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the bigger issue is how the other players act
That the issue that this attempts to solve. Players are often more opposed to undead as allies than they are anything else. Even a summoner with an evil subtype eidolon is often treated with more respect than someone summoning/raising undead. Other players will go out of their way to threaten/restrict the actions of the necromancer player character, in ways rarely seen in other situations.
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the bigger issue is how the other players actThat the issue that this attempts to solve. Players are often more opposed to undead as allies than they are anything else. Even a summoner with an evil subtype eidolon is often treated with more respect than someone summoning/raising undead. Other players will go out of their way to threaten/restrict the actions of the necromancer player character, in ways rarely seen in other situations.
In my experience the players that act that way will do so regardless of roleplay or other elements, that is them as a person being a jerk. I just tend to ignore them.
The ones who are playing a charcater that is a Cleric of Pharasma or a Paladin with Oath Against Undeath that are not actually jerks as human beings tend to want to have a good roleplaying experience instead. I find these scenarios very rewarding, like the time I saved a Paladins life by sacrificing my undead minions to a Dire Bear so the Paladin could get back into formation without being eaten. He had fun making his character start to question his faith and my necromancer was whispering sweet nothings of corruption to him.
ive only seen a few players that play a necromancer that dont they themsleves cause issues
they should just ban necromancers in general
Play a Hallowed Necromancer. You don't have to be a corpse-obsessed control freak just because everyone thinks you should! Beat those stereotypes!
Venture-Agent, Netherlands—Utrecht
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My Necroccultist has adventured with Lawful and/or Good Clerics and even a Paladin or two, and they didn't really have a problem with it. Part of it was that they understood I wanted to play my character without them interfering, but part of it I think was also that I explained how I'm more "borrowing" the skeletons, rather than dominating them, sort of like a Summoner. First impressions do matter, and if I say I have a contract with the undead, it makes it a lot more agreeable than if I'm wringing my hands in the corner of the room while a skeleton is feeding me grapes.
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they should just ban necromancers in general
Oh cool, we're banning stuff? Let me get my list of problem stuff:
- Paladins
- Summoners
- Slumber Hex
- Mental Stat Boost Items
- Factions
- 4 Player Adjustment
- Non-Core Races
- Boons
- Calistrians
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Oh cool, we're banning stuff? Let me get my list of problem stuff:
Give me time and I'm sure I can come up with more.
- Paladins
- Summoners
- Slumber Hex
- Mental Stat Boost Items
- Factions
- 4 Player Adjustment
- Non-Core Races
- Boons
- Calistrians
For my next character, I'm going to blow a race boon on a Calistrian Summoner. Just for you <3
Also, Paladins make the game fun. I like the "awkward roommate" situations that crop up when I play my Devil Summoner, my freakshow Alchemist, or my eccentric Necromancer. Hell, I have a demon riding Summoner who gets along famously with a local Oradin.
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Oh cool, we're banning stuff? Let me get my list of problem stuff:
Give me time and I'm sure I can come up with more.
- Paladins
- Summoners
- Slumber Hex
- Mental Stat Boost Items
- Factions
- 4 Player Adjustment
- Non-Core Races
- Boons
- Calistrians
For my next character, I'm going to blow a race boon on a Calistrian Summoner. Just for you <3
Also, Paladins make the game fun. I like the "awkward roommate" situations that crop up when I play my Devil Summoner, my freakshow Alchemist, or my eccentric Necromancer. Hell, I have a demon riding Summoner who gets along famously with a local Oradin.
Don't forget to level dip into Paladin and Witch.
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they should just ban necromancers in generalBan paladins, they have far more class features restricting who they can play with.
Necromancers come with none of that unfortunate baggage
Personally, I think if played right, the PFS Paladin should have more cause to attempt to get along with the necromancer, than the necromancer should have cause to enjoy having the paladin. Lawful Good, so orders from the Pathfinder Society to get along, and cooperate, should be followed with pride and in earnest. Plus, the paladin is probably going to try to convert the necromancer towards the path of good, at some point, so being a jerk isn't a good plan to promote Goodness as appealling path for that necromancer. That necromancer probably finds this annoying, but Paladins make for trustworthy shield, so even a necromancer will tollerate a paladin in their party.
Regarding the Tabards, the one challenge with undead is that they all kinda look like undead. If you put the tabards on the friendly ones, it would be easier to role play a Paladin that could discern "good" undead from the bad ones. As for paying for the tabards, seems like a small cost in the name of pathfinder cooperation. And you could certainly reuse them. For the Zombie T-rex, I'm sure you could find a way to mark it. If you are summoning the undead (instead of raising/animating them), you could just tell the GM that your summoned undead have those tabards since the only in-game value is in cooperation, I think the GM wouldn't mind - main thing is to put the Tabards on the Miniatures for your undead.
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There's a challenge for you: Come up with a valid RP explanation for a paladin/necromancer multi-class that doesn't violate your pally code. Don't worry if it's mechanically effective for now.
Hint: The answer is a LOT easier than many people realize.
Honestly, I think that's going to be a pretty hard row to hoe, animate dead is an explicitly evil spell and commanