Why do so many people these days seem to get butthurt when I say that undead, and especially mindless undead are evil?
Sure. You've got like maybe a few exceptions like a ghost or a sentient zombie that's not actually a ghoul.
I'm sick of these people who get all pissy because they want the evil undead raising without any of the consequences.
Asher Hill
Its your game, user. Play it however you want.
Jackson Cooper
Well I have never understood how something mindless can be evil.
Levi Price
it is not in and of itself evil, it's just doing evil shit. but that's fucking semantics, and you know it.
Ryan Fisher
>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.
Jason Thomas
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.
Nathaniel Sullivan
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.
Levi Lewis
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.
Nolan Mitchell
What about honored ancestors who come back from the afterlife to aid and assist their descendants?
Why do they have to be evil?
Isaac Lopez
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.