As the topic says, why is necromancy evil in your setting? Mechanically there's really no reason for it to be any worse than any other magic, as most don't require any malevolent actions (Risen corpses of most spells don't defile or harm the soul in any way), and there are many like deathwatch that are actually mostly BENEVOLENT (Letting you see where individuals who would be most in need of help would be).
So how do you explain this, or do you use necromancy as neutral in your setting?
If it's not evil, it's taboo. The nicest necromancer is still desecrating corpses. You can try to make 'ethical' necromancers who only use dead animals and insects if you want to try and make one who jives with the PCs more but there's always going to be a bit of mistrust. It's unnatural magic.
Very much so this. Even if the necromancers aren't killing people for their corpses (or at least hiring bandits/mercs/etc. to do it for him) the very act of taking the remains of the dead and filling them with magic to use as puppets completely spits in the face of the majority of the world's cultural restrictions on how the dead are treated.
Did you miss the part where undead released from a caster's service don't just collapse on the ground, but instead start wandering around indiscriminately attacking any living thing it sees because "Frick you that's why"? You're creating a persistent and permanent evil being that is actively hostile to life. That's the evil part.
So basically, its only evil if the Necromancer doesn't dispose of their undead but just lets it go loose.
Is starting a fire evil because it'll cause a forest fire if you don't put it out and just walk away?
If a necromancer is done with a corpse and doesn't wish to keep renewing their hold on it they can tell the zombie to go bash its brains in against a tree until its destroyed (or sit in a fire, or do a number of other methods to self destruct) and then leave: the zombie will literally go do that, with zero choice in the matter, problem solved
This isn't the only reason why it's evil. But hearing a commotion and seeing the corpse of your dead partner/sibling/child bashing their head against a tree because the necromancer defeated the monster isn't going to win them any points.
So we're at a "its not evil, they're the Dark Knight the world needs but doesn't like" level then.
No we're still firmly at "it's evil" for a lot of the reasons mentions before this one. I'm pointing out how even proper 'corpse disposal' is fricked.
Fire is not sentient, it simply obeys the laws of physics. Undead, even unintelligent ones, have sentience that actively seeks to kill for no reason other than hostility to life.
Necromancer owns a mine that is maned by zombies. One day Necromancer falls down stairs, has a heart attack, gets food poisoning, etc.
Now there is a shit tons of zombie's attacking the near by town. "oh well he should have aids to keep him save" now the town is effective hostage and must keep him safe to prevent zombies coming out of the mine.
This is someone using Necromancy for greed anon, I.E. for a sinful purpose.
there's a difference between using necromancy for things like fighting an evil overlord who wants to enslave/kill your kingdom and using it because you're too cheap to pay people a living wage.
I know but lets break it down. Laws, at least commercial laws, are general about what you are doing, not why you are doing something.
Is owning a mine legal?
Is raising zombies legal?
If the answer to both is yes then you get zombie's maned mines. If you get the laws around raising zombies is complex and aimed at moral action then you get lobbyist working to make zombies maned mines legal. After all the army fighting current evil overlord needs weapons and armor. Supplying the iron to make said weapons and armor is in fact helping the war effort to overthrow the evil overlord.
Oh? The war is over, well the zombie mines are already in production and it would hurt the economy to change over.
So in other words, the true evil was capitalism all along.
> the true evil was capitalism all along.
You may be right. I guess that the a good way to put it is that necromancy is not objectively evil with the reason that I give in
But it does have strong reasons that it is a bad idea and has high risks of innocent bystanders getting hurt.
>So in other words, the true evil was capitalism all along.
Thats kinda funny because the first time Ive ever heard of "hey lets teach everyone raise undead so we can use undead as our workforce and can spent out time on idle pursuits" were from people arguing for a necromantic communist utopia.
its the plot behind like a thousand zombie movies; its an incredibly common plot that the reason things get out of hand is because corporations look at the zombies and go "Hey, but can we teach them to do manual labor?" and frick things up by spreading the virus by trying to indoctrinate undead.
I mean, that's the plot/reason for the zombies origins in later dead rising games, that corporations wanted the zombies for cheap labor.
Its to show how the rich don't see their workers as human anymore, and are completely and utterly devoid of empathy or attachment to other humans, to the point they might as well be another species, because they don't view the non-rich as anything but a tool to make them money and power.
>like a thousand zombie movies
Post them.
Shaun of the dead's ending.
White Zombie.
The plague of the zombies.
Dead rising (Video game listed earlier)
the original script for dawn of the dead was more explicit in this, but the scientist in that movie causes everything to go to hell via his obsession with "training/teaching" zombies.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UndeadLaborers is an entire trope unto itself.
Thats only five, where are the other 995?
Causality's fricked up enough as is so further disrupting the weave of fate by preventing threads from being severed only makes the gods' attempts at holding things together harder. Curiously that means that unsanctioned fertility magic is also anathema, people malign necromancy extra-hard to virtue signal since pretty much everyone's secretly guilty of the other blasphemy.
The economic stuff adds nice spice to Unsounded's ostensible holy war.
