Ghosts are listed as 'Any alignment' so good ghosts are perfectly fine in the canon. I think a lot of DMs only use alignment as a kind of general guide anyway and if anything, Good aligned vampires seem to be more common in fiction than evil ones these days.
Also, if you look at Nanny Peu Peu from Tomb of Annihilation, she can resurrect a dead character as an undead, with their stats and alignment retained.
Revenants are also defined as Neutral, but given their nature I imagine they can retain their original alignment as long as its alignment articulation tolerates vengeance. J.O'Barr's The Crow would be a good model of the relentless incarnation of righteous vengeance. There's even old UA offering the Revenant as a player species, maybe a precursor to the Gothlines(tm), so presumably alignment freedom would be granted. I think it got shelved as being OP (there was IIRC an undying mechanic like the Monster).
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Not canon per se, but Hollowfaust has a LG guildmaster who was involuntarily turned into a lich.
Oh Hollowfaust... Such a great book!
I'm not sure why alignment is even being used for the conversation. What an alignment is of a monster in the monster manual is just there to indicate the most common alignment of such a creature, it is not a definitive rule for the universe that all creatures have said alignment.
You can do what you want, but IMHO
I know a lot of folks get re-animated, so to speak, carrying over the necrotic energy from the resurrected Ravensloft monsters with no alignment thread. Don't get me wrong, I think that stuff's cool too. That said, there is a presumption in game continuity that a lot of the MM's Undead were "undeadened" through practices that were "affronts to all that is good and holy." Quite a few aren't, like the aforementioned ghosts and revenants .. but quite a few are. And going to Ravensloft bestiary, while none of them have an alignment, they're largely their because they're supposed to be horrific or at best on the frightening/disturbing spectrum. Show me in established game pantheons a "good aligned" god (also bringing in the question gods have alignments so you can pretend alignment doesn't matter to the game, unless you have a pantheon) who traffic's with undead or considers undead a normal part of their portfolio. The best you could do would be maybe reworking an Egyptian inspired mythology and de-align the mummy, but oh wait, animated mummy's were a product of French colonial imagination. To the culture of origin they were basically burial honors. Voodoun and the zombie? The D&D Zombie is very much a Romero product and bears little but nomenclature relationship with the any IRL spiritual practices (except offensive interpretations of them).
Resurrection is bringing something back to life, a good thing, Undead aren't that undeadening, reanimating, whatever you want to call the sort of bringing back to the dead that bring about the MM "evil" undead are in most monster descriptions the results of something predatory or abusive. I think someone mentioned the "trend" of good vampires. I dunno. I'm not sure if the sparkle vampires of Twilight were like the new "good drow" or whether Edward was just an exception. The vampires in True Blood were a mixed lot, but all were struggling against a "nature" (lurching into the vampire as addict trope, addiction isn't ever a "good thing") and some who weren't struggling even went so far as to embrace the sort of Vampire "uber mensch" trope (like all the vampires in the Blade trilogy). Buffy, you had one, then two good vampires and a a couple or so "try hards" but vampires were by and large considered inherently evil. Sure Lestat eventually at some point finds Jesus, like literally, but Lestat was an exceptional vampire. I'd say the vampires in Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" are the closest you get to "good vampires" but even they are so more human than human they're basically Beyond Good and Evil (and the baggage that entails) than really on a human moral plane.
So sure, there's space of undead who are products of tragedy or otherwise accident and maybe hold onto their mortal morality. Others through some sort of supernatural will of their own or a greater power also somehow live beyond death. For many others in the books (like the vampire if you go by the MM rules for the monster) undeath is a debasement, corruption, abuse, despoiling etc of "life" or former vessels of life. In D&D metaphysics (optional I know but largely adhered to in the modules or I haven't seen a 5e adventure really depart from these principles) the animus behind such beings, or unbeings stems from the same parts of the DM cosmology as necrotic energy, the Negative plane, which joins with the positive to keep the outer, inner and prime material planes in place ... on a certain level the negative and positive planes are literally beyond good and evil established in the outer planes, but at the same time prior edition presentations of things from the negative plane coming in the prime material, you'd rather deal with something entirely out of the box like from the Far Realms.
So there's nothing wrong with saying, "well none of that applies to my game, dudes" and using the stat block as an action figure and making your own story about it. It's just that there's a lot of stuff left behind that I feel could really enrich a game if a game actually contended with the deeper story of an undead rather than presumptions of amoral utility for unintelligent varieties or full moral agency as seems desired by folks who want say good vampire and liches. Even the modern stories that revamp monsters or redeem them stlll deal with the legacies that came before them. It's not required gaming though, I just think it's too much anti-spidermen "give me great power and no responsibility (that would usually play into the adoption of usage of something that's broadly considered horrific).
