Why is Necromancy evil but Conjuration is not?

[ProsecutorGodot]

All of this is moot if there is no living creatures in the universe.
The idea that you can always be evil by hating living creatures is just silly.
If they mentioned that skeletons and zombies did torture each other and did evil things when there was no accessible living creatures I would consider them evil but they do not.
When there is no living creatures they can not do evil.

This doesn't really make sense (still) and also doesn't matter because they are still evil.

The energy that animates them imbues them with evil. It doesn't matter if there's nothing for them to kill.

[Unoriginal]

All of this is moot if there is no living creatures in the universe.
The idea that you can always be evil by hating living creatures is just silly.
If they mentioned that skeletons and zombies did torture each other and did evil things when there was no accessible living creatures I would consider them evil but they do not.
When there is no living creatures they can not do evil.

One, how is that relevant since there ARE living creatures of the universe?

Two, why does homicidal hatred stop being evil if there is no target for the hate at this given moment? Would Dan the Dwarfslayer, who will send a lynch mob against any dwarf who walks into his town, stop being evil if Dwarves just avoid his town after too many victims?

[noob]

This doesn't really make sense (still) and also doesn't matter because they are still evil.

The energy that animates them imbues them with evil. It doesn't matter if there's nothing for them to kill.

The alignment system is an horrible judiciary system: it judge people as being evil even if the person never did anything wrong and will never be able to do anything wrong.

Two, why does homicidal hatred stop being evil if there is no target for the hate at this given moment? Would Dan the Dwarfslayer, who will send a lynch mob against any dwarf who walks into his town, stop being evil if Dwarves just avoid his town after too many victims?

Now imagine that dan have the same intelligence as an animal and literally never saw any dwarf in its life, that dwarves does not exists and that he never killed dwarves. (also dan would have never spread messages of hatred)
would dan somehow still be evil?

[ProsecutorGodot]

The alignment system is an horrible judiciary system: it judge people as being evil even if the person never did anything wrong and will never be able to do anything wrong.

Now imagine that dan have the same intelligence as an animal and literally never saw any dwarf in its life, that dwarves does not exists and that he never killed dwarves. (also dan would have never spread messages of hatred)
would dan somehow still be evil?

I really, truly, do not know how to properly argue against this. You're asking us (in the case of undead) to assume they just materialized into a world with absolutely no life.

Given that scenario, still evil. The moment life appears it would be eradicated without with extreme prejudice.

I also don't know why we have to assume anything about Dan. We know he hates and kills dwarves, whether or not he would do so in an alternate reality where dwarves don't exist is irrelevant.

[Unoriginal]

Given that scenario, still evil. The moment life appears it would be eradicated without prejudice.

Well actually it would be eradicated with extreme prejudice.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This whole "what if there was no other life" thing is especially meaningless in this context--

Undead can't come into being unless there was (now dead) life present. Unlike elementals, they're not natural creatures. They are perversions of the remains of living things (or of souls that were evil before death). So the only way to get a universe with undead and no other life is to kill off all that other life first. And this is not a good act either; neither are its echoes (the undead).

Absurd hypothetical situations are absurd hypothetical situations, not meaningful edge cases.

[noob]

This whole "what if there was no other life" thing is especially meaningless in this context--

Undead can't come into being unless there was (now dead) life present. Unlike elementals, they're not natural creatures. They are perversions of the remains of living things (or of souls that were evil before death). So the only way to get a universe with undead and no other life is to kill off all that other life first. And this is not a good act either; neither are its echoes (the undead).

Absurd hypothetical situations are absurd hypothetical situations, not meaningful edge cases.

There is worlds with no life but that had life once (ex: after the heroes fails to stop the evil demon lord from tempering with the universe or after death itself wins or stuff like that)
Having undead afterwards is better than having nothing afterwards.
So if some undead is not destroyed by the cataclysm the world is better because corpses will starts coming to unlife spontaneously and some time later there might even be a civilization of undead.

[PhoenixPhyre]

There is worlds with no life but that had life once (ex: after the heroes fails to stop the evil demon lord from tempering with the universe or after death itself wins or stuff like that)
Having undead afterwards is better than having nothing afterwards.
So if some undead is not destroyed by the cataclysm the world is better because corpses will starts coming to unlife spontaneously and some time later there might even be a civilization of undead.

