My group will start RotR sometime soon, with me as the DM. One of the players has his mind set on playing an outcast necromancer (cleric) from the Shoanti-Skull tribe (yes, I know that they are undead HUNTERS, hence outcast). He plans to raise a small army of undead as his escort as soon as he has access to animate dead. His alignemt is somehing N though (CN I believe). He is/was quite ethusiastic about this concept.
I got the impression that necromancy i.e. the creating of unded is considered evil by most folks in Golarion (and the spells DO have the evil describtor). That would seriously hinder group-NPC interaction or create the situation where the necromancer would have to hide his creations much of the time. Adding to that, some of the more hideous foes in the campaign are necromancers themselves. I fear that much of their psychological effect would be gone (think ogrekin mum), if the party traveled with a pack of undead themselves. Last but not least I think the other players would have a hard time explaining why their mostly good aligned characters would travel with a "defiler of the dead".
Therefore I have disallowed this character choice. And now my bad conscience plagues me. Was my decision reasonable, what do you think?
It would be based on your view of Golarion, it is your game in the end. But I would tend to agree, Sandpoint tends to more your traditional sleepy town, and anyone getting spotted with an undead minion would get the locals gossiping, even if they recently thwarted the goblin threat.
It could be a really interesting game if you did allow it, the PC would have to be careful to not let his secret out to anyone bar the party, even if they'd accept it. (i.e. it'd have to be some very liberal Paladin to work with this guy)
It could be fun, as long as the player doesn't then lead into doing whatever he likes (killing NPCs and the like), cos that could break the AP later on.
imo, I think it was not only reasonable, but the right one.
I think the PCs in RotRL really need a strong connection with Sandpoint and its people. Because of this I think that the deck should be stacked in favor of this connection right from the get-go (ie character creation). Necromancer + outcast is just asking for a pain in the butt.
On the other side, if you, as the DM, don't mind doing a lot of extra work with PC motivations and NPC reactions, go for it :)
Best.
Thankfully the player has understood my reasons for disallowing his necromancer and will be playing a regular Shoanti-shaman now.
Thanks for your feedback.
Just remember, some townsfolk may not be pleased to see their dead grandma being used as cheap labor. Just a thought.
I've always pictured good aligned necromancers as people who bring back the dead to save the living. One of those spirits of your ancestors protecting you thing.
I had another player using a necromancer once, but he made sure to put facemasks on all the dead he summoned so they couldn't be recognized by their families.
I guess it just depends on the magical education of the populace, so in the case of Sandpoint, its probably not a good idea.