Use of Undead - A Tangent

[Cosi]

Creating undead is evil no matter HOW you do it.

Then why the hell where you asking people to find a spell that made undead and didn't have the Evil tag? If you've already decided that making undead is always Evil even if the tag isn't present, what could that possibly prove?

Everyone else is having a discussion about the rules, how they work, and WHY.

I mean, not the OP of this thread. Who, you know, started the discussion. He was asking about the social consequences of the use of undead-creating spells as a basis for civilization.

YOU come in here and say "I disagree with the founding premise that the rules you all are discussing is based on. And when I throw out those premises, the rules you are discussing don't make sense, therefore, the rules are flawed".

No. I'm saying that we shouldn't care what the result of this debate is, because it doesn't answer the question we want to answer. It's like if I asked if Fighters were good, and you spent ten pages ranting about how you have to be a Fighter to take Weapon Specialization. That's true (mostly), but it doesn't answer the question at all, so why do I care?

[Cosi]

Planar Binding to create more undead not actually significant though, since it's control that's the problem.

It is if you bind things that can cast animate dead. Like, I don't know, Ultroloths. Seriously, do people not read things at all?

EDIT: Oops. I misremembered the Ultroloth's statblock. It gets desecrate, not animate dead. Still, Pit Fiends get create undead and you can always make your undead Spell-Stitched so they can make more undead.

The "Evil tag" is partially there to cut off arguments of this nature, so the DM can point out it doesn't matter how cute you get about using your mindless undead, it's Evil, it says right there.

And my point is that doing things that way is lazy, stupid, and childish. If you want to shut down debates by saying "I'm DM, and that makes me right, and there's nothing you can do", you can do that, but you should stop pretending its anything other than petty and childish. If you don't want to answer moral questions, you shouldn't ask them. You certainly shouldn't insist that no one be allowed to answer them.

It does not matter that there are non-spell effects which can create undead without having the [Evil] descriptor due to their not being spells, this is not a contradiction in the rules. If there is a spell which creates undead while not having the [Evil] descriptor, then that spell has been mis-tagged- and even so, it would change nothing about the nature of undead, which is Evil.

This is circular. So obviously circular in fact that I shouldn't even have to point it out.

If you refuse to keep your morality system separate from the game, that is your choice, and you may feel free to houserule whatever morality system you want into DnD when you play it. This does not mean the game is wrong or badly designed for disagreeing with you.

You have yet to explain why we would want the game to make objective moral judgments, aside from "it lets the DM punish PCs who do things I don't like". Fun fact: that is terrible design.

[Pleh]

"Real roleplayers let the designers decide how they feel about things!"

Well, you could say that an unwillingness to make your character actually fit the setting in which they find themselves to indeed be bad roleplaying.

After all, if necromancy is inherently evil in this setting, then your character probably feels the pang of conscience when considering or implementing such actions.

Even if us real people have no reason to feel as the character does (since our moral system functions differently), that doesn't mean the character doesn't have any reason to feel it. That is meta gaming. So far as your character knows, all society sees undeath as clearly and obviously evil. Everyone is raised to know this. Applying your personal morality in place of a sense of morals more fitting to your character is indeed bad roleplaying (or even just a failure play the role).

Now your argument here is built upon conflating things that are not equivalent: in this instance, what the player wants to do and what their character wants to do.

"Real roleplayers let the designers decide how they feel about things!"

No, real roleplayers do not let designers decide how the Player feels about things.

But they will definitely submit to what the designer says their Character feels about things. If the player decides their character is unconcerned with things that are definitively evil, then they are a neutral or evil character.

Of course, the DM can waive or alter the setting, so if the players don't like how the setting informs their character's morality, they can appeal the DM to waive or alter the setting's alignment controls to better suit the player's preferred style of play. There is nothing wrong at all with this. In fact, it is better to game this way, as it sets roleplaying goals that are more desireable to the player.

But system designers are not bad or wrong for setting an objective morality to their system, thus dictating character responses to some degree.

They might be more culpable for not being a bit more clear or consistent about it.

[Doctor Despair]

I'm simultaneously not sure what your point is with the elemental (since binding an elemental is also binding a soul); and sure you're missing my actual point. The fact creating the flesh golem is Evil is unrelated to the relevant part, which is the analogy to undead.

So let me step back to the square 1 of what I see our arguments as:

You: Undead, even if Mindless, are Evil because the only way to make them is with [Evil] magic, whose intrinsic [Evil] nature carries over to their alignment.
Me: First off, you can make undead without [Evil] magic. Second off, other things can only be made with [Evil] magic, but somehow result in Neutral creatures.

Am I incorrect on your base argument, and is my counter-argument getting it's point across?

It could be that using any magic to create an undead shifts your alignment towards evil, whether or not it has the [Evil] tag, because it contributes to the "Greenhouse Gas" metaphor of spontaneously occurring undead that cause unintended harm in the world. The designers may have chosen not to tag every spell that could potentially create undead with the [Evil] tag but, instead, gave it to a few commonly used spells with no other use than to raise undead. In that sense, a list of [Evil] spells that create undead could be accurate, but not exhaustive.

