Why are Undead so hated?

[whitetyger009]

my point is that his question is about why it IS not what it SHOULD BE.  if you want to go off on what it should be then you need a new thread.  if you want to talk about a homebrew then you need a new thread.  if you want to talk about ANYTHING but why it IS then you need a new thread.  this thread is not about what your private world is or will be or could be.  if you are taking the thread off on another topic then you need a new thread.  if you are talking about anything other than why it IS then you missed the point.

in addition his question was not just about 3.5 it was about undead in general under most games.

In general, Undead draw the ire and become the enemies of just about everyone.  Why?

In D&D and many systems, Undead tend to be Evil (just 'kuz).  They're common antagonists.  (Liches/Skeletons/Zombies are terrorizing the countryside/eating our young/making cookies without permission!  Oh NOES!)

There are often classes devoted to destroying/hampering Undead, and on a lesser scale, specific anti-Undead abilities.  (See Turn Undead and Radiant Servant of Pelor.)  These are usually more frequent than other anti-type abilities, except for maybe Dragons.  (I know of no official 3.x anti-Elemental or anti-Plant classes, except perhaps the Blighter and that, for me, doesn't count.)

Is it because Undead symbolize death?  Are we as players and GMs and humans so afraid of death that we want to hunt and destroy it at every opportunity?

Is it because Undead tend to be ugly, smelly, and disease-ridden?

so i will state it again sirpercival it looks like you need atleast 1 and possibly 2 new threads to deal with your (and others) wishes to talk about what could be or what should be.

[sirpercival]

Why does it need to be a new thread?  Discussing "why it is" as you say has a simple answer, which has already been reiterated: "because they wrote it that way".  Congratulations, discussion over.  Was there more to say on the matter?

Now, rather than splitting off into one or more other topics when there's been so much intertwined talk about what I'm saying, can we move on?

[whitetyger009]

Why does it need to be a new thread?  Discussing "why it is" as you say has a simple answer, which has already been reiterated: "because they wrote it that way".  Congratulations, discussion over.  Was there more to say on the matter?

Now, rather than splitting off into one or more other topics when there's been so much intertwined talk about what I'm saying, can we move on?

oh well in that case the answer is simple.  if you want to do it you go right ahead and have your homebrew do whatever it is you want with the undead mindless or otherwise.  call them good or neutral, make the spells of thier creation good or neutral, (you would ofcourse have to change the alighment of those undead gods to match) and while your at it call the negative energy plane the new carebears HQ.  since sirpercival is now happy i guess we can all move on and never address this thread again.

[Pencil]

(click to show/hide)

Is it wrong to find it more interesting wether a mindless undead is equal to a vibrator or not?

my point is that his question is about why it IS not what it SHOULD BE.  if you want to go off on what it should be then you need a new thread.  if you want to talk about a homebrew then you need a new thread.  if you want to talk about ANYTHING but why it IS then you need a new thread.  this thread is not about what your private world is or will be or could be.  if you are taking the thread off on another topic then you need a new thread.  if you are talking about anything other than why it IS then you missed the point.

You seem to fail to notice the connection between why it is and what it should be.

Why it is is,as sirpercival mentioned, because they wrote it that way.Or to a bit more exact because they defined them as evil and good people dont like the evil.(also defined in the game)

Now the next step in line is to ask WHY did they do it?(to answers this with "because they did" is retarded and circular)
Every time you ask WHY someone did something (or the motive behind an action) you need to examine their reasons and arguments.Doing this is basically saying "should this be the case?" or "does their reasoning work?"

So if you want to go any further than the trivial you have to question their arguments.
Hope I was clear.

[bhu]

In general, Undead draw the ire and become the enemies of just about everyone.  Why?

In D&D and many systems, Undead tend to be Evil (just 'kuz).  They're common antagonists.  (Liches/Skeletons/Zombies are terrorizing the countryside/eating our young/making cookies without permission!  Oh NOES!)

There are often classes devoted to destroying/hampering Undead, and on a lesser scale, specific anti-Undead abilities.  (See Turn Undead and Radiant Servant of Pelor.)  These are usually more frequent than other anti-type abilities, except for maybe Dragons.  (I know of no official 3.x anti-Elemental or anti-Plant classes, except perhaps the Blighter and that, for me, doesn't count.)

