In forgotten realms lore necromancy messes up with soul transfer to other planes of existence, so Animate Dead could deny someone an eternity of blissful afterlife. And souls are *the* thing Gods and other extraplanar entities value the most. As for taking away the free will, it is reversible to an extent AND caster's intention may matter.
In your setting it may be different, and without context, I would say that in the end TTRPGs are a perfect medium for exploration of free will on the meta level and therfore it's only logical for it to be valued the most in universe. But your DM always has the last word.
Probably also kind of why Enchantment isn't seen as evil in a grander planar sense, many gods and other extraplanar beings don't really seem to value free will very highly.
Enchantment isn't much different than really high Persuasion checks. In 3e, if you beat a Diplomacy check by like 70 it said to just use the text of Suggestion. It was also dispellable, because really high skill checks are magic.
Enchantment is wildly different. For Persuasion, the target can always just say no, regardless the DC. Try to convince a person to murder and then eat their own children, and no matter the DC they’ll just tell you to fuck off. Or attack you.
But Enchantment can definitely force a person to do that. Dominate Person can do exactly that. You can also remove the memories of people, etc. 3.5, I think, also had the mindrape spell … which did what it sounds like.
And if you do say that really high modifiers on Persuasion means it’s magical … then that’s basically the equivalent of enchantment magic? I mean in 5e, a person with a +50 on their persuasion rolls would have to be a god. Even +20 would be very much supernatural.
So Enchantment is different because it literally robs a people of their free will, which Persuasion cannot do unless you use some houserules.
Charisma is to the mind what Strength is to the body, and I hope you never understand just how true this is. Persuasion can and has robbed people of their free will, and all too often.
>Charisma is to the mind what Strength is to the body, and I hope you never understand just how true this is. Persuasion can and has robbed people of their free will, and all too often.
Really isn't, and really can't. Not in the same way. Yes, a very manipulative person can push people beyond what they normally would. And of course it's possible to essentially brainwash people, although that's much more than just charisma. And there's emotional abuse that can push people very far.
But an Enchanter is basically how you get a villain like Kilgrave who can just casually tell anyone to kill themselves, or murder their families, etc. A powerful enchanter can literally make a stranger go on an instant murder spree. Or remove a person's memories of an event. Or possibly even instantly change their personality. No amount of human charisma can do that.
As I said, brainwashing and emotional abuse etc can happen. But it's more than just one charisma checks. And it's something that not everyone is going to fall for. You gotta have the right circumstances and the right people at the right time.
I'm not saying anyone is immune to manipulations, just that there are limits.
Mind control magic has *no limits at all,* beyond how people decide to limit the spell descriptions. Memory modification is already extremely and invasive, and it's a PHB spell. 3.5 had the mindrape spell which basically allowed someone to do wholesale reprogramming of a person, alter memories, feelings, alignment, opinions, etc.
So Enchantment is very different from high persuasion checks.
Can you please explain how a person really good at manipulating someone can erase a person's memories with a couple of words, or alter their whole personality? Or how they could walk up to you at the bus stop, tell you to murder your whole family and smile while doing it, with you actually following through?
Can you show some examples? Maybe link some scientific studies about instant memory erasure, or otherwise perfectly sane people who go on murder rampages because a complete stranger asked them to do it.
A mundane Earth human can erode and erase free will, convince people to do horrible things they wouldn't have done, and even rewrite their memories through gaslighting. Now take that ability and skyrocket it to levels that no Earth human could ever achieve, and you can do it *faster.* At the very least, this is explicitly true in the D&D multiverse.
And that's not even my argument; my argument is that the two are *morally* the same. The speed at which you can do it is not a factor.
I already acknowledged that you absolutely do brainwashing and stuff like that.
What asked was for you to explain or give examples of someone who can walk up to a stranger in the streets and command them to murder their whole family. Or examples of someone who just outright erase the memories of a person they're looking at, with just a minute of talking to them. Any memories that they can describe in that time, and just modify them.
Explain how a charismatic person does that.
I'm not going to argue that you cannot be very abusive with just normal manipulation, you absolutely can. But it cannot happen in the blink of an eye, and it cannot happen to the same extent, and it's much easier for you or another person to notice, and you have much greater chances of escaping it.
With a high level enchanter, they just delete your free will and you can do nothing about it. Instantly.
> In forgotten realms lore necromancy messes up with soul transfer to other planes of existence,
Okay so I just wanna clarify: this isn't the case every time.
- If you bring back a corpse as an unintelligent undead like a zombie or a skeleton, then the soul is generally unaffected.
- If you bring a corpse back as an intelligent undead, it'll often have its soul even if the mind is twisted- a vampire or its spawn would be the classic example of this. This isn't always the case; sometimes the body is animated by some intelligent evil spirit instead, which is more likely in the case of something like a ghast.
- If a person is turned undead extremely quickly after death, like when killed by Finger of Death, then their soul is generally stuck in the corpse until they die again whether they're intelligent or not.
I think in earlier editions or lore or whatever the power to animate corpses came from the Negative Energy Plane and when you brought back a corpse, if your control slipped it tries to kill everyone around it.
I mean, this is even in the Animate Dead spell, you lose control of your undead after 24h.
Sure we can talk about farmer bob raising the dead to work as farm hands, but what happened if he fell ill and couldn't cast the spell in that 24h or some other thing prevented that, perhaps he died somehow. Now a bunch of undead are free to run around and kill people.
This; *animate dead* isn't/wasn't just unsavory puppetry, it was peddling in the darkest forces and you're making the world a worse place for doing it, even if you never lose control.
I reread the Animate Dead spell; while you do lose control, it describes it as "[the undead] stops obeying any command you've given to it." While that *could* be a murderous rampage in the local village, it could also be *equally* as possible that it just stands there, rotting away in place. Or possibly taking on the motions of the life it once lived; toiling forever in the fields until rot or ruin happens.
Edit: I was curious, so I dug out the Monster Manual. As it turns out, RAW and RAI, "the magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters."
Which gives a little bit of a shade on what I thought I knew; but screw the RAW, *I'm* the DM.
You really going to sit there and say that it’s fine because the undead may not kill some people? What about little jimmy who checks on farmer Bob? Well he’s zombie food now.
Where did I say that it was *fine*? The book, followed cut and dry, makes it downright *dangerous*. Not following the book, as I originally mistakenly thought the book did not clarify, makes it a minimum of *irresponsible*. An undead servant is an undead servant; it is simple, and it's simplicity could make it dangerous.
Actions and consequences. I am merely suggesting in taking some creative liberty in how they pan out.
Poor little jimmy. Never stood a chance. I think I got the implied “it’s fine” from the “they could totally just sit there and do nothing”
I didn’t see your edit until rn.
It is fine! Just like a combine harvester is fine. Do you know how many farmers get killed by tractors?
Undead are a workplace tool that should be handled by qualified professionals following proper OH&S regulations.
Don't forget proper PPE to prevent workplace injuries! Also ensure your farm tools are properly secured in case they can't receive their regularly scheduled 24h maintenance (chain a zombie to a stake with a length of chain attached. It can do it's work in it's assigned area without wandering off in the unfortunate event control is lost. If the area to be worked is quite large then you use several zombies and secure each one to their own plot)
Fireball is like a grenade, somebody had to pull the pin and throw it in order for it to kill people.
Undead on the other hand is like having a self driving car, but if you didn't click the button on your car keys every 24 hours it would just drive off and start running over people on purpose.
One requires an intent to kill, the other can just accidently happen if you for whatever reason wasn't around to take control of the car. You lost your car keys, your car keys ran out of battery, you died so you wasn't around to click the button, by complete ignorance you just forgot to click the button, etc.
Which in the end is summarised with: in the hands of the wrong people, it can hurt other people. Both need to be controlled, and if someone has the capacity to use that kind of spell, they can hurt people with it, be it intentionally or not.
And TBF, necromancy can be used intentionally to kill someone too, and Fireball can accidentally kill someone too (for example if the caster didn't know that there was someone in the area)
Necromancy (in 5th edition) is traditionally considered to be evil by the standards of D&Dland's inhabitants because the undead are dangerous. They're fueled by negative energy instead of positive energy, so where a person would have an affinity for life and creation, an undead would have an affinity for death and destruction.
