, and follow you, it won't be gentle unless you tell it not to harm them. Every movement is from pure malice, they aren't unfeeling robots.

They may not think, but they feel plenty of hate.

File: 1462729492046.jpg (71KB, 440x660px) Image search: [Google]

71KB, 440x660px

I love the blanket statements applied all over this thread. Mostly assuming that what is true for undead is true for all undead in every setting. Assumptions that uncontrolled Skeletons, zombies and other mindless undead will just rampage in a frenzy of bloodlust and murder. Rather than stand there stationary awaiting instructions or a new controller to give them direction.

Rather like a robot that has completed it's task or a computer that has run it's last line of commands. Just because something does not have orders does not necessarily mean it defaults to action.

>Desecrating a dead body
>Not Evil

Pick one heathens

>>48240714
>all viruses are evil even though it isn't a living organism.

>>48249013
This is /tg/, if a retard isn't making a stupid decision or a blanket statement is be worried we'd been bought out by the Feds

>>48246249
I would consider ripping the dead from their rest to serve as your mindless automatons pretty fucking evil regardless of what you're doing with them.

>>48244669
Post-modernism started in the late 1800s.

>>48249013
In what settings do they work like that? I can't think of any off the top of my head, while I can think of several where they default to murder.

Undead are evil because things that die are supposed to stay dead. If you raise the dead without evil being involved, it's a resurrection. It's not undeath. This isn't rocket science, people.

File: 1466401874778.jpg (23KB, 524x336px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 524x336px

>>48240908
>I think post-modernism is cultural relativism.

Wew Lad. I mean I despise the idea that everything is equal, but at least get your terminology straight.

>>48249578
But what if an undead creature is raised against it's will. Is it evil, despite taking no evil actions itself?

>>48249013
thing is, if you turn undead into yet another form of object fully animated by magic then why would you animate corpses instead of say, an automaton designed for a task

and at the same time it takes away all the flavor of necromancy

>>48249600
Couldn't that make it a form of slavery, thus making it evil?

Also, the process of making undead could force it to become evil, which is just more evil on the BadWrong Cupcake.

>>48240666
The reasoning is often unclear as to why exactly they are evil. A lot of people view zombies and skeletons and such as simple automatons, which would be gross, but not intrinsically more evil than a golem or a forklift. They've also never smelled a corpse, and cannot imagine why using zombies for manual labor would be a horrible and unsanitary idea.

SoS gives a pretty solid reason for why necromancy is bad, which is that the energy used to animate them is antithetical to life in general. Grass doesn't grow where the undead walk, water they move through becomes poisonous, and there's always the chance that they will snap and start hunting down living things to ruin if kept in a barren locale for long enough. This is to say nothing of the potential plagues caused by large numbers of decaying corpses wandering around.

Basically they're dangerous, and everything they touch becomes poisonous. The only thing they're good at doing is killing people and ruining crops... So everyone basically agrees that they're evil, and that necromancers are evil.

>>48240666
I tend to write intelligent undead in the same vein as a bodysnatcher. For example, if I wanted to write about a man being turned into a vampire, I'd describe it as looking like Carl, acting like Carl and even has all the same memories as Carl but it is most definitely *not* Carl. Carl's dead and his body is being animated by negative energy using his mind and body as camouflage to prey on others.

I like to make it clear to people that complain, that a "good" vampire is only acting that way to increase it's own chances of survival. And that they, and all undead, are physically incapable of experiencing empathy.

>>48249013
>I've never seen a zombie movie

>>48240702
Good and Evil are tangible forces in most DnD settings, like magnetism or gravity. Undead (for the most part) are animated by Evil just like the arrow on a compass is moved by magnetism. Evil is an inherent property of certain entities, just like gravity is a property of matter. If that doesn't sit right with you, you shouldn't be playing in Standard Fantasy Setting #15795

>>48249973
>My zombies are different, they're not evil and nothing will go wrong. Please don't interfere with my libertarian power fantasy. #RunPaul2020

>>48240666

In almost every game of this era or any other, undead, especially mindless undead, are not attributed any evil characteristics. They do exactly what they are told, whether that's rape puppies or aid the elderly. Nowhere in the actual book does it say that their creation requires any harm be done to the soul that used to inhabit the corpse. Nowhere in the actual book does it say that their creation or continued existence does any harm to the living. Nowhere in the actual book does it say that they default to any kind of evil behavior or automatically cause the spread of any kind of evil force. The book declares them to be Evil with absolutely no justification as to why a necromancer who raises skeletons to build art schools for underpriveleged children is somehow villainous. Of course people recoil from the idea that someone or something is evil just because an authority said so, even when that authority has presented no evidence whatsoever. Worshiping the powerful is very nearly the opposite of justice. If you want the undead to be evil, you are going to have to start by coming up with /actual fucking consequences/, not just "your Paladin falls" alignment-as-railroad bullshit.

>>48250004
It's not necessarily good or evil, a lot of settings make a distinction of positive and negative energy being unaligned. But even then most decent settings shit tends to go bad with undead because it's simply an inherent part of horror. Exceptions might exist, but generally undead are a bad idea. Best case scenario you got a place like unsounded where undead are a regular part of the workforce but even then the populace is generally uncomfortable with the inherent danger and fact of undead being highly unnatural constructs.

>>48250029
>every game of this era

Nice bullshit faggot.

Golarion: Literally every time an undead is raised, it's soul is taken from the afterlife and bound to it's former mortal shell, denied it's final judgement by Pharasma. Not only does this violate the natural laws of the world, it's robs Pharasma of her deific right, a right that transcends all objectionable and philosophical questioning of mortal minds, to cast her judgement but also brings the entire existance of life, universe and everything to one step closer to the end of all time as Groteus moves in closer to recycle all existence once the last soul has be judged and ceases to exist. What exactly is going to happen is not explicit but he does say that it will not be pleasant.

>>48250029
>Doesn't actually read sourcebooks for settings. Ignores evil descriptors in the books

>>48249435
If you're stealing their souls and enslaving them, absolutely.

If you're simply animating their corpse with magic and using an uninhabited corpse, not so much.

>>48250156
This is what this thread is basically about. A bunch of morons who either don't read the books or don't actually play trying to come up with subversions of things and the people who do know this shit telling them they are morons and that's not how this shit works.

Then there are the homebrew faggots who think their special snowflake systems are the best thing and actually count when it comes to system based discussions.

>>48250265
>If you're simply animating their corpse with magic and using an uninhabited corpse, not so much.

Then where is the horror? I don't want to play such a bland setting where something that's supposed to be this dark, overbearing evil is turned into a triviality. It just devolves into players and GMs wanking off into their game about how cool and powerful they are.

There's no fun without a definitive evil, and people who want to pick it apart can't deal with the idea of being the bad guy.

>>48250135

The full quote was:

>In almost every game of this era or any other,

So no, one counterexample does not disprove anything.

>>48250156
>Ignores evil descriptors in the books

You appear to have missed this part of my post:

>The book declares them to be Evil with absolutely no justification as to why a necromancer who raises skeletons to build art schools for underpriveleged children is somehow villainous.

If reading comprehension is this hard for you, maybe you shouldn't try to argue in a written medium.

The whole idea that'd it be cheaper to have zombies work in your factories as opposed to living people is dumb. You ever hear of factory towns and company stores?

Now... if zombie labor was more like a kind of penal labor that if you die on the job and you owed money to the company store, or they were kept around to intimidate any potential unionizers...

Big bad necromancer robber barons sounds like a cool thing actually, where the exploitative nature of an industrial tycoon falls in a grey area of not being directly evil, as he does pay, and people do earn a wage enough to live... plus you could weigh in a moral quandary situation, where the steel or goods from the necrobaron is fueling a massive economic boom and growth in a nearby city, meaning city officials are willing to overlook the necromantic practice because of how much money they're making, or have invested into the factory...

Imagine it, a necromancer in a top hat and suit, smoking a big cigar.

>>48250355

>So no, one counterexample does not disprove anything.

Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Mystara, Golarion, Spelljammer, Warhammer, Deadlands...

Each of these major settings has justifications as to why undead are evil.

>The book declares them to be Evil with absolutely no justification as to why a necromancer who raises skeletons to build art schools for underpriveleged children is somehow villainous.

You would of course know that this is wrong if you actually read the sourcebooks.

Why don't you just admit you don't actually read the materials and just spew nonsense?

>>48249493
>In what settings do they work like that?

Every single edition of D&D that specifies what they do at all when not given commands specifies that they don't take actions. People bitching otherwise are citing third-party sourcebooks of optional rules intended for darker themed or horror campaigns.

>>48250398
And no, your own setting doesn't matter. We're talking about actual major settings.

>>48250355
>The book declares them to be Evil with absolutely no justification
Because the almighty powers that dictate the logic of the universe have declared it to be evil, thus it is evil and only bad things will inevitably come of it. This isn't a point up for debate and subjective morality bullshit isn't applicable, because the laws of the universe have already decided the issue.

