"Good" Necromancy

[Summer-Knight925]

I have a player who wants to start a necromancer, but in the setting, "evil" is not an alignment choice for players because, simply put, thats evil. So how would you go about using pure evil and not being evil?

So far ive thought of a organization who is "good" but uses necromancy to fight evil (the best tool against evil IS evil after all), but I dont feel thats good enough.

so if anyone has any ideas for making necromancy "good" let me know.

 

[Jack Simth]

I have a player who wants to start a necromancer, but in the setting, "evil" is not an alignment choice for players because, simply put, thats evil. So how would you go about using pure evil and not being evil?

So far ive thought of a organization who is "good" but uses necromancy to fight evil (the best tool against evil IS evil after all), but I dont feel thats good enough.

so if anyone has any ideas for making necromancy "good" let me know.

There's only a relative handful of necromancy spells that actually have the [Evil] tag. With a small handful of exceptions, about the only Necromancy spells that have the [Evil] descriptor are the ones that actually create Undead.

Now, there's very few necromancy spells that are beneficial to the target, but neither are most Evocations (such as Fireball). You can have a Lawful-Good Necromancer, no problem.

 

[WalrusThief]

-Why- is it evil? You are simply using the body, not the soul. The person will never use it again. It's a bit morbid, but not evil.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

Well...in the setting a major badguy (now dead...woot for killing demigods!) used legions of undead, he was uber evil tho, so how could i make it so he can do it for good?

 

[WalrusThief]

My point remains. On a philosophical level, -why- is creating undead evil?

 

[Summer-Knight925]

Negative energy powers them? its really not evil (as much as...well being undead) but I need to make it so he (the player) doesnt drift to the darkside

 

[Jack Simth]

-Why- is it evil? You are simply using the body, not the soul. The person will never use it again. It's a bit morbid, but not evil.

Why does True Resurrection fail if the corpse is walking around elsewhere?

The 'how it works' and 'why it's bad' did not make the spell descriptions in the vast majority of cases. But considering how Raise Dead, Resurrection, and True Resurrection fail outright if the corpse is animate and elsewhere (even though True Resurrection does not require any portion of the body to work!), that suggests that there's more going on with the Animate line that is listed.

While there aren't any particularly strong RAW arguments for it, it's not out of line to say that the Animate spells drag the soul back from it's eternal rest to toss it into a prison of rotting flesh to be tortured to power the undead abomination that was made from it's clay.

As for raising armies of mindless slaves? No, you can't really do that without being Evil. But there's a LOT of necromancy spells that are non-evil.

 

[WalrusThief]

Thats another kettle of fish, and falls more in the line of DMing tactics than philosophy.

Ideas:
-Give him a close connection or relationship to a good-aligned god or church.
-Instill him with a hatred of evil.
-Make a penalty for turning evil that he wouldnt want to incur.

Probably others, those are off the top of my head.

 

[Summer-Knight925]

I was gonna have him be part of a secret group of wizards who use necromancy spells to benefit good, using evil against evil kind of thing, it could work in theory.
But if he became "evil" (corrupt, using his powers for evil or to simply benefit him, as in using others) the group would hunt him down and destroy him 47 times

 

[Jack Simth]

Thats another kettle of fish, and falls more in the line of DMing tactics than philosophy.

Not really. Any question of 'why' something is evil must also touch on the question of how it's done. When the 'how' is completely undefined, the 'why' is almost impossible to define cleanly. So if a DM is posed the question of why all the undead-creation spells are evil, he first must define how they work.

If the spell said it drew back the spirit from it's eternal rest to be imprisoned in a cage of rotting flesh and tortured for power, then obviously, it would be evil. If the spell said it drew a minor demon/devil from the lower planes, chaining it to the corpse, but setting it free to work it's evil will on the material plane once the corpse was destroyed, then it would be reasonably clearly a very bad thing. If the spell said that it copied a tiny fragment of the goodness of a good-aligned deity, tied it to the body, and set loose a spirit of good that would go forth and help others once the undead ceased to be functional, then not so evil.

But the Animate Dead spell says nothing about how the spell actually works. So a clear-cut 'why is this evil' is not really answerable.