Neat. Sounds like it'd tie in well with other reincarnation wackiness or ties to the afterlife (if premature reanimation snatches back who's to say delay isn't allowing summons to some other plane's body?)
>Town overrun by zombies because the local Necromancer didn't have life alert.
Shit, I'm writing this down and I'm going to use it in my next campaign.
>SETTING DEPENDENT OUTCOME GENERALISED TO ALL OTHER SETTINGS
He mentioned Deathwatch, a 3e spell with the evil descriptor. Necromancy in prior editions covered control of life and death, meaning healing and inflict spells were necromancy rather an conjuration.
And stop following children into bathrooms, rightist scum.
Necromancy of the zombie-rearing kind has the unfortunate side effect of poisoning the environment in which it happens. The energies that sustain corpses are drawn from the land and living beings. Those who practice necromancy excessively become decrepit and physically hollowed out, only sustained by their own tainted magic while trees wither and water stagnates.
The magic takes hold of the land, preventing anything new from growing. Such desecration is difficult to undo.
This guy gets it. Necrotic energy should be sort like radioactivity - too much of it in an area stops life from growing, rusts metal and poisons reality.
>"But I'm poisoning reality for a GOOD cause!"
>Mhmm. Very interesting. Now stand against the wall.
everything gives off radiation and blasts of it can be used to cure (necromancy literally is the classification for several high level curative spells)
you'd have to destroy the universe to prevent it from ever being used from anyone, ever. so why force it underground?
You’d have to destroy the universe to get rid of all evil too what’s your point moron. But instead of doing that we stop it as much as possible and force it hngerground, That’s not a good argument.
This. In my D&D games creating undead would release a decent bit of negative energy, and only 70% would go into awakening and powering the undead while the rest would spill into the environment. Afterwards the undead would be forever powered but that would go against the law of conversation of energy, what actually happens is undead constantly draw negative energy from the negative energy plane and again do it at less than 100% efficiency, so they draw in two skeletonfulls of negative energy and manage to keep one to power themselves while the rest seeps into the background. Background negative energy either harms (or in large amount slays) life or alternatively enters corpses, creating spontaneously spawning undead. Those new undead also draw negative energy to power themselves which spills even more of it into the background, leading to a chain reaction which causes undead infestations. If it wasn't for necromancers there would never be enough negative energy in the environment for things like wraiths or revenants to come to unlife.
Saving this idea.
Though I also have to ask, would this apply to half-undead too like dhampirs given they too have a negative energy affinity?
Dahmpirs are a very weird thing here. D&D undead shouldn't be able to reproduce due to the negative energy thing, as they're more like constructs powered by negative energy than actually living beings (Which isn't a problem in our real world folklore because the whole positive/negative energy mechanic doesn't really exist there).
Most D&D settings do contain dhampirs so there must be something to it. Maybe it has to do with vampires drinking life, giving them an unnatural connection to life most undead do not possess?
Or maybe ... dhampirs and vampires are unrelated? They just appear similar and so got similar names, but "under the hood" work differently. See for example "red panda" vs. "giant panda". Or like neither "fish hawk" (an osprey) nor "duck hawk" (a falcon) are hawks.
In the source material it is stated they are the offspring of vampires.
>drawn from the land and living beings
>the magic takes hold of the land, preventing anything new from growing
Those two points are contradictory. The coherent disaster case for this is "Fairy Ring" style depletion, where a "desecration front" expands outwards from a taint-origin to ruin more land, and behind this front is *supernaturally* barren, but not truly cursed.
Disgusting does not necessarily equal Evil. Sanctity of corpses is not a certainty, "sky burials" of literally just leaving the body to scavengers have been a thing in plenty of cultures, as has traditional cannibalism of the deceased.
Unless soil conditions and/or particulars of the magic give a very short shelf-life for viable targets, it's going to be lower risk and higher reward to engage in grave robbery. Which is a strict gain of labor, as opposed to a shift of control with a likely loss of skills.
However, enslavement comes up *a lot*, and if you're going to bind someone to service until you can't get anymore out of them *anyways*, what's the issue with making it so they *cannot* disobey? The same answer of "desensitized to killing for profit" would be the answer.
---
In a general capacity, D&D Alignment takes pains to clarify that "nature" is a subject of Neutrality, not Good and Evil, so "the natural cycle" does not matter for it as it's outside or in-between.
Otherwise, and in any other setting, it becomes incredibly difficult to have any real advancement be anything other than Evil, because it's *going* to violate some part or other of "the natural order".
Fundamentally, Good/Evil is about Charity/Greed and Kindness/Cruelty, with Purity/Filth being *very* scarce on the list of examples, and as above "nature" is a Neutral thing.
Back in the TSR days, it was a question of consent to have one's corpse animated, with Liches being Evil due to their ongoing cost being the souls of others, while Mummies had the bill footed by their God.
As it legitimately did not fit into the prior post, I'll note here that I was specifically going after the "weakest" points. Undead being fundamentally inimical to life has many internally consistent reasons for it, and "the Beyond Mortal Ken definition of Evil deems the act so" is just a differing basis of Alignment.
