Is Necromancy inherently evil or not?


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Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert wrote:

I think this is incredibly subjective if you aren't using a published setting that explains these issues. I personally think raising undead should be a very bad thing because flavor, so I added in a logical reason for it to be bad since I don't use alignment and don't have a bunch of gods dictating morality. It is bad because I decided the flesh, blood, or organs of a human sacrificial victim is a necessary spell component for raising undead in my setting. It is a flavorful and logical explanation for why it would be a very bad thing to do. I also reclassified healing magic as Necromancy, because Necromancy is simply the magic of life and death. Raising undead is very bad, yes, but there are more benign forms of Necromancy, and healing is one of those.

In Golarion, it's bad because good and evil are tangible forces with actual definitions, rather than subjective social constructs. No real reason aside from it being evil is really necessary when evil itself has actual power in the world.

The Zoroastrians believed the dead were unclean and evil. Zoroastrianism has also influenced many religions that came after it with its idea of a titanic struggle between the forces of good - light, and evil - darkness. It is great to find where ideas come from, by all means check it up. Golarion seems to have gone to Zoroastrian conclusions where the living dead are evil because dead is what they are. That often repeated descriptor of "unnatural" is starting to sound like propaganda.


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DM Under The Bridge wrote:
Kelsey Arwen MacAilbert wrote:

I think this is incredibly subjective if you aren't using a published setting that explains these issues. I personally think raising undead should be a very bad thing because flavor, so I added in a logical reason for it to be bad since I don't use alignment and don't have a bunch of gods dictating morality. It is bad because I decided the flesh, blood, or organs of a human sacrificial victim is a necessary spell component for raising undead in my setting. It is a flavorful and logical explanation for why it would be a very bad thing to do. I also reclassified healing magic as Necromancy, because Necromancy is simply the magic of life and death. Raising undead is very bad, yes, but there are more benign forms of Necromancy, and healing is one of those.

In Golarion, it's bad because good and evil are tangible forces with actual definitions, rather than subjective social constructs. No real reason aside from it being evil is really necessary when evil itself has actual power in the world.

The Zoroastrians believed the dead were unclean and evil. Zoroastrianism has also influenced many religions that came after it with its idea of a titanic struggle between the forces of good - light, and evil - darkness. It is great to find where ideas come from, by all means check it up. Golarion seems to have gone to Zoroastrian conclusions where the living dead are evil because dead is what they are. That often repeated descriptor of "unnatural" is starting to sound like propaganda.

Zoroastrianism or pretty much every Western depiction of the undead from Medieval legends up until we started playing with trope reversals in the modern era.


Okay so my personal beliefs on this subject are generally necromancy is like blood magic.... evil and sketchy as all hell. But that's just it key word generally, I doesn't have to be evil . Its all about the person raising them, as unnatural as raising the dead is that doesn't make it completely evil. If the person making the dead rise did so in such a way that he is still respecting the corpse and using it not as a throwaway pawn but as a valued piece then to me it is not evil but just unnatural.


What is evil about blood?


DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?

I suppose the Location?


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Terquem wrote:
DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?
I suppose the Location?

Usually it's located inside someone else and it's considered impolite to take it out to use for magic.


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DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?

Well, to get blood out of people involves hurting them, which is generally considered evil.

Paizo and Pathfinder have generally accepted a "screw the stupid pathological corner cases" rule, as, in fact, has almost every rational actor since the beginning of thought. This has been formalized, for example, by the Jewish tradition of "building a fence around the Torah," or the English proverb "better safe than sorry." If blood that has been harvested evilly is a corrupting influence that is bad for the world, blood of uncertain provenance should be treated as an evil, corrupting influence precisely because to do otherwise would be to encourage people to harvest blood corruptly and then to lie about it, compounding the harm to the world.


DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?

I was referring kind of to how the dragon age series views blood magic. How it is viewed as inherently evil cause you have to blood in order to power it, generally blood s acquired through injuring people which is in itself an evil act. However I am proposing the scenario a scenario in which nobody else is really getting hurt so is it still evil?

Magic like anything else is a tool, it is the wielder not necessarily the magic that is evil.


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Yes.

You have now received an answer from a stranger on the internet. Please consider your moral issue resolved.


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No.

You have now received an answer from a stranger on the internet. Please consider your moral issue resolved.

Shadow Lodge

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I think that this thread would have gone better if it had been titled:

SHOULD Necromancy be inherently evil or not ?

the answer to that, by the way, is NO


It is whatever you determine it to be for your game.


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In my view, animating the remains of the dead is desecration of a corpse. It's an evil act. I would not want the remains of my dead loved ones made to dance like a puppet by a necromancer. It's a foul abomination. The dead should rest in peace.

