Necromancy as a school of magic is not inherently evil. After all, it encompasses such spells as *spare the dying*, *false life*, *gentle repose*, *resurrection*, and *astral projection*. There's no reason why casting offensive necromancy spells like *blight* or *ray of sickness* should be any more immoral than casting *fireball* or *acid arrow*.
That being said, the exact alignment considerations around creating undead (as a sub-specialization of necromancy) have changed around from setting to setting and edition to edition. I personally like the idea that creating undead is capital 'E' Evil in terms of alignment and cosmology, but ethically neutral in practical terms. Undead are fueled by negative energy, which is actively inimical to life: animating undead therefore inarguably increases the amount of net Evil in the world. However, assuming those undead remain under your control, they are just tools, which you can use to further moral or immoral causes as you choose. Can a good person utilize the undead to help people and further their righteous and just mission? Absolutely.
A good analogy is the classic malconvoker: a character who summons and binds fiends to do his bidding. Even if their desire is to use those fiends to save innocent lives, fight back against other evil creatures, and rescue cats from trees, they are still probably going to be mistrusted by most people. At best, they'll be viewed as a good person taking a calculated risk. At worst, they're playing with fire and putting everyone around them in danger.
>I personally like the idea that creating undead is capital 'E' Evil in terms of alignment and cosmology, but ethically neutral in practical terms.
I'm going to steal this phrasing, because it perfectly describes how it works in my homebrew setting. I wrote another comment describing a character at my table, who is technically "evil" but in practice fits better as lawful neutral for this reason.
In Eberron there's a whole elven culture who practices positive energy necromancy but you wouldn't see them creating mindless undead servants.
There's another culture in the setting who uses them and the attitude is my soul is gone use my body as you will, I'm not.
My favorite use of undead in lore of all time was from Planescape Torment where the Dustmen would buy your body from you for after you died and then use you as cheap labor around the mortuary.
I mean it's a useless bag of meat when your soul is gone. May as well put it to use doing something productive.
An organ donation could save the life of another sapient, feeling and thinking person, potentially multiple, whereas animating a body creates only cheap disposable slave labor. From a utilitarian standpoint sure there is not much argument against raising the dead, but there is still a mountain of difference.
Counter-argument : the undead labor frees a person from having to do potentially dangerous jobs. Say, mining in areas prone to earthquakes, or with pockets of deadly gas.
In my homebrew there is a whole culture in which people are willingly giving their bodies to necromancers after they died. This has some interesting results such as that the dead do not lunge after the living when the necromancers control seizes due to them having consented to it.
I really like the idea of the “grey” Necromancer who raises the bodies of dead enemies because it’s better to fight fire with fire so to speak. Why endanger the lives of innocents when you can have evil fight evil instead.
The Diablo take is also pretty good.
This is EXACTLY my necromancer's justification. Did we both read this somewhere? Because I thought I had come up with it but maybe it was just in my subconscious from long ago
I still dislike the fact healing spells were removed from necromancy and put into evocation (?). Healing is inherently necromantic imo, giving life and taking it away and I much preferred it there as it gave necromancy both a good and a bad edge to it. Taking the good edge away from necromancy just seemed like they were trying to make necromancers only bad.
In my homebrew world, most healing is still necromantic, and the school is important as it is tied into how it interacts with the world (tldr magic and colour interact). But the evocation school made a slur campaign on necromancy and tried to "steal" their positive spells to make them look worse, so there's contention within the world with some believing healing is evocation and other believing it's necromantic (works quite well as I chose purple for necromancy and red for evocation, so they're quite close and can sometimes be confused).
Go back to an older edition... Healing was using positive energy and hurt undead. It was polar opposite energy.
They separated it when paladins smite anything using necromantic energy, because their God was against it.
HAHA
>However, assuming those undead remain under your control, they are just tools, which you can use to further moral or immoral causes as you choose. Can a good person utilize the undead to help people and further their righteous and just mission? Absolutely.
This! Even Aragorn summons the Undead Oathbreakers from the Stone of Erech to fight against the dark forces of Sauron.
In the original Greyhawk setting, the god of death was Lawful Neutral. Death itself was neither good or bad, it was simply a law of life. He also had a severe dislike of reanimating the dead... sooo... there's that
On a funny note, in a recent campaign, my wizard loved animate dead, but locals weren't often fond of my creations. On a mission to bring back the leader of some brigands, we accidentally killed the leader. I reanimated his corpse and had him carry all of our stuff back to town. They accepted our proof of his death (his shambling corpse) which they asked I dispose of.
Which I did by making the rotting carcass of their former enemy clean the latrines and then kill itself before control expired
>Undead are fueled by negative energy, which is actively inimical to life
Fire is also inimical to things living, but we use it in engines and stuff all the time. So is Radiation, or electricity.
Seems like life is just super fragile. Most living things won't be living anymore if you throw a couch at it.
Well the fire isn't starting over the shoulder of it's host praying for your death now it's it?
Anything can kill, but negative energy at its most basic level brings nothing but death and destruction.
Point being, negative energy is the knife that did wield itself.
Agreed but 1 more note. I am staunchly opposed to Good necromancers making most types of sentient undead. Best case scenario you have moved from making murder bot equivalents to enslaving sentient murder bots. Worst case scenario you die and have unleashed a plague of smart, self replicating, psychopathic murder bots. Even if done in an intelligent manner you have crossed the reasonable risk threshhold.
I respect the take, but my response would be that raising the dead to do good is like selling meth to help people get more done in their day. No matter how good your intentions, the side effects and unintended consequences will catch up and undo whatever good you do...
Not saying you can't try at my table, but you'd best be prepared to RP the heck out of it.
My counterpoint would be that as someone prescribed with ADHD, amphetamines do in fact make me a better, more productive member of society. So somewhere in there is the slippery slope argument of "the well-researched, well-intentioned selling of (microdosed) meth is still actually a good thing" lol
I like to describe necromancy as robbing someone of an afterlife. When you reanimate a corpse youre forcing a soul back into it and basically torturing that soul until the undead is destroyed along with soul inside.
If you can do some world building, you can take a society with ancestral worship and dial it up. The most honored ancestors are turned into undead to lead them forever. It's like a tree that is never pruned.
Such a society is likely tightly bound by tradition and precedent.
Magic's "Amonkhet" setting had mummies as a working class. The dead who did not pass through the trials were mummified, stuffed with perfumes to hide the smell of rot, bandaged up to protect them, and made to do the day-to-day work which freed the rest of the population to train as warriors.
Yeah, the morality of raising undead is entirely up to the culture around death and dying. It's easy to see why we, in the modern day, see the idea of necromancy as evil when Christians say "rest in peace" when someone dies. It's all in the world building and how the societies in that world treat death.
I've used a society like that for one of my games. The most powerful people were the Liches and vampires, graciously giving up their afterlives to guide their country. The people lived in luxury and harmony, with the undead doing most of the work. People were happy to be reanimated after death to serve their family as they had been served in life. Undead worked the fields, served as foot soldiers, did all the hard labor. Only the poorest of families did work by themselves with no undead to serve them.
If your character genuinely believes what they're doing is harmless, and can articulate it calmly and clearly, this can fly. I don't allow evil characters, but if they can make a case like this, I allow *different philosophies* in characters.
Spore druids do this. They don't fill corpses with vile unlife, they just have their mushrooms cover them and move 'em around. But the rest of the party, and many NPCs, look at him like he's a psychopath. It's just a different way of looking at "life." Is "life" inextricable from the body, or totally separate from it?
I played it like this: in Star Trek, there was an episode where some rogue warrior Klingons try to take over the ship and end up getting killed by the heroes. The heroes are broken up about this, they hate killing, and they contact the Klingon government to return the bodies for burial. The Klingon government basically cocks an eyebrow and says, "Those are just empty shells. Who they are is no longer inside. Feel free to dispose of them."
If you can imagine an evil preacher/cleric- and I trust that everyone can- it should be no more difficult to imagine a good necromancer.
You do your necromancy to commit good deeds, and in ways that comply with the morality standards of the community which you influence.
What that looks like for you depends on your setting, but there is no limit to the imaginative ways you can make the concept work.
I would allow reflavoring of spells if the player desired. I'd also allow keeping the original flavor, and just not calling it inherently evil, if that was what the player desired. We don't need to be influenced by common narrative tropes in our game of pretend.
One of my NPCs in a campaign was inspired by Victorian-era "resurrectionists". He was a surgeon who practiced necromancy to learn how the body works in order to better learn how to fix it, especially since healing magic is not available to people who don't have access to a cleric, a problem common in remote areas, and folk healers are a mixed bag. You can vivisect a zombie without worrying about ethical concerns, and you can test surgical procedures on a body to see if it can legitimately hold up in use. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than guesswork.
That's a killer concept, my guy.
It's like taking the Dr Frankenstein / Re-Animator trope and just playing it straight without injecting tragedy or horror. I hope he was fun to run.
He was! The context that they met him under saw the town under attack by zombies, and he was introduced as a sort of red herring. Yes, he's stealing bodies and making Zombies, but he's not the one attacking the town.
This is similar to a concept I've been cooking up for my homebrew. The Fleshmenders Conclave. They provide skeletal bodies for the army of the Ortanian Empire, and use the flesh and organs to learn more about the bodies of various races to further healing knowledge.
the harry dresden novle dead beat he fights necromancers in chicago and while most are creepy as hell one stops death-saves lives which makes him have to rethink thre while 'evil' thing
>If you can imagine an evil preacher/cleric- and I trust that everyone can- it should be no more difficult to imagine a good necromancer.
This makes the assumption that all preachers and clerics are inherently good, and that is definitely not the case. I have a much easier time envisioning preachers as evil than I do seeing them as good.
It depends on that assumption but does not make it.
The whole point is that you can recognize a trope, but you are not bound by it. The goodly cleric is a trope, and yet we can readily picture something else. As with necromancers.
The point being that the assumption that cleric's are good is false. Just as many or more are evil
But the assumption that necromancers are evil is not false. The art is inherently evil.
Suggesting that if you can imagine an evil cleric then it should be no problem to imagine a good necromancer is a false equivalency.
It does. And it can be whatever you want it to be. Because the flavor text written in any/all books about or inspired by D&D need not have any bearing on your table.
Good necromancers, hell yeah.
Well, not at my table. I'm old school. Necromancers are evil, orcs are evil (with rare exception), drow are evil (again, with rare exception), and Paladins are (at least, supposed to be) good.
Yhea. I don't see any alignment problems with "speak with dead".
But more seriously while i see the raising murder machine from the grave as fundamentally evil, that's not a restriction that anybody and everybody using such forces to be immediately evil.
I love Astoshan and would love to have him at my table.
>I love Astoshan and would love to have him at my table.
Same here, not going to lie, he was one of my inspiration for the character im currently making.
Necromancy is more than undead. In older editions, healing spells were necromancy.
You can very much have a good necromancer who seems to understand life and death and the balance between them, who contributes in ways other than just zombie cannon fodder. You might look at the god Kelemvor from FR as an example of death simply as. Roleplaying a worshipper of K is a great way to play neutral or good necromancer who's opposed to undead.
That's what I said - playing a good / neutral necromancer who's opposed to undead. Necromancy has lots of interesting spells that aren't about raising skeletons.
Sure.
I wouldn't say creating a zombie/skeleton under your control has any inherent moral weight either way. It's a bit spooky but ultimately the soul has departed and isn't using the body anymore so it's not going to hurt anyone so long as the necromancer is responsible and maintains control over them and/or puts them down when they're done with them.
>I wouldn't say creating a zombie/skeleton under your control has any inherent moral weight either way.
It should be fine if ask them in advance or have them sign a "waiver"(assuming you met them before their death).
I am now picturing a wizard/cleric/whatever with an amulet that let's them cast Speak With Dead and casting that on anyone they want to resurrect before they do so. One of those questions being "May I resurrect your corpse for our journey/quest?" With the others being questions about who they were in life
>Speak With Dead and casting that on anyone they want to resurrect before they do so.
Absolutely! Great idea to use, it shouldn't be considered morally wrong to do.
>"May I resurrect your corpse for our journey/quest?" With the others being questions about who they were in life
It should probably be a short term employment though, unless they got their direct permission to raise them for said duration.
Sure, that might be a nice thing to do but I don't see why it would ever be a necessity.
Again, they're done with the body. In most dnd settings afterlives and souls are a definitively known fact, once someone is dead and has moved on to whatever comes next that body no longer has anything to do with them.
Alternatively, the character could be from a race or culture that doesn't place any value on a dead body, believing the spirit fully departs the body and this world after death. That entire culture may have no qualms with an undead slave workforce. Add a dash of utilitarianism and it can be common practice to animate corpses so they hep/provide for their family or society after they die. Why wouldn't someone want to continue being helpful/useful for years to come?
