Undead Alignment

How does Veeky Forums feel about the undead?
How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead being able to be any alignment, and not being "Always Neutral Evil".

How does Veeky Forums feel about Predatory Undead being Any Alignment?
How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead that don't have to feed being Any Alignment?

Inb4 "depends on setting". I'm asking from a worldbuilding perspective.

>How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead being able to be any alignment, and not being "Always Neutral Evil".
I'm willing to make some exceptions for ghosts and creatures like that, but I'm generally opposed to it.
>How does Veeky Forums feel about Predatory Undead being Any Alignment?
No.
>How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead that don't have to feed being Any Alignment?
No.

>But what if a good necromancer...
No.

Necromancers and undead are the most perfect villains that you can find. Even orcs can find some excuses like "it's their culture", or "They don't have natural resources", or "It was all demon blood".
But undead? Fuck 'em.

friendly reminded that as of 5e every hackneyed attempt to create an undead post labor necromancer utopia is reliant on every single person who controls the zombie labor never missing their 24 hour check-in to re-cast the spell that prevents their raised undead from immediately becoming uncontrolled, ravenous beasts that instantly begin attacking any and all living things for subsistence.

OP here.
What if one of your players wants to become Undead? Do they have to be Evil to do that? If they do, then does the Alignment automatically switch?


Why does Undeath make a being Evil? Is it to keep the idea of life sacred? What does it add to a setting aside from ease of access to villains and monsters?

who cares about alignment

think about the purpose of the undead in your setting or game. do they exist to signal a feeling of disturbing, unnatural horror, a tapping into an instictual revulsion of the dead? are they there because you want to explore the idea of people coming back from death changed physically and perhaps mentally? is it a heroic fantasy setting and they fill a useful niche as minion and villains? are they the logical conclusion of some other element of your setting, the way the magic or metaphysics work? or is it just grandfathered into your setting through a stale sense of obligation that any fantasy setting needs undead?

start from there and then figure out how it makes sense for them to behave.

>How does Veeky Forums feel about the undead?
As a non-skeleton meatbag human, I have to say that skeletons are bonefied badasses, other undead are pretty shitty.
>How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead being able to be any alignment, and not being "Always Neutral Evil".
Skeletons can be your friends, in fact they give great support!
>How does Veeky Forums feel about Predatory Undead being Any Alignment?
I don't believe that Vampires or Zombies can be good as they lack the empathy and ethical backbone of skeletons.
>How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead that don't have to feed being Any Alignment?
Ghosts can be good too, I guess.

>What if one of your players wants to become Undead? Do they have to be Evil to do that?
Yes.
>If they do, then does the Alignment automatically switch?
No, they alignment switches because they took the path of becoming an undead creature and did horrible things in order to become an undead creature.
>Wait, why do you have to be evil to become undead?
Because you're intentionally throwing away your humanity.

>What does it add to a setting aside from ease of access to villains and monsters?
Let me answer the question with a question. What does easy, guilt-free immortality add to the setting beyond petty escapism?
All things die. Immortality is unnatural. Achieving immortality must mean something beyond "Oh, guess I'm a skeleton now". Either you make sacrifices to achieve it, or it handicaps or limits you in some way.

Adding to this, I just personally find necromancy and undeath distasteful, because it attracts all kinds of edgelords, fedoras and self-taught nihilists.

I really, really want to run a game, or write a novel, or do SOMETHING with the idea of World of Warcraft's Forsaken. There's something really fascinating to me about a group of zombies breaking free of a necromancer's thrall, regaining their sapience, and struggling to build new lives out of the ruins of the old world. Normally when you've got self-aware zombies, they're unique individuals - you never see whole zombie societies.

And I love thinking about that. What would daily life be like for zombies? What would they value? What would be their philosophy? How would they choose their leaders? What kind of social structure would they adopt? How would they interact with non-undead societies? There's so much fertile ground there, yet to be tilled.

