Im D&D 5E, all Clerics learn Animate Dead, even good ones.
Clerical magic is sourced from your deity. Why would a good deity allow you to Animate Dead if they were opposed to creating undeads? Does this mean that as a Good Cleric, I can Animate Dead with impunity?
you can, but the reaction of the god depends on the god in question
if your god is hades, then you are just borrowing a few skellies for a while, and he dont mind
if your god is bahamut, then as long as you use them to smite evil he dont mind
if your god is the enemy of all undead, like pelor, then one wonders why you decided to worship him in the first place, at best he puts you in a time out for misappropriation of his powers, worst case is he sends you to the shadow realm
Dunno about 5reeeee, but in 3.PF you cant cast spells of an opposing alignment (so if your good is good, no evil spells, so no raise dead)
5e has no spell alignments
>Clerical magic is sourced from your deity. Why would a good deity allow you to Animate Dead if they were opposed to creating undeads? Does this mean that as a Good Cleric, I can Animate Dead with impunity?
Honestly, it feels clumsy that Clerics (or even Warlocks for that matter) all get a standard set of miracles while their actually sourced thematic-appropriate miracles (from their sponsor or the demon they stole/married their powers from) are treated as something of an after thought just kinda snookered in there.
I mean, in 5e at least.
Why does Pelor give you the ability to create undead at all?
Yeah, you mostly just throw out Spiritual Weapon and Spirit Guardians and throw around Sacred Flames. I wish they'd cut a bunch of the standard Cleric spell list and doubled the amount of Domain spells you get.
he doesnt have time to police every single cleric, eventually someone is gonna find out how to do it, pelor does not breath down your neck,scrutinizing your every move
exactly how they do it and why they do it is up to the player, it could be fun
you might even have a signed affidavit saying you are authorized to raise dead by pelor, after stating a good case and promising to send reports to pelor every now and then to make sure the skeletons are made and used in manner approved by your god
>Does this mean that as a Good Cleric, I can Animate Dead with impunity?
Read
It's a test. He takes a thing that could be useful but against his rules. Then he sticks a big "Do Not Touch" sign on it. You know you might be being watched, or might not be. As you grab the thing he bursts through the false wall behind and slaps you into non-existence.
Pelor has killed people for less.
>is not a good act, and only evil casters use such spells frequently
So it's totally cool for a Good aligned cleric to use it every once and a while.
This sounds pretty biblical.
This just shines a spotlight on how shitty active gods are.
God being real is perfectly fine, god being a meddling micromanager is not because everything devolves to "my god can beat up you god".
Times were better when all healing spells were Necromancy sphere. Necromancy is, after all, the school about living energies.
It's almost like the gods aren't autistic children and can be reasonable.
im sure a good person can be trusted with skeletons
we can trust them with fireballs, dominate person, killing cloud, imprison, shocking grasp, and a ton of other recklessly deadly spells or in the case of shockig grasp literal electric torture that can be cast as much as you want
but we trust them not to
Read a little more.
But skeletons are spoopy and my paladin doesn't like spoopy. Please god give me the power to ban all spoopy things!
When you pray for your spells, you are directly requesting the divine aid of your patron. If you're a cleric of Pelor and you prepare Animate Dead, you are asking him for that spell directly. He grants it to you because you're one of his clerics and he trusts that you are not going to do anything with it that he won't like. If you break that trust, he'll react appropriately.
>The gods of life promote ... driving away the forces of death and undeath
You can be a Good aligned Cleric who doesn't worship a God of Life. Also, "promotes driving away" != "completely intolerant of".
Ressurection, revivify, etc. are necromancy at least.
The Watsonian explanation is gods don't actually give a shit what you use their power for, as long as you further their agenda. For the most part, their agenda is "don't usurp me or work for another god, also do vaguely thematic things."
The fedora wearing Watsonian/Doylist explanation is that the gods are just concepts Clerics use to channel divine magic, except for the ones that deliberately start shit in the game world. Those are Epic level former PCs. This also explains how Clerics of ideals exist.
The pure Doylist reading is 5e is poorly written and designed, relying entirely on mind caulk from 40 years of D&D as franchise to function.
Not trying to give you an opinion, just giving you some context to form your own.
I'll sum up a bit of what we know:
>creating undead through necromancy is not a good act
>only evil characters frequently use necromancy spells to create undead
>the gods of life (almost any non-evil deity) promote driving away the forces of death and undeath
>undead-creating necromantic magic is sinister (source: skeleton and zombie MM entries)
To me, the lore seems close to what we had in the 3rd edition days: It is possible to create undead infrequently while maintaining a non-evil alignment, but it is sinister and not-good, and few non-evil gods are entirely unopposed to undeath.
Of course, that's just the default setting. Every group is free to have embrace different settings, lore, or interpretations if they so choose. Personally I think alignment can go suck an egg, so I'd encourage using different ideas.
Every spellcaster gives a character some options they don't need to take because they'd be out of character.
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also
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This
Would your average, tree-hugging druid take blight? The thing thats basically designed to destroy nature? Or would a good-natured wizard, who dedicates his life to good causes suddenly take magic jar and basically become a lich?
They can, because that befits their abilities, but they probably wouldn't, because it doesn't befit their nature. Though maybe animate dead should technically be a domain spell for death clerics or something, that limits someones ability to play an evil cleric to a specific subclass, and alignment limitations on mechanics were cut for good reason.
>Would your average, tree-hugging druid take blight? The thing thats basically designed to destroy nature?
decay and rot are just as much a part of nature as growth
if things didnt wither and shrivel, we would be knee deep in corpses
druid giveth plant, druid taketh away
Fair, though I would actually call this similar to a cleric using animate dead. It's forcing decay before it's time, like cutting a cycle in half. Not saying that druids shouldn't use it, but imo if you're playing a stereotypical, balance in all things nature druid, it seems like an odd choice to me. Though if you are only using it on creatures, it wouldn't matter too much.