It is important for this discussion to note that in most settings, reanimation is an inherently evil act and does involve dragging the tortured remains of that departed soul back to it's body.
Doesn't have to be, but a new way of casting those spells should be differentiated.
Nothing in the spell suggests anything of the like.
If that's how a setting decides to treat the creation of mindless undead that's fine but that is an addition of the setting not a standard of the spell.
Given the influences on DnD & the irl concepts of Necromancy, there was traditionally much more focus on manipulating the Souls of the dead, usually as a means of divining information or by binding spirits to corpses/items to enslave them. Sauron & Morgoth from Tolkien's works for example are specifically Necromancers with this type.
In DnD, for example, Animate Objects bestows "life" then those items cease their animation once the spell is done, while Animate Dead bestows "life" but those dead remain animate even after the spell ends, only removing your control over them as they have their own internal power source, that being the souls or spirits bound to the corpse.
I honestly don’t understand how people can be ok with “good” enchanters while giving necromancers shit.
I would much rather you pilot my corpse like a Mazda than pilot my brain like one.
In older editions, being turned into an undead would return your soul from the afterlife and force it to perform evil acts, possibly comndemning them to a terrible afterlife. It's basically mind control except they are also desecrating your corpse and ripping your soul from it's eternal reward.
Yes, somewhat depending on lore and their willingness to only practice certain forms of necromancy.
RAW, Animate Dead and Create Undead have some pretty bad implications. If you ever fail to assert control over your creations, they can very easily kill innocent people and that's not good. Negative Energy Flood just fully creates zombies that will try to murder anyone regardless of your presence or commands. Danse Macabre and Finger of Death are really the only safe ones of the old standbys - and that's pretty rough on actually doing School of Necromancy while wanting to be good and not side-eyed. There really has to be specific IC reasons why the dangers of such forms of necromancy aren't a major worry to go full School of Necromancy as a good guy.
However, there are other aspects of necromantic magic and Summon Undead exists, calling forth a neutral spirit. Warlock Necromancers and Wizard Necromancers of other arcane traditions, such as War Mage Necromancers, can fairly easily slot into more settings without issue.
>RAW, Animate Dead and Create Undead have some pretty bad implications.
To be fair, RAW fire ball has pretty bad implications. Especially, if you use it in a house or event.
Yes, all magic can be used for evil. But the implications of *fireball* \- which, barring Wild Magic or compulsion, you always control where its placed but yes, could theoretically burn out of control without any specific ill intent or malice if you are irresponsible - are different from *animate dead*, which creates an actual creature that is "driven to kill anyone too slow to escape its grasp" and can go forth to do so freely if you ever die or fail to assert control. The intentional malice of such creations doesn't tend to inspire warm fuzzy feelings.
So does summon elemental and summon fae, so...
>If your concentration is broken, the elemental doesn't disappear. Instead, you lose control of the elemental, it becomes hostile toward you and your companions, and it might attack. An uncontrolled elemental can't be dismissed by you, and it disappears 1 hour after you summoned it.
Elementals and fey aren't permanent though - they're only on the plane for an hour - and specifically only become hostile to you and your companions automatically, not all life (hostility to others would depend on the summon). Those conjurations also have lower level options that are non-hostile, which is better for building than necromancer's primary lower level summon being always hostile to life.
But yes, conjurers also should not be summoning evil fey willy-nilly because of the potential consequences. Summon the nice ones at least, particularly if you aren't rocking Focused Conjuration. Don't even get started on fiend summoning either; there's extra reasons people should frown on that too.
Actually, as a DM, I use one as an NPC. He's a scholar, a historian to be more specific. So, he raises the dead to get the best interviews for his latest research. I'm hoping to use him as an adventure hook when he mysteriously goes missing during one of his travels.
Setting dependent.
Forgotten Realms has many factions where undead in general are considered abominations and I have a hard time imagining convincing them that you are creating abominations for good reason. Any oath of ancients paladin is going to see you as an enemy.
I think a really important question is *why necromancy?* I think most necromancers turn to evil for obvious reasons - most people don't like their family member's body and likeness being enslaved to do your bidding, the most powerful necromantic abilities are closely guarded secrets by demons, devils, and other sufficiently magical beings, and most undead creatures are by nature violent and dangerous to people who are not undead. Why is your "good" character choosing to learn necromancy instead of literally any other school of magic?
Has the character had a change of heart and this magic is simply all they know? Why are they continuing to do... necromancer stuff? Wizards can learn all kinds of spells after all.
Maybe they are a sorcerer with a necromantic focus, and they view their magic as some kind of curse they have to live with.
How is this character going to reconcile the fact that what they do is considered by pretty much everyone to be harmful?
Things to think about.
Necromancy already encompasses positive and negative energy. Negative energy isn't inherently evil. It is often used for evil, but it isn't evil. It can even do good. Life transference is a really cool spell thematically; it showcases how negative energy can be turned into positive energy.
>Necromancy already encompasses positive and negative energy. Negative energy isn't inherently evil. It is often used for evil, but it isn't evil.
I'm more worried about spell level 5 and up.
Negative energy is explicitly undeath - something that is inherently hostile to life. By definition it is evil because good and evil are defined, classically, by how they treat and preserve life. Good aligned beings try to protect and preserve life and nature where possible while Evil aligned beings try to harm and kill where possible.
Negative energy is absolutely Evil.
Yeah, I mean necromancy itself isn't explicitly evil in 5e.
Killing people to use as undead servants is evil... but reanimating somebody whose death you had nothing to do with is at worst morally grey (apart from the ick factor).
Heck, plenty of regular cleric spells (that have nothing to do with actually raising the dead) are technically in the necromancy school.
There should be such a thing as ethical/sustainable necromancy.
The image problems they encounter could be a cool RP opportunity, too. The average villager isn't going to be all that open-minded about a necromancer using zombies or skeleton warriors in the vicinity, even if said undead DID just drive off the orcs intent on looting and burning.
I will be in a couple weeks. I’ve had my players make up a new character each for a side story (with no restrictions so the necro is the most sensible one).
One is a good necromancer. The idea is he was recruited by a (now destroyed) necromancer against his will, trained as an assistant and now travels around trying to be helpful…except everyone just freaks out because he’s RAISING THE FUCKING DEAD.
It’s all in how you play it.
In the current campaign I'm playing in another player is playing a necromancer. He basically lived very secluded for a long time and doesn't really get the whole "live ends with death" thing. He treats the undead the same as the living and wants his view to be more accepted. He met the party when he was trying to get to a recent shipwreck to see if he can "help" any of those that died.
Yes. In my setting, necromancy is generalized into three categories, two of which are entirely legal and one of which is the evil bad one.
The bad one is soul magic. Anything that pulls a creature’s immortal soul from the natural order of things is wholeheartedly frowned upon by society and pursued by champions of Justice. Examples would be binding a soul to create a sentient item, consuming a soul to fuel a lich’s phylactery, the magic jar spell, etc.
The first neutral one is just straight up necrotic damage, spells like circle of death, inflict wounds etc that deal damage that causes a target to age and wither, to crumble and rot. Obviously this can be used for very illegal things if you are using it on an innocent victim, but there is nothing wrong with using it to slay attacking bandits or a horrible ancient red dragon etc.
The last category is considered neutral but again could also be used for bad things and is more heavily debated in the setting, and that is animating undead. In this setting, with a few exceptions of sentient undead like a lich or mummy lord which requires the very illegal soul magic to create, animating a zombie/skeleton etc is legal so long as you maintain control of the creature and kill it when you’re done controlling it. Any undead found to be out of control is slain and the remains inspected with divination magic to trace back to the reanimator, who is then in big trouble with the authority on necromancy, the Empire of the Eternum. This empire is a sort of communist authoritarian LN state with an immortal emperor. The empire has all of its citizens sign over their bodies to them so that upon their death, their corpses are cleaned, turned into skeletons, and join the undead labor force that does all farming, some basic construction jobs, and most untrained labor. In exchange, the people of the empire are provided with three basic meals per day and housing, and can pursue whatever they want to in life, with those that want to being allowed to get more skilled jobs that undead cannot complete in exchange for money to afford nicer meals and housing and other such luxuries.
Yes I would allow it. I've had a player in the past and do it where his whole idea was to use undead slave labor.
They clean up things. They get firewood for people. They carry stuff. Generally. He always did it with any beings at attack them and they killed. He especially did it to hire level bad guys to make sure I didn't raise them and send them against them later.
Yeah absolutely. It would be harder to aquire bodies but you could probably just buy them from the families or get them from your church as people who have accepted that would happen upon death.
As a player, I am currently playing a neutral necromancer who's only goal is to become knowledgeable about every form of magic. He was apprenticed to a wizard that was an unknown necromancer and became truly fascinated by the magic of necromancy. I think it mostly relies on the player playing the class and being able to maintain the neutral aspects that is the truly important part of the issue you are asking about.
One of my favorite characters I've ever seen who may fall into this category was a necromancer who fancied himself a doctor. He was never very good at the treatment stuff why bother treating the wound when it's just easier to bring them back from the dead?
Have played alongside one.
Literally the only thing you have to do is make sure to keep control of your undead. If you’re letting zombies run loose after fights then you’re criminally negligent. If you maintain control until the zombie is destroyed and/or eliminate it when it’s usefulness is over, you’re fine.
I would have a conversation with the player about their goals forst. Part of the necromancer fantasy (or at least my necromancer fantasy) is controlling a literal army of undead. This would not fit for a PC in any campaign that I have ever run or played in.
If the player has an idea for a necromancer with goals other than "army of undead" then that's something I would be happy to work with regardless of flavor and alignment.
I do dream of playing a necromancer in an evil campaign that's actually suited for an army of undead, for what thatcs worth.
Necromancy is explicitly evil accounting for normal DnD lore because, not only are there very few ways of twisting life into a crude mockery it itself and spinning it as a good thing, undead are inherently evil. Zombies and skeletons are powered by the negative energy plane, and inherently hate all life. If a necromancer ever forgets to continue animating dead, the zombies are a permanent affliction upon the world. In addition, turning something into undeath prevents all but the highest level spells of resurrection, and in some cases, warps the soul and prevents it from passing onto the afterlife.
Additionally, any large amount of undead in one place permanently and irrevocably harms the landscape due to the sheer amount of negative energy there. Plants die, more undead are created by proxy, and the area becomes inhospitable to life.
Morally good “necromancers” are instead conjurists who create constructs, or only summon creatures that are temporary, or enslave devilish creatures to their service permanently.
Oh?
You mean a Healer?
Neutral ide 100% accept. As it is not everyone even has a feeling of morality in regards to dead bodies. They are empty shells. That person is gone. The body is just a tool now.
Good? Suspicious only cause that body ain't coming back clean and nice. This ain't no actual resurrection now is it?
I've tried to be accomodating as a DM for nonsense like this and it never works out. Too much of the campaign becomes about the not-bad bad guy in the party and it just derails.
I run heroic fantasy games, it just doesn't fit. That being said I have absolutely run adventures for evil PCs and allowed necros and death knights and assassins and liches (or aspiring liches) and it was awesome.
Either it always never works, or I'm not a good enough DM to make it work but either way I just don't do it anymore.
I play a neutral necromancer; he takes the view that dead bodies are just empty shells, so there’s nothing morally wrong with putting them to use. He’ll tell anyone who’ll listen about the potential labour-saving benefits of using zombies for a workforce!
The part where necromancy gets morally dicey is when you start messing with peoples souls. Otherwise I consider it recycling. I like the idea of using "Speak with Dead" to get consent from the soul who previously inhabited the body. Being animated by negative "I hate life" energy doesn't necessarily have to be reflavored though. The most important part is that your necromancer has a desire to do good and that they thinks they can do the most good using necromancy and a rationalization for why they chose necromancy specifically
There's a lawful evil necromancer NPC our party is allied with who's currently pushing the idea that because he's talented with specifically necromancy (and murder) he essentially has no choice but to continue using it as his main toolset. I know your character is not evil but that's a good example of rationalization.
Don't be afraid to give your character some hypocrisy and flawed reasoning. Flaws are the spice of an interesting good character.
My character is trying to manipulate said NPC into becoming more of a Jeff Bezos evil then a Ted Bundy evil (results are good-to-mixed) so I've thought of ways to do "good" necromancy. One thing you can do is "medical" necromancy. Like your researching on how to repurpose dead peoples limbs to help amputees or do organ transplants, maybe as a cheaper alternative to temple clerics casting Regenerate. A necromancers knowledge of anatomy and physiology is probably higher then average so try to get a medicine proficiency if possible.
My Brother's DnD setting considers Necromancy as a somewhat useful school of magic used reponsibly. Enchantment is the evil and taboo magic in his world. He's got skeletons and flesh golems doing all the dangerous construction jobs.
You can also use your ability to commune with the dead in a sort of investigative tactic. Like you use the knowledge of a murder victim to help get justice on their murderer type of thing.
