Why is sending living soldiers who have their hopes and dreams to their deaths seen as better than sending mindless...

Why is sending living soldiers who have their hopes and dreams to their deaths seen as better than sending mindless bone puppets? The whole undead = evil trope is fucking stupid

Then make constructs, not undead you fucking cunt

Necromancer sympathizers are the worst

Well, if you are playing Christianity influenced setting (which means the body matters because of resurrection or similar), or if the setting implies, that raising the undead binds the soul of a person to his dead carcass, or if you are raising the dead using evil (such as imprisoning demons and using them to animate corpses), then yeah, its evil.
also this:

sending a dude whose already died back to fight against his will, while simultaneously denying them an afterlife isn't a cool thing to do.
depends on the setting

The cost in time and resources to make a construct army outweighs the cost of an undead army by orders of magnitude.

What if it's a contract entered willingly? Like, you can receive a substantial bonus to your soldier's wage, or perhaps an extension on your pension most-mortem for your family if you volunteer your soul for active duty for the length of, say, a few more years or another tour of duty or so. Longer might be less feasible, since there'd be organic decay to consider.

Since the contract is entered willingly to the benefit of both parties (state military receives a soldier that feels no pain for a tour of duty, and the deceased gains some form of recompense for his volunteering the use of his corpse, is it not then evil? We can assume that, say, this arrangement has been worked out for some time with the government/governing body already, and that all parties understand the full implications of their contract and have seen them borne out in full, so that no parties involved in this contract are under any false notions or illusions.

Afterwards, we can say that the remains are brought to consecrated grounds where ritual/ceremony is held to appease all gods of life/death/state governance involved in this contract and return the deceased to the afterlife, a little tardy but otherwise intact/

Whatever helps you sleep at night Hans

Sure, but you don't have to call upon the fell powers of the darkest Abyss and/or Negative Energy Plane to do so.

As well, a construct bereft of orders will stand in place and do nothing. A necromantically animated skeleton or zombie bereft of orders will attack and kill the nearest living thing that it can perceive, then the next nearest, and so on. They are innately hostile to life.

Now, conversely, there is a strong argument to be made for the idea that a corpse is an object, not a creature, so it should be more than possible to cast Animate Object on them. BAM! Fleshy constructs that won't attack the nearest living thing on instinct.

Ran a dungeon once with a ravid in it that did that. Cleric was confused as heck when he couldn't Turn Undead, though given that the "zombies" weren't attacking him there really wasn't a need to anyway (and since TU was useless they didn't interpret it as an attack). The party thought it was pretty clever when they finally encountered the ravid.

It's fun to pull harmless twists on the party.

I never understood this hatred of the dead either. An honor based society with necromancy would commit their corpses to the eternal defense of their country.

I like how the elder scrolls somewhat took taboo away from death, where Dunmer in Morrowind would protect the family crypt or join the ghost fence.

and how is a bone construct not a construct? Why golem is ok but some frankenstein monster suddenly is evil? Both are on the same level of sentience and are artifficial

Because disturbing the peace of the dead is vulgar.

The idea that in ALL settings, necromancy is inherently tied to the soul of the deceased, and that doing anything to it is evil and has terrible consequences. Though I've yet to see sources for this posted, at least outside of the spell being tagged "evil" in settings with alignment charts.

The "animating bodies = evil" crowd is fucking retarded. Their argument always boils down to "Its always been that way in fantasy, so it should always be that way" ignoring several examples to the contrary.

Not in every setting they're not. Necromancer apologists are the worst when almost every setting has undead trap the souls of the dead, corrupt its surroundings, and are drawn towards malice regardless of what they do.
Undead farmers and warriors will always succumb to the corruption. Farms will be useless, undead warriors won't resist killing innocents, etc. It's like trying to use caramel as glue, it might work at first but the rot will overwhelm its benefits and seep into the wood.

But if you wanna make your magical, inconsequential setting where nothing is bad and everything can be nice like a Saturday morning cartoon, go right ahead.

>t when almost every setting has undead trap the souls of the dead

that's how it's like in your Skyrim?

except when heroes raid their tombs right?