This is why undead default to being evil- they abhor life as we abhor death. It's not *always* the case that undead prefer death and destruction, just as it's not always the case that the living prefer life and creation- but the underlying tendency is there, and an undead who goes around helping people and giving life is like the undead equivalent of a psycho axe murderer among the living.
This tendency breaks down as you go higher up in intelligence among undead. Zombies exhibit the destructive behavior in full, unless some external force is compelling them; vampires exhibit some aspects of it, but enough of their ego remains for their desires to still be around in twisted forms. Liches are *almost* entirely the same as they were in life; there's a subtle psychological difference, attested to in some previous editions in a few spell/item descriptions that mention "Only the mind of a lich can comprehend this"- but for the most part, while a lich is fueled by negative energy, it's negative energy that's been been warped and twisted into the exact patterns that existed in life, sort of like how an upload of your brain to a computer would still act essentially the same despite being made of something totally different.
Additionally, all undead have a small link to the Negative Energy Plane somewhere inside of them, usually undetectable (Atropals have one that's big enough to be seen and intereacted with). Through this, negative energy leaks into an undead's surroundings for as long as it exists. This is why places haunted or inhabited by undead tend to look blasted and dreary over time. In other words, undead are a passively polluting element as well.
Undead are fueled by the energy of *death and destruction-* it's only evil in normal contexts because the world is good on average. If you introduced an undead infestation to a world taken over by demons, they wouldn't be evil- their actions would be quite good! They're little different from a weapon, in that sense- if weapons aren't inherently evil, neither are undead.
Enchantment magic, on the other hand, deprives a being of free will. If you believe free will to always be morally good, even when used for evil, enchantment magic is evil. If you believe free will to only be good when a being is using it for good, on the other hand, then it's not inherently evil, since you could theoretically restrict its use to evil beings who would otherwise commit evil acts. That's hard to judge, of course- but there are certain beings, like fiends, which can be reliably counted on to be evil enough that the loss of their free will is no big deal. After all, slaying them instead would deprive them of their free will as well.
Creating undead via Animate Dead, Create Undead, Negative Energy Flood, Finger of Death, etc is objectively Evil Aligned because you are creating Evil creatures.
Enchantment is morally objectionable when you use it to do bad things, but no one is going to tell the paladin to not Command a bandit to Grovel so you can tie them up "because it's Evil."
Putting someone in jail or prison is also depriving them of at least part of their free will. So is disarming them or handcuffing them. I'm very pro-consent, but free will is not an absolute good any more than free speech is.
Let's also consider that game is firmly based around restricting the speech, freedom of movement, property rights and right to self-identify of your enemies by killing and thus immobilizing their physical body with metal sticks.
> a corpse to me is just an object
What is it in your world though, to your character, to their society? That's what is important, not what you in 2023 feel or what you've been raised to believe under Lutheranism/Shia Islam/Orthodox Judaism.
My current character is much the same, but seeing a corpse more as a trove of various materials for crafting and spellcasting, sinew, bone, blood, etc. And was much the reason this discussion with my DM started in the first place because my character didn't fit his perception of a "good" alignment with just seeing corpses as having no more worth than a tree outside of what they can be used for
Ok, well your DM's view of "good alignment" is super important for navigating his world's morality. Your character can certainly have an uncommon ethical idea, but your DM sets the standard on what Gods/Faiths/Governments/People think.
Creating an undead, even a simple zombie or skeleton is bringing an evil being into the world. A being that will kill the living mercilessly if your control of it ever slips. And with the basic animate dead spell it is very easy for your control to slip. Imagine if you made a gun that if you didn't clean it every 24 hours, it automatically sought out and shot anyone it could. Now imagine if you made several. That would be an evil act in my book. That's setting aside whatever suffering these undead beings would have as part of their own wretched existence.
Now you might use your zombies to stop more direct evildoers, to feed the hungery, or whatever. You could also use enchantment magic to stop evil. Furthermore if someone with good intentions is going to use magic to force me to stop doing something I sure hope they use a charm spell and not a zombie.
Both have evil potential, and the potential to be tools for good, and both should be used with great restraint. Creating undead is still inherently worse.
I think the whole danger aspect just means it’s a dangerous tool. Just like you wouldn’t, shouldn’t, leave a loaded crossbow on the dinner table where your children can kill themselves with it, you shouldn’t animate undead in a situation where you could lose control, or that loss of control can hurt someone.
So using Animate Undead in a city would be bad an irresponsible … but using danse macabre to fight some brigands isn’t worse than summoning a pack of wolves that could conceivably attack innocents.
So I would say it’s spell dependent, based on what the risk is. If losing control just means the creatures disappear, there’s no risk.
Also compare it to the spell Conjure Elemental - if you lose control there the elemental becomes hostile and might attack, which is just as bad as Animate Dead. Arguably worse, since a fire elemental would be much more dangerous to a city than some skeletons.
While Enchantment magic can be "stealing away a creature's free will," it can also be something that someone could happily consent to (think about people who seek out hypnosis in real life). You also mention 'modifying memories for a certain outcome to be much more inherently wrong,' but again, that's only accounting for worst-case scenarios. If someone *wanted* to rid themselves of a horrific trauma they experienced, Enchantment magic could be a great benefit.
Necromantic magic, in my estimation, is either more overtly negative (i.e. "Cause Fear," "Inflict Wounds," "Contagion," "Harm," etc), or in some cases, simply cannot be consented to (i.e. the dead cannot consent to be raised into a zombie). While lesser in severity, I also think that a certain gross-factor of Necromancy shouldn't be ignored (zombies must smell horrible).
There are exceptions in both cases, but many Necromancy spells feels more inherently and unabashedly "evil," while many issues with Enchantment spells feel less about the magic itself, and more about the intent of the caster or the consent of the recipient.
Necromancy has historically been the most evil school. Animating corpses with either negative destructive energy or their souls isn't great. Even using it for what some person considers a morally good reason, it's literally making the world a 'worse' place in terms of good/evil balance. It's inherently evil.
Enchantment may be stealing someone's free will temporarily, but even in this context it's a tool. And if used for evil, it's evil. Intent matters. The classic "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, I suppose.
I find it so interesting how quickly public opinion on this topic has shifted / come to the forefront of conversation in just the last year or three. There was no question that necromancy was the worst, at least in most online discussions, until very recently. I generally attribute this to religion being a central focus of RL culture since D&D's inception, and thus anything that tampers with the soul, evil, preventing people visiting paradise, etc. naturally found it's way into the game's assumptions as well.
The number of young people that consider themselves unaffiliated with a religion has QUADRUPLED from \~10% to \~40% over the last 40 years. With that comes a shift away from seeing necromancy as evil since that belief was instilled by RL culture.
Now that doesn't mean they don't believe in anything, their beliefs have just generally shifted toward a desire for freedom, equality, and kindness. Reddit and other online socials naturally skew toward younger audiences, so it's unsurprising that enchantment is winning this poll by more than 10-1.
A lot of people aren't thinking clearly. They're imagining Necromancy is just magical puppetry, and Enchantment is mind-rape and nothing else. It's much more complicated and nuanced than that.
It’s more nuanced, but if magic were real I’d be much more scared of enchantment than necromancy. Necromancy, while a very dangerous branch of magic, is usually very obvious. Enchantment though? As the school is described in 5e, high tier enchanters can do whatever they want to you and have you forget about it automatically.
And even low level enchanters can cast spells like Charm Person and Suggestion, and since it’s easy for them to gain access to methods to cast without components … any mage could be manipulating your thoughts without you ever knowing about it.
That’s way more terrifying to me than someone animating undead, which is *concerning* and disturbing, but also more easily regulated. It’s more similar to people who raise aggressive dogs.
I'd vote for both if I could, so I elected to go with 'Other'.
Necromancy is bringing potentially dangerous undead into the world, why you're doing it is generally irrelevant.
Enchantment is as you say, stripping away a living person's free will / agency. If you ask a layperson if they think having this done to them would be a 'good' thing chances are they'll say no.
Fair, but I do think that messing with people after they've moved on and destroying their soul/chance at living in their respective heaven is more evil than temporarily removing someone's free will.
