There was also the Dustmen faction in Planescape. They would pay people for the right to reanimate their bodies after death and use the zombie or skeleton as menial labor.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I personally have a few issues with how Necromancy and the Undead are treated in what seems to be all of the official materials, ... how Necromancy is treated as "Evil" magic and how the undead, especially the kind with practically no Intelligence, are some kind of "Evil" by default. ...
This is good honest realism which, in your case, would require some degree of homebrew away from RAW.
RAW: Skeletons arise when animated by dark magic. They heed the summons of spellcasters who call them from their stony tombs and ancient battlefields, or rise of their own accord in places saturated with death and loss, awakened by stirrings of necromantic energy or the presence of corrupting evil.
Animated Dead.Whatever sinister force awakens a skeleton infuses its bones with a dark vitality, adhering joint to joint and reassembling dismantled limbs. This energy motivates a skeleton to move and think in a rudimentary fashion, though only as a pale imitation of the way it behaved in life. An animated skeleton retains no connection to its past, although resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it. ...
Undead zombies ... are ... Dark Servants. Sinister necromantic magic infuses the remains of the dead, causing them to rise as zombies that do their creator’s bidding without fear or hesitation. They move with a jerky, uneven gait, clad in the moldering apparel they wore when put to rest, and carrying the stench of decay.
It's not exactly sitting on the fence. Personally, I wouldn't mind asking a DM if it could suit a setting to set a corpse of some villain onto a path of community service, but it seems such options would need homebrew.
For that matter, the issue of 'consent' with regard to dead bodies, at least in the real world, has very little to do with morality and a lot more to do with societal customs and taboos.
Social customs and taboos are part of a group of people's morality, pretty much by definition. "Taboo" equals "bad".
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For that matter, the issue of 'consent' with regard to dead bodies, at least in the real world, has very little to do with morality and a lot more to do with societal customs and taboos.
Social customs and taboos are part of a group of people's morality, pretty much by definition. "Taboo" equals "bad".
Only by the definition of morality as "something accepted by a society", which would be a circular discussion
To put it in D&D terms, we're talking about whether necromancy is somehow inherently evil, not inherently non-lawful
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Someone is asleep? Unconscious? Dead? They can't consent.
Correct, correct, and meaningless
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Someone is asleep? Unconscious? Dead? They can't consent.
Correct, correct, and meaningless
To continue the paragraph you cut: "...This is a fact. This is why we have organ donor cards. This is why we have wills, because once we're dead, we do not give consent to anything."
You're pretty much dealing with the wishes of a person in regard to what they and their family might want to do with the body. What would you want to happen with the body of your mum/dad? What would you want to happen with their souls?
We read that "Independent skeletons temporarily or permanently free of a master’s control sometimes pantomime actions from their past lives, their bones echoing the rote behaviors of their former living selves. The skeleton of a miner might lift a pick and start chipping away at stone walls. The skeleton of a guard might strike up a post at a random doorway. The skeleton of a dragon might lie down on a pile of treasure, while the skeleton of a horse crops grass it can’t eat. Left alone in a ballroom, the skeletons of nobles might continue an eternally unfinished dance."
A view parallel to this holds that the animus part of the d&d soul is still bound to the body for the approx one hundred years until the bones might naturally crumble to dust, a process that may potentially be delayed if the corpse is animated.
I don't think that many people would want their body or the bodies of their mum or dad to be turned into an entity whose default setting was to hate and want to destroy all life. It's an issue of respect.
For that matter, the issue of 'consent' with regard to dead bodies, at least in the real world, has very little to do with morality and a lot more to do with societal customs and taboos.
Social customs and taboos are part of a group of people's morality, pretty much by definition. "Taboo" equals "bad".
Only by the definition of morality as "something accepted by a society", which would be a circular discussion
To put it in D&D terms, we're talking about whether necromancy is somehow inherently evil, not inherently non-lawful
No, we're [not] talking about whether necromancy is somehow inherently evil.
We're talking about turning peoples' bodies into creatures such that, "When skeletons encounter living creatures, the necromantic energy that drives them compels them to kill unless they are commanded by their masters to refrain from doing so. They attack without mercy and fight until destroyed..."
So If anyone's interested fudgemuppet did a video on whether or not necromancy is inherently evil. And while it was based in the metaphysics of the elder scrolls universe I feel like it's relevant to this discussion. One of the points brought up in the discussion was whether or not a society still viewed a corpse as the person it once was. After all if it is then it would be considered wrong since it's still their body, However if they believe otherwise then there would be nothing inherently wrong about the act of raising them.
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If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
So If anyone's interested fudgemuppet did a video on whether or not necromancy is inherently evil. And while it was based in the metaphysics of the elder scrolls universe I feel like it's relevant to this discussion. One of the points brought up in the discussion was whether or not a society still viewed a corpse as the person it once was. After all if it is then it would be considered wrong since it's still their body, However if they believe otherwise then there would be nothing inherently wrong about the act of raising them.
...which is a situation far removed from the RAW one of 5e where zombies are "Dark Servants."" into which "Sinister necromantic magic infuses the remains of the dead,.." so that "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."
The video has lots of interesting content.
Never the less they still brought up the issues of 39:50 burial rites and that families want closure. They went further to discuss issues of torture of a soul and situational issues of denying afterlife which go beyond most 5e issues 43:40. They also discussed 35:00 the difference between flagrant necromancers and those that are careful about where they dip their toes (with all these issues could easily be transposed into 5e). And brought in the idea 25:40 of criminals being animated to repay costs of crimes. There was an earlier view that necromancy hurts the spirit but that it can be a necessary evil to enable local potentials to combat necromancy on the view that "nobody wants Necromancy to be a problem for them." I found the discussion on comparisons to other forms of magic interesting Enchantment, typically on failed saving throw, takes away agency. Conjuration can summon creatures that are typically bound to the casters will. Illusion can deceive. (The local woodcutter might hate the kid that could cast the create bonfire cantrip). Necromancy is not alone in being able to raise issues.