>>48250377
Orrrr the country is locked in a war, and desperately needs the weapons the factory makes

>>48250336
>Then where is the horror?
It's unneeded.

>something that's supposed to be this dark, overbearing evil
That's just a matter of opinion.

>It just devolves into players and GMs wanking off into their game about how cool and powerful they are.
Uh, no? There are things besides power wanking and moral horror.

>There's no fun without a definitive evil.
Some of us go for something more ambiguous and realistic.

>and people who want to pick it apart can't deal with the idea of being the bad guy.
Maybe they don't want black and white morality, and want something more nuanced.

>>48250463
Then you're a boring, shite, GM and I don't want to play with you.

>>48250436
I can't find anything, but I do know that literally all the modules I've played and run, undead that are not under control of a necromancer attack anything on sight.

>>48250398

Please feel free to cite the sourcebooks for any of these that declare mindless undead to actually be created by or naturally perform Evil actions, and not just arbitrarily be tagged with the Evil descriptor by default.

>>48250440
>Spelljammer, Mystara, and Deadlands are "major settings"

According to what, the fact that you personally think they're neat? I like Spelljammer, but that doesn't mean I'm going to delude myself into thinking that it's not a forgotten relic of a past time.

>>48250470
Oh. I'm talking about what I often want as a player there.

As a GM? I've done both, and everyone seemed to get more invested in the setting where who is the bad guy and who is the good guy was hard to determine.

>>48250445
>Because the almighty powers that dictate the logic of the universe have declared it to be evil

Do you believe that what is right is determined by who is the strongest? If not, you have no argument. You do not get to exempt yourself from actually proving that a supposedly evil person has actually done bad things just because someone or something powerful has declared it to be so. Rejecting might makes right isn't subjective morality, it's having morals at all.

>>48250377
What if the mindless undead labor was only used to menial and distasteful acts. Freeing up the living members of the society to pursue higher goals? Education, art, mathematics those kind of things. But the understood price of having so many benefits in life is that your empty husk will be used for the benefit of the next generation.

Many people get stuck in a Westernized view of Fantasy. But if the culture is vastly divergent then perhaps using dead bodies as a work force isn't distasteful.

>>48250492
So if a robot is assigned to guard , lets say, a tomb and keep all intruders out. Is the robot evil because it is fulfilling it's orders and attacking tomb robbers?

>>48250029
>Nowhere in the actual book does it say that they default to any kind of evil behavior or automatically cause the spread of any kind of evil force.

That's kinda what the evil descriptor is for. If something has it, it means they do evil shit.

You're also wrong. Its right there in the zombie entry, and the description for just about every other undead mentions the ways they horribly murder people.
>When left unattended, zombies tend to mill about in search of living creatures to slaughter and devour.

>>48250495
The "show me your sources" argument is pretty bullshit bro.

You're running an adventure, there's a zombie. What's it do? Stand there and mill about or attack? Because literally every published adventure, splatbook and fluffbook has them react violently. It's a trope at this point and you're wanting to subert it, fine but you're refusing to acknowledge that what you're doing is a subversion and NOT AT ALL the common element.

Which leads me to one of two conclusions:

1. You don't like the way undead are treated in popular culture and refuse to knowledge that so that other people can't refute your point or

2. You've never actually read a lot of D&D or fantasy stuff and have formed your own opinion and are refusing to believe it when other people call you out on your stupidity.

Now back to the problem to refute his point. He's probably not going to be able to find specific sources anytime soon. A lot of the fluff that comes from D&D settings is through modules and books, and not an encyclopedic article explaining the nature of undeath in each and every setting. But has some one who's played more than 15 years of D&D published adventures, read numerous books and played campaigns in nearly every setting, he's right. Undead and the forces behind them are nefarious and antithetical to life itself.

Not every example has concrete logic behind why, because not every writer wants to spend a ton of time researching a common trope.

>>48250618
D&D is not the only fantasy setting in existence.The OP never specified D&D or any setting in fact. As for game with non evil undead. Here is one: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177596/The-Skeletons

>>48250606
Is the robot powered by the tortured soul of the formerly living creature?

Depending on setting, yea sure. So are constructs powered by elemental depending on the setting.

Generally speaking tombs that are guarded by undead or even constructs are generally not belonging to people concerned about their godliness if there's a morality issue with the guardians.

>>48250669
what if the skeleton isn't powered by a tortured soul? What if it is merely an automaton animated through pure magical power. Once again a specific type of power source is being applied to everything without regard for differences in fluff and setting.

>>48250659
Of all the D&D settings, they all pretty much use the same bestiary and tropes.

Doesn't matter if you're playing Ravenloft or Greyhawk, most of the time and most of the settings the creatures act the same.

Settings that they don't are subversions and are not generally major setting that everyone accounts for when they're assuming "D&D".

>>48240666
People want the necromancy and undead, but don't want the setting to inevitably run to necromancy bringing about an industrial revolution due to free labor that never tires. Logical world building can be good, but it should always be sacrificed if it comes at the expense of fun.

>>48250716
Well then it's a construct and not an undead and/or you're deviating from what is assumed to be a normal convention of the major D&D settings which tend to all share these common elements, including the nature and behaviors of undead.

>>48250727
but D&D (and it's attached settings) is not the only system and settings out there. The OP never specified any system.And you are assuming everything is D&D. Which it is not. It's not even that great of a system IMO.

>>48250530
There are literal planes of existence that are composed of pure Evil. The creatures that live in these places are literally composed of matter and energy that has Evil particles. Their DNA, their cells, their physical makeup has a element called Evil within them. When a person dies, their soul naturally gravitates towards the plane of existence that most closely matches their alignment as it's physically tainted with these particles of Evil.

The planes existed before there were even gods (depending on setting). Might makes right means nothing in this multiverse as the Gods merely follow the dictates of the various planes of existence.

>>48250606
Except as has been said multiple times in the thread, an undead's natural state is to destroy life. It is malicious and destructive if not leashed hardcore by magic. A robot merely obeys and then does nothing, but a zombie once loose kills, and kills, and kills until there is no life for it to kill.

>>48250716
Then you're in a setting that isn't part of any major game or using the major cultural tropes found within the vast majority of media where undead are horrifying monsters out to kill and destroy all life.

>>48250747
I'm OP and we're talking about D&D, specifically a Pathfinder community in my area with a few problem players who don't care about the pre-written adventures we play on a montly basis and want to engage in their own bullshit and argue about the setting and rules that have already been laid out.

>>48250606
But what happens if you give it freedom from that order?

The robot just sits there harmlessly. The undead, in many settings, proceeds to kill everything it can. That's where the evil part comes in, not when they're being magically forced to act against their nature. You can force demons to do good/neutral things too, its still evil as hell to summon them because they WILL do evil if given the chance and bringing them into the world is doing exactly that.

>>48250747
Also, out curiosity how many systems with their own unique worlds where undead are not evil that actually have enough traction played elsewhere to be a relevant part of the conversation can you cite be be an legitmate excuse?

Because as far as anyone else here is concerned if it's fantasy, it's D&D unless stated otherwise here.

I think the main thing is that negative energy is the opposite of positive energy, and living things run on positive energy in most fantasy settings with those planes(especially D&D). They attempt to balance and cancel each other out.

So sticking a bunch of anti-life into a bunch of monsters isn't a good idea, because if they're not controlled the energy running them is inimical to life. Positive energy destroys undead, so naturally anything with trace amounts of positive energy in it would be something mindless undead would instinctively try to get rid of.

>>48250771
Oh well then put that you are talking about D&D in your original post then. Specifics and details make all the difference. If you leave the question open to all the settings and, homebrews out there you leave room for people to find examples of games that contradict your point. I rest my argument if you are talking about D&D and D&D ONLY it's because Gygax and the follow on designers said "This is bad.And don't think about it. Okay."

>>48250618
>If something has it, it means they do evil shit.

This is an excuse answer. It's declaring that the evil tag is deserved because it is there. These monsters are described, and they are not described as doing anything evil.

3.5e MM description of the Zombie:
>These mindless automatons shamble about, doing their creator's bidding without fear or hesitation.

Now fair play, I don't actually have the 5e MM on me right now, so maybe 5e patched the thing where at the very least uncontrolled undead are actually dangerous, but the PHB description of Animate Dead says:
>If you issue no commands, the creature only defends itself against hostile creatures.

So controlled undead are still totally safe.

>>48250626
>You clearly haven't read all these sourcebooks that are totally real and not at all made up that I will not actually name

By the actual descriptions in the game books, a zombie that is not commanded to attack will not attack. You're right in that this totally /is/ a big departure from the standard fantasy millieu, but it is explicitly how these settings are written to work according to the rulebooks published for them. Pathfinder patched this because it is a *well recognized flaw* of the rules that skeletons and zombies are not even slightly hostile - and even then, there are still no unfortunate consequences to casting Animate Dead except "someone powerful said it's wrong therefore it's wrong." Might makes right does not become less immoral just because the mighty are especially mighty, or even infathomably mighty. Good is about what you do with power, not merely having it.