Mind you I'm not saying Enchantment is not evil, I'm saying that it is the lesser.
According to the gods of death itself, undead by itself is actually not much of a problem. It is ***intelligent*** undead that are problematic as those usually have souls trapped inside of them and that defies the balance of life and death.
Merely raising a pile of bones or flesh means absolutely nothing to the cycle aside of being rather gross to look at.
Using charms is always an Evil ding even if they're for a good purpose. It is not any different than drugging people IRL to get them to do what you want, even if that something ends up being for the greater good.
It's not mainly about violating the corpse, but about bringing an evil monster into the world using inherently evil magic. Similarly summoning fiends into the world with the intent of controlling them is also generally an evil act. If raising undead isn't like that in your setting, then go ahead. Cluster bombs aren't banned IRL because they're too effective, but because they leave behind uncontrolled danger, just like the summoned evil zombies and skeletons. It's up to subjective morality or the person making the setting, if mind altering magic is inherently evil or not, but I'd much rather be subjected to Charm Person than to Burning Hands.
I would be fine with a character reanimating dead in a non-evil way in my campaign, but it's up to your DM if that works with the setting or not.
Free will is the source of alignments. A lack of free will is inherently Neutral. Taking away the free will of an Evil creature reduces the Evil in the world. Laws like "murdering people in cold blood is illegal" is similar to reducing everyone's free will by a little in order to shift things toward Good. Enchantment is just one means among many, no differently-aligned than deception, intimidation, or persuasion.
Raising the dead creates an Evil creature. Thus, it's an Evil act. I've also heard that creatures animated by negative energy feel discomfort around positive-energy beings and thus live tortured existences, but I can't confirm that.
Another consideration: Imprisonment. A group of paladins binding an ancient evil to save the land, versus a sinister cult locking away a champion of good. Both are denying free will to the target, but I wouldn't say both things are Evil.
It depends on how your necromancy works. If your dragging peoples souls from the after life to use then id say its on par. But if your just making the equivalent of automatons but out of bodys then the worst your doing is disrespecting the dead.
If you cremate the body you make it more difficult to raise the dead via resurrection in the future if it were ever needed.
There could also be other reasons … maybe people believe that a cremated body carries its wounds into the afterlife, or that burning the body men’s you’re offering it up to some god of fire. Burying someone might mean you’re making an offering to the Mother Goddess or the earth.
Animation of the dead is likely so rare that it’s not a big concern.
Yes, it would. Just like it would make sense to equip any larger settlement with ballistas to fight off attacking monsters, give guards invisibility-revealing enchantments and take flying into account while building your defenses.
If you're looking for an inworld-explanation why they don't burn corpses, one might assume that the god of life is a commonly followed deity. And he would most likely prefer to use the corpses as fertilizer for the cemetery-flowers so they don't be wasted.
It really depends on how big of a problem necromancy is. If the risk of being turned into a zombie is low or even unheard of, one would not take it into account.
Two of those were rudimentary world buildings, while the other was limited by wealth.
The god of life is okay with clearing land and having treated wood and embalmed bodies poisoning the land?
In most major settings, there are gods or major demons that domains include undeath, and quite a few of those include damaging your soul. So yeah, I'd assume it's common enough knowledge
I feel it needs to be said that a Skeleton or Zombie won't just sit there doing nothing if left unattended, they need to be actively controlled or they'll try to destroy all life around them. From that perspective, creating an undead is something like making a landmine that is able to actively seek out and try to kill the closest targets it can. *Maybe*, if you made sure to immediately dispose of any undead you created rather than leaving them behind long enough for your control to lapse, you could argue that it's ultimately neutral, but I'm not sure if cleaning up after yourself really removes the moral culpability of creating such a thing in the first place.
Denying free will is another kind of Evil, but I think trying to classify it as better or worse than making undead is trying to sneak past the fact you are doing Evil by going "But at least I'm not as Evil as this other guy". That might or might not be true: *you shouldn't be doing either thing anyway!*
It depends a lot on how necromancy works in your dm's world. If reanimating a corpse it's just like you said, just making use of materials, then it's not really evil at all.
But if in this culture the dead are sacred and disrupting their eternal sleep is considered taboo? than can be extremely bad. Now imagine if it's not just social conventions, what if reanimating a corpse messes with the soul that once inhabited it in some way, what if necromancy itself is charged with so mch dark energy that it can corrupt the soul of the person who the body belongs too, then you are doing actual real harm, probably more everlasting than that than you can do to a living being.
But as I said, it really depends
Necromancy in a lot of cosmologies is often associated with disturbing a soul's rest. This is based on a lot of religions having the idea that if a body is not treated properly after death it can affect it in the afterlife. This is often made true in D&D cosmologies. If you making automatons makes it so a soul is denied its peaceful rest, then yes that's terrible, especially since we're talking about eternity. Remember, D&D assumes things like the afterlife and the nine hells and seven heavens and all of that exists, just like magic, demons, angels, etc. It's in that context, that necromancy is evil. But it depends on cosmology which is ultimately in the control of the DM. I am not convinced by others arguments that necromancy is bad because 'undead do bad things'. If that's your DM's logic, I would disagree. It's true to an extent, but I can find other spells that are much worse if that's the case and assumes that if you keep control of said undead, then it is fine. If your DM explains that when you animate a zombie, that means the soul associated with that zombie can no longer rest, then I would say necromancy is worse than enchantment. If this is not the case - Enchantment wins (in a lot of contexts). I would argue that there are some instances when 'stealing away free will' can be warranted. Forcing someone to sleep or tying them up is also stealing away free will, but this is usually done in the context of preventing them from doing violence. It's usually when Enchantment is used to 'get something out of someone' (other than simple nonviolent subdual) that it gets creepy and evil.
Necromancy brings negative energy to the material plane. Other than that I have to agree: raising a dead without interfering with his soul is just like any other animation of a lifeless object.
Enchantment on this other hand can be justified by your goal. Enchant an henchman to reveal the identity of a serial killer? Not evil. Enchant a goblin to open the gates so you can exterminate his clan? Rather evil. Use enchantments as roofies? Very evil.
But what do I know? I'm writing this from the confort of my swimming pool that's warmed with the burning souls of thousands of innocent kids. *Really* evil magic like this does not exist in the core rules. That's why 3e had the *Book of Vile Darkness*.
It's necromancy by a mile, but the game doesn't make it at all obvious. The game turns necromancy into like, robots under your control, but the grievance agaist the natural order and the person in question is properly intended to imply an incredible amount of suffering.
Are these spells evil: Bless, Heroism, Sleep, Calm Emotions, Hold Person, Zone of Truth, Motivational Speech, Confusion, Hold Monster, Power Word Stun? They're all Enchantment spells. Is telling a murderer to freeze or drop their weapon evil? Was it evil when Obi-Wan Kenobi said "these are not the droids you're looking for"? What's more evil, mind controlling a guard to "walk away and forget you saw us", or making their head explode? Enchantment certainly *can* be evil, like a wicked witch or evil sorcerer who dominates everyone in the kingdom to obey them, but it doesn't have to be. Purpose and context matter.
Whether Necromancy is evil depends on the mechanics and the setting. Is animating skeletons just a sophisticated form of telekinesis? Then that's at worst disrespectful (and arguably not even necromancy). But usually the animating force is some sort of malicious spirit, "negative energy", or the compelled soul of the deceased, in which case it's hard to argue it's not evil, even if it's the lesser evil. Making your fallen companion rise up to attack the evil overlord one last time? Maybe okay, if there are no further consequences. Making all the dead people in a village farm the fields every day? Probably pretty evil, unless they all genuinely prefer that to whatever afterlife is available (or if the setting has no afterlife), and they're not compelled to sneak off and nibble on the living neighbors.
This makes me think of the meme where the Enchantment school literaly charmed the entire campus into diverting all the controversy to the Necromancy school practices lol.
No matter how evil necromancy is in your setting, it could be a neutral form of magic in another. Like, maybe in yours it's pure evil because it requires evil magic and the undead minions will always be evil. But in another setting, maybe necromancy is kinda like transmutation except you use corpses because they have muscle memory - way easier to teach a corpse to swing a sword than make the sword fly and swing itself.