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
While I generally treat undead as morally unambiguous evil, I did include a Good-aligned Skeleton in my last campaign. It wanted to be put to rest at last by being buried beside her husband: an adventurer who died in a dangerous ruin.
Look up Blood of Vol for a whole culture that believes in "good undead". It's in the Eberron sourcebook.
Well to refine that to what's actually said there, Blood of Vol treats undeath as a compromise to assist the living faithful of their cult in finding some way to achieve divinity in life. Undeath is a sad option for those unable to live to see the Blood of Vol's goals come to fruition. You're right, that they don't see undeath as evil, but something closer to a necessary evil than a true boon.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
So a bit of one potential explanation for the inherently evil nature of undead is how alignments can be interpreted in D&D.
It's useful shorthand on how a creature or character acts or is predicted to act. I don't want to get into alignment but its necessary for my explanation of "Evil" undead. This is a statement of my understanding of it. I'm not looking to start an alignment discussion it's just needed for my explanation.
Lawful = Follows or respects some sort of code or law.
Chaotic - Disregards codes and laws.
Good = Selfless or community-based.
Evil = Selfish and individual-oriented.
Neutral = Acts based on the moment depending on what they perceive as the best action at the time.
That's all it is. It's simple. Not saying It's right or wrong but that is generally how alignment breaks down in the D&D context.
Remember good and evil have nothing to do with hostility. Both can be passive or aggressive, alignment does not indicate temperament.
Undead tend to be evil because most are selfish and driven by their simple desires as they are reanimated and mostly mindless. The actions and energies that form undead types tend to be malicious in nature and that transfers to them in the form of function. Many are described as having a hunger for life or are programmed with a specific task in mind given to them by the process that creates them. They don't have a mind that is truly their own to follow and a specific code. Low complexity undead, in general, tends to be more akin to tools than creatures, and giving them an alignment that requires understanding a complex system that involves selflessness and adhering to laws may not make sense. Most are driven by simple needs, often spurred by their own missing elements or driven by certain exemplified emotions (like specters).
Many undead are also partial reconstructs that take elements of their previous lives along but not the whole picture which could also account for a change in alignment. Most know the language they knew in life for example but don't necessarily retain any personality.
One reason a resurrection is a much different process and also requires the willingness of the soul in most lore. This is complete restoration.
The more complicated types of undead are different in that they could have other alignments but often don't. They are often undead as a result of their actions, a specific event, or a choice they make. Such as a Lich, Vampire, Death Knight, Dracolitch, etc. These actions tend to be selfish or self-serving often out of the fear of death or coming from a predatory nature or requiring horrific sacrifices of others. Lich rituals require a lot of death and destruction, vampires must actively put their need to feed above the lives of others. All of which would be considered self-serving and therefore evil in the general alignment structure of D&D.
That being said you would need a complex undead in order to be good. Such as a vampire who struggles with its nature or a death knight seeking a path of redemption if they acted for the good of others at the cost to themselves. The more mindless are victims of their nature and often cannot make choices.
Ghost can be anything because they aren't typical and they retain most of what they were before. Revenants want revenge based on their previous lives so they retain the knowledge and personality to an extent. So they could be any alignment or good depending on what they were prior.
A good undead could exist in the sense that their goals and drives were not selfishly based but simple undead of good alignment would not be truly good but more so useful. Like a tool. As the process that created them was likely tragic and the energies to do so do not for their sake but for the sake of others. An example of this would be having a bunch of animated skeletons tasked to harvest a villages crops or provide manual labor. One could say they are doing good but reanimated undead don't really have free will so can they actively act for the greater good or do they do so because the entity that created them commanded them to do so.
A good necromancer with the best intentions still is using the dead, although you could easily make it so they get consent prior to death and in that case, maybe the skeletons would simply be considered neutral then like most constructs if you are going with the assumption the process of undeadening energy doesn't make then hostile by default which some lore suggest and can also make sense if they are energies from negative planes.
So I'd say most undead are considered evil not because they have to be necessary but because the methods and intents that create undeath are inherently selfish, and do not involve the consent of the reanimated the vast majority of the time. There are of course exceptions to this but, once again exceptions rather than the rule.
Just how I run undead for my groups and whatnot. Undeath can be as complicated or simple as you want, but in 5E I think evil is based on selfish nature and connection to evil energy planes more or less. It's easier to just have something being evil as an uncomplicated target versus a morally grey creature. A lot of people play fantasy games to not have to contemplate morality and escape the complexity of reality and undead to a degree fill this niche as being inherently evil.
