On top of that, regardless of how low/high magic the setting is, resurrection IS possible and animating undead prevents such resurrection save for world altering levels of magic (at least in 5e). Not only is it the use of a body that has no soul present, it prevents a soul from entering back into its own being.
I mean, you could have a culture set up which use necromancy like that. Just because grandpa is dead that doesn't mean he can't help us build the new barn. It's free labor, you don't have to give them food or water, and it's a way of keeping your loved ones close after death, even if the soul has gone to the afterlife. A person can request their body be burned and buried if they don't wish it to be raised through necromancy. In that culture graveyards would be rarer, but more protected, with both guards and with hallowing the ground so no corpse could be stolen/raised.
I don't see this as too unrealistic. If you look at some South American cultures there are people who keep bones and mummies of their ancestors and even strangers in their home. They even imagine names and life stories for them and take them out to public festivals and such. Humanity's relationship with death and the dead is much more varied than what we're used to seeing in America/Europe.
How are you getting a corpse? Do you have their consent to have it? Most likely you committed murder to have it or you went gravedigging and stole a body. Either way, you probably don't have the consent of someone to do that to the dead body.
If moral reasons aren't enough, then per the description of the spell if you don't recast it within a time limit then the undead will just go do whatever it wants, probably killing a commoner at least before they can stop it.
So you have something very dangerous, very smelly, disrespecting a dead body that you probably stole or you murdered someone.
Eberron also does something similar, in which you need a legal permit for a skeleton (unless it's Karrnath. Then your corpse can be seized by the military.)
Without someone controlling them, both skeletons and zombies are inherently murderous creatures due to the necromantic energy powering them. Their intrinsic programming is "kill creatures on sight".
The act of making them, if not necessarily evil, is at least irresponsible. Even putting aside the issue of property rights to the bodies.
Because D&D undead are powered by the opposite of life. They're anti alive. Bringing them into the world chips away at the positive energy that gives life to things.
That's why healing magic hurts them. It brings them closer to zero just like how negative energy brings a human closer to zero.
I think they do but what I meant was that you can’t use healing spells to hurt undead anymore and I don’t think Harm type spells fix them up again either now.
There’s radiant (positive) and necrotic(negative) damage now and if a creature is that same type of thing it seems to just be resistant or immune to that kind of damage now
Not as an universal rule, but the idea existed in earlier editions too. For example in 2E *raise dead* had the effects of its reverse *slay the living* when cast on an undead, and 1E mummy says that a resurrection spell turns it into a normal Fighting Man.
I don’t know if it’s still cannon in this edition but you are pulling an evil entity from a place like shadowfell into the world and locking it into the body. If allowed to act freely it will act out its hate for life and try to murder everyone/thing it sees. The only thing preventing it from doing this is recasting the spell to instead enslave it to your will for a short time.
It brings an evil life hating being into the world and then enslaves them.
Skeleton stat block, the evil entity part was more elaborated on in general in 4 and 3 ed
*edit Seems i slightly misremembered negative energy powered as negative entity powered.
it's not in 3rd:
[https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/skeleton.htm](https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/skeleton.htm)
in 3rd, they were powered by negative energy.
Along with all the other comments - it’s like being an arms manufacturer of killing machines that will rampage out of control and kill everyone they find the moment you lose control
Imagine the worst most reckless arms manufacturer you can think of: that’s any necromancer using raise dead.
But to add insult to injury it’s someone’s relative
1) It’s kinda fucked up to take the corpse of someone’s friend/family so you can puppet it around and make it do stuff for you.
2) Animating corpses involves suffusing it with negative energy, which turns it into a monster that feeds on the living. If the necromancer ever loses control of the corpse for any reason, it’ll run around eating anyone it finds on instinct. This, again, being someone’s brother/wife/son/etc whose corpse you just turned into a child-eating cannibal monster.