>He's probably not going to be able to find specific sources anytime soon.

If he didn't want to prove that the sourcebooks actually said something, he shouldn't have brought them up. Asking him to cite sources to back up his own argument is absolutely fair. Of course I'm not just going to trust that his sources totally do exist in these unnamed books.

>>48250760
>There are literal planes of existence that are composed of pure Evil.

Does being composed of pure Evil cause creatures to commit immoral acts? If not, then the beings are not actually composed of pure evil. They're composed of some metaphysical substance that people called Evil, but if names were automatically accurate the Democratic People's Republic of Korea would not be a fascist Hellscape.

And if being composed of pure Evil *does* cause creatures to commit immoral acts, then, as of 3.5e at the very least, neither zombies nor skeletons can possibly be composed of pure Evil because they do not commit *any* acts of their own volition. Even if it is true that being composed of pure Evil *does* cause people to commit Evil acts, it is still straightforwardly obvious that manipulating that energy to cause those creatures to cease doing Evil and build an orphanage or, Hell, walk off a cliff and kill themselves, that this is *not* an immoral act, so clearly even the energy of pure Evil can be used for perfectly moral purposes.

Your argument is "we called it evil, therefore it is evil." That's one very small step removed from "because I say so."

>>48250786
Robots becoming self-aware after being left idle too long is a pretty common trope too. AIs turning evil, robots becoming heroes and so on. There's a lot of complexities with robots. Vanilla D&D generally assumes that mindless undead are inherently evil, each setting has it's own reasons why and I don't have the reference material to go into details for every setting why. But it's possible to subert that.

Not all undead have to be evil. For instance early D&D mummies were raised as guardians using positive energy and only attacked those who would disrupt the funeral rights of the deceased.

Ghosts in Pathfinder might be harmed by positive energy and be considered undead, but can be good aligned.

There was a Forgotten Realms comic I read a while back about a good man being turned into a vampire and too afraid to walk into the sun, ended up going into the underdark and preying off the evil goblins and similarly evil creatures to help make the best of his situation. Arguably evil, but a victim of circumstances and trying to make the best of a bad situation while trying to do the most good.

>>48250822
Undead that arise naturally on their own DO attack anything living though. It's their natural state. Also you're channeling something that is inimical to living things and that only Evil/Neutral Deities can control, so who is going to be more likely to send "mindless/100% uncaring undead" to do things? Someone evil, a stronger undead, or the rare neutral spellcaster willing to control a bunch of dead bodies to do menial labor?

There's also something in 3.5's Libris Mortis on large amounts of undead causing an area to become unhallowed or eventually even having the negative energy trait, which is evil.

>>48250820
I shouldn't need to. It's pretty much assumed here, unless you're trying to weasel your point in through a technicality. Of course you wouldn't admit that.

>>48250929
I play RPGs. I have not touched D&D in years. I do not assume it is the exclusive setting and system unless specified.

>>48241619
>Because Evil is a literal physical element in D&D setting.
>>48250004
> Undead (for the most part) are animated by Evil
>>>I assume there's more posts along this line, pretend this line links to them.

And yet the average 3.5 skellyman/zombone lacks the [Evil] subtype.

>>48250918
>Undead that arise naturally on their own DO attack anything living though. It's their natural state.

They don't do it in 3.5e, they don't even do it in PF according to the SRD. Descriptions in the SRD are sparse, but it still refers to skeletons as "mindless automatons," which would suggest a lack of volition outside of commands.

>Also you're channeling something that is inimical to living things and that only Evil/Neutral Deities can control,

Animate Dead is a Wizard spell, too. You can get that spell without any contact with an evil deity at all. It doesn't matter if Good-aligned Wizards can't cast it, because people who become Evil through use of [evil] spells becoming actually evil, immoral people is your conclusion. It cannot be one of your supporting arguments, that's circular reasoning.

>There's also something in 3.5's Libris Mortis on large amounts of undead causing an area to become unhallowed or eventually even having the negative energy trait, which is evil.

It's not evil just because it has the evil tag. The very foundation of having morals at all is the notion that whether or not someone or something is good or evil must be based somehow on their actions, intentions, and effects on the world. If becoming unhallowed is a boon to creatures tagged [evil], that is only genuinely immoral if it's already been demonstrated that creatures tagged [evil] are actually, really evil. This isn't evidence in favor of your argument until you've already proven it. Human waste is nothing but harmful to sapient life. Does that make all humans evil for producing large quantities of it?

>>48250979
That's nice, your a small minority.

>how should I assume that when you said travel, you meant car? I only ride my bike, unlike the other 95% of adults in the US.

>>48251016
Top of the stat block. Neutral Evil Undead.

Evil is not a subtype, it is an alignment.

>>48251042
>Evil is not a subtype
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#evilSubtype

>>48251049
He's still right, evil subtype is for beings of pure evil like Devils. Undead have evil alignments.

>>48251025
the difference being travel form point A to point B is still travel. No matter the means of locomotion. Rollplaying is still rollplaying. no matter which system you use. As soon as you begin talking about system specific details system does matter. Despite what you'd like to think. As evidenced by the fact that since you failed to specify a system you have caused confusion. And received what amounts to garbage answers to your rant.

>>48251080
Fuck off, we're all talking about vanilla D&D. Not your own special little homebrew. Your point is moot.

>>48250771
>I'm OP and we're talking about D&D, specifically a Pathfinder community in my area with a few problem players who don't care about the pre-written adventures we play on a montly basis
Not that guy, but it was not clear that you were specifically talking about pathfinder.

A lot of people don't care for d&ds (nonsense) absolute morality, even when playing d&d, and play d&d without it.

>and want to engage in their own bullshit and argue about the setting and rules that have already been laid out.
Tell them in advance you're sticking to d&d absolute morality as written, and if that's not the game they want to play play with another group.

But there are a lot of people who ignore that nonsense in pathfinder. It's full of self contradictions And the like.

I know I don't play with it when I'm gming. But if someone else is GMing, and that's the game they want to run, I'm not going to pitch a fit about it, I'll just play a less interesting character.

>>48250893
>Does being composed of pure Evil cause creatures to commit immoral acts?
Yes. This is why demons and fiendish animals are evil aligned and have the evil subtype.

>neither zombies nor skeletons can possibly be composed of pure Evil because they do not commit *any* acts of their own volition
They arent composed of pure evil. They just have animating spirits that are composed of Evil. The flesh is mortal and thus not evil, but the animating spirit, having been corrupted by the negative energy of pure destruction turns to killing to satiate an unfulfillable craving for life.

They have volition though. Sure they can't think, but like an insect relying on its mindless instincts, it mills about seeking out life to destroy. And to put a stop to an argument about animals and evil, they don't go around killing everything they encounter with no regard for self or sustenance.

>Your argument is "we called it evil, therefore it is evil."
Except it's called evil because they found that souls that engaged in activities that were harmful to others and fit the basic idea of what is evil across many cultures ended up in these awful hellholes of the afterlife and eventually became outsiders that like to destroy and kill and corrupt. So the great minds of the various worlds upon the material plane experimented with the energies of these places and found that they caused people to become nasty selfish assholes, aka evil. The places are composed of an energy and matter that is inimicable to kindness, compassion, and everything that makes for a safe stable civilization. The same is true for all the other planes of existence.

>>48251042

You've lost track of the argument. The claim made was "undead must be evil because they're made of pure Evil energy." But they're not, because they don't have the [evil] subtype. Lots of creatures can be Evil aligned. Very few of them are actually made of Evil energy.

And even if the undead *did* have the [evil] subtype, it has yet to be demonstrated that the energy that's called Evil by the books is actually immoral at all. Just because something has a label does not make that label accurate.

>>48247927
Eh chain two skeletons to a millstone or paddlewheel for a boat and have em crank away. Have them holding a sleeve around the handle and just keep it greased and it'll last for ages.

>>48251099
No need to be mad bro. Just because you made a nebulous and unclear rant about a specific system and setting. Doesn't mean you are wrong. it just means you made a crappy first post to get the supporting arguments and counter arguments you were looking for.

>>48251138
>the animating spirit, having been corrupted by the negative energy of pure destruction turns to killing to satiate an unfulfillable craving for life.

Not in 3.5e, and so far as the SRD shows, not in PF either.

>Sure they can't think, but like an insect relying on its mindless instincts, it mills about seeking out life to destroy.

Not in 3.5e, and according to the SRD not in PF either.

And even if the undead *are* killers by default, that still doesn't make a necromancer evil for taking those killers and not only preventing them from killing, but safely and reliably compelling them to do good works instead.

You aren't engaging with my argument at all, you're just stating your conclusion without any evidence to back it up, because the evidence isn't there.

>>48251017
Theoretically if that was my conclusion, than evil casters casting a ton of [good] spells turning Good would also happen.

I'd rather just say that people using dangerous forces for good ends would just turn out neutral. Not good though.