Relying on "sanctity of the dead", or "it's unnatural", create very awkward pressures on the setting by *mandating* homogeneity or stagnation to remain consistent. Which is still possible, but runs into issues with medical studies and sanitation being "wrong".
I will note that a Created Fallen World with emergent properties that the creator(s) did not specifically design for mortals to truly *discover* actually can give a satisfying resolution to a naturalism bias.
But that is specifically by having the "natural order" include a society that becomes more advanced *alongside* the wilds, rather than the natural order being a static cycle, which is a very unusual case.
As for sanctity of the dead? Only answer is "Moral Absolutist fine calling a large number of entirely real cultures inarguable Evil for their treatment of the dead specifically".
It detaches one from the core concepts of living.
Really, like most things in life, it’s an issue of consent. If the spirit agrees to do whatever the necromancer asks, fine, it’s their corpse, fair enough. If the spirit has their body used without permission, then it’s a case of theft and so henceforth immoral.
tfw no cute necromancer gf
It isn't (or at least not more than throwing fireball or brainwashing) but the promise of eternal life attracts the kind of peoples that causes a lot of bad stereotypes.
A few reasons
1. If the caster dies the undead they had are released are no longer uncontrol. They will kill the shit out of any dog sized or above lifeforms that they come across.
2. Undead can over time evolve. This can lead to zombie's or other lower tier undead becoming thinking beings and thus trying to break free from casters not excepting real push back.
3. When destroyed by means other then holy magic undead have a small chance to release what is called a death seed. If a death seed comes into contact with a corpse then you have a new undead that has no master. Said undead with act like what is in point 1.
4. People that think "hey lets just use corpses as a workforce it will save me a lot of money" have a good chance of being ass holes. They want labor that is made out of former human capital. At best that is cutting workers completely out of the means production. At worst it is cutting up workers to make the means of production. It touches some of the same reasons cannibalism is taboo.
5.Powerful thinking undead are generally ass holes or outright monsters in the moral sense.
I like this a lot. All of the points are logically sound and most are interesting. Thank you anon.
Strictly speaking, it isn't. Inherently corruptive magic exists but Necromancy isn't under that umbrella.
The reason why Necromancy is outlawed by divine and mortal law is because it's equivalent to shoveling toxic waste everywhere. Undead are produced "naturally" when vast amounts of waste magical energy sinks into the ground and binds to corpses in an attempt to return to where it belongs (inside a living body). So undead as pests left over from a bunch of butthole wizards duking it out is bad enough, but that isn't an intended outcome and avoiding magical pollution and waste mana is considered good practice for any properly-educated wizard. Necromancers on the other hand are like javascript coders. Wasting mana and pushing it into corpses isn't just a result of accident and negligence, it's the intended best practice of their school. And similar to the undead won't go away if the caster dies or stops controlling them, and because the magical energy animating them wants to reunite with more magical energy (inside living things) they'll cause the typical problems of "hunting and killing people" if not kept on a tight leash. Skilled necromancers can avoid this by setting up complicated guiding enchantments on them, but a wizard putting in that kind of effort is usually better off just making a sturdy golem.
Studying necromancy-adjacent practices in pursuit of immortality is actually MORE moral than raising the dead because you're (in theory) only working with yourself instead of contaminating everything around you. Both "good" and "evil" factions in the world have their share of lich-like immortals, though as a practical and aesthetic choice the "good" ones tend to bind themselves to a golem-like body because being a walking corpse is filthy and disgusting.
I haven't finished it yet, but. I've started making a system. In this system I have decided that necromancy spells can be empowered at a risk of damaging the soul/souls involved or various other harmful effects to yourself and others. Therefore, it's not always evil, but the necromancer can gain a benefit from being evil, and usually will because most won't know the downsides.
It's practicioners are black and its practice generates generational wealth for them.
Actually it does defile the soul in my setting because evil is a real cosmic force and every time you cast a spell with the evil tag it gets a little bit stronger
Because you are defiling the body by reanimating it. The body has reached it’s final resting place like nature and whatever deity there is in your setting meant it to be.
I do not run it with 'neutral' mind-rape magics in enchantment and golem making, but 'evil' necromancy. No.
Both are questionable, but at least there's nobody home in a zombie corpse being enslaved and forced into unlife. It's like an animated object.
Well the soul energy that they use to animate the corpses could just as easily be used to animate a golem or other construct, so why use bodies at all unless you're a creep? Also it's just plain disrespectful to the dead
>desecrates the sanctity of life
>has the audacity to ask why that's evil
human garbage
>desecrates the sanctity of life
The frick does that mean
that you specifically have no soul
I understand, larp away friends
If you dont understand that you should have been aborted.
Why are leftists like this?
I don't know, why are you unable to elaborate what your lame empty platitude means? Do you actually have beliefs?