Earlier, a comparison was made to folks driving cars not necessarily being evil despite contributing to global warming. That may be true, but that would not necessarily mean that the act of burning fossil fuels is not an "evil" act. It could mean that the "evil" of being a consumer of fossil fuels is small enough that it is offset by the good done later in the day. In that same sense, using undead to do good in the world could positively impact your alignment eventually; indeed, if you somehow negated their contribution of negative energy to the plane, it may not even harm much of anything from a moral standpoint. However, the act of creating one is still evil -- even if you balance it out. Negative two plus three may result in a positive number, but the two is still negative regardless.

[Dragonexx]

That the rules for the morality of undead are inconsistent because the people writing them couldn't decide if PCs Necromancers were supposed to be okay or not?

The reality of this is that trying to argue what's [Good] and what's [Evil] are flat pointless and an exercise in madness. The rules are inconsistent and conflicting because the reality of the situation is that all the material they draw from (or just straight copy/paste) comes from multiple books, over multiple editions, written by multiple authors who (as the dragonlance example earlier in this threat shows) can have WILDLY different perspectives on morality and that does find it's way into the rules. And thus spawn internet flame wars when people try to interpret them.

[Psyren]

I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Animating undead being evil doesn't stop your PC from being a necromancer, and if you are instead the DM, you can houserule the problem away without the WotC/Paizo Fun Police showing up at your door brandishing AR-15s.

As such a necromancer's player, you can have your character disbelieve the concerns raised in this thread about the practice, or even just dismiss them (considering the "greater good" to trump such misgivings) - and if you so choose, you can even make it their goal to create a utopia fueled on the backs of infinite undead labor. Nothing posted here is stopping you. All this rule does is point out the likely reasons why nobody has successfully pulled off such a scheme before, and in corollary, why the forces of Good (including the cadre of anti-undead deities) would put their all behind fighting such a scheme in the past. Perhaps your PC will be the first to fend off the paladins and other so-called do-gooders who have thwarted those who tried before, and bring the world around to your way of thinking.

In the meantime though, the point of rules like these is to explain why the world is the way it is when the game begins - why, for instance, the only people who practice large-scale necromancy are found in Evil churches, and why the world has not already undergone and industrial revolution due to the dead.

[ErebusVonMori]

Going back to practicality, if you use dread necromancers for the higher level casters you can make some headway on the numbers front, undead leadership also goes a bit further. Zones of desecration pushes things a bit further, and some of the undead boosting feats to get a little more milage out of each skeleton.

[Necroticplague]

Then why the hell where you asking people to find a spell that made undead and didn't have the Evil tag? If you've already decided that making undead is always Evil even if the tag isn't present, what could that possibly prove?

Because the argument that was being had was that Mindless Undead were evil because they could only be animated using [Evil] spells, and the [Evil] of those spells carries over to the undead's nature. It was pertaining to how something can be Evil and Mindless despite the SRDs mention of creatures incapable of moral action only being able to be Neutral. Whether it was evil to animate the mindless undead was immaterial to that discussion.

[Segev]

1) Whether they feel guilt is irrelevant to the damage they're causing. Though, you've just exposed the entire point of Good churches and deities, (i.e. to point out the issue and create that guilt) so congratulations?

I'm not sure if you're ignoring or missing my point, at this point. You keep arguing something I don't care about and then claiming it proves I'm wrong.

The entire point I am getting at is that anything that is an Evil Act should be something that a Good person, every time they do it, feels a genuine pang of conscience over. INHERENTLY. Not, "If only you knew that you were contributing in a non-measurably small way to a problem that we can never actually assign any single specific part of to you, you'd feel somewhat guilty for it." If you can't say, "If only you hadn't done that Evil thing, this bad thing wouldn't have happened," this doesn't count.

It's not an [evil] act, otherwise. And "it is, really, because the designers said so," just doesn't cut it, because if you use that logic, then of course sanctify the wicked is also [good], because the designers said so. And you can't say, "Well, it's stupid that they said that," about sanctify the wicked but then say, "But it makes total sense that they say that about animate dead, and be consistent. Not if your sole justification for animate dead making sense is "well, they get to define it."

Nor if "well, casting animate dead causes smidgens of evil to occur in the world that gradually makes it more evil!" Because the same justification can be given to sanctify the wicked: "Well, each time you cast it, the net good in the world increases, so it's good to do."

As mentioned above, BoED states that casting [Good] spells cannot redeem you. So no, even the book you keep trying to bring up does not help your case one iota.

As hinted above, this is irrelevant. I'm not talking about redemption. I'm talking about applying exactly the same logical justification process to both spells.