Animating the dead will be an evil act in just about any game I GM, whether or not "evil" has any level of in-game objective reality.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Adventure Path, Pathfinder Accessories, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Animated the dead is not an evil act in my game, but largely taboo in most societies for many of the reasons stated here. Necromancers may be evil and bent on death and destruction or neutral/good and from a differing culture.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?

Well, to get blood out of people involves hurting them, which is generally considered evil.

Paizo and Pathfinder have generally accepted a "screw the stupid pathological corner cases" rule, as, in fact, has almost every rational actor since the beginning of thought. This has been formalized, for example, by the Jewish tradition of "building a fence around the Torah," or the English proverb "better safe than sorry." If blood that has been harvested evilly is a corrupting influence that is bad for the world, blood of uncertain provenance should be treated as an evil, corrupting influence precisely because to do otherwise would be to encourage people to harvest blood corruptly and then to lie about it, compounding the harm to the world.

See this is why I don't give blood. The nurses take my blood, it hurts, and then their alignment changes to evil.

Chaotic evil nurses, with a needle already inside you, are a real hassle to deal with.


DM Under The Bridge wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?

Well, to get blood out of people involves hurting them, which is generally considered evil.

Paizo and Pathfinder have generally accepted a "screw the stupid pathological corner cases" rule, as, in fact, has almost every rational actor since the beginning of thought. This has been formalized, for example, by the Jewish tradition of "building a fence around the Torah," or the English proverb "better safe than sorry." If blood that has been harvested evilly is a corrupting influence that is bad for the world, blood of uncertain provenance should be treated as an evil, corrupting influence precisely because to do otherwise would be to encourage people to harvest blood corruptly and then to lie about it, compounding the harm to the world.

See this is why I don't give blood. The nurses take my blood, it hurts, and then their alignment changes to evil.

Chaotic evil nurses, with a needle already inside you, are a real hassle to deal with.

Okay sarcasm understood but unnecessary. I would like to point out the word give, meaning your choice in this scenario. The nurses in question are not taking which is sort of what was being got at before. You choose not to give blood, scenario ends no one gets hurt, no alignment changes. You choose to give blood, that's is your choice get a tiny pinch give blood feel good about yourself, nobodies alignment changes except yours which may give you one good deed point.


Archae wrote:
DM Under The Bridge wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:
DM Under The Bridge wrote:
What is evil about blood?

Well, to get blood out of people involves hurting them, which is generally considered evil.

Paizo and Pathfinder have generally accepted a "screw the stupid pathological corner cases" rule, as, in fact, has almost every rational actor since the beginning of thought. This has been formalized, for example, by the Jewish tradition of "building a fence around the Torah," or the English proverb "better safe than sorry." If blood that has been harvested evilly is a corrupting influence that is bad for the world, blood of uncertain provenance should be treated as an evil, corrupting influence precisely because to do otherwise would be to encourage people to harvest blood corruptly and then to lie about it, compounding the harm to the world.

See this is why I don't give blood. The nurses take my blood, it hurts, and then their alignment changes to evil.

Chaotic evil nurses, with a needle already inside you, are a real hassle to deal with.

Okay sarcasm understood but unnecessary. I would like to point out the word give, meaning your choice in this scenario. The nurses in question are not taking which is sort of what was being got at before. You choose not to give blood, scenario ends no one gets hurt, no alignment changes. You choose to give blood, that's is your choice get a tiny pinch give blood feel good about yourself, nobodies alignment changes except yours which may give you one good deed point.

Which means of course that there's nothing inherently evil about blood magic, since in theory the blood could be donated.

Which is fine in theory and I wouldn't have any problem with a game or setting that used it that way, but that's the "pathological corner case" that Orfamay Quest was talking about. As I said about undead earlier pretty much every Western depiction from Medieval legends through early genre fiction up until we started playing with trope reversals in the modern era portrayed it as evil. That's the starting point.


Well yea I understand its a corner case.honestly the name necromancy kind of sounds evil, and on paper it is evil plain and simple. But those corner cases where it can be used for good are I think important.

In modern society yes I agree it is view as evil, but in modern society which kind of sucks in many aspects, vampires sparkle, call of duty is viewed as a good game, and Disney decides what many people view as common mythology.

Liberty's Edge

Come on folks, even the dead get bored and like a nice chat now and then.


Couldn't the same (hypothetically) be done with "blood magic" though?

That's the rub - at what point does something "generally considered evil" (such as dealing with blood or the dead) suddenly become "not evil"?