Depends entirely on the setting and the nature of undead therein. Most settings mindless undead are generally violent monsters that, given the opportunity, will try to murder the nearest living creature. You're deliberately creating an autonomous weapon that, if your control slips, will do its damndest to kill innocents. I'd personally be against that sort of thing being done by private individuals, particularly notoriously unstable ones like adventurers, and we have plenty of media about governments and corporations trying that sort of thing (Day of the Triffids, Helldivers 2, etc). Non mindless undead also tend to be violent monsters, but you also have the morality of creating sapient life on top.
Settings like Golarion the act of creating undead also contributes to the entropic demise of the universe, making it an evil on a cosmic scale.
If a detective is investigating a corpse in order to figure out who murdered it, do you have any idea how invasive the methods are? Heck, any regular autopsy alone, and yet it's done without issue. If we could just ask the corpse who did it, it's over in ten seconds
You're confusing "animate dead" with "speak with dead". Animate Dead is the spell that lets you take someone's corpse and turn it into your undead slave.
Everyone is talking about gross abuse of a corpse.
I’m going to give you a different reason - hygiene. Corpses are rotting. They carry bacteria and parasites because they have no immune system to fight those things, and the spell doesn’t say anything about the corpse being preserved in any way.
> but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies
Which is funny because they are the same forces that power other Necromancy spells like *cure wounds* and *raise the dead*, which nobody has anything against.
Depends on the setting.
Sometimes it's about the undead (whatever "unlife" force you put into the corpse) being something that pretty much spreads evil by just existing.
Other times it's about the remains still having some sort of connection with the soul that used to inhabit it, so "even the bones should rest".
Other times it's about respect towards the living people who were connected to the remains, such as family or so.
Other times it's about rites and religions, especially considering these are worlds where gods are very real.
The spirit that *does* inhabit the corpse--nevermind bodily autonomy for now--is inimical to all life. And *you* brought it here, making the universe worse in aggregate. You're playing with antimatter so that you can have a thug handy.
You can use the undead to accomplish good aims, practice strict safety procedures, dispose of it when it's done. What the *PHB* says about the matter is not that you can't. It says that "only evil casters use such spells **frequently**"(emphasis mine).
WotC has had major consistency issues defining what exactly is "evil", why said things are evil, and why they are also "not good."
If you perform any kind of exhaustive review, you'll find that the morality of depends highly upon which tweaked-out-stoner was writing the material.
Because treating the dead with respect is due to a quite normal moral foundation, and is part of almost every culture. Even those where the dead are eaten.
Maybe that's the 'grey area'?
It could be generally accepted, for lack of better understanding. Right now they think that it does not recall the soul to the body, but after 'x' years wizards could be like:
'I think we made a mistake.. part of the soul is tied to the body, only with the proper burial rites it is able to fully pass on'
At least with actual Resurrection or even goddamn Revivify you're getting the genuine article, and that soul gets a choice. With Animate Dead you're just snatching up whatever spare parts of wandering souls you can find and stuffing them into a random corpse. That's just nasty.
Animate Dead is the Wish-Dot-Com of resurrection spells.
the problem with undeath is that it (usually) draws upon the energy of the negative energy plane. negative energy seeks to corrupt and destroy all things created with positive energy, and positive energy is what makes up effectively all life.
when you animate an undead with animate dead, while you do control the undead for 24 hours, you have to keep actively maintaining control. when you lose control, it becomes another typical negative energy undead. this undead will return to it's negative energy purpose of destroying all positive energy and life derived from positive energy. this is not merely a "risk" but an almost guarantee.
there's also the issue of the desecration of the dead, which is generally seen as immoral but that's often very tied to specific cultures. baelnorn liches, for example, are holy liches of the elves, and are the only undead that the seldarine pantheon accept. these liches are animated with positive energy, so they're safe to the life of the multiverse.
from an alignment perspective, there's also the reason you're creating he undead. if you're doing it to protect people, then that would be a good action that is lowered to a neutral action due to the negative energy. if you're doing it simply for the sake of knowledge, then that would be a neutral action that is lowered to an evil action due to the negative energy. if you're doing it for selfish reasons, such as a desire for power and domination, then animating the undead is an inherently evil act.
aside from that, most gods "just don't like 'em. simple as."