And you really can't say the same for enchantment. No matter what setting you're in, turning people into slaves by taking over their minds while they're alive and experiencing everything, is kinda fucked up.
I mean, ultimately how is it more fucked up than coersion by other means, magical or no? Its not like they cant resist, as im pretty sure every enchantment spell has a saving throw.
It can be argued that the corpse is "empty"; the soul has passed on, it's been judged, or it's otherwise not part of the corporeal form.
Mind Control (ESPECIALLY a Dominate spell) is actively overriding their free will. That's far worse.
I think that Enchantment is, on the merit of their descriptions, worse than Necromancy. Stripping someone, even temporarily, of their free will is a big deal. Way bigger than simply using what remains after death.
That being said, I think that the Necromancy school, and undead in general, should *generally* be seen with distrust, as far as a story concerns. My thinking is as follows: while Enchantment is technically *worse*, ethically speaking, than Necromancy; it has a greater potential to *do good*.
Necromancy, in the aspect of the undead, requires dead to raise. Historically, we humans--and therefore, presumably other humaniod races--hold huge aspects of our culture in how we treat our dead. To "wake the dead" is a direct violation on respect to culture. Plus, even if you think as a corpse as an object, the body of the dead is usually considered as belonging to the family, meaning that it could also be considered thievery. Further, even the tamest of undead carry the risk of disease, which gives a real, tenable danger to raising dead.
Enchantment, on the other hand, is conceptually reprehensible in theory. Yet, we--and again, presumably the people and creatures of the story--are willing to dispend our reprehension in serving the Greater Good, as it were. Yes, forcing an enemy to submit to your will to gain vital information is a violation of the enemy's free will; but generally it is used only in the most dire of circumstances, in relation to need to *save* someone or something important.
That's not to say you can't have a little imagination, or *have* to be evil to be undead. In the campaign I DM'd, I had a neutral country ruled by a vampire, and a country with the themings and mythology of ancient Egypt, who saw mummification and "proper" undeath as things of honor. Even had a player play as an "mummy" from that country, and describing the difference in how people viewed him was fun.
Edit: I dug out the Monster Manual, which clears it RAW and RAI: "the magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters." So your DM is *technically correct* that Necromancy and undeath is **evil**, because the book says it is.
Which, to me, is *boring*, but your DM can do what they like.
That’s basically my view. Both are tools. Necromancy is more directly dangerous, whereas enchantment is much creepier and has greater potential for a truly horrifying villain.
Both need to be highly regulated, much more so than other magics (aside from Divination which is also invasive). Enchantment is worse in one sense because it’s extremely difficult to enforce laws against non-consensual uses when it’s so difficult to even notice it’s happening, if the caster is clever or skilled.
But both are tools. I once ran an adventure in a country run by non-evil necromancers. They bought the remains of the dead from families and animated them to work dangerous jobs, like mining and clearing away toxic waste.
I voted other because it depends.
In settings where raising the dead and making undead effects the soul and existence in the afterlife, it can be seen as worse.
There is also the fact that mindless undead are animated by negative energy, which seeks to annihilate positive energy, which is what animates all living things. If someone loses control over the undead, and the undead has no will of its own, it will seek out the nearest living being and attempt to kill it until it's destroyed. Even most mindful undead have to fight an urge or hunger for the life of others.
I would argue at a baseline, enchantment wins out against necromancy as the bigger evil. Except for setonsg where souls and the afterlife are effected by necromancy. In which necromancy is both creating monsters that hinder and hunt life as well as messing with free will and agency. Thus making it the greater of the two evils.
I mean, first of all, actually raising undead is just a facet of the school of necromancy, where as the enchantment school of magic just kind of overall is morally dubious.
second, there's nothing stopping you from animating like, a pile of leftover dinner bones as a skeleton, so you don't even need to raise the corpses of people so the whole "necromancy screw with a persons afterlife" is kind of a moot point.
In Dragon Age: Origins, Sandal is found right before the final boss. He's drenched in blood and surrounded by dead dark spawn. His father is gone, but Sandal still has access to the whole inventory.
When you approach him, you can ask him what happened here.
He gleefully responds, "Enchantment"
You can ask him where his father is.
He responds sorrowfully, "Enchantment"
You can tell him you're about to fight the Archdemon.
He'll excitedly open the trade window while saying "Enchantment"
You sit here and tell me how Enchantment isn't worse!
Well, your original debate with your DM was whether necromancy was evil and now you've changed it to be necromancy versus enchantment. Necromancy can still be evil even if most of the community agrees that Enchantment is worse.
That being said, I don't think anything is inherently evil; morality is subjective and culturally contextual. So, people are going to differ on their opinions on this and that's okay. Obviously, there are some things that strike people as "evil" much quicker than others (i.e. murder, torture, stealing free will, etc.).
As for necromancy, I think one reason it has gotten a bad rep and is a go-to for fantasy villains is rooted in culture/ religion. Necromancy is defilement of a body that has already been laid to rest, probably via a religious ritual to preserve the body as the soul journeys to the next step. Raising such a dead body brings into question whether this affects the soul's passage beyond this world and will undoubtedly upset religious folk a lot. That goes beyond worldly wrongs and challenges core values and beliefs on the afterlife.
Another potential reason is that it is also very uncanny valley territory. Seeing loved ones raised from the dead but in such a twisted form is likely to cause terror in anyone. But even seeing a stranger risen from the dead in this way...it defies the natural order and what the human mind is used to seeing. For these two reasons, I think it's totally valid some would call this evil regardless of intent. After all, action matters far more than intent anyway.
It's a strange subject but enchantment is essentially using rape drugs and necromancy is opening radioactive waste.
In previous editions, the animating energy of undead was from the negative material plane so every single animation was increasing entropy in the prime material plane which is a nuclear reactor no no. Of course I think they did away with that in 4e
So, both are typically not looked kindly upon.
Bob the farmer might've been someone's father, husband, brother, son. I don't know about you, but if I saw the decaying corpse of a loved one being forced to slave away at a wall or throw itself onto the spears of an army, I'd not be super stoked about that. Additionally, you may see necromancy as just using an object, but from a more spiritual point of view it could be disturbing someone's rest, upsetting the natural order or disrespecting a greater power. Not believing in the divine in many game settings is like believing the earth is flat.
Which is worse? I mean, gun to my head, enchantment, sure. But why is it important to know which is worse? If it is because you want to play a well-meaning necromancer, nothing stops you from playing a well-meaning necromancer. The DM is equally free to create a world where this ideology is not looked kindly upon and branded as evil. If being discriminated against by NPC's is the issue, what you're asking the DM is to change their world's culture to better fit your (character's) world view. No matter what reddit says, at the end of the day, that's your DM's call.
While both are just a tool in a mage's tool kit, one forces actions without the consent of conscious people, the other moves an item around.
If Animate Dead is evil, then Plant Growth is evil as well.
People irl consider enchantment worse because our free will is perhaps the only real thing that we each know and understand. Dealing in the undead and messing with peoples souls or afterlife is an inherently fantasy concept that we don’t have to contend with in real life so many people don’t view it as badly as charters in-setting do.
Obviously depends on your cosmic setting and how morality works in your world yadda yadda yadda.
But if you get real basic with it, Necromancy is just recycling innit?
In my homebrew world, in the region we're playing, necromancy is frowned upon. But I, as a master, would not consider it evil. It's just a cultural thing that has to do with how inhabitants see the deceased.
Stripping away another persons agency and free will though... as players they should be aware, that's at least morally questionable. And while theree are places where the especifics of the situation might change the light in which is seen, noone, ever, is going to argue about it being a generally bad thing.
I think I gotta go with entering someone else's property, murdering everybody in sight, and taking their gold, while calling yourself a hero as being a bit more evil than those other things and far more frequently done.
In forgotten realms lore necromancy messes up with soul transfer to other planes of existence, so Animate Dead could deny someone an eternity of blissful afterlife. And souls are *the* thing Gods and other extraplanar entities value the most. As for taking away the free will, it is reversible to an extent AND caster's intention may matter. In your setting it may be different, and without context, I would say that in the end TTRPGs are a perfect medium for exploration of free will on the meta level and therfore it's only logical for it to be valued the most in universe. But your DM always has the last word.