This was just my 2 cents. Hope some of you will find it useful and maybe give a fresh perspective on how undead fit in your own worlds as well.
Lore also speaks of undead that got in that condition because they were cursed and yet that could still have a potential for good.
The LotR's Army of the Dead came good when fighting with Aragorn.
A VERY good example!
I have run Necromancers in this and several other game systems. I did it in an evil game we did many years ago but most of the time I run a 'good Necromancer. This is always with the express permission of, and after a long conversation with, the DM.
I don't like the fact that most of the created Undead like Zombies or Skeletons are Undead out of the box. IMHO if the Necromancer resurrects them with good intent then I don't see any reason why they can't be at least Neutral in their behavior when not doing a task. Essentially stand over there unless you're attacked.
Could a Bronze dracolich preserve itself to fight for it's cause?
The list of things that a mortal has to do in order to become a Lich is pretty long and usually involves some pretty terrible things (I think at least one soul has to be captured/sacrificed in some way?). I don't know if there even IS an established procedure for a dragon to become a dracolich.
This likely comes back to the DM to decide. I can see some really good RP elements where the Dracolich has free will and can thus act in a generally good way but they must do a Wisdom check once a day to maintain their hold. Sort of like how 'good' vampires are often portrayed as having to fight off their bloodlust.
Also, if you look at Nanny Peu Peu from Tomb of Annihilation, she can resurrect a dead character as an undead, with their stats and alignment retained.
She was entirely 'evil' and yet a DM can play this or anything else as they like.
It's fine to develop the Addams family or Casper or anything else. Each table can do their own thing.
Also, if you look at Nanny Peu Peu from Tomb of Annihilation, she can resurrect a dead character as an undead, with their stats and alignment retained.
She was entirely 'evil' and yet a DM can play this or anything else as they like.
It's fine to develop the Addams family or Casper or anything else. Each table can do their own thing.
In this nitpick. I think you're finding a fault in a claim made over a month ago on false pretexts. The poster, over a month ago, wasn't saying Nanny Peu Peu was a good character. It's very clear she's evil. However, the mechanical description of beings that undergo her rite, specifically the retainment of their living alignment in undeath, serves as another example of undead in D&D who aren't inherently evil, in some cases even good aligned ... which was the purpose of this thread.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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This is where DM Who think that restless spirits can abandon the evil stereotype go.
These are some stat blocks I dug up for use in a adventure like Curse of Strad. Check the link for the stats https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L8JrLtObw8AvcFw4JcW.
Ghosts are listed as 'Any alignment' so good ghosts are perfectly fine in the canon. I think a lot of DMs only use alignment as a kind of general guide anyway and if anything, Good aligned vampires seem to be more common in fiction than evil ones these days.
Also, if you look at Nanny Peu Peu from Tomb of Annihilation, she can resurrect a dead character as an undead, with their stats and alignment retained.
Orange Juice!
Not canon per se, but Hollowfaust has a LG guildmaster who was involuntarily turned into a lich.
Revenants are also defined as Neutral, but given their nature I imagine they can retain their original alignment as long as its alignment articulation tolerates vengeance. J.O'Barr's The Crow would be a good model of the relentless incarnation of righteous vengeance. There's even old UA offering the Revenant as a player species, maybe a precursor to the Gothlines(tm), so presumably alignment freedom would be granted. I think it got shelved as being OP (there was IIRC an undying mechanic like the Monster).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You can do what you want, but IMHO
I know a lot of folks get re-animated, so to speak, carrying over the necrotic energy from the resurrected Ravensloft monsters with no alignment thread. Don't get me wrong, I think that stuff's cool too. That said, there is a presumption in game continuity that a lot of the MM's Undead were "undeadened" through practices that were "affronts to all that is good and holy." Quite a few aren't, like the aforementioned ghosts and revenants .. but quite a few are. And going to Ravensloft bestiary, while none of them have an alignment, they're largely their because they're supposed to be horrific or at best on the frightening/disturbing spectrum. Show me in established game pantheons a "good aligned" god (also bringing in the question gods have alignments so you can pretend alignment doesn't matter to the game, unless you have a pantheon) who traffic's with undead or considers undead a normal part of their portfolio. The best you could do would be maybe reworking an Egyptian inspired mythology and de-align the mummy, but oh wait, animated mummy's were a product of French colonial imagination. To the culture of origin they were basically burial honors. Voodoun and the zombie? The D&D Zombie is very much a Romero product and bears little but nomenclature relationship with the any IRL spiritual practices (except offensive interpretations of them).