Well OP, it depends on the fucking setting, what kind of world do you want to create? Grim Fandango or Requiem?

And in DnD, it's made of negative energy = neutral evil, like how U 239 = radioactive emission, so there's no going around that.

Neutral evil

If one of my players became undead he'd basically lose the character to me.

I'd say a powerful force, god or another lich is controlling him and he has to do its bidding or be incapacitated or destroyed, so it's either his companions that kill him or me or he fucks off any ways.

>What does easy, guilt-free immortality add to the setting beyond petty escapism?
I doubt it's easy to become an undead, regardless of what alignments can achieve it. As for what it adds: the ability to bring in a slew of potential characters that are immortal and unimaginably old without restricting them to villainy. Why can't we have an Undead that uses it's immortality to shepherd the mortal kingdoms away from certain dangers?
>The Lich subtly influences politics to discourage people from exploring the mountains of doom, where a dragon is kept in magical slumber, in an effort to prevent the dragon from waking and wreaking havoc.
>A Mummy uses his immortality to guard over the vault of a horrible magic item that could be used to destroy entire cities.
>A Vampire stalks the night, silently watching powerful adventurers for signs of corruption and turning them into his undead thralls if they show unrepentant evil in their deeds, adding to his army of wardens against evil.
>A Revenant acts like Merlin, designating heroes and giving them advice gleaned from the wisdom that comes with living for centuries.

None of those characters need have acquired their Undead immortality easily, and none of them need be Evil.
Imo, Undeath is just another form of life, so why should it be any different aside from the fact that they don't breathe?

Agreed, imo a game that boxes undead into the role of "Always Neutral Evil monster that hates all living things" is missing out on the ability to tell stories like that.

In DnD positive energy is the opposite of Negative Energy but has no alignment, and indeed a Positive Energy dominant plane can kill even living things with an overdose.
Life has no inherent alignment, as evidenced by, well, life. So why should Undeath have an inherent alignment?

Undead don't just pop up on their own. They're almost always created by absolutely abhorrent methods.

99% of the time, they don't even have their own will. They're just a meat-robot made out of a now damned human.

>Imo, Undeath is just another form of life, so why should it be any different aside from the fact that they don't breathe?

if it's no different, why have it in the first place? you can have immortals without making them undead.

>As for what it adds: the ability to bring in a slew of potential characters that are immortal and unimaginably old without restricting them to villainy
How about you make them extremely old and immortal without making them horrible undead monsters.

Wait, I know the answer. The whole reason is because you want to turn the tropes on their heads. "But what if Dark Lord actually ISN'T that evil?" "But what if it's the paladins who are bigoted and prejudiced?" "But who is the real monster here?"

Which is fine, I guess, people do that. But don't expect everyone to like it, or not get tired from it.

>Have immortals without making them undead
Sure, you can do that if you want, which then defeats the purpose of...
>Let me answer the question with a question. What does easy, guilt-free immortality add to the setting beyond petty escapism?

So which is it? Is immortality without a Price: living immortals that do whatever, or with a Price: you are not longer alive, you're dead and inhabiting your own corpse.

>The whole reason is because you want to turn the tropes on their heads
Maybe, or maybe it's to add options? You can still have the evil Dark Lord, the depraved vampires, and the soul-eating Liches if you want. But you can also add in other versions.

If you want to make a stereotypical "Orcs r bad, death is bad, light is good" setting, then go ahead. Like you said, people do that. Hell, I do that a lot. Most of my undead character are villains. But why do they have to be?

I made the thread to bring up the idea that undead don't have to be inherently evil, no more than any other living thing is.

manipulating negative energy = fucking up natural balance = risking a lot of damage = bad
you can't do a lot of things with that energy except destroy life.
ergo artificial being made entirely of artificial energy = very bad
To keep the previous comparison, radiation is natural, yet you will be put down very soon if you make uranium golems. They are not part of the natural order and can' be sustained without destroying the world.