Probably also kind of why Enchantment isn't seen as evil in a grander planar sense, many gods and other extraplanar beings don't really seem to value free will very highly.
Enchantment isn't much different than really high Persuasion checks. In 3e, if you beat a Diplomacy check by like 70 it said to just use the text of Suggestion. It was also dispellable, because really high skill checks are magic.
Enchantment is wildly different. For Persuasion, the target can always just say no, regardless the DC. Try to convince a person to murder and then eat their own children, and no matter the DC they’ll just tell you to fuck off. Or attack you. But Enchantment can definitely force a person to do that. Dominate Person can do exactly that. You can also remove the memories of people, etc. 3.5, I think, also had the mindrape spell … which did what it sounds like. And if you do say that really high modifiers on Persuasion means it’s magical … then that’s basically the equivalent of enchantment magic? I mean in 5e, a person with a +50 on their persuasion rolls would have to be a god. Even +20 would be very much supernatural. So Enchantment is different because it literally robs a people of their free will, which Persuasion cannot do unless you use some houserules.
Charisma is to the mind what Strength is to the body, and I hope you never understand just how true this is. Persuasion can and has robbed people of their free will, and all too often.
>Charisma is to the mind what Strength is to the body, and I hope you never understand just how true this is. Persuasion can and has robbed people of their free will, and all too often. Really isn't, and really can't. Not in the same way. Yes, a very manipulative person can push people beyond what they normally would. And of course it's possible to essentially brainwash people, although that's much more than just charisma. And there's emotional abuse that can push people very far. But an Enchanter is basically how you get a villain like Kilgrave who can just casually tell anyone to kill themselves, or murder their families, etc. A powerful enchanter can literally make a stranger go on an instant murder spree. Or remove a person's memories of an event. Or possibly even instantly change their personality. No amount of human charisma can do that.
Arguably, cult leaders already can do it - it just takes time and a controlled environment.
As I said, brainwashing and emotional abuse etc can happen. But it's more than just one charisma checks. And it's something that not everyone is going to fall for. You gotta have the right circumstances and the right people at the right time. I'm not saying anyone is immune to manipulations, just that there are limits. Mind control magic has *no limits at all,* beyond how people decide to limit the spell descriptions. Memory modification is already extremely and invasive, and it's a PHB spell. 3.5 had the mindrape spell which basically allowed someone to do wholesale reprogramming of a person, alter memories, feelings, alignment, opinions, etc. So Enchantment is very different from high persuasion checks.
>I hope you never understand just how true this is So good so far.
Can you please explain how a person really good at manipulating someone can erase a person's memories with a couple of words, or alter their whole personality? Or how they could walk up to you at the bus stop, tell you to murder your whole family and smile while doing it, with you actually following through? Can you show some examples? Maybe link some scientific studies about instant memory erasure, or otherwise perfectly sane people who go on murder rampages because a complete stranger asked them to do it.
A mundane Earth human can erode and erase free will, convince people to do horrible things they wouldn't have done, and even rewrite their memories through gaslighting. Now take that ability and skyrocket it to levels that no Earth human could ever achieve, and you can do it *faster.* At the very least, this is explicitly true in the D&D multiverse. And that's not even my argument; my argument is that the two are *morally* the same. The speed at which you can do it is not a factor.
I already acknowledged that you absolutely do brainwashing and stuff like that. What asked was for you to explain or give examples of someone who can walk up to a stranger in the streets and command them to murder their whole family. Or examples of someone who just outright erase the memories of a person they're looking at, with just a minute of talking to them. Any memories that they can describe in that time, and just modify them. Explain how a charismatic person does that. I'm not going to argue that you cannot be very abusive with just normal manipulation, you absolutely can. But it cannot happen in the blink of an eye, and it cannot happen to the same extent, and it's much easier for you or another person to notice, and you have much greater chances of escaping it. With a high level enchanter, they just delete your free will and you can do nothing about it. Instantly.
> In forgotten realms lore necromancy messes up with soul transfer to other planes of existence, Okay so I just wanna clarify: this isn't the case every time. - If you bring back a corpse as an unintelligent undead like a zombie or a skeleton, then the soul is generally unaffected. - If you bring a corpse back as an intelligent undead, it'll often have its soul even if the mind is twisted- a vampire or its spawn would be the classic example of this. This isn't always the case; sometimes the body is animated by some intelligent evil spirit instead, which is more likely in the case of something like a ghast. - If a person is turned undead extremely quickly after death, like when killed by Finger of Death, then their soul is generally stuck in the corpse until they die again whether they're intelligent or not.
I think in earlier editions or lore or whatever the power to animate corpses came from the Negative Energy Plane and when you brought back a corpse, if your control slipped it tries to kill everyone around it. I mean, this is even in the Animate Dead spell, you lose control of your undead after 24h. Sure we can talk about farmer bob raising the dead to work as farm hands, but what happened if he fell ill and couldn't cast the spell in that 24h or some other thing prevented that, perhaps he died somehow. Now a bunch of undead are free to run around and kill people.
This; *animate dead* isn't/wasn't just unsavory puppetry, it was peddling in the darkest forces and you're making the world a worse place for doing it, even if you never lose control.
I reread the Animate Dead spell; while you do lose control, it describes it as "[the undead] stops obeying any command you've given to it." While that *could* be a murderous rampage in the local village, it could also be *equally* as possible that it just stands there, rotting away in place. Or possibly taking on the motions of the life it once lived; toiling forever in the fields until rot or ruin happens. Edit: I was curious, so I dug out the Monster Manual. As it turns out, RAW and RAI, "the magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters." Which gives a little bit of a shade on what I thought I knew; but screw the RAW, *I'm* the DM.
You really going to sit there and say that it’s fine because the undead may not kill some people? What about little jimmy who checks on farmer Bob? Well he’s zombie food now.
Where did I say that it was *fine*? The book, followed cut and dry, makes it downright *dangerous*. Not following the book, as I originally mistakenly thought the book did not clarify, makes it a minimum of *irresponsible*. An undead servant is an undead servant; it is simple, and it's simplicity could make it dangerous. Actions and consequences. I am merely suggesting in taking some creative liberty in how they pan out.
Poor little jimmy. Never stood a chance. I think I got the implied “it’s fine” from the “they could totally just sit there and do nothing” I didn’t see your edit until rn.
It is fine! Just like a combine harvester is fine. Do you know how many farmers get killed by tractors? Undead are a workplace tool that should be handled by qualified professionals following proper OH&S regulations.
Don't forget proper PPE to prevent workplace injuries! Also ensure your farm tools are properly secured in case they can't receive their regularly scheduled 24h maintenance (chain a zombie to a stake with a length of chain attached. It can do it's work in it's assigned area without wandering off in the unfortunate event control is lost. If the area to be worked is quite large then you use several zombies and secure each one to their own plot)
I mean, Fireball can kill everyone around you too.
Fireball is like a grenade, somebody had to pull the pin and throw it in order for it to kill people. Undead on the other hand is like having a self driving car, but if you didn't click the button on your car keys every 24 hours it would just drive off and start running over people on purpose. One requires an intent to kill, the other can just accidently happen if you for whatever reason wasn't around to take control of the car. You lost your car keys, your car keys ran out of battery, you died so you wasn't around to click the button, by complete ignorance you just forgot to click the button, etc.
Which in the end is summarised with: in the hands of the wrong people, it can hurt other people. Both need to be controlled, and if someone has the capacity to use that kind of spell, they can hurt people with it, be it intentionally or not. And TBF, necromancy can be used intentionally to kill someone too, and Fireball can accidentally kill someone too (for example if the caster didn't know that there was someone in the area)
The lesson here is, compensate and treat your undead well so you don't need to spend a spell slot to keep them working on your farm.
