well its true, dead humanoids just lying around are such a waste of perfectly good resources. cemetery take up perfectly good fertile land and for what !
Just a little idea I'm currently working on for playing a necromancer who is a nice guy and just wants to create a better society, one where the living and the dead live in harmony. The anitmated dead will help build the city and the future.
Its like being an organ donor except we don't waste anything !
Just wondering if anyone else has had some fun character ideas for classes/race that are by default considered evil.
So the undead build the city, repair the streets and do the plumbing?
Without payment, or the need for food and shelter? Well, soon all the unemployed and starving peasants should start uniting and revolting against unfair work conditions. Upheaval and war should follow soon.
It's like a zombie apocalypse in reverse...
So the undead build the city, repair the streets and do the plumbing?
Without payment, or the need for food and shelter? Well, soon all the unemployed and starving peasants should start uniting and revolting against unfair work conditions. Upheaval and war should follow soon.
It's like a zombie apocalypse in reverse...
Or you could have a socialist necromancer at the top that's doing this and giving the peasants and working classes free food and shelter and whatnot built by the undead, and thus have a society where any sort of physical labor is unnecessary for the living and they're free to concentrate on arts and culture and the like...
Ah, that sounds like a utopian society as proposed in Star Trek.
But instead of transporters you have zombies carrying you around.
Or you could have a socialist necromancer at the top that's doing this and giving the peasants and working classes free food and shelter and whatnot built by the undead, and thus have a society where any sort of physical labor is unnecessary for the living and they're free to concentrate on arts and culture and the like...So the undead build the city, repair the streets and do the plumbing?
Without payment, or the need for food and shelter? Well, soon all the unemployed and starving peasants should start uniting and revolting against unfair work conditions. Upheaval and war should follow soon.
It's like a zombie apocalypse in reverse...
Lacking motivation, the people would rapidly fall into decadence and enui.
Just wondering if anyone else has had some fun character ideas for classes/race that are by default considered evil.
How about a drow warrior who's not evil but just a misunderst... oh wait.
|
Oh joy! Now you people want to make us slaves, building your cities, growing your food, and carrying you around! Geez! Will the trials and tribulations of the heart-beat challenged never end?
Plus, do you really wnat a zombie preparing your food? Things have a habit of falling off.
hehehe colorful
but I was thinking more of just doing the menial jobs.
working in the mines
cleaning the streets
moving industrial material around
you still need the crafters to actually put stuff together as zombies and skeletons aren't exactly a skilled workforce
but you wouldn't need any "labourers" your entire living population would be a skilled workforce, and labour would be handled by the undead.
on the plus side your entire labor force doubles as an instant army in a pinch ;) heh just try to siege our city with undead on every corner ;)
once they been wiped out your real army can lay waste to the poor remnants of your attackers.
then you just makes skeletons and zombies out of the army who attacked you ;) rinse and repeat
btw this is for Kingmaker :)
Oh joy! Now you people want to make us slaves, building your cities, growing your food, and carrying you around! Geez! Will the trials and tribulations of the heart-beat challenged never end?
** spoiler omitted **
we'll be quick to crackdown on any zombie pro rights groups .... probably just kill them and turn them into zombies :)
no wait thats evil.
kindly suggest they kill themselves (we'll raise them as zombies) to better appreciate those they seek to improve the lives of :)
unhappy with your life , why not end it ? we'll put you to good use for the good of your family while your soul can move on to move interesting planes.
|
The issue with this is that your working with inherently evil negative energy. You are bringing the rotting dead back to life to work as slaves. Most GN's would rule that kind of thing corrupts your character... I just don't see a 'Good' character doing this stuff- even with the best intentions.
Would work great for an evil character who 'thinks' he is being good.
inherently evil negative energy
Aaaarghh!! Not again, pleease?
Aaaarghh!! Not again, pleease?