Why is it so? Because it's magic.
If you don't like it, change it. But it's part of the initial system.

>living immortals that do whatever, or with a Price: you are not longer alive, you're dead and inhabiting your own corpse.
I've never said living immortals can do whatever. And being a skeleton is sure hell of a "price" for eternal life with no other drawbacks.

Your attempt at "HA, GOTCHA, WHICH IS IT" is honestyl pathetic.

>How do you feel about the undead?
I think they're pretty neat, both as monsters and mechanics, but also as an idea to explore.
>being any alignment
In my games undead are the byproduct of whatever the setting's conceptual force of entropy is. In dnd they are walking tears in reality between the prime material and the negative energy plane. As a result, undead are always neutral evil because their very existence hastens the inevitable fading of life from reality.
>Predatory undead
Like all undead, they are always neutral evil, though it doesn't stop them from retaining their sentience and feeling guilt over their actions. Still, those with moral fibre enough to be considered good end their unlives or lock themselves away if they lack the means to destroy themselves.
>undead who don't have to feed
Their new condition still makes them neutral evil. However, while those who were lawful good or neutral good in life take their own lives, those of other alignments might seek to make use of their newfound immortality. For example lawful neutral characters who become undead might seek to become ghost rider like figures or eternal lords to keep the law forever. Still the curse of undead will win out in the end and their perspective will be twisted by their unnatural form.

Everything this user has said, basically, with a big helping of what said.
Undead and all that shit should have a point, and you need to take the idea a little more seriously.
OP sounds like they are just trying to find a reason to put them in for a TWEEST, and that makes me leery at best.

I don't like alignment systems.

But even in systems that do have them, I prefer allowing more ambiguity than "Always x alignment"

>So which is it? Is immortality without a Price: living immortals that do whatever, or with a Price: you are not longer alive, you're dead and inhabiting your own corpse.

but you just said they were another form of life. are they dead or alive? what's the difference to being undead except being a skeleton?

i actually don't have a problem with undead being not-evil, i think treating them just like ordinary people with ordinary personalities tends to devalue the concept. in myth and legend they are disturbing monsters, not always evil but usually unbalanced and deranged. just having them as normal people who happen to be skeletons could be an interesting one-off concept to play with but is more likely to just turn them into another boring stock fantasy race.

>How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead being able to be any alignment, and not being "Always Neutral Evil".
Alignment is retarded. If they're intelligent and sentient, then they have a choice.

>How does Veeky Forums feel about Predatory Undead being Any Alignment?
It's complicated, but if it's mostly a matter of survival than it's neutral at worst.

>How does Veeky Forums feel about Undead that don't have to feed being Any Alignment?
If they're intelligent, then it'd be retarded for them to NOT be any alignment, but alignment is retarded.

Such a petty price...
>Not being able to feel anything. You can tell when someone's touching you, but you can't feel warmth on your skin. You can't feel love, only remember it. You're never truly angry, just acting how you remember angry people acted.
>Can never eat or drink again. Unable to satisfy your thirst or hunger regardless of how long you go without eating or drinking. Of course this is lessened by the fact that you literally can't feel anymore.
>Can never sleep, consigned to an eternity of restlessness and a mediocre sense of wakefulness.
>Have to watch as your body rots away
>Have to wrestle mentally with the weight of ages, watch your loved ones die and their children die and their children die ad nauseum until the end of your unlife

It wasn't a "HA, GOTCHA", it was a "but you already said something else".
This isn't some childish competition about who's undead are the best, it's a discussion of the merits of various interpretations of undeath. I've acknowledged that there are other versions, ones which I've legitimately enjoyed and like.

OP here.
It's less for a "TWEEST" and more because I literally don't see any logical reason why Undead should be Always Neutral Evil.
Obviously for some they should have a tendency towards it, Vampires, Ghouls and other predatory undead foremost among these.
Some should have no alignment at all, Skeletons and Zombies are little more than animate corpses with no will of their own, why should they be any different than a golem or an animate object?
Others should be free to chose from all over the alignment spectrum: Mummies and Liches for example.