>>48251063
>He's still right, evil subtype is for beings of pure evil like Devils.
and if you follow the quote chain, my contributions to the thread started with linking some people saying undead /are/ powered by/made of Evil by pointing out that they lack the subtype intended for such entities.

>>48251144
Technically if it says Always Evil, like it does for most alignments, the vast majority of undead are going to be evil, particularly mindless with a few exceptions(The Crypt guardians whose name escapes me right now are Neutral). Most exceptions to this case usually go out of their way to not be Evil or do Good things.

File: Zombie Feeds the Homeless.jpg (89KB, 652x367px) Image search: [Google]

89KB, 652x367px

>>48251253
You are my fucking hero Anon. A well composed counter argument citing sources and examples.

>>48251273
>I'd rather just say that people using dangerous forces for good ends would just turn out neutral. Not good though.

Dude, you still aren't getting it. This is not about what metaphysical energies a necromancer radiates. This is about whether or not D&D has successfully made the labels on those energies actually match good and evil in any coherent way. If you're arguing that a guy who builds an orphanage is evil because if he hadn't done that the orphans would have instead been murdered, then your argument is incoherent, full-stop. Animate Dead (and Command Undead and so on) is a fully safe and reliable means of getting undead to do your bidding, up to and including destroying themselves upon the expiration of their utility. Even if undead had a predisposition towards evil acts - something which is so far demonstrated only by an uncited quote, but I'll give the benefit of the doubt and assume it's from *some* popular edition of the game under discussion - it still makes no sense to condemn people who simultaneously prevent those killers from harming others and turning their energies to good works for no other reason except the flavor of magic they end up radiating.

Why do people feel the need to subvert the status quo by trying to make the Necromancers civil servants?
Is it just contrarianism for the sake of being contrarian?

>>48251376

Partly it's that necromancers are frequently the only good minion-based option in a game, so if you want that style of gameplay, you need to be a necromancer, and you don't necessarily want to be an evil jackass about it.

But what I'm arguing is not that good necromancers necessarily make a better story, but rather that good necromancers are perfectly possible by the actual games we've been given, and if you want to make necromancers necessarily evil you are going to have to add in some house rules. There's no grounds for bitching about people playing the game as it's written when you haven't yet informed them you'd like to change it - and no, telling them that the book as written already endorses your preferred flavor of necromancy when that is objectively false does not qualify.

>>48251311
>Technically if it says Always Evil,

And the map says North Korea is a democratic republic. It's on you to prove the label is accurate, citing the label on its own means fucking nothing.

>>48251138
In d&d they're not animated by spirits at all, they're just animated by negative energy. Negative energy is bad not because of being made if pure evil, but because it's like liquefied entropy, antilife energy.

>>48251477

Electricity is extremely harmful to living creatures. Is your computer evil?

>>48251512
Not yet

People are getting too wrapped up in the metaphysics of the setting. It's perfectly feasible for a setting to simply have a poorly thought out internal consistency and the reason for the change is a real-life concern. Such is the case for DnD/PF.

The reason undead are evil in DnD is because, during the satanism scare in 2e, DnD was forced to become less morally ambiguous and make 'icky' things like undead actively evil. It was also a design decision in 3.5 to keep this to allow paladins to smite them. Prior to this, undead were mindless creatures with a purely neutral alignment.

Pathfinder continues this tradition because it is Jason's belief that, due to the high public visibility of pathfinder society, PF must push a system of morality that is obvious at first glance rather than necessarily containing depth. This is so parents don't have their first experience of PF being e.g. 'I summon the undead' or 'I worship devils' ----- Not that they do a great job of this, incidentally, but that's the reasoning.

If you think about it in terms of the real-life politics, it makes perfect sense why people might be annoyed about 'undead are always evil' when the IRL justification likely doesn't apply to them at all (and it's a revision in DnD already anyway).

>>48251512
Oh. I'm >>48251115.

I don't actually use this explanation and dnds absolute morality when I GM.

That doesn't change the fact that that's the way it works officially, and running it otherwise is a houserule.

>>48251613
Sure, but it also doesn't change the fact that the way it works officially does not necessarily involve any immoral acts on behalf of any given necromancer, despite being densely covered in "Evil" tags and descriptors.

>>48244904

>Raping the unliving soul of the deceased because you don't want to pay a guy for labor
>not doing evil shit

>>48251376

Most gamers are at best paper pushers/technocrats so its more like uphold and expand the status quo to include looking cool, but still being able to pat yourself on the back for being a Good Person.

>>48251613
What about Deathless from BoED? Good undead.

>>48251477
I say spirits because if you take a look at the lore, and what types of undead can be spawned from a corpse, you get an interesting bit of implied lore.

What is a Shadow or Spectre? They are incorporeal undead that arise from a corpse, but arent made from a soul. So what are they? An animus, otherwise known as the animating spirit of a body.

So how does this tie into making a zombie?
Positive energy feeds this animus keeping it "alive" and helping a soul to move a body. When something dies, the soul leaves, leaving behind its animus and body. An animus decays and eventually dies when a corpse is finally destroyed. A necromancer comes along and corrupts the animus of the corpse with negative energy, filling it with a lust and craving for something it no longer has. It tries to fill this craving by killing everything it can sense that has this positive energy from it being alive.

Incidentally, undead in older editions are animated by spirits of hunger and malice. Lookup Van Richten's Guide to Liches or undead, I can't remember the actual title.

>>48251720
But mindless undead in D&D are not in possession of a soul. They are motivated by pure negative magical essence. No soul raping involved.

>>48251376
I think it works in Diablo, where necromancers are sworn to protect the resting dead from the forces of Hell and other meddlers.

The only time I've seen 'necromancy as a civil service' done right is in the comic 'Unsounded.' One of the countries in the setting uses 'plods,' questionably sapient and aggressive zombies, for a large portion of their unskilled labor. The plods need to be kept muzzled and collared or they'll chow down on whoever's closest.

Most other countries find the practice reprehensible, partially for almost correct religious reasons or because the act itself poses a fairly substantial danger even with the economic benefits.

>>48243114
>>48246679
Or get an Inevitable after you because you are dicking with order.

>>48251795
Hey, you are not allowed to bring in examples outside of D&D. That has been established.(*cough* not stated *cough*) in the OPs first post.

>>48251780
>implying implications

This is pretty good lore, but it's not implied, it's stuff you made up.

>>48251647
In DnD things can be 'evil' with no immoral acts required. The lines are entirely arbitrary.

>>48251762
Boed is hardly a good example it's filled with evil stuff under other named differently

>>48252047

That's what I've been saying, yes.

Although I will now additionally assert that this is pointlessly confusing, and either the "good" and "evil" metaphysical energies should be renamed to something more in line with what they actually represent, or else what they represent should be rewritten to fit the names.

>>48251720
There is no soul involved in unintelligent undead, only magic energy (specifically, negative energy).

Though in many editions you could also animate them as animated objects.

>>48251780
>Shadow
>Animus
>Animating spirit of the body
That's pure conjecture/homebrew. Interesting homebrew, but homebrew nonetheless.

Van Richten doesn't apply to regular dnd. Ravenloft has all kinds of weird exceptions.

>>48252140
>>48252188
If you use animate object on a skeleton instead of using negative energy it's officially not evil. Fun fact.

>>48252262
Well shit. Problem solved we can all go home now.

>>48252262
It's also not really any more effective than animating a skeleton sized rock

>>48252262
>Bone Golem
>Looks like a skeleton, moves like a marionette
That'd actually be a good low-level challenge for horror games.

>>48240702

My basic understanding of it is mindless undead don't just stand there doing nothing or simply be the way neutral animals do.

They have a drive when not controlled by a necromancer, which is to seek out and kill the living. They do not do this for sustenance or any particular reason, but the only instinct of the walking dead is to kill the living. Ergo, they have no minds, but are evil creatures.

File: DOTS.png (266KB, 400x300px) Image search: [Google]

266KB, 400x300px

>>48240666

>>48252649
>Fuck off, we're all talking about vanilla D&D. Not your own special little homebrew. Your point is moot.

>>48252649
>OP's setting is default dnd. He established this later on by throwing a fit at people not assuming default dnd by default.

>>48252816
Oh there he is again. OP, you should really fucking specify what system/setting when you make the goddamn thread. A lot of the people here play non dnd games.

Even those of us who do play a lot of dnd, aren't necessarily going to assume an unmarked thread is about dnd.

Most unmarked threads on tg are not system specific.

>>48252908
lol. I'm not actually OP. In fact I'm the guy he spazzed out on. I' m just carrying on his shitty legacy now. Because he was such a dick over something that was his mistake.

>>48248995
I think I may steal this one, that's way better than what I've been doing with them.

>>48240666
>Since we now know you mean dnd, specifically pathfinder:
Many people don't play with the completely arbitrary alignment judgements of dnd editions. Where those lines are often varies one edition to the next, and in the case of pathfinder, they have in places published that they started something is not evil, then later published something else contradicting it or vice versa.