A skeleton is not sentient and is no more a "slave" than an animated (not awakened) mannequin or toy, no matter how much it might vaguely look like a person
For that matter, the issue of 'consent' with regard to dead bodies, at least in the real world, has very little to do with morality and a lot more to do with societal customs and taboos. Dead people can't give or withhold consent. If you want to develop some fantasy philosophy where the possibility of resurrection extends concepts like consent past death, though, then knock yourself out. Have your adventurers carry around DNR (Do Not Revivify) cards or something
Consent is automatically withheld if not given. That has nothing to do with taboo or custom, it's just a fact. If you think otherwise, then you think there's a grey area, and there isn't. It's cut and dried, black and white, fact.
Someone is asleep? Unconscious? Dead? They can't consent. This is a fact. This is why we have organ donor cards. This is why we have wills, because once we're dead, we do not give consent to anything.
In a fantasy society where necromancy was common knowledge, I can imagine a fascistic society where people proudly carried "I consent to be raised as a skeleton, for the glory of Dark Lord Necrothi." The spell Resurrection specifically includes a caveat that the resurrected creature has to be willing, presumably because the game devs understand consent. As a default, we'd all assume that nobody consents to their body being used for necromantic purposes beyond death unless they're some underling saying "please master, raise me in your dark image..."
Now, I early on acknowledged that broadly human cultures more often than not have taboos against the desecration of the dead (inclusive of both actual remains as well as memorial markers) and said taboos certainly have some influence on the default moral prescriptions and assumptions within the necromancy suite. However, I think you're getting a little too assertive in conflating the overlapping areas of bioethics and theories of agency/consent and applying it to 1.) imaginary fantasy cultures and 2.) universal declarations of what "the dead are" in a way that's imposing unnecessary prescriptive limitations on a game worlds social and metaphysical constructs.
Presently, do the indigent dead consent to be buried in a potters' field? Some may see it as a grave injustice, so to speak; but in present society this utilitarian end is what lays for those who do not have kin able to engage in the extractive capitalism of the funerary industry. Does a "suspicious corpse" consent to a coroners inquest, or is it considered the utilitarian social good to find out "why" to protect the community from bad actors or public health concerns? We could do a deep dive into any number of moral philosophy syllabi or legal treatise but death in many ways is unsettling to theories of autonomy, Kurzweill posthuman set aside, it's kinda considered the limits of autonomy.
There's a lot of metaphysical assumptions within the linguistics of referring to and discussing dead. Some still attach life signifiers, speaking of a corpse as mom or dad or whatever name you called or relationship defined the person in life. However, there's also a lot of treating the corpse as other from the living being one knew. Dad's body, etc. These aren't stylistic differences or matters of simple idiom whim, but speak to a larger haziness around death that destabilizes solid concepts. Death, maybe moreso than life, is a transitive state where things are dissolved biologically, psychological, consciously and legally.
More to your claim, resurrection isn't so much about the physical remains, sure they're required for the initial version, but the more advanced true resurrection doesn't even need remains if they aren't available. The willingness is simply the desire to return to the body (abandoned property legal theories may apply so now we're in soul probate) or world its gone beyond. I wouldn't use that clause as some blanket statement of implicit morality in D&D metaphysics.
It is not hard to fictionally realize a culture where it is granted that the soul or spirit that brought life to a body abandons their claim to that body in death, and some societies may indeed practice utility necromancy, using those remains for societal works, or maybe just adornment like those horrible Paris catacombs (but we don't really call those horrible....).
A corpse having consent is a legal construct really only granted to those with the privilege to have resources to have their post death "will" codified and enacted. And it relies on others agency to do so. We also oddly call those agents executors (basically seeing to the death).
At the end of the day, Weekend at Bernies* is not a cause for moral outrage, and reanimator style necromancy in fact can be fun for a game world (maybe even fun and profit, or fun and state security), and such game play may actually grant death and the dead more consideration than blanket application of present theories of agency that overstate socio-cultural norms. Compared to other transgressions for which D&D is sometimes used as a vehicle, toying with the "to be and not to be" and Yorrick contemplations the game's standard necromancy repertoire gets a green light in my book.
Digressing, but you brought it up, is command on the same evil spectrum you're assigning dominate person? I think the game's much more ideologically or morally ambivalent than you're willing to accommodate. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's still a play style than a universal claim to the game.
Reanimated dead, at least skeletons, if abandoned or not maintained, will lapse into patterns from the prior life that inhabited those remains. Is this psychic or necrotic echo or residue the soul or some epiphenomenal byproduct of having once hosted a soul ... D&D as written doesn't go that deep or at least it gives the DM a lot of of leeway to deviate from any notions of how mind/body/soul function ... those presumptions can then be used by individual tables to determine the morality of necromancy.
It is not hard to fictionally realize a culture where it is granted that the soul or spirit that brought life to a body abandons their claim to that body in death, and some societies may indeed practice utility necromancy, using those remains for societal works, or maybe just adornment like those horrible Paris catacombs (but we don't really call those horrible....).
RAW D&D is at the very least close to that. RAW, it presents an oft cosy view of spirits heading off into the arms (or jaws) of greater powers. RAW, this doesn't change the rest of it where the default for skeletons and zombies falls way short of societal and goes headlong into seeking the eradication of life.
