about undead

an ordinary animate dead spell is evil

evil why?

(d x d - 3.5e and 5e)

Virtue ethics

because it defiles a person's body? because it goes against society? - no good person would do that, you'd think

that's cultural. surely it doesn't apply everywhere

Kantian

because it goes against the natural rules of the universe?

well, who wrote those rules? not the undead

that's just not fair for necromancers

Utilitarian

because undead that you're creating are all evil beings by nature? even the casting of the spell is enough to pollute the universe irreversibly... or make people suffer in incalculable ways

if that's so, then it's not inherently evil

if you'd just come this way and cast a good spell a hundred times to cancel out its casting. wash your sins away.

then why?

animate dead and some other forms of necromancy fill out all three criteria

not like many other magics

first - you enslave the body

make it move again

second - you enslave the will

make it so that the corpus cannot even think of saying no to your orders

third - you enslave the soul

animate dead makes everyone equal under the rules of magic. erase the person-shell, the memory, the life that was lived, that was once there, and replace it with a mocking puppet.

sure, it might theoretically be able to be reversed

but that's no small miracle

magic is already an unusual and - say - unknowable thing

unlike alchemy and astrology

very few know how animate dead works

even fewer can reverse triple slavery, let alone when it's done on the scales of towns and cities and even civilizations

evil is not a physical danger. just speaking words and waving your hands and making things arise with a snap of your fingers isn't enough to commit evil. just having command over the elements and life and death isn't enough to be evil or good.

evil is an intellectual danger, one which is sometimes described as physical (devils and demons and wraiths and toxic sins) and of course takes many physical forms, but ultimately still intellectual. devils and demons come from the outer planes, the plane of thoughts and forms, remember?

some writers say that to be a caster of necromancy, you have to understand it first

innately understand its philosophy

lose respect for what death is, what it means here - in that you will blaspheme against the concept of death itself in your works.

become blind to what nature and society are - why we are innately tied to them - and turn towards something else. see the dead as a resource that isn't being used enough. see them as one that could free us from toil, short lives, hunger, and all of our wants.

there is no price that makes animate dead worth using. only someone who has turned away from the idea of good - someone so disgusting that they could barely even fit into the category of neutral - sees otherwise.

virtue ethics, kantian ethics, utilitarian ethics, are methods of argumentation. they won't decide for you what is and isn't good, they will only show you a possible path.

you might like to decide instead

to ask why people think one way (necromantically) or another way (dnd's definition of good). to ask which is better, from your perspective.

to understand, philosophically, whether those conceptions are built on love or hate, respect or disrespect.

in that sense, there are many realities where animate dead is good, many of which are hard to distinguish from d x d.

there are many realities where scorning the homeless and wantonly slaughtering your neighbors is good - many of which are hard to distinguish from the real world.

(is it? what about war? what about collateral? what about unnecessary suffering, about good, proud people, and their homes?)

(what about the enemy?)

in that sense, it's hard to decide no matter which ethical theory you see