Paradox,
Completely disagree with most of your assumptions, mainly because elementals have both, a charisma score and an INT score, but...
My fourth assumption is that animating a dead body would require as much, if not more, intricate control over the form. Based on that, it would require the binding of something in a similar vein as an elemental is to a construct. But placing an elemental into a body is very costly and creates a flesh golem.
This.
Your further assumptions would explain why 'Animate Dead' is evil.
However, a corpse is an object, and majority of undead are animated corpses.
Skeletons are the animated bones of the dead, mindless automatons that obey the orders of their evil masters.
A skeleton is seldom garbed in anything more than the rotting remnants of any clothing or armor it was wearing when slain. A skeleton does only what it is ordered to do. It can draw no conclusions of its own and takes no initiative. Because of this limitation, its instructions must always be simple.
Zombies are corpses reanimated through dark and sinister magic.
Because of their utter lack of intelligence, the instructions given to a newly created zombie must be very simple.
Of course, reading this stricktly tells us skeletons only obey orders of _evil_ masters and that 'animate dead' is 'dark and sinister' magic.
I would like to note that Dark Is Not Evil.
Sinister... well, one of it's meanings is 'left-handed.' The word itself is just flavor.
Curiously, skeletons and zombies have a charisma score, meaning they have some desire to do something.
Okay, Libris Mortis, which should have been the first thing to look at, lists the following:
- Evil spirits animating an empty container, able to re-awaken some of the personalities and memories stored in the body.
This would support the "evil" part of animating undead, as the necromancer calls an evil being to permanently dwell in the world, even
if strictly bound to the necromancer's command.
-- In some scenarios of the above, the original spirit _might_ be trapped in the corpse with the evil spirit.
- Suffusing the corpse with enough negative energy to animate it. This would be a neutral scenario.
- Linking the corpse to Negative Energy Plane, and this link constantly draining the material world of energy, this flow animating the corpse. This would be another evil act, but roughly equal to leaving a decanter of endless water open and upside down.
These, really, are the options available. The neutral option is the one that is strictly speaking, supported by RAW... up to a point, the point being the EVIL tag in animating spells. Return to the Tomb of Horrors took the third view on the subject, mostly.
The third option would make animating the dead farmer a bad idea, as it's unlikely any ground he's worked on for any length of time would produce much of a harvest. On other hand, negative energy bursts, Inflict spells and such would implicate that negative energy IS in fact, an energy, not a void.
This.. makes the first option the most likely, actually. This makes the creation of the undead a slightly evil act ( especially from a fresh corpse, where it risks trapping the soul, ) but makes skeleton farmers basically acceptable, and roughly equal to using a tool whose creation required an evil act - any act _done_ with the tool itself carries no taint of it's creation.