A corpse having consent is a legal construct really only granted to those with the privilege to have resources to have their post death "will" codified and enacted. And it relies on others agency to do so. We also oddly call those agents executors (basically seeing to the death).
A corpse can be viewed as having nothing. It's the person or creature in life that matters. There are two options. Either the person and their wishes can either be respected or not. Simple as that.
Even if it was put into law, it's still the same. Sure there could be enforcement of a law to protect a person's wishes but no more than there could be an enforcement of a law that violated them. Sure it may rely on others agency, but that's only if there is a lack of respect for or heed to the wishes of the creatures whose bodies might be animated. Everyone, in this sense, can be an executor.
At the end of the day, Weekend at Bernies* is not a cause for moral outrage, and reanimator style necromancy in fact can be fun for a game world (maybe even fun and profit, or fun and state security), and such game play may actually grant death and the dead more consideration than blanket application of present theories of agency that overstate socio-cultural norms. Compared to other transgressions for which D&D is sometimes used as a vehicle, toying with the "to be and not to be" and Yorrick contemplations the game's standard necromancy repertoire gets a green light in my book. ...
D&D as written doesn't go that deep or at least give the DM a lot of of leeway to deviate from any notions of how mind/body/soul function ... those presumptions can then be used by individual tables to determine the morality of necromancy.
That's fine, but it's not RAW 5e. Any table can do what they want with homebrew so go for it. But it may take some thorough homebrewing. I don't think many people would naturally consent to their bodies being turned into various of the current forms of d&d's monstrous undead.
It is not hard to fictionally realize a culture where it is granted that the soul or spirit that brought life to a body abandons their claim to that body in death, and some societies may indeed practice utility necromancy, using those remains for societal works, or maybe just adornment like those horrible Paris catacombs (but we don't really call those horrible....).
RAW D&D is at the very least close to that. RAW, it presents an oft cosy view of spirits heading off into the arms (or jaws) of greater powers. RAW, this doesn't change the rest of it where the default for skeletons and zombies falls way short of societal and goes headlong into seeking the eradication of life.
A corpse having consent is a legal construct really only granted to those with the privilege to have resources to have their post death "will" codified and enacted. And it relies on others agency to do so. We also oddly call those agents executors (basically seeing to the death).
A corpse can be viewed as having nothing. It's the person or creature in life that matters. There are two options. Either the person and their wishes can either be respected or not. Simple as that.
Even if it was put into law, it's still the same. Sure there could be enforcement of a law to protect a person's wishes but no more than there could be an enforcement of a law that violated them. Sure it may rely on others agency, but that's only if there is a lack of respect for or heed to the wishes of the creatures whose bodies might be animated. Everyone, in this sense, can be an executor.
At the end of the day, Weekend at Bernies* is not a cause for moral outrage, and reanimator style necromancy in fact can be fun for a game world (maybe even fun and profit, or fun and state security), and such game play may actually grant death and the dead more consideration than blanket application of present theories of agency that overstate socio-cultural norms. Compared to other transgressions for which D&D is sometimes used as a vehicle, toying with the "to be and not to be" and Yorrick contemplations the game's standard necromancy repertoire gets a green light in my book. ...
D&D as written doesn't go that deep or at least give the DM a lot of of leeway to deviate from any notions of how mind/body/soul function ... those presumptions can then be used by individual tables to determine the morality of necromancy.
That's fine, but it's not RAW 5e. Any table can do what they want with homebrew so go for it. But it may take some thorough homebrewing. I don't think many people would naturally consent to their bodies being turned into various of the current forms of d&d's monstrous undead.
I think, no, no doubt about it, you're mistaking lore for RAW. It's ok. The stuff you're citing are about the working in a general D&D universe, which I've already discussed. Your strange adherence, after coming up with your own hypotheticals to resist the moral norm assumptions yourself, to the monster write ups as the only conceivable way to play monsters in D&D is ... oddly absolutist for a game that offers you the framework of a default game world but also encourage the DM to let their imagination go beyond it. This, among other reasons, is likely why the game is going away from formats in monster descriptions that are mistakenly interpreted as "hardwired" alignments to "typical" suggestions. I'm actually curious if any classic "mindless" undead get substantial rewrites to where they land morally "typically LE" perhaps, with maybe a sentence or two giving exceptions or the broad disclaimers "most cultures."
I'll leave it at that since I don't think you grok codification in a will and testament vs a society's laws.
I mean some would let Orcus party at Bernie's if he shows up with a sixer or a six-six-sixer. Actually, didn't he show up in Weekend at Bernie's II?
It is not hard to fictionally realize a culture where it is granted that the soul or spirit that brought life to a body abandons their claim to that body in death, and some societies may indeed practice utility necromancy, using those remains for societal works, or maybe just adornment like those horrible Paris catacombs (but we don't really call those horrible....).
RAW D&D is at the very least close to that. RAW, it presents an oft cosy view of spirits heading off into the arms (or jaws) of greater powers. RAW, this doesn't change the rest of it where the default for skeletons and zombies falls way short of societal and goes headlong into seeking the eradication of life.
A corpse having consent is a legal construct really only granted to those with the privilege to have resources to have their post death "will" codified and enacted. And it relies on others agency to do so. We also oddly call those agents executors (basically seeing to the death).
A corpse can be viewed as having nothing. It's the person or creature in life that matters. There are two options. Either the person and their wishes can either be respected or not. Simple as that.
Even if it was put into law, it's still the same. Sure there could be enforcement of a law to protect a person's wishes but no more than there could be an enforcement of a law that violated them. Sure it may rely on others agency, but that's only if there is a lack of respect for or heed to the wishes of the creatures whose bodies might be animated. Everyone, in this sense, can be an executor.
