Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1030328Explain.

Theyve never been explicitly evil. Especially in BX D&D. Theres modules where the PCs can meet friendly undead and 5e even notes that sometimes skeletons rise from the grave to protect family. And in one of the modules the PCs can encounter non-evil lich and other undead. Some types have been stated as evil. but fluff text tends to get ignored right out the gate even then. And its changed sometimes from edition to edition.

Quote from: Omega;1030520Theyve never been explicitly evil. Especially in BX D&D. Theres modules where the PCs can meet friendly undead and 5e even notes that sometimes skeletons rise from the grave to protect family. And in one of the modules the PCs can encounter non-evil lich and other undead. Some types have been stated as evil. but fluff text tends to get ignored right out the gate even then. And its changed sometimes from edition to edition.

Couldn't you be evil but still defending something important to you or doing good through evil means? I can see that as a way to square the circle. Evil because of your essence, but not will.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1028932So it is an old convention that cure spells harm the undead and inflict spells heal them. Does anyone do anything different with this?

I ditch said concept altogether, precisely for the reasons you stated. Does that count as "different"?

This is why "good" and "evil" are not great alignments.  A Ghost can be Chaotic and Cursed and not necessarily 'evil', but still dangerous and wrong.

"good" and "evil" seem fine to me as alignments. Which is to say, if people treated them as what team you were on and/or what you could expect of said creatures to do in the world, rather than some genuine moral or cosmic judgment schema.

Steal or disrupt? Chaotic. Kill or terrorize? Evil. Give to or protect the needy and helpless (motivations irrelevant)? Good. Uphold society? Lawful. Huge number of edge cases and 'where does this fit' scenarios? Sure, what's the problem?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1030868This is why "good" and "evil" are not great alignments.  A Ghost can be Chaotic and Cursed and not necessarily 'evil', but still dangerous and wrong.

I totally agree:).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1030884"good" and "evil" seem fine to me as alignments. Which is to say, if people treated them as what team you were on and/or what you could expect of said creatures to do in the world, rather than some genuine moral or cosmic judgment schema.

Steal or disrupt? Chaotic. Kill or terrorize? Evil. Give to or protect the needy and helpless (motivations irrelevant)? Good. Uphold society? Lawful. Huge number of edge cases and 'where does this fit' scenarios? Sure, what's the problem?

Problems? How many do you want:D?

Well, going by the first part I bolded, the first problem would be "if your ruler is Lawful Good, why are all his soldiers Chaotic Evil"? (Because medieval armies didn't follow the 20th+ century laws of war, that's why. They are going to steal, kill, disrupt and terrorize, it's in the job's description. Even today's soldiers disrupt the functioning of other societies and kill people in them, it's just the stealing and terrorizing that are supposed to be absent).

Then we get to your "give to or protect the needy and helpless(motivations irrelevant)=Good". By your metric, my mafia boss who used to finance an orphanage is Good. Of course, he also sells drugs, which is where the money came from, but he seldom needed to kill or terrorize, preferring to bribe officials.
So he's Good...despite the fact that he did it for the PR, and actually used it as recruiting grounds for people with no other attachments except to his organisation:p? Oh, and he also upholds the traditional values. Like "code of honour", "men keeping their words", and the authority of the Church, thus becoming Lawful as well.
I'd say that any metric which makes my mafia boss Lawful Good is flawed;).

So, using alignments to predict the behaviour of people, and not their allegiance to cosmic forces, is a daft idea. And of the two parts of contemporary alignment (as opposed to the single-axis "lawful-chaotic" of the days of yore), "good, neutral, evil" is the less reliable metric. Because it's open to more interpretation.

I remember this was one of the things I ignored while GMing my level 1-25 3.x campaign, back in the day. I'm a holy/unholy guy, if it has to come up at all. That way i can have 'holy' undead if I need them (and I have them in my campaign as a PC race, the Living Dead). Now there are parts of the idea (and a heap of the 3rd ed monsters) I'd use if I was running some sort of D&D space fantasy, but these days that ground is covered by Stars Without Number, so it remains a hypothetical.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;1030527Couldn't you be evil but still defending something important to you or doing good through evil means? I can see that as a way to square the circle. Evil because of your essence, but not will.

No. Some were explicitly stated to be non evil aligned. One 5e example being Diderius the Mummy Lord. Because he was neutral alighned he carried that over as a mummy and his domain aura lacks the dark magic effects. There is also a friendly ghost.

Personally, i rather see undead as reacting like humans that are affected with a fatal sickness:
They heal from healing, and is hurt by damage.
However, if they are healed enough, they stop being undead and/or slowly starts losing their "undead" abilities.

This also means that a character that gets massively wounded might also get controlled my necromancers.

Do that sound like a new idea to you?

Quote from: AsenRG;1030984I'd say that any metric which makes my mafia boss Lawful Good is flawed;).

If the only purpose we are ascribing to the alignment tab is to predict future actions or which 'team' he's going to be on, how is it flawed?

Quote from: Gorilla_Zod;1031053I remember this was one of the things I ignored while GMing my level 1-25 3.x campaign, back in the day. I'm a holy/unholy guy, if it has to come up at all. That way i can have 'holy' undead if I need them (and I have them in my campaign as a PC race, the Living Dead). Now there are parts of the idea (and a heap of the 3rd ed monsters) I'd use if I was running some sort of D&D space fantasy, but these days that ground is covered by Stars Without Number, so it remains a hypothetical.