[Psyren]

The entire point I am getting at is that anything that is an Evil Act should be something that a Good person, every time they do it, feels a genuine pang of conscience over. INHERENTLY. Not, "If only you knew that you were contributing in a non-measurably small way to a problem that we can never actually assign any single specific part of to you, you'd feel somewhat guilty for it." If you can't say, "If only you hadn't done that Evil thing, this bad thing wouldn't have happened," this doesn't count.

It's not an [evil] act, otherwise.

I actually agree with this reasoning. But where you fall down is that you then point to driving cars in our world as not causing such guilt, without ignoring all the other logical reasons for that discrepancy. For example, we don't have good deities in our world dedicated to making the causal link between that individual activity and its ultimate effects clear, while they do. We don't have feasible/practical alternatives in many places to using fossil-fuel powered vehicles, but there are many such alternatives to zombie labor. So one causing personal guilt but not the other is easily explained if you just take 5 minutes to think about it.

And "it is, really, because the designers said so," just doesn't cut it, because if you use that logic, then of course sanctify the wicked is also [good], because the designers said so.

Multiple times you've been given the reasons why animating undead is immoral that go beyond "because they said so." Furthermore, Sanctify being [Good] doesn't mean jack squat for morality, as cited in the very book that you keep bringing up. Repeat after me - casting Good spells doesn't make you Good. Is that clear enough?

[Zanos]

Second, even if you were correct and there's no possible way that skeletons and zombies can attack without being told to do so, those comprise a whopping two undead out of dozens, maybe hundreds printed in the game. Whatever you think about those two standing around if given no orders, does not apply to all the other undead out there.

That's a weak argument. Yes, skeletons and zombies compose a fraction of printed undead (more like twenty of them, since it's a template), but they compose the vast majority of undead intentionally created by magic, since they're the only product of the first spell that an aspiring necromancer learns that creates permanent undead.

Multiple times you've been given the reasons why animating undead is immoral that go beyond "because they said so." Furthermore, Sanctify being [Good] doesn't mean jack squat for morality, as cited in the very book that you keep bringing up. Repeat after me - casting Good spells doesn't make you Good. Is that clear enough?

I was under the impression that casting [Good] spells was a Good act. Is it not?

[Psyren]

That's a weak argument. Yes, skeletons and zombies compose a fraction of printed undead (more like twenty of them, since it's a template), but they compose the vast majority of undead intentionally created by magic, since they're the only product of the first spell that an aspiring necromancer learns that creates permanent undead.

The intended undead aren't the problem.

I was under the impression that casting [Good] spells was a Good act. Is it not?

"Good spells don’t have any redemptive influence on those who cast them, for better or worse."

[Zanos]

The intended undead aren't the problem.

The intended undead are definitely relevant, since we're discussing magic that creates undead, not the set of all undead that exist.

"Good spells don’t have any redemptive influence on those who cast them, for better or worse."

Isn't redemption a specific mechanic in BoED though?

[Psyren]

The intended undead are definitely relevant, since we're discussing magic that creates undead, not the set of all undead that exist.

The two are correlated, per Libris Mortis and BoVD. Magic that creates undead leads to the latter, intended or not. The reason for this is theorized in LM, but the fact that it happens is just that, fact.

Isn't redemption a specific mechanic in BoED though?

"Any" encompasses all forms of redemption.

[Segev]

I actually agree with this reasoning. But where you fall down is that you then point to driving cars in our world as not causing such guilt, without ignoring all the other logical reasons for that discrepancy. For example, we don't have good deities in our world dedicated to making the causal link between that individual activity and its ultimate effects clear, while they do. We don't have feasible/practical alternatives in many places to using fossil-fuel powered vehicles, but there are many such alternatives to zombie labor. So one causing personal guilt but not the other is easily explained if you just take 5 minutes to think about it.

There are absolutely alternatives to fossil fuels. They're practical enough that many parts of the world still rely on them, and even the USA relied on them for the first century or more of existence. Heck, the Amish do just fine without them.

Sure, we'd be reducing our food production and shipping capacity. We'd have to cram far more people into cities to keep them in horseback distance of work, and the maneur-cleaning services would be an enormous industry costing a fortune out of our much-diminished economy, but it's doable. Just disastrous to our modern way of life.

Likewise, tireless automaton-like labor that costs next to no maintenance compared to the subsistence farmer would dramatically improve the standard of living and economic welfare of whatever lands utilized the undead in such a fashion. Sure, it might be feasible to go back to back-breaking labor for subsistence peasant farmers, but standards of living would drop catastrophically.

And regardless of where you stand on the AGW issue, it's inarguable that there are zealots who treat it almost like a religion, with Pope Al Gore as the Prophet. There ARE preachers for the cause who act much the way a Pelorite priest might regarding undead. But that Pelorite in a land where the undead were integral to the economy and didn't do demonstrable individual harm each time the TN cleric of Nerull sold another farmhand to Farmer Bob...well, he'd have a hard time getting Pelor-worshipping Bob to feel that pang of guilt, even if he agreed overall that perhaps the anthropogenic undead miasma was a societal ill.