Hardly necessary too, all you have to point out is the mundane fact that it generally involves graverobbing at best or homicide at worst.

and since when homicide is an evil thing in fantasy settings? When barbarians do it then it's le epic and metal but when a necromancer does it then it's evil?

Heroes don't raid tombs without a very good reason.

>dude we need loot lmao
great reason

Animated undead are not at peace, therefore you are not disturbing their peace. If anything, killing them is doing a great service to them.

Those are raiders, not heroes.

>not just embracing your inner necromancer and ignoring the anger of stupid paladins and XGood characters

not every setting has soul binding as a part of the ritual, zombie might just be a shell and the soul is already in an afterlife so how is that disturbing any peace? Why would they give a shit what happens to some pile of meat?

It depends on the setting, but everyone knows that necromancers and necromancy sympathizers are necrophiliac degenerates the likes of which deserve no quarter.

Because dealing with human corpses is fucking taboo. Even in 18th century it was still considered immoral to interact with human remains (the people running the graveyards and such enterprises were barely tolerated), even if it was done for scientific/medical reasons, even if it were to be done on the worst offenders the desacration was still illegal.
Imagine the horror - your brother/friend/partner passes away, possibly in great pains. The next week you see their rotting, decomposing corpse walking on the street, slaving for some necrophiliac. Their face, once so pensive and beautiful lacking the spark of sentience and falling of their skull. Bit-by-bit. This idea is, even nowadays, absolutely repulsive and disgusting.

>tl;dr It’s an emotional (not cultural as you might want it to be) kind of thing and medieval fantasy is not your ancap/libertarian utopia.

Because one involves tearing people from their eternal rest into torturous and unnatural service through the blackest of magics.

That is mostly a cultural thing. In many cultures, death is not the end. In certain parts of Southeast Asia the corpses of family members are regularly dug up, washed, and treated as if they are still alive. National Geographic has done a few great reports about these customs.

It really seriously depends on the metaphysics behind necromancy

It's not, actually

Frankenstein's monsters are constructs, they're called flesh golems.

the only black thing is the cock inside your mom's cunt truth is Veeky Forums just cannot even grasp the concept of a setting that isn't WoW like

>look at my single counter example
>for which I didn’t give any concrete info
>and which still is inadequate , because those people take care off the deceased, not have some en-masse utilization programs

Also consider this - in your case it was actually cloture numbing instinct and emotions.
The respect for dead is too wide spread (ignoring war to a certain degree) for it to be a random flux of cultural tradition.

I hate you dnd fags thinking your mechanics are the only thing out there when the vast majority of settings with necromancy and undead the undead aren’t inherently hostile to the living and in fact dnd is the only one I can think of where that’s true

It is more interesting if it is detrimental and people do it anyway. Conflict is what makes a story. If you totally whitewash necromancy you take away the conflict.

If you can’t see disturbing and desecrating a corpse at rest is morally wrong, we have nothing to discuss. Expect a paladin knocking on your door.

It depends on the setting user. In some games it might not be evil. It really depends on what your using it for in those types,of settings.

In Golarion/Pathfinder necromancy binds the soul that should move to an after life to the corpse. Further more in Pathfinder there are tangible cosmic ideals that exist in the universe. Evil happens to have claimed necromancy. You could create a zombie for a noble purpose but it corrupts you and if you stop controlling the zombie then you've created a monster

Isn't necromancy there just summoning and binding undead like demons?

Because in most settings, defiling graves pisses off the gods, or necromancy involves enslaving souls, or necromancy involves blood sacrifice/evil corrupting magic/etc., or the undead naturally cause plague and misfortune.

You Reddit-tier neutral necromancy wankers are relying on a scenario that is almost never true.

>raising the dead from their deserved rest
Haha, don't do that

>Don't fuck with the dead
>Carries a literal cape of bones

...really? Show me three games where that ISN'T the case. I'll wait.

sup

Necromancery in general is regarded evil because it involves tampering with the dead in ways that defile the peace of the grave.

>not playing a (almost entirely delusional) necromancer who considers his minions close friends and becomes extremely distressed when one is killed even though he can just raise them again

Question for necromancer sympathizers. Why do you absolutely, positively need zombies/skeletons/undead to do whatever it is you're doing, as opposed to a myriad of other options? Why do you specifically need dead dudes?