Except that those undead who can spontaneously arise (skeletons, mainly) are incapable of creating a civilization. All they have is hate for the living. If there are no living around, they don't do anything. They can't create anything of their own.

The undead who can do such things (liches, vampires, etc) can't come into existence spontaneously.

And the whole "existence is better than non-existence" is a hotly debated question in philosophy, not some obvious truth that can be merely asserted.

[Naanomi]

Alignment in 5e is really not more important than your Flaw, Trait, Bond, etc. And by all the gods and their angels, it's agonizing that there are 20 pages thread on the former and barely a mention of the latters.

I agree for PCs and roleplay, but... there is no ‘world of bonds’ where ‘my younger sister’ incarnates do battle with ‘my family dog’ elementals, with ‘my church congregation’ on the sidelines ready to take advantage. Similarly, The ancient history of the planes is not filled with references to a war between ‘flaw: raging alcoholic’ and ‘flaw: hopelessly naive’ that shook reealoty to its core and shaped the worlds as they are today... that was Law and Chaos

Alignment has cosmological implications in the default setting to discuss that the other character traits don’t, and thus it garners more discussion

[noob]

I agree for PCs and roleplay, but... there is no ‘world of bonds’ where ‘my younger sister’ incarnates do battle with ‘my family dog’ elementals, with ‘my church congregation’ on the sidelines ready to take advantage. Similarly, The ancient history of the planes is not filled with references to a war between ‘flaw: raging alcoholic’ and ‘flaw: hopelessly naive’ that shook reealoty to its core and shaped the worlds as they are today... that was Law and Chaos

Alignment has cosmological implications in the default setting to discuss that the other character traits don’t, and thus it garners more discussion

I would like the stat block of "my family dog" elementals.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I agree for PCs and roleplay, but... there is no ‘world of bonds’ where ‘my younger sister’ incarnates do battle with ‘my family dog’ elementals, with ‘my church congregation’ on the sidelines ready to take advantage. Similarly, The ancient history of the planes is not filled with references to a war between ‘flaw: raging alcoholic’ and ‘flaw: hopelessly naive’ that shook reealoty to its core and shaped the worlds as they are today... that was Law and Chaos

Alignment has cosmological implications in the default setting to discuss that the other character traits don’t, and thus it garners more discussion

IMO, all those "cosmological implications" are really just set dressing. They're background scenery.

But then again, I find the Great Wheel (especially Planescape's version) to be a colossal pile of bad mixed with worse, especially with the outer planes. It's symmetry for the sake of symmetry, trying to shove things into nice neat little boxes. It's not good worldbuilding from a game-play perspective or as a tool for making settings. Too many planes that don't differ enough and are monotone in nature (but somehow infinite?). Too much just pigeonholing things with variety only available in little bits. Too much rigidity/identity of thought and behavior (all X are like Y). But that may just be me.

[Naanomi]

I really, truly, do not know how to properly argue against this. You're asking us (in the case of undead) to assume they just materialized into a world with absolutely no life.

Indeed, and The Great World is interconnected, there is no way to keep worlds separated from each other in the long term... even the most isolated worlds (Athas, the Prison Plane... the Temporal Prime if it exists in this edition) have several recorded instances of Planar incursions to other world. It is not possible to totally isolate those undead on ‘dead world’.

And, if the undead plague somehow spread to every world (there are infinite of them, many of them infinitely large) and overcome all life (which Gods, the Inner Planes, some cosmic horrors. and Positive energy can create spontaneously)... then the Great Wheel would likely collapse anyways as the Outer Planes fail without meaningful belief to shape them; negative energy overwhelms positive; and Draeden/Far Realms stuff/Ancient Horrors move in to taken anything left out

And the whole "existence is better than non-existence" is a hotly debated question in philosophy, not some obvious truth that can be merely asserted.

And historically a totally different cosmological battle than Alignment... the battle between Draeden and Primordial Immortals that shaped ‘existence VS non-existence’ in the Great Wheel happened before the Outer-Planes formed at all

I would like the stat block of "my family dog" elementals.

Just use a dog swarm stats, up the mental stats, and give it outsider traits.

[Willie the Duck]

And, just to clarify some of the above conversation, Celestials in no way get to decide what Good is... they recognize Good, understand it (at least better than mortals, it is implied that even the most enlightened of them still don’t fully see the whole of it); but are just as bound to the definition set by the cosmos as anyone.