Multiple times you've been given the reasons why animating undead is immoral that go beyond "because they said so." Furthermore, Sanctify being [Good] doesn't mean jack squat for morality, as cited in the very book that you keep bringing up. Repeat after me - casting Good spells doesn't make you Good. Is that clear enough?

And my point - which I've reiterated multiple times - is that the same reasons why animating dead is immoral can be applied with equal felicity to casting good spells. Both are equally post-hoc explanations for the arbitrary label assignment.

[Psyren]

Just disastrous to our modern way of life.

Like I said - impractical/infeasible.

Likewise, tireless automaton-like labor that costs next to no maintenance compared to the subsistence farmer would dramatically improve the standard of living and economic welfare of whatever lands utilized the undead in such a fashion. Sure, it might be feasible to go back to back-breaking labor for subsistence peasant farmers, but standards of living would drop catastrophically.

It only does that if you ignore the unintended consequences such undead would bring about. Which again, are far worse than anything that can be attributed to the climate, because they produce things that actively seek our destruction in addition to passive degradations.

And regardless of where you stand on the AGW issue, it's inarguable that there are zealots who treat it almost like a religion, with Pope Al Gore as the Prophet. There ARE preachers for the cause who act much the way a Pelorite priest might regarding undead. But that Pelorite in a land where the undead were integral to the economy and didn't do demonstrable individual harm each time the TN cleric of Nerull sold another farmhand to Farmer Bob...well, he'd have a hard time getting Pelor-worshipping Bob to feel that pang of guilt, even if he agreed overall that perhaps the anthropogenic undead miasma was a societal ill.

Whether such zealots truly exist or not, Al Gore is not a deity and thus his ability to convince the common man of the problem is limited. Pelor is, and in-universe, is extremely well-regarded (by non-necromancers, anyway.)

As far as "demonstrable harm" - again, your character does not have to believe in any of the "demonstrations" if they choose not to. What matters is that those who oppose him would, which is why such a scheme has not borne fruit in the past.

And my point - which I've reiterated multiple times - is that the same reasons why animating dead is immoral can be applied with equal felicity to casting good spells. Both are equally post-hoc explanations for the arbitrary label assignment.

But it is not being applied with equal felicity. It is demonstrably unequal. They have consciously chosen to make being a good person more difficult than being an evil one in this game. Casting a bunch of spells regardless of intent can make you evil, while doing the same cannot make you good. Whether you agree with that design choice or not, it is still fact. Speaking for myself, I happen to agree with it.

[Segev]

Casting a bunch of spells regardless of intent can make you evil, while doing the same cannot make you good. Whether you agree with that design choice or not, it is still fact. Speaking for myself, I happen to agree with it.

I think a significant portion of why I feel you're talking past me rather than addressing me lies in this statement. You keep talking about it as if my point has any bearing on whether casting XYZ spell changes the alignment of the caster. It doesn't.

Let's focus on the "casting evil spells increases evil in the world" angle. In particular, we're arguing that casting animate dead, say, 1,000 times will result in +10% spontaneous undead. As an example. This is why it's inherently evil to cast the spell, right?

Okay, using that same logic, sanctify the wicked is a [good] spell and should cause an increase in good in the world, regardless of its other effects, just as animate dead causes evil in the world independent of its actual spell effect. Let's say that sanctify the wicked's ambient effect is something like, if you cast it 1,000 times, 10% more wrongdoers will spontaneously feel so guilty that they have a change of heart and independently seek repentance.

So torturing 1000 evildoers was as good an act as animating 1000 skeletons to produce farm labor or free electricity was an evil one, or thereabouts, if we value repentant souls and spontaneous undead roughly equally for argument's sake.

Before I continue even trying to make a point based on this, do you understand this argument as I've presented it? Whether you agree or not. If you do not understand it, or think this argument itself flawed, please explain in your own words what you think I'm arguing, and then why it is flawed.

[Psyren]

Before I continue even trying to make a point based on this, do you understand this argument as I've presented it? Whether you agree or not. If you do not understand it, or think this argument itself flawed, please explain in your own words what you think I'm arguing, and then why it is flawed.

You are arguing that casting [Good] spells should have a positive impact to counteract the negative impact of animating undead. True or false?

[Zanos]

The BoED only says that casting Good spells cannot redeem you, it doesn't say that casting Good spells is not a Good act.

If you murder 20,000 people no amount of giving beggars coppers is going to redeem you either, but it's still a Good act. Redemption isn't about balancing your heart on the scales, it's about actual repentance.

[Psyren]

The BoED only says that casting Good spells cannot redeem you, it doesn't say that casting Good spells is not a Good act.

If you murder 20,000 people no amount of giving beggars coppers is going to redeem you either, but it's still a Good act. Redemption isn't about balancing your heart on the scales, it's about actual repentance.