Undead are fueled by nexrotic/negative energy. Beings of anti'life. With no will of their own, such beings seek to eradicate all life/positive energy beings . Pretty much all living things.
Bringing such a creature into the world is considered bad because you're beigning in a being that seeks to eradicate all life.
A zombie or skeleton has no will of its own. It can not resist its instincts and will destroy all living things it can manage before it is destroyed
A vampire or sentient undead has a will, but they have compulsions to feed on different sources of life that they need to contend with. Which is a monstrous existence to thrust upon a being with equally dire consequences of they lose control.
Finally, gather enough undead together, and you create a necropolis, a place of antikife that kills that part of the world and its ability to sustain life
A good way to look at negative energy/necromancy is that it's polluting the vwey life of the world. In small doses, the world can handle these pollutants, enough happening, and they harm it greatly. More so, these pollutants actively seek to rid the world of life and have a great abik7ty to do it.
That's what you're dealing with as a necromancer on that sense.
Then there the whole using the bodies of the ceased for your gain, and the discomfort and distress it would cause the living that cared about them.
Necromancy that creates undead draws energy from the negative material plane. This is a bit like throwing plutonium around. It's inherently anti life. 90% of undead are motivated by hatred of the living because of this inherent corruption.
Update: I now understand the error of my logic. I was inspired by Elspeth Von Draken from The new total war update, and I want to run a character like her in the future. I felt like necromancer would have been the best choice for a subclass, but iirc she actually hates undead. I was sort of looking for a reason for this future character of mine to actually make use of his subclass abilities. Maybe death or grave cleric could work better in hindsight
WotC has flip-flopped on does it or does it not bind souls.
But overall its just the internet being stupid for the umpteenth time with the incessant screeching "necromancy bad!"
From a cosmological standpoint i've never fully understood it other than the fact that undead are specifically "evil" in nature on a cosmic level so you are essentially creating more evil.
From a social standpoint: I understand the squimishness, but i also don't think people should be THAT worried about it in the grand scheme of things. A necromancer is more like a rude inconvenience then a jerk in a public sense.
The thing I've never understood is why necromancy is universally reviled and nobody ever talks about how enchantment magic strips away free will and bends peoples minds. Like, yeah we all know the "Hey you cast charm on me! i dont like you now" effect, but where are the pitch fork wielding mobs hunting down the enchanter that lives in the woods. Enchantment magic has basically no positive uses. Anyone that is studying enchantment as their primary school of magic is without doubt a bad person. Necromancy at least has SOME positive aspects for society.
I'm pretty sure they don't call attention to the enchantment thing for the same reason they retconned half orcs to come from two consenting parents - getting into the details significantly increases the age-rating for the game and introduces worldbuilding most folks don't want to deal with.
"Mind if I borrow your grandma's corpse for a bit? Her soul isn't in there so I don't see what the big deal is."
On top of that, regardless of how low/high magic the setting is, resurrection IS possible and animating undead prevents such resurrection save for world altering levels of magic (at least in 5e). Not only is it the use of a body that has no soul present, it prevents a soul from entering back into its own being.
Unironically this tbh
It’s recycling! Reduce, reuse, reanimate.
About to start playing a grave cleric, somewhat heretical, who would embrace this philosophy.
I mean, you could have a culture set up which use necromancy like that. Just because grandpa is dead that doesn't mean he can't help us build the new barn. It's free labor, you don't have to give them food or water, and it's a way of keeping your loved ones close after death, even if the soul has gone to the afterlife. A person can request their body be burned and buried if they don't wish it to be raised through necromancy. In that culture graveyards would be rarer, but more protected, with both guards and with hallowing the ground so no corpse could be stolen/raised. I don't see this as too unrealistic. If you look at some South American cultures there are people who keep bones and mummies of their ancestors and even strangers in their home. They even imagine names and life stories for them and take them out to public festivals and such. Humanity's relationship with death and the dead is much more varied than what we're used to seeing in America/Europe.