The very idea of ripping someone's internal organ - say, their heart, or liver, or lung - out of the cadaver, and then replacing someone else's organ with it seems, at best, ghoulish, in many regards, and would have been considered unimaginably foul and wicked if proposed centuries ago - after all, it seems a grave* disrespect for the deceased (beyond the obvious other weird questions that are raised).

... but today, organ donation is not only important, it's seen as compassionate, and folk are justifiably encouraged to do exactly that. After all if you die, of what use is your organs to you?

And the question arises: at what point does this stop? What line could be crossed that people must go "here, and no farther"?

Zombies, I'll grant, tend to go kill folk if uncontrolled... but skeletons' "evil" seems entirely limited to a "cunning" that... "allows them to use weapons and wear armor".

õ.o

All the gods of Golarion, deliver us from the evil cunning of fighters! (And barbarians, and bards, and clerics, and druids, and monks oh, yeah, no armor, and paladins, and rangers, and rogues! An alchemists, and cavaliers, and inquisitors, and oracles, and summoners! And bloodragers, and brawlers, and hunters, and investigators, shamans, skalds, slayers, swashbucklers, and warpriests! (Fortunately for us all, witches and arcanists are not evil... unless they dabble in necromancy!))

But even with zombies, it hedges. "tend to" is not the same as "this is what they do by default" but rather "a majority follows a trend toward this action, but have no specific compulsion."

What's more, this isn't a roving pack - it's just "mill[ing] about", which, according to more than one source means to loiter or stay in a general area (though some movement may apply). Even this doesn't create the roving hordes we'd expect from such malevolence.

And this (among other places) is where the disconnect lies for many. Where is their intrinsic evil? And why?

- the use of necrotissue for various purposes to improve the lives of many, is no more evil than it is for us... and in our case, it could be extremely good indeed

- the 'evil' as-presented is extremely mild-to-non-existent, runs contrary to other rules and precedent (with one exception), and isn't very great even at its presumed worst as-presented... unless confusing and arbitrary answers are given in an aside, in which case... "waaaaah~?"

Almost all of the "evil" seems to be ascribed to the "ew" factor that the dead are given - and are given with good reason, as, historically, they've been rife with plague and disease. Body disposal wasn't just kind, it was necessary for survival. But now? We'd just be letting people die for no good reason.

Similarly, skeletons could (and, per RAW, just as well as the living with a '10' in their INT) be put to work doing exceptionally dangerous building tasks, potentially saving current lives in the process. This is... well, it's pretty great, really.

1) Organ donation
2) Other parts for medicine and benefits of the living
3) Skeletons can work (also wear armor and wield weapons)

All of this is beneficial to society and the world, and is RAW... if not RAI. And it's that very RAI that causes disconnect and weirdness.

Of course there could be very, very interesting 'answers' to those questions, depending on the world you build. But that's up to each person. :)

* Doh-hohohohohoh~!


Tacticslion wrote:
Couldn't the same (hypothetically) be done with "blood magic" though?

No. If the only examples of it being not-evil are pathological corner cases (which rational discussants have agreed will be ignored), then listing pathological corner cases (which will be be ignored) is not helpful, not particularly rational, and doesn't do anything.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Tacticslion wrote:
Couldn't the same (hypothetically) be done with "blood magic" though?

No. If the only examples of it being not-evil are pathological corner cases (which rational discussants have agreed will be ignored), then listing pathological corner cases (which will be be ignored) is not helpful, not particularly rational, and doesn't do anything.

... "pathological corner cases" as opposed to... "corner cases"? I'm not following the difference, as I've not heard the former term used, though I'd appreciate clarity on it, if possible.


Tacticslion wrote:

Couldn't the same (hypothetically) be done with "blood magic" though?

That's the rub - at what point does something "generally considered evil" (such as dealing with blood or the dead) suddenly become "not evil"?

The very idea of ripping someone's internal organ - say, their heart, or liver, or lung - out of the cadaver, and then replacing someone else's organ with it seems, at best, ghoulish, in many regards, and would have been considered unimaginably foul and wicked if proposed centuries ago - after all, it seems a grave* disrespect for the deceased (beyond the obvious other weird questions that are raised).

... but today, organ donation is not only important, it's seen as compassionate, and folk are justifiably encouraged to do exactly that. After all if you die, of what use is your organs to you?

And the question arises: at what point does this stop? What line could be crossed that people must go "here, and no farther"?

Zombies, I'll grant, tend to go kill folk if uncontrolled... but skeletons' "evil" seems entirely limited to a "cunning" that... "allows them to use weapons and wear armor".