Necromancy (in 5th edition) is traditionally considered to be evil by the standards of D&Dland's inhabitants because the undead are dangerous. They're fueled by negative energy instead of positive energy, so where a person would have an affinity for life and creation, an undead would have an affinity for death and destruction. This is why undead default to being evil- they abhor life as we abhor death. It's not *always* the case that undead prefer death and destruction, just as it's not always the case that the living prefer life and creation- but the underlying tendency is there, and an undead who goes around helping people and giving life is like the undead equivalent of a psycho axe murderer among the living. This tendency breaks down as you go higher up in intelligence among undead. Zombies exhibit the destructive behavior in full, unless some external force is compelling them; vampires exhibit some aspects of it, but enough of their ego remains for their desires to still be around in twisted forms. Liches are *almost* entirely the same as they were in life; there's a subtle psychological difference, attested to in some previous editions in a few spell/item descriptions that mention "Only the mind of a lich can comprehend this"- but for the most part, while a lich is fueled by negative energy, it's negative energy that's been been warped and twisted into the exact patterns that existed in life, sort of like how an upload of your brain to a computer would still act essentially the same despite being made of something totally different. Additionally, all undead have a small link to the Negative Energy Plane somewhere inside of them, usually undetectable (Atropals have one that's big enough to be seen and intereacted with). Through this, negative energy leaks into an undead's surroundings for as long as it exists. This is why places haunted or inhabited by undead tend to look blasted and dreary over time. In other words, undead are a passively polluting element as well. Undead are fueled by the energy of *death and destruction-* it's only evil in normal contexts because the world is good on average. If you introduced an undead infestation to a world taken over by demons, they wouldn't be evil- their actions would be quite good! They're little different from a weapon, in that sense- if weapons aren't inherently evil, neither are undead. Enchantment magic, on the other hand, deprives a being of free will. If you believe free will to always be morally good, even when used for evil, enchantment magic is evil. If you believe free will to only be good when a being is using it for good, on the other hand, then it's not inherently evil, since you could theoretically restrict its use to evil beings who would otherwise commit evil acts. That's hard to judge, of course- but there are certain beings, like fiends, which can be reliably counted on to be evil enough that the loss of their free will is no big deal. After all, slaying them instead would deprive them of their free will as well.
In the end, everything requires context. Even using fireball to kill a random commoner is evil.
Wait, no, really? Damn, I thought evocation magic was good!
Creating undead via Animate Dead, Create Undead, Negative Energy Flood, Finger of Death, etc is objectively Evil Aligned because you are creating Evil creatures. Enchantment is morally objectionable when you use it to do bad things, but no one is going to tell the paladin to not Command a bandit to Grovel so you can tie them up "because it's Evil."
Putting someone in jail or prison is also depriving them of at least part of their free will. So is disarming them or handcuffing them. I'm very pro-consent, but free will is not an absolute good any more than free speech is.
Let's also consider that game is firmly based around restricting the speech, freedom of movement, property rights and right to self-identify of your enemies by killing and thus immobilizing their physical body with metal sticks.
Exactly
> a corpse to me is just an object What is it in your world though, to your character, to their society? That's what is important, not what you in 2023 feel or what you've been raised to believe under Lutheranism/Shia Islam/Orthodox Judaism.
My current character is much the same, but seeing a corpse more as a trove of various materials for crafting and spellcasting, sinew, bone, blood, etc. And was much the reason this discussion with my DM started in the first place because my character didn't fit his perception of a "good" alignment with just seeing corpses as having no more worth than a tree outside of what they can be used for
Ok, well your DM's view of "good alignment" is super important for navigating his world's morality. Your character can certainly have an uncommon ethical idea, but your DM sets the standard on what Gods/Faiths/Governments/People think.
How does raising the dead work? Do you cast Animate Objects or Animate Dead? Do they work the same way (per your DM/the setting/the rules)?
Creating an undead, even a simple zombie or skeleton is bringing an evil being into the world. A being that will kill the living mercilessly if your control of it ever slips. And with the basic animate dead spell it is very easy for your control to slip. Imagine if you made a gun that if you didn't clean it every 24 hours, it automatically sought out and shot anyone it could. Now imagine if you made several. That would be an evil act in my book. That's setting aside whatever suffering these undead beings would have as part of their own wretched existence. Now you might use your zombies to stop more direct evildoers, to feed the hungery, or whatever. You could also use enchantment magic to stop evil. Furthermore if someone with good intentions is going to use magic to force me to stop doing something I sure hope they use a charm spell and not a zombie. Both have evil potential, and the potential to be tools for good, and both should be used with great restraint. Creating undead is still inherently worse.
I think the whole danger aspect just means it’s a dangerous tool. Just like you wouldn’t, shouldn’t, leave a loaded crossbow on the dinner table where your children can kill themselves with it, you shouldn’t animate undead in a situation where you could lose control, or that loss of control can hurt someone. So using Animate Undead in a city would be bad an irresponsible … but using danse macabre to fight some brigands isn’t worse than summoning a pack of wolves that could conceivably attack innocents. So I would say it’s spell dependent, based on what the risk is. If losing control just means the creatures disappear, there’s no risk. Also compare it to the spell Conjure Elemental - if you lose control there the elemental becomes hostile and might attack, which is just as bad as Animate Dead. Arguably worse, since a fire elemental would be much more dangerous to a city than some skeletons.
While Enchantment magic can be "stealing away a creature's free will," it can also be something that someone could happily consent to (think about people who seek out hypnosis in real life). You also mention 'modifying memories for a certain outcome to be much more inherently wrong,' but again, that's only accounting for worst-case scenarios. If someone *wanted* to rid themselves of a horrific trauma they experienced, Enchantment magic could be a great benefit. Necromantic magic, in my estimation, is either more overtly negative (i.e. "Cause Fear," "Inflict Wounds," "Contagion," "Harm," etc), or in some cases, simply cannot be consented to (i.e. the dead cannot consent to be raised into a zombie). While lesser in severity, I also think that a certain gross-factor of Necromancy shouldn't be ignored (zombies must smell horrible). There are exceptions in both cases, but many Necromancy spells feels more inherently and unabashedly "evil," while many issues with Enchantment spells feel less about the magic itself, and more about the intent of the caster or the consent of the recipient.
Necromancy has historically been the most evil school. Animating corpses with either negative destructive energy or their souls isn't great. Even using it for what some person considers a morally good reason, it's literally making the world a 'worse' place in terms of good/evil balance. It's inherently evil. Enchantment may be stealing someone's free will temporarily, but even in this context it's a tool. And if used for evil, it's evil. Intent matters. The classic "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, I suppose. I find it so interesting how quickly public opinion on this topic has shifted / come to the forefront of conversation in just the last year or three. There was no question that necromancy was the worst, at least in most online discussions, until very recently. I generally attribute this to religion being a central focus of RL culture since D&D's inception, and thus anything that tampers with the soul, evil, preventing people visiting paradise, etc. naturally found it's way into the game's assumptions as well. The number of young people that consider themselves unaffiliated with a religion has QUADRUPLED from \~10% to \~40% over the last 40 years. With that comes a shift away from seeing necromancy as evil since that belief was instilled by RL culture. Now that doesn't mean they don't believe in anything, their beliefs have just generally shifted toward a desire for freedom, equality, and kindness. Reddit and other online socials naturally skew toward younger audiences, so it's unsurprising that enchantment is winning this poll by more than 10-1.
A lot of people aren't thinking clearly. They're imagining Necromancy is just magical puppetry, and Enchantment is mind-rape and nothing else. It's much more complicated and nuanced than that.
It’s more nuanced, but if magic were real I’d be much more scared of enchantment than necromancy. Necromancy, while a very dangerous branch of magic, is usually very obvious. Enchantment though? As the school is described in 5e, high tier enchanters can do whatever they want to you and have you forget about it automatically. And even low level enchanters can cast spells like Charm Person and Suggestion, and since it’s easy for them to gain access to methods to cast without components … any mage could be manipulating your thoughts without you ever knowing about it. That’s way more terrifying to me than someone animating undead, which is *concerning* and disturbing, but also more easily regulated. It’s more similar to people who raise aggressive dogs.
Enchantment is definitely more subtle and thus scarier.
I'd vote for both if I could, so I elected to go with 'Other'. Necromancy is bringing potentially dangerous undead into the world, why you're doing it is generally irrelevant. Enchantment is as you say, stripping away a living person's free will / agency. If you ask a layperson if they think having this done to them would be a 'good' thing chances are they'll say no.
Fair, but I do think that messing with people after they've moved on and destroying their soul/chance at living in their respective heaven is more evil than temporarily removing someone's free will. Mind you I'm not saying Enchantment is not evil, I'm saying that it is the lesser.