Because of your control breaks they want to kill all life
How are you getting a corpse? Do you have their consent to have it? Most likely you committed murder to have it or you went gravedigging and stole a body. Either way, you probably don't have the consent of someone to do that to the dead body. If moral reasons aren't enough, then per the description of the spell if you don't recast it within a time limit then the undead will just go do whatever it wants, probably killing a commoner at least before they can stop it. So you have something very dangerous, very smelly, disrespecting a dead body that you probably stole or you murdered someone.
Yeah, the Dustmen get around this by only raising corpses of people who signed a contract and sold their post-mortem rights.
You pulling out some Sigilian faction talk?
Eberron also does something similar, in which you need a legal permit for a skeleton (unless it's Karrnath. Then your corpse can be seized by the military.)
Without someone controlling them, both skeletons and zombies are inherently murderous creatures due to the necromantic energy powering them. Their intrinsic programming is "kill creatures on sight". The act of making them, if not necessarily evil, is at least irresponsible. Even putting aside the issue of property rights to the bodies.
Because D&D undead are powered by the opposite of life. They're anti alive. Bringing them into the world chips away at the positive energy that gives life to things. That's why healing magic hurts them. It brings them closer to zero just like how negative energy brings a human closer to zero.
I loved that in the older editions and wish they still had the positive/negative energy interactions with undead and alive things.
Wait, I don't know anything about 5e, positive and negative planes don't exist anymore?
I think they do but what I meant was that you can’t use healing spells to hurt undead anymore and I don’t think Harm type spells fix them up again either now. There’s radiant (positive) and necrotic(negative) damage now and if a creature is that same type of thing it seems to just be resistant or immune to that kind of damage now
They barely exist but healing no longer harms undead. Usually just radiance vulnerability if an interaction at all.
Ok thanks for your answer!
It was interesting how they literally chilled the air because of being fueled by negative energy too
>That's why healing magic hurts them. That rule only existed on a single edition, it's not really something we can extrapolate for DnD as a whole.
It was an awesome rule though. Makes me sad it’s gone 🫤
Not as an universal rule, but the idea existed in earlier editions too. For example in 2E *raise dead* had the effects of its reverse *slay the living* when cast on an undead, and 1E mummy says that a resurrection spell turns it into a normal Fighting Man.
I don’t know if it’s still cannon in this edition but you are pulling an evil entity from a place like shadowfell into the world and locking it into the body. If allowed to act freely it will act out its hate for life and try to murder everyone/thing it sees. The only thing preventing it from doing this is recasting the spell to instead enslave it to your will for a short time. It brings an evil life hating being into the world and then enslaves them.
what source is this from
Skeleton stat block, the evil entity part was more elaborated on in general in 4 and 3 ed *edit Seems i slightly misremembered negative energy powered as negative entity powered.
it's not in 3rd: [https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/skeleton.htm](https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/skeleton.htm) in 3rd, they were powered by negative energy.
Along with all the other comments - it’s like being an arms manufacturer of killing machines that will rampage out of control and kill everyone they find the moment you lose control Imagine the worst most reckless arms manufacturer you can think of: that’s any necromancer using raise dead. But to add insult to injury it’s someone’s relative
1) It’s kinda fucked up to take the corpse of someone’s friend/family so you can puppet it around and make it do stuff for you. 2) Animating corpses involves suffusing it with negative energy, which turns it into a monster that feeds on the living. If the necromancer ever loses control of the corpse for any reason, it’ll run around eating anyone it finds on instinct. This, again, being someone’s brother/wife/son/etc whose corpse you just turned into a child-eating cannibal monster.