Did we have that before?
more evil than ripping a living creature from this or some other plain out of thin air and sending it to its doom as cannon fodder to some larger more unpleasant creature ala any of the summon spells ?
least I summon whats already dead, your summoning living creatures and sending him off to be slaughtered by all manner of creature, that gotta be more evil ;)
Just a hundred page thread on the inherent evil of negative energy.
hopefully no-one will necro it. (no pun intended)
more evil than ripping a living creature from this or some other plain out of thin air and sending it to its doom as cannon fodder to some larger more unpleasant creature ala any of the summon spells ?
least I summon whats already dead, your summoning living creatures and sending him off to be slaughtered by all manner of creature, that gotta be more evil ;)
Ah, I see where this is going.
inherently evil negative energy.
Well, actually this thread is supposed to be about things considered evil used for a good cause, so using zombies to pave the streets seems perfectly ok to me.
All ethical issues aside (since they've been debated ad nauseum in other threads), there are practical considerations.
Unless you have a virtually army of subordinate necromancers, you are quickly going to overextend your ability to control the undead created. Further, if you lick that problem, you have a large force of 'citizens' roaming your lands who can be made to turn coat by any necromancer (or evil cleric with a feat)...and unless you have charismatic subordinates, the undead will be easy pickings.
|
I could see a great tragedy coming from this idea. It is a tale of the slow spiral into madness and evil blossoming from good intentions:
* Good wizard with the best of intentions creates undead minions from condemned criminals to help his town/village.
* Things go great for a while. The street are clean, the farms tended and crime is down (deterrant of being an undead slave).
* The rate of convictions mysteriously goes up as villagers begin to find excuses to eliminate inconvenient neighbours. Eventually, even minor crimes become punishable by undeath.
* The necromancer begins tinkering with making his creations intelligent; again with the good intention that intelligent undead can be more helpful. The intelligent undead are evil, and their influence further taints the necromancer and villagers (feed us, Seymour).
* Very soon, the number of undead outnumber the living and the "natural" populace become the slaves/fodder for the evil (and mad, possibly undead himself now) wizard lord and his army of undead.
* A nice, orderly undead society and lots of damned souls. Asmodeus laughs cruelly and turns off the TV.
more evil than ripping a living creature from this or some other plain out of thin air and sending it to its doom as cannon fodder to some larger more unpleasant creature ala any of the summon spells ?
least I summon whats already dead, your summoning living creatures and sending him off to be slaughtered by all manner of creature, that gotta be more evil ;)
I asked about this a while back, but I found out with a Summon Spell the creature cant really die. It gets sent back to its home plane. The Planer Ally spells actually bring the creature here and it could die. Which is why there is a price and whatnot. So Summon angels and send them to their death to your hearts content with the summon spells, its ok.
In Kingmaker, given the setting, I think this may prove difficult, frankly, I only think this works in a society that has no social taboos toward the dead, and in which it is generally accepted that corpses have no sentimental value and are just so much rotting meat and bone.
Otherwise, regardless of whether the necromancer is well-meaning, or good, or honorable, people are going to be really creeped out by the living dead shambling around freely, and will assume the necromancer is evil. I can see mobs with pitchforks forming pretty quickly in response. Not good for your kingdom's Loyalty score.
And of course that doesn't even touch the reaction of the unions to this unfair competition for unskilled laborers. Imagine the reaction of all the poor ditchdiggers who would be thrown out of work! It could cause a recession! Social upheaval! Revolution, even! :)
There has to be a reason that Geb is the only nation that I am aware of that considers undead part of the populace. Most likely for many of the reasons cited above (controlling them, escalation of more powerful undead, social stigma, etc.). Tread carefully here.
Regarding Phasics' original question: how about an assassin who kills in the name of the government and is 100 percent convinced he does the right and good and of course lawful thing, because he only kills evil guys who threaten the peace?
Sort of like the Operative in Serenity.
|
|
The main issue I would see is you're taking an entire class of peasants who are good at dirty, menial jobs and taking away their work and giving them insentive to not find a new job.
You're still feeding/transporting/cleaning up after them, but they don't have to do anything to receive these social benefits. Since they are peasants, you'll see some of them send themselves or their children to schools, but the majority will probably just sit back and let the zombies do the work, leaving a lazy populous waiting to be attacked by Good-diety inspired champions to "liberate" them of their tainted ways (and land).
|
|
Regarding Phasics' original question: how about an assassin who kills in the name of the government and is 100 percent convinced he does the right and good and of course lawful thing, because he only kills evil guys who threaten the peace?