I’m not going to waste time playing your word games and explaining basic human concepts literally everyone understands. So yeah, kill your self you dishonest moron and I hope someone raped your moms dead body and uploads a video of it
I can tell you're real empathic guy who really cherishes life lmao
I have real empathy, in that I want to genocide all sub-humans who think like you and are a threat to actual humans.
Uh huh, like I said I can tell exactly the kind of guy you are
Sorry leftnoid, my empathy is only for based and Christian peoples, not subhumans
If considering necromancy as a whole, not all spells relate to corpse desecration. What about Cause Fear or Ray of Enfeeblement?
Oh hey looks like we are having this thread again for the 10231092310293 time.
There you go OP, now frick off.
In cold economic facts; it is a incentive to kill people or allow their deaths.
There is no necromancy in my setting. If you claimed to be raising the dead, people would make fun of you for being insane or throw you in an asylum. If you claimed to be speaking with the dead, you better be damned careful about what the dead are saying, lest you be lynched for prophesying.
Necromancy isn't "evil" it's unhygienic, it's unhealthy to work with corpses and necromancers tend to be filthy, disease-ridden people because germs and hygiene aren't well understood concepts. So when people start getting sick around necromancers they're not going to blame the invisible bacteria that follows them around, it's only natural to assume it's caused by necromancy itself. And even when people develop a better understanding of how disease works there will still be historical and religious attitudes in the way of necromancy being accepted by society at large.
Honestly, this is so obvious to me that I'm surprised no one else has brought up this factor, unless someone has and I'm just an idiot.
I tried to do this in one game, but it was a wasted effort. Everyone was so happy to accept that necromancy was evil that nobody thought twice about people going sick around it.
> nobody thought twice
Why should that matter?"Evil" or not necromancy is still causing harm and killing the necromancers stops the harm.
I kinda like the Death Gate Cycle's explanation of why necromancy is a big no-no for most people.
>reanimating a dead member of certain race means that another member of the same race dies prematurely
>not letting the corpse stay still long enough after the death before reanimating it will mean that instead of getting an obedient and dumb zombie, you get a super-zombie that is just as intelligent as it was while alive, extremely hard to kill, capable of independent thinking, and filled with hatred towards the living because it is in constant pain
These two facts lead to Sartan populations across 3 different (out of 4, the only one that didn't get completely wrecked was also the one that was filled to the brim with anti-magic sea water) worlds getting devastated.
>sartans, along with their elf, dwarf, and human subjects, colonize four distinct elemental worlds formed from the ruins of post-nuclear war earth
>their plans for it all kinda sucked and thus the connections between the worlds only work at half-capacity
>even with this limitation, most worlds can function to some extent.
>except in the earth world, where humans, elves, and dwarfs perish quickly because the environment quickly became too toxic and cold for them
>sartans can somewhat tolerate these hard conditions thanks to their magic, but even their living areas are limited to near magical life-support pylons
>their population was also pretty small to begin with, so they resorted to using reanimated sartan corpses to do physical labor
>this continues for centuries and ends up killing off most of the sartan populations in the air and fire worlds (water world is fine thanks to that whole anti-magic sea water thing)
>earth world's sartan population ultimately gets wrecked because one necromancer couldn't let his girlfriend's corpse stay still long enough for her soul to fully leave the corpse and thus caused a super-zombie apocalypse by reanimating her too early
This question is a symptom of the stupid way DnD handles magic.
The answer is, because you are consorting with evil spirits, sacrificing your soul, and bringing evil spirits into the world to harm others.
>But that's not DnD canon!
DnD is stupid
>Why is necromancy evil?
Necromancy isnt evil, its the subset of undead creation spells that are evil. Why? Because the undead are an abomination against the natural cycle of the body and soul, created when a dead woman fled in abject fear of judgment by the goddess of death, rending the laws of mortality. And now she rules from Abaddon, the realm of nihilistic and soul eating daemons, in a hedonistic orgy of food, blood, and wine much like her mortal life.
Guess who knows all the bad evil necromancy spells that create all those undead and provides them to mortals to damn their immortal souls? The evil goddess of the undead, her protege an evil demigod of accidental death, the demonlord of necromancy and undeath, demonlord of vampires, demonlord of ghouls, and the soul eating outer god of empty death. In order to gain the knowledge of making zombies and skeletons and other things anathema to life and goodness, you must consort with monstrous evil and do things both hideous and cruel to gain your end of their bargains. To be a necromantic master of the undead is to damn your soul to the Abyss or, even worse, to the soul eaters in Abaddon.
>But that's not DnD canon!
Except it is, Van Richtens Guides from ad&d 2e basically describe it as such, and you can see the bones of this in every edition after. Even Pathfinder, in both editions, describes it as such.
>why is necrophilia illegal in your setting? It's not like they're alive to feel it, and it makes me feel good!
First of all: depends on the setting.
Second of all: are all of these "what's 2+2? And don't tell me 4" threads made by the same homosexual?
Because it's for gays. Also because the default objective of undead is "slaughter the living", and it only takes a brief interruption of control to do a factory reset on undead, and then where's your post-scarcity society? Getting eaten by zombies, that's where.