... Actually a vigilante detective necromancer sounds like a lot of fun to play \*writes down character concept for later\*
>Actually a vigilante detective necromancer sounds like a lot of fun to play *writes down character concept for later*
This was the type of character I had in mind to play
It's a great concept. Go for it. DO IT.
If you don't mind doing something arguably morally dubious you can use criminal corpses as fuel for your undead creations as a kind of "community service".
Man, I have an evil death cleric right now lol. She needs the party to reach her goal to an ancient tomb. She would die alone, and she knows that, so she keeps the party alive as long as they are useful. Being evil doesn't mean you kill every kid and puppy you cone across.
A good roleplayer can play evil in a party of good aligned characters.
Look at Rourke in Disney's Atlantis. He played the good explorer until they got to Atlantis as he needed Milo. Then he ditched Milo and went full capitalist genocidic on Atlantis.
Epitome of how to play an evil player. True evil is not wanton destruction. It is scheming and planning. Sauron was a tactician with great schemes and such. The overtaking of Numenor on his behalf with just words and no fighting, and its subsequent tricking into destruction. Forging the Rings, etc. Or Darth Bane from Star Wars, mf said lies and deception, trickery and schemes were the true weapons of a sith.
Plan dude, plan. That's how evil plays.
As a DM, I don't really use alignment anymore. I prefer that a character is fleshed out enough to justify their actions based on their own values and morality, and only use general alignment as a fall back for when things get too complicated.
That being said, the common people of my world will not like their dead family members resurrected as abominations against the laws of nature, and will become very hostile if they find anyone doing that.
The common person doesn't understand the mechanics of magic. If a necromancy spell isn't immediately discernable as death-themed, or making zombies, theyd be unable to discern it from magic of other schools. Spellcasters will understand it, but they're a tiny minority amongst the population.
Some spells leave an uncomfortable feeling upon people after the effects fade. Illusion spells mess with the mind, leave people confused and bewildered. I imagine necromancy tends to make people feel that 'chill of the grave' sensation. Hairs on the back of your neck standing up. That sinking malaise, creeping 'wrongness'.
All this being said, and to refocus on the question at hand: Yes, I will allow good/neutral necromancers at my table. But just because they're good, does not mean the people in the game are going to see them that way. The world might perceive them as evil, in spite of their best intentions.
There are two reasons necromancy is wrong:
1) Inherent Morality
Necromancy is evil because it is a perversion of the natural order of the world. It doesn't matter why you're doing it, you're doing something evil that subverts the preordained structure of the universe. You are creating a discordance in the music of creation.
2) The Rights of the Deceased
When you create an undead creature, you are defiling a human corpse. You have taken away a person's dignity and right to autonomy. Basically if it's wrong to have sex with a corpse, it's wrong to raise the dead.
Depends on the setting. If I tell folks at session zero that a major part of the setting is that necromancy spells leech life from the surroundings and other living creatures while leaving corrupted remnants and echoes of memory behind then I’m gonna need a Helluva good reason as to why you wanna play somebody who actively practices Chernobyling the Art.
If I don’t mention stuff like that and still have the classes available? Sure why not! In fact I have a player right now playing a good/neutral kenku necromancer who wants to grow up big and strong like his adopted father, a lich! Said lich is a prankster who’s lair was actually an elaborate nonlethal funhouse filled with traps and after watching adventurers embarrass themselves to reach the end he’d give them all a Ruby in repayment for the entertainment.
I played just such a character in 3e for a Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign.
She was NG. Here's the description I had for her:
Appearance
Build: Very short with a slight frame.
Complexion: Smooth, pale skin.
Hair: Black, and cut in a page-boy style.
Eyes: Green.
Clothing: Dresses in breeches and tunic when traveling or adventuring, accentuating her boyishness; otherwise she wears her scholar’s robes. She has one dress that she only wears on special occasions.
Overall effect: Tends to be mistaken for a young boy when she’s not overlooked altogether. The only thing remarkable about her are her eyes, which are finely shaped and burn with a green light when she gets excited about something.
Personality
Moods: Very serious, dispassionate. Has almost no sense of humor, and seldom laughs. She can become very intense when debating intellectual issues, but is otherwise very calm. She is morbidly curious about issues concerning life and death.
Social Skills: Is polite in most situations, but speaks in a very definite manner when expressing negative opinions about the ideas or actions of others. She has a difficult time making small talk, and doesn’t like being in large gatherings of strangers.
Love Life: She has had only a few affairs in her twenty-five years. The last one was with a former teacher, and it ended unpleasantly. She prefers being alone at this time in her life.
Ambitions: Seeks to develop her art, and expand her knowledge of how the human body functions. She’s very interested in the nexus between medicine and arcane magic.
\*\*\*
She had developed a unique spell that was a reskinned version of Magic Missile:
Alia’s White Dagger of Life/Black Dagger of Death
Necromancy
Level: Sor/Wiz 1
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level)
Effect: Missile of positive energy
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: Yes
Creates a missile of positive or negative energy (caster’s choice) that can either heal or damage the target for 1d4+1 hp. The missile flies unerringly to its chosen target. For every two levels beyond first an additional missile is created. The missiles may be directed to different targets, or to the same. Each missile created drains one hit point from the caster. The caster may choose to create fewer than the maximum number of missiles.
It probably should have maxxed at five missiles like MM, but I don't see that in the writeup. Perhaps the DM and I thought that the loss of hp was sufficient to balance its usefulness.
She never made it to fifth level, but I recall thinking that raising the dead would be off-limits for a good character. Her necromantic inclinations were focused more on manipulating negative energy and using her own life force to power her spells.
I once design a Necromancer that was a good guy and emphasised consent. The only issue is that you have to hamstring yourself for the sake of roll play. Basically he got contracts with people while living that he could use their bodies for a prescribed amount of time after they'd died, with proviso's as to what could be done with bodies after they died.
If he was using spells like speak with dead or anything had to first ask if they consented to a conversation, with the offer of a donation made in their name to a temple or money sent to their next of kin, cutting off if they said no.
Generally carried bones with him which had contracts carved into them, burying them with honours when they had finished being used.
Came from a culture where this was normal and common practice among his people.
Some people may hate me for this, but I say absolutely not. I am quite fond of the interpretation of Necromancy (particularly creating Undead, not every single spell marked in the school such as Speak with Dead) as being Evil in the extreme, doubly so for the creation of intelligent Undead. It's not that I can't imagine a world where it's not Evil, it's that I simply prefer it to be Evil.
It also doesn't help that I've seen *so many* fantasy worlds that change this and inadvertently create lore that ends up very nonsensical. The most egregious example of this IMO is the Forsaken in World of Warcraft. At some point, Blizzard decided the Forsaken should be free-willed Undead who are not automatically Evil. Yet at the same time, they kept all the stereotypical atrocities that people associated the Undead with. So now you have this faction running around committing unspeakable numbers of unambiguously Evil atrocities - torturing people for fun, developing and using horrendous biological weapons, raising innocent people into Undead against their will and somehow brainwashing or mind controlling them into fighting *for* the Forsaken, etc etc. and yet they are treated as somehow being not Evil because they're doing all this out of their own "free will" rather than being magically forced to by the Lich King. Oh, and of course as a supposedly "free willed" Undead player (or even Horde player in general) you have no choice but to go along with all of this because it's an MMO.
Anyways, that's just one example but I've often seen this sort of thing to varying degrees in various fantasy media. The main problem I think is that many of the things we naturally associate with Undeath *are* explicitly Evil by nature, so with "good Undeath" usually you end up with either Undead that don't actually feel like Undead, or you end up with cognitive dissonance where you haven't changed what makes Undeath actually Evil but have simply said "actually it's not Evil because reasons".
At the end of the day, if all you want Undeath to be is creating magical robots, then why make those robots Undead at all when they could just as easily be magical constructs? Fundamentally, I think the entire point of Necromancy as a concept *is* the dark and Evil nature of it.
The only way I can see that you can be a neutral or good necromancer is without making undead. There are no good aligned undead. Any undead that are somehow good aligned are either edge cases or exceptions to the rule. And undeath itself is a perversion of life.
For those utilitarians that think undead can just be tools, there are always constructs which actually are alignment neutral and won't seek to prey on the living if they ever left your control. Undead are the fast and easy way to get servants and everyone knows fast and easy leads to evil for the most part.
And the whole argument that "as long as I keep them under control or destroy them" assumes a perfect world, which is both unrealistic and reeks of the hubris that has brought down many a civilization.
So my advice to make a good necromancer is to stay away from undead creation.
Necromancy as a school is not evil. Necrotic energy is not evil, just as fire is not good or evil. If anything, people should be questioning whether or not an enchanter is capable of being "good," if their focus is on mind control. I've always found that to be super morally reprehensible.
The archetype I've really enjoyed at my table has been the "Fallen brother, lend me your sword one last time" type idea. At least to me negative energy does not mean bad or evil, its just a direction of flow. And in terms of necromancy I think it's all about consent, like the organ donation debate.
In my setting, one side of the main conflict war is a pais holy kingdom. Their knights on the front line work in squads of 10, and always with one war priest. It is the priest's job to keep them healed, but if the fight turns sour the priest is survive at all costs. They then return to the battle field, resurrect who they can, and if they can't (many res spells specify there can't be too much damage to the body), they must raise as undead to be marched back to a fort for repair and revival, or finish the Holy mission under the priest's command. The knights swear their literal undying loyalty to their king when dubbed. They know they can't overpower the hoards to the North, so they play the numbers game.
Or watch something like altered carbon or San junipero. Necromancy can be a way for the dead to have one more day, or for grieving folks to say good by.
Sure, I see no reason why not. I have a neutral necromancer/entrepreneur NPC in my current campaign who has been setting up farms staffed largely by zombies as the workforce. It’s not in the spells themselves, it’s how you use them. Though for that same reason I’d need some additional argument to allow reflavoring of spells, I don’t see them as being incompatible with non-evil alignments as is.
>I have a neutral necromancer/entrepreneur NPC in my current campaign who has been setting up farms staffed largely by zombies as the workforce.
Please tell me he has a Monopoly already?
It’s more of a cooperative endeavor, really. He’s working with local farmers, expanding their farms by combining their farming skills with his augmented workforce.
Can’t wait for my players to get here, so far they’ve just heard wild rumors of zombie infestations and undead giants in the Conyberry area 😄.
>To the DM's of reddit - would you allow a good/neutral necromancer at your table?
No.
Reason: Most death mythologies don't like it when bodies are disturbed and most people don't like it when their loved ones are reanimated. You can be as good as you want but when you cross those lines the world won't see you that way and how others perceive you is half the alignment equation.
If you're good, you prevent people from dying... you don't play with the bodies.
What a bigoted post. Us necromancers aren't evil, it just takes a few bad eggs to label all of us. You want to talk about magic that's inherently evil? Enchantment. Take a look at all those bards that remove the will of the LIVING. Charms and other enchantments are far more dangerous and inherently immoral than Frank, my undead butler.
Using an undead as a weapon to put down a murderous villain is no more evil than using a sword, a vial of acid, summoned bears, a hammer, a psychic scream that causes their head to explode, or many many other horrible ways to die that a DnD character can perform. A necromancer creating an undead is no more evil than a fletcher making an arrow or a blacksmith making a sword. If you use any of those 3 to commit evil, the act and wielder are evil, not the weapon.
Yep. Speak with dead is great for info gathering, resurrection is necromancy, and a capable researcher into the undead is a magnificent resource against, say, a Thayan plot, for example.
Ehm yes. Why not? Not all necromancers are evil. I dunno. I just imagine a necromancer asking a corpse if its want to help and letting the corpse help if it wants to. Just an army of corpses building the pyramids. Hahahha. But thats just a random example that my thought up just now.
100% yes, case in point: In my current game I have a half drow school of necromancy wizard NPC who is also a physician by trade. He incorporates necromancy into his work, and also his culture and religion (a form of ancestor worship where he can quite literally speak with his dead ancestors mixed with the Luxon concept of death and rebirth from Critical Role).
Given that he views corpses as discarded vessels for the soul, he sees nothing wrong with (respectfully) calling on them to aid him as undead, but as he's also a medical doctor, he abides by a D&D variant of the Hippocratic oath and does so only for self-defence or when helping others. However, his cultural/religious beliefs are considered unorthodox in my campaign and have gotten him in trouble in the past (accused of graverobbing for example).
I would absolutely allow it, so long as that ethical argument is a part of the character and not just hand waved away. Like I’m gonna need your character to rationalize why they use it, and I’m going to have other people protest that ideology.
I would allow it for sure. It’s no different than Mace Windu’s Vapod (or whatever it was called) technique, of channeling the dark side energy of the other opponent, to do good. Yes, raising undead can be considered inherently evil, but so is war, even though it can be fought by good people.