>why should they be any different than a golem or an animate object
Truly, why should they be? Why necromancers even exist, when they can easily animate furniture, or statues, or knives, or stone, or clay, or dirt, and replace undead entirely? It's a straight upgrade - no angry paladins involved!

Wait a second... Could it be...

Are mummy evil or just rich chad?

>I literally don't see any logical reason why Undead should be Always Neutral Evil
They are that way in D&D due to cosmological concerns. If you don't see the logical reason, it's because you haven't read the books that explained it.
>Skeletons and Zombies are little more than animate corpses with no will of their own, why should they be any different than a golem or an animate object?
Because their existence is unnatural and false, and contributes to the dissolution of the material plane by shifting the balance of planar energy to entropy. Their existence hastens the end of reality, literally.
As I said, you are asking a herp derp I never opened a book question on Veeky Forums, land of the people who decide books are too hard and people need to be spoonfed answers.
This thread is right up there with the threads that ask how alignments work because they take examples from 6 different games, all with their own take on what alignments are, and think there is a singular fashion.

Fair point. I can see how losing their mystique could devalue them.
I do agree on the point that they should be different: living for a long time with different baseline perceptions would obviously alter how a being behaves and thinks. If an undead can't feel emotion anymore, just remember what it felt like, then obviously they would act very differently and have a more detached viewpoint than they used to.
However, imo that doesn't mean that they have to be Evil. Angels have detached viewpoints and they're "good".

>Corpses are easier to acquire than the massive amounts of wealth required to create golems and easier to animate than inanimate objects because they once held the spark of life.
>Mindless Undead don't mess with souls
>Sentient Undead are perceived as Evil, maybe they actually aren't, nobody would give them the time to explain and just attacked on sight. If the undead in question chose undeath then there wasn't any soul-mucking to be had.

Rich chad.

Fair enough point. You're right, in standard DnD they're evil because of those reasons. So what if there was a setting where they didn't literally hasten the end of the world? I'd imagine that the predispositions to thinking undead are evil would still exist (they do in real life and Undead aren't even real).

Depends on the setting. I'd recommend looking at the Forsaken in Warcraft.

Some undead are mindless/masterless, some are enslaved. The rest are just twisted humans trying to find purpose in a world that abhors and condemns them for an existence they were forced into.

>I'd imagine that the predispositions to thinking undead are evil would still exist
>Sentient Undead are perceived as Evil, maybe they actually aren't, nobody would give them the time to explain and just attacked on sight.

We have now oficially entered the "dindu nuffin" territory, as well as "evil, prejudiced, BIGOTED paladins" territory.

I support full equal, civil and human rights for intelligent undead.

If my attempts at ascension to immortality fail, I even hope to be one someday.

Better undeath, than permadeath.

Most undead are mindless creatures, ranging from true neutral to neutral evil. These are your every day ghosts, zombies and skeletons. These can occur naturally through bodies left to rot without proper burial. They wander their place of death seeking to be slain again and properly buried. Many sects of priests train adventurers in burial arts in order to put these souls to rest.
Next are the deliberate undead. These undead are the result of rituals forgoing life itself. Vampires, Liches, Ghouls, etc. These undead are created to consume and, while they may attempt to follow the path of good, they eventually go mad without consumption. They are generally untrusted and the rituals to become one of these are dark indeed.
The final type of undead are the holy undead. These are resurrected warriors and paladins graced by the gods. These undead retain much of their intellect and personality. They are called upon in times of need by the orders that buried them, however once their duty is fulfilled they return to the afterlife to continue service to the gods.

Alignments are for autists.

>When OP is such a fucking dumb piece of 5enigger nonlore shit he doesn't know about the scholarly reasons for why the Undead Exist in the first place or the self-perpetuating cycles of undeath that lead to it's propagation through self-aware neromantic intelligences made when criteria are met for it to occur.

