How do I make Necro =/= Evil ?

[JimAde]

Ferrun: Good point. And from a commercial point of view, zombie horses don't have to be fed, but can still pull a plow just fine. Actually better since its strength goes up by 2.

 

[VirgilCaine]

A skeletal wolf or a zombie bear would still be an excellent cohort to have following you around, and since skeletons and zombies aren't really that intelligent to begin with, you don't lose much in raising a non-intellegent creature instead.

Also, don't forget--zombies don't have to be decaying, disgusting corpses--you could use oil of timelessness on the bodies, keeping them in perfect shape (if you killed the bear without leaving marks).

 

[Desdichado]

Also, don't forget--zombies don't have to be decaying, disgusting corpses--you could use oil of timelessness on the bodies, keeping them in perfect shape (if you killed the bear without leaving marks).

And even if you don't want to spend your cash on the oil of timelessness you can just bury them in a salt or sandy dry patch for a few months before you animate them. They won't be as attractive, but at least they won't be actively rotting and stinking if they're well-mummified when you animate them as zombies.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Hollow Faust has already been mentioned

Complete bok of necromancers for 2nd ed already mentioned.

Planar Factions, a pdf by Ronin Arts, has an organization of necromancers that use the undead to fight evil. Pretty spiffy and realtively inexpensive and doesn't have to be tied into the planes necessarily.

 

[Riggs]

FWIW, I played a good Necromancer a while back in RM, and he was a surgeon that actually was good at it and never tried to accidentally fail to gain bodies. He'd go down to the charnel house (this was in a big, monster-disctricted, seedy city) and pay or sneak out bodies that were unidentified and about to be incinerated.

He also had a strict insistence that only the naked skeleton was appropriate to raise, as then it was like a moving artwork (he had art all over his ground-floor apt) and so he had a half-orcish butler skelly, and then 2 human skellies that dug him a basement lab. He was visited by the odd demon and monster and other necros, etc. either assuming he was bad, or trying to tempt him or just pushing him around but my guy was more a snooty connoisseur of anatomical art rather than a classic creepy necromancer. Dressing up his bodyguards was funny too.

The one thing we all retained from him was the line I gave him when foes were dying or doomed which was "Here, hold this brush" where the brush was a toilet brush they'd be using forever very soon.

It can be and was done, but the old RM books didn't even try to support a PC Necromancer.