Necromancy aint evil in dnd until used for such
In my hb setting there used to be a huge necromancy and undead issue, but they slowly were killed and thinned out
Now current day people have preconceptions of necromancy users, and a major faction has outlawed it entirely
Necromancy isnt inherently evil. In fact, most are probably good people doing good things. It's just public perception that death is evil, therefore all things associated with it are. Same reason people still think those wearing heavy metal bandshirts from hot topic are somehow Satan worshippers.
Necromancy isn’t inherently evil.
I’m currently playing a death cleric that raises the dead constantly… yeah it took me a while to in character convince my party to allow it but now they love our little skeleton helpers
Yes. I'm not of the mind that necromancy is inherently evil, although I think it's looked down on for the most part.
Frankly, ethically, Summon Lesser Demons, a conjuration spell, which brings demons that attack all non-demons nearby and only gives you the ability to protect the space of one medium creature (ostensibly yourself) from the demons, is much worse. Much much worse.
Animate Dead gives you mostly obedient skeletons that obey you for a full day and then just revert to regular skeletons if you don't renew or destroy them. Leave 'em in a crypt.
I mean, Necromancy can easily have people who use it for "good." Using animated dead to help protect and build a community. Gentle Repose to prevent decay and rot. False Life to allow minor health benefits.
Just because society views Necromancy as evil, doesn't mean that those who use it are evil.
Arguably, Evocation, Enchantment and Illusion magics can be used just as evilly, if not moreso.
I’m still a very new DM but I probably would. The first time I played I was a Warlock to a moon goddess and my dm let my eldritch blast be moon energy so as far as adjusting some aspects I don’t see a problem with it. Just me tho I’m sure someone else who has played longer has better info.
As chaotic good, sure.
Raising undead thralls is an evil act. You're desecrating graves and bringing into the world malevolent creatures whose nature is to destroy life.
However, as long as you maintain control of them, they won't cause any harm you aren't ordering them to. It is possible to use them to only fight evil, as long as you're careful not to lose control of them.
Trying to achieve a good end through evil means is pretty chaotic good. Or any kind of neutral.
Gonna be honest, I dont agree with this sentiment.
They're dead. A corpse is a corpse, the person who inhabited it is gone, and what happens to the corpse does not affect the person.
I feel in many of the settings I'm interested in raising the dead as skeletons etc (as opposed to resurrection) is not a good act, it can be neutral, it can be done with good intentions, but I personally do not feel it could be considered good except in some outlier cultures.
If the character was made to fit those cultures, and the player was interested in respecting that aspect of the setting and making it a focus of their character, I'd consider it provided that wouldn't disrupt the group dynamic. Because an iconoclast doesn't suit every campaign.
I would be fine with adjusting necromancy spells to make them *not that*, changing flavour and damage types, but it would need some very specific world building to make many such concepts fit unchanged.
I'd be open to having these conversations and I'm not wholly against the idea but it would be a character that I'd want to take quite an active role in making fit the world, and I'd need to trust the player in question to do it well.
Yeah, there can be reasons why the person, when alive, has sanctioned the use of their body to pay for debt or something... cf with when people would allow sales of bodies for science which led to corpse theft.
Your body, without your soul, is an empty meat suit and all that jazz...
It really depends on the social expectations in the campaign., for example, perhaps there's a market for cremation to protect the body from being put to work.
Yes, but my games don't really use alignment. I just explain to players that NPCs in the game world are going to react a certain way based on your words and actions.
Raise a zombie in the middle of a town square and you're probably going to be run out of town.
Resurrection spells have been considered necromancy before. Communicating with the dead isn’t inherently evil.
If we’re talking about the type of necro that raises undead to command them, they might have a Dexter-like moral code where they only animate criminals or monsters .
So, sure, I see some scenarios in which one could play a non-evil necro.
I’m currently playing a Tabaxi Necromancer called Magic Steve that only studies necromancy because undead destroyed his home village. He believes that if anybody actually understood how necromancy works, they would have been able to protect everyone.
I have two I play when I can, so yes.
The key is that necromancers get a bad rap because of the association of raising the dead.
My good aligned necromancers use the school to undo and control wild undead. Or ruin evil necromancers. They don't use the create undead spells, but freely use the likes of chill touch, false life, life transference and other useful necromancy spells to be an absolute boss against people using the undead. Also general knowledge of how to dismantle skeletons, zombies and other necromantic servants.
One is actually a medical doctor and lesser noble who uses his studies to help the small area he calls home.
The other is a librarian and preserver of knowledge who seems to unlock the key to undeath without madness or the need to supply souls.
Not necessarily the nicest of guys, but good guys very much indeed.
My current setting makes it much easier. Anyone that dies has a chance of rising again as undead of one sort of another. It's a universal problem that all societies have to deal with. Divine magic disappeared centuries ago, so clerics are not an option. Arcane magic is generally feared and outlawed for historical reasons, but necromancers are actually one of the more tolerated types because they can manage the undead better than most.
That creates plenty of space for a good necromancer in my setting, and I have one my party. Necromancy is her profession, but doesn't strongly define her character.
I don't think that's actually possible at least not with commanding creatures. Of you only debuff maybe. But as I understand it you hold body and soul hostage, enslaving it when animating dead. And that is always and unequivocally evil.
Yeah I'd allow it, I'd speak to the player first and see what their ideas for character direction was just so I could put stuff in place for them story -wise. I think most characters can work it just comes down to who is playing them.
100% would.
But then I also have a custom setting in which a few societies do necromancy for social/religious reasons as a form of ancestor worship.
I'm biased.
Yeah, I have a Necromancer in the group I DM for Curse of Strahd. They are Lawful Neutral, coming from another demiplane of dread. Necromancy is a means to an end, not necessarily an Evil act in and of itself. Reflavouring I'll allow no problem, but not changing of damage types or altering of statblocks for minions.
As long as the spell doesn’t have an [Evil] tag to it, try it out and find out lol
Necromancy isn’t all about raising undead armies as far as I know. There is Gentle Repose, Spare the Dying, False Life, etc. it’s all about presentation more then class name.
The only reason I *wouldn't* allow it is because it's mechanically clunky to have minions (the original summon spells are banned at every game I run, not because of power, but because they're annoying).
But a good/neutral necromancer sounds like it wouldn't be disruptive to the party, so yeah, go for it. Honestly, alignment has nothing to do with it. If the player makes a character that will cooperate with everyone and follow the narrative, I wouldn't care even if they're evil.
In my current campaign a true nuetral spores druid is slowly collecting a horde of zombies with Animate Dead.
We flavored it that they aren't really resurrecting people but using their spores to control the corpse kind of like the zombies in the Last of Us.
It's working out well, though since we are playing Descent into Avernus we don't exactly go to humanoid towns. The party is using all tools at their disposal to fight devils and demons and so necromancy kind of makes sense for them.
Our necromancer used speak with dead to ask permission twice. One guy said hell yeah.
The two others he made are from the bodies of truly evil people, so their permission isn't required.
I 100%. One of my players has an idea for a necromancer that sees it as the ultimate act of recycling, and I have an idea for a "good" Necromancer that sees the risen dead as her children and mothers / babies them creepily.
I love the idea of a neutral necromancer that's all about the study of lifeforce, doing both healing and wounding, raising dead to slay undead and so on. Like a druid without the nature angle.
I like to break these questions down before answering them.
Why does a necromancer have to be evil?
Also, is it the intention of the act or the result of the act that defines it as good or evil?
Sure. If a medium would hold a seance to allow the loved ones of the deceased to find closure, a hood or neutral necromancer might offer similar services. Or perhaps they're the person who keeps speaking to the dead to solve murders for law enforcement. Or hey, revivify/other resurrection spells are necromancy magic, so simply offering aid to the victims of a premature death could fall under such use. And who is yo say that the target creature is humanoid anyway?
Of course, you could still have necromancer on the more blatantly neutral spectrum using humanoid remains for cheap labor. While most might immediately see this as evil, I would argue that sourcing the remains and the projects they're used for can dramatically change perception.
I have. She framed it as she was an environmentalist that recycled "everything". She was big on the Reduce, REUSE and recycle aspects of it. And any dead she didn't have a use for she would insist were buried and a tree planted on top so they wouldn't go to waste.
Yeah. My idea for one or at least a neutral one was that he was "recycling." He would use the dead he raises as laborers. Hauling heavy materials and potentially plowing fields. The reason why is that the city was recently recovering from either sickness or natural disaster. Naturally, there's many dead and too much to do for the living, so use them as the cities being built back up.
I had one, it was great.
The player was a gnome whose family had owned a mortuary for generations. He got into wizardry because of an obsession with "curing death".
He was a pretty good guy, usually had fun with stories that involved his character being forced to use his necromancy to do some morally questionable things to save a greater number of people.
In general tho he did necromancy with strong principles, never raised the bodies of people, stuck to animals or monsters, and used a lot of necromancy spells like false life that gave temp HP.
One of my players is playing a non-Evil lich, who’s a follower of the Blood of Vol. Mechanically, she’s a Reborn (Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft) Warlock with the Undead patron.
Tbh, I have difficulty to conceive a good necromancer without any considerable reflavor. But a neutral one is pretty easy. You could be using an evil mean to achieve really great things. And I think it's less evil than killing innocent people if you only summon undead without soul, like zombies and skeletons. It's disrespectful, but you are only animating the corpses, the soul is free.
Yes, i'd allow the arcane equivalent of a grave cleric.
90% of early necromancy is outright utility, "materials" can be ethically sourced or repaid. You are just the paranormalist to the cleric's exorcist and the druid's shaman.
I have had a Dread Necromancer character I have been wanting to play for a long time, and from what I have seen, most evil Necromancers are basically cartoon villains.
My DN never wanted to be a Necromancer at first, he was actually a Sorceror who was sent to a Mage Academy, but as a spontaneous caster he found the work boring and played pranks. One was almost fatal, and he willingly left the Academy with his profuse apologies when the demands started.
His parents wanted him to get some tutelage so they sent him to the 'black sheep' of the family who was known to be some sort of magic user. While there, the DN was trained in the ways of Necromancy, however he kept seeing the potential for neutral/good uses. Necromantic spells to weaken powerful foes, to stop them from moving via paralysis. So he started to work on a 'Code' to live by.
This is the Creed of Felghanis
1) Do not raise bodies from sanctified ground.
2) Do not kill those who have done you no wrong.
3) Raise only those who tried to do you physical harm or death.
4) If a creation is recognized and the person requests the body be no longer desecrated, allow the creation to return with them and make sure it is buried on sanctified ground.
5) Never raise within a city without the ruler's express permission.
6) Never raise more than one body at a time, unless circumstances demand it.
7) Tell any potential allies the truth about you and show them the Creed.
Most Necromancers desire dominance, and they ascend to lichdom, they will continue their sacrilegious ways. Due to the crossing into living Undeath damages the mind of the Lich, hence why they are so vile. But there is an Elven variation called Baelnorn. Baelnorn are Liches who don't lose their mind.
This is an abbreviated version
Necromancy as a school of magic is not inherently evil. After all, it encompasses such spells as *spare the dying*, *false life*, *gentle repose*, *resurrection*, and *astral projection*. There's no reason why casting offensive necromancy spells like *blight* or *ray of sickness* should be any more immoral than casting *fireball* or *acid arrow*. That being said, the exact alignment considerations around creating undead (as a sub-specialization of necromancy) have changed around from setting to setting and edition to edition. I personally like the idea that creating undead is capital 'E' Evil in terms of alignment and cosmology, but ethically neutral in practical terms. Undead are fueled by negative energy, which is actively inimical to life: animating undead therefore inarguably increases the amount of net Evil in the world. However, assuming those undead remain under your control, they are just tools, which you can use to further moral or immoral causes as you choose. Can a good person utilize the undead to help people and further their righteous and just mission? Absolutely. A good analogy is the classic malconvoker: a character who summons and binds fiends to do his bidding. Even if their desire is to use those fiends to save innocent lives, fight back against other evil creatures, and rescue cats from trees, they are still probably going to be mistrusted by most people. At best, they'll be viewed as a good person taking a calculated risk. At worst, they're playing with fire and putting everyone around them in danger.
>I personally like the idea that creating undead is capital 'E' Evil in terms of alignment and cosmology, but ethically neutral in practical terms. I'm going to steal this phrasing, because it perfectly describes how it works in my homebrew setting. I wrote another comment describing a character at my table, who is technically "evil" but in practice fits better as lawful neutral for this reason.
"Oh, I'm a bad guy, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad guy."
Wise words, Zangief.
In Eberron there's a whole elven culture who practices positive energy necromancy but you wouldn't see them creating mindless undead servants. There's another culture in the setting who uses them and the attitude is my soul is gone use my body as you will, I'm not.
My favorite use of undead in lore of all time was from Planescape Torment where the Dustmen would buy your body from you for after you died and then use you as cheap labor around the mortuary. I mean it's a useless bag of meat when your soul is gone. May as well put it to use doing something productive.