I agree with this too. But if you can't offset that way, why would you expect to be left alone to animate legions of undead in peace? Why would you expect no opposition? That is ultimately my question. Again, they are explaining why nobody has pulled this off before.

[Segev]

You are arguing that casting [Good] spells should have a positive impact to counteract the negative impact of animating undead. True or false?

Not quite.

I am arguing that there is as much justification for a post-hoc "casting [good] spells increases the ambient good in the world" as there is for a post-hoc "casting [evil] spells increases the ambient evil in the world," when either is used to justify a spell being labeled [good] or [evil] because the actual effect of the spell (or requirements of its casting) fails to actually be good or evil.

[Psyren]

Not quite.

I am arguing that there is as much justification for a post-hoc "casting [good] spells increases the ambient good in the world" as there is for a post-hoc "casting [evil] spells increases the ambient evil in the world," when either is used to justify a spell being labeled [good] or [evil] because the actual effect of the spell (or requirements of its casting) fails to actually be good or evil.

First, even if the direct effects or requirements of a spell do not have a demonstrable moral impact, it is still possible that the indirect ones can, and that those effects can exist for spells that animate undead. That is the case here.

Second, however reasonable such equal justification may be to you, the designers have consciously chosen not to go with it, and so good spells have a different (i.e. weaker) impact on the world than evil ones do. It is a common fantasy trope that the path to evil is easier and faster, and it is an equally common trope that perpetrators of evil acts care less for the unintended or indirect consequences of their actions than those trying to do good, who need to take more factors into consideration.

Third and final, the issue here is not merely "[Evil]" spells. The line about making the world a darker and more evil place from BoVD does not actually apply to all [Evil] spells - rather, it focuses on the ones that create or animate undead. There is no corresponding [Good] spell that can counteract that effect by RAW, and spells that make undead are considered evil acts whether they have the descriptor or not, just like undead themselves detect as evil regardless of their alignment.

[Segev]

Ah, so blasphemy does not increase the ambient evil of the world? As an example.

[Psyren]

Ah, so blasphemy does not increase the ambient evil of the world? As an example.

It does not. It would probably have a moral impact on you (the caster) eventually if you made a habit of it, but there is no line about it "making the world a darker and more evil place" (BoVD) or "being a constant drain on the energies of the Material Plane" (LM). Those are qualities unique to animating undead.

[Segev]

It does not. It would probably have a moral impact on you (the caster) eventually if you made a habit of it, but there is no line about it "making the world a darker and more evil place" (BoVD) or "being a constant drain on the energies of the Material Plane" (LM). Those are qualities unique to animating undead.

Hokay.

Still not a very GOOD post hoc excuse, but whatever. I'll grant that they made the effort, however unsatisfying, and that they did not add the same text, however easily the same reasoning COULD apply, to justify their [good] spells being [good].

[AnimeTheCat]

I'm specifying because it is an important distinction. If a necromancer wants to make use of more animated undead that his CLx4 (as per the control limit of Animate Dead) then acknowledging how such undead behave is of extreme importance. A kingdom based on an undead workforce will use far more undead than can be provided by the casters' HD limit.

It's those kinds of assumptions that I find to be lazy and even damaging to this kind of discussion. When trying to figure out how a Benevolent Necromantic Empire might function, the assumption of unlimited spellpower is the most shameless of hand-wave. Not having enough wizards can lead to creative solutions, and it is those solutions that will breathe life into a setting. If your only answers to those questions are, "we have more wizards", then you've just destroyed most of what could make the setting interesting.

How many necromancers might you really need? How many would you realistically have access to? Let's take the best case scenario. Say you control a metropolis of minimum size (so you have access to the largest number of wizards but have to account for the smallest population), that gives you access to 4 high level wizards of levels 1d4+12 (DMG p. 139). Since this is a best case scenario we'll say that every wizard is a Necromancer and they are all max level (16th level). This also gives access to another necromancer of half level and so on down till level 1. A necromancer needs to be 7th level to cast Animate Dead so that gives you access to 4 16th level Necromancers and 4 8th level, allowing you to directly control 384 HD worth of undead. Sounds like a lot. Is it enough?

The Romans are thought to have had @25% of the population as slaves (you are essentially trying to build a slave based society where the slaves are replaced with guilt-free undead). Your Metropolis has a population of @25,000. That means you can directly control 384 out of 6,250 zombie/slave workers. That's one hell of a shortfall to make up for. Finding a way to do so is where things get interesting. This is also why I'm focusing on the uncontrolled animated undead. I think that they will be a real consideration for such a society, perhaps a dirty little secret that they keep out of sight of visitors to the kingdom. The assumption that you will automatically have enough necromancers to fulfill all of your control needs is the least interesting of all possible answers and, like I said, just lazy.