Resurrection is bringing something back to life, a good thing, Undead aren't that undeadening, reanimating, whatever you want to call the sort of bringing back to the dead that bring about the MM "evil" undead are in most monster descriptions the results of something predatory or abusive. I think someone mentioned the "trend" of good vampires. I dunno. I'm not sure if the sparkle vampires of Twilight were like the new "good drow" or whether Edward was just an exception. The vampires in True Blood were a mixed lot, but all were struggling against a "nature" (lurching into the vampire as addict trope, addiction isn't ever a "good thing") and some who weren't struggling even went so far as to embrace the sort of Vampire "uber mensch" trope (like all the vampires in the Blade trilogy). Buffy, you had one, then two good vampires and a a couple or so "try hards" but vampires were by and large considered inherently evil. Sure Lestat eventually at some point finds Jesus, like literally, but Lestat was an exceptional vampire. I'd say the vampires in Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" are the closest you get to "good vampires" but even they are so more human than human they're basically Beyond Good and Evil (and the baggage that entails) than really on a human moral plane.
So sure, there's space of undead who are products of tragedy or otherwise accident and maybe hold onto their mortal morality. Others through some sort of supernatural will of their own or a greater power also somehow live beyond death. For many others in the books (like the vampire if you go by the MM rules for the monster) undeath is a debasement, corruption, abuse, despoiling etc of "life" or former vessels of life. In D&D metaphysics (optional I know but largely adhered to in the modules or I haven't seen a 5e adventure really depart from these principles) the animus behind such beings, or unbeings stems from the same parts of the DM cosmology as necrotic energy, the Negative plane, which joins with the positive to keep the outer, inner and prime material planes in place ... on a certain level the negative and positive planes are literally beyond good and evil established in the outer planes, but at the same time prior edition presentations of things from the negative plane coming in the prime material, you'd rather deal with something entirely out of the box like from the Far Realms.
So there's nothing wrong with saying, "well none of that applies to my game, dudes" and using the stat block as an action figure and making your own story about it. It's just that there's a lot of stuff left behind that I feel could really enrich a game if a game actually contended with the deeper story of an undead rather than presumptions of amoral utility for unintelligent varieties or full moral agency as seems desired by folks who want say good vampire and liches. Even the modern stories that revamp monsters or redeem them stlll deal with the legacies that came before them. It's not required gaming though, I just think it's too much anti-spidermen "give me great power and no responsibility (that would usually play into the adoption of usage of something that's broadly considered horrific).
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
zombies as always evil I can see, but something like a at least NEUTRAL vampire I think is probable.
While I generally treat undead as morally unambiguous evil, I did include a Good-aligned Skeleton in my last campaign. It wanted to be put to rest at last by being buried beside her husband: an adventurer who died in a dangerous ruin.
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
I think you can find many examples of good or neutral undead in books, movies, pop culture.
Depends on the campaign.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Look up Blood of Vol for a whole culture that believes in "good undead". It's in the Eberron sourcebook.
Well to refine that to what's actually said there, Blood of Vol treats undeath as a compromise to assist the living faithful of their cult in finding some way to achieve divinity in life. Undeath is a sad option for those unable to live to see the Blood of Vol's goals come to fruition. You're right, that they don't see undeath as evil, but something closer to a necessary evil than a true boon.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Warning bit of a wall of text coming your way.
So a bit of one potential explanation for the inherently evil nature of undead is how alignments can be interpreted in D&D.
It's useful shorthand on how a creature or character acts or is predicted to act. I don't want to get into alignment but its necessary for my explanation of "Evil" undead. This is a statement of my understanding of it. I'm not looking to start an alignment discussion it's just needed for my explanation.
Lawful = Follows or respects some sort of code or law.
Chaotic - Disregards codes and laws.
Good = Selfless or community-based.
Evil = Selfish and individual-oriented.
Neutral = Acts based on the moment depending on what they perceive as the best action at the time.
That's all it is. It's simple. Not saying It's right or wrong but that is generally how alignment breaks down in the D&D context.
Remember good and evil have nothing to do with hostility. Both can be passive or aggressive, alignment does not indicate temperament.
Undead tend to be evil because most are selfish and driven by their simple desires as they are reanimated and mostly mindless. The actions and energies that form undead types tend to be malicious in nature and that transfers to them in the form of function. Many are described as having a hunger for life or are programmed with a specific task in mind given to them by the process that creates them. They don't have a mind that is truly their own to follow and a specific code. Low complexity undead, in general, tends to be more akin to tools than creatures, and giving them an alignment that requires understanding a complex system that involves selflessness and adhering to laws may not make sense. Most are driven by simple needs, often spurred by their own missing elements or driven by certain exemplified emotions (like specters).
