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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kobold Stew" data-source="post: 6217376" data-attributes="member: 23484">This would be enough for me, honestly. * Magic has to be shown to be available for all (the spell list in the PhB should also be the spell list for evil wizards the players fight) * If alignment is implemented (and I see no sense of its abandonment), then all choices must receive comparable space, even if it's brief.The real test, in my view, will be Necromancy spells. Historically the game has been terrified of the word, and that has led to various unreconciled tensions in the test packs for Next:* cure spells by common sense should be labeled as necromancy, but they aren't.* some necromancy has implied or explicit judgmental connections with evil alignments (e.g. Animate Dead: "Animating the dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use this spell frequently").* an implied Mage school choice is coming, which then excludes "being a Necromancer" from Clerics (who will instead be "clerics of Death"?) -- needless duplication.* An early playtest (081312), back where then game had Specialties (i.e. planned feat chains… remember them?), there was the option of being a Necromancer. It was brilliant, in that it was independent of class or alignment: any LG spell caster could take it and have an animated servant as could a spell caster of any alignment.  * That same Specialty had, as its first-level ability, Aura of Souls, which (by my reading) was the worst-conceived fluff text for an ability yet presented (yes, worse than Damage on a Miss!): the Necromancer can "capture the fleeing life energy of a creature" and "destroy one of these spirits" in order to gain advantage, once. Literal soul-destroying, as a first-level ability. Sadly, rather than fix it, Necromancy has since been kept from the play tests completely.All in all (and I'm just talking about 5e materials), it's a pretty schizophrenic attitude to Necromancy. I'm not just here to complain. Here is, specifically, what I'd like to see for Necromancy in Next.:1. All healing spells (and their opposites, cause wounds, etc.) be labeled as Necromancy (and have opposite effects on the undead).2. Judgmental language associated with using necromancy spells be removed from spell descriptions. This includes all flavour-text. Sure, Necromancers will tend to be evil, but the game shouldn't prevent players who want to be good from using these spells. (I don't want to see a return of "[evil] descriptors" and the like).3. There be a feat that optimizes the use of necromancy, available and useful to both clerics and mages, but also Rangers (what better undead-hunter?) and even Paladins. i.e. Anyone dabbling with life-magic (including healing). For example: A feat that allowed +1 on any die rolls associated with Necromancy spells, or that treated any necromancy spell as if it was cast using a spell slot one higher. 4. I can already improvise a relevant background ("Death-cult-raised" or whatever) -- but something that gave relevant skills (Arcana, Insight, Survival?) would be cool.  Not everyone will want to be a Necromancer, of course, but being one should not commit you to an alignment or a class choice. All of this would support evil characters in play (and provide tools for the DM to introduce them), but also help provide awesome choices for neutral and good characters as well.Finally, I've seen the concerns about space: implementing all of these suggestions would take no more than an extra column of space total, I figure.</blockquote>

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