The definition of Good in the Great Wheel is either a self-emergent property of the very early Outer Planes, or was set by the Beings that create cosmologies in the first place (which have gone under a few names throughout the editions, but are utterly incomprehensible even to the Gods)

Yes, we have been sloppy with the language, trying to fit the D&D paradigm into the Euthyphro Dilemma framework. The points line up similarly though: 'Good' is a state that just is, with no requirement that it have a reasoned justification (traditionally split into the categories of Beneficence, Non-malfeasance, Justice, and respect for Autonomy, although those are descriptive, not proscriptive, categories). Either situation makes Good and Evil things to respect because of their consequences, rather than towards any perceived actual goodness. It also makes them arbitrary, be they the accidental end result of an ancient physical process, or the decision of a God/god/celestials/etc.

Reading this thread and many others like it, people seem really unwilling to let go the 3.X alignment system, or to recognize things changed.

IMO, all those "cosmological implications" are really just set dressing. They're background scenery.

To me, it seems like more that people seem 'unwilling' (probably just have different priorities/preferences) to note that D&D is mostly trying to set up a game world where PC 'heroes' can go into the creepy dungeon in the wicked swamp and battle an evil necromancer and his undead minions, and perhaps later in their career team up with angelscelestials from heavenvarious outer planes in the good-aligned part of the D&D cosmology, to do battle against demons and devilsdemons and devils. As PhoenixPhyre points out, the cosmology (and the moral reasoning, if you look too closely) is set dressing. Unless of course it is important to your games. In which case, one should be prepared to explain away any inconsistencies which arise.

[Bohandas]

“A zombie retains no vestiges of its former self, its mind devoid of thought and imagination. A zombie left without orders simply stands in place and rots unless something comes along that it can kill. The magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters.”

That would put it on the same ground as building a self-resetting trap

[Naanomi]

That would put it on the same ground as building a self-resetting trap

I rarely build self-resetting traps that target all living beings as soon as they are detected; and when I do I always avoid explicitly imbueing them with Evil

[redwizard007]

I've been LMAO reading all the circular arguments in this thread. The (most) common theme seems to be that an act can be evil only if it harms someone. While that is something that philosophy can argue (and has) in the real world, in D&D there are specific acts that for one reason or another are evil by definition. That's it. Period. End of ridiculous argument. If you want a morally gray game, there are several out there, but not this game. House rule something if you want, but by default REGULARLY ANIMATING DEAD IS AN EVIL ACT BECAUSE IT BRINGS MORE EVIL INTO THE WORLD.

[noob]

Just use a dog swarm stats, up the mental stats, and give it outsider traits.

What are the stats of a dog swarm?

[Bohandas]

I rarely build self-resetting traps that target all living beings as soon as they are detected;

That's pretty much how a trap works though. Something steps on the pressure plate or tripwire or whatever and it goes off. It can't discriminate between friend and foe.

[redwizard007]

What are the stats of a dog swarm?

I usually use the stats for a mob of kittens, but up the damage by 1 die.


Bohindas: you seem to see skeletons as a substitute for robotics, but robots aren't usually powered by pure evil.

[ProsecutorGodot]

That's pretty much how a trap works though. Something steps on the pressure plate or tripwire or whatever and it goes off. It can't discriminate between friend and foe.

The trap is stationary and can be ignored. The undead will spot you and chase you down until it's destroyed.

[Unoriginal]

Bohindas: you seem to see skeletons as a substitute for robotics, but robots aren't usually powered by pure evil.

More to the points, robots rarely desire to kill people out of hatred and will do so as much as their programing allows, and risk to create more robots that desire to kill people just by existing.


If a necromancer was in a room with a Cleric of Vecna, a serial killer, a random miner, a baby, and a chained Gnoll, all sleeping, gave the skeleton they just created a revolver and told the skeleton "do whatever you want", the skeleton would shoot the necromancer in the face, then try to do the same to the baby, the Gnoll, the serial killer, the random miner and the Cleric, in no particular order (unless one tries to defend, at which point the skeleton will kill them first and then move to the others).

[noob]

The trap is stationary and can be ignored. The undead will spot you and chase you down until it's destroyed.

You have not seen all the traps.
Some traps are particularly cunning and aware of their surroundings.
Which is why entering a dungeon is 2 times more likely to kill you and your civilization and everything that exists and more than anything else ever.

[Millstone85]

More to the points, robots rarely desire to kill people out of hatred and will do so as much as their programing allows, and risk to create more robots that desire to kill people just by existing.