You are fricking ill.
it shows how lazy the goddess of life and dead is with upholding her rule.
it is in general disturbed the dead in body and soul, which further corrode unnecessarily.
Because my setting was inspired by Celtic myth and is the Otherworld of fey, ghosts and spirits. It's an afterlife full of magic, that considers our world to be their afterlife. Undead are those who got "snagged" between worlds to various degrees, with intelligent undead having the same rights as anyone else so long as they behave. Undead lacking in sapience or who act like murderous buttholes will be treated accordingly. Necromancy is basically mind control to them, so like Enchantment type spells it's generally outlawed without a license that only gets granted to specific mages the kingdoms employ in hunting the more dangerous undead.
Necromancy was originally just talking to the spirits of the dead for divination purposes. Just stick with that and it’s fine.
>it's fine
Yes, because politicians will love it when they can't silence people by well-timed "accidents". They won't ever run a smear campaign against people who can un-silence such and brand it as both "morally evil" and plain illegal to practice, research or talk about. Ever. Pinky promise.
How come nobody thinks to use it for justice? Like say, finding criminals by speaking to dead witnesses or their victims, or temporarily bringing back the dead to exact vengeance on their killers?
Because it is, and that's what makes it cool as frick. Embrace the darkness, have a little fun with it. Be bad, do crime, raise the dead. You're role-playing, so play your role.
Any spirit drawn back to the world of the living is subjected to unendurable agony.
Because only Evil Clerics can command undead.
I actually had this weird homebrew idea of a deity which functioned as a demigod of nonevil undead which gave the abilities of Negative Energy Channelling and Command Undead to his traditionally good-aligned clerics. He is traditionally worshipped by nonevil undead who use his blessing to bolster their comrades and reign in uncontrolled undead via Command Undead.
Because necromancy means that you must defy the god of death. Which is in itself isn't evil. Problem is you are still fricking dead, so the world rejects you and all your magic/essence/soul, call it whatever you want, is flowing out of your body because it can't support it properly. So you either must keep it in, somehow, or replenish the lost stuff.
As a result there are two general types of undead - Angry Dead and Hungry Dead.
Angry Dead were so fricking pissed during their death that they came back to life out of sheer fricking hatred. They are revenants hell bent on righting whatever happened to them. They do not tire, they do not stop, and they are more or less immortal. There are almost no ways to kill them without divine intervention and in most cases even then you are just binding them in chains and burying them into the ground in hope that you die before they get out. They already showed middle finger to one god and won't stop because someone else showed up.
Hungry Dead are your vampires, zombies, ghouls and the like. If they don't eat they get weaker, if they don't eat people they get dumber. Most zombies were much more intelligent once upon a time but gone without a proper screaming meal for too long and lost most their ability yo reason. If they don't eat people for too long they'll lose their mind permanently. Same goes for the body if they don't kill even animals.
In my setting you're ripping a soul out of the underworld before it's properly cleansed of impurity and trapping it inside a corpse. This practice also puts a permanent stain on your own soul because you've essentially doomed a spirit to eternal suffering by yanking it out of the cycle of reincarnation. Destroying the undead doesn't free the captive soul either.
>drags your grandmother's corpse from the ground to perform free lawn care services across the street
Yeah, geez. I dont know what people's problem is.
Whatsamatter goyim? You weren’t using her? And feelings, traditions and morals are just brain chemicals that don’t mean anything, YOU WILL let me use your dead grandmother as a zombie sex slave and YOU WILL eat the resurrected zombie bugs
Because necromancy naturally sets a precedent of not valuing human life and simply killing others when it suits you
>need some labor
Just kill a bunch homeless people for work
>running low on troops
Slaughter the nearest village for more troops
>hate wife
You get the point
Necromancy works in my setting by utilizing "anima", an energy that's very poorly understood.
Because of this, you have to kill another creature to utilize necromancy. This can be as simple as crushing insects for small spells, but for larger spells you must generally find a creature capable of pain or fear (such as a cow or humod but only excreted by living beings: an) to sacrifice for your spell.
This likewise ties into how Ressurection spells work: Souls exiting a body will have anima hanging onto them by virtue of their living body having had it, hanging on like metaphorical scraps of their corpse. As time goes by the soul will shed these pieces, until after a period of 10-20 years they no longer have any anima attached at all. ressurection spells work by latching onto the anima on the soul as an anchor and pulling it back to the world of the living, so after a soul loses all its anima, it is no longer ressurectable and the person is lost to the afterlife forever.
Undead raised by necromancy will require anima to survive after this; For simple undead they just pull anima into themselves via osmosis, which is the reason that undead usually make the living feel uneasy, as they are being fed upon in a miniscule manner just by existing near them. Large numbers of undead will over time, however, cause a land to sicken and die off as their drain becomes large enough to drain damaging amounts.
Larger and more powerful undead are, on the other hand, required to feed off of the living directly to survive, as their forms require large amounts of anima to be sustained. This is why Vampires drink blood for example, as this is the method their bodies drain anima, through the creatures blood. This is likewise why unintelligent undead will seek to attack and eat living creatuers, as they have an instinctive need to sate this "hunger", and zombies can over time, evolve into stronger and more dangerous undead via anima consumption.