õ.o

All the gods of Golarion, deliver us from the evil cunning of fighters! (And barbarians, and bards, and clerics, and druids, and monks oh, yeah, no armor, and paladins, and rangers, and rogues! An alchemists, and cavaliers, and inquisitors, and oracles, and summoners! And bloodragers, and brawlers, and hunters, and investigators, shamans, skalds, slayers, swashbucklers, and warpriests! (Fortunately for us all, witches and arcanists are not evil... unless they dabble in necromancy!))

But even with zombies, it hedges. "tend to" is not the same as "this is what they do by default" but rather "a majority follows a trend toward this action, but have no specific compulsion."

What's more, this...

Rip out an organ with blood magic, and it is evil.

Rip out an organ with a pick (mmmmm x4 crit) and it isn't evil in and of itself.

Good mention of barbarians, such characters can easily bite people to death, and use said bite attacks without it being considered evil. Chewing a face off until you get to the warm grey centre, not evil. Blood magic though, so evil, quintessentially evil for some.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Tacticslion wrote:
Couldn't the same (hypothetically) be done with "blood magic" though?

No. If the only examples of it being not-evil are pathological corner cases (which rational discussants have agreed will be ignored), then listing pathological corner cases (which will be be ignored) is not helpful, not particularly rational, and doesn't do anything.

Part of the problem is that, unlike necromancy, there isn't actually a definition of "blood magic" in PF, right?

Makes it hard to decide what corner cases are and are not. I tend to think of it as involving human sacrifice - ala stereotypical Aztec blood pyramids or stories of devil summoning rituals. But I've also seen fiction where small amounts of the caster's own blood was used to power magic. That's "blood magic" too and there wouldn't be anything wrong with that, right?
How about animal sacrifices? Very common in historic religions not generally considered evil.

So it depends on what we're talking about and how you define this thing we're calling blood magic.


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Tacticslion wrote:

Couldn't the same (hypothetically) be done with "blood magic" though?

That's the rub - at what point does something "generally considered evil" (such as dealing with blood or the dead) suddenly become "not evil"?

The very idea of ripping someone's internal organ - say, their heart, or liver, or lung - out of the cadaver, and then replacing someone else's organ with it seems, at best, ghoulish, in many regards, and would have been considered unimaginably foul and wicked if proposed centuries ago - after all, it seems a grave* disrespect for the deceased (beyond the obvious other weird questions that are raised).

... but today, organ donation is not only important, it's seen as compassionate, and folk are justifiably encouraged to do exactly that. After all if you die, of what use is your organs to you?

And the question arises: at what point does this stop? What line could be crossed that people must go "here, and no farther"?

Zombies, I'll grant, tend to go kill folk if uncontrolled... but skeletons' "evil" seems entirely limited to a "cunning" that... "allows them to use weapons and wear armor".

õ.o

All the gods of Golarion, deliver us from the evil cunning of fighters! (And barbarians, and bards, and clerics, and druids, and monks oh, yeah, no armor, and paladins, and rangers, and rogues! An alchemists, and cavaliers, and inquisitors, and oracles, and summoners! And bloodragers, and brawlers, and hunters, and investigators, shamans, skalds, slayers, swashbucklers, and warpriests! (Fortunately for us all, witches and arcanists are not evil... unless they dabble in necromancy!))

But even with zombies, it hedges. "tend to" is not the same as "this is what they do by default" but rather "a majority follows a trend toward this action, but have no specific compulsion."

What's more, this...

Yep, the zombie could be given the order to bash and eat all the helpless innocents, or they could be tasked to stand around all day or lean against that barrel. The zombie cares not and the "evil" nature of the zombie can not take over and change chill non-violent commands into malevolence. Zombies don't fight their program to act out and be evil. Zombies aren't willfully evil with evil compulsions, they are closer to computers, whereby the hardware obeys their software without having any wishes or "evil" desires of its own.


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DM Under The Bridge wrote:

Rip out an organ with blood magic, and it is evil.

Rip out an organ with a pick (mmmmm x4 crit) and it isn't evil in and of itself.

Good mention of barbarians, such characters can easily bite people to death, and use said bite attacks without it being considered evil. Chewing a face off until you get to the warm grey centre, not evil. Blood magic though, so evil, quintessentially evil for some.

The difference there is that you're usually not ripping an organ out with blood magic, but ripping an organ out and then using that to power your blood magic.

Stabbing the bad guy who's trying to kill you is one thing. Stabbing someone else and using the blood from that to power an attack on the guy who's trying to kill you is something else.


DM Under The Bridge wrote:
Yep, the zombie could be given the order to bash and eat all the helpless innocents, or they could be tasked to stand around all day or lean against that barrel. The zombie cares not and the "evil" nature of the zombie can not take over and change chill non-violent commands into malevolence. Zombies don't fight their program to act out and be evil. Zombies aren't willfully evil with evil compulsions, they are closer to computers, whereby the hardware obeys their software without having any wishes or "evil" desires of its own.