Well, I think the "grey goo scenario", i.e. apocalypse by nanomachines, might be a great sci-fi equivalent of what necrotic energy can do.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Well, I think the "grey goo scenario", i.e. apocalypse by nanomachines, might be a great sci-fi equivalent of what necrotic energy can do.

And I'd be very comfortable calling someone who knowingly, intentionally, repeatedly created grey goo (especially grey goo programmed to hate all life and want to destroy everything, even if it can't use that material for replication) evil.

And undead go one step further--they're powered by evil, made out of the corpses of living things. And if you're the "well, this was the easy way" type of necromancer, the easiest way to get more corpses is to let your pets do exactly what they want to do. Kill living creatures. A necromancer who only uses corpses of things willingly granted or lawfully/properly slain (ie evil creatures that attacked and were killed in self defense or the defense of others) is going to find making an army real hard. And the temptation to just "clean up the streets", "get rid of that human [or non-human] waste" or "desecrate that graveyard"[1] is going to be quite large.

[1] Note that desecrating graveyards, especially using necromantic means such as undead is a good way to get uncontrolled undead. Which no good person would do, I'd wager.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've been LMAO reading all the circular arguments in this thread. The (most) common theme seems to be that an act can be evil only if it harms someone. While that is something that philosophy can argue (and has) in the real world, in D&D there are specific acts that for one reason or another are evil by definition. That's it. Period. End of ridiculous argument. If you want a morally gray game, there are several out there, but not this game. House rule something if you want, but by default REGULARLY ANIMATING DEAD IS AN EVIL ACT BECAUSE IT BRINGS MORE EVIL INTO THE WORLD.

I would agree that regularly animating undead is a sign of someone "with a bad moral compass", because of all the risks involved, risks that go beyond any of the real-world parallels some posters have tried to draw. (Trucks, explosives, and nuclear material aren't actively, independently malignant of their own accord.)

But I'm never going to approach that decision from a "D&D Cosmic Forces Good vs Evil" starting point, because I'm always going to consider that "moral system" broken as all get out, and I'm not going to argue from a position I find repugnant for the sake of "it's just a game setting". I wouldn't want to live, or have one of my characters live, or enjoy playing a character in, a world with malignant and vile injustice built right into the very fabric of existence.

[Naanomi]

More to the points, robots rarely desire to kill people out of hatred and will do so as much as their programing allows, and risk to create more robots that desire to kill people just by existing.

And robots are at least 50% less likely to be damaging to the universe by existing or in the act of being created than your given animated corpse

But I'm never going to approach that decision from a "D&D Cosmic Forces Good vs Evil" starting point, because I'm always going to consider that "moral system" broken as all get out, and I'm not going to argue from a position I find repugnant for the sake of "it's just a game setting". I wouldn't want to live, or have one of my characters live, or enjoy playing a character in, a world with malignant and vile injustice built right into the very fabric of existence.

That you don’t like the assumptions of the default setting is fine, and no one is forcing you to play using those assumptions... but it remains a default part of the setting assumptions that such an objective moral system exists, that the details are in some ways incomprehensible to mortals, and that is indeed a fair and just universe under such a system... unrealistic, arguably, but hey it is fantasy.

Just conceding that part of the argument because you don’t like the priors is... well... bad debate form if nothing else

[noob]

And robots are at least 50% less likely to be damaging to the universe by existing or in the act of being created than your given animated corpse

that is what you think until a teacher tells you how robotic arms works (seriously if you make a mistake in coding one it can break stuff and people around in horrific ways).

[Rebonack]

I'm a bit late to the conversation, but I wanted to touch on the initial question.

Why is necromancy considered evil but conjuration isn't?

The answer of course is that the school of necromancy isn't evil, but the act of necromancy (reanimating corpses by stuffing them full of hateful spirits) is something only an evil mage would do with any regularity.

So necromancy (the verb) is bad. But necromancy the verb isn't the same as necromancy the noun. Necromancy is necromancy but not all necromancy is necromancy.

This is, in a word, confusing.

Necromancy as the name for the school that touches on life-force stuff is really, really terrible. It has deep roots in D&D, but that doesn't make it any less terrible. It leads to confusion exactly like what we're seeing in this topic (but casting Chill Touch isn't evil, so why is turning that farmer's corpse into a shambling abomination evil?)