Tying into this, casting necromancy, even when a sacrifice is present, presents an inherent risk of corruption to the caster: The spell is wild and will cut deep gashes into them (like an uncontrolled vaccum) if not handled properly as it tears chunks of the caster's anima out to fuel itself.
Over time, this can lead to what is known as "Soul scarring", a magical affliction that leads to its caster's very person being damaged, harming their ability to process empathy or other emotions, driving necromancers who are cast spells too frequently to become evil. In extreme cases, this can even lead to what is called "Soul sickness", an irreversible disease wherein the soul is so damaged/scarred by necromancy that the caster's soul begins to "Self feed" on their own anima, essentially wasting them away into an unintelligent undead themself (though draining the anima of other living beings can stave this off).
Necromancy is therefore not TECHNICALLY evil, but undead are damaging to the environment and dangerous. Additionally casting it more than once or twice runs the risk of turning you into a sociopath who will behave in an amoral way, and also risks turning you into a literal undead monster.
Hence casting necromancy is seen as akin to a nation launching a nuke, an act that, on paper, could be seen as defensible in a single dose, but in reality is known to lead to more and more usage of itself with all the horror that entails.
It's not. Necromancy is the study of the forces of life and death, as well as spirits. I've kept healing spells as being of the necromancy school, and undead you create are mindless, soulless beings more akin to constructs than walking dead. Necromancy is a tool, and like any tool, can be used for both good and bad. It is considered rather macabre, though. Like taxidermists and morticians are. Some cultures do consider necromancy evil, but there isn't anything inherently wrong about necromancy.
It's not. Most people are just really uncomfortable with seeing their dead relatives shuffling around and won't give permission to be raised after they die, making using their remains a crime. Necromancy only outright illegal in some places when you're fricking around with corpses and the spirits of the dead. Just channeling negative energy or similar magic is fine, though it will probably scare the shit out of your average person.
The god of death hates it when people's souls are brought back as undead and actively has their followers hunt down those who try to escape death. Soulless corpses raised as mindless undead are fine, contrary to popular belief, but zealous death priests don't usually differentiate them from liches and the like.
The negative energy that powers most necromancy tends to attract negative entities, and consorting with them can provide valuable (and often evil) power and knowledge but it's not required to cast spells. Most people don't know all this and just assume that necromancers defile the dead, pact with evil spirits, and are universally hated by the god of death.
It's not, but it has a terrible reputation because "never call up that which you can not put down" is a fundamental rule that keeps getting ignored.
Popular morality in my pseudo-medieval world is not utilitarian in nature. Magic in my paganism-is-canonically-correct world is a sacred endeavor.
I know this is a dumb bait post but I genuinely don't get the appeal of good necromancers beyond "you thought necromancers are bad but actually this one is good." It's just not an interesting concept to me.
If anything, necromancers who think they're good but definitely aren't are more interesting. Or people who fool themselves into thinking necromancers can be good when they can't. Those make for fun scenarios and could be used to talk about real morality. "Actually, bringing grandma back from the dead could be used to make an automated factory" or w/e, not so much.
Messing with dead peoples' bodies and souls is bad. The Gods deem it so. The DM thinks it makes for fun villains.
I always thought it'd be interesting to do a campaign where you're PI's or cops in a major city where people can sign away their bodies for cash, with the expectation that when they die their soulless husks are used for labour. Then there'd obviously be some cityhall, Chinatown, shady deal where you find out tons of people are being killed to fuel the economy and corruption goes all the way up to highest echelons of government.
>autists need basic things like corpse taboos explained to them
>morons can't understand that in D and D all undead energy comes from a plane of antilife that is anathema to all living things
Thank god we had another necromancy thread
>necromancy in your setting
>IN D&D...
We aren't talking about forgotten realms ok
need basic things like corpse taboos explained to them
Anon, if you're just using taboos, dissecting corpses has been seen as taboo in China, does that mean medical researchers and western medicine is evil because we learned our knowledge by dissecting corpses?
You're using appeal to tradition, which is a logical fallacy. You're failing to state why its EVIL, not why its "disconcerting".
Dead bodies feed the earth. Necromancy defies the cycle of life.
The secrets of necromancy are themselves tainted. Knowing how to raise the dead, means you have to understand an aspect of magical metaphysics that intrinsically corrupts the mind, in the same way cannibalism does. Thus, Necromancy is evil by definition. Divine magic is however an exception to this, although the association with sorcererus magic still turns people off.
Mostly because bad guys used necromancy in recent history, but in other countries/cultures its not looked at as evil or is rather seen as a necessary evil in extremely dangerous places.
Most people are just think its icky though, and many have trauma over "wild" undead that sprout up on battlefields and in dungeons and whatnot due to all the death.
It's only seen as evil by humans and other lower races, who imbue dead bodies with mystical qualities belonging solely to the living, out of fear and denial. Corpses are no more than objects.
