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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6272549" data-attributes="member: 58197">There's nothing wrong with upholding tradition, but I'm against &quot;genre convention by decree.&quot; It was very common in the first three editions of the game to write genre conventions around alignment into the rules: Druids had to be Neutral, monks had to be Lawful, barbarians couldn't be Lawful, et cetera, et cetera. Lately, there seems to be a growing sense in both WotC and the community that this is counterproductive. DMs don't need prodding from the rules to implement genre conventions if they like them; if I want an evil necromancer in my game commanding legions of the dead, then I'll have one, and if I don't, I won't. Where the PCs are concerned, players often enjoy playing against type, and the rules should not forbid them from doing so without a good reason.Obviously this is my own reasoning for why things changed, and might not match WotC's reasoning, though I'd bet I'm fairly close. Whatever the reason, alignment restrictions vanished from 4E and remain mostly vanished from Next, and I don't see a clamor to restore them. But animate dead is a throwback: The rules explicitly state that only Evil casters use it frequently, without explanation.If this convention is to be written into the game, the game should present necromancy in such a way that the convention follows naturally rather than being imposed by fiat. There are lots of ways to do that and we've discussed many in this thread. On the other hand, maybe it's better to let individual DMs figure out how they want to handle necromancy. In that case, strike the sentence altogether and leave it to DMs to enforce genre convention, or not, by whatever means they feel appropriate. Or present a menu of options in a sidebar. What we've got right now is the worst of both worlds: It imposes arbitrary restrictions but adds nothing to the setting.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 6272549, member: 58197"] There's nothing wrong with upholding tradition, but I'm against "genre convention by decree." It was very common in the first three editions of the game to write genre conventions around alignment into the rules: Druids had to be Neutral, monks had to be Lawful, barbarians [I]couldn't[/I] be Lawful, et cetera, et cetera. Lately, there seems to be a growing sense in both WotC and the community that this is counterproductive. DMs don't need prodding from the rules to implement genre conventions if they like them; if I want an evil necromancer in my game commanding legions of the dead, then I'll have one, and if I don't, I won't. Where the PCs are concerned, players often enjoy playing against type, and the rules should not forbid them from doing so without a good reason. Obviously this is my own reasoning for why things changed, and might not match WotC's reasoning, though I'd bet I'm fairly close. Whatever the reason, alignment restrictions vanished from 4E and remain mostly vanished from Next, and I don't see a clamor to restore them. But [I]animate dead[/I] is a throwback: The rules explicitly state that only Evil casters use it frequently, without explanation. If this convention is to be written into the game, the game should present necromancy in such a way that the convention follows naturally rather than being imposed by fiat. There are lots of ways to do that and we've discussed many in this thread. On the other hand, maybe it's better to let individual DMs figure out how they want to handle necromancy. In that case, strike the sentence altogether and leave it to DMs to enforce genre convention, or not, by whatever means they feel appropriate. Or present a menu of options in a sidebar. What we've got right now is the worst of both worlds: It imposes arbitrary restrictions but adds nothing to the setting. [/QUOTE]

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