To give you the quickest rundown on this shit, go read the parts of Overlord with the Cycle of Death shit in the Undead Invasion Arc, then learn about Hauntings, necromantic intelligences, Atropus, then Gary Gygaxx's own fucking words on Fat Fuck Orcus in the like what, last book he wrote before the reaper came for his poor ass?

Summary-
Once upon a fucking time everyone has predetermined death determined in it's own little plane
When you die, a little bit of death energy is released, then it disappears
Someone uses magic to fuck this cycle up so hardcore, death overstretches into life itself, and other planes to boot and gains pseudo-concepts from life to apply to it's own natural ends, which is "kill everything by any methods in terms of cause and effect available, and I'll also keep record of it for future record perpetuating more code in what used to be natural predetermined death."
So now we have a sentience of sorts that wants everybody dead, and uses 3rd party contractors who think they know what they're doing but they don't and are feeding into this malignant cancer.

The workforce of this system are what we know as the undead! And thanks to magic, this gets worse and worse over time! And Thanks to a Ex-Wizard/Cleric multiclass to a Deity of Slaughter turned into the de-facto Demon prince of this system, everything got fucked!

You want to know what the fucking endgame of this is? Well, in Ravenloft, there was an experiment which tried to answer this, and it gave birth to the ONLY Negative Energy Elemental EVER TO EXIST- though depowered, and offset because of an original concioussness because the Dark Powers are not stupid, and can recognize a threat, which is why they've contained gods and Elder Evils before.

That Negative Energy Elemental?
Death. Grim Reaper. Plain and fucking simple, no bullshit, had mad powers based on the expanse of it's being, would have killed everything if not for it being offset by the means of creation not fucking up and a bunch of other stuff.

Oh Right, Some dudes actually were smart enough to realize that this system basically is puppeted as fuck, slowly degrades and breeds in the means to self-replicate like a goddamed Grey Goo event, and is more or less bad for everything until one genus went

"Remove malignent will of Plane of negative Energy."
And then we got the Deathless, who are not unviable Archliches or Baelnorm just waiting to be cotnrolled by EX-Candidate for the skelepocalypse.

And then there's of course, the fact that Good, Evil, Law, Neutrality and Chaos are Defined Objective Forces with influence over unique "corruption" like aspects that are effectively like an invasive force over freewill- and Evil has MANY of these, Taint, Vile Darkness, Infernal corruption, Actual proven negative Energy exposure side effects in the Necormancers Handbook, Mortibund, Undead STDs, the works.

And a good chunk of Evil descriptor spells are under the school of necromancy, putting you at risk of this.

yeah, gee fucking wiz, I wonder why no one considers using powers affiliated with Nuclear Fallout's Meaner Eviller cousin with a prison record.

I'm not even going to go into Orcus's fucking portfolio, I've done it enough already.

So Yeah, Negative Energy Plane is sentient/makes sentiences that perform the classic Undead Spawn Cycle, and THIS IS BAD

You want to know why Undead tend to be evil? Because they're puppeted dead people that only have consciousness, and what limit of that that isn't influenced by Demonic Creation, (Death Knights) Necrobiology, (Ghouls and variants) or an Abortion of Divine proportions (Vampires- see Kancheslsis) and have DEATH ITSELF SHITPOSTING INTO Them 24/7 to slowly get them to function as intended- nevermind the fact that the D&D definition of Evil is being an invasive fuck who hurts people in various flavours. NE for people who do it on a social uncaring opportunist level, LE for people who do it with etiquette, and CE for people who are actually a precursor to a much worser threat to the entire system itself who literally are hinted at being proxies to some elaborate Eon stretching plan to let the fucking Outer gods in by constantly challenging this system at the cost of having to be the worst of anything ever.

