How is the Negative energy plane evil? It is -harmful-, but we do not characterize fire as evil, because it burns things, nor do we consider storms evil because theyare destructive. Furthermore, we eat meat. That is "Draining the lives of others" is it not? Does that mean every paladin should fall because he had a good steak? And don't say "because they prey on humans", because there is nothing that says that the undead could not use common livestock, like we do. Not RAW, anyway.
The Negative Energy Plane is a barren, empty place, a void without end, and a place of empty, endless night. Worse, it is a needy greedy plane, sucking the life out of anything that is vulnerable. Heat, fire, and life itself are all drawn into the maw of this plane,
which always hungers for more. ... It is a dark, empty place, an eternal pit where a traveler can fall until the plane itself steals away all light and life.
What's good about any of that? Seriously. Point to one HAPPY thing about any of that.
Fire consumes, but it gives something back.
Storms can destroy, but they can also bring water which is life.
We eat meat and turn that meat into something else. More of us.
The negative material plane is the place where the laws of conservation of energy and matter stop working. It Destroys. Period. Here stuff ends and does not come back. Ever. No, really. It doesn't. This is it. Buh-bye. Game over. The End.
Evil is being selfish. This entire PLANE is selfish. Note, I did not say that it is TEH EVAL! I said it isn't good. This plane is not good. At all. Nope.
I'm not even going to pretend you would be willing to pay 50 GP in material components to get a human commoner zombie. Necromancy is expensive . Furthermore, someone has to direct the completely mindless skeletons and zombies in performing the jobs, and highly trained clerics are also expensive. it is far cheaper to simply hire peasants, even over time.
It's 25 gp/hd for animate dead. And a Fell Animate Acid Splash is 3rd level and will turn a 12 headed hydra into your personal Zombie Slave if you time it JUUUUUUST right, free-o-charge. All I gotta do is find you, knock you out, drag you home, tie you down, and bleed you. Bleed you REEEEEEEEEL Slow... Then, just before you die, Fell Animate Acid Splash right to the face. One Free Zombie. Then I just need to peel off all your skin to get to the good parts.
(Yeah, I can see why people would warm up to Necromancers.)
3rd level spells are 5th level wizards or clerics. Cheap. Control is not a concern.
A skeleton does only what it is ordered to do. It can draw no conclusions of its own and takes no initiative.
Open door when anyone approaches. The skull has one eye socket on one side, one eye socket on the other and just enough spine, shoulder, and arm to do the job. It will keep following orders, even if control is relinquished, because it's mindless. You just can't ever CHANGE those orders, once they are given.
Now the Skeleton powered cart, you'd need some sort of transmission, so you can take the skeletons in and out of gear, otherwise the cart would never stop. Those legs never stop pumping.Of course if you have an accident, armless skeletons might start running around after they break away from the bottom of your cart, but that's just a design flaw, not a problem with application.
Mindless undead are puppets animated through negative energy. The soul is not involved. That is not up for debate. Furthermore, you can't resurrect them because the body is not avalible, not because the soul is trapped. If you smashed the zombie dead, and you had strong enough magic, you could revive them. (raise dead wouldn't work, too much damage on the body)
No. What is up for debate is why people don't like the undead. I stated that people cannot be brought back from the dead while they are undead. EVER. As a cleric, I am trying to inspire faith in people. One way is by being someone they like. Another way is to give them something to FEAR. Now then... what boogieman could I use to scare the faithful into showing up to church and donating every week? Hmmmm...
Oh BTW,
This spell can also resurrect elementals or outsiders, but it can’t resurrect constructs or undead creatures.
Note, it does not say, It can make a new body if someone is a zombie. It says, IT CAN'T BRING BACK SOMEONE WHO IS UNDEAD. That means, if you die, and I animate your corpse as a zombie, your friends can WISH you a new body, but they can't put your soul back inside it until your Zombie Body is destroyed. Period. End of Statement. They can Wish the Zombie Dead, and that might even work, but while that Zombie body Exists, YOU CAN'T COME BACK.
