What are necromantic effects?

[FANGO]

I believe that necromantic effects probably means death effects, the type that scarabs of protection and such protect from. That would be my guess, at least.

 

[LordAO]

It quite clearly states that Baelnorns are liches. Maybe elves can be normal liches too, but that doesn't make baelnorns any less liches. And so what if the Monsters of Faerun isn't a core rulebook? It's still official material. Do you mean to say that tome and blood, sword and fist, and even dragon magazine are irrelevant because they aren't core rulebooks?

 

[hong]

It quite clearly states that Baelnorns are liches.

Which is dumb. Good-aligned undead break one of the unstated assumptions of D&D.

Maybe elves can be normal liches too, but that doesn't make baelnorns any less liches.

They are still exceptions to the rule.

And so what if the Monsters of Faerun isn't a core rulebook? It's still official material. Do you mean to say that tome and blood, sword and fist, and even dragon magazine are irrelevant because they aren't core rulebooks?

Yep. People refer to them from time to time and they have a wider degree of acceptance than splatbooks from third-party publishers, but basically the core is the PHB, DMG and MM.

 

[LordAO]

Which is dumb. Good-aligned undead break one of the unstated assumptions of D&D.

There is nothing that says undead have to be evil, just most are. And there are good liches! (yes they are in monsters of fearun too, so I guess you'll have a cow about that). As far as only accepting the PH, DMG, and MM as legitimate sources of info, I think that's your problem. They are all written by the same people, published by the same company, and are part of the same game. It's not like they were written by a third party, like Sword and Sorcery. If you don't want to use them in your game, fine. That's your perogative. As far as the official D&D rules are concerned, they are just as much a part of it as anything else. You don't have to use the rules from those books, or even the rules from the core rulebooks either. It's your game, and you can do anything you want with it, but don't try and deligitimize other people's comments just because they got their info from somewhere other than the three core rulebooks.

Besides, the argument of whether or not Baelnorns are really Liches is beside the point. Even if they aren't "true Liches" they are most certainly Undead, which is what I believe this forum is discussing.

 

[Umbran]

There is nothing that says undead have to be evil, just most are. And there are good liches!

I see you haven't read the description of liches recently. I quote from the Monster Manual, Pg 217:

"Alignment: any evil"
and
"The process of becoming a lich is unspeakably evil..."

Maybe not all undead need to be evil, but liches are supposed to be.

The fact that the core rules and the FR books were written by the same company does not mean that they are all "as official" in all cases. If they had wanted the rules used in the Forgotten Realms to be "standard", they would have put them into the core rules in the first place. The fact that they are provided in separate books means that the authors/publishers intend a separation between them.

There is nothing wrong with having a particular game setting contradict the core rules. However, you must accept that said contradiction is only applicable in that setting. The rules in the FRCS and Monsters of Faerun are used in the Realms, but do not apply elsewhere.

So, there are variant liches in Monsters of Faerun. Fine. They can use the Clone spell. Maybe all liches in FR can use clone. Don't try to extrapolate that back to all of D&D, though. The same rules simply don't apply.

Heck, even if the Baelnorn were in the core, it is not wise to generalize from one aberrant case. There are rules. There are exceptions to those rules. The exception does not then imply that the original rule does not exist.

 

[LordAO]

The same rules do apply, undead are undead. The Forgotten Realms follows all of the normal rules on templates and creature types. It is basically default D&D. Yes there are some unique creatures in the forgotten realms, but all of the constructs are still constructs and all of the undead are still undead. And part of the reason not everything is printed in the core rulebooks is because
1 - they wouldn't fit.
2 - they want you to buy more books.
And who cares if liches are evil or not, we're talking about undead as a whole, not just liches. And whether or not a creature is good or evil is irrelevent to this discussion.
You even admit that even if the baelnorn was in the main book, you would still disregard it as "aberrant". What's that supposed to mean? Liches are the only undead that have phylacteries in the first place. Vampires don't. Zombies don't. Baelnorns are thus less "aberrant" then liches are! And regardless of what they are and where they came from, all are undead!