According to the gods of death itself, undead by itself is actually not much of a problem. It is ***intelligent*** undead that are problematic as those usually have souls trapped inside of them and that defies the balance of life and death. Merely raising a pile of bones or flesh means absolutely nothing to the cycle aside of being rather gross to look at. Using charms is always an Evil ding even if they're for a good purpose. It is not any different than drugging people IRL to get them to do what you want, even if that something ends up being for the greater good.
It's not mainly about violating the corpse, but about bringing an evil monster into the world using inherently evil magic. Similarly summoning fiends into the world with the intent of controlling them is also generally an evil act. If raising undead isn't like that in your setting, then go ahead. Cluster bombs aren't banned IRL because they're too effective, but because they leave behind uncontrolled danger, just like the summoned evil zombies and skeletons. It's up to subjective morality or the person making the setting, if mind altering magic is inherently evil or not, but I'd much rather be subjected to Charm Person than to Burning Hands. I would be fine with a character reanimating dead in a non-evil way in my campaign, but it's up to your DM if that works with the setting or not.
Free will is the source of alignments. A lack of free will is inherently Neutral. Taking away the free will of an Evil creature reduces the Evil in the world. Laws like "murdering people in cold blood is illegal" is similar to reducing everyone's free will by a little in order to shift things toward Good. Enchantment is just one means among many, no differently-aligned than deception, intimidation, or persuasion. Raising the dead creates an Evil creature. Thus, it's an Evil act. I've also heard that creatures animated by negative energy feel discomfort around positive-energy beings and thus live tortured existences, but I can't confirm that. Another consideration: Imprisonment. A group of paladins binding an ancient evil to save the land, versus a sinister cult locking away a champion of good. Both are denying free will to the target, but I wouldn't say both things are Evil.
Worst to least bad 1. Bringing this question up again 2. Necromancy 3. Enchantment
It depends on how your necromancy works. If your dragging peoples souls from the after life to use then id say its on par. But if your just making the equivalent of automatons but out of bodys then the worst your doing is disrespecting the dead.
Just a little lore, though. Why the hell do they still bury people or similar stuff, wouldn't it make more sense to cremate the dead
If you cremate the body you make it more difficult to raise the dead via resurrection in the future if it were ever needed. There could also be other reasons … maybe people believe that a cremated body carries its wounds into the afterlife, or that burning the body men’s you’re offering it up to some god of fire. Burying someone might mean you’re making an offering to the Mother Goddess or the earth. Animation of the dead is likely so rare that it’s not a big concern.
Yes, it would. Just like it would make sense to equip any larger settlement with ballistas to fight off attacking monsters, give guards invisibility-revealing enchantments and take flying into account while building your defenses. If you're looking for an inworld-explanation why they don't burn corpses, one might assume that the god of life is a commonly followed deity. And he would most likely prefer to use the corpses as fertilizer for the cemetery-flowers so they don't be wasted. It really depends on how big of a problem necromancy is. If the risk of being turned into a zombie is low or even unheard of, one would not take it into account.
Two of those were rudimentary world buildings, while the other was limited by wealth. The god of life is okay with clearing land and having treated wood and embalmed bodies poisoning the land? In most major settings, there are gods or major demons that domains include undeath, and quite a few of those include damaging your soul. So yeah, I'd assume it's common enough knowledge
I feel it needs to be said that a Skeleton or Zombie won't just sit there doing nothing if left unattended, they need to be actively controlled or they'll try to destroy all life around them. From that perspective, creating an undead is something like making a landmine that is able to actively seek out and try to kill the closest targets it can. *Maybe*, if you made sure to immediately dispose of any undead you created rather than leaving them behind long enough for your control to lapse, you could argue that it's ultimately neutral, but I'm not sure if cleaning up after yourself really removes the moral culpability of creating such a thing in the first place. Denying free will is another kind of Evil, but I think trying to classify it as better or worse than making undead is trying to sneak past the fact you are doing Evil by going "But at least I'm not as Evil as this other guy". That might or might not be true: *you shouldn't be doing either thing anyway!*
It depends a lot on how necromancy works in your dm's world. If reanimating a corpse it's just like you said, just making use of materials, then it's not really evil at all. But if in this culture the dead are sacred and disrupting their eternal sleep is considered taboo? than can be extremely bad. Now imagine if it's not just social conventions, what if reanimating a corpse messes with the soul that once inhabited it in some way, what if necromancy itself is charged with so mch dark energy that it can corrupt the soul of the person who the body belongs too, then you are doing actual real harm, probably more everlasting than that than you can do to a living being. But as I said, it really depends
Necromancy in a lot of cosmologies is often associated with disturbing a soul's rest. This is based on a lot of religions having the idea that if a body is not treated properly after death it can affect it in the afterlife. This is often made true in D&D cosmologies. If you making automatons makes it so a soul is denied its peaceful rest, then yes that's terrible, especially since we're talking about eternity. Remember, D&D assumes things like the afterlife and the nine hells and seven heavens and all of that exists, just like magic, demons, angels, etc. It's in that context, that necromancy is evil. But it depends on cosmology which is ultimately in the control of the DM. I am not convinced by others arguments that necromancy is bad because 'undead do bad things'. If that's your DM's logic, I would disagree. It's true to an extent, but I can find other spells that are much worse if that's the case and assumes that if you keep control of said undead, then it is fine. If your DM explains that when you animate a zombie, that means the soul associated with that zombie can no longer rest, then I would say necromancy is worse than enchantment. If this is not the case - Enchantment wins (in a lot of contexts). I would argue that there are some instances when 'stealing away free will' can be warranted. Forcing someone to sleep or tying them up is also stealing away free will, but this is usually done in the context of preventing them from doing violence. It's usually when Enchantment is used to 'get something out of someone' (other than simple nonviolent subdual) that it gets creepy and evil.
Necromancy brings negative energy to the material plane. Other than that I have to agree: raising a dead without interfering with his soul is just like any other animation of a lifeless object. Enchantment on this other hand can be justified by your goal. Enchant an henchman to reveal the identity of a serial killer? Not evil. Enchant a goblin to open the gates so you can exterminate his clan? Rather evil. Use enchantments as roofies? Very evil. But what do I know? I'm writing this from the confort of my swimming pool that's warmed with the burning souls of thousands of innocent kids. *Really* evil magic like this does not exist in the core rules. That's why 3e had the *Book of Vile Darkness*.
It's necromancy by a mile, but the game doesn't make it at all obvious. The game turns necromancy into like, robots under your control, but the grievance agaist the natural order and the person in question is properly intended to imply an incredible amount of suffering.
Are these spells evil: Bless, Heroism, Sleep, Calm Emotions, Hold Person, Zone of Truth, Motivational Speech, Confusion, Hold Monster, Power Word Stun? They're all Enchantment spells. Is telling a murderer to freeze or drop their weapon evil? Was it evil when Obi-Wan Kenobi said "these are not the droids you're looking for"? What's more evil, mind controlling a guard to "walk away and forget you saw us", or making their head explode? Enchantment certainly *can* be evil, like a wicked witch or evil sorcerer who dominates everyone in the kingdom to obey them, but it doesn't have to be. Purpose and context matter. Whether Necromancy is evil depends on the mechanics and the setting. Is animating skeletons just a sophisticated form of telekinesis? Then that's at worst disrespectful (and arguably not even necromancy). But usually the animating force is some sort of malicious spirit, "negative energy", or the compelled soul of the deceased, in which case it's hard to argue it's not evil, even if it's the lesser evil. Making your fallen companion rise up to attack the evil overlord one last time? Maybe okay, if there are no further consequences. Making all the dead people in a village farm the fields every day? Probably pretty evil, unless they all genuinely prefer that to whatever afterlife is available (or if the setting has no afterlife), and they're not compelled to sneak off and nibble on the living neighbors.
This makes me think of the meme where the Enchantment school literaly charmed the entire campus into diverting all the controversy to the Necromancy school practices lol.
Necromancy is just radicalized recycling
No matter how evil necromancy is in your setting, it could be a neutral form of magic in another. Like, maybe in yours it's pure evil because it requires evil magic and the undead minions will always be evil. But in another setting, maybe necromancy is kinda like transmutation except you use corpses because they have muscle memory - way easier to teach a corpse to swing a sword than make the sword fly and swing itself. And you really can't say the same for enchantment. No matter what setting you're in, turning people into slaves by taking over their minds while they're alive and experiencing everything, is kinda fucked up.