Is it because Undead symbolize death?  Are we as players and GMs and humans so afraid of death that we want to hunt and destroy it at every opportunity?

Is it because Undead tend to be ugly, smelly, and disease-ridden?

Undead are higher on the food chain than you are.  If you'll notice humans tend to see anything more powerful than themselves as evil so long as it requires them for sustenance.  It's about self preservation.  Also the undead tend to spread in a virus like manner.  Every one of us they kill joins their side.  You have in theory a fairly short period of time to curb stomp that before it gets out of hand.

[linklord231]

Whitetyger, one line in your post really jumped out at me and got me thinking.  Specifically, you said "you would ofcourse have to change the alighment of those undead gods to match (sic)."

Which of the Player's Handbook deities would be considered "Undead Gods," or "Gods of the Undead," as you probably meant?
Boccob probably doesn't care one way or the other about undead.  Some Liches might like him, but most would doubtless prefer Vecna.
Erythnul is the God of Slaughter.  You could argue that since Undead are good at slaughtering things, and have themselves been the subject of slaughter, he might like them.  But there's also the possibility that Erythnul considers Undead to be abominations that have escaped his domain - they are immune to Mind Affecting (and thus not subject to panic, one of Erythnul's favorite emotions), and they got back up after being killed.
Hextor is the god of conquest and tyranny.  He probably sees Undead as useful tools of war, but nothing more.
Nerull either loves or hates the Undead.  Since he's the Foe of Life, that probably means he likes Undead.  He's also worshipped by necromancers, so that should give us a clue as to his feelings towards Undead.  But at the same time, since he's the God of Death, how does he feel about those who have dodged his embrace?  Either he wants to see all life extinguished and replaced with Undeath, or he wants all living and undead things to be just dead.
St Cuthbert probably doesn't care about undead as a whole, but might empathize with specific ones.  Revenants, for example, un-live solely for retribution - one of St Cuthbert's highest ideals.
Vecna is literally an Undead God (he's an ascended Lich), so he probably doesn't hate the undead.  He probably doesn't favor them either, though; all he cares about is magic and secrets.
Wee Jas is most comparable to Nerull, and probably feels similarly with respect to the undead.  Since one of her titles is "Death's Guardian," she's more likely to hate them than not, in my opinion.

So there you go.  It seems to me that having some Undead be Neutral aligned wouldn't change much, because most Neutral or Evil gods have reasons to be their alignment independent of their feelings toward Undead.  The ones that already explicitly hate undead (Pelor and Obad-Hai, for instance) would hate undead even if they were Neutral. 

Oh, and please note that these interpretations are based solely on the brief descriptions on pgs 106-108 of the Player's Handbook.  If there is further information regarding certain deities' feelings toward undeath, please enlighten me. 

[bhu]

So Yes, undead are evil because there were created evil by the game designers. You cannot make Mindless Undead neutral and still be playing D&D. The cascade of changes required by that little alteration could change the alignment of several gods alone. It's not the same story. It's not the same message. It's a game mechanic. Like Armor Class, Hit Points, and BAB. You cannot change it without changing the entire alignment system.

So Yes, they are evil because the rules REQUIRE them to be evil. Nothing else fits.

You're forgetting tradition.  Dnd is at least loosely based on fantasy fiction which is based loosely on myth and legend.  In how many of those stories are undead the good guys?  Elves and Orcs fight each other in dnd because they did in Tolkein's stories (at least initially).  Similar themes abound in the game.  Vampires are evil in dnd because they're evil in just about all the origin myths regarding them.  Skeletons and zombies are evil because in fantasy fiction they've always traditionally been used that way by bad guys. 

The disconnect comes from the younger more modern audiences not having any connection or little exposure to the fiction that inspired much of 1E, which the later iterations are still based upon somewhat at least fluff wise.  The Lich for example comes from Clark Ashton Smith's stories.  Your average 1 or 2E grognard knows this.  How many kids under 20 have ever even heard of Smith?  The writers come from an older generation and still remember teh roots of the various concepts in dnd, and have forgotten their younger audiences dont. 