At the end of the day, Weekend at Bernies* is not a cause for moral outrage, and reanimator style necromancy in fact can be fun for a game world (maybe even fun and profit, or fun and state security), and such game play may actually grant death and the dead more consideration than blanket application of present theories of agency that overstate socio-cultural norms. Compared to other transgressions for which D&D is sometimes used as a vehicle, toying with the "to be and not to be" and Yorrick contemplations the game's standard necromancy repertoire gets a green light in my book. ...
D&D as written doesn't go that deep or at least give the DM a lot of of leeway to deviate from any notions of how mind/body/soul function ... those presumptions can then be used by individual tables to determine the morality of necromancy.
That's fine, but it's not RAW 5e. Any table can do what they want with homebrew so go for it. But it may take some thorough homebrewing. I don't think many people would naturally consent to their bodies being turned into various of the current forms of d&d's monstrous undead.
I think, no, no doubt about it, you're mistaking lore for RAW. It's ok. The stuff you're citing are about the working in a general D&D universe, which I've already discussed. Your strange adherence, after coming up with your own hypotheticals to resist the moral norm assumptions yourself, to the monster write ups as the only conceivable way to play monsters in D&D is ... oddly absolutist for a game that offers you the framework of a default game world but also encourage the DM to let their imagination go beyond it. This, among other reasons, is likely why the game is going away from formats in monster descriptions that are mistakenly interpreted as "hardwired" alignments to "typical" suggestions. I'm actually curious if any classic "mindless" undead get substantial rewrites to where they land morally "typically LE" perhaps, with maybe a sentence or two giving exceptions or the broad disclaimers "most cultures."
I'll leave it at that since I don't think you grok codification in a will and testament vs a society's laws.
I mean some would let Orcus party at Bernie's if he shows up with a sixer or a six-six-sixer. Actually, didn't he show up in Weekend at Bernie's II?
Yep, a fair bit of the stuff I'm citing is about the world systems created for 5e.
This also associates with the RAW description of Animate Dead that "Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life".
My comments on consent relate to the fact that, in any universe, there are varying possibilities that potential targets may not want this kind of thing going on with their bodies and might prefer that they "rest in peace". In many world systems a logical response to an animation of the bodies of loved ones and respected citizens could be more than a bit negative - but, hey, you develop your own worlds. Anything might be possible. Perhaps the rotting flesh of those zombies might not even need to have a stomach-wrenching smell.
My own hypotheticals, as morally ambiguous as they may similarly be, worked centrally on ideas of potential punishment for offenders in parallel to lotr's army of the dead. The video cited mentioned similar themes.
As mentioned, if you want to "let Orcus party at Bernie's if he shows up with a sixer or a six-six-sixer" go for it. I keep saying the same.
Karrnath is the obvious example of a "necromancy is societally acceptable" Eberron locale, but don't forget about Aerenal who are literally ruled by the benign Undying Court.
I've always thought it was a bit funny that the Death domain and the Oathbreaker subclasses got shuffled to the DMG as "evil, not for players" classes, yet Necromancy Wizards stayed in the PHB. That said, all the Undead in the Monster Manual are Evil, and failing to reconstitute your control over them basically sets them loose on the world to feast upon the flesh of the living, so it's not that farfetched to see the standard Necromancer shtick as morally grey at best.
Evil being inherent to Undead has a similar mentality to Demons and Devils - they are creatures who are inherently evil to justify characters slaying them without remorse. The collateral damage is that Necromancers and Fiendish Warlocks are always seen as at least evil-adjacent.
Being a necromancer doesn't require you to create undead. Granted, you'll be missing out on class features if you choose to go that route, but it's still possible. Plus, you could stick with just animating the bodies of fallen enemies: don't think anyone's going to make much of a fuss if you turn some dead gnolls into zombies to send them against the live gnolls that are attacking a town.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
A skeleton is not sentient and is no more a "slave" than an animated (not awakened) mannequin or toy, no matter how much it might vaguely look like a person
For that matter, the issue of 'consent' with regard to dead bodies, at least in the real world, has very little to do with morality and a lot more to do with societal customs and taboos. Dead people can't give or withhold consent. If you want to develop some fantasy philosophy where the possibility of resurrection extends concepts like consent past death, though, then knock yourself out. Have your adventurers carry around DNR (Do Not Revivify) cards or something
Consent is automatically withheld if not given. That has nothing to do with taboo or custom, it's just a fact. If you think otherwise, then you think there's a grey area, and there isn't. It's cut and dried, black and white, fact.
Someone is asleep? Unconscious? Dead? They can't consent. This is a fact. This is why we have organ donor cards. This is why we have wills, because once we're dead, we do not give consent to anything.
In a fantasy society where necromancy was common knowledge, I can imagine a fascistic society where people proudly carried "I consent to be raised as a skeleton, for the glory of Dark Lord Necrothi." The spell Resurrection specifically includes a caveat that the resurrected creature has to be willing, presumably because the game devs understand consent. As a default, we'd all assume that nobody consents to their body being used for necromantic purposes beyond death unless they're some underling saying "please master, raise me in your dark image..."
By your definition, everything CAN give (or withhold) consent which is a bit silly. If the world of D&D worked this way, every forest and farm would have at least one Druid or Ranger around to ask the trees if it would be okay to cut them down (I'm willing to be no).
I often like upsetting old tropes, especially old tropes that always seem to look unfavorably on a particular group. Any time I see a story where Orcs are big and stupid because in many cases they're portrayed as big and stupid (and evil), it makes me a little crazy. I love the fact that Orcs are a playable race in D&D because that means players and DMs can easily create characters that break the trope.