>Dnd alignment is arbitrary and doesn't make much sense.
>Varies from one dnd to the next.
>Many Inconsistencies within a single edition.
>The rulings on the alignment of different tasks is spread out all over the place so you're not likely to see all of the official rulings that have been made anyways
>I've met more people who don't use it than those who do. So few people do use it, that you should really specify if you are, because most people aren't going to assume that to be the case.

>>48252525
>early room in dungeon has a door barricaded against things further down, death note from adventurer
>note hastily outlining grave horror, apologizing to wife, kids and the world
>corpse in corner, long turned to bones
>suddenly jerks upright as if on strings and attacks party, dry whispers of further apologies in the stale air

jesus christ how stressful

>>48244166

The answer:

Use the bones of something that is resistant to fire, or has bones that can't melt unless it reaches a frankly stupid heat level, and even then it would go all Waxy.

Alternatively, make it a living metal construct, and bind fire to it, so you get a T-1000 that is on FIRE.

Coincidentally, I once had a slime mage that ascended into a T-1000, with the metal being a mix of several mythical ones.

My GM raged for days when he realized he couldn't get my character killed after the campaign ended and so he became a recurring feature in that particular setting over the millennia, to the point he was still dicking about when it reached Spell-jammer level stuff.

>>48245326

Undead in WoW ARE capable of feeling happiness.

It's just that none of them are happy to begin with and actively surround themselves with depressing shit and awful people.

Oh, and the fact that the moment they meet a true death their souls go to Mega-Oblivion-Hell aligned with the Void Lords by default because The Light is a bit of a massive fucking tool and cares nothing for morality or intent.

File: 1457376046412.jpg (355KB, 1280x1034px) Image search: [Google]

355KB, 1280x1034px

>>48242769
Yes. In Elder Scrolls, Dark Elves are seen as necromancers, yet ironically they despise necromancers, regularly conducting witch-hunts to root out all forms of undead. Unsurprisingly their province has the least amount of vampires. The big difference for them is that their necromancy is a family affair that both parties agree to (though sometimes family members that did particularly terrible things will be forcefully bound as punishment). Thus there's a split between good and bad necromancy. It wouldn't be hard to do something similar in other settings.

>>48240666
Is a sword evil? What about a gun? Of course not, they are merely weapons, tools. The same goes for zombies, they are not living, thinking creatures acting on their own impulse. They are mindless weapons being wielded by another.

File: Doot.png (562KB, 632x738px) Image search: [Google]

562KB, 632x738px

>>48240666
The mindless, uncontrolled undead are not evil, i would mostly consider them as wild animals.

But if said undead is controled, then the one who raise it is at fault.

>>48253900
>Use the bones of something that is resistant to fire, or has bones that can't melt unless it reaches a frankly stupid heat level

jet fuel can't melt steel skeletons

>>48255812
40k roleplay has Evil swords.

>>48255812
Neither are spiders, ants, scorpions, centipedes, roaches, or other vermin. But they have a charisma score and a wisdom score, and that meens undead that have no minds can also act on their own when not controlled.

Except they act on the impulse of destroying living things because they're inhuman monsters risen from the grave. Their instincts to consume and move around consuming things applies to people as well as animals because they have no impulses telling them not to.

Never forget - mindless does not mean without will or self awareness. Otherwise vermin wouldn't be a threat either.

>>48255840
>>48255812
Show me a statblock that says mindless undead are not evil.

>>48251253
Except in the statblocks for the mindless undead, their alignments are listed as evil. Which means regardless of the animating energy, they are evil for some reason. And since in PF they have a wisdom of 10 and a charisma of 10, they have the will to act, and the awareness of self (and not self). That means they can go and do things. And since their alignment is evil, the things they do will be coded to that alignment with no other source of intellectual desire to inform their actions outside of their base cunning and their self awareness that includes the awareness that they are in fact evil.

Why would they NOT go around seeking living things to destroy? They are evil, self aware, the awareness of that which is alive and not themselves, and have the will to act and the cunning to act on their desire.

They are literally mindless killing machines.

>>48256555
>Except in the statblocks for the mindless undead, their alignments are listed as evil.

And the map says North Korea is a democratic republic. This isn't the first time I've brought this up. The accuracy of the labels is your conclusion. Stop trying to use it as a supporting argument.

>And since in PF they have a wisdom of 10 and a charisma of 10, they have the will to act, and the awareness of self (and not self)

No they do not. Having a Wisdom score means that they are capable of perceiving their environment. It does not mean they are capable of will. Having a Charisma score means they are capable of telling the difference between themselves and things that are not themselves. It does not mean they are capable of will.

>Why would they NOT go around seeking living things to destroy?

Because it is explicitly stated that they do not do that.

None of this is actual lore from the books. It's bullshit you made up that directly contradicts the lore in the books.

>>48256778
>Wisdom describes a character's WILLPOWER, COMMON SENSE, AWARENESS, and INTUITION. Wisdom is the most important ability for clerics and druids, and it is also important for monks and rangers. If you want your character to have acute senses, put a high score in Wisdom. Every creature has a Wisdom score. A character with a Wisdom score of 0 is incapable of rational thought and is unconscious.

>Charisma measures a character's personality, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and appearance. It is the most important ability for paladins, sorcerers, and bards. It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to channel energy. For undead creatures, CHARISMA IS A MEASURE OF THEIR UNNATURAL "LIFEFORCE". Every creature has a Charisma score. A character with a Charisma score of 0 is not able to exert himself in any way and is unconscious.

>Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, brought to unlife through foul magic. While most skeletons are mindless automatons, they still possess an EVIL CUNNING imparted to them by their animating force—a cunning that ALLOWS THEM TO WEILD WEAPONS AND WEAR ARMOR.

>Zombies have poor reflexes and can only perform a single move action or standard action each round (it has the staggered condition.) A zombie CAN MOVE UP T ITS SPEED AND ATTACK in the same round as a charge action.

Note that neither of those statblocks say they must be directed to do so, unlike every spell which is labeled a Compulsion Effect.

By the logic you are using, every vermin and plant monster in the entire system is also completely harmless and does absolutely nothing ever. If you wish to ignore the evil section of the statblock as well, you may as well state that you are making your own entire world where undead are not evil and are mindless automatons that must be commended.

This is information straight out of the books.

>>48256778
>Because it is explicitly stated that they do not do that.
This is false information.

>>48256778
And vampires don't drink blood either.

>>48256778
I would like to point out that in the Golem section of the book, it specifically states that golems do nothing unless commanded. There is no such statement anywhere concerning undead, including mindless undead.

In fact the animate dead spell does not state that uncommnded, uncontrolled dead do not sit there and do nothing. So there is no actual place that it says "uncontrolled mindless undead do nothing". You're literally making that up.

>intt Unemployed Snowflakes with Sociology Degrees putting them to good use.

>>48256872
>This is information straight out of the books

Slightly different books, but yes. And it doesn't say any of the things you want it to. It comes right out and says that skeletons are mindless automatons, that they know how to wield a weapon does not actually change that. Fuck, you're citing "zombies are capable of attacking" and trying to treat this as "zombies must necessarily attack every living thing nearby." That is blatantly dishonest.

>By the logic you are using, every vermin and plant monster in the entire system is also completely harmless and does absolutely nothing ever.

You seem to be confused. That ability scores have anything to do with the conversation is *your* argument. My argument is that ability scores are not relevant to the particular behaviors under discussion. Zombies and skeletons are mindless automatons because "mindless automaton" are the exact words used to describe them by the source material, not because of their ability scores.

>>48256879
Skeleton description in PF SRD describes them as "mindless automatons." Zombies get the same description in 3.5e MM.

>>48257001

Specifically it says this:
>Being mindless, golems do nothing without orders from their creators.

So it explicitly says that golems do nothing because they are mindless. It also explicitly says that skeletons are mindless. So the place where it says "uncontrolled mindless undead do nothing" is in fact exactly the quote you just referenced (without copy/pasting explicitly - can't imagine why).

>>48257040
And yet again, the most important part of your argument is ignored - the part where you claim they sit there and do nothing.

If a thing has awareness and willpower, it can act. If it has an unnatural lifeforce, then it can do things. Those very same books say that Golems are mindless automatons that do nothing unless commanded. NOWHERE does it say that about mindless undead. Even the skeleton description which I quoted word for word does not state "they do nothing unless commanded", a statement which is word for word printed in the section about golems.

So they have willpower, they have awareness, and they do not have a section of their description that says "they do nothing unless commanded" unless the mindless automatons that are golems.

You are interpreting the statblock in the most favorable manner to suit your argument while ignoring any other statblock that supports any other argument, including those that state that they are free willed evil beings according to their statblock, even if they are mindless.

Face it, you are just making up your own world and not arguing the actual system at all, because if you were, you would be wrong.

Undead don't have to be evil, but the act of Necromancy is almost always evil. Even if there is no Objectively Evil Negative Energies involved, it's still desecration of the dead at best, and mind-raping an unwilling person and bringing them back to a mockery of life at worst. I don't fucking care if you want to use some zombies to build an orphanage if you're unearthing my dead body and yanking my soul out of the afterlife to put it into a rotting corpse.