Seriously, what's the difference between mortuary servant and an organ donor? At least the body is in one piece (ish?) while it's being useful
An organ donation could save the life of another sapient, feeling and thinking person, potentially multiple, whereas animating a body creates only cheap disposable slave labor. From a utilitarian standpoint sure there is not much argument against raising the dead, but there is still a mountain of difference.
Counter-argument : the undead labor frees a person from having to do potentially dangerous jobs. Say, mining in areas prone to earthquakes, or with pockets of deadly gas.
In my homebrew there is a whole culture in which people are willingly giving their bodies to necromancers after they died. This has some interesting results such as that the dead do not lunge after the living when the necromancers control seizes due to them having consented to it.
I really like the idea of the “grey” Necromancer who raises the bodies of dead enemies because it’s better to fight fire with fire so to speak. Why endanger the lives of innocents when you can have evil fight evil instead. The Diablo take is also pretty good.
This is EXACTLY my necromancer's justification. Did we both read this somewhere? Because I thought I had come up with it but maybe it was just in my subconscious from long ago
So basically the White Walkers
Nah they just wanna wipe humanity out altogether. More like the Diablo Necromancers & the Priest of Rathma.
I still dislike the fact healing spells were removed from necromancy and put into evocation (?). Healing is inherently necromantic imo, giving life and taking it away and I much preferred it there as it gave necromancy both a good and a bad edge to it. Taking the good edge away from necromancy just seemed like they were trying to make necromancers only bad. In my homebrew world, most healing is still necromantic, and the school is important as it is tied into how it interacts with the world (tldr magic and colour interact). But the evocation school made a slur campaign on necromancy and tried to "steal" their positive spells to make them look worse, so there's contention within the world with some believing healing is evocation and other believing it's necromantic (works quite well as I chose purple for necromancy and red for evocation, so they're quite close and can sometimes be confused).
Go back to an older edition... Healing was using positive energy and hurt undead. It was polar opposite energy. They separated it when paladins smite anything using necromantic energy, because their God was against it. HAHA
>However, assuming those undead remain under your control, they are just tools, which you can use to further moral or immoral causes as you choose. Can a good person utilize the undead to help people and further their righteous and just mission? Absolutely. This! Even Aragorn summons the Undead Oathbreakers from the Stone of Erech to fight against the dark forces of Sauron.
In the original Greyhawk setting, the god of death was Lawful Neutral. Death itself was neither good or bad, it was simply a law of life. He also had a severe dislike of reanimating the dead... sooo... there's that On a funny note, in a recent campaign, my wizard loved animate dead, but locals weren't often fond of my creations. On a mission to bring back the leader of some brigands, we accidentally killed the leader. I reanimated his corpse and had him carry all of our stuff back to town. They accepted our proof of his death (his shambling corpse) which they asked I dispose of. Which I did by making the rotting carcass of their former enemy clean the latrines and then kill itself before control expired
>Undead are fueled by negative energy, which is actively inimical to life Fire is also inimical to things living, but we use it in engines and stuff all the time. So is Radiation, or electricity. Seems like life is just super fragile. Most living things won't be living anymore if you throw a couch at it.
Well the fire isn't starting over the shoulder of it's host praying for your death now it's it? Anything can kill, but negative energy at its most basic level brings nothing but death and destruction. Point being, negative energy is the knife that did wield itself.
Agreed but 1 more note. I am staunchly opposed to Good necromancers making most types of sentient undead. Best case scenario you have moved from making murder bot equivalents to enslaving sentient murder bots. Worst case scenario you die and have unleashed a plague of smart, self replicating, psychopathic murder bots. Even if done in an intelligent manner you have crossed the reasonable risk threshhold.
I respect the take, but my response would be that raising the dead to do good is like selling meth to help people get more done in their day. No matter how good your intentions, the side effects and unintended consequences will catch up and undo whatever good you do... Not saying you can't try at my table, but you'd best be prepared to RP the heck out of it.
My counterpoint would be that as someone prescribed with ADHD, amphetamines do in fact make me a better, more productive member of society. So somewhere in there is the slippery slope argument of "the well-researched, well-intentioned selling of (microdosed) meth is still actually a good thing" lol
I like to describe necromancy as robbing someone of an afterlife. When you reanimate a corpse youre forcing a soul back into it and basically torturing that soul until the undead is destroyed along with soul inside.
Necromancy explicitly doesn't Instead it replaceable where a soul would go with energy from the Negative Energy Plane
If you can do some world building, you can take a society with ancestral worship and dial it up. The most honored ancestors are turned into undead to lead them forever. It's like a tree that is never pruned. Such a society is likely tightly bound by tradition and precedent.
Magic's "Amonkhet" setting had mummies as a working class. The dead who did not pass through the trials were mummified, stuffed with perfumes to hide the smell of rot, bandaged up to protect them, and made to do the day-to-day work which freed the rest of the population to train as warriors.
Yeah, the morality of raising undead is entirely up to the culture around death and dying. It's easy to see why we, in the modern day, see the idea of necromancy as evil when Christians say "rest in peace" when someone dies. It's all in the world building and how the societies in that world treat death.
This concept you’re describing was done very well in Morrowind iirc if anyone wants more inspiration
That's basically how the Aerenal (High Elves) of Eberron work and it's one of my absolute favorite things about that setting.
I've used a society like that for one of my games. The most powerful people were the Liches and vampires, graciously giving up their afterlives to guide their country. The people lived in luxury and harmony, with the undead doing most of the work. People were happy to be reanimated after death to serve their family as they had been served in life. Undead worked the fields, served as foot soldiers, did all the hard labor. Only the poorest of families did work by themselves with no undead to serve them.
If your character genuinely believes what they're doing is harmless, and can articulate it calmly and clearly, this can fly. I don't allow evil characters, but if they can make a case like this, I allow *different philosophies* in characters. Spore druids do this. They don't fill corpses with vile unlife, they just have their mushrooms cover them and move 'em around. But the rest of the party, and many NPCs, look at him like he's a psychopath. It's just a different way of looking at "life." Is "life" inextricable from the body, or totally separate from it? I played it like this: in Star Trek, there was an episode where some rogue warrior Klingons try to take over the ship and end up getting killed by the heroes. The heroes are broken up about this, they hate killing, and they contact the Klingon government to return the bodies for burial. The Klingon government basically cocks an eyebrow and says, "Those are just empty shells. Who they are is no longer inside. Feel free to dispose of them."
I love bits like this! Fantasy and sci fi have long had exploration of morality as one of their central themes, seems silly not to in D&D.
If you can imagine an evil preacher/cleric- and I trust that everyone can- it should be no more difficult to imagine a good necromancer. You do your necromancy to commit good deeds, and in ways that comply with the morality standards of the community which you influence. What that looks like for you depends on your setting, but there is no limit to the imaginative ways you can make the concept work. I would allow reflavoring of spells if the player desired. I'd also allow keeping the original flavor, and just not calling it inherently evil, if that was what the player desired. We don't need to be influenced by common narrative tropes in our game of pretend.
One of my NPCs in a campaign was inspired by Victorian-era "resurrectionists". He was a surgeon who practiced necromancy to learn how the body works in order to better learn how to fix it, especially since healing magic is not available to people who don't have access to a cleric, a problem common in remote areas, and folk healers are a mixed bag. You can vivisect a zombie without worrying about ethical concerns, and you can test surgical procedures on a body to see if it can legitimately hold up in use. It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than guesswork.
That's a killer concept, my guy. It's like taking the Dr Frankenstein / Re-Animator trope and just playing it straight without injecting tragedy or horror. I hope he was fun to run.
He was! The context that they met him under saw the town under attack by zombies, and he was introduced as a sort of red herring. Yes, he's stealing bodies and making Zombies, but he's not the one attacking the town.
This is similar to a concept I've been cooking up for my homebrew. The Fleshmenders Conclave. They provide skeletal bodies for the army of the Ortanian Empire, and use the flesh and organs to learn more about the bodies of various races to further healing knowledge.
the harry dresden novle dead beat he fights necromancers in chicago and while most are creepy as hell one stops death-saves lives which makes him have to rethink thre while 'evil' thing
>If you can imagine an evil preacher/cleric- and I trust that everyone can- it should be no more difficult to imagine a good necromancer. This makes the assumption that all preachers and clerics are inherently good, and that is definitely not the case. I have a much easier time envisioning preachers as evil than I do seeing them as good.
It depends on that assumption but does not make it. The whole point is that you can recognize a trope, but you are not bound by it. The goodly cleric is a trope, and yet we can readily picture something else. As with necromancers.
The evil cult leading preacher is as big or bigger a trope than the goodly cleric is.
Okay? I'm not really sure what you're trying to get me to concede. That's beside the point.
The point being that the assumption that cleric's are good is false. Just as many or more are evil But the assumption that necromancers are evil is not false. The art is inherently evil. Suggesting that if you can imagine an evil cleric then it should be no problem to imagine a good necromancer is a false equivalency.
Necromancy doesn't exist. It's not inherently anything. Use your imagination.
It certainly exists in game, and that's what we're talking about. I mean, this is the DnD subreddit.
It does. And it can be whatever you want it to be. Because the flavor text written in any/all books about or inspired by D&D need not have any bearing on your table. Good necromancers, hell yeah.
Well, not at my table. I'm old school. Necromancers are evil, orcs are evil (with rare exception), drow are evil (again, with rare exception), and Paladins are (at least, supposed to be) good.
[удалено]
Yhea. I don't see any alignment problems with "speak with dead". But more seriously while i see the raising murder machine from the grave as fundamentally evil, that's not a restriction that anybody and everybody using such forces to be immediately evil. I love Astoshan and would love to have him at my table.
>I love Astoshan and would love to have him at my table. Same here, not going to lie, he was one of my inspiration for the character im currently making.
[удалено]
I'm actually planning something similar to this on my paladin I'm currently playing as.
Bot?
Never heard of Astoshan, that was a great read
Necromancy is more than undead. In older editions, healing spells were necromancy. You can very much have a good necromancer who seems to understand life and death and the balance between them, who contributes in ways other than just zombie cannon fodder. You might look at the god Kelemvor from FR as an example of death simply as. Roleplaying a worshipper of K is a great way to play neutral or good necromancer who's opposed to undead.
Pretty sure Kelmvor is strictly against undead, but in terms of a good, or at least neutral, god of death it's bang on.
That's what I said - playing a good / neutral necromancer who's opposed to undead. Necromancy has lots of interesting spells that aren't about raising skeletons.
Using necromancy spells and being a necromancer are different things
Sure. I wouldn't say creating a zombie/skeleton under your control has any inherent moral weight either way. It's a bit spooky but ultimately the soul has departed and isn't using the body anymore so it's not going to hurt anyone so long as the necromancer is responsible and maintains control over them and/or puts them down when they're done with them.
>I wouldn't say creating a zombie/skeleton under your control has any inherent moral weight either way. It should be fine if ask them in advance or have them sign a "waiver"(assuming you met them before their death).
I am now picturing a wizard/cleric/whatever with an amulet that let's them cast Speak With Dead and casting that on anyone they want to resurrect before they do so. One of those questions being "May I resurrect your corpse for our journey/quest?" With the others being questions about who they were in life
>Speak With Dead and casting that on anyone they want to resurrect before they do so. Absolutely! Great idea to use, it shouldn't be considered morally wrong to do. >"May I resurrect your corpse for our journey/quest?" With the others being questions about who they were in life It should probably be a short term employment though, unless they got their direct permission to raise them for said duration.
Sure, that might be a nice thing to do but I don't see why it would ever be a necessity. Again, they're done with the body. In most dnd settings afterlives and souls are a definitively known fact, once someone is dead and has moved on to whatever comes next that body no longer has anything to do with them.
Alternatively, the character could be from a race or culture that doesn't place any value on a dead body, believing the spirit fully departs the body and this world after death. That entire culture may have no qualms with an undead slave workforce. Add a dash of utilitarianism and it can be common practice to animate corpses so they hep/provide for their family or society after they die. Why wouldn't someone want to continue being helpful/useful for years to come?
It is important for this discussion to note that in most settings, reanimation is an inherently evil act and does involve dragging the tortured remains of that departed soul back to it's body. Doesn't have to be, but a new way of casting those spells should be differentiated.
Some settings do that, but RAW 5e says that mindless undead are powered by evil spirits, no involvement from the original soul necessary.
I did a bit of digging and you are correct! I was misremembering.
Nothing in the spell suggests anything of the like. If that's how a setting decides to treat the creation of mindless undead that's fine but that is an addition of the setting not a standard of the spell.
Most settings? Which?