Because the sheer size of an undead workforce for the proposed kingdom is going to far outstrip it's capacity for control. Look above. I've mentioned this before, I'll probably have to mention it again. Knowing how to handle uncontrolled undead will be key to the kingdoms success. Eventually control will be lost, whether on the small scale or on a larger scale. Other kingdoms will judge you on the worst possible situation and you must acknowledge it, instead of pretending that the problem doesn't exist.

OK, So the numbers/data you provided was very helpful. I was able to use the basics you provided to get a better image of just what exactly I'm working with. Specifically, I can break the numbers down to show just how many undead such an empire can control.

Spoiler: Wizards

Show

Since you started with wizards, I'll start there too. In a metropolis you'll have 4 wizards of 1d4+12 level. For the rest of the example I'm going to use best case scenario. Here's the breakdown of how many wizards you would have:
Level 16: 4
Level 8: 8
Level 4: 16
Level 2: 32
Level 1: 64

With these numbers, you have 4 wizards who can collectively control up to 256 HD of undead at a time and 8 wizards who can collectively control up to 256 HD of undead at a time for a total of
512 created undead under absolute control with no further influence. What's more is that all of those wizards also have Command Undead that they can cast as well. That means that with consecutive castings of command undead the wizards can control another 960 undead. This works by the wizards literally getting no days off ever, but they're only casting 8 spells a day so it's not the end of the world. Mechanically, the 16th level wizards are focused specialists with maximum natural intelligence for a 16th level character (Base 18+4 for levels) granting them 2 bonus second level spells, 3 necromancy specific spells from focused specialist and 3 granted from the table (base 4 - 1 for focused specialist). That's 8 command undead spells that last for 16 days each meaning that 8 spells can be cast on different undead over the course of 16 days granting a total control pool with command undead 512 for the 16th level casters and the 8th level casters controling 448 (7 spells per day, 8 Casters, 8 day duration: 7x8x8=448). So, just in the 12 highest level wizards you can control 512HD of undead and 960 undead from the two spells. I'll simplify this, I'm only talking about skeletons (1 HD each). This means 12 casters can support 1472 undead indefinitely using only spells per day.

For the finer details on how this would work, they would use wands for initial command and control purposes and then later sustain using only command undead spells from preparation as to not rely on magic items for anything beyond initial startup of the kingdom.

Next, we'll move on to those lower level casters. The 16 level 4 wizards can prepare and cast 6 level 2 spells every day (2 base, 1 int bonus, 3 focused specialist). This means that with recurring castings the level 4 casters can support 96 undead every 4 days totaling to 384 undead if they do nothing but cast that spell every day on 6 undead. 1856 undead now with absolutely no hand-waiving or rules bending. Now you have 32 level 2 and 64 level 1 wizards. If they all take precious apprentice they can manage a total of 128. This brings the total up to 1984 undead total commanded using no magic items except wands. I think you'll notice that this number is much higher than the number you originally quoted.

Spoiler: Sorcerers

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Next, let's move on to sorcerers. You'll have the same number of sorcerers in such a society and they will also have numerous spells per day. The numbers are broken down as follows:
16: 4
8: 8
4: 16
2: 32
1: 64

Since the same sorcerers can cast the same spells you'll get the same number of undead created using Animate Dead out of these sorcerers so starting with 512 HD created and controled. Total controled undead: 2496 HD (2496 Skeletons). Then, these same individuals can control undead via Command Undead. I'll break down the numbers below:

Level 16: Cha 22	8 Castings (6 base, 2 cha)	4 Sorcerers	16 Days	512 Undead Controlled
Level 8: Cha 20	7 Catings (6 Base, 1 Cha)	8 Sorcerers	8 Days	448 Undead Controlled
Level 4: Cha 19	4 Castings (3 Base, 1 bonus)	16 Sorcerers	4 Days	256 Undead Controlled
Level 2: Cha 18	1 Casting (1 Precious Apprentice)	32 Sorcerers	2 days	64 Undead Controlled
Level 1: Cha 18	1 Casting (1 Precious Apprentice)	64 Sorcerers	1 days	64 Undead Controlled

With these numbers you can see a total of 1,344 undead can be controlled with Command Undead from the sorcerers bringing the overall number of controlled undead in the kingdom to 3,840. But we can't stop there because we still have Clerics.

Spoiler: Clerics

Show

Clerics, in this perfect scenario, would break down as this:
18: 4
9:8
4:16
2:32
1:64

Clerics don't get Command Undead as a spell but they get it as a class ability so the numbers at the lower levels will only be slightly different. You get 576 undead from Animate Dead from your clerics and 336 from Rebuking Undead to Command them. This brings our total number of undead up to 4,752.

This leaves only 1,498 slave positions in the example you gave of the roman thinging around 25% would be slaves. This can easily be filled by lawbreakers, or actual slaves, and can even mean that the more technically sensitive slavery positions are handled by real living beings.

This is not perfect and only answers the question of numbers, but I think that's a lot bigger number than you may have initially thought. The only "Cheese" you could consider would be Precious Apprentice to get more command undeads, but that's really only 256 less skeletons so I can take it or leave it.