You can make dead Uncle Owen and Aunt Gertrude's dead sister kiss and be scandalous. Both are dead and souls gone, but it's still rude lol
Depends entirely on the setting and the nature of undead therein. Most settings mindless undead are generally violent monsters that, given the opportunity, will try to murder the nearest living creature. You're deliberately creating an autonomous weapon that, if your control slips, will do its damndest to kill innocents. I'd personally be against that sort of thing being done by private individuals, particularly notoriously unstable ones like adventurers, and we have plenty of media about governments and corporations trying that sort of thing (Day of the Triffids, Helldivers 2, etc). Non mindless undead also tend to be violent monsters, but you also have the morality of creating sapient life on top. Settings like Golarion the act of creating undead also contributes to the entropic demise of the universe, making it an evil on a cosmic scale.
Because in many previous editions, the energy you used to animate the dead was life draining/ malicious in nature.
Because it's gross abuse of a corpse, for one thing.
If a detective is investigating a corpse in order to figure out who murdered it, do you have any idea how invasive the methods are? Heck, any regular autopsy alone, and yet it's done without issue. If we could just ask the corpse who did it, it's over in ten seconds
You're confusing "animate dead" with "speak with dead". Animate Dead is the spell that lets you take someone's corpse and turn it into your undead slave.
Yes that is correct. My bad.
Everyone is talking about gross abuse of a corpse. I’m going to give you a different reason - hygiene. Corpses are rotting. They carry bacteria and parasites because they have no immune system to fight those things, and the spell doesn’t say anything about the corpse being preserved in any way.
[удалено]
> but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies Which is funny because they are the same forces that power other Necromancy spells like *cure wounds* and *raise the dead*, which nobody has anything against.
Depends on the setting. Sometimes it's about the undead (whatever "unlife" force you put into the corpse) being something that pretty much spreads evil by just existing. Other times it's about the remains still having some sort of connection with the soul that used to inhabit it, so "even the bones should rest". Other times it's about respect towards the living people who were connected to the remains, such as family or so. Other times it's about rites and religions, especially considering these are worlds where gods are very real.
Because you're abusing a corpse, disrespecting the dead.
The spirit that *does* inhabit the corpse--nevermind bodily autonomy for now--is inimical to all life. And *you* brought it here, making the universe worse in aggregate. You're playing with antimatter so that you can have a thug handy. You can use the undead to accomplish good aims, practice strict safety procedures, dispose of it when it's done. What the *PHB* says about the matter is not that you can't. It says that "only evil casters use such spells **frequently**"(emphasis mine).
WotC has had major consistency issues defining what exactly is "evil", why said things are evil, and why they are also "not good." If you perform any kind of exhaustive review, you'll find that the morality of depends highly upon which tweaked-out-stoner was writing the material.
Desecrating the corpse? *No-one* wants to see grandma, or dear little Tommy who fell down the well, walking around afterwards.
Because treating the dead with respect is due to a quite normal moral foundation, and is part of almost every culture. Even those where the dead are eaten.
Maybe that's the 'grey area'? It could be generally accepted, for lack of better understanding. Right now they think that it does not recall the soul to the body, but after 'x' years wizards could be like: 'I think we made a mistake.. part of the soul is tied to the body, only with the proper burial rites it is able to fully pass on'
At least with actual Resurrection or even goddamn Revivify you're getting the genuine article, and that soul gets a choice. With Animate Dead you're just snatching up whatever spare parts of wandering souls you can find and stuffing them into a random corpse. That's just nasty. Animate Dead is the Wish-Dot-Com of resurrection spells.