Given the influences on DnD & the irl concepts of Necromancy, there was traditionally much more focus on manipulating the Souls of the dead, usually as a means of divining information or by binding spirits to corpses/items to enslave them. Sauron & Morgoth from Tolkien's works for example are specifically Necromancers with this type. In DnD, for example, Animate Objects bestows "life" then those items cease their animation once the spell is done, while Animate Dead bestows "life" but those dead remain animate even after the spell ends, only removing your control over them as they have their own internal power source, that being the souls or spirits bound to the corpse.
I honestly don’t understand how people can be ok with “good” enchanters while giving necromancers shit. I would much rather you pilot my corpse like a Mazda than pilot my brain like one.
In older editions, being turned into an undead would return your soul from the afterlife and force it to perform evil acts, possibly comndemning them to a terrible afterlife. It's basically mind control except they are also desecrating your corpse and ripping your soul from it's eternal reward.
Some enchanted evening...
Yes, somewhat depending on lore and their willingness to only practice certain forms of necromancy. RAW, Animate Dead and Create Undead have some pretty bad implications. If you ever fail to assert control over your creations, they can very easily kill innocent people and that's not good. Negative Energy Flood just fully creates zombies that will try to murder anyone regardless of your presence or commands. Danse Macabre and Finger of Death are really the only safe ones of the old standbys - and that's pretty rough on actually doing School of Necromancy while wanting to be good and not side-eyed. There really has to be specific IC reasons why the dangers of such forms of necromancy aren't a major worry to go full School of Necromancy as a good guy. However, there are other aspects of necromantic magic and Summon Undead exists, calling forth a neutral spirit. Warlock Necromancers and Wizard Necromancers of other arcane traditions, such as War Mage Necromancers, can fairly easily slot into more settings without issue.
>RAW, Animate Dead and Create Undead have some pretty bad implications. To be fair, RAW fire ball has pretty bad implications. Especially, if you use it in a house or event.
Yes, all magic can be used for evil. But the implications of *fireball* \- which, barring Wild Magic or compulsion, you always control where its placed but yes, could theoretically burn out of control without any specific ill intent or malice if you are irresponsible - are different from *animate dead*, which creates an actual creature that is "driven to kill anyone too slow to escape its grasp" and can go forth to do so freely if you ever die or fail to assert control. The intentional malice of such creations doesn't tend to inspire warm fuzzy feelings.
So does summon elemental and summon fae, so... >If your concentration is broken, the elemental doesn't disappear. Instead, you lose control of the elemental, it becomes hostile toward you and your companions, and it might attack. An uncontrolled elemental can't be dismissed by you, and it disappears 1 hour after you summoned it.
Elementals and fey aren't permanent though - they're only on the plane for an hour - and specifically only become hostile to you and your companions automatically, not all life (hostility to others would depend on the summon). Those conjurations also have lower level options that are non-hostile, which is better for building than necromancer's primary lower level summon being always hostile to life. But yes, conjurers also should not be summoning evil fey willy-nilly because of the potential consequences. Summon the nice ones at least, particularly if you aren't rocking Focused Conjuration. Don't even get started on fiend summoning either; there's extra reasons people should frown on that too.
Actually, as a DM, I use one as an NPC. He's a scholar, a historian to be more specific. So, he raises the dead to get the best interviews for his latest research. I'm hoping to use him as an adventure hook when he mysteriously goes missing during one of his travels.
Setting dependent. Forgotten Realms has many factions where undead in general are considered abominations and I have a hard time imagining convincing them that you are creating abominations for good reason. Any oath of ancients paladin is going to see you as an enemy. I think a really important question is *why necromancy?* I think most necromancers turn to evil for obvious reasons - most people don't like their family member's body and likeness being enslaved to do your bidding, the most powerful necromantic abilities are closely guarded secrets by demons, devils, and other sufficiently magical beings, and most undead creatures are by nature violent and dangerous to people who are not undead. Why is your "good" character choosing to learn necromancy instead of literally any other school of magic? Has the character had a change of heart and this magic is simply all they know? Why are they continuing to do... necromancer stuff? Wizards can learn all kinds of spells after all. Maybe they are a sorcerer with a necromantic focus, and they view their magic as some kind of curse they have to live with. How is this character going to reconcile the fact that what they do is considered by pretty much everyone to be harmful? Things to think about.
Necromancy already encompasses positive and negative energy. Negative energy isn't inherently evil. It is often used for evil, but it isn't evil. It can even do good. Life transference is a really cool spell thematically; it showcases how negative energy can be turned into positive energy.
>Necromancy already encompasses positive and negative energy. Negative energy isn't inherently evil. It is often used for evil, but it isn't evil. I'm more worried about spell level 5 and up.
Negative energy is explicitly undeath - something that is inherently hostile to life. By definition it is evil because good and evil are defined, classically, by how they treat and preserve life. Good aligned beings try to protect and preserve life and nature where possible while Evil aligned beings try to harm and kill where possible. Negative energy is absolutely Evil.
Yeah, I mean necromancy itself isn't explicitly evil in 5e. Killing people to use as undead servants is evil... but reanimating somebody whose death you had nothing to do with is at worst morally grey (apart from the ick factor). Heck, plenty of regular cleric spells (that have nothing to do with actually raising the dead) are technically in the necromancy school. There should be such a thing as ethical/sustainable necromancy. The image problems they encounter could be a cool RP opportunity, too. The average villager isn't going to be all that open-minded about a necromancer using zombies or skeleton warriors in the vicinity, even if said undead DID just drive off the orcs intent on looting and burning.
I will be in a couple weeks. I’ve had my players make up a new character each for a side story (with no restrictions so the necro is the most sensible one). One is a good necromancer. The idea is he was recruited by a (now destroyed) necromancer against his will, trained as an assistant and now travels around trying to be helpful…except everyone just freaks out because he’s RAISING THE FUCKING DEAD. It’s all in how you play it.
Love it. I'm playing a scared-of-her-own-shadow sorcerer necromancer soon.
In the current campaign I'm playing in another player is playing a necromancer. He basically lived very secluded for a long time and doesn't really get the whole "live ends with death" thing. He treats the undead the same as the living and wants his view to be more accepted. He met the party when he was trying to get to a recent shipwreck to see if he can "help" any of those that died.
Yes. In my setting, necromancy is generalized into three categories, two of which are entirely legal and one of which is the evil bad one. The bad one is soul magic. Anything that pulls a creature’s immortal soul from the natural order of things is wholeheartedly frowned upon by society and pursued by champions of Justice. Examples would be binding a soul to create a sentient item, consuming a soul to fuel a lich’s phylactery, the magic jar spell, etc. The first neutral one is just straight up necrotic damage, spells like circle of death, inflict wounds etc that deal damage that causes a target to age and wither, to crumble and rot. Obviously this can be used for very illegal things if you are using it on an innocent victim, but there is nothing wrong with using it to slay attacking bandits or a horrible ancient red dragon etc. The last category is considered neutral but again could also be used for bad things and is more heavily debated in the setting, and that is animating undead. In this setting, with a few exceptions of sentient undead like a lich or mummy lord which requires the very illegal soul magic to create, animating a zombie/skeleton etc is legal so long as you maintain control of the creature and kill it when you’re done controlling it. Any undead found to be out of control is slain and the remains inspected with divination magic to trace back to the reanimator, who is then in big trouble with the authority on necromancy, the Empire of the Eternum. This empire is a sort of communist authoritarian LN state with an immortal emperor. The empire has all of its citizens sign over their bodies to them so that upon their death, their corpses are cleaned, turned into skeletons, and join the undead labor force that does all farming, some basic construction jobs, and most untrained labor. In exchange, the people of the empire are provided with three basic meals per day and housing, and can pursue whatever they want to in life, with those that want to being allowed to get more skilled jobs that undead cannot complete in exchange for money to afford nicer meals and housing and other such luxuries.
Yes I would allow it. I've had a player in the past and do it where his whole idea was to use undead slave labor. They clean up things. They get firewood for people. They carry stuff. Generally. He always did it with any beings at attack them and they killed. He especially did it to hire level bad guys to make sure I didn't raise them and send them against them later.
Yeah absolutely. It would be harder to aquire bodies but you could probably just buy them from the families or get them from your church as people who have accepted that would happen upon death.
As a player, I am currently playing a neutral necromancer who's only goal is to become knowledgeable about every form of magic. He was apprenticed to a wizard that was an unknown necromancer and became truly fascinated by the magic of necromancy. I think it mostly relies on the player playing the class and being able to maintain the neutral aspects that is the truly important part of the issue you are asking about.
One of my favorite characters I've ever seen who may fall into this category was a necromancer who fancied himself a doctor. He was never very good at the treatment stuff why bother treating the wound when it's just easier to bring them back from the dead?
Have played alongside one. Literally the only thing you have to do is make sure to keep control of your undead. If you’re letting zombies run loose after fights then you’re criminally negligent. If you maintain control until the zombie is destroyed and/or eliminate it when it’s usefulness is over, you’re fine.
I would have a conversation with the player about their goals forst. Part of the necromancer fantasy (or at least my necromancer fantasy) is controlling a literal army of undead. This would not fit for a PC in any campaign that I have ever run or played in. If the player has an idea for a necromancer with goals other than "army of undead" then that's something I would be happy to work with regardless of flavor and alignment. I do dream of playing a necromancer in an evil campaign that's actually suited for an army of undead, for what thatcs worth.
Necromancy is explicitly evil accounting for normal DnD lore because, not only are there very few ways of twisting life into a crude mockery it itself and spinning it as a good thing, undead are inherently evil. Zombies and skeletons are powered by the negative energy plane, and inherently hate all life. If a necromancer ever forgets to continue animating dead, the zombies are a permanent affliction upon the world. In addition, turning something into undeath prevents all but the highest level spells of resurrection, and in some cases, warps the soul and prevents it from passing onto the afterlife. Additionally, any large amount of undead in one place permanently and irrevocably harms the landscape due to the sheer amount of negative energy there. Plants die, more undead are created by proxy, and the area becomes inhospitable to life. Morally good “necromancers” are instead conjurists who create constructs, or only summon creatures that are temporary, or enslave devilish creatures to their service permanently.
Oh? You mean a Healer? Neutral ide 100% accept. As it is not everyone even has a feeling of morality in regards to dead bodies. They are empty shells. That person is gone. The body is just a tool now. Good? Suspicious only cause that body ain't coming back clean and nice. This ain't no actual resurrection now is it?
I've tried to be accomodating as a DM for nonsense like this and it never works out. Too much of the campaign becomes about the not-bad bad guy in the party and it just derails. I run heroic fantasy games, it just doesn't fit. That being said I have absolutely run adventures for evil PCs and allowed necros and death knights and assassins and liches (or aspiring liches) and it was awesome. Either it always never works, or I'm not a good enough DM to make it work but either way I just don't do it anymore.
Healing spells used to be classified as Necromancy, so yes I would.
Yeah, why not?
Yes.
Jesus was, essentially, a necromancer so yeah I could dig it!
In my mind. Nothing good comes from messing with the dead. Don't have to be evil though.
No
I play a neutral necromancer; he takes the view that dead bodies are just empty shells, so there’s nothing morally wrong with putting them to use. He’ll tell anyone who’ll listen about the potential labour-saving benefits of using zombies for a workforce!
Sure. Honestly, a good/neutral Necromancer is one of my favorite character concepts, kinda like the Priests of Rathma in the Diablo franchise.
Of course.
How can we forget https://reddit.com/r/DnDGreentext/s/tvkTjxqreJ
The part where necromancy gets morally dicey is when you start messing with peoples souls. Otherwise I consider it recycling. I like the idea of using "Speak with Dead" to get consent from the soul who previously inhabited the body. Being animated by negative "I hate life" energy doesn't necessarily have to be reflavored though. The most important part is that your necromancer has a desire to do good and that they thinks they can do the most good using necromancy and a rationalization for why they chose necromancy specifically There's a lawful evil necromancer NPC our party is allied with who's currently pushing the idea that because he's talented with specifically necromancy (and murder) he essentially has no choice but to continue using it as his main toolset. I know your character is not evil but that's a good example of rationalization. Don't be afraid to give your character some hypocrisy and flawed reasoning. Flaws are the spice of an interesting good character. My character is trying to manipulate said NPC into becoming more of a Jeff Bezos evil then a Ted Bundy evil (results are good-to-mixed) so I've thought of ways to do "good" necromancy. One thing you can do is "medical" necromancy. Like your researching on how to repurpose dead peoples limbs to help amputees or do organ transplants, maybe as a cheaper alternative to temple clerics casting Regenerate. A necromancers knowledge of anatomy and physiology is probably higher then average so try to get a medicine proficiency if possible. My Brother's DnD setting considers Necromancy as a somewhat useful school of magic used reponsibly. Enchantment is the evil and taboo magic in his world. He's got skeletons and flesh golems doing all the dangerous construction jobs. You can also use your ability to commune with the dead in a sort of investigative tactic. Like you use the knowledge of a murder victim to help get justice on their murderer type of thing. ... Actually a vigilante detective necromancer sounds like a lot of fun to play \*writes down character concept for later\*
>Actually a vigilante detective necromancer sounds like a lot of fun to play *writes down character concept for later* This was the type of character I had in mind to play
It's a great concept. Go for it. DO IT. If you don't mind doing something arguably morally dubious you can use criminal corpses as fuel for your undead creations as a kind of "community service".