As far as safety is concerned, Just don't control that many. Don't push the bill to the teetering brink of destruction. Even 3,000 mindless undead that can work endlessly and tirelessly can reduce the effort required from the everyday citizen in various ways. For example, usually if streets are dirty/trashy vermin will be attracted, build the city with "sewers" of conveyer belts underground that skeletons mindlessly and endlessly turn that lead to a giant incenerator where all garbage and waste is incenerated. Streets will be cleaner and vermin will be reduced and you don't have to pay anyone to do it. Similar examples, use said incinerator of garbage to fuel the furnaces where your blacksmiths work, now you're not only keeping your city clean, you're also using the garbage for a purpose. This will not yield high enough temperatures to produce high quality products.

More to come later, but these are just the numbers crunched and some very basic thoughts on application.

[Fizban]

Well hot dog, someone actually did the math. Bravo Mr. Cat, bravo. I disagree that merely filling 3/4 of the slave requirement would have so drastic an impact, and sending those undead off to be industrial machinery should be leaving you with deficits on basic food production, but still. With maximum specialization of all the spellcasters capable of controlling undead, you can almost replace historical slave numbers with undead.

But can those undead actually replace the slaves? Even if you could match the full number, I think mindless undead are not going to be able to fill the roles of thinking+subjugated slaves.

[RedMage125]

First off, Fizban, your entire post (#270)...I wish I could "Like" it. +1 to everything you said.

Then why the hell where you asking people to find a spell that made undead and didn't have the Evil tag? If you've already decided that making undead is always Evil even if the tag isn't present, what could that possibly prove?

I was calling you out on your ENTIRELY FALSE claim that there were such spells. You lied, I called your bluff. Put up or shut up and admit you were wrong.

And it wasn't me that "decided making undead is always Evil", the RAW did. Stop trying to make it sound like I'm just pushing my opinions. Read the RAW before you make a claim about what they say.

No. I'm saying that we shouldn't care what the result of this debate is, because it doesn't answer the question we want to answer. It's like if I asked if Fighters were good, and you spent ten pages ranting about how you have to be a Fighter to take Weapon Specialization. That's true (mostly), but it doesn't answer the question at all, so why do I care?

No, your entire argument is coming from the stance of "objective Good/Evil is stupid and rules should not be made that require it in order for those rules to make sense". Which is EXACTLY what I said you were saying (claiming the rules were flawed because you disagree with one of the underlying premises).

And my point is that doing things that way is lazy, stupid, and childish. If you want to shut down debates by saying "I'm DM, and that makes me right, and there's nothing you can do", you can do that, but you should stop pretending its anything other than petty and childish. If you don't want to answer moral questions, you shouldn't ask them. You certainly shouldn't insist that no one be allowed to answer them.

This first part is entirely your opinion and has no foundation in fact. And the second is a Straw Man, because no one is saying that. The RAW gives answers about the objectivity of Good/Evil and so on. That has very little to do with questions of morality. Namely because morality is flexible enough that sometimes, immoral or questionably moral acts can be justified depending on circumstances. And in objective Good/Evil/etc, there are certain acts that are Evil no matter what. You may BELIEVE that circumstances justified your actions, and by mortal moral mores (that's some fun alliteration), you may be entirely correct. But the objective forces of Good/Evil/etc. are dispassionate and judge your acts by firm, unrelenting criteria to which even gods are beholden.

Objective Good and Evil doesn't preclude complex moral dilemmas, or even complex morality in a character. It only affects how those characters are judged by those forces and could have an effect on their alignment over time.

This is circular. So obviously circular in fact that I shouldn't even have to point it out.

It's not circular, it's supportive facts. Creating undead is Evil. For those spells which ONLY do that, it is always an Evil ac to cast them, right? Since there already exists a mechanic for spells where casting them is an effect of x alignment (this is the [x alignment] descriptor), that descriptor was added to the spells which only create undead. This is called CONSISTENCY, not circularity.

I wouldn't expect someone who thinks his opinions are facts to understand that, but there it is.

You have yet to explain why we would want the game to make objective moral judgments, aside from "it lets the DM punish PCs who do things I don't like". Fun fact: that is terrible design.

Fun fact: That is an opinion. I know you THINK that your opinions are so vital and universal that they hold objective weight as fact, but you're dead wrong.

Because the argument that was being had was that Mindless Undead were evil because they could only be animated using [Evil] spells, and the [Evil] of those spells carries over to the undead's nature. It was pertaining to how something can be Evil and Mindless despite the SRDs mention of creatures incapable of moral action only being able to be Neutral. Whether it was evil to animate the mindless undead was immaterial to that discussion.