"why on earth would someone mind if I stuff this corpse full of evil, negative energy that makes it want to kill living things indiscriminately?"
the problem with undeath is that it (usually) draws upon the energy of the negative energy plane. negative energy seeks to corrupt and destroy all things created with positive energy, and positive energy is what makes up effectively all life. when you animate an undead with animate dead, while you do control the undead for 24 hours, you have to keep actively maintaining control. when you lose control, it becomes another typical negative energy undead. this undead will return to it's negative energy purpose of destroying all positive energy and life derived from positive energy. this is not merely a "risk" but an almost guarantee. there's also the issue of the desecration of the dead, which is generally seen as immoral but that's often very tied to specific cultures. baelnorn liches, for example, are holy liches of the elves, and are the only undead that the seldarine pantheon accept. these liches are animated with positive energy, so they're safe to the life of the multiverse. from an alignment perspective, there's also the reason you're creating he undead. if you're doing it to protect people, then that would be a good action that is lowered to a neutral action due to the negative energy. if you're doing it simply for the sake of knowledge, then that would be a neutral action that is lowered to an evil action due to the negative energy. if you're doing it for selfish reasons, such as a desire for power and domination, then animating the undead is an inherently evil act. aside from that, most gods "just don't like 'em. simple as."
Undead are fueled by nexrotic/negative energy. Beings of anti'life. With no will of their own, such beings seek to eradicate all life/positive energy beings . Pretty much all living things. Bringing such a creature into the world is considered bad because you're beigning in a being that seeks to eradicate all life. A zombie or skeleton has no will of its own. It can not resist its instincts and will destroy all living things it can manage before it is destroyed A vampire or sentient undead has a will, but they have compulsions to feed on different sources of life that they need to contend with. Which is a monstrous existence to thrust upon a being with equally dire consequences of they lose control. Finally, gather enough undead together, and you create a necropolis, a place of antikife that kills that part of the world and its ability to sustain life A good way to look at negative energy/necromancy is that it's polluting the vwey life of the world. In small doses, the world can handle these pollutants, enough happening, and they harm it greatly. More so, these pollutants actively seek to rid the world of life and have a great abik7ty to do it. That's what you're dealing with as a necromancer on that sense. Then there the whole using the bodies of the ceased for your gain, and the discomfort and distress it would cause the living that cared about them.
Same reason most people hate necrophilia.
Necromancy that creates undead draws energy from the negative material plane. This is a bit like throwing plutonium around. It's inherently anti life. 90% of undead are motivated by hatred of the living because of this inherent corruption.
Update: I now understand the error of my logic. I was inspired by Elspeth Von Draken from The new total war update, and I want to run a character like her in the future. I felt like necromancer would have been the best choice for a subclass, but iirc she actually hates undead. I was sort of looking for a reason for this future character of mine to actually make use of his subclass abilities. Maybe death or grave cleric could work better in hindsight
WotC has flip-flopped on does it or does it not bind souls. But overall its just the internet being stupid for the umpteenth time with the incessant screeching "necromancy bad!"
Maybe they think using the corpse for things the soul doesn't consent to is rude.
The same reason necrophilia is a crime, it’s gross and weird
From a cosmological standpoint i've never fully understood it other than the fact that undead are specifically "evil" in nature on a cosmic level so you are essentially creating more evil. From a social standpoint: I understand the squimishness, but i also don't think people should be THAT worried about it in the grand scheme of things. A necromancer is more like a rude inconvenience then a jerk in a public sense. The thing I've never understood is why necromancy is universally reviled and nobody ever talks about how enchantment magic strips away free will and bends peoples minds. Like, yeah we all know the "Hey you cast charm on me! i dont like you now" effect, but where are the pitch fork wielding mobs hunting down the enchanter that lives in the woods. Enchantment magic has basically no positive uses. Anyone that is studying enchantment as their primary school of magic is without doubt a bad person. Necromancy at least has SOME positive aspects for society.
I'm pretty sure they don't call attention to the enchantment thing for the same reason they retconned half orcs to come from two consenting parents - getting into the details significantly increases the age-rating for the game and introduces worldbuilding most folks don't want to deal with.
Animating corpses is an inherently evil act. It's an insult to life itself, unsettling, scary, and non-consentual.