Nechronica V:tm Warhammer

Necromancy is and will always be tied to evil. That doesn't mean you can never play a necromancer, or that all necromancers must be Saturday morning cartoon villains. It does mean, however, that nobody is going to take you seriously if you start spouting off how participating in a nearly universally agreed upon evil act is "totally good guys I swear." It's like if you wanted to help children by violently murdering their parents in front of them to build character.
Just accept that it's evil to most people and that you aren't smart or clever for wanting to ignore such an obvious and well seeded idea.

They're plastic bones, of course

Not that guy but Warhammer Fantasy comes to mind, at least for the Tomb Kings. Dark magic is inherently corrupting but there can be "good" or at least neutral undead beings such as Abhorash, wights or various varieties of trapped spirits.

Because they want mindless, obedient, eternal slaves. It's the weak, ugly, and ultimately unsucessful man's way to gain an army of loyal slaves and warriors without effort or needing to talk to them.

They're wannabe rulers with no capacity for ruling. So they turn to magic that lets them bypass the hard stuff.

>Implying you can simply mass-produce bone soldiers for whatever reason without employing unspeakable amounts of soul-sealing/etc.
Why is having a setting where magic renders any conflict solved by mindless proxy seen as better than having actual danger and risk involved? The whole magic = science trope is fucking stupid.

Ey get outta here with that

Depends on the setting OP.
First of all, is there a difference between the undead and construcs beside the name ?
Because sending mindless constructs to war comes with it's own moral questions.
Most DnD setting have undead where you tear the soul out of the afterlive and basically staple it to it's old rotten body and give it an IKEA replacement for it's old mind and what you have is basically the "I have no mouth and i must scream" situation.

Instead you could use other creatures with lesser or no sentience to use them as "Ablative troops" in your setting, like domestic animals and pests.

V:tM - you play as a dead thing that is inherently inimcal to living creatures. Nechronia you're beign raised as a helpless puppet by undeniably evil masters to be tormented.

Warhammer? I'll give you that, because it's so laughably retarded anythign works there.

>never willingly drank the blood of the innocent, only feeding off of worthy opponents
>sought to rid himself of the curse of vampirism at every turn
>killed a fucking dragon to stop the thirst and inspired others in his order to do the same
>only wanted to protect his people
what a bro

He's wrong about Warhammer, though. It's the big daddy of Necromancers, Nagash, who contributes directly to the end of the fucking world.

The other forms of Magic are well understood, thoroughly researched. Necromancy isn't. Thus, I study Necromancy. An important (and very practical) aspect of Necromancy is the reanimation of dead bodies. Thus I reanimate bodies, mostly to study why the energy involved behaves as it does.

If you're just going to make up bullshit then I'm not going to argue with you.

I'd bet a million dollars all of the people squawking about "the dead's deserved rest" have had a res at some point in time. At least raising a zombie doesn't subvert divine will and rip a soul from the afterlife's clutches. You just animate a little mr. janglebones to dance a silly skeleton jig.

>Tomb Kings
>Priests of Morr (in the classical sense of necromancy, communing with the spirits of the deceased)
>Wights
>Strigoi vampires, before their empire got GREENED
>Blood Dragons, though most can be considered either neutral or lawful evil
>misguided sorcerers wanting to bring back loved ones or do good in the world, even if it always ends badly
>Vladdy Daddy did nothing wrong
Nagash and most necromancers as a general rule are utter cunts though.

Resurrection doesn't rip a soul from anywhere in most settings, the soul tends to stick around for a bit following death. Resurrection puts the soul back in the body and makes the body able to function properly again.

>mentioning foul necromancy and the practices of the honored ancestors in the same breath
Fucking filthy outlanders.

You do realize that magic items in Skyrim are powered by the souls of dead creatures, usually humans, right? What makes you think Draugr aren't?

This.

Play somebody who just knows he is doing bad things and play it like the war veteran.
"I do bad things to bad people".
You will still be an insufferable asshole, but you can still use the tortured souls of some bandits to save the children out of the burning orphanage.
Just be aware of it.