No, that was YOUR misinterpretation.
I said undead were created by Evil magicks, because the act of making them (which always involves magic of some kind) is always an Evil act. And Evil can leave its taint when it is performed (as per BoVD "Lingering Effects of Evil"). So even the zombies animated by an evil epic cleric using the Zone of Animation epic feat is use of magic to perform an Evil act, and thus the magicks which animate those zombies are Evil. So the fact that it is evil to animate them is actually EXTREMELY relevant to that discussion.

And since the magicks which animate them are Evil, they have Evil as a part of their physical nature. Thus we see that the Specific rule about creatures to whom Evil is inherent to their nature supercedes the General rule about intelligence and moral culpability.

It was YOU that kept thinking I meant "[Evil] spells" when I said "Evil magicks". I thought I clarified that in my last response to you.

Hokay.

Still not a very GOOD post hoc excuse, but whatever. I'll grant that they made the effort, however unsatisfying, and that they did not add the same text, however easily the same reasoning COULD apply, to justify their [good] spells being [good].

And you are entirely entitled to your opinion. No one want to change your opinion. We've only been trying to point out what the RAW say, which you kept claiming the absence of.

I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Animating undead being evil doesn't stop your PC from being a necromancer, and if you are instead the DM, you can houserule the problem away without the WotC/Paizo Fun Police showing up at your door brandishing AR-15s.

Yes, this. Also, Psyren, let me applaud you for doing what I could not, which was to make Segev FINALLY recognize that there was an in-game justification for why animating undead was Evil. He usually intentionally ignores when people point it out, then waits a few pages and claims it doesn't exist again.

[ErebusVonMori]

Why's no one going dread necromancer on this? I mean the class was pretty much designed for this, hordes of undead are the one thing it will outperform a cleric on post lv 12 and it synergises massively with Undead Leadership, adding an additional pool of mindless undead.

Still one question as yet unanswered is what do you do with the large pool of mortal labour you've freed up? I mean obviously a few scribe jobs and admin jobs to keep tracks of whose skeleton is whose. Some farming jobs will simply be too complicated for a skeleton to do endlessly, but if given micromanagement perhaps doable and to simply point at someone and go 'Obey him' is a simple command.

[Fizban]

Why's no one going dread necromancer on this?

There is no RAW source of Dread Necromancers. One can claim a RAW number of casters based on city generation, but those are core classes only. Modifying the city generation tables is the best place to start if you really want to change a ground-up setting, but now you're re-writing the setting and can't claim the conclusion is supported by the default 3.5 rules.

Still one question as yet unanswered is what do you do with the large pool of mortal labour you've freed up?

As the labor required to survive goes down, arts and sciences (and services I'm pretty sure) go up. You could make estimates based on real life or how much labor you need to replace to begin the Renaissance and how long it would take- IIRC it wasn't actually all that much labor, but everything takes time. That's about it really- any actual results are still going to be determined by the DM, weather it's an increase in skilled classes for city generation, new skills and tech availability, or whatever. Either you modify the setting in response to player actions, or they have a bunch of bored people who've lost their jobs to the undead and have nothing to replace them- and them you modify the setting in response to the player actions a different way.

If you're the DM then you're just modifying the setting with more precise justification than usual, with spreadsheets of undead instead of "magic rocks make magic train tracks and it works."

AnimeTheCat said he has more stuff coming, which I am eager to see. However,

For example, usually if streets are dirty/trashy vermin will be attracted, build the city with "sewers" of conveyer belts underground that skeletons mindlessly and endlessly turn that lead to a giant incenerator where all garbage and waste is incenerated. Streets will be cleaner and vermin will be reduced and you don't have to pay anyone to do it. Similar examples, use said incinerator of garbage to fuel the furnaces where your blacksmiths work, now you're not only keeping your city clean, you're also using the garbage for a purpose. This will not yield high enough temperatures to produce high quality products.

I would like to expand on my disagreement with this. Much like the industrialization thread, I think this ignores too much of the infrastructure. It's not the moving of garbage into sewers that's the problem: it's digging sewers (you wouldn't even invent a giant conveyor belt, just use water) in the first place. I'm fairly certain medieval tech level doesn't have a problem with solid waste- just "sewer" waste, so you don't need giant incinerators. Smithing any amount of iron requires extreme heat that you're not going to get out of "garbage"- it doesn't burn hot enough, otherwise people wouldn't need to mine coal and prepare charcoal.

Free labor, assuming it can do the work, will make a lot of basic improvements easier, but they don't actually increase the tech level, just make them more common in the areas with the undead control to build them. This just gets you closer to pre-renaisance/renaisance standards of living, as does reducing the labor required for farming. Digging sewers with magic means you don't need to take people off the farms, but getting people off the farms would let you dig sewers and then do something else. Actually harnessing undead mechanical power for anything other than what it is, is exceedingly difficult. My baseline in the industrial thread was a train: the real, easily measured power of industry comes online when you can move tons and tons of goods in a fraction of the time. Until you can produce a train equivalent, you're just getting medieval with a slightly nicer standard of living- which incidentally, is already assumed in many places in DnD.