Plot-driven training, outside of level advancement

[Nytmare]

Come again? Is he also a meat-eating vegetarian?

I could easily imagine a belief system where the un-animate dead were seen as a waste of a perfectly good resource. The Scarred Lands are full of (maybe not good, but) non evil societies built on the backs of an undead labor force.

A council of lawful good liches leading a brightly lit utopia with a slave population of animate skeletons. When you die, you go on to aid your family for generations to come as an undead laborer and guardian.

Look at Eberron's Blood of Vol, a deity-less religion that, by and large, is made up of normal everyday people who think that undeath is akin to sainthood and something that people should aspire to.

Pacifism is about violence, and necromancy doesn't have to always be about raising an undead army so that you can conquer the world, it can just be about cheating death.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I apologize for picking on your example, but it was relevant and available. There are probably others that are more of a gray area, but IMO this isn't.

That's okay, and no need to apologize. It wasn't a great example. I wanted something that was not just another skill check, and that's what I came up with in the time I had before I had to get back to work. I gave examples to make the concept concrete, and I think it worked. The idea wasn't to concept everyone of my great new idea, but to explore a concept that I'd been toying with. Your feedback was helpful.