To that end, I've actually run a character that I laughingly call The Happy Necromancer. I have an elaborate backstory that explains why he doesn't consider necromancy to be evil and how he travels about helping others and in general doing historical research with his Necromantic powers. He doesn't FORCE the spirits of the past to do his bidding...he asks them if they're willing to just sit and speak with him for a while. He goes to the sites of dead cities that nobody has ever heard of and tries to find out about the people who lived and worked there. He writes down their stories and publishes them for others to read so the past is not forgotten. He carries two reanimated skeletal dogs around with him to act as guards to protect him when he sleeps. In most cases (because he was created in another system and he had ZERO combat abilities), the GM would often let me create one big undead guardian that I would clad in armor (so 'normal' people wouldn't get scared). He even studied Alchemy so he could mix up concoctions to help him (like covering the smell of the dead).
IMHO it's okay for people, in general, to be frightened or suspicious of Necromancers because the field carries some serious sociological issues with it. I would think that many people would have the same issues if they saw a Minotaur (a creature that was relegated to 'enemy' status until they became playable) or a Hobgoblin. As long as the player understands that there may be places in the world where certain races or professions might be frowned upon and accepts that, it's all good.
All of this comes down to the DM and the player communicating. As long as the DM and the player are good with it, the RAW is secondary IMHO.
Yep, a fair bit of the stuff I'm citing is about the world systems created for 5e.
This also associates with the RAW description of Animate Dead that "Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life".
Yeah, so maybe to clarify your thinking and ability to argue through these sorts of conversations, RAW is more mechanics. Flavor text within a spell description like your citation, which again resonates with the default text of most undead in the game, are flavor and any reasonable DM with any experience developing a game world can see flavor like that as default, and a potential point of departure. Much like, as mentioned recently in this thread, default alignments for certain races. No one who sits at a table and witnesses game play where animate dead is used by "good" characters and skeletons or zombies are generated in a "good" society for some sort of utilitarian means could in the eyes of no one argue that table is playing against RAW.
My comments on consent relate to the fact that, in any universe, there are varying possibilities that potential targets may not want this kind of thing going on with their bodies and might prefer that they "rest in peace". In many world systems a logical response to an animation of the bodies of loved ones and respected citizens could be more than a bit negative - but, hey, you develop your own worlds. Anything might be possible. Perhaps the rotting flesh of those zombies might not even need to have a stomach-wrenching smell.
Yeah, I don't know why you're trying to antagonize my thinking here. I was fairly clear much earlier in this thread at articulating the rationale for the default social norms shaping the game's flavoring of the undead. I don't know if your comment about corpse stench was some sort of effort at a clever dig, but again a DM worth their salt would have the imaginative depth to acknowledge either cultures where certain sensory input from the dead actually don't produce revulsion (it's unclear in congnitively and neurologically where revulsion response are truly instincitive or culturally imprinted/constructed, but that may not make it through your essentialist filters), or could have culture literally enriched by perfumes if not an appreciation for the scents that are part of their life (mild fun example some folks think manure just smells like sh!t ... others pick up a sweetness to it their sensory processing making association with an agricultural vitalism). So no need to try a "you do you" diss, on the contrary I just appreciate that there are a lot of ways to do things, especially in a fantastic context.
My own hypotheticals, as morally ambiguous as they may similarly be, worked centrally on ideas of potential punishment for offenders in parallel to lotr's army of the dead. The video cited mentioned similar themes.
Yeah, that part of LOTR is pretty chilling in the books. Legal theories of forfeiture are one way to illustrate it. Although there are very different distinctions between law as written (you are talking about what IRL are called civil and criminal theories of forfeiture) and a civilizations spirit of justice (where we see how that prior parenthetical relates to social elements understanding of what is just - justice and law often having more of a glib than true relationship, which is why it's fun to tease out these areas in game spaces). The cursing wasn't litigated, it was merely pronounced by an authority with broader agency over an entire people. The moment in LOTR can actually be read as one of Aragorn's more morally ambiguous moments, embracing levels of authority of his neglected "station" that he had hiterto found unsettling. It's one example of what we're talking about, though given it's characterization in the books, it does lean toward conventional sensibilities to make those passages chilling, and also show that Aragorn is now working at an elevated capacity in comparison to his mere ranger role largely seen up to that moment.
It's funny. In the corner of my homebrew world where the current campaign is taking place, necromancy is illegal -- not for moral reasons but historical ones, as the (official) history of the kingdom says it was founded hundreds of years ago by refugees fleeing from an undead army in the Auld Country -- but this thread has given me some interesting ideas for how to potentially handle the next phase of the campaign if the party wants to go in a more 'political intrigue' sort of direction.
What if there was a person or movement that viewed the laws against necromancy as akin to drug or alcohol prohibition? i.e. It's just another school of magic, no different than any other, and it could have beneficial uses if legalized.
Basically no one in the kingdom has ever seen a zombie or anything like that, so there's no real societal stigma against it beyond "well, it's always been illegal, so it must be bad... right?"
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's funny. In the corner of my homebrew world where the current campaign is taking place, necromancy is illegal -- not for moral reasons but historical ones, as the (official) history of the kingdom says it was founded hundreds of years ago by refugees fleeing from an undead army in the Auld Country -- but this thread has given me some interesting ideas for how to potentially handle the next phase of the campaign if the party wants to go in a more 'political intrigue' sort of direction.
What if there was a person or movement that viewed the laws against necromancy as akin to drug or alcohol prohibition? i.e. It's just another school of magic, no different than any other, and it could have beneficial uses if legalized.
