Necromancers...Who else wants them?

[renau1g]

The downside in 3e was that a cleric made a better necromancer than the necromancer or dread necromancer did at least IIRC...

 

[Wik]

The downside in 3e was that a cleric made a better necromancer than the necromancer or dread necromancer did at least IIRC...

Yeah, but in 3e, the Cleric made a better ANYTHING than something that was actually specialized towards the role...

 

[renau1g]

So true... poor everyone who wasn't a cleric or druid

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: Necromancers pre-4Ed

They existed in both 2Ed and 3Ed, and were fun in both.

Re: Non-Evil Necromancers

Whether Necromancers can only be evil or not depends upon your culture.

For instance, one could consider those who created mummies to be Necromancers of a sort, and often, mummification was reserved for the respected/revered dead...and their guardians.

In addition, in the practice of voudoun, whether a houngan or mambo was evil was determined by their actions, since routinely dealt with the spirits of the living world and the dead regardless of their moral compass.

There are even works of fiction in which Necromancers were responsible- at least in part- for the safety of their societies. They animated the bodies of those who volunteered to serve as undead guardians of their cities.

Necromancy- its a tool, not an alignment.

 

[Herschel]

The thing to understand with the classic necromancer, is that they're not taking bones and making telekinetic puppets out of them. They are taking souls and warping them to animate undead. That's not a 'dark' act, that's an act of pure evil.

That's like having a PC class called 'Maiden Kidnapper' to team up with 'Villiage Burner' and 'Kingdom Enslaver'. Your 'shtick' happens to be 'do terrible evil' and it's hard to justify that as a heroic class.

This. Any "Necromancer" who simply animates soulless bits is just a low-level posuer.

 

[Obryn]

I'd love to see a Necromancer, and see no reason why it wouldn't be one of the classes in development.

I mean, they've already published most of the more classic archetypes - and in fact, they're inventing new archetypes altogether. So a return back to a semi-classic wouldn't be a bad idea at all, IMO.

-O

 

[Felon]

No, I don't buy that one bit. It's the same logic people used to justify removing the assassin from 2e. The assassin is definitely an iconic villain as well.. but it's also a description of a certain kind of hero, one that seems to work just fine in D&D.

This is something of a miconception. The logic for removing the assassin from 2e (stated in the DMG IIRC) wasn't about morality, it was about mechanics. To the designers, the basic concept of assassin--someone who kills for money--does not lend itself to a specific subset of abilities that wasn't already extant. The ability to deliver death comes in many forms, be it a deft stab in the back, a brutal frontal assault, or a life-annihilating spell. I remember that passage, because I was bitter about the assassin's absence until I read it, and had to concede its correctness. If you take away the insta-kill, what you had left is a bad rogue. I can't say the 4e assassin seems any more of standout.

Note that the basic sentiment seems to be "I want this class", rather than "this is why it should be a class". I suppose one could claim "becasue we wants it" is the only criterion that has to be met, but is that an approval system that ensures quality?

Why is it unpallatable for a necromancer to be a build for an existing class? Is it just that a brand new class is "neater"?

 

[mneme]

Felon, two things:

1. Power source. There's a power source tailor made for the necromancer -- and arcane/divine ain't it.

2. Features. The necromancer should be a pet class with summons, and at the moment, there are two pet classes (ok, one pet class, one pet build for an existing class) and neither have summons, or really, should. One could add an always-on pet build for wizards, which would probably be closest -- but should a necromancer really be an Int-primary class? Maybe...but I'd argue for Charisma, really.

 

[Piratecat]

This is something of a miconception. The logic for removing the assassin from 2e (stated in the DMG IIRC) wasn't about morality, it was about mechanics.

I pretty sure you're at least partially mistaken here; while I agree that the 1e assassination mechanic was a train wreck, I've had several people from TSR tell me that it was removed to forestall morality objections. No big deal either way, of course.

I'd be fine with a necromancer as a build for an existing class. I think it'd really benefit from being its own class, though; shadow is tailor-made for it.

 

[Obryn]

This is something of a miconception. The logic for removing the assassin from 2e (stated in the DMG IIRC) wasn't about morality, it was about mechanics. To the designers, the basic concept of assassin--someone who kills for money--does not lend itself to a specific subset of abilities that wasn't already extant.

While this was provided as a post-hoc justification - and it's a pretty good one, I have to say - it was part of the general movement to strip potentially-objectionable material out of the game.

I don't see an argument where this was done for mechanical reasons, whereas the removal of demons, devils, half-orcs, etc. were done to sanitize the game.

-O