[DonQuixote]

The Lich for example comes from Clark Ashton Smith's stories.  Your average 1 or 2E grognard knows this.  How many kids under 20 have ever even heard of Smith?  The writers come from an older generation and still remember teh roots of the various concepts in dnd, and have forgotten their younger audiences dont.

Russian folktales would like to have a word with you.  Koschei the Deathless was one of the earliest portrayals of a lich-like entity.

Also, didn't Smith use the word "lich" to refer to pretty much any undead?

[Bozwevial]

Also, didn't Smith use the word "lich" to refer to pretty much any undead?

I think so. I know Lovecraft used it at least once in a closer sense, but that was a necromancer's spirit possessing the corpse of the narrator's friend.

[bhu]

Koschei's appearance is never given in the stories though he is usually depicted as an old man.  He may inspire the Liches phylactery but he himself is not undead.

Smith did indeed use Lich as a term for most undead, but the concept of a Lich as a magic user seeking eternal life through undeath or returned from the dead as is presented in dnd comes straight from fiction wrote by him Howard, Lovecraft, Lieber, and Fox.  In fantasy fiction at least I've never seen the term used before them (though I'm sure they based it on something).

[sirpercival]

oh well in that case the answer is simple.  if you want to do it you go right ahead and have your homebrew do whatever it is you want with the undead mindless or otherwise.  call them good or neutral, make the spells of thier creation good or neutral, (you would ofcourse have to change the alighment of those undead gods to match) and while your at it call the negative energy plane the new carebears HQ.  since sirpercival is now happy i guess we can all move on and never address this thread again.

First of all, thank you for your condescension, it was refreshing amidst all the monotonous reasonable discussion.  I probably shouldn't bother trying to continue, since you've degenerated to "you're not allowed to talk about things I don't want to talk about", but I'm an optimist.  And anyway maybe someone else will respond meaningfully.

Second, the undead gods are not mindless, I would hope.  So no change of alignment would be necessary.

Third, I actually do have a homebrewed undead in my Magipunk Campaign Setting called the Lifetorn.  However, they're not mindless, and other non-evil intelligent undead exist in the literature so there's no real conflict there.  The relevant alignment text is:

Lifetorn are generally neutral.  The stigma attached to being Lifetorn, as well as the lessened degree of empathy with living creatures, can often turn them to evil; however, there are some Lifetorn that genuinely care about improving the lives of others.

Lifetorn are created as a cheaper alternative to Raise or Rez, and the transition is usually done by the choice of the family or the will of the subject, when the family has no other alternative (in the case of a sole breadwinner in an extremely poor family, for example).  They aren't evil, but they are unsavory and and often embarrassing.  They're a source of cheap labor for people with few scruples.  The transition to Lifetorn is essentially just a reallocation of power source, from positive energy to negative energy.

[whitetyger009]

sirpercival there you go twisting my words. 

first i have stated several times that you can go off and do what you want in your homebrew.  this statement is then followed by stating that it doesn't change anything about how the rules work elsewhere.  and since this was a thread on the basic system in general your homebrew should have its own thread.  you are more than free to talk about whatever it is you wish to talk about however it should be brought to your attention (and that is what i did) that the discussion has moved off topic.  the discussion about what things SHOULD/COULD BE needs its own thread.  however as you mentioned you are more than happy to hijack this thread. 

second (and this is for linklord also) while god are not mindless they tend to have something in common with thier worshipers.  (linklord i will not argue about the gods in the phb but then again i never made that refrence you did) further more i will not talk about this further on this thread leading it even more off topic than it has already gone.  as i stated it needs a new thread.

third woop-tee-do.  if you already have your own game why do you have a need to hijack this thread?  no don't answer me its a retorical question. 

since you have pointed out that the original point of this thread has been fulfilled then any further posts on this thread only lead it further into the offtopic realm.  (though i greatly enjoy the tangent on the evil of sex objects.)

[littha]

Oh, and please note that these interpretations are based solely on the brief descriptions on pgs 106-108 of the Player's Handbook.  If there is further information regarding certain deities' feelings toward undeath, please enlighten me.

