system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[DnD Forgotten Realms]Dead Souls eventually lose their memory and identity and merge into the plains of their afterlife. Except for special exceptions and divine favorites. Given that fact, is it really immoral to use the souls of condemned criminals as a necromantic power source?

The afterlife kind of sucks. If you are sufficiently evil to go to the hell's or the abyss, have fun with that. Everyone else for the most part eventually becomes a husk devoid of its original identity until they eventually merge into the essence of the plane of their afterlife.  A husk which has none of your thoughts, feelings or emotions is not you anymore then your skin or hair cells are you after they fall off.  There are exceptions, Divine Servants of the Gods who make them happy and other special exceptions. But those are exceptions. The above is the general rule.


Obviously it would be immoral to inflict pain upon a soul and cause it to suffer. But there are many powerful necromantic spells which use souls as a power source in a destructive manner, destroying the soul in the process. Therefore I pose this question to you.  Given the fact that criminals condemned to die justly for terrible crimes will in short order cease to exist anyway, why shouldn't mortal necromancer's use the arcane power contain within their souls as a power source for the betterment of society?
gpt
In DnD, preventing a soul from going to its rightful destination is an evil act.

This doesn't have to do with the consequentialist results of actions, but that all undead register as "Evil" by the spell Detect Evil.

If this is confusing, imagine that "Good" and "Evil" aren't moral calls but useful names for allegiance to either the extraplanar forces that are native to the positive energy plane or to the forces of hell and the abyss.

Could you still make a necromancer who is a virtuous person and views it morally good to use condemned criminals souls as a power source? Sure.

Are the gods associated with the positive energy plane going to approve? Hell no.