In wraith your interaction with humans if at all are positive because if you act shitty you lose, mummy’s don’t give a fuck about humans, the Frankenstein’s are actually nice to people for the most part and vampires only feed on humans because they have to and aren’t actively hostile unless they have to be. Good job being wrong about a whole setting. Also you’re completely wrong about nechronica

>Specifically mention Vampire: the Masquerade, and nothing else.
>"But wut about muh wraiths and mummies and MUHHHHHHH?"

Shut up stupid.

No, I'm really not. An the thing about WoD - all those things you mentioned are PCs. Not the zombies they raise. Necromancy in WoD IS inherently dangerous and usually evil - even mages, those phenomally idiotic fuckups, avoid delving deep into it.

>usually humans
Completely wrong. Normal soul gems can't even catch black souls. Almost everything is made using the souls of animals or daedra.

>usually humans
You are mostly right, but usually they are powered by non-sentient creatures.
Human soultrapping exists and it's the easiest way to have an angry mob burn your house down with you inside.

>Also you’re completely wrong about nechronica
The fuck he is, you idiot. First ucking page.

A world in which humanity has met its end.
A world in which everyone has died.
A world in which nothing more can die.
In which naught stirs but walking corpses.
The protagonists of Nechronica are the girls of this world
unfortunate enough to possess
hearts- the Dolls.
To put it simply, it is a game in which the players become
zombie girls and fight against
other zombies.
The one who caused the dead to wake- the ruler of this sha
ttered world- is the
Necromancer.
The Necromancer serves as both the master of the game and the arch
enemy.
For it could be none other than the Necromancer who gave
hearts to the Dolls.
For in a world filled with mindless puppets, the Dolls- th
ey alone whom possess wills of
their own- are no more than toys.
For the tragic comedy wrought by the foes sent against them is
a delightful spectacle.
Since Dolls are already dead, they will find no rest when
they are broken.
The peace of death came to an end long ago, just as did
the world itself

Draugr aren't constructs powered by human souls, they humans who are cursed with undeath.

It has all the same moral problems as using automated killbots does in the real world, plus any setting-specific badness inherent to necromancy.

Where, Skyrim? I don't know, I was talking about my setting

That's a good idea for fiction. You should write a story that examines that theme.

You're just unapologetically making shit up at this point.

It's a simple genre thing. DnD needed a justification for players feeling no guilt running around killing the evil sorcerers doing horrible magic, so they did this by making necromancy an inherent evil that channels the energy of death and kills the universe a little bit each time you do so. If you don't like this then by all means change it, but that's why it's there.

>Not running a setting where all the players are mage-kings enfaggoting the world by casting dick blisteringly dangerous magic at their foes while the normal people cower in fear just to see how far down the dark path they'll lead themselves if handed the sandpaper and told that some asshole is better at rubbing his own balls with the stuff than they are.
Undead world wars are the least of the dickery my players get up to.
It's amazing the kind of dark shit people'll do if you just hand them power, a justification of 'we're not as big a bag of dicks as the other guy' and gently apply pressure.

"but why is raising the dead evil this class does exactly the same thing"
>ignoring the fact that negative energy is an inherently evil and life-destructive force with no beneficial applications to the living
>bringing negative energy into the material plane quickens entropy, hurts or murders living beings and does nothing good other than heal undead
>which shouldn't be alive in the first place because negative energy is keeping them animated

It's never been good or neutral to raise the dead less on moral issues and more on the fact that you're using negative energy and if you tools can't see that then you've got no room to discuss why necromancy is considered evil.

The fuck is a ravid?

Wait what are the settings where undead aren't soul powered, aren't abominations against natural orders, etc?

>Warhammer? I'll give you that, because it's so laughably retarded anythign works there.

Shows what you know, retard. All undead are animated by dhar, which is inherently deleterious to mortals and will ultimately ruin entire ecospheres. See: Mousillon, Nehekhara, Sylvania.

While not all undead are hostile, their very nature makes them a problem for the living.

Maybe if necromancers weren't constantly murdering everything in arm's reach people wouldn't think making undead was evil.

Necromancers ruined necromancy for everyone.

>objective evil
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Diablo 2
Guild wars

Oh yeah, and Space Dandy

There is literally nothing wrong with being a necromancer.