>t. Mind flayer
In the setting I used to run, necromancy deals with the spiritual residue left behind when a being dies (and similar stuff like the caster's conception of dying and death). When you cast Raise Dead you're not involving souls whatsoever, you're just using magic and said spiritual residue/impression to make the corpse move and function. You can even conjure undead without having a corpse present out of your own conceptions of death, but doing so is a lot less efficient and more temporary than properly raising a corpse.
So yeah, it's not evil in any meaningful sense. That said necromancy is quite counterintuitive compared to other schools of magic, so it's more difficult to learn than fire or creation magic or whatever. And just because there's nothing inherently evil about it doesn't mean it has a good reputation - what kind of creep chooses to animate corpses instead of chucking fireballs (especially when the former is more difficult to learn)?
Imagine the material world as a single living thing. The place that undeath comes from is like the shadow of that living creature. Following it, existing because of it, bound to it. The animal wishes to live. The shadow wishes to cease.
Necromancy gives power to that shadow, sickens the living creature that is the world. Every undead thing is animated by the same shadowy force. The lesser undead carry only a sliver of its power, and stumble around only barely able to coordinate and control themselves. The greater undead hold more, not just competence and skill but fell power. The gods tremble at the idea of the entire Shadow.
Tainting the world by thinning the border, or reversing natural processes, or bringing shards of the Shadow into life's domain causes the very universe to decay. All the Shadow desires is the cessation of life, and cruelty to the living in the meantime.
it's not unless you're doing it evilly
you can animate a body without dragging the soul back, you can even bring a soul back consensually and there are some sentient non-evil undead created through necromancy like this, although this typically requires someone to be prepared long before death
but if you want to be evil you can trap a soul in something or someone and this will basically cause it to go insane over time, especially if it's in the wrong body - this is much more difficult than working with the consent of the relevant creature, so it can't happen by accident
it's also considered somewhat evil to animate a body (even without a soul) without prior consent except in the most dire of circumstances but this is more along the lines of messing with a dead body - it's like how you need consent to take someone's organs rather than super double evil black magic
Necromancy is an abomination, but that's not as severe as it sounds. Shadecraft is pretty bad as far as sin goes. It violates the natural order by preventing the remnants of the dead from restful dissolution, and can easily lead to the raised shade becoming corrupted and predatory. Shades are basically made of undispersed attachments and psychic detritus, so make a great seedbed for curses or demons.
Lichcraft is more accepted, but still looked down upon. Dead flesh is ritually unclean and making a career out of manipulating it means you're untouchable (in the bad sense). Skeletons, particularly cleaned and carved ones, are okay and considered holy servitors of the god of the tomb cities, but you still need untouchables to process the corpses.
>As the topic says, why is necromancy evil in your setting?
Because it is being done in a way unsanctioned by the church. Frankensteins and skeletons are allowed because they don't rot, zombies and shitty frankensteins aren't because they decay and spread plague. Clean skeletons and corpse golems so fresh they're almost alive are the way to go.
>corpse golems so fresh they're almost alive are the way to go.
Now I imagine a necromancer with a Mr. Clean mascot golem advertising door to door for him.
Because it involves trapping ambient spirits or, in the case of higher level rituals, pulling resting souls right out of the afterlife and binding them to your will. All with out the permission of the spirits or souls or the various Gods overseeing their rest. It also involves passively leeching the pure life energy powering all of reality to keep your corpse minions from falling apart, which weakens the cohesion of existence and further facilitates the inevitable end of everything.
It's not. It's only ever considered evil when you do it with evil means, so if you are using puppet souls of dead people to reanimate the dead or dragging the previously dead back to wretched rotting life.
Most of the time it's used for medical practices and healing, but even going so far as to use bodies isn't necessarily a bad deal as long as the bodies used to be horrible people and or were gotten/ bought ethically. Zombies are often used and guards and such so requisition of bodies is more common. But overall, necromancers are commonly considered creepy weirdos but vitally necessary and not typically evil, there are some good examples of that though
My setting doesn't really have a true alignment system so it is hard to denote which spells would be "good" or "evil" as it varies from culture to culture.
However, in general it is not necessarily necromancy, but specific spells of necromancy which are considered evil.
So spells like Cause Fear or False Life would be considered ok given its use isn't specifically linked to undeath. Even death spells which simply dole out negative energy damage or damage ability scores like Ray of Enfeeblement are considered fine.
It is spells which specifically deal with undead where things get dicey. Animate Dead and Undead Anatomy come to mind as forms of undeath-related necromancy which are frowned upon by most societies. Even Repair Undead or Ghoul Touch would fall into this category as it brings one closer to undeath or helps undead (which are typically evil). Though obviously the greatest offending spells would be Create Undead or spells which turn the living undead directly after death like Ghoul Gauntlet.
And undead, which are heavily associated with necromancy, are by their nature unnatural and against the natural order which causes them to behave in ways which hurt society and the living, usually as a way to lash out at their discomfort of being something which should not exist.