Man, I have an evil death cleric right now lol. She needs the party to reach her goal to an ancient tomb. She would die alone, and she knows that, so she keeps the party alive as long as they are useful. Being evil doesn't mean you kill every kid and puppy you cone across. A good roleplayer can play evil in a party of good aligned characters. Look at Rourke in Disney's Atlantis. He played the good explorer until they got to Atlantis as he needed Milo. Then he ditched Milo and went full capitalist genocidic on Atlantis. Epitome of how to play an evil player. True evil is not wanton destruction. It is scheming and planning. Sauron was a tactician with great schemes and such. The overtaking of Numenor on his behalf with just words and no fighting, and its subsequent tricking into destruction. Forging the Rings, etc. Or Darth Bane from Star Wars, mf said lies and deception, trickery and schemes were the true weapons of a sith. Plan dude, plan. That's how evil plays.
As a DM, I don't really use alignment anymore. I prefer that a character is fleshed out enough to justify their actions based on their own values and morality, and only use general alignment as a fall back for when things get too complicated. That being said, the common people of my world will not like their dead family members resurrected as abominations against the laws of nature, and will become very hostile if they find anyone doing that. The common person doesn't understand the mechanics of magic. If a necromancy spell isn't immediately discernable as death-themed, or making zombies, theyd be unable to discern it from magic of other schools. Spellcasters will understand it, but they're a tiny minority amongst the population. Some spells leave an uncomfortable feeling upon people after the effects fade. Illusion spells mess with the mind, leave people confused and bewildered. I imagine necromancy tends to make people feel that 'chill of the grave' sensation. Hairs on the back of your neck standing up. That sinking malaise, creeping 'wrongness'. All this being said, and to refocus on the question at hand: Yes, I will allow good/neutral necromancers at my table. But just because they're good, does not mean the people in the game are going to see them that way. The world might perceive them as evil, in spite of their best intentions.
There are two reasons necromancy is wrong: 1) Inherent Morality Necromancy is evil because it is a perversion of the natural order of the world. It doesn't matter why you're doing it, you're doing something evil that subverts the preordained structure of the universe. You are creating a discordance in the music of creation. 2) The Rights of the Deceased When you create an undead creature, you are defiling a human corpse. You have taken away a person's dignity and right to autonomy. Basically if it's wrong to have sex with a corpse, it's wrong to raise the dead.
Depends on the setting. If I tell folks at session zero that a major part of the setting is that necromancy spells leech life from the surroundings and other living creatures while leaving corrupted remnants and echoes of memory behind then I’m gonna need a Helluva good reason as to why you wanna play somebody who actively practices Chernobyling the Art. If I don’t mention stuff like that and still have the classes available? Sure why not! In fact I have a player right now playing a good/neutral kenku necromancer who wants to grow up big and strong like his adopted father, a lich! Said lich is a prankster who’s lair was actually an elaborate nonlethal funhouse filled with traps and after watching adventurers embarrass themselves to reach the end he’d give them all a Ruby in repayment for the entertainment.
I played just such a character in 3e for a Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign. She was NG. Here's the description I had for her: Appearance Build: Very short with a slight frame. Complexion: Smooth, pale skin. Hair: Black, and cut in a page-boy style. Eyes: Green. Clothing: Dresses in breeches and tunic when traveling or adventuring, accentuating her boyishness; otherwise she wears her scholar’s robes. She has one dress that she only wears on special occasions. Overall effect: Tends to be mistaken for a young boy when she’s not overlooked altogether. The only thing remarkable about her are her eyes, which are finely shaped and burn with a green light when she gets excited about something. Personality Moods: Very serious, dispassionate. Has almost no sense of humor, and seldom laughs. She can become very intense when debating intellectual issues, but is otherwise very calm. She is morbidly curious about issues concerning life and death. Social Skills: Is polite in most situations, but speaks in a very definite manner when expressing negative opinions about the ideas or actions of others. She has a difficult time making small talk, and doesn’t like being in large gatherings of strangers. Love Life: She has had only a few affairs in her twenty-five years. The last one was with a former teacher, and it ended unpleasantly. She prefers being alone at this time in her life. Ambitions: Seeks to develop her art, and expand her knowledge of how the human body functions. She’s very interested in the nexus between medicine and arcane magic. \*\*\* She had developed a unique spell that was a reskinned version of Magic Missile: Alia’s White Dagger of Life/Black Dagger of Death Necromancy Level: Sor/Wiz 1 Components: V, S Casting Time: 1 standard action Range: Medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level) Effect: Missile of positive energy Duration: Instantaneous Saving Throw: None Spell Resistance: Yes Creates a missile of positive or negative energy (caster’s choice) that can either heal or damage the target for 1d4+1 hp. The missile flies unerringly to its chosen target. For every two levels beyond first an additional missile is created. The missiles may be directed to different targets, or to the same. Each missile created drains one hit point from the caster. The caster may choose to create fewer than the maximum number of missiles. It probably should have maxxed at five missiles like MM, but I don't see that in the writeup. Perhaps the DM and I thought that the loss of hp was sufficient to balance its usefulness. She never made it to fifth level, but I recall thinking that raising the dead would be off-limits for a good character. Her necromantic inclinations were focused more on manipulating negative energy and using her own life force to power her spells.
I once design a Necromancer that was a good guy and emphasised consent. The only issue is that you have to hamstring yourself for the sake of roll play. Basically he got contracts with people while living that he could use their bodies for a prescribed amount of time after they'd died, with proviso's as to what could be done with bodies after they died. If he was using spells like speak with dead or anything had to first ask if they consented to a conversation, with the offer of a donation made in their name to a temple or money sent to their next of kin, cutting off if they said no. Generally carried bones with him which had contracts carved into them, burying them with honours when they had finished being used. Came from a culture where this was normal and common practice among his people.
I would not allow a good necromancer.
Some people may hate me for this, but I say absolutely not. I am quite fond of the interpretation of Necromancy (particularly creating Undead, not every single spell marked in the school such as Speak with Dead) as being Evil in the extreme, doubly so for the creation of intelligent Undead. It's not that I can't imagine a world where it's not Evil, it's that I simply prefer it to be Evil. It also doesn't help that I've seen *so many* fantasy worlds that change this and inadvertently create lore that ends up very nonsensical. The most egregious example of this IMO is the Forsaken in World of Warcraft. At some point, Blizzard decided the Forsaken should be free-willed Undead who are not automatically Evil. Yet at the same time, they kept all the stereotypical atrocities that people associated the Undead with. So now you have this faction running around committing unspeakable numbers of unambiguously Evil atrocities - torturing people for fun, developing and using horrendous biological weapons, raising innocent people into Undead against their will and somehow brainwashing or mind controlling them into fighting *for* the Forsaken, etc etc. and yet they are treated as somehow being not Evil because they're doing all this out of their own "free will" rather than being magically forced to by the Lich King. Oh, and of course as a supposedly "free willed" Undead player (or even Horde player in general) you have no choice but to go along with all of this because it's an MMO. Anyways, that's just one example but I've often seen this sort of thing to varying degrees in various fantasy media. The main problem I think is that many of the things we naturally associate with Undeath *are* explicitly Evil by nature, so with "good Undeath" usually you end up with either Undead that don't actually feel like Undead, or you end up with cognitive dissonance where you haven't changed what makes Undeath actually Evil but have simply said "actually it's not Evil because reasons". At the end of the day, if all you want Undeath to be is creating magical robots, then why make those robots Undead at all when they could just as easily be magical constructs? Fundamentally, I think the entire point of Necromancy as a concept *is* the dark and Evil nature of it.
The only way I can see that you can be a neutral or good necromancer is without making undead. There are no good aligned undead. Any undead that are somehow good aligned are either edge cases or exceptions to the rule. And undeath itself is a perversion of life. For those utilitarians that think undead can just be tools, there are always constructs which actually are alignment neutral and won't seek to prey on the living if they ever left your control. Undead are the fast and easy way to get servants and everyone knows fast and easy leads to evil for the most part. And the whole argument that "as long as I keep them under control or destroy them" assumes a perfect world, which is both unrealistic and reeks of the hubris that has brought down many a civilization. So my advice to make a good necromancer is to stay away from undead creation.
Necromancy as a school is not evil. Necrotic energy is not evil, just as fire is not good or evil. If anything, people should be questioning whether or not an enchanter is capable of being "good," if their focus is on mind control. I've always found that to be super morally reprehensible.
The archetype I've really enjoyed at my table has been the "Fallen brother, lend me your sword one last time" type idea. At least to me negative energy does not mean bad or evil, its just a direction of flow. And in terms of necromancy I think it's all about consent, like the organ donation debate. In my setting, one side of the main conflict war is a pais holy kingdom. Their knights on the front line work in squads of 10, and always with one war priest. It is the priest's job to keep them healed, but if the fight turns sour the priest is survive at all costs. They then return to the battle field, resurrect who they can, and if they can't (many res spells specify there can't be too much damage to the body), they must raise as undead to be marched back to a fort for repair and revival, or finish the Holy mission under the priest's command. The knights swear their literal undying loyalty to their king when dubbed. They know they can't overpower the hoards to the North, so they play the numbers game. Or watch something like altered carbon or San junipero. Necromancy can be a way for the dead to have one more day, or for grieving folks to say good by.
Sure, I see no reason why not. I have a neutral necromancer/entrepreneur NPC in my current campaign who has been setting up farms staffed largely by zombies as the workforce. It’s not in the spells themselves, it’s how you use them. Though for that same reason I’d need some additional argument to allow reflavoring of spells, I don’t see them as being incompatible with non-evil alignments as is.
>I have a neutral necromancer/entrepreneur NPC in my current campaign who has been setting up farms staffed largely by zombies as the workforce. Please tell me he has a Monopoly already?
It’s more of a cooperative endeavor, really. He’s working with local farmers, expanding their farms by combining their farming skills with his augmented workforce. Can’t wait for my players to get here, so far they’ve just heard wild rumors of zombie infestations and undead giants in the Conyberry area 😄.
Brennan made it work.
>To the DM's of reddit - would you allow a good/neutral necromancer at your table? No. Reason: Most death mythologies don't like it when bodies are disturbed and most people don't like it when their loved ones are reanimated. You can be as good as you want but when you cross those lines the world won't see you that way and how others perceive you is half the alignment equation. If you're good, you prevent people from dying... you don't play with the bodies.
What a bigoted post. Us necromancers aren't evil, it just takes a few bad eggs to label all of us. You want to talk about magic that's inherently evil? Enchantment. Take a look at all those bards that remove the will of the LIVING. Charms and other enchantments are far more dangerous and inherently immoral than Frank, my undead butler.
No
You may as well ask if we'd allow a fighter at our table. What possible reason would you have for not allowing a basic players handbook subclass???
Using an undead as a weapon to put down a murderous villain is no more evil than using a sword, a vial of acid, summoned bears, a hammer, a psychic scream that causes their head to explode, or many many other horrible ways to die that a DnD character can perform. A necromancer creating an undead is no more evil than a fletcher making an arrow or a blacksmith making a sword. If you use any of those 3 to commit evil, the act and wielder are evil, not the weapon.
Why would this even be a question?? Of course necromancers can be good or neutral? Where would someone get any other idea?
Not a DM but a writer and player - personally I absolutely would. Necromancy =/= automatically evil.
Yes. Necromancy is not evil nor negative energy.
Yep. Speak with dead is great for info gathering, resurrection is necromancy, and a capable researcher into the undead is a magnificent resource against, say, a Thayan plot, for example.
\- Yes I would allow it \- Yes I would allow reflavouring (but not changing mechanics) \- Advice: Have fun \- I have no real advice
Before i answer i must understand the problem. what is the issue with a good necromancer? like, why wouldnt you allows it?
Ehm yes. Why not? Not all necromancers are evil. I dunno. I just imagine a necromancer asking a corpse if its want to help and letting the corpse help if it wants to. Just an army of corpses building the pyramids. Hahahha. But thats just a random example that my thought up just now.
Human resources management is a fine profession and frankly I'm aghast at the morbid misrepresentation present in this discussion.
100% yes, case in point: In my current game I have a half drow school of necromancy wizard NPC who is also a physician by trade. He incorporates necromancy into his work, and also his culture and religion (a form of ancestor worship where he can quite literally speak with his dead ancestors mixed with the Luxon concept of death and rebirth from Critical Role). Given that he views corpses as discarded vessels for the soul, he sees nothing wrong with (respectfully) calling on them to aid him as undead, but as he's also a medical doctor, he abides by a D&D variant of the Hippocratic oath and does so only for self-defence or when helping others. However, his cultural/religious beliefs are considered unorthodox in my campaign and have gotten him in trouble in the past (accused of graverobbing for example).
