Is necromancy evil or only as harmless as talking to your dead grandmother?

[tuxgeo]

That's not a "cake and eat it too" situation. Something doesn't have to be irredeemably evil and still be eerie/scary. Something can be utterly harmless and still be creepy and unsettling.

Or some parts of it could be irredeemably evil while other parts are harmless; yet all parts could still be creepy and unsettling.

< snip > Some people want Low magic settings just so MAGIC ITSELF is scary and eerie and mysterious. And no one is saying that the necromancer shouldn't be shunned and/or hunted down. The issue is whether it's Evil in an Alignment sense, not socially acceptable or hohum. I would expect, even on a good day, for a Necromancer to be treated like a leper. Even in the Real World history, those who handled the dead have been treated with unease and discomfort - undertakers for instance, and even today the common stereotype of morticians and coroners are morbid or "off".

The "squick" factor of doing things with the dead, yes.

Also, there are necromantic spells that do not involve the dead at all, e.g. 3E's "Spectral Hand": manifest life energy to project touch spells (100 ft. + 10 ft./level) away. (Just the thing for applying melee-ranged Cleric healing spells across the Nentir River at Fallcrest.) (Oops! Fallcrest is 4E. Mixed editions there. Sorry.)

 

[Set]

2) Really? Raping someone's mind and changing them into something alien is less evil than flat out snuffing their soul?

Are there any spells or effects in D&D that snuff someone's soul? A Sphere of Annhilation, perhaps?

Magic Jar, Soul Bind and Trap the Soul can *imprison* a soul, but that's not the sort of necromancy this thread seems to be dealing with.

While you haven't said this specific thing, these sorts of threads almost inevitably invite someone coming in to 'explain' how animate dead is so horrible because it traps the souls of the dead in their rotting corpses, even though nothing of the sort actually happens.

The souls of the dead remain in whatever heaven or hell they've earned or their actions in life. This has always been the case, and the rules have always supported this.

Skeletons and zombies remain mindless, despite the fact that souls (defined as 'petitioners') have intelligence scores.

Skeletons and zombies have been neutral, in the previous three editions, and have become evil with the 3.5 and higher editions, *regardless of the alignment of the soul.*

So, evil Necromancer Ray can find out that his annoying brother, Paladin Bob, has just died, fighting the good fight, and, because he hates him so much, go animate his corpse and make it do evil things. And Paladin Bob is *not* ripped out of heaven, *does not* become evil and mindless and lose his Paladin status and become permanantly barred from returning to the Upper Planes, because Necromancer Ray is just mucking around with his body, and cannot touch (or turn evil) his immortal soul.

Zombies don't have the souls of their former owners lurking behind their eyes, helpless prisoners of the fell powers that raised them. They are, and always have been, in D&D, mindless, meaning that they fairly obviously don't have souls tucked away inside of them, screaming silently in eternal horror.

(A creepy thematic idea, but ultimately, kinda pointless. The negative energy does the animation. What possible use is there to go all the way to heaven or hell to grab a soul to ride around uselessly in the body? Seems to be asking for trouble, actually. What if the spirit / soul resisted the control and seized control of it's body and attacked you? Best to just stick to mindless negative energy!)

I could come up with a similar 'explanation' that fireball spells call forth little baby fire elementals or phoenix eggs to the material plane, causing them to explode and die, exposed to what, to them, is unbearable cold. But the games rules don't support that, so it would be kinda silly to post 'casting fireball is evil because it kills baby fire elementals!'

And yet, made up stuff about necromancy is fairly common.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'd just like to point out that even mucking with the afterlife isn't necessarily an evil act: after all, anyone using raise dead is doing precisely that.

Enslaving someone's eternal soul? Isn't that pretty much the same as casting imprisonment? What makes binding them into a zombie more evil?

Pretty much the only one that can be considered to be outright evil is spells that actively destroy the evil soul for all eternity, and even THEN they're only evil if all alignments are mutable.

ie - if it's possible for someone to achieve redemption, then I believe that destroying their soul is an evil act outright because it absolutely denies the possibility that they can be redeemed.

But, if you have creatures that are "alignment: always evil and nothing works to change that not even the direct intervention of overgods", then even irrevocable destruction is not necessarily an evil act.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Something doesn't have to be irredeemably evil and still be eerie/scary. Something can be utterly harmless and still be creepy and unsettling.

Indeed.

According to many RW faith traditions, humans cannot face unvarnished divine good any more than they can face true evil. Legends of the Greek gods, the Loa of Voudoun or even the Angels and God from the Judeo/Christian/Islamic tradition are so terrible to behold directly that to do so is to terrify one to the core...or even be destroyed.

 

[Barastrondo]

please go read up on a lot of fantasy/folk lore before "evil became the chic cliche' '"

Odysseus calls up the shade of his own father for advice. And enough heroes descended into the underworld to deal with the dead (often peaceably) that Joseph Campbell wrote it into the monomyth. My personal interest in necromancy as something other than pure evil came from doing some of that reading before I got into D&D.

you could have a setting where necromancers keep the undead at bay, where they keep a ruined world working, where they are the last remnants of civilization (due to udneath) etc.

It never has to be an all-or-nothing thing. Take the Scarred Lands. You have a city where the necromancers are a force of cold and impersonal, but fair, law. They actually protect the people in their care. There is also a civilization of vilest necromancy in the woods nearby, a bunch of evil necromantic dwarves, and an entire nation with "evil necromancy" as a theme a ways to the west. Not only do you get a greater variety of necromantic styles showcased, but you get plot-starting blood rivalries between them to boot. Fun!

Skeletons are not constructs because they like killing the living (check their desciptions), so the udnead, creatures of necormancy are inherently hateful, jealous covetous, angry, spiteful of the living.