Sort of like the Operative in Serenity.
He follows the laws of the kingdom?
He only kills evil people?How exactly is this not LG?
That's LE in my book.
Right, because he knew it. But what about, for example, the crusaders, having done exactly the same but didn't know and/or admit that their actions were evil?
He follows the laws of the kingdom?
He only kills evil people?How exactly is this not LG?
So here we have the Paladin. Only with Assassin abilities.
sparkly vampires that don't feed on humans, their good vampires you see, they don't feed on criminals just defenseless puppies and innocent little bambi's (never really understood that one Ms. Meyer hehehe)
Regarding Phasics' original question: how about an assassin who kills in the name of the government and is 100 percent convinced he does the right and good and of course lawful thing, because he only kills evil guys who threaten the peace?
Sort of like the Operative in Serenity.He follows the laws of the kingdom?
He only kills evil people?How exactly is this not LG?
Killing in the name of the government and following the laws of the kingdom are not the same thing. Governments sometimes don't follow their own laws, and sometimes operatives of the government exceeed their authority even while thinking they are acting in the name of the government. I get the impression the operative in Serenity was pretty much a free agent who did much of what he did without explicit orders, probably for plausible deniability.
You should look at the Scarred Lands from Sword and Sorcery 3.0 the city was Called Hallowfaust the City of Necromancers
Ya know scarredlands had a whole city state like that called hallowfast. The city was run by nercomancers and undead patrolled the streets, worked the fields and so on.
Most folks will see it as evil, but to some they see it as a recourse to be used.
EDIT: Aww Damn you ninja joe, damn you all to hell ! :)
well its true, dead humanoids just lying around are such a waste of perfectly good resources. cemetery take up perfectly good fertile land and for what !
I agree 100%. And yet when I tell people I'm a necrophiliac, they look at ME as if I'M weird!
|
I'm all for it. Screw all that "goodness" nonsense. It makes sense. Cheap, efficient labour.
If any peasant complains - instant promotions to zombie worker are just a stab and a spell away.
In fact, let's all cross the Border, except for those peasants, who will be re-branded (and actually branded) as cattle. Blood bags, the lot of them!
A proper civilisation strives on the exploitation of the lower masses, anyway. Who says they can stop serving their social betters just because they're dead. They're lucky we're not proposing to use their souls as a cheap power source.
Wait a minute...
A friend of mine back in college had a homebrew world that included a kingdom that functioned this way. The "lazy peasant" problem was dealt with by the fact that you had to earn the right to be reanimated as an intelligent undead when you died. Otherwise you became a part of the zombie workforce.
And in my own campaign, there's an upcoming NPC who also does the undead socialist state and makes it all work by keeping his kingdom very small, only about a hundred people at a time. At that size it's possible to simply know each person individually and keep everyone motivated by a sense of community.
Plus, do you really wnat a zombie preparing your food? Things have a habit of falling off.
When this happened in the past, it was the cause of a great deal of excitement, and if I may say so, general disgust. It was looked upon, furthermore, as an unwelcome and non-hygienic intrusion.
|
|
A friend of mine back in college had a homebrew world that included a kingdom that functioned this way. The "lazy peasant" problem was dealt with by the fact that you had to earn the right to be reanimated as an intelligent undead when you died. Otherwise you became a part of the zombie workforce.
And in my own campaign, there's an upcoming NPC who also does the undead socialist state and makes it all work by keeping his kingdom very small, only about a hundred people at a time. At that size it's possible to simply know each person individually and keep everyone motivated by a sense of community.
Sounds almost like a monastery. It would require a lot of discipline to keep human nature in check.
Holds up a new sign reading "ZOMBIES WERE PEOPLE TOO!"