People who play with dead things are gross, user. That's something that's wrong with necromancers.

according to D&D's morality, this is lawful evil
but D&D's morality is retarded.

If you think about it though Christians getting upset about bodies being messed with is actually pretty weird, Christians think that the body is simply a vessel for the soul and that upon death the soul departs leaving the body empty, so why is desecrating a corpse a taboo in the first place?
Literally the only person they believe was capable of resurrection was Christ himself and it would probably be considered sacrilegious to suggest that anyone else could.

Three very traditional games.

As per usual

>DEPENDS ON THE SETTING

But in most settings necromancy tortures and abuses the soul, is against the original individual's will, desecrates the body, causes damage to the environment, and also produces undead that are inherently evil and harmful to life.

You may have a setting where it's different but that is hardly the baseline and it's disingenuous to act like it is or should be or that other people are foolish for not following your specific headcanon/setting.

Because necromancy is a super overpowered tool, like gunpowder, if you can get it off the ground then basically it makes a lot of future wars almost obselete by conventional standards.

Which i guess is also a fantasy version of MAD, so, you've given me a lot to think about..

Unsounded with one notable exception
"Plods" are corpses that are animated using enchanted masks that contain magical instructions turning the corpse into a meat robot that can follow simple orders, In the setting they are used throughout much of the world as a moral alternative to slave labor.

It's the natural order for living things to eventually die and upsetting that order tends to come with nasty dramatic consequences.

With necromancy, whatever the setting, you're playing around with liquid entropy. The environmental hazards of battlefields with soldiers imbued with even a drop of death magic are likely going to be pretty severe.

It's also really fucking unhealthy to have corpses walking around. Armies have problems keeping their shit from contaminating water supplies; you're going to have epidemics starting from marching your humanitarian necrosquad anywhere near anything living beings interact with.

I agree white mages and other rezzers are horrible

raising an army implies a certain amount of broad consent. You were able to draw recruits to your cause, or nobles were convinced to raise their levies in your name, or draftees were willing to submit and not raise rebellion against you the moment you armed them. You might use the forces at your command for ill deeds, but you cannot cut yourself totally free from societies bonds. If you ever do something so far beyond the pale that the bonds upon your followers break, you're done.

A necromancer faces none of that. their entire army is made of unthinking obedient corpses. the only restraints on the horrors a necromancer can work are their own whims.

Among other things, it's considered a sign of respect for the person in question, a method of indicating that they lived and that they (in Roman Catholic tradition at least) will be raised in glorified bodies by God at the end of the world. Keeping them in the state in which they died shows respect for their body and therefore themselves, with obvious exceptions made for things like organ donations- presumably the Almighty can shuffle around and repair organs as needed.
There was a lot of tradition involved, obviously, but besides this specific interpretation, the general logic involved in ritual burial for most cultures is to allow/expedite the passing to the afterlife, and refusing to bury someone indicates that you view their body as an asset rather than as a former part of a person. This is why organ donation s voluntary- It's disrespectful for the same reason you don't come out and ask someone if you can have their stuff after they die, unless you do so respectfully.

In Christian read Western influenced settings and rules undead is descecration of the corpse at best and extremely disrespect to the dead.

In many settings undead are animated by one or more of the following. Negative energy (literally pure evil energy), demonic powers or pacts, or trapping the souls of the dead and enslaving them. These options are all clearly evil and contribute to the uncontrolled undead hate and kill the living multiplying in the process. Which is also evil as it's literally and undead plague of indiscriminate death.

If none of this applies then it's PROBABLY fine and not evil unless some other evil cra replaces these options.

This doesn't even begin to touch on the frequently evil methods for corpse collection. You can come up with good and neutral methods all day but there will always be jackasses robbing Graves or killing people to sell corpses. While claiming they were legally aquired. This was an issue in real life when medical dissection became a thing. There are never enough corpses, why not make more?

If in your setting you make zombies with love magic that makes them hug puppies instead of killing everything they see when uncontrolled. And on top of that no one gives a shit about the corpses of their loved ones then undead could be fucking good in your weird ass setting.

TLDR: depends on setting. Default settings USUALLY have established reasons why it's evil ranging from literally animated with evil to we just don't want you to use grandma as a meat puppet and would rather respect her memory instead.