The greatest fucking examples of the Undead being evil is the fact that they rob the security of permanence in death, threaten the sanctity of the soul, which security isn't granted for, and once upon a time, the most vile piece of shit from Greyhawk stole into Sigil, gave the middle finger to the Lady of pain, and Made D&D 3.5 happen, Also, this faggot made one of the Strongest fucking Vampires ever who was his OWN vampire variant to boot, and appeared in his own comic as the very definition of an EXTREME CE Vampire, moreso than the generic one you're to characterize in the monster Manual as Buffy the Vampire Slayer tier Vamp fodder.

Fun Fact, Vampire Lords to Orcus Do not have shit on any Vampire past Age 500, (pre5efagStrahd's age) They are directly credited by Van Richten himdself (And metagaming proven) to be stronger, if not moreso than Demigods with the capacity to become Elder Evil via Age Categories that provide more power than a fucking Dragon can get from their own Age categories, and THEY CAN CHEAT THIS SYSTEM VIA ANY FORM OF FORCED AGING.

So Yeah, Chew on that, every Vampire/Vampire Lord you've ever fought was actually the kind of Sociopathic idiot that falls on their own ass because they're impulsive fucks that breed rapidly, have no self-control and are effectively "Blood bandits."

You want to know what happened the last time in D&D Lore that a vampire did fucking anything worthy of note and wasn't CE?

Mordoc Lesanmere
Epic level Blackguard Vampire Lord, so he forfeited his racial heritage to Kanchelsis for a quick power boosts, boasts a line of spawn and True Vampire heirs, and has survived assassination
Gathered 40,000 undead To Invade and take Baldurs gate
Get's impatient so he literally takes the entire city over anyway using zombies and a macguffin Tower because YOLO
Did this not even using Blood Ghouls, Canonical things that are fucking VTMB Ghouls, servants with Deaths Chosen class levels, or using his fucking Gaserous form even once, or the full repitore of his Blackguard abilities
Also, did not mobilize said unstoppable Army to assist hi,
Got his ass kicked because of this.
Was LE
Was backed by Egyptians blessed by Egyptian gods

When a Vampire shifts alignment, all things hit powergaming TPK Nightmare.
You want to know what the top vampires in D&D are doing? Nothing, they're all Dead Apostle Ancestor tier, somehow Van Richten INTERVIEWS ONE and says all he does is literally do what Autistic people do when the overthink things about paintings.

High priest of Vampires to the Vampire God? Is literally a Vampire from a 1e Adventure WHO IS NOW LOLTH'S FUCKING CONSORT and is the entire reason the entire Drow Race like Vampires (is fucking a god), and arranges crappy family reunions with the intention of politely asking his border-line retarded overpowered (Would probably Energy Drain Divine Ranks if he was relevant) Deity to literally stop making vampires CE so they can do VTMB Cammarilla in D&D, but just get's turned down as the guy fucks around on hus LAYER OF THE ABYSS where he literally fucks with his kids in AN EXACT IDENTICAL REPLICA OF THE SCARLET DEVIL MANSION FROM TOUHOU FILLED WITH THE LAZIEST DEMONS EVER. yes, it's a mansion bigger on the inside with shifting rooms that he uses to hunt, because he is just like caine, has a beast, and is the very definition of all vampire stereotype kept consistent in every D&D edition ever. I should note this means he has full Vampire Age categories, Divine Powers, all Salient abilities for Vampires, no weaknesses, and is the black sheep of the entire elven race.

By technicality, all Vampires gain access to racially restricted mechanics limited to half-elves and true elves because of this guy. There's a Reason why like, two Elves have SOMEHOW managed to Retain Alignment when turning into vampires in D&D canon you fucking know- One, a Maid Fetishist who is the luckiest fuck ever, and the other a moping cunt for Lathander who is still around.

You are fantastically boring.

There's also a very funny questline that was left in shambles because they accidentally rewrote the vampire god, offsetting the story for an epic level adventure where you have to stop a vampire lord for using a deity sacrifice powered aging machine to age the material plane to death and rule over what's left.