Now there's the actual rules question. It does appear, but isn't 100% clear from the monster description, that without orders zombies will "mill about in search of living creatures to slaughter and devour". That gives some weight to their "evil" nature.

OTOH, that description could be read as 'those are the common commands given to zombies' rather than that's what they do when not controlled, which seems to be the interpretation you're taking?


Unfortunately for zombie-lovers**, leaving them alone, even with orders, isn't a good idea:

...

... moving down for ease of reading...

my earlier link to the rules wrote:
Zombies are unthinking automatons, and can do little more than follow orders. When left unattended, zombies tend to mill about in search of living creatures to slaughter and devour. Zombies attack until destroyed, having no regard for their own safety.

Bold mine, naturally.

So unfortunately, zombies tend to "go bad" when the necromancer isn't paying attention.

Fortuitously, they don't stray very far ("mill about"), and are easily controlled and kept sealed away.

A humorous scenario I thought of while writing this wrote:

Adventurer 1: "The sign says, 'Danger, NO ENTRY, locked for your safety. NO TREASURE' Huh. Who'd have thought a necromancer cared about that?"

Adventurer 2: "They wouldn't! And that's a suspiciously specific denial*! Must be treasure inside! Let's go!"

*bash in the metal door*

Adventurer 1: "Ah, crap, it's just a janitor crew again."

*later, the necromancer gets home*

Necromancer: "DAGGUM STUPID ADVENTURERS! Do they have any idea how much it costs to get a corpse-permit?! ARG! Can these incopetent cretins not read?!"

* (tv tropes warning) QUASI-EDIT: hoist by my own petard! Arg!

Anyway, the point is, you can keep 'em sealed up (presuming idiots, uh, morons, er adventurers, ah, those with mistaken impressions don't do something stupid), but I would find it much more understandable (and safe) to simply make 'em skeletons which, by all indications, don't do anything without orders.

** EDIT: Okay, uh, ew, by the way, and not what I meant.

Silver Crusade

I'd argue the 'necromancy is evil' thing doesn't arise as much from 'the dead are icky' as it does from the fact its intrinsically desecration of a corpse.

Now, one could make a utilitarian argument that its 'unused' but the idea of using a human being's body to do stuff like cart around your palanquin or fight orcs for you in most cases is a pretty evil thing to do.

I can see a world being ok with the reanimation of animals or the like and still balking at humans being reanimated. I mean, how would you react if someone went into a grave yard and animated your grandfather's corpse to do non-evil activities such as dancing, or carrying around drinks?


Scythia wrote:

This talk of necromancers trurning loose animated undead after using them for a simple chore makes me think of one of those emotional scenes where a person releases an animal that they were taking care of back into the wild.

"Go Skeleton, be free and live... er unlive out there in the beautiful world. Return to nature, which is not where you came from, and be what have always been... since I used magic to make you that way."

Go! *Sob* Before I change my mind!


EDIT: for sick, slick kobold ninjas. :)

Spook205 wrote:

I'd argue the 'necromancy is evil' thing doesn't arise as much from 'the dead are icky' as it does from the fact its intrinsically desecration of a corpse.

Now, one could make a utilitarian argument that its 'unused' but the idea of using a human being's body to do stuff like cart around your palanquin or fight orcs for you in most cases is a pretty evil thing to do.

I can see a world being ok with the reanimation of animals or the like and still balking at humans being reanimated. I mean, how would you react if someone went into a grave yard and animated your grandfather's corpse to do non-evil activities such as dancing, or carrying around drinks?

With a resounding "meh"? (Well, okay, actually, I'd be pretty weirded out... but mostly that's because I've never seen an actual skeleton used to dance or carry out drinks.)

I mean, seriously - my grandfather's heart, lungs, liver, etc. aren't sacred, but his bones are?

The Catholic Church doesn't seem to think so (or at least haven't publicly decried their use in decoration).

But more than anything... what you describe is pretty directly a result of "the dead are icky" - we don't want to see grandfather's corpse, because it's "grandfather's" corpse, and we knew that guy, once, and he was pretty boss. Ew.

That's my point.

You bring up "cart around a palanquin" and "fight orcs" like they're equal. They're not.

One is a mild service of convenience that could be accomplished in many different ways instead.

The other is a potentially life-saving measure.

What's more, it's all falling under the presumption that the living didn't give their permission while they were alive.