I know as far as Wee Jas goes she is ok with undead provided they are volunteers rather than just some random corpse. Specifically the church of Wee Jas will raise the corpses of Ruby Knight Vindicators as undead provided that they weren't completely incompetent.

I always wanted to play a LG paladin of Wee Jas, it could be interesting to see what their opinion on undead would be.

[veekie]

In-game considerations:
Mythology source
-The dead walking is rarely a good thing in pretty much any mythology. They are a sign that something is very wrong with the world. However, one oddity is that the walking dead are often placed in the victim role as well, something the game aspect of things don't reflect much. They are also bringers of wisdom and warning, assuming you weren't the one who got on their bad side.
-Abrahamic faiths further cemented this by wiping out/demonizing the native myths, which killed off whats left of the beneficent dead and linked them strongly to demons. Morality in D&D is related to Abrahamic morality(which makes sense in a way), so everything follows.

The Smiting Issue
-As the traditional foe of the undead, clerics and paladins were determined to be super effective against the undead. As their abilities were often alignment based, mook undead tended to be immune.
-Undead are very directly opposite archetypical clerics really. They inflict a large variety of status effects which clerics can/must fix.
-This winds up with the 3E issue of even mindless undead being evil, to allow Good divine casters to be even more effective on them.

In The Fluff
-Natural undeath arises from generally, horrible deaths. The creature that results is not going to be a stable, well adjusted being for the most part even before they add the hungers and alignment changes.
-Curse-origin undeath are likewise, intended as a punishment. As most of these punishments are directed to evil individuals to begin with, it only made things worse.
-Artificial undead were in the fluff, devised by Orcus, a demon. It is reasonable to expect then, that the spells to create them are evil, after all he made them that way, possibly drawing upon his power to function. Meanwhile, as the forces of Good are reluctant to draft people who are unable to give consent, and thus do not sponsor any equivalent magic on a large scale.
-Self-inflicted undeath meanwhile is a mixed bag. Most of these stem from selfish intent, and requires evil acts to attain without divine sponsorship. They're rare though, and thus don't really feature into common perceptions.

Why NOT hate
-Sentient undead, except at the lowest end, are actually more compelling and attractive than they were in life as a result of raised charisma scores.
-Undead without feeding habits make very good allies and servants. Even evil can have friends, which makes it a good idea to befriend one if you have no conflicting interests.

Meta-game considerations:
Undead are by default, easy Acceptable Enemies.
-They are already dead, so you can't be too wrong to kill them.
-Low end undead(zombies, skeletons, ghouls) are usually disgusting, they combine the natural reaction to decomposition with the effect of being ALMOST human(unlike say, a tree, which is clearly not human and never was to begin with) to generate a visceral 'wrongness' reaction. As humans we know lots of the stuff they have outside should be firmly inside.
-Contagious undead(ghouls, vampires, wights) add the fear of corruption and disease to the mix.
-Feeding undead puts people firmly on the prey side, which adds another layer of primal unease. Nobody likes being on the menu.
-They make easy recurring enemies. If they can beat death once, they can do it again.

They last forever.
-Undead with return conditions(liches, ghosts and even vampires(to an extent)) don't expire easily. When players can solve most problems with a hefty dose of overkill, it just plain won't stick.
-They can be extremely ancient, yet humanoid enough to be relatable, unlike dragons and Outsiders. Age also means power, partly from endless training for the sentients, which makes them a parallel for player competencies.
-They can stand guard indefinitely, often over their own belongings. When PCs break into tombs to take their stuff they can respond to the home invasion none the worse for the passage of time.
-They're for the most part, resistant to the cheap takedown methods due to their buffet of immunities. So they make good boss-types, a huge wall of hp lets them last as long as you need them to.

They make a good story.
-Especially for unwilling undead, the process involves a nasty death at some point. This can evoke empathy.
-Some undead can pass for human, vampires and liches do not necessarily have to rot. They make a handy Enemy Among Us.

[Chrononaut]

In general, Undead draw the ire and become the enemies of just about everyone.  Why?

In D&D and many systems, Undead tend to be Evil (just 'kuz).  They're common antagonists.  (Liches/Skeletons/Zombies are terrorizing the countryside/eating our young/making cookies without permission!  Oh NOES!)