Basically no one in the kingdom has ever seen a zombie or anything like that, so there's no real societal stigma against it beyond "well, it's always been illegal, so it must be bad... right?"
But obviously creating zombies is a gateway drug to Lichdom! ;)
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Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
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There was also the Dustmen faction in Planescape. They would pay people for the right to reanimate their bodies after death and use the zombie or skeleton as menial labor.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
This is good honest realism which, in your case, would require some degree of homebrew away from RAW.
RAW:
Skeletons arise when animated by dark magic. They heed the summons of spellcasters who call them from their stony tombs and ancient battlefields, or rise of their own accord in places saturated with death and loss, awakened by stirrings of necromantic energy or the presence of corrupting evil.
Animated Dead. Whatever sinister force awakens a skeleton infuses its bones with a dark vitality, adhering joint to joint and reassembling dismantled limbs. This energy motivates a skeleton to move and think in a rudimentary fashion, though only as a pale imitation of the way it behaved in life. An animated skeleton retains no connection to its past, although resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it. ...
Undead zombies ... are ...
Dark Servants. Sinister necromantic magic infuses the remains of the dead, causing them to rise as zombies that do their creator’s bidding without fear or hesitation. They move with a jerky, uneven gait, clad in the moldering apparel they wore when put to rest, and carrying the stench of decay.
It's not exactly sitting on the fence. Personally, I wouldn't mind asking a DM if it could suit a setting to set a corpse of some villain onto a path of community service, but it seems such options would need homebrew.
Social customs and taboos are part of a group of people's morality, pretty much by definition. "Taboo" equals "bad".
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Only by the definition of morality as "something accepted by a society", which would be a circular discussion
To put it in D&D terms, we're talking about whether necromancy is somehow inherently evil, not inherently non-lawful
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Correct, correct, and meaningless
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
To continue the paragraph you cut: "...This is a fact. This is why we have organ donor cards. This is why we have wills, because once we're dead, we do not give consent to anything."
You're pretty much dealing with the wishes of a person in regard to what they and their family might want to do with the body. What would you want to happen with the body of your mum/dad? What would you want to happen with their souls?
We read that "Independent skeletons temporarily or permanently free of a master’s control sometimes pantomime actions from their past lives, their bones echoing the rote behaviors of their former living selves. The skeleton of a miner might lift a pick and start chipping away at stone walls. The skeleton of a guard might strike up a post at a random doorway. The skeleton of a dragon might lie down on a pile of treasure, while the skeleton of a horse crops grass it can’t eat. Left alone in a ballroom, the skeletons of nobles might continue an eternally unfinished dance."
A view parallel to this holds that the animus part of the d&d soul is still bound to the body for the approx one hundred years until the bones might naturally crumble to dust, a process that may potentially be delayed if the corpse is animated.
I don't think that many people would want their body or the bodies of their mum or dad to be turned into an entity whose default setting was to hate and want to destroy all life. It's an issue of respect.
No, we're [not] talking about whether necromancy is somehow inherently evil.
We're talking about turning peoples' bodies into creatures such that, "When skeletons encounter living creatures, the necromantic energy that drives them compels them to kill unless they are commanded by their masters to refrain from doing so. They attack without mercy and fight until destroyed..."
So If anyone's interested fudgemuppet did a video on whether or not necromancy is inherently evil. And while it was based in the metaphysics of the elder scrolls universe I feel like it's relevant to this discussion. One of the points brought up in the discussion was whether or not a society still viewed a corpse as the person it once was. After all if it is then it would be considered wrong since it's still their body, However if they believe otherwise then there would be nothing inherently wrong about the act of raising them.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
...which is a situation far removed from the RAW one of 5e where zombies are "Dark Servants."" into which "Sinister necromantic magic infuses the remains of the dead,.." so that "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."
The video has lots of interesting content.
Never the less they still brought up the issues of 39:50 burial rites and that families want closure.
They went further to discuss issues of torture of a soul and situational issues of denying afterlife which go beyond most 5e issues 43:40.
They also discussed 35:00 the difference between flagrant necromancers and those that are careful about where they dip their toes (with all these issues could easily be transposed into 5e).
And brought in the idea 25:40 of criminals being animated to repay costs of crimes.
There was an earlier view that necromancy hurts the spirit but that it can be a necessary evil to enable local potentials to combat necromancy on the view that "nobody wants Necromancy to be a problem for them."
I found the discussion on comparisons to other forms of magic interesting
Enchantment, typically on failed saving throw, takes away agency.
Conjuration can summon creatures that are typically bound to the casters will.
Illusion can deceive.
(The local woodcutter might hate the kid that could cast the create bonfire cantrip).
Necromancy is not alone in being able to raise issues.
Now, I early on acknowledged that broadly human cultures more often than not have taboos against the desecration of the dead (inclusive of both actual remains as well as memorial markers) and said taboos certainly have some influence on the default moral prescriptions and assumptions within the necromancy suite. However, I think you're getting a little too assertive in conflating the overlapping areas of bioethics and theories of agency/consent and applying it to 1.) imaginary fantasy cultures and 2.) universal declarations of what "the dead are" in a way that's imposing unnecessary prescriptive limitations on a game worlds social and metaphysical constructs.
Presently, do the indigent dead consent to be buried in a potters' field? Some may see it as a grave injustice, so to speak; but in present society this utilitarian end is what lays for those who do not have kin able to engage in the extractive capitalism of the funerary industry. Does a "suspicious corpse" consent to a coroners inquest, or is it considered the utilitarian social good to find out "why" to protect the community from bad actors or public health concerns? We could do a deep dive into any number of moral philosophy syllabi or legal treatise but death in many ways is unsettling to theories of autonomy, Kurzweill posthuman set aside, it's kinda considered the limits of autonomy.