If grandfather signed up for the "militia-after-death" arrangement (you know, the local optional law where your bones can be animated to fight to defend the village from wild predators and hordes of cruel marauders) while he was alive, why would I reject his last desires? My own selfish desire to see him "rest"? (Which, incidentally, "he" insomuch as anything was "him", would be "resting" by default.)


Kobold Cleaver wrote:
Scythia wrote:

This talk of necromancers trurning loose animated undead after using them for a simple chore makes me think of one of those emotional scenes where a person releases an animal that they were taking care of back into the wild.

"Go Skeleton, be free and live... er unlive out there in the beautiful world. Return to nature, which is not where you came from, and be what have always been... since I used magic to make you that way."

Go! *Sob* Before I change my mind!

SPOILER, ALERT, DUDE!

(For Gravity Falls. If you've seen it, you're a'ight, but if not... WATCH THAT SERIES! :D)

Silver Crusade

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Tacticslion wrote:

EDIT: for sick, slick kobold ninjas. :)

Spook205 wrote:

I'd argue the 'necromancy is evil' thing doesn't arise as much from 'the dead are icky' as it does from the fact its intrinsically desecration of a corpse.

Now, one could make a utilitarian argument that its 'unused' but the idea of using a human being's body to do stuff like cart around your palanquin or fight orcs for you in most cases is a pretty evil thing to do.

I can see a world being ok with the reanimation of animals or the like and still balking at humans being reanimated. I mean, how would you react if someone went into a grave yard and animated your grandfather's corpse to do non-evil activities such as dancing, or carrying around drinks?

With a resounding "meh"? (Well, okay, actually, I'd be pretty weirded out... but mostly that's because I've never seen an actual skeleton used to dance or carry out drinks.)

I mean, seriously - my grandfather's heart, lungs, liver, etc. aren't sacred, but his bones are?

The Catholic Church doesn't seem to think so (or at least haven't publicly decried their use in decoration).

But more than anything... what you describe is pretty directly a result of "the dead are icky" - we don't want to see grandfather's corpse, because it's "grandfather's" corpse, and we knew that guy, once, and he was pretty boss. Ew.

That's my point.

You bring up "cart around a palanquin" and "fight orcs" like they're equal. They're not.

One is a mild service of convenience that could be accomplished in many different ways instead.

The other is a potentially life-saving measure.

What's more, it's all falling under the presumption that the living didn't give their permission while they were alive.

If grandfather signed up for the "militia-after-death" arrangement (you know, the local optional law where your bones can be animated to fight to defend the village from wild predators and hordes of cruel marauders)...

Ah, that's a good point. I forgot about the memento mori style displays. But I'd argue those aren't 'desecrating' the corpse. Its the difference of say a saint's body being kept on display versus decorating your lawn with the impaled.

Still, there's a world of difference between a respectful and disrespectful usage. Which would lean towards the spells themselves being neutralish, at least for the non-sentient undead. Although why you'd animate them as skeletons instead of medium sized animated objects, is also sketchy.

Diminishing defenders of a city wish to protect their people even in death and have themselves raised as unliving protectors? Not bad.

Adventuring PC who needs grunt troops and decides to go shopping at nearby mausoleums? Pretty damn bad.

I've got a PC cleric in one of my campaigns who animates only people who try to kill him and views it as him having his opponents work out their penance to his god. I wouldn't say thats evil, but I'd also not be in a rush to say that's perfectly acceptable behavior.


Spook205 wrote:

Ah, that's a good point. I forgot about the memento mori style displays. But I'd argue those aren't 'desecrating' the corpse. Its the difference of say a saint's body being kept on display versus decorating your lawn with the impaled.

Still, there's a world of difference between a respectful and disrespectful usage. Which would lean towards the spells themselves being neutralish, at least for the non-sentient undead. Although why you'd animate them as skeletons instead of medium sized animated objects, is also sketchy.

Diminishing defenders of a city wish to protect their people even in death and have themselves raised as unliving protectors? Not bad.

Adventuring PC who needs grunt troops and decides to go shopping at nearby mausoleums? Pretty damn bad.

I've got a PC cleric in one of my campaigns who animates only people who try to kill him and views it as him having his opponents work out their penance to his god. I wouldn't say thats evil, but I'd also not be in a rush to say that's perfectly acceptable behavior.

Fair enough - but that's kind of my point... the "evil" they embody... feels a bit "off", as well as needless from either design or game perspective. It can work in specific settings, but in generic core it just seems needless.

Neutral, I could definitely see.

Evil? Meh. Depends on how you use/acquire such things.