There are often classes devoted to destroying/hampering Undead, and on a lesser scale, specific anti-Undead abilities.  (See Turn Undead and Radiant Servant of Pelor.)  These are usually more frequent than other anti-type abilities, except for maybe Dragons.  (I know of no official 3.x anti-Elemental or anti-Plant classes, except perhaps the Blighter and that, for me, doesn't count.)

Is it because Undead symbolize death?  Are we as players and GMs and humans so afraid of death that we want to hunt and destroy it at every opportunity?

Is it because Undead tend to be ugly, smelly, and disease-ridden?

Might as well chuck my two cents into the issue.

Humans find rotted corpses in general and human ones especially repellant, to the point where something that's not recognizably human (a skeleton - you'd not think that was inside people on the street without being told!) induces the same primal fears.

This is because we are not carrion animals. Behavioural microbiology at work - eating rotted meat is an EXCELLENT way to die of food poisoning, and just touching a recently dead human is a good way to contaminate you with all the lovely human-eating bacteria going wild in the corpse.

What's more scary than a dead loved one who, simply by touching their body, can wrack or kill you outright? A dead loved one who gets up and chases you down to do it, of course. Folklore undead are all pretty similar - from Jiang-Shi to the Ukranian vampire (which informed Bram Stoker to an extent) they all tend to be corpses near or at rigor mortis who get up and attack you. If humans WERE carrion animals, we probably would eat our dead and this discussion would be moot - a corpse holds no fear to a vulture, so they wouldn't have mythological dead vultures getting up and attacking. (If anything, an undead vulture is probably the promised land. Food that actively seeks you out for you to eat it!)

 The difference between Raise Dead bringing you back with one negative level and Create Undead bringing you back as an outwardly identical corpse creature (BoVD template, think 'zombie that retains old self') is largely a matter of opinion at that point. So why hate undead? Well for one, making the dead walk is deeply unsettling and violates corpse taboos, which are found in every human society, unless you bring them back looking identical, then it's totally awesome and you're a badass who 'beat death'.

This taboo is why mindless undead are treated as evil, the designers never stopped to question why a mindless servant would be thus. Mechanically a mindless undead is easier to make as a totally loyal but stupid piece of muscle compared to a golem, and the reason it's evil is that as we have established, it's violating taboo... so yeah as DM I would totally allot necromancy to the same stature as a coroner: distasteful to the majority but enough people want to pay for it, so...

As for why certain CLASSES hate the undead so much, I recall reading on RPG.net that the original cleric arose out of someone wanting to play an Abraham van Helsing type back in the game's inception to stop someone else's vampire from running roughshod over their party, so why CLERICS who by rights should either not turn or just turn a wide variety of things based on their beliefs all get turn undead: sacred cow legacy.

Incorporeal undead are a whole other kettle of fish and are really taken from completely different folklore than corporeal ones (it shows in their fluff origins) and should probably be treated as such. Historical Evil Intangible Forces (tm) were all conflated with undead when a lot of these dudes would be better served ruleswise by being incorporeal outsiders and just lining them up as an afterlife in the setting fluff. If you're tenaciously evil you can be a wraith instead of going to Carceri, say.

That's actually another gulf with the core setting, afterlives are by definition life after death (undeath) but a petitioner in a plane is not undead... the only undead that seems to address this issue is a ghost, and frankly if you consult fluff, ghosts can get powers emulating the energy drain attacks of all the major incorporeal undead anyways, so really if you were trying to get a cohesive nature of incorporeal undeath down you'd put wraiths, spectres etc. down as variant ghosts.

[Sevash]

And as I'm reading this thread, an idea pops into my head.

Most of the discussion about whether something is "good" or "evil" is relative to the species of the person taking the action, in any given game.  Sure, we attach the same descriptor to it from our perspective...but to a mummy, many of the things that we consider "good" are actively detrimental to him regardless of his alignment.  He's probably tossing around some of the same questions we are, albeit not on an online message board (unless we're playing Urban Arcana, which means there's a cosmopolitan mummy waxing philosophical in a crypt that has internet access and oh god I want to play in your game).

