Hi All,
This question was posed to me the other day, and while my default assumption is 'no, probably not', there are a lot of good deities and there could be one that's particularly pragmatic about it, even if they would never condone it.
Any thoughts?
well, Rysky ninja'ed me. The school of necromancy is mostly unaligned : it's good, evil or neither depending on who uses it and how, not by nature ... but the undead creation spells, on the other hand, are clearly labelled as evil ... so they are antithetic to the proponents of Good.
I think a cleric who worships a god that is not specifically anti-undead (Sarenrae, Pharasma, etc.), could probably take a pragmatic approach to another character animating undead and not feel the need to destroy the undead and/or it's creator if they are presently being used for the greater good.
However, all of the spells that are used to create undead have the evil descriptor. I don't think any god that is specifically good aligned is going to be happy with their clerics casting spells that are evil regardless what the spell does. In the same way a lawful deity wouldn't like for their clerics to be casting spells that are chaotic. It would be for this reason more than any other that the god would be unhappy.
As for necromancy the school? I don't see any reason that a good aligned god would have a problem with it. There are plenty of necromancy spells that lack the evil descriptor (eg. Gentle Repose, Oath of Justice).
For clarity, we'll say player A wants to play a character that creates undead and player B wants to play a cleric who worships a good deity. Neither player wants to cause the other grief, but both would like to explore these options for their character.
The objective in this case would be to determine if there is a good aligned deity that player B could choose that would allow both of these characters to exist in the same adventuring party.
well, there's going to be major bickering, if not complete incompatibility between the necromaster and the good cleric.
maybe it would work better if the cleric was good, but worshipped a neutral deity, such as Abadar or Gorum... those are more likely to be pragmatic about raising soldiers from the walking dead.
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In character, the player of the cleric could simply say that the chastise the necromancer on a regular basis and try to encourage them to stop, but continue to adventure with them because the adventure is too important.
But generally speaking, no good deity is going to be happy about necromancy. Some are more willing to be pragmatic about it and accept in out of necessity and deal with this issue after the greater problem is resolved.
But if you're looking for a good deity that's going to be supportive and happy about the necromancer, you're barking up the wrong tree.
(Assumption: OP meant "creating undead" instead of mere "necromancy".)
On Golarion? Not really, at least among the major pantheons. Goes along with the whole "creating undead is always BadWrongEvil" principle JJ set for the world.
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There's always the Egyptian pantheon. Osiris is LG in PF, and as a temporarily ressurected being, has planty of association with undeath (also, he later picked up a full association with the underwold). Think Pharasma without the personal bias.Actually he’s anti undead too. Extremely so since he offers the Repose Domain.
You see death not as something to be feared, but as a final rest and reward for a life well spent. The taint of undeath is a mockery of what you hold dear.
If you take the Souls Subdomain it even switches out animate undead with speak with dead.
As a death god, Osiris is tightly aligned with the likes of Pharasma and Anubis,
Osiris is a good of rebirth and resurrection, not undeath.
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It would be easier if you were willing to relax the default assumption that creating undead is always an evil act. It could still be very easy to do unethically due to any of a number of factors, if you don't want to treat undead casually in the campaign. For example, creating intelligent undead interferes with souls, and uncontrolled unintelligent undead attack nearby creatures, which makes keeping skeletons around rather reckless even if it weren't inherently evil.
If you are sticking with creating undead being inherently evil, my gut says Shelyn. She's redemptive, like Sarenrae, but more pacifistic about it. A follower of hers could very plausibly stick with trying to persuade the necromancer to stop creating undead, and making sure they're slipping into greater evil, rather than take aggressive action. The necromancer cound even take the time to turn their skeletons into works of art.
It would also help if the cleric has a reason to want the necromancer around, such as confronting a greater evil or a personal relationship (or both). Siblings seem particularly appropriate given Shelyn's relationship with Zon-Kuthon.
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Yeah, it helps if you're willing to ignore the basic descriptors. XD
It's not so much ignoring the descriptors as using a different interpretation of them.
Before Paizo clarified their intention, there was a lot of debate over whether casting an [evil] spell was an evil act, or whether it merely drew upon Evil powers that Good deities (thus clerics of Good deities) could not access. The best summary of the latter position is: ccasting a [fire] spell doesn't make you more "fire", it just means the spell manipulates fire. So why would casting an [evil] spell make you evil?
Post-clarification, I think it is a very reasonable house rule to use this more morally ambiguous definition of what the [evil] descriptor means.
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Well, THERE'S an unnerving first step down a dark road.As long as you aren't making intelligent undead, sure. Intelligent undead, probably not.
Mindless undead are just bone and meat. There is no soul or intelligence, so is just a little bit taboo.
Going down a dark road would be turning the undead into bombs and having them attack their living family members.
Which reminds me, are there any builds that utilize exploding skeletons? Maybe a necromancer alchemist build? I'm, uh, asking for a friend.
It'd be like if you're a doctor and have a friend that smokes.
It's annoying and you think it's unhealthy, but you can still work with and respect them.
I could see a Good aligned deity tolerating the raising of undead specifically for the purpose of training others to combat the various forms of undead and the research needed to do so more effectively. However, the bodies would need to be donated by volunteers willing to undergo such a process for the greater good, Clerics or Paladins involved in such a program should probably seek out an Atonement every so often, and an Arcane caster might want to use the raise undead spells only sparingly, probably rotating who had to raise what on a highly ordered schedule. So if you took great care in doing so and only did it to research and train against undead within very well monitored conditions, I think a Good aligned deity would tolerate such activities in that the goal is Good, if not exactly approve of the specific methods used.