The Blood & Treasure Monster Tome included a good undead created from lawful/good clerics known as "holy bones." It worked pretty much like the deathless from 3e Book of Exalted Deeds and Eberron.

My campaign is set in a world called Rhûne.

Rhûne came into existence in 1983 when James "Jimmy" Benotti, who had just attended an Iron Maiden concert, stepped off a curb and into the path of an oncoming car.  Jimmy was hospitalized in critical condition with severe head trauma.  The doctors were able to save Jimmy's life, but he was left in a coma.  His doctors determine his brain was still active, but could not offer any clues when he might wake. Rhûne is the struggle for Jimmy's life, playing out inside his head in the form of a complete and fully realized fantastic world consisting of multiple dimensions.

If these dimensions were mapped, they would form two cones adjoined at their bases. At the "top" of this structure is the Plane of Positive Energy, which is commonly known as "The Source," and at the other end is the Negative plane, which is commonly known as "Oblivion."  Rhûne exists in the center of the plane formed where the two cones meet.  
 The space "above" Rhûne is a seemingly infinite number of "Heavens" populated by increasingly powerful beings, many of whom would qualify as "angels."  Some of these beings, the Archangels, are essentially infinitely powerful (but also largely incapable of travelling to lower dimensions) and serve in a leadership role, directing the action of the vast legions of the Angelic Host. The space "below" Rhûne is a seemingly infinite number of "Hells" populated by increasingly powerful beings, many of whom would qualify as "devils."  Some of these beings, the Archdukes of Hell, are essentially infinitely powerful (but also largely incapable of travelling to higher dimensions) and serve in a leadership role, directing the action of the vast legions of the Demonic Hordes.  These two forces are engaged in a war.  At stake in this war is the world of Rhûne itself, which represents Jimmy's fate.  The Archangels seek to "raise" Rhûne up into Heavens, while the Archdukes correspondingly seek to drag Rhûne down into Hell.  If the Angels succeed, Jimmy will wake up.  If the Archdukes succeed, Jimmy will die.

Because I don't run D&D, but Fantasy HERO, I don't have "cure" and "inflict" spells.  There are priests, and some priests do study and use magic (most do not), but they are not any different than any other kind of spell-caster.  Their spells don't come to them through prayer, they're just skills and techniques they've studied and mastered.  However there is an organization, the Holy Church of Simon Rex (which is very much an expy of the Catholic Church), which has access to a wide range of spells -- known collectively as "White Magic" -- that were taught to priests in ages past by various angels, and many priests study magic for the express purpose of communing with angelic powers and eliciting their aid in developing new spells, crafting magic items, etc.  Many of these spells involve channeling positive energy directly from The Source (hence it's common name), and since the energy of the source is the energy of pure life, it can be used to heal, even to restore life, and can also be used to inflict massive amounts of damage on beings and creatures infused with negative energy.

The danger of using these kinds of magic is that they require a high degree of purity of mind, body and soul, so "good priests" must live highly ascetic, moral lives -- "sin" or "corruption" has an almost physical reality, like a toxin that builds up in the blood, and when positive energy comes into contact with these impurities, it burns them out.  This is extremely painful, and can be fatal for the extremely corrupt.  For example, a cultist who worships the dark powers and does their bidding will be heavy with "negative karma," and casting even low power white magic spells would likely kill them.  A full-blown demon from the pits who tried to cast a simple healing spell would pretty much explode in a fireball.

True undead are always evil, as they are essentially "demons."  The pits of Hell are filled to the brim with damned souls and dark spirits that can sometimes escape from Hell by "sliding" into a corpse and animating it.  There are essentially three methods of achieving this:  1) they can be summoned into the corpse by a spell ("Animate Dead"), 2) they can spread by a form of contagion, or 3) they can form when the death is the result of a terrible and evil act, such as murder or suicide, though often there must be very specific circumstances surrounding the death.

Not all undead in Rhûne are true undead though.  Some skeletons (and mummies, but those are just skeletons that have been prepared differently) are not undead at all, but actually animated objects that are not "alive" nor "undead," merely animated.  This is as close as you get to "good undead."  They're more or less mindless, generally programmed to kill anything that enters a certain area.  There are three ancient cultures (none of which still exists) in my setting that often entombed a cadre of warriors who had been animated in this way with their fallen kings and nobles.  In one of these cultures, the Sphinx Empire (they're the mummifiers), a king's personal guard would all drink poison and follow their liege into death, while in the other two cultures fallen warriors would be collected from the battlefield and prepared, often years in advance of the death of their lord, and it was considered a great honor to be chosen for this Eternal Watch.  At least one Sphinx Empire tomb, built for an actual Sphinx princess, contained over 500 skeletal warriors.  An entire legion defending a mummified corpse.

Wizards hoping to blast one of these eternal guardians with positive energy is in for a nasty surprise, since they're animated by a fairly neutral form of magic and not living in any sense, so positive energy is about as effective on them as it is one rocks (which is to say not effective at all).

Quote from: Catelf;1031189Personally, i rather see undead as reacting like humans that are affected with a fatal sickness:
They heal from healing, and is hurt by damage.
However, if they are healed enough, they stop being undead and/or slowly starts losing their "undead" abilities.

This also means that a character that gets massively wounded might also get controlled my necromancers.

Do that sound like a new idea to you?

Yes, that certainly sounds unorthodox. But it's creative.