Unwanted summons

[Eorendil]

Sorry to edge in here but while pumping a bunch of bones with negative energy may not be, at its core, evil, disturbing the remains of any person or creature in order to make said minion could be seen as such. Not everyone has a dispassionate view of these vessels we call bodies and sometimes, in lore and myth, the disruption of those remains can torment or cause pain to the spirit that has passed on.

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

I do agree with that, Meira, but as to whether the process actually involves the soul directly at all... That, I want to hear L's side on.

[darkstorme]

Agreed.  Leanthar can tell us the actual mechanics - and then we can determine quite how irredeemably evil the act is, and how nasty an alignment violation it is for a good-aligned spellcaster to bring them forth.

(N.B. - shadows, while evil, are not in the same category: they're drawn from the Plane of Shadow.)

[Acacea]

Intentions only determine if the user is innocent of motives when committing an evil act. It does not change the act.

As for the summons... we have summons by alignment or deity. If you are good, you will have 'good' summons. However, this thread is about necromancy, not conjuration...

[Acacea]

Reventage - 2/9/2005  6:22 PM Also when you animate a pile of bones, it has nothing to do with bringing a dead brethren back to life. What you basically do is you borrow a kind of a soul from the plane of the negative energy and use it to make the bones move. You create a mindless slave. You are not raising your long lost friend to fight his last battle for you one more time.  I’m not going to go into the argument whether animating a dead corpse is an evil act or not. What I can tell you is that it most definitely isn’t a good one.

 

Leanthar - 2/9/2005  7:37 PM  What Rev says, he is right on.

 

Pankoki - 9/13/2005  1:15 PM    While I think this discussion is going in loops now, I feel that everyone needs to realize something very important about this whole issue that makes the matters much simpler.
  First of all to address the initial question, Animate Dead is an evil act. Period. There is absolutely no loop around it. You are not raising the bones of anyone willing, you are using the remains of RANDOM dead person and making a puppet out of it. Don't try to find a way around it, that is just looking for excuses to get a pretty handy tank.
  With that said however, the decision to cast the spell is based strictly on dogma and alignment. An Aeridinite would never raise an undead corpse, period. But maybe a Chaotic Neutral Goranite would, just to investigate the properties of the raised corpse and use the research to build some contraption with the same resistances. See... thats how you do it. Don't try to make an evil spell a good one, instead understand your dogma and go from there.

 

Dorganath - 12/26/2005  10:58 AM    I don't know if this helps or not, but Necromancy is magic that deals with manipulating life, which can include protecting life as well as destroying it.
  Summons that call undead or fallen heros or whatever are not necromantic but rather conjuration, as they call across the planes for the creature that is brought forth.
  Now, a Good-aligned cleric would probably not cast Animate Dead because using a fallen corpse as a mindless automaton is pretty not Good.  On the other hand, Death Ward is necromantic and is frequently used by Good-aligned clerics to protect one's party.
  You're correct that Necromancy is not inherently Evil, but often those who specialize in it are.  And since we have such a rich deity system here, we can see conflicts such as you describe from followers of one deity to the next.

 

Leanthar - 12/26/2005  11:01 AM  Well stated Dorganath.

 In most cases, the usage of a spell (or anything else) will determine if it was evil or not. In a few, it is the process (and thus part of the usage) that makes the act so bad. In such a situation, good intentions will make it perhaps a lesser of evils (or maybe they just don't care much about the whole thing), but it does not, still does not, make the action "good."   Quotes come from here, and here.  (Of course I accidently hit submit to the thread I was quoting...smooth.)

[Stephen_Zuckerman]

Thank you, Acacea. You've answered the question beautifully.

To sum up, on the idea of making deaders fight for ya:

You pump a corpse full of negative energy and summon a sort of shadow-soul from the Negative Energy Plane. This is NOT the soul of the original person. Just something to make your deader go.

This is a defilement of the corpse; the ultimate insult to whomever's body it used to be. Thus, an evil act. However, some characters may simply disregard the defilement. That's up to them.

Bada bing, bada boom.

Fin.