In a great deal of pre-D&D folklore and fantasy, that's not actually a theme, though. There are a lot of ghost stories and old ballads where ghosts appear as neutral, even benevolent figures. If you've ever read any Manly Wade Wellman, he even has a story where an evil curse is broken by temporarily summoning the shade of George Washington. Chinese folklore in particular (and probably that of a lot of other Asian cultures) is thick with the idea of ghosts having a wide range of personalities, in particular a desire to help their living relatives. It doesn't negate the existence of stories where there are hateful, jealous or vengeful undead, thankfully. We still get those. But folks like me like to use the whole body of death-lore. I like to add some Garth Nix to my Clark Ashton Smith, some Dia de los Muertos to my superstitious European burial traditions.

Each to his own, I know but folks do want their cake and to eat it, in this situation. ie ot have necromancy be "eerie, scary" etc, AND ot use it without consequence.

I'd call it more like "having your medieval Europe-inspired fantasy and your Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy too"; most D&D worlds are big enough to support both.

 

[Lanefan]

Are there any spells or effects in D&D that snuff someone's soul? A Sphere of Annhilation, perhaps?

As written, no. I stuck one in and gave it to Necromancers as a 7th (i.e. hghest) level spell called Spirit Blast. Prior to that, it was the most devastating bullet in the psionic arsenal but I got rid of psionics this time around.

While you haven't said this specific thing, these sorts of threads almost inevitably invite someone coming in to 'explain' how animate dead is so horrible because it traps the souls of the dead in their rotting corpses, even though nothing of the sort actually happens.

The souls of the dead remain in whatever heaven or hell they've earned or their actions in life. This has always been the case, and the rules have always supported this.

Skeletons and zombies remain mindless, despite the fact that souls (defined as 'petitioners') have intelligence scores.

Skeletons and zombies have been neutral, in the previous three editions, and have become evil with the 3.5 and higher editions, *regardless of the alignment of the soul.*

For the lesser undead such as these, you're quite right. But how does it work if a high-level Necromancer manages to get a Wight going, which *does* have some sort of spirit; or a Ghoul or Ghast which at least have intelligence. Where does that spirit and-or intelligence come from? Certainly not the Necromancer...

If I'm a Necromancer, I see my primary aim as doing two primary things during my career to help me eventually get to my career goal:

1. Make things dead, preferably with nice unblemished corpses
2. Get those corpses up and running under my control
3. (career goal) Turn myself into the most powerful undead I can.

I still have it that very high level evil MUs and occasionally Clerics can turn themselves into liches etc., but Necromancers have an inside track: I've designed a special spell "Necromantic Continuation", castable once only by a Necromancer of 20th-level or higher (in 3e I'd use 25th, in 4e 35th, i.e. something beyond the usual range), which if successful turns the caster into a major undead and if unsuccessful slays the caster irrevocably.

I guess what I'm saying is I've given Necromancers quite a bit of thought, and concluded that for them to work as I envision them they pretty much have to be evil. So, evil they are.

Lanefan

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

In general though it should be kept really damn horribly evil, it's important for heroes to face things that really are worse than death!

But this doesn't have to be necromancers. In fact seeing perfectly ordinary people being prejudiced and cruel I'd say is worse than death. At least when you're dead you don't have to keep seeing it.

but in MOST settings, necromancy and the unfead are best kept very nasty, very scary, not just form superstition but as said, because it's so foul.

Who says it's foul? Necromancers might take great care to preserve the bodies of the dead so that they don't rot and don't smell and don't look so bad. That what embalmers do today (I believe).

Each to his own, I know but folks do want their cake and to eat it, in this situation. ie ot have necromancy be "eerie, scary" etc, AND ot use it without consequence.

Some of us don't want necromancy to be "eerie, scary". (Nor, in my case, do I want to use it. I think of all power as something no one should choose, but if it's an easy choice it's no fun.)

Sometimes, there are powers/things best left alone! And that is good for the game.
if PCs use them, they run risks...risks are good frisson', DM shouldn' ban, just give warnings of possible conqequences if used.

Yes, but what those things are is individual GM purview.

And no one is saying that the necromancer shouldn't be shunned and/or hunted down.

I'm saying they shouldn't be shunned or hunted down. And it is precisely for the following type of mention why I wish to break the stereotype:

Even in the Real World history, those who handled the dead have been treated with unease and discomfort - undertakers for instance, and even today the common stereotype of morticians and coroners are morbid or "off".

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And no one is saying that the necromancer shouldn't be shunned and/or hunted down.

Whether a necromancer is shunned and/or hunted down should depend upon the culture in which the necromancer lives and how he operates within it.

 

[Rechan]

Whether a necromancer is shunned and/or hunted down should depend upon the culture in which the necromancer lives and how he operates within it.

Agreed. But it was in response to the notion that if a Necromancer isn't evil to the core and more horrible than practically anything else, he's a normal normal, misunderstood lovable guy and since it's not EVIL that means it must be OK.

It's not an either/or where the only options are polar opposites. It can be a spectrum.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Odysseus calls up the shade of his own father for advice. And enough heroes descended into the underworld to deal with the dead (often peaceably) that Joseph Campbell wrote it into the monomyth. My personal interest in necromancy as something other than pure evil came from doing some of that reading before I got into D&D.

Or the Witch of Endor in the Bible. Good gravy, after having the king's ghost show up and tell Saul that he had screwed up, the witch told him 'you're too skinny, you need to eat something.' Creepy and disturbing does not equal evil. Heck, I ran an Iron Kingdoms game where the creepiest and most disturbing NPC was one of the good guys. (And prosector for the city of Corvis.)

A necromancer who is doing his best to help the dead find rest will almost certainly be creepy, but evil? Maybe not so much.

The Auld Grump