As for why so many people are butthurt about this shit, it's because we're taught to think that subversion alone is key to creativity and good writing. Hence so many retards on /tg/ with their good demons and dwarves who are 12 foot tall aquatic centaurs.

>>48257074
No - that's a deliberate interpretation in the absence of actual rules.

Vermin are also mindless - your reasoning means they are also incapable of acting and doing anything without commands. There is literally nowhere in any book that says zombies and skeletons do nothing in the absence of commands from their creators, unlike golems. It's literally MADE UP.

>>48257101
>Those very same books say that Golems are mindless automatons that do nothing unless commanded. NOWHERE does it say that about mindless undead.

Again: That golem line you're crowing about specifically says golems do not act unless commanded *because they are mindless*. It is very clear that their lack of action is a consequence of their mindlessness, which means that the same lack of action is present in other mindless creatures, including skeletons.

Also, "willpower" is the ability to resist others imposing their will. It doesn't mean that a creature has a will of their own, it just represents how hard it is to assert control of something.

Additionally, even if skeletons *were* naturally evil, this still does not change the fact that a necromancer commanding a skeleton has safe and reliable control over them, and therefore the actual subject of the OP (which is about people who raise undead) are perfectly capable of being good even /if/ skeletons were mindlessly violent when uncontrolled.

>>48257139
>if you're unearthing my dead body and yanking my soul out of the afterlife to put it into a rotting corpse.

Never says you have to yank anyone's soul from anywhere to cast Animate Dead in most settings.

>>48257139
Dude, what the fuck? This can't get anymore clear. The line explicitly says that golems not taking actions on their own is a consequence of their being mindless. You're just refusing to read English properly at this point.

>>48257154
Yes. And that statement IS NOT applied to any undead of any sort. You are literally ignoring the fact that it isn't, and deciding a rule which applies to one creature type automatically applies to a different creature type.

You could equally apply that same rule to apply to mindless plants and say that because a mindless plant grown from a seed has a creator, it will obey his commands, because it explicitly doesn't say that in the section on plants.

>>48257176

His point is that Vermin are also mindless (Int -) yet they do not do nothing in the absence of orders.

File: disdain for plebs.jpg (4MB, 2160x2184px) Image search: [Google]

4MB, 2160x2184px

>some faggot is actually insisting that the undead are mindless in the same sense that golems are mindless

>>48257190
>And that statement IS NOT applied to any undead of any sort.

The statement is applied to all mindless creatures, because it is explicitly a consequence of being mindless. Yes, that is stupid - it's also what the rules say.

File: citation needed.jpg (23KB, 550x550px) Image search: [Google]

23KB, 550x550px

>>48257210
Show me exactly where in the book it explicitly says "anything that is mindless does nothing unless given orders".

>>48257196

In light of the golem line, they should by the lore of the books apparently not do anything without command, because not acting unless commanded is apparently an attribute of mindless creatures. Presumably whatever created vermin the first place compels them to behave like random encounters. Or, y'know, Paizo is stupid and can't keep their lore straight.

>>48257176
>>48257176
Yes, it says that.

ABOUT GOLEMS.

NOT ABOUT UNDEAD.

Moreover the rule you are citing is referring to an entire creature type - golems - and not another creature type - undead.

The only place it ever mentions undead being mindless automatons also states they psses an evil cunning that allows them to wield weapons and armor, while the part that says they have an "evil cunning" is specifically ignored in your arguments that state they wouldn't actually use that evil cunning to take action against anyone.

It's called cherry picking.

Incidentally, it is mentioned that only undead possessed of intellect in PF actually have souls, but that charisma of 10 means that zombies and skeletons actually have an undead 'lifeforce'.

>>48257233
Show me exactly where in the book it explicitly says "mindless undead will automatically attack any living creature nearby." You can't build your entire argument on implication and then, when the implication falls apart under scrutiny, demand that the counter-statement be built upon explicit declarations.

And again: None of this shit affects necromancers with unfailing control over the mindless undead.

>>48257210
>>48257210
No it isn't Your interpretation means carnivorous plants and all vermin also do nothing without orders.

That rule applies to exactly one creature - golems.

>>48257255
But you apparently can build your entire argument on one implied reading of a rule applied to another creature type and say it holds up under scrutiny?

By RAW, undead zombies and skeletons have willpower, awareness, life force, and are evil. By RAW, that would lead them to kill other living things mindlessly, because it is the most effective evil use of their life.

File: dutiful_return_by_seb_m-d83gnci[1].jpg (97KB, 960x723px) Image search: [Google]

97KB, 960x723px

>>48240666
>666
Most necromancers and by extension, undead are evil since they usually powered by dark, malevolent energy. However there are cases where in zombies can be an incredible boon. For example, a local necromancer could single-handedly greatly increase the local wealth of his hometown by replacing all hard labour with zombie labour that works 24/7.

The villagers give him a small amount of tax, and they get a few dozen extra farm hands. Sure Aunt Betty near the hinterland might be frightened to see her husband plow the field with zombified ol' Bessy, but for the most part it's a net gain.

Bandits come around? Well you have an unflinching militia to protect the towns people. King's Men comes around to investigate the undead? Show them the fruits of your labour with a large tithe and a tour of the happy townsfolk.

>>48257255
>>48257255
Except, you know, until they die, dispel magic is used, or they try and command more hit dice of undead than they are able to.

File: smug.jpg (16KB, 480x378px) Image search: [Google]

16KB, 480x378px

>>48257255
>Show me exactly where in the book it explicitly says "mindless undead will automatically attack any living creature nearby."
Pages 272 and 315 of the 5e Monster Manual.

>>48257242
>Yes, it says that.

>ABOUT GOLEMS.

And explicitly as a consequence of mindlessness, yes. Which means that it presumably applies to other mindless creatures as well, and you can't declare that it doesn't just because it doesn't suit you. This is basic logic.

>while the part that says they have an "evil cunning" is specifically ignored in your arguments

What does having an "evil cunning" mean? I ignored it because it's an empty statement that contributes nothing except what the rest of that sentence says - that this gives them the ability to wield weapons and don armor (technically it says /wear/ armor, but you don't need any kind of 'cunning' to wear armor that's already on you).

>>48240752
/thread

But let's keep going anyway

>>48257258
>That rule applies to exactly one creature - golems.

That is not what the sentence said. That sentence said that golems do not act without orders because they are mindless.

>>48257284
>But you apparently can build your entire argument on one implied reading of a rule applied to another creature type and say it holds up under scrutiny?

I'm not the one who brought statements from other creature types into this. If you want to declare that the line from the golem entry shouldn't be considered relevant to any undead entries, that just means we're back where we started.

>By RAW, undead zombies and skeletons have willpower, awareness, life force, and are evil.

This means that skeletons #1 can resist others' efforts to force them to do things, #2 can see, #3 are (sort of) alive, and #4 you are using your conclusion as a supporting argument again. Precisely zero of these things suggests that they kill everything they see.

>>48257297
The conversation is not about 5e. For the conversation about 5e, see "necromancers do not have to be evil just because skeletons would do evil things if the necromancer /wasn't/ commanding them" statements.

>>48257295

And a car can kill its driver and a number of innocent bystanders in unlikely edge cases. In fact, despite being unlikely edge cases overall, this is a very common form of death because of how common car use is. Are cars evil?

>>48257352
>The conversation is not about 5e.
How nice of you to cherry pick like that when these details have been the same in every fucking edition.

Necromancers don't have to be Evil, but the best they can be is Neutral.
Do people forget Neutral exists? When you're using Evil means for Good ends?

>>48257366

If these details have been the same in every edition, you should have no difficulty citing them in other editions.

File: 13012758_1028278220594807_2919134957279710198_n.jpg (7KB, 133x210px) Image search: [Google]

7KB, 133x210px

>>48246082
The same place where the dead can be raised and be animated despite the several impossibilities and implausibilities of the very act you fucking autist.

>>48257373
>When you're using Evil means for Good ends?

Why is it Evil to command creatures who would otherwise be murdering people to stop doing that? How, in any way besides "the book says so," is this an immoral course of action, in means or ends?

>>48257352
>I'm not the one who brought statements from other creature types into this
Yes you did - when you decided that part of that line, "do nothing without orders from their creators" magically appears in two statblocks where it does not exist.

>This means that skeletons #1 can resist others' efforts to force them to do things, #2 can see, #3 are (sort of) alive, and #4 you are using your conclusion as a supporting argument again. Precisely zero of these things suggests that they kill everything they see.
Its pretty basic logic.
>willpower: the ability to control yourself : strong determination that allows you to do something difficult
>awareness: knowing and understanding a lot about what is happening in the world or around you
>evil: causing harm or injury to someone
http://www.merriam-webster.com
My conclusion is valid according to basic logic and standard definitions in the dictionary.