Though there are good undead, there being an entire kingdom of benevolent undead and an unique demigod (currently) named Macar which offers boons to good undead who worship him.
Necromancy is evil in real life (if it were real anyway) and therefore all settings because disturbing the dead from their peaceful repose in the afterlife is gravely disordered. What's blasphemous isn't blasphemous just because. Bad actions have bad effects. Fricking with death makes for some bad juju.
In my setting for a BFRPG campaign necromancy is evil due to the effect it has on the surrounding land and people.
I don't have an exact "reason why" or method worked out yet, but essentially the necromancer has to take the life out of the surrounding landscape and people to animate his corpse minions.
The land turns dull and gray, any people who choose to stay almost become zombies in their own right (essentially living their life in a mindless trance, tilling dead fields, trying to cook over an extinguished fire, etc), the draining effect slowly spreads out from the necromancers lair overtime.
Not actually evil or good per se. Most undead are essentially golems that use death magic instead of elemental magic. Turning yourself undead is also not any more evil than praying to a deity of your choice and going to his heaven after death. It's just another way to dodge hell (everybody goes to hell by default). The evil kind of necromancy is concerned with enslaving the souls of the dead, but it's very rare because it's very tricky. A person's soul goes straight to heaven or hell after death, most necromancers can't overrule it. They either need consent or to kill their victim with a special soul-paralysing spell or weapon.
My shit has lifeforce as a quantifiable value. Most Necromancers either add or subtract from that value, be it others or their own. But there is a 'cheat' created by the Goddess of Undeath that a well versed user of Necromantic power can set a negative lifeforce value in a creature. This is where Undead come from, be it in the wild or born of Necromancy. Due to this, and how most worshipers of this Goddess are Undead using Necromancers, the practice as a whole is viewed with stigma.
a little bit of corpse-magic isn't so bad, but the sort of person who fully devotes their life's work to making dead bodies walk is far from good and/or stable.
Necromancy isn't inherently evil in my setting. It is well understood that once a spirit leaves a body, the body is simply material.
Enchantment, on the other hand, tends to be viewed much more harshly, since it's enslaving another being to your will (even if only temporarily).
There are good necromancers in my world although even the good ones are looked at with suspicion at best. The good ones are typically the ones that use their powers to detect and destroy undead, perform funerary services for wealthy families, or investigate murders by interviewing the dead.
However the one's that wants to make skellingtons and do that kind of nasty stuff are usually bad people because even if they aren't ontolgically evil it takes a special kind of person to go around obtaining corpses to raise as their unwilling servants.
But both are considered less bad than summoning outsiders because of the incursion and the tendency for shit to go sideways when they show up in numbers.
Necromancy as a school of magic dealing with the soul is not inherently evil.
Creating the undead however is.
In the case of mindless undead, you are either enslaving the part of the soul of the previous occupant, dragging it up from the afterlife into a decomposing body for your own purposes, causing immense pain which most people can agree is evil.
In the case you are using magic to conjure a soul to fill a corpse, conjuration magic does not create something out of nothing. Rather it effectively takes things from the future to exist in the present. Thus a soul created through magic is a soul robbed from a fetus, creating stillborns which the gods consider quite evil.
And finally there are the intelligent undead like vampires and liches and others. They have effectively managed to turn their immortal and incorporeal soul into a physical entity tied to the material plane. They have irrevocably removed a soul from the cycle of life and death for their own purposes, and thus are considered evil.
The act of animating dead can be broken down into three parts if the aggregate alignment of all three components is evil aligned then that act of animation is evil. To explain:
Part one animation magic:
what is the alignment of the animating magic itself. Binding the soul of an orphan into a corpse to puppet it under your absolute control is evil. Pumping energy from a neutral aligned plane, like the negative energy plane or the plane of fire is neutral. Giving a wayward soul an opportunity to fulfill the tasks left unfinished so they can move on is good.
Part two corpse acquisition:
Killing innocents to raise their bones is evil.
Raising the bones of an animal as part of a use every part of the buffalo philosophy is neutral
getting a contract with the living to raise their remains with part of the profits from the undeads labor going to their family is lawful and possibly good.
Part three the opinion of the god of death(or other relevant deities consult your local priest).
If the CE god of corruption advocates for the animation of the dead this tilts the action towards evil
If the god of death doesn't care their alignment doesn't matter this tilts the action towards no one alignment or neutrality
If the NE god of death hates animating the undead(perhaps because it prevents them from doing the same) then this tilts the action towards good
1/2
2/2
As an example lets assume that the actions components have equal weight and assemble the alignment of two different spell casts
Gorthak the ravager binds the soul of the orphan he just killed back into its charred corpse to serve as a puppet because it serves the interests of his dark god is committing an evil act even if he uses that undead to kill demons
Steven the wizard (Bachelors in necromancy minor in business) channels energy from the astral plane into a body that he acquired by paying its former owner a lump sum when the lived in exchange for use of the corpse. The god of death is LE but only cares if a corpse is properly buried the first go around this action is neutral and likely lawful