I would posit that Thaumaturgy is a much more accurate name for the school, as wonder-working traditionally covered blessing and cursing, healing and harming, curing disease and inflicting disease, raising the dead and, yes, raising up spirits. And these are all things that fall under the category of Necromancy in D&D.

So in the event of such a name change (Thaumaturgy, Thaumaturge sub-class) it would be really easy to dispel confusion. Thaumaturgy is the school. Necromancy is a subset of the school that deals in the naughty act of stuffing corpses full of evil spirits to create omnicidal minions under your tentative and temporary control. Thaumaturgy isn't evil (or good), it's magic that involves the manipulation of the forces of life and death. Necromancy, on the other hand, is not a good act and something only an evil mage would make use of regularly.

[JackPhoenix]

I'm a bit late to the conversation, but I wanted to touch on the initial question.

Why is necromancy considered evil but conjuration isn't?

The answer of course is that the school of necromancy isn't evil, but the act of necromancy (reanimating corpses by stuffing them full of hateful spirits) is something only an evil mage would do with any regularity.

So necromancy (the verb) is bad. But necromancy the verb isn't the same as necromancy the noun. Necromancy is necromancy but not all necromancy is necromancy.

This is, in a word, confusing.

Necromancy as the name for the school that touches on life-force stuff is really, really terrible. It has deep roots in D&D, but that doesn't make it any less terrible. It leads to confusion exactly like what we're seeing in this topic (but casting Chill Touch isn't evil, so why is turning that farmer's corpse into a shambling abomination evil?)

I would posit that Thaumaturgy is a much more accurate name for the school, as wonder-working traditionally covered blessing and cursing, healing and harming, curing disease and inflicting disease, raising the dead and, yes, raising up spirits. And these are all things that fall under the category of Necromancy in D&D.

So in the event of such a name change (Thaumaturgy, Thaumaturge sub-class) it would be really easy to dispel confusion. Thaumaturgy is the school. Necromancy is a subset of the school that deals in the naughty act of stuffing corpses full of evil spirits to create omnicidal minions under your tentative and temporary control. Thaumaturgy isn't evil (or good), it's magic that involves the manipulation of the forces of life and death. Necromancy, on the other hand, is not a good act and something only an evil mage would make use of regularly.

It's not confusing, it's simply not true. Necromancy isn't a verb, it's only a name of a spell school. Act of "reanimating corpses by stuffing them full of hateful spirits" is called "creating undead", not "necromancy", even though spells that do so belong to the school of necromancy. But those spells are not the only means of creating undead. Blessing, healing or curing disease do not fall under the necromancy school for at least 3 editions of D&D, or ever, in the case of blessing.

[Talakeal]

So going back to the discussion of alignments being beyond human comprehension, I can see a few takes on it.

First, good means "good as outsiders define it" rather than "good as humans define it" then I would say humans ouhght not concern themselves with the objective definitions of good and evil and instead view them as they relate to humanity.
It would be no different than humans in the real world trying to take into account the ethical systems of ants and termites; they may exist but they dont relate to humanity.

Second, if good and evil are universal but they dont actually have any detectsble consequences, they are just good and evil for their own sakes, then we get back to the gods as Abe Simpson model.

Third, we can have the book of exalted deeds system, where isolated good and evil acts cause suffering in the universe ignoring the normal system of cause and effect. For example, if I animate a ombie, force it to good deeds for twelve hours, and then disintigrate it so it cant harm anyone it may seem good, but then on the other side of the continent a family suddenly comes down with the black plague or a greedy landlord decides to evict an orphanage during a blizzard.

Imo this last is much better suited to an existential horror setting like Call of Cthulhu than a high fantasy game like Dungens and Dragons.

I've been LMAO reading all the circular arguments in this thread. The (most) common theme seems to be that an act can be evil only if it harms someone. While that is something that philosophy can argue (and has) in the real world, in D&D there are specific acts that for one reason or another are evil by definition. That's it. Period. End of ridiculous argument. If you want a morally gray game, there are several out there, but not this game. House rule something if you want, but by default REGULARLY ANIMATING DEAD IS AN EVIL ACT BECAUSE IT BRINGS MORE EVIL INTO THE WORLD.

Just because some guy wrote a rule back in the 1970s doesn't mean that it was well thought out. The argument isnt that the rule doesn't exist, it is over whether it is a good rule that is consistent with the rest of the system / setting.