>>48257451
You made a living conduit to the multiversal source of negative energy and are bringing the entire plane closer to oblivion by fiddling with the natural order. Undead don't form on their own, except in areas saturated with negative energy, which don't form on their own. (Creating areas saturated with negative energy is also Evil.)

More negative energy in the world = more instability = world is one step closer to ruin.

>>48257451
>Good necromancy
Look out world it is time for a crash course in why moral relativism doesn't work in D&D

>>48257466
>Yes you did

What? No I didn't. Very obviously the point where other creatures' descriptions got pulled into this when other people cited golems. This is blatantly dishonest.

>willpower: the ability to control yourself : strong determination that allows you to do something difficult

Not in D&D. In D&D, willpower is the ability to resist control by others. This is what your Wisdom score contributes to. Otherwise, skeletons would have no Wisdom score, because to be mindless is to lack will by definition.

>awareness: knowing and understanding a lot about what is happening in the world or around you

That is the third definition given, yes, however being that Wisdom provide bonuses to perception-related skills it was very obviously using the first and/or second definition, that is, the ability to perceive things in general, not a particularly exceptional capability to do so. In particular because someone with a WIS of 1 obviously does not understand "a lot" of what is happening in the world around them.

>evil: causing harm or injury to someone

And its antonym is good, which is helping and benefiting others (well, that's one definition anyway, and it's the one that most correlates to the definition of evil you've gone with). A necromancer can use mindless undead to do nothing but help and benefit the people around him, and regardless of who is right in this conversation it will still be objectively true that he has only done and intended good in the world. Yet, according to D&D definitions, that necromancer is disqualified from being good. The definitions of "good" and "evil" are not properly applied here. You are using your conclusion as your supporting argument. Far from valid logic, circular reasoning is a formal fallacy.

>>48257472
>You made a living conduit to the multiversal source of negative energy and are bringing the entire plane closer to oblivion by fiddling with the natural order.

According to what source?

>>48257489

Nothing about any of my arguments has anything to do with moral relativism. Yours is listing in that direction, though.

>>48257451
>Why is it Evil to command creatures who would otherwise be murdering people to stop doing that?
Commanding them to stop murdering people isn't Evil at all.

*Keeping them around* after that instead of taking the opportunity to kill/banish them permanently, actively choosing to keep them in an environment where they could harm innocents just so you can have a slightly more convenient worker, is very much Evil.

>>48257585
>*Keeping them around* after that instead of taking the opportunity to kill/banish them permanently, actively choosing to keep them in an environment where they could harm innocents just so you can have a slightly more convenient worker, is very much Evil.

So you think cars are evil, then? Their death toll is in the tens of thousands annually.

>>48257375
No can do, earlier editions seem not to account for mindless undead that are not under someone's control. However, 3.5 defines "mindless" as "operating on simple instincts or commands", so your "anything mindless must do nothing if not commanded" argument is bullshit.

>>48257601
>using undead abominations to do your dirty work is comparable to driving a car

>>48257601
If self-driving cars started intentionally running people down, then sure.

File: ice and fire huehue.jpg (458KB, 1680x1050px) Image search: [Google]

458KB, 1680x1050px

>>48241230

In the warcraft universe. the Red Dragonflight's fire can bring people back to life, like a certain someone..

The current Lich King, who holds the undead in the world back from slaughtering everything within their path for example.

>>48257609
>However, 3.5 defines "mindless" as "operating on simple instincts or commands", so your "anything mindless must do nothing if not commanded" argument is bullshit.

That argument was taken from the golems' creature entry which, in PF, explicitly states that golems' inability to take action without command is a direct consequence of their being mindless. Honestly, cross-referencing what exact words are or aren't in completely unrelated monster entries isn't really a very sound means of argumentation in the first place, but if anyone still wants to go that route, then yes, the golem entry states nothing explicit about the undead (obviously) and its implication is that all mindless creatures do not act unless commanded.

I'm more than happy to ignore that nonsense entirely, but skeletons and (in a slightly different edition) zombies aren't just called mindless, they're mindless *automatons*. Automatons do only what they're programmed to do, and there's no evidence that the undead are programmed to kill on sight in 3.X. This was patched in later editions, but the general problem of necromancy completely and unerringly overriding the default behavior of the undead was not. In 5e, Animate Dead even causes the undead to only attack creatures who are attacking them, so you don't even have to specify "don't kill anything until I tell you to" as a command.

>>48257632

What's the difference, other than the fact that you happen to find one squicky? I mean, Jesus Christ, cars are powered by toxic fluids that are instant death to consume and which can cause brain damage just by inhaling its fumes.

>>48257647

Controlled undead only attack when attacked, and again, gasoline harms people just by being near us and will kill us if we consume even a small amount of it. It's actually a lot more dangerous than negative energy, which you can pump a decent amount of into somebody before they croak.

>>48257720
>What's the difference, other than the fact that you happen to find one squicky?
If I leave my car alone for 20 minutes while I go grocery shopping, I will never ever come back and find that it has eaten a child in my absence. That's the fucking difference.

>>48257762
What's the CR for an evil, intelligent honda civic?

>>48257762
Ah, so your objection is not that these things kill children when we lose control over them, but rather the exact means of death. Eating a toddler is bad, but crushing a toddler to death is okay.

>>48257698
>and there's no evidence that the undead are programmed to kill on sight in 3.X.
Except for the behavior of wights, wraiths, vampires...

>>48257671
Yeah, so the undead weren't sweeping across the world unified by the will of their king, he was holding them back all along. Right. We'll go with that. Nice lore, WoW guys.

>>48257790
No, my objection is that I put a car in my garage or in the middle of a field somewhere and it will never hurt anyone, while an undead monster will continue to be a constant danger to everyone around it until it is destroyed.

>>48257797
Wights, Wraiths, Shades, Ghouls, Ghasts, Banshees, Skeletons, Zombies and so on.

Morgs are from exceptionally evil people.

Vampires have to subsist on blood of the living, usually killing their victim int he process or turning them into their thrall.

Ghosts... Sure, they aren't explicitly evil though many are.

Nearly every undead monster in the D&D monster manual and popular culture even by default evil.

>>48257797

Precisely zero of these creatures are described as mindless automatons.

>>48257698
No - skeletons are referred to as "mindless automatons that posses an evil cunning".

And yet you hear constant arguments that they're not evil too.

>>48257835
Precisely 100% of them are described as undead.

>>48257822
Okay, let me clarify, do you think cars are evil under *any* normal circumstances, including when they are being driven, and are therefore a constant danger to everyone around them?

>>48257844
Shh, don't present facts. It hurts their fragile egos.

>>48257853
>and are therefore a constant danger to everyone around them?
That's on the driver. A car, left on its own, will not run over a toddler. Undead monsters left on their own will gladly eat toddlers.

File: 1134468051063.jpg (118KB, 800x600px) Image search: [Google]

118KB, 800x600px

>>48240666
>Why do so many people these days seem to get butthurt when I say that constructs, and especially mindless constructs are evil?
>Sure. You've got like maybe a few exceptions like an AV program or a sentient turbochef that's not actually a toaster.
>I'm sick of these people who get all pissy because they want the evil war machines without any of the consequences.

>>48257853
Cars can be left alone as long as you put them in park and put the parking break on. They don't wander off and seek to kill the living on their own.

Now that we bring this up, there are strict rules, backed up by punishments ranging from fines to prison, regarding the allowable use of your car. Seeing as how it's dangerous.

>>48257845

So what? Almost none of them attack living people on sight. You cannot claim that attacking living people on sight is an attribute of all undead because all of them will attack living people under some kind of circumstance. Practically anything will attack living people under some kind of circumstance.

>>48257844

Again, you are using your conclusion as a supporting argument. That D&D uses evil completely inconsistent with its actual definition is the subject of debate, you cannot use their usage of the word "evil" as evidence of anything because your entire job here is to prove that they're using it right. The actual sentence you are quoting a fragment of declares that skeletons use their "evil cunning" to put on helmets and wield swords. If that qualifies skeletons as evil, "your Paladin falls" just reached a whole new level of stupidity.

>>48257893
Right, but cars still don't eat people when you go away. At worst, a car might roll away and maim or kill some one because it was not properly parked. But once parked, they don't lash out at people who happen to wanter too near to them and try and coop their brains out like a pumpkin.

>>48241025
>This along with them being from a specific setting that threw out the alignment rules.
Pretty sure you're mistaken. I assume you're referring to Eberron, and deathless predate Eberron. They first showed up in the book of exalted deeds.

>>48257902
>So what? Almost none of them attack living people on sight.
The opposite is true in my experience.

>>48257869
>A car, left on its own, will not run over a toddler.

Unless it's in neutral. Even then, if the actions of an automaton are on the conscience of what commands it, that puts the actions of an undead on the necromancer.

>>48257886
>Cars can be left alone as long as you put them in park and put the parking break on.

Undead can be left alone so long as you've got the right spell on them, or if you need to leave them for longer than 24 hours, shackle them to a tree. It's not significantly more expensive than installing a parking break on a car.