There's a lot of metaphysical assumptions within the linguistics of referring to and discussing dead. Some still attach life signifiers, speaking of a corpse as mom or dad or whatever name you called or relationship defined the person in life. However, there's also a lot of treating the corpse as other from the living being one knew. Dad's body, etc. These aren't stylistic differences or matters of simple idiom whim, but speak to a larger haziness around death that destabilizes solid concepts. Death, maybe moreso than life, is a transitive state where things are dissolved biologically, psychological, consciously and legally.
More to your claim, resurrection isn't so much about the physical remains, sure they're required for the initial version, but the more advanced true resurrection doesn't even need remains if they aren't available. The willingness is simply the desire to return to the body (abandoned property legal theories may apply so now we're in soul probate) or world its gone beyond. I wouldn't use that clause as some blanket statement of implicit morality in D&D metaphysics.
It is not hard to fictionally realize a culture where it is granted that the soul or spirit that brought life to a body abandons their claim to that body in death, and some societies may indeed practice utility necromancy, using those remains for societal works, or maybe just adornment like those horrible Paris catacombs (but we don't really call those horrible....).
A corpse having consent is a legal construct really only granted to those with the privilege to have resources to have their post death "will" codified and enacted. And it relies on others agency to do so. We also oddly call those agents executors (basically seeing to the death).
At the end of the day, Weekend at Bernies* is not a cause for moral outrage, and reanimator style necromancy in fact can be fun for a game world (maybe even fun and profit, or fun and state security), and such game play may actually grant death and the dead more consideration than blanket application of present theories of agency that overstate socio-cultural norms. Compared to other transgressions for which D&D is sometimes used as a vehicle, toying with the "to be and not to be" and Yorrick contemplations the game's standard necromancy repertoire gets a green light in my book.
Digressing, but you brought it up, is command on the same evil spectrum you're assigning dominate person? I think the game's much more ideologically or morally ambivalent than you're willing to accommodate. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's still a play style than a universal claim to the game.
Reanimated dead, at least skeletons, if abandoned or not maintained, will lapse into patterns from the prior life that inhabited those remains. Is this psychic or necrotic echo or residue the soul or some epiphenomenal byproduct of having once hosted a soul ... D&D as written doesn't go that deep or at least it gives the DM a lot of of leeway to deviate from any notions of how mind/body/soul function ... those presumptions can then be used by individual tables to determine the morality of necromancy.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
RAW D&D is at the very least close to that. RAW, it presents an oft cosy view of spirits heading off into the arms (or jaws) of greater powers.
RAW, this doesn't change the rest of it where the default for skeletons and zombies falls way short of societal and goes headlong into seeking the eradication of life.
A corpse can be viewed as having nothing. It's the person or creature in life that matters. There are two options. Either the person and their wishes can either be respected or not. Simple as that.
Even if it was put into law, it's still the same. Sure there could be enforcement of a law to protect a person's wishes but no more than there could be an enforcement of a law that violated them. Sure it may rely on others agency, but that's only if there is a lack of respect for or heed to the wishes of the creatures whose bodies might be animated. Everyone, in this sense, can be an executor.
That's fine, but it's not RAW 5e. Any table can do what they want with homebrew so go for it. But it may take some thorough homebrewing. I don't think many people would naturally consent to their bodies being turned into various of the current forms of d&d's monstrous undead.
I think, no, no doubt about it, you're mistaking lore for RAW. It's ok. The stuff you're citing are about the working in a general D&D universe, which I've already discussed. Your strange adherence, after coming up with your own hypotheticals to resist the moral norm assumptions yourself, to the monster write ups as the only conceivable way to play monsters in D&D is ... oddly absolutist for a game that offers you the framework of a default game world but also encourage the DM to let their imagination go beyond it. This, among other reasons, is likely why the game is going away from formats in monster descriptions that are mistakenly interpreted as "hardwired" alignments to "typical" suggestions. I'm actually curious if any classic "mindless" undead get substantial rewrites to where they land morally "typically LE" perhaps, with maybe a sentence or two giving exceptions or the broad disclaimers "most cultures."
I'll leave it at that since I don't think you grok codification in a will and testament vs a society's laws.
I mean some would let Orcus party at Bernie's if he shows up with a sixer or a six-six-sixer. Actually, didn't he show up in Weekend at Bernie's II?
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Yep, a fair bit of the stuff I'm citing is about the world systems created for 5e.
This also associates with the RAW description of Animate Dead that "Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life".
My comments on consent relate to the fact that, in any universe, there are varying possibilities that potential targets may not want this kind of thing going on with their bodies and might prefer that they "rest in peace". In many world systems a logical response to an animation of the bodies of loved ones and respected citizens could be more than a bit negative - but, hey, you develop your own worlds. Anything might be possible. Perhaps the rotting flesh of those zombies might not even need to have a stomach-wrenching smell.
My own hypotheticals, as morally ambiguous as they may similarly be, worked centrally on ideas of potential punishment for offenders in parallel to lotr's army of the dead. The video cited mentioned similar themes.
As mentioned, if you want to "let Orcus party at Bernie's if he shows up with a sixer or a six-six-sixer" go for it. I keep saying the same.
Karrnath is the obvious example of a "necromancy is societally acceptable" Eberron locale, but don't forget about Aerenal who are literally ruled by the benign Undying Court.