Despite the fact that the Trick for vampires aging themselves to become Elder Evils is a thing. So this guy would have actually collapsed the universe under the weight of a million blood sucking Great Old Ones being born in less than an instant, had he succeeded. And you fight some of the nastiest template stacked demigod horrors ever, awesome constructs, a vampire Elf queen, and later kick this guys ass.

Oh right- Important concept people tend to fuck up on with D&D vampires-
There are two kinds-
Base MM Vampire which almost all are based on barring the fuckfest that is Moonbane and Cerebral Vampires
Nosferatu.
The difference is that one is no different from any other undead in terms of Modus operandi- they actually suck blood and drain levels to get at a person's lifeforce- the composite energies of the soul, which is the real meat of the liquid, and the other is actually a closer-necrobiological organism that requires blood outright, and isn't in it for eating a piece of someone's soul.

By Technicality, the Nosferatu stand the greater chance of not dying in an all-out Magic-Death scenario- also by extension of the fact that it's a stated fact that the God of Vampires, Kanchelsis, is MADE out of Blood and Magic, so in effect, you could consider them walking Magic Clots that could still have their powers in said "Mystra's vaginal cramps ruined the weave again" scenario and be the biggests existential threat ever.

Shame Orcus's big fat Horsedick steamrolled this entire subplot/background thing going on.

playing a campaign right now where theres good cult called "the greatful undead". it plays out exactly as youd suspect. theres actually 9 musical cults in total.

It's your setting. Do whatever you want with your undead.

Alignment as a concept is shit and things like undead only go to show how shit it is.

Undead are antithetical to life and safety, even if they are good.

Undead which are good have to exist for a reason, and that reason is probably not a good one even if the undead is good.

See previous. The only reason for a predatory undead to be good is that there is something horrifically evil and untoward, not to mention downright unnatural, going on and when it gets fixed, chances are the undead will either die or revert to being evil.

Again, see previous up one. even the good and motherly ghost is sufferign undeath because her child is in a terrible situation and she cannot rest until that is resolved.

UNDEATH IS NOT NATURAL OR GOOD.

People claiming it is are very, very foolish who will die to the first undead that pretends to be good for more than a few minutes.

It depends on YOUR setting because there is no setting where undeath is a good thing.

>What if one of your players wants to become Undead? Do they have to be Evil to do that? If they do, then does the Alignment automatically switch?
Pretty much, the only time that shouldn't happen is if they get certain unintential effects. There's also the D&D Archlich, which is basically a good or neutral aligned lich that goes through a more difficult and less evil ritual to become undead for a SELFLESS reason, like protecting a civilization, guarding an artifact that could bring a fuckton of destruction, etc. If an evil person tried that they would probably go crazy and become a standard lich or demi-lich.
>Why does Undeath make a being Evil? Is it to keep the idea of life sacred? What does it add to a setting aside from ease of access to villains and monsters?
Well it's usually because of the notion of escaping your own death, cursing yourself (depriving you of your dignity), losing your soul, etc.

Same way I feel about getting these dubs

I'd rather be boring than a contrarian.

>not knowing about the Perpetuity of Bone

That's not an Undead.
That's an Archangel.

>Mindless Undead

Unaligned

>Intelligent Undead

Depends on the undead, Mostly evil.

Had a few good mummies though.

I have a PC in my current game who is undead not my choice, but died and awoke as a skeleton. He remembers little of his previous life, and he's spent the last century or so hiding his form from the public eye and trying to find out more about his old life and why he was raised.
He was a high-ranking general of a wizard necromancer millenia ago. The wizard sacrificed the PC during a failed ritual to become a lich. The some of the chaotic, arcane feedback of the spell settled into his bones (due to the way necromancy works on my setting), and was triggered centuries later, animating him in the ground in a now-open field.
My point is if a player wants to make an undead character there are many ways to do it well. You just need to work with them to make it interesting instead of contrived. Just like tieflings, dragonborn, and elves.