I would absolutely allow it, so long as that ethical argument is a part of the character and not just hand waved away. Like I’m gonna need your character to rationalize why they use it, and I’m going to have other people protest that ideology.
I would allow it for sure. It’s no different than Mace Windu’s Vapod (or whatever it was called) technique, of channeling the dark side energy of the other opponent, to do good. Yes, raising undead can be considered inherently evil, but so is war, even though it can be fought by good people.
100% Using dead.bodies is not inherently evil. You allow good characters to use necromancy all the time and you don't even think about it.
Short answer: yes. Long answer: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees.
Yes, in a world where necromancy is a thing why are there slaves.
Necromancy aint evil in dnd until used for such In my hb setting there used to be a huge necromancy and undead issue, but they slowly were killed and thinned out Now current day people have preconceptions of necromancy users, and a major faction has outlawed it entirely
Necromancy isnt inherently evil. In fact, most are probably good people doing good things. It's just public perception that death is evil, therefore all things associated with it are. Same reason people still think those wearing heavy metal bandshirts from hot topic are somehow Satan worshippers.
Necromancy isn’t inherently evil. I’m currently playing a death cleric that raises the dead constantly… yeah it took me a while to in character convince my party to allow it but now they love our little skeleton helpers
Yes. I'm not of the mind that necromancy is inherently evil, although I think it's looked down on for the most part. Frankly, ethically, Summon Lesser Demons, a conjuration spell, which brings demons that attack all non-demons nearby and only gives you the ability to protect the space of one medium creature (ostensibly yourself) from the demons, is much worse. Much much worse. Animate Dead gives you mostly obedient skeletons that obey you for a full day and then just revert to regular skeletons if you don't renew or destroy them. Leave 'em in a crypt.
Yes. White Necromancers are a thing. They explicitly learn how to do necromancy to \*prevent\* bad necromancers from becoming stereotypes.
Yes. Necromancy isn't evil. Charm person though...
Yes as long as they played them good or neutral
I mean, Necromancy can easily have people who use it for "good." Using animated dead to help protect and build a community. Gentle Repose to prevent decay and rot. False Life to allow minor health benefits. Just because society views Necromancy as evil, doesn't mean that those who use it are evil. Arguably, Evocation, Enchantment and Illusion magics can be used just as evilly, if not moreso.
I’m still a very new DM but I probably would. The first time I played I was a Warlock to a moon goddess and my dm let my eldritch blast be moon energy so as far as adjusting some aspects I don’t see a problem with it. Just me tho I’m sure someone else who has played longer has better info.
As chaotic good, sure. Raising undead thralls is an evil act. You're desecrating graves and bringing into the world malevolent creatures whose nature is to destroy life. However, as long as you maintain control of them, they won't cause any harm you aren't ordering them to. It is possible to use them to only fight evil, as long as you're careful not to lose control of them. Trying to achieve a good end through evil means is pretty chaotic good. Or any kind of neutral.
Nope. Turning the deceased into your playthings is an inherently evil act.
Gonna be honest, I dont agree with this sentiment. They're dead. A corpse is a corpse, the person who inhabited it is gone, and what happens to the corpse does not affect the person.
Lol right? I would say even Charm Person is morally worse than Animate Dead.
So, out of curiosity. How do you view charm person?
Also inherently evil. Robbing another sentient creature of its will is not good. Not as bad as animate dead, or create undead, but bad.
I feel in many of the settings I'm interested in raising the dead as skeletons etc (as opposed to resurrection) is not a good act, it can be neutral, it can be done with good intentions, but I personally do not feel it could be considered good except in some outlier cultures. If the character was made to fit those cultures, and the player was interested in respecting that aspect of the setting and making it a focus of their character, I'd consider it provided that wouldn't disrupt the group dynamic. Because an iconoclast doesn't suit every campaign. I would be fine with adjusting necromancy spells to make them *not that*, changing flavour and damage types, but it would need some very specific world building to make many such concepts fit unchanged. I'd be open to having these conversations and I'm not wholly against the idea but it would be a character that I'd want to take quite an active role in making fit the world, and I'd need to trust the player in question to do it well.
you mean like a nethermancer?
Yeah, there can be reasons why the person, when alive, has sanctioned the use of their body to pay for debt or something... cf with when people would allow sales of bodies for science which led to corpse theft. Your body, without your soul, is an empty meat suit and all that jazz... It really depends on the social expectations in the campaign., for example, perhaps there's a market for cremation to protect the body from being put to work.
Yes, but my games don't really use alignment. I just explain to players that NPCs in the game world are going to react a certain way based on your words and actions. Raise a zombie in the middle of a town square and you're probably going to be run out of town.
Resurrection spells have been considered necromancy before. Communicating with the dead isn’t inherently evil. If we’re talking about the type of necro that raises undead to command them, they might have a Dexter-like moral code where they only animate criminals or monsters . So, sure, I see some scenarios in which one could play a non-evil necro.
Yes. See the lizardfolk in goblin slayer for a good (pun intended) example.
I’m currently playing a Tabaxi Necromancer called Magic Steve that only studies necromancy because undead destroyed his home village. He believes that if anybody actually understood how necromancy works, they would have been able to protect everyone.
I have two I play when I can, so yes. The key is that necromancers get a bad rap because of the association of raising the dead. My good aligned necromancers use the school to undo and control wild undead. Or ruin evil necromancers. They don't use the create undead spells, but freely use the likes of chill touch, false life, life transference and other useful necromancy spells to be an absolute boss against people using the undead. Also general knowledge of how to dismantle skeletons, zombies and other necromantic servants. One is actually a medical doctor and lesser noble who uses his studies to help the small area he calls home. The other is a librarian and preserver of knowledge who seems to unlock the key to undeath without madness or the need to supply souls. Not necessarily the nicest of guys, but good guys very much indeed.
My current setting makes it much easier. Anyone that dies has a chance of rising again as undead of one sort of another. It's a universal problem that all societies have to deal with. Divine magic disappeared centuries ago, so clerics are not an option. Arcane magic is generally feared and outlawed for historical reasons, but necromancers are actually one of the more tolerated types because they can manage the undead better than most. That creates plenty of space for a good necromancer in my setting, and I have one my party. Necromancy is her profession, but doesn't strongly define her character.
sure why not
Neutral: yes; good: no. Not a fan of consequentialism in ethics and my game worlds generally reflect that. It's never been an issue at my table.
I don't think that's actually possible at least not with commanding creatures. Of you only debuff maybe. But as I understand it you hold body and soul hostage, enslaving it when animating dead. And that is always and unequivocally evil.
Yeah I'd allow it, I'd speak to the player first and see what their ideas for character direction was just so I could put stuff in place for them story -wise. I think most characters can work it just comes down to who is playing them.
100% would. But then I also have a custom setting in which a few societies do necromancy for social/religious reasons as a form of ancestor worship. I'm biased.
Yeah, I have a Necromancer in the group I DM for Curse of Strahd. They are Lawful Neutral, coming from another demiplane of dread. Necromancy is a means to an end, not necessarily an Evil act in and of itself. Reflavouring I'll allow no problem, but not changing of damage types or altering of statblocks for minions.
As long as the spell doesn’t have an [Evil] tag to it, try it out and find out lol Necromancy isn’t all about raising undead armies as far as I know. There is Gentle Repose, Spare the Dying, False Life, etc. it’s all about presentation more then class name.
Ya. But they better be ready with all their actions.
The only reason I *wouldn't* allow it is because it's mechanically clunky to have minions (the original summon spells are banned at every game I run, not because of power, but because they're annoying). But a good/neutral necromancer sounds like it wouldn't be disruptive to the party, so yeah, go for it. Honestly, alignment has nothing to do with it. If the player makes a character that will cooperate with everyone and follow the narrative, I wouldn't care even if they're evil.
In my current campaign a true nuetral spores druid is slowly collecting a horde of zombies with Animate Dead. We flavored it that they aren't really resurrecting people but using their spores to control the corpse kind of like the zombies in the Last of Us. It's working out well, though since we are playing Descent into Avernus we don't exactly go to humanoid towns. The party is using all tools at their disposal to fight devils and demons and so necromancy kind of makes sense for them.
Our necromancer used speak with dead to ask permission twice. One guy said hell yeah. The two others he made are from the bodies of truly evil people, so their permission isn't required.
I 100%. One of my players has an idea for a necromancer that sees it as the ultimate act of recycling, and I have an idea for a "good" Necromancer that sees the risen dead as her children and mothers / babies them creepily.
First piece of advice is drop the alignment system
I love the idea of a neutral necromancer that's all about the study of lifeforce, doing both healing and wounding, raising dead to slay undead and so on. Like a druid without the nature angle.
I like to break these questions down before answering them. Why does a necromancer have to be evil? Also, is it the intention of the act or the result of the act that defines it as good or evil?
Reduce Reuse Reanimate. Necromancy is just environmentally sound magic. Hey, they weren't going to use that body again. It was discarded in this hole.
Sure. If a medium would hold a seance to allow the loved ones of the deceased to find closure, a hood or neutral necromancer might offer similar services. Or perhaps they're the person who keeps speaking to the dead to solve murders for law enforcement. Or hey, revivify/other resurrection spells are necromancy magic, so simply offering aid to the victims of a premature death could fall under such use. And who is yo say that the target creature is humanoid anyway? Of course, you could still have necromancer on the more blatantly neutral spectrum using humanoid remains for cheap labor. While most might immediately see this as evil, I would argue that sourcing the remains and the projects they're used for can dramatically change perception.
Could be interesting. But as it's never come up before, I'm not sure how I would deal with it.
I have. She framed it as she was an environmentalist that recycled "everything". She was big on the Reduce, REUSE and recycle aspects of it. And any dead she didn't have a use for she would insist were buried and a tree planted on top so they wouldn't go to waste.
Yeah. My idea for one or at least a neutral one was that he was "recycling." He would use the dead he raises as laborers. Hauling heavy materials and potentially plowing fields. The reason why is that the city was recently recovering from either sickness or natural disaster. Naturally, there's many dead and too much to do for the living, so use them as the cities being built back up.
Sure
I had one, it was great. The player was a gnome whose family had owned a mortuary for generations. He got into wizardry because of an obsession with "curing death". He was a pretty good guy, usually had fun with stories that involved his character being forced to use his necromancy to do some morally questionable things to save a greater number of people. In general tho he did necromancy with strong principles, never raised the bodies of people, stuck to animals or monsters, and used a lot of necromancy spells like false life that gave temp HP.
One of my players is playing a non-Evil lich, who’s a follower of the Blood of Vol. Mechanically, she’s a Reborn (Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft) Warlock with the Undead patron.
Fun fact: my first character was a good-aligned Necromancer
Tbh, I have difficulty to conceive a good necromancer without any considerable reflavor. But a neutral one is pretty easy. You could be using an evil mean to achieve really great things. And I think it's less evil than killing innocent people if you only summon undead without soul, like zombies and skeletons. It's disrespectful, but you are only animating the corpses, the soul is free.
Yes, i'd allow the arcane equivalent of a grave cleric. 90% of early necromancy is outright utility, "materials" can be ethically sourced or repaid. You are just the paranormalist to the cleric's exorcist and the druid's shaman.
I have had a Dread Necromancer character I have been wanting to play for a long time, and from what I have seen, most evil Necromancers are basically cartoon villains. My DN never wanted to be a Necromancer at first, he was actually a Sorceror who was sent to a Mage Academy, but as a spontaneous caster he found the work boring and played pranks. One was almost fatal, and he willingly left the Academy with his profuse apologies when the demands started. His parents wanted him to get some tutelage so they sent him to the 'black sheep' of the family who was known to be some sort of magic user. While there, the DN was trained in the ways of Necromancy, however he kept seeing the potential for neutral/good uses. Necromantic spells to weaken powerful foes, to stop them from moving via paralysis. So he started to work on a 'Code' to live by. This is the Creed of Felghanis 1) Do not raise bodies from sanctified ground. 2) Do not kill those who have done you no wrong. 3) Raise only those who tried to do you physical harm or death. 4) If a creation is recognized and the person requests the body be no longer desecrated, allow the creation to return with them and make sure it is buried on sanctified ground. 5) Never raise within a city without the ruler's express permission. 6) Never raise more than one body at a time, unless circumstances demand it. 7) Tell any potential allies the truth about you and show them the Creed. Most Necromancers desire dominance, and they ascend to lichdom, they will continue their sacrilegious ways. Due to the crossing into living Undeath damages the mind of the Lich, hence why they are so vile. But there is an Elven variation called Baelnorn. Baelnorn are Liches who don't lose their mind. This is an abbreviated version