(Of course, with that said, worshipers of Abadar who would donate their corpses so that necromancers could legally purchase subjects by paying fees to the god of banking, wealth, and trade... LN ftw?) ;D


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Krensky wrote:
Come on folks, even the dead get bored and like a nice chat now and then.

Mom told me to go out and make new friends.


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Good point, thanks for the clarification. Also don't leave zombie grandfather alone and unattended.


The question of it being evil or not is going to be dictated by the society that it's portrayed in. The society of Golarion, outside of a few outliers, considers it to be morally wrong, or evil. So regardless of the individual using the magic, as a general thought it's going to be seen as evil.

If a person wants to play a necromancer who raises undead, let them. And let them deal with the repercussions of their choice. In the beginning, for sure, they'll be seen as evil, and so will the people that are seen with them. Which means the party that teams with the necromancer is going to get tagged with the stigma too. They can spend time trying to dissuade the opinion, but you're talking about centuries of ingrained social stigma against necromancy so it will take a LOT of convincing.

While the necromancer might say the body was just a shell, etc. Try convincing a townsfolk that when they see their spouse, child, lover's body come shambling back into town, enslaved to the necromancer's will. Empty shell or not people are going to view it in a dim light.

In response to the OP's question, which stems from his frustration in not getting selected for AP's that take place in Golarion; No, necromancy is not in and of itself evil. However, the general perception of it in Golarion is that it is evil, which means that that character would have to spend a great deal of time and effort overcoming that perception. Perception is reality, as the saying goes.

Another thing to consider is that playing a character like this is going to mean a lot of work for the GM in setting up reactions etc. Suddenly who the 5th corpse from the left is, matters. In an environment where you are looking for 4-6 people, and you get 20 or so applicants, the person that poses extra work and a headache in trying to "justify" necromancy, is likely to get left out.


Kelarith wrote:

The question of it being evil or not is going to be dictated by the society that it's portrayed in. The society of Golarion, outside of a few outliers, considers it to be morally wrong, or evil. So regardless of the individual using the magic, as a general thought it's going to be seen as evil.

If a person wants to play a necromancer who raises undead, let them. And let them deal with the repercussions of their choice. In the beginning, for sure, they'll be seen as evil, and so will the people that are seen with them. Which means the party that teams with the necromancer is going to get tagged with the stigma too. They can spend time trying to dissuade the opinion, but you're talking about centuries of ingrained social stigma against necromancy so it will take a LOT of convincing.

While the necromancer might say the body was just a shell, etc. Try convincing a townsfolk that when they see their spouse, child, lover's body come shambling back into town, enslaved to the necromancer's will. Empty shell or not people are going to view it in a dim light.

In response to the OP's question, which stems from his frustration in not getting selected for AP's that take place in Golarion; No, necromancy is not in and of itself evil. However, the general perception of it in Golarion is that it is evil, which means that that character would have to spend a great deal of time and effort overcoming that perception. Perception is reality, as the saying goes.

Another thing to consider is that playing a character like this is going to mean a lot of work for the GM in setting up reactions etc. Suddenly who the 5th corpse from the left is, matters. In an environment where you are looking for 4-6 people, and you get 20 or so applicants, the person that poses extra work and a headache in trying to "justify" necromancy, is likely to get left out.

Does the general perception (in the local culture? Or across a whole setting?) determine how alignment magic reacts?

Silver Crusade

thejeff wrote:
Kelarith wrote:

The question of it being evil or not is going to be dictated by the society that it's portrayed in. The society of Golarion, outside of a few outliers, considers it to be morally wrong, or evil. So regardless of the individual using the magic, as a general thought it's going to be seen as evil.

If a person wants to play a necromancer who raises undead, let them. And let them deal with the repercussions of their choice. In the beginning, for sure, they'll be seen as evil, and so will the people that are seen with them. Which means the party that teams with the necromancer is going to get tagged with the stigma too. They can spend time trying to dissuade the opinion, but you're talking about centuries of ingrained social stigma against necromancy so it will take a LOT of convincing.

While the necromancer might say the body was just a shell, etc. Try convincing a townsfolk that when they see their spouse, child, lover's body come shambling back into town, enslaved to the necromancer's will. Empty shell or not people are going to view it in a dim light.

In response to the OP's question, which stems from his frustration in not getting selected for AP's that take place in Golarion; No, necromancy is not in and of itself evil. However, the general perception of it in Golarion is that it is evil, which means that that character would have to spend a great deal of time and effort overcoming that perception. Perception is reality, as the saying goes.

Another thing to consider is that playing a character like this is going to mean a lot of work for the GM in setting up reactions etc. Suddenly who the 5th corpse from the left is, matters. In an environment where you are looking for 4-6 people, and you get 20 or so applicants, the person that poses extra work and a headache in trying to "justify" necromancy, is likely to get left out.