>>48257902
Zombies do.

Ghouls might hold back but they universally grave flesh.

Skeletons are described as having an evil cunning. Take that as you will.

Ghasts and Wights absolutly do try and hurt the living whenever possible.

Vampires have to attack the living to survive.

Some of the more powerful sentient undead don't have to attack living people, but are almost all the result of really nasty people getting killed or transformed into undead.

File: image.png (9KB, 619x400px) Image search: [Google]

9KB, 619x400px

what kind of shitty GM do you have that actually does this kind of "oh you didn't specifically say for it to not destroy the room so it will" with a shit eating grin?

I mean for fuck sake, you magically controlling a corpse run by negative energy, unless the mindless thing breaks free how can it do anything except what you tell it, it literally has no will of its own, it's not some animate monkeys paw or some shit, if you say stand here, it'll fucking stand there for a century or more, and probably attack anything alive, but nothing more.

God damn you pedantic shits piss me the fuck off, no sane gm is going to do any of that, and if your gm does and there isn't a fucking excellent explanation in setting as to why than you kick him in these kids and leave.

>>48240752
>6. They're losers, which is why they're wasting their time on the internet arguing about their power fantasies instead of actually playing because they're insufferable and nobody wants to play with them.
Wew lad. That lack of self awareness.

>>48257906
Park in your garage and forget to turn it off, it'll kill anyone who enters.

>>48257936
If they stark sucking on the tail pipe the second they go in their maybe

>>48257919
Your experience being with random encounters where even perfectly normal wolves will fight to the death like they were killbots. A wight is an asshole murderer who wants to kill people, but he's not mindless and he's of slightly above average intelligence. He's going to pick his targets. And really, heavily armored adventurer parties are exactly the kind of people he should be avoiding.

>>48257926
>Unless it's in neutral.
Once again, that's on the driver. At no point will the car actively try to murder someone.

>Undead can be left alone so long as you've got the right spell on them, or if you need to leave them for longer than 24 hours, shackle them to a tree.
And what if you fucking die first, hm? Or what if they break free from their shackles?
>It's not significantly more expensive than installing a parking break on a car.
Yes it is, because parking brakes are fucking standard now.

>>48257538
And using the very same line from the golem statement to justify "skeletons are mindless automatons that do nothing without their creator's orders" when no such line exists in the skeleton description is honest? You are literally reading into the description information that is not present in any place except under a description of another creature type. Not even in the Animate Dead spell does it state mindless undead do nothing when uncontrolled. Nowhere in any PF book does it say mindless undead stand the and do nothing without a command. Only Golems do that - literally it is the only place that ever states anything mindless does nothing without commands.

Oozes and Vermin, two types of creates that have no intelligence score act mindlessly. There is no statement that undead with no intelligence score do not act mindlessly. The fact that they have wisdom and charisma further indicates that they are capable of acting in the same manner as vermin and oozes, in a mindless manner based on instinct. Since they have an alignment, unlike oozes and most vermin, they will act instinctively and mindlessly in accordance to their alignment.

So, at this point you are now reduced to specifically ignoring parts of definitions that don't fit your worldview. It states in D&D "Wisdom represents willpower" with no qualifiers or other statements about what it does not represent. All three definitions of awareness are part of the definition of awareness - that third part doesn't apply to some other word. And you asked me why a creature listed as evil would seek to do harm, well, that's within the definition of evil; it's still an objective meaning for evil.

You may as well say "this is my homebrew, it has nothing to do with D&D" because when you are literally ignoring textbook definitions, you are not arguing from logic or from an objective standpoint.

>>48257972
It sounds like you just really want a necromancers undead to be worse than useless

>>48257902
If fucking says in the STATBLOCK they "posses an evil cunning" you autistic moron. You read things from other statblocks into places it doesn't exist and then IGNORE WHAT'S ACTUALLY IN THE STATBLOCK AT THE SAME TIME.

>>48257929
>Zombies do.

According to what? Keep in mind we're talking about Pathfinder, here. That 5e patched this specific problem (but not the greater problem) is not under debate.

>Ghouls might hold back but they universally grave flesh.

So what?

>Skeletons are described as having an evil cunning

Which they use to wear hats, yes.

>Ghasts and Wights absolutly do try and hurt the living whenever possible.

But skeletons and zombies are mindless automatons, which means by definition they do not have desires. The ghastly/wightly desire to kill things is necessarily distinct from any possible actions taken by an automaton.

>Vampires have to attack the living to survive.

But they can and do pick targets. The dietary requirements of a vampire are not at all the same thing as automatically attacking every living thing they see.

The only thing these creatures have in common (besides generally being surprisingly lively dead things) is that there are circumstances under which they will attack the living. There are definitely circumstances under which skeletons and zombies will attack the living, in any edition - whenever they're commanded to.

>>48257948
>Your experience being with random encounters where even perfectly normal wolves will fight to the death like they were killbots
Every time I've encountered animals acting like killbots, they were either under some influence or lacked the opportunity to escape.

>>48257936
How many times do I have to say this: it's on the driver.

>>48257007
>"how dare people more knowledgeable than me apply their knowledge"

>>48257671
I think you're misinterpreting the events. Fordragon never died. The flames kept Putress's plague from killing him at the cost of all of his body hair and a lifetime of searing agony. Alexstrasza tries to do the same for Bridenbrad but her fire isn't strong enough to strip the plague of undeath from his body.

>>48258007
>sociologist
>more knowledgeable than anyone
Hilarious

>>48257987
No - under control they're perfectly capable of doing what they are commanded, including nothing. But when they are not controlled, they don't "just stand there". Golems are always controlled. Undead are controlled only by the spell or by other undead, in both cases through magical power.. When they are controlled they do nothing if that is the intent of the master. But if they are not controlled - as when happens when the controller is killed - they don't just stand there and do nothing. They do what is instinctive to their nature - which is evil - and they do so because they have the willpower to motivate themselves and the life force to exist beyond control of another.

Claiming "oh, they stand there and do nothing when no one has control over them through magic" is false information based on deliberate misinterpretation of rules that have no bearing on the undead.

>Thinking nonsentient machines don't have a default setting of "murder the fuck out of anyone within reach"
>Not knowing about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQ2dI_B_Ycg

>>48258019
Oh UNcontrolled undead, fuck, yeah anythings game then, yeah.

>>48257956
>Once again, that's on the driver.

Different responses to different people. That snippet wasn't aimed at you. The part that *was* aimed at you raised the question as to why the actions of mindless undead don't rest on the necromancer who created and controls them.

>And what if you fucking die first, hm?

What if the driver has a heart attack on the road?

>Yes it is, because parking brakes are fucking standard now.

Why can't shackles be standard on undead?

>>48257972

>And using the very same line from the golem statement to justify "skeletons are mindless automatons that do nothing without their creator's orders" when no such line exists in the skeleton description is honest?

Yes. Because that is the implication of the line. That's what the words mean.

>You are literally reading into the description information that is not present in any place except under a description of another creature type.

I'm going to point out again that it wasn't me who brought up golems. I've already said that I think the whole line of inquiry is a huge stretch, and it's not even a stretch whose implications favor the side that brought it up - which is yours, not mine.

>It states in D&D "Wisdom represents willpower" with no qualifiers or other statements about what it does not represent.

Do you seriously not know how Wisdom and willpower are related in D&D? Wisdom contributes to your Willpower save, which has a very specific function.

>All three definitions of awareness are part of the definition of awareness - that third part doesn't apply to some other word.

That is not how definitions work.

>And you asked me why a creature listed as evil would seek to do harm, well, that's within the definition of evil

Whether or not D&D is using the word 'evil' correctly is the subject of debate. You cannot use it as a supporting argument. Still. That hasn't changed since the last twelve times I mentioned this.

>>48257988
>If fucking says in the STATBLOCK they "posses an evil cunning" you autistic moron.

Why is it so hard for you people to understand that "D&D uses the word 'evil' incorrectly" is the subject of debate?

>>48257993

Good for your GM. The way he specifically runs wights and ghouls doesn't have any bearing on their lore in the books.

>>48258013
>person who specializes in a field of knowledge
>not knowledgeable
I get you're a college drop-out, but at least pretend to not be completely ignorant.

>>48258019
>Undead are controlled only by the spell or by other undead, in both cases through magical power.. When they are controlled they do nothing if that is the intent of the master. But if they are not controlled - as when happens when the controller is killed - they don't just stand there and do nothing. They do what is instinctive to their nature - which is evil - and they do so because they have the willpower to motivate themselves and the life force to exist beyond control of another.

Uncontrolled skeletons don't go wandering off out of the dungeon/castle/etc. just to be spoopy skellies in the woods. Yeah, they may mindlessly murder anything that comes within their sphere of awareness, but that's no different than a golem told to "Kill any intruders" guarding a room; if some kid accidentally finds his way there, skeleton or golem, he's gonna be preteen jam on the wall real quick.