"No,No your not nearly as tasty as people"
|
|
Killing in the name of the government and following the laws of the kingdom are not the same thing. Governments sometimes don't follow their own laws, and sometimes operatives of the government exceeed their authority even while thinking they are acting in the name of the government. I get the impression the operative in Serenity was pretty much a free agent who did much of what he did without explicit orders, probably for plausible deniability.Regarding Phasics' original question: how about an assassin who kills in the name of the government and is 100 percent convinced he does the right and good and of course lawful thing, because he only kills evil guys who threaten the peace?
Sort of like the Operative in Serenity.He follows the laws of the kingdom?
He only kills evil people?How exactly is this not LG?
But that wasn't the hypothetical he posited. In his example, he kills people on orders from his government (lawful) and all of the people he kills are evil (good). There is not plausible deniability in the scenario described by Cpt. Caboodle, just a LG assassin doing his job for the kingdom.
I removed a rather vulgar post.
But that wasn't the hypothetical he posited. In his example, he kills people on orders from his government (lawful) and all of the people he kills are evil (good). There is not plausible deniability in the scenario described by Cpt. Caboodle, just a LG assassin doing his job for the kingdom.Killing in the name of the government and following the laws of the kingdom are not the same thing. Governments sometimes don't follow their own laws, and sometimes operatives of the government exceeed their authority even while thinking they are acting in the name of the government. I get the impression the operative in Serenity was pretty much a free agent who did much of what he did without explicit orders, probably for plausible deniability.Regarding Phasics' original question: how about an assassin who kills in the name of the government and is 100 percent convinced he does the right and good and of course lawful thing, because he only kills evil guys who threaten the peace?
Sort of like the Operative in Serenity.He follows the laws of the kingdom?
He only kills evil people?How exactly is this not LG?
IMHO lawful good and assassin are pretty much mutually exclusive. If you live in a country whose laws permit extrajudicial killing of any class of people (even evil people) that country ain't exactly LG. Laws punish actions like crimes, not inherent qualities like good and/or evil. Those accused of a crime are, in a LG system, at least entitled to some sort of hearing by an impartial authority, rather than extrajudicial execution. It is certainly conceivable, in a fantasy setting, to envision a country in which government agents are given the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, but those countries, IMHO, would not be LG, nor would those agents be likely to be.
|
|
IMHO lawful good and assassin are pretty much mutually exclusive. If you live in a country whose laws permit extrajudicial killing of any class of people (even evil people) that country ain't exactly LG. Laws punish actions like crimes, not inherent qualities like good and/or evil. Those accused of a crime are, in a LG system, at least entitled to some sort of hearing by an impartial authority, rather than extrajudicial execution. It is certainly conceivable, in a fantasy setting, to envision a country in which government agents are given the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, but those countries, IMHO, would not be LG, nor would those agents be likely to be.But that wasn't the hypothetical he posited. In his example, he kills people on orders from his government (lawful) and all of the people he kills are evil (good). There is not plausible deniability in the scenario described by Cpt. Caboodle, just a LG assassin doing his job for the kingdom.Killing in the name of the government and following the laws of the kingdom are not the same thing. Governments sometimes don't follow their own laws, and sometimes operatives of the government exceeed their authority even while thinking they are acting in the name of the government. I get the impression the operative in Serenity was pretty much a free agent who did much of what he did without explicit orders, probably for plausible deniability.Regarding Phasics' original question: how about an assassin who kills in the name of the government and is 100 percent convinced he does the right and good and of course lawful thing, because he only kills evil guys who threaten the peace?
Sort of like the Operative in Serenity.He follows the laws of the kingdom?
He only kills evil people?How exactly is this not LG?
Good opposes evil. Killing evil wouldn't itself be evil, or you could not have any good PCs considering how they often go out with the intent of slaughtering sentient evil beings.
Good opposes evil. Killing evil wouldn't itself be evil, or...
Not automatically. Nor would it, in and of itself, be good. Evil critters and people kill each other all the time. Context is all important. Presumably those evil, sentient creatures have done something to justify good characters going after them, like raiding the village or ambushing hunters in the woods, etc. If not, then a good character should probably just leave them alone. I wouldn't think that good characters would just decide to go slaughter the goblins in the next valley who aren't bothering anybody just because they are, you know, evil.