Many undead are also partial reconstructs that take elements of their previous lives along but not the whole picture which could also account for a change in alignment. Most know the language they knew in life for example but don't necessarily retain any personality.
One reason a resurrection is a much different process and also requires the willingness of the soul in most lore. This is complete restoration.
The more complicated types of undead are different in that they could have other alignments but often don't. They are often undead as a result of their actions, a specific event, or a choice they make. Such as a Lich, Vampire, Death Knight, Dracolitch, etc. These actions tend to be selfish or self-serving often out of the fear of death or coming from a predatory nature or requiring horrific sacrifices of others. Lich rituals require a lot of death and destruction, vampires must actively put their need to feed above the lives of others. All of which would be considered self-serving and therefore evil in the general alignment structure of D&D.
That being said you would need a complex undead in order to be good. Such as a vampire who struggles with its nature or a death knight seeking a path of redemption if they acted for the good of others at the cost to themselves. The more mindless are victims of their nature and often cannot make choices.
Ghost can be anything because they aren't typical and they retain most of what they were before. Revenants want revenge based on their previous lives so they retain the knowledge and personality to an extent. So they could be any alignment or good depending on what they were prior.
A good undead could exist in the sense that their goals and drives were not selfishly based but simple undead of good alignment would not be truly good but more so useful. Like a tool. As the process that created them was likely tragic and the energies to do so do not for their sake but for the sake of others. An example of this would be having a bunch of animated skeletons tasked to harvest a villages crops or provide manual labor. One could say they are doing good but reanimated undead don't really have free will so can they actively act for the greater good or do they do so because the entity that created them commanded them to do so.
A good necromancer with the best intentions still is using the dead, although you could easily make it so they get consent prior to death and in that case, maybe the skeletons would simply be considered neutral then like most constructs if you are going with the assumption the process of undeadening energy doesn't make then hostile by default which some lore suggest and can also make sense if they are energies from negative planes.
So I'd say most undead are considered evil not because they have to be necessary but because the methods and intents that create undeath are inherently selfish, and do not involve the consent of the reanimated the vast majority of the time. There are of course exceptions to this but, once again exceptions rather than the rule.
Just how I run undead for my groups and whatnot. Undeath can be as complicated or simple as you want, but in 5E I think evil is based on selfish nature and connection to evil energy planes more or less. It's easier to just have something being evil as an uncomplicated target versus a morally grey creature. A lot of people play fantasy games to not have to contemplate morality and escape the complexity of reality and undead to a degree fill this niche as being inherently evil.
This was just my 2 cents. Hope some of you will find it useful and maybe give a fresh perspective on how undead fit in your own worlds as well.
HALLOWEEN IS COMING undead fiesta!
Lore also speaks of undead that got in that condition because they were cursed and yet that could still have a potential for good.
The LotR's Army of the Dead came good when fighting with Aragorn.
A VERY good example!
I have run Necromancers in this and several other game systems. I did it in an evil game we did many years ago but most of the time I run a 'good Necromancer. This is always with the express permission of, and after a long conversation with, the DM.
I don't like the fact that most of the created Undead like Zombies or Skeletons are Undead out of the box. IMHO if the Necromancer resurrects them with good intent then I don't see any reason why they can't be at least Neutral in their behavior when not doing a task. Essentially stand over there unless you're attacked.
Could a Bronze dracolich preserve itself to fight for it's cause?
The list of things that a mortal has to do in order to become a Lich is pretty long and usually involves some pretty terrible things (I think at least one soul has to be captured/sacrificed in some way?). I don't know if there even IS an established procedure for a dragon to become a dracolich.
This likely comes back to the DM to decide. I can see some really good RP elements where the Dracolich has free will and can thus act in a generally good way but they must do a Wisdom check once a day to maintain their hold. Sort of like how 'good' vampires are often portrayed as having to fight off their bloodlust.
She was entirely 'evil' and yet a DM can play this or anything else as they like.
It's fine to develop the Addams family or Casper or anything else. Each table can do their own thing.
In this nitpick. I think you're finding a fault in a claim made over a month ago on false pretexts. The poster, over a month ago, wasn't saying Nanny Peu Peu was a good character. It's very clear she's evil. However, the mechanical description of beings that undergo her rite, specifically the retainment of their living alignment in undeath, serves as another example of undead in D&D who aren't inherently evil, in some cases even good aligned ... which was the purpose of this thread.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.