Now then, many DMs ignore this. And I don't know if your soul is trapped in the zombie body. But by the rules, you're screwed. And note, clone would get around this by getting your soul into a new body before the zombie gets back up. But as per clone, all ties to the old body are severed when you activate a clone, so that animated corpse really ain't you, now is it?
BRAINS! BRRRAAAAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS! BRBBRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIINNNNNZZZZZZZZZZZZ! -Grab- CHOMP! *Gnaw* gnawgnawgnawgnawgnawgnaw....
Zombies are puppets with no sense of hunger. If you are implying ghouls, the faster, more intelligent zombie, nowhere is it stated that they must eat humanoid flesh. They should be destroyed because they are crazy, insane monsters, not because they eat meat.
I'm being funny. Mostly funny. It was a joke. This part:
BRAINS! BRRRAAAAINS! BRAINS! BRAINS! BRBBRRRAAAAAAAAIIIIINNNNNZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
And this part:
CHOMP! *Gnaw* gnawgnawgnawgnawgnawgnaw....
However, in retrospect, I will agree that this part:
-Grab-
Is not funny. Nope. That part was a total downer. I really shit the bed on that part of the joke. It seemed funny at the time, but I really flubbed the timing.
You see, you keep combining real world examples with gaming examples. So I thought it was okay to do the same.
Yay, shock tactics! You would do that if you were hungry enough.
No. I would never do that no matter how hungry I was. I would shoot myself, in the head, and end my pain and misery before I ever got that hungry. I like life, but I would not want to exist in that state for even a little while.
There are horrible disgusting monstrocities that seek to destroy all life. Plenty of creatures, both living and undead want to do that.
Uh, no. I disagree. You see, the living creature most likely wants to keep living after it's destroyed all other forms of life. It would like to be the last one left, but I'm sure it's plans don't involve suicide at the end.
However, simply because a creature has different biological requirements is not a reason to hate it. Being an insane paranoid hunter would be a reason to hate it. Point of fact, most undead -could- get by just fine without hurting anything other than livestock, the only reason they don't is the "lol, CE" bit inserted at the end of almost every one of thier stat blocks. Saying that undead physiology makes them inherently antagonist towards humankind is absurd. They are feared because they choose to put themselves at odds with us, not because they must.
One, it's not biological, it's magical. You seem to want to treat a vampire like he's infected with something. He's not. He's a bottomless pit. He takes everything and gives back nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Actually, the undead don't need to feed at ALL, when you read the actual write ups. A vampire doesn't need livestock. He doesn't need humans.He can sit in his coffin for a thousand years and pop up the next day without one negative to anything.
He just has an entire UNIVERSE OF NEGATIVE ENERGY poking him in the back of his brain saying, "G'won... you know you want to... eat just a little bit of life force. You'll feel better."
See, THAT'S the problem. You assume there is a conservation of matter an energy. There isn't. In the d20 universe, there is good and evil. Evil can win by destroying everything. Not, a planet laid waste, but actual NOTHING LEFT. No dust, no light, no information, nothing.
A singularity may crush you into a tiny dot, but there is at least something left. You continue to influence the universe by adding just a little bit of mass to it. You create just a little bit more gravitational pull.
The negative material plane doesn't even leave you that.
That said, spawn creating undead can die in a fire. Unless a Wight, say, breaks the neck of every cow it would feed off of so it cannot spawn, they simply cannot make a sustainable population. That, and the attitude of most spawn creating undead make them very unsuitable for close habitation with anything, period.
The wight doesn't need to eat anything. It eats because it WANTS to, not because it HAS to.
Your question was "Why are Undead so hated?" The answer is: The D20 universe is not the same as the real world. The laws of physics are not the same. Good and Evil are actual tangible things. Undead are usually evil, sometimes neutral, and only in extreme circumstances for limited periods of time, good. People don't like evil and fear that which is not like them. As a rule, the undead scare the crap out of them. Deal with it."