Does this moral dichotomy work along other axes, too?  We know that there's a Law/Chaos component, but what about beyond that?  Should an Azer Paladin be able to smite water-based creatures because their classical elements are opposed?

[littha]

And as I'm reading this thread, an idea pops into my head.

Most of the discussion about whether something is "good" or "evil" is relative to the species of the person taking the action, in any given game.  Sure, we attach the same descriptor to it from our perspective...but to a mummy, many of the things that we consider "good" are actively detrimental to him regardless of his alignment.  He's probably tossing around some of the same questions we are, albeit not on an online message board (unless we're playing Urban Arcana, which means there's a cosmopolitan mummy waxing philosophical in a crypt that has internet access and oh god I want to play in your game).

Does this moral dichotomy work along other axes, too?  We know that there's a Law/Chaos component, but what about beyond that?  Should an Azer Paladin be able to smite water-based creatures because their classical elements are opposed?

I had hoped this thread had died finally... in either case the argument against you is that D&D has moral absolutes and Good or Evil are cosmic energies. An angel is Good because they are literally formed from good itself.

[Sevash]

I had hoped this thread had died finally... in either case the argument against you is that D&D has moral absolutes and Good or Evil are cosmic energies. An angel is Good because they are literally formed from good itself.

Yeah, I hesitated to perform Raise Thread [Evil?], especially on a discussion that in some places was very venomous.  This is half me talking out of my ass, and half ruminating on (admittedly not very far-reaching) changes I might make in my own setting. 

Law/Chaos and Good/Evil have the ability to smite each other, because they are opposed in many different ways.  However, the basic elements of creation tend to have animosity towards each other as well.  Hence where the quotation marks come in for "good" and "evil" when it comes to different species.  Fire can be used to cook food or burn orphanages, it doesn't care.  But that puddle of water HAS TO GO.  Is there any reason for elemental-based creatures not to have abilities that explicitly harm their diametric opposites?

[littha]

I had hoped this thread had died finally... in either case the argument against you is that D&D has moral absolutes and Good or Evil are cosmic energies. An angel is Good because they are literally formed from good itself.

Yeah, I hesitated to perform Raise Thread [Evil?], especially on a discussion that in some places was very venomous.  This is half me talking out of my ass, and half ruminating on (admittedly not very far-reaching) changes I might make in my own setting. 

Law/Chaos and Good/Evil have the ability to smite each other, because they are opposed in many different ways.  However, the basic elements of creation tend to have animosity towards each other as well.  Hence where the quotation marks come in for "good" and "evil" when it comes to different species.  Fire can be used to cook food or burn orphanages, it doesn't care.  But that puddle of water HAS TO GO.  Is there any reason for elemental-based creatures not to have abilities that explicitly harm their diametric opposites?

Probably because classically the elements are the basic building blocks of the world. If they were naturally antagonistic to each other the prime material plane wouldn't exist.

I recall something from somewhere (no idea where honestly) about a human being being made of the four classical elements: Earth is the body, Water is the blood, Air is the breath and Fire is the Soul.

[veekie]

The classical elements are less opposed than categorical and descriptive. You thus define objects based on the elemental makeup, whether it is simple and comprised of few elements or complex and comprised of many.
They are pushing rather than annihilating forces, where they meet they form a new composite elements.
Positive and negative energy are opposed forces, in function. One creates and the other destroys, but in combination they represents the start and end of a cycle. One becomes the other.

The moral forces though are directly opposed to annihilate. They don't really have a physical foundation to build on. One can exist without the other and still have a world. Unlike the elemental forces as well, they have intrinsic motives and can be considered a demi-sentient force, not really self aware, but with goals and preferences(whereas the elements just Exist).

But that brings us back to the original point.
Created Undead are in game, a negative energy construct generated by an [Evil] effect. So their genesis is invariably tainted by that. Naturally arising undead tend to be created by [Evil] deeds(most commonly some form of unwilling death) are are likewise tainted. Its likely not related to negative energy other than the fact that they are incomplete beings, with only half the cycle of life to empower them. The prime mover to that is then the [Evil] effects and deeds that spawn them. Tendencies are just inherited, is all.