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Originally Posted by
Jane_Smith
Raising the dead is only an evil act to our society, that does not make it actually an evil act. Its like the bosmer in the elder scrolls series: they eat the flesh of there dead elders so they can live on with them and carry on. Does that make them evil? To the empire? Maybe. To the bosmer culture? No. To the cosmos? It does not give the tiniest amount of ****s, not even one. Its completely objective, so saying "undead is evil" has no solid grounds besides a spell descriptor that was placed by the makers of a game who set out to make necromancy just another "villian spell set" - the game is flawed in many cases, ESPECIALLY alignment, and its up to us as players and dm's to fix it and mend it, not just blindly follow greyhawks/cores "FLAVOR" that says hur dur undead are innately evil - as thats fluff and not 100% subject to whatever setting we play (Besides greyhawk).
Think of it this way. A fighter kills a bandit in self defense and takes his sword and maybe some healing potions to patch up the damage the bandit inflicted. A necromancer kills a bandit in self defense and raises his now empty/soulless corpse as a tool to protect him from future bandits. A cleric helps a group of players plunder a tomb to a ancient and forgotten god and loot the belongings of long dead ancestors. A ranger uses poison on a orc war parties food stock to prevent them from being able to raid a nearby farming community, thus preventing pillaging/murder/rape. A rogue uses blackmail to keep a corrupt noble from passing a law that would allow him to imprison anyone he wishes at any time for torture or worse under "suspicion" of crimes. A warlock had his soul sold by his parents while still in the womb for infernal powers, rebelled against his fate over time and led a rebellion against a tyrannical nation with the power of hellfire, leading thousands to freedom and peace. A druid's clan deep in the wastelands is suffering from famine, and its a time of war, she kills her enemies and holds feasts for her clan to feast on there corpses to save them from hunger.
I won't poke at the above right now, maybe later, except to ask if you read my post in which I gave a pretty solid explanation for why animating the dead is evil.
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Cosmos Effects of Actions (Unbias of any cultural influence)
Using Negative Energy: Neutral.
Why: Its just an energy like heat or cold, everything in the world sheds some of it, its part of the material plane. Death is not evil.
This is already true under the default alignment system.
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Using Positive Energy: Neutral.
Why: Healing can be used to keep someone alive for torture/etc and prolong there suffering. Life is not good.
Ditto.
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Animating a Corpse: Neutral.
Why: Animating a suit of armor or table is not evil. Raising a corpse, like forging a sword, should have the actions the wielder performs with it tested. Are blacksmiths considered evil for taking ore out of the earth, melting it down, and giving it to a soldier who may one day use it to kill a innocent man? No. Is the blacksmith a hero for making a sword that a paladin uses to save the world? No. A corpse is an object, a soulless object that feels nothing and is nothing but an empty shell that feels hunger pains due to the negative energy within it. If a sword suddenly sprouted legs, arms, and who's only desire was to kill as it was created to do, would it be evil? No.
FIFY. Raising and animating aren't quite the same.
More importantly though, there's a massive flaw in the comparison of a sword and, for example, a zombie. The sword won't wander off and attack random people when the wielder dies. It won't attack on its own at all if it's not under the direction of a sentient being capable of making moral and possibly aligned decisions. To kill for no reason whatsoever is evil. The animate sword doesn't need to eat. It doesn't gain anything at all from killing, unless its intelligent. Then maybe it gets pleasure from killing. It's a hell of a tough sell to say that killing for pleasure isn't evil.
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Using a Poison: Neutral.
Why: Poison is only considered "dishonorable" because like guns, peasants or untrained peons can kill a trained master of swordsmanship or magical demigod wizard with a vial of liquid brewed from some backwoods mushroom. It is not evil - its no more evil then cutting a mans arm or leg off in the heat of battle. If you have to fight, the very act of fighting and combat brings suffering, so saying "poison causes suffering and thus is evil", is pointless and outright ignorant. So its only considered evil out of stigma of "fair play" by the guys who wasted there lives beating dummies with a sharp stick. Is a druid or ranger evil for using a natural element in there territory to defend themselves or as a tool of the trade they have easy access to? Hell no. There is a saying that fits perfectly for this - guns don't kill people, people kill people. The action performed with it should be judged evil/good, not the item itself.
I've already done a full post for this one. I'll link it.
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Murder: Neutral.
Why: Is an animal considered evil or performing an act of evil if it kills another animal to gain mates, food, or territory? Nope. Is an animal considered evil if it kills a human in self defense? Nope. Is a king who orders his army to conquer new lands to expand his territory to feed his ever-growing population evil? Maybe, but not inherently, according to how he handles it. Like anything else, murder is a tool, and how its performed and used should determine its evil/good; someone who kills anyone just for money can even have good reasons, say if that money goes to an orphanage, but someone who just kills for fun is truly evil, and somewhat twisted.
You're misusing the term here. Most of what you've described isn't murder. It's just killing, and isn't evil under the default system to begin with. The king is responsible for actions taken in his name with his consent/under his orders. If his soldiers are murdering people, raping, and pilliaging, then he bears the weight of those deeds if he is aware of them and condones them. That's one of those special corner cases though. Most creatures are only responsible for their own actions and the immediate, and obvious, consequences there of.
The ends justify the means is an excuse, not a proper justification. If you decapitate an innocent child to save the kingdom, that's an evil act even if it did serve the greater good, unless the child understood why you had to do it and gave consent. Even then there had to be zero chance of saving the kingdom in any other way.
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Now, things that are truly evil? Senseless crimes that benefit nobody but the attacker/offender. Even good can come from cruel acts like torture, blackmail, lying, stealing, murder, etc IF IT HAS a "ends justify the means" - it has to have some reasoning for the action. The reason should determine the good/evil axis of the action, NOT the action itself.
Good ends don't justify evil means, but most actions aren't inherently good or evil unless they involve certain magicks. The remaining handful are actions that cannot help but violate the tenets of good.
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So yeah, I hate when people just say 'X is evil, period", it makes no sense, and I would not want to be in any setting where alignment is so concrete and black/white, as it is rather bland and boring.
98% of all actions aren't inherently aligned with good or evil. You're either misreading the RAW too strictly or haven't actually read it all that carefully to begin with.