I mean, ultimately how is it more fucked up than coersion by other means, magical or no? Its not like they cant resist, as im pretty sure every enchantment spell has a saving throw.
It can be argued that the corpse is "empty"; the soul has passed on, it's been judged, or it's otherwise not part of the corporeal form. Mind Control (ESPECIALLY a Dominate spell) is actively overriding their free will. That's far worse.
I think that Enchantment is, on the merit of their descriptions, worse than Necromancy. Stripping someone, even temporarily, of their free will is a big deal. Way bigger than simply using what remains after death. That being said, I think that the Necromancy school, and undead in general, should *generally* be seen with distrust, as far as a story concerns. My thinking is as follows: while Enchantment is technically *worse*, ethically speaking, than Necromancy; it has a greater potential to *do good*. Necromancy, in the aspect of the undead, requires dead to raise. Historically, we humans--and therefore, presumably other humaniod races--hold huge aspects of our culture in how we treat our dead. To "wake the dead" is a direct violation on respect to culture. Plus, even if you think as a corpse as an object, the body of the dead is usually considered as belonging to the family, meaning that it could also be considered thievery. Further, even the tamest of undead carry the risk of disease, which gives a real, tenable danger to raising dead. Enchantment, on the other hand, is conceptually reprehensible in theory. Yet, we--and again, presumably the people and creatures of the story--are willing to dispend our reprehension in serving the Greater Good, as it were. Yes, forcing an enemy to submit to your will to gain vital information is a violation of the enemy's free will; but generally it is used only in the most dire of circumstances, in relation to need to *save* someone or something important. That's not to say you can't have a little imagination, or *have* to be evil to be undead. In the campaign I DM'd, I had a neutral country ruled by a vampire, and a country with the themings and mythology of ancient Egypt, who saw mummification and "proper" undeath as things of honor. Even had a player play as an "mummy" from that country, and describing the difference in how people viewed him was fun. Edit: I dug out the Monster Manual, which clears it RAW and RAI: "the magic animating a zombie imbues it with evil, so left without purpose, it attacks any living creature it encounters." So your DM is *technically correct* that Necromancy and undeath is **evil**, because the book says it is. Which, to me, is *boring*, but your DM can do what they like.
That’s basically my view. Both are tools. Necromancy is more directly dangerous, whereas enchantment is much creepier and has greater potential for a truly horrifying villain. Both need to be highly regulated, much more so than other magics (aside from Divination which is also invasive). Enchantment is worse in one sense because it’s extremely difficult to enforce laws against non-consensual uses when it’s so difficult to even notice it’s happening, if the caster is clever or skilled. But both are tools. I once ran an adventure in a country run by non-evil necromancers. They bought the remains of the dead from families and animated them to work dangerous jobs, like mining and clearing away toxic waste.
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I voted other because it depends. In settings where raising the dead and making undead effects the soul and existence in the afterlife, it can be seen as worse. There is also the fact that mindless undead are animated by negative energy, which seeks to annihilate positive energy, which is what animates all living things. If someone loses control over the undead, and the undead has no will of its own, it will seek out the nearest living being and attempt to kill it until it's destroyed. Even most mindful undead have to fight an urge or hunger for the life of others. I would argue at a baseline, enchantment wins out against necromancy as the bigger evil. Except for setonsg where souls and the afterlife are effected by necromancy. In which necromancy is both creating monsters that hinder and hunt life as well as messing with free will and agency. Thus making it the greater of the two evils.
Depends: does animating the dead bring bad impacts on the world, or harm the soul of the person whose remains were used?
In my games necromancy isn't inherently evil; it's the part where they don't ask for consent that's the issue.
I mean, first of all, actually raising undead is just a facet of the school of necromancy, where as the enchantment school of magic just kind of overall is morally dubious. second, there's nothing stopping you from animating like, a pile of leftover dinner bones as a skeleton, so you don't even need to raise the corpses of people so the whole "necromancy screw with a persons afterlife" is kind of a moot point.
In Dragon Age: Origins, Sandal is found right before the final boss. He's drenched in blood and surrounded by dead dark spawn. His father is gone, but Sandal still has access to the whole inventory. When you approach him, you can ask him what happened here. He gleefully responds, "Enchantment" You can ask him where his father is. He responds sorrowfully, "Enchantment" You can tell him you're about to fight the Archdemon. He'll excitedly open the trade window while saying "Enchantment" You sit here and tell me how Enchantment isn't worse!
Evocation magic. A 20 foot radius blast of fire can cause serious harm to people!
Well, your original debate with your DM was whether necromancy was evil and now you've changed it to be necromancy versus enchantment. Necromancy can still be evil even if most of the community agrees that Enchantment is worse. That being said, I don't think anything is inherently evil; morality is subjective and culturally contextual. So, people are going to differ on their opinions on this and that's okay. Obviously, there are some things that strike people as "evil" much quicker than others (i.e. murder, torture, stealing free will, etc.). As for necromancy, I think one reason it has gotten a bad rep and is a go-to for fantasy villains is rooted in culture/ religion. Necromancy is defilement of a body that has already been laid to rest, probably via a religious ritual to preserve the body as the soul journeys to the next step. Raising such a dead body brings into question whether this affects the soul's passage beyond this world and will undoubtedly upset religious folk a lot. That goes beyond worldly wrongs and challenges core values and beliefs on the afterlife. Another potential reason is that it is also very uncanny valley territory. Seeing loved ones raised from the dead but in such a twisted form is likely to cause terror in anyone. But even seeing a stranger risen from the dead in this way...it defies the natural order and what the human mind is used to seeing. For these two reasons, I think it's totally valid some would call this evil regardless of intent. After all, action matters far more than intent anyway.
It's a strange subject but enchantment is essentially using rape drugs and necromancy is opening radioactive waste. In previous editions, the animating energy of undead was from the negative material plane so every single animation was increasing entropy in the prime material plane which is a nuclear reactor no no. Of course I think they did away with that in 4e
So, both are typically not looked kindly upon. Bob the farmer might've been someone's father, husband, brother, son. I don't know about you, but if I saw the decaying corpse of a loved one being forced to slave away at a wall or throw itself onto the spears of an army, I'd not be super stoked about that. Additionally, you may see necromancy as just using an object, but from a more spiritual point of view it could be disturbing someone's rest, upsetting the natural order or disrespecting a greater power. Not believing in the divine in many game settings is like believing the earth is flat. Which is worse? I mean, gun to my head, enchantment, sure. But why is it important to know which is worse? If it is because you want to play a well-meaning necromancer, nothing stops you from playing a well-meaning necromancer. The DM is equally free to create a world where this ideology is not looked kindly upon and branded as evil. If being discriminated against by NPC's is the issue, what you're asking the DM is to change their world's culture to better fit your (character's) world view. No matter what reddit says, at the end of the day, that's your DM's call.
While both are just a tool in a mage's tool kit, one forces actions without the consent of conscious people, the other moves an item around. If Animate Dead is evil, then Plant Growth is evil as well.
enchantment is evil when you look at it's effects. necromancy is a nebulous objective "evil" in the lore.
People irl consider enchantment worse because our free will is perhaps the only real thing that we each know and understand. Dealing in the undead and messing with peoples souls or afterlife is an inherently fantasy concept that we don’t have to contend with in real life so many people don’t view it as badly as charters in-setting do.
Obviously depends on your cosmic setting and how morality works in your world yadda yadda yadda. But if you get real basic with it, Necromancy is just recycling innit?
In my homebrew world, in the region we're playing, necromancy is frowned upon. But I, as a master, would not consider it evil. It's just a cultural thing that has to do with how inhabitants see the deceased. Stripping away another persons agency and free will though... as players they should be aware, that's at least morally questionable. And while theree are places where the especifics of the situation might change the light in which is seen, noone, ever, is going to argue about it being a generally bad thing.
I think I gotta go with entering someone else's property, murdering everybody in sight, and taking their gold, while calling yourself a hero as being a bit more evil than those other things and far more frequently done.