I've always thought it was a bit funny that the Death domain and the Oathbreaker subclasses got shuffled to the DMG as "evil, not for players" classes, yet Necromancy Wizards stayed in the PHB. That said, all the Undead in the Monster Manual are Evil, and failing to reconstitute your control over them basically sets them loose on the world to feast upon the flesh of the living, so it's not that farfetched to see the standard Necromancer shtick as morally grey at best.
Evil being inherent to Undead has a similar mentality to Demons and Devils - they are creatures who are inherently evil to justify characters slaying them without remorse. The collateral damage is that Necromancers and Fiendish Warlocks are always seen as at least evil-adjacent.
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.
Being a necromancer doesn't require you to create undead. Granted, you'll be missing out on class features if you choose to go that route, but it's still possible. Plus, you could stick with just animating the bodies of fallen enemies: don't think anyone's going to make much of a fuss if you turn some dead gnolls into zombies to send them against the live gnolls that are attacking a town.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
By your definition, everything CAN give (or withhold) consent which is a bit silly. If the world of D&D worked this way, every forest and farm would have at least one Druid or Ranger around to ask the trees if it would be okay to cut them down (I'm willing to be no).
I often like upsetting old tropes, especially old tropes that always seem to look unfavorably on a particular group. Any time I see a story where Orcs are big and stupid because in many cases they're portrayed as big and stupid (and evil), it makes me a little crazy. I love the fact that Orcs are a playable race in D&D because that means players and DMs can easily create characters that break the trope.
To that end, I've actually run a character that I laughingly call The Happy Necromancer. I have an elaborate backstory that explains why he doesn't consider necromancy to be evil and how he travels about helping others and in general doing historical research with his Necromantic powers. He doesn't FORCE the spirits of the past to do his bidding...he asks them if they're willing to just sit and speak with him for a while. He goes to the sites of dead cities that nobody has ever heard of and tries to find out about the people who lived and worked there. He writes down their stories and publishes them for others to read so the past is not forgotten. He carries two reanimated skeletal dogs around with him to act as guards to protect him when he sleeps. In most cases (because he was created in another system and he had ZERO combat abilities), the GM would often let me create one big undead guardian that I would clad in armor (so 'normal' people wouldn't get scared). He even studied Alchemy so he could mix up concoctions to help him (like covering the smell of the dead).
IMHO it's okay for people, in general, to be frightened or suspicious of Necromancers because the field carries some serious sociological issues with it. I would think that many people would have the same issues if they saw a Minotaur (a creature that was relegated to 'enemy' status until they became playable) or a Hobgoblin. As long as the player understands that there may be places in the world where certain races or professions might be frowned upon and accepts that, it's all good.
All of this comes down to the DM and the player communicating. As long as the DM and the player are good with it, the RAW is secondary IMHO.
Yeah, so maybe to clarify your thinking and ability to argue through these sorts of conversations, RAW is more mechanics. Flavor text within a spell description like your citation, which again resonates with the default text of most undead in the game, are flavor and any reasonable DM with any experience developing a game world can see flavor like that as default, and a potential point of departure. Much like, as mentioned recently in this thread, default alignments for certain races. No one who sits at a table and witnesses game play where animate dead is used by "good" characters and skeletons or zombies are generated in a "good" society for some sort of utilitarian means could in the eyes of no one argue that table is playing against RAW.
Yeah, I don't know why you're trying to antagonize my thinking here. I was fairly clear much earlier in this thread at articulating the rationale for the default social norms shaping the game's flavoring of the undead. I don't know if your comment about corpse stench was some sort of effort at a clever dig, but again a DM worth their salt would have the imaginative depth to acknowledge either cultures where certain sensory input from the dead actually don't produce revulsion (it's unclear in congnitively and neurologically where revulsion response are truly instincitive or culturally imprinted/constructed, but that may not make it through your essentialist filters), or could have culture literally enriched by perfumes if not an appreciation for the scents that are part of their life (mild fun example some folks think manure just smells like sh!t ... others pick up a sweetness to it their sensory processing making association with an agricultural vitalism). So no need to try a "you do you" diss, on the contrary I just appreciate that there are a lot of ways to do things, especially in a fantastic context.
Yeah, that part of LOTR is pretty chilling in the books. Legal theories of forfeiture are one way to illustrate it. Although there are very different distinctions between law as written (you are talking about what IRL are called civil and criminal theories of forfeiture) and a civilizations spirit of justice (where we see how that prior parenthetical relates to social elements understanding of what is just - justice and law often having more of a glib than true relationship, which is why it's fun to tease out these areas in game spaces). The cursing wasn't litigated, it was merely pronounced by an authority with broader agency over an entire people. The moment in LOTR can actually be read as one of Aragorn's more morally ambiguous moments, embracing levels of authority of his neglected "station" that he had hiterto found unsettling. It's one example of what we're talking about, though given it's characterization in the books, it does lean toward conventional sensibilities to make those passages chilling, and also show that Aragorn is now working at an elevated capacity in comparison to his mere ranger role largely seen up to that moment.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
It's funny. In the corner of my homebrew world where the current campaign is taking place, necromancy is illegal -- not for moral reasons but historical ones, as the (official) history of the kingdom says it was founded hundreds of years ago by refugees fleeing from an undead army in the Auld Country -- but this thread has given me some interesting ideas for how to potentially handle the next phase of the campaign if the party wants to go in a more 'political intrigue' sort of direction.
What if there was a person or movement that viewed the laws against necromancy as akin to drug or alcohol prohibition? i.e. It's just another school of magic, no different than any other, and it could have beneficial uses if legalized.
Basically no one in the kingdom has ever seen a zombie or anything like that, so there's no real societal stigma against it beyond "well, it's always been illegal, so it must be bad... right?"
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
But obviously creating zombies is a gateway drug to Lichdom! ;)
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.