D&D 4E Necromancers in 4e

[frankthedm]

I miss healing magic being necromancy. It makes far, far more sense than conjuration. I could see transmutation, but conjuration?!

Only the power of the gods can heal, thus it is their power that must be conjured to you.

Necromancy sucks away life force, conjuration calls life force to you.

Also transmutation can heal a little, look at polymorph.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Only the power of the gods can heal, thus it is their power that must be conjured to you.

So then why are all cleric spells not conjuration? Honestly, I appreciate the addition of flavor text to explain certain rules that make the game more fun (I love to do add flavor text to explain why so many undead are evil), but there's no reason to rationalize rules that are weird for the sake of being weird.

 

[frankthedm]

Because not all spells a cleric gets require divine potency to be conjured to the local as curing does. The rest of the spells work close enough to operate by the same rules as other spells, but calling positive energy to close a wound is a special trick of divine conjuration. Sages suspect some ancient agreement between Flaragin and Olidamarra is what grants bards the option of healing.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Because not all spells a cleric gets require divine potency to be conjured to the local as curing does. The rest of the spells work close enough to operate by the same rules as other spells, but calling positive energy to close a wound is a special trick of divine conjuration. Sages suspect some ancient agreement between Flaragin and Olidamarra is what grants bards the option of healing.

...whatever works for your game, dude. I myself, and I think many others, would rather just put cure spells in the necromancy school and not need any oddball setting-specific explanation.

 

[Zurai]

Only the power of the gods can heal, thus it is their power that must be conjured to you.

Also transmutation can heal a little, look at polymorph.

Am I the only one that sees the irony in this?

 

[frankthedm]

...whatever works for your game, dude. I myself, and I think many others, would rather just put cure spells in the necromancy school and not need any oddball setting-specific explanation.

I call it more oddball to put "curing" in the school of death magic. Necromancy takes, not gives. It devours health [damage], strength[enfeeblement, exhaustion] and life force[enervation, energy drain]. It intills soul consuming dread [Fear] and might even rob victims of an afterlife[Trap the soul].

 

[Zurai]

I call it more oddball to put "curing" in the school of death magic. Necromancy takes, not gives. It devours health [damage], strength[enfeeblement, exhaustion] and life force[enervation, energy drain]. It intills soul consuming dread [Fear] and might even rob victims of an afterlife[Trap the soul].

Or it can prevent those things (Death Ward).

Necro-, as a word, just means "corpse" or "relating to a corpse". It's as easy and logical to say that any magic that targets a corpse or dead flesh is Necromancy - literally, "corpse magic" - and that, after all, healing is restoring flesh that once was dead to life.

That's the tack 2nd edition took and it makes perfect sense.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

PHB, page 174: "Necromancy spells manipulate the power of death, unlife and the life force."
Clearly, the Jedi are necromancers.

But seriously, while necromancy might literally mean "corpse-magic" or whatever, this is D&D not a latin class. If necromancy was just about death, there should really be a life-mancy school to balance it.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Only the power of the gods can heal, thus it is their power that must be conjured to you.

Necromancy sucks away life force, conjuration calls life force to you.

Also transmutation can heal a little, look at polymorph.

I prefer the idea that necromancy is the practice of tapping into the positive and negative energy planes. Arcane necromancers have found that negative energy is easier to get at, for whatever reason, and this is why necromancy is associated with the undead. Divine spellcasters have no trouble tapping into either plane, but which one they do the most of is going to be determined mainly by their ethos.

 

[GreatLemur]

Well, something needs to be sacrificed to get any kind of permanent servant. Got any better ideas?

I figure the poor bastard who provided the corpse made quite a sacrifice.

But seriously, I don't really see why animate dead (or the equivalent) reallly needs to be permanent by default. I think a mage armor-like duration is plenty reasonable.

Only the power of the gods can heal, thus it is their power that must be conjured to you.

That's . . . pretty weird. I always just figured the idea was that wholly new flesh and blood was being created to replace what was lost or damaged.

For my money, transmutation makes the most sense as a healing school. Seems to me that a type of magic that could turn you into an umber hulk ought to have no difficulty whatsoever in sealing up a sword wound.