Does the general perception (in the local culture? Or across a whole setting?) determine how alignment magic reacts?

Not in Pathfinder. Ostensibly we're dealing with objective polestars here.

As the DM is the final arbiter though it might come down to where he thinks those objective polestars fall.

Grand Lodge

doting to read calmly later

Scarab Sages

I would expect the response to necromancy to be dictated by the culture/region in which the game is taking place. In Golarion it may be generally frowned on everywhere, but if you're playing in the Eberron setting and you go to Aerenal the response may be different.

I also think that practicing necromancy doesn't have to include raising the dead or revivifying corpses to use them as cannon fodder. A necromancer could be a wizard who specializes in knowing about undead and how to combat them, but not actively practice creating such things himself.

But if a player wants to play a necromancer who has undead servants, and wants to do so in a game setting where that is considered evil and abhorrent by the general populace, the player should be prepared to deal with some unfriendly reactions from NPCs.


wraithstrike wrote:
Alynthar42 wrote:
Is it possible to play a good character who practices necromancy, or is the act of raising the dead evil in and of itself? I would argue that no magic is evil unless the casting of the spell required an inherently evil act, such as murder of an innocent.
Not all necromancers raise dead. Some just focus on negative energy based spells, but if you are raising dead, many GM's will consider it to be evil. In Golarion it is definitely evil.

Animate dead! Raise dead doesn't normally create zombies.


Speak with dead doesn't have the evil descriptor.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Kelarith wrote:

The question of it being evil or not is going to be dictated by the society that it's portrayed in. The society of Golarion, outside of a few outliers, considers it to be morally wrong, or evil. So regardless of the individual using the magic, as a general thought it's going to be seen as evil.

Be a bit more specific. If you're talking about Necromany as in using the spell False Life, then there is no onus. If you're talking about the more popular topic of creating Undead, then in the Golarion setting it's not just "considered" evil. It IS evil, because it results in the creation of an evil entity.


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Hey, skeletons dancing a jig sounds a lot like Dia Los Muertos, one of the more fun Autumn Holidays (Aren't they all though?)!


The RAW of animate dead is that they can be told to attack or follow the necromancer around. If the GM says so, you can give them simple commands like dig a hole or build a brick wall. Then it's not so evil depending on how it's used.


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Dire Elf wrote:

I would expect the response to necromancy to be dictated by the culture/region in which the game is taking place. In Golarion it may be generally frowned on everywhere, but if you're playing in the Eberron setting and you go to Aerenal the response may be different.

I also think that practicing necromancy doesn't have to include raising the dead or revivifying corpses to use them as cannon fodder. A necromancer could be a wizard who specializes in knowing about undead and how to combat them, but not actively practice creating such things himself.

But if a player wants to play a necromancer who has undead servants, and wants to do so in a game setting where that is considered evil and abhorrent by the general populace, the player should be prepared to deal with some unfriendly reactions from NPCs.

The concept of alignment in the game is objective, not subjective. This is why different nations have different alignments.

In Golarion, Cheliax is Lawful Evil. They don't consider the things they do to be bad, they consider keeping slaves and murdering your enemies to be normal and acceptable practices. Similar thing with most drow societies in most settings, they do things that others consider Evil, but for them it's normal, that doesn't mean it becomes Good for them.

The real question you have to answer is where does Necromancy fall within the cosmos. Where does it draw energy from? What does it do to the soul of the animated person? How does it interact with the afterlife?

It's really just determining where it falls in the cosmological side of your game. Does intent matter? Does it matter more than the means?

The alignment spectrum is immutable. Where things fall on that spectrum and why is up for debate, but the subjective viewpoint of the individual is irrelevant to the spectrum as a whole (within the game that is, the viewpoint of the GM and players does matter).


Goth Guru wrote:
The RAW of animate dead is that they can be told to attack or follow the necromancer around. If the GM says so, you can give them simple commands like dig a hole or build a brick wall. Then it's not so evil depending on how it's used.

This gets into intent vs method.

If I cook a stew to feed the homeless that's probably Good.
If I cook a stew out of orphans to the feed that homeless, that's probably Evil.

Lets move that to the arena of spellcasting...

If I cast Create Food and Water to feed the homeless, that's probably Good.
If Create Food and Water were to be changed to [Evil] and require the sacrifice of a newborn child forcefully taken from it's mother, even though I'm doing it to feed the homeless, it's probably still Evil.

There's ways to determine where Animate Dead falls on that spectrum. You can remove the [Evil] descriptor and make it a neutral tool who's alignment value becomes dependent on it's intent.

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