Quote Originally Posted by understatement View Post
On a mildly-unrelated note, why is Animate Dead an Evil spell while Dominate Person isn't?
It is a minor "sacred cow" of D&D. In the mythologies that informed ye olde D&D, most especially certain Christian medieval mythologies and story traditions that were inspired by some of those Christian mythologies, animating dead is disturbing the dead in a very wrong kind of way. Or worse. The belief that messing with a dead body can disrupt the "proper" journey of the soul is a very common one, 'round the globe, in fact.

Logically speaking, one can easily imagine a campaign world where Animate Dead was not evil, with only miniscule rule changes. I do not believe that TST/WotC has ever created such a campaign world, though.

In other words: Design Decision.
Corollary: You do not have to like a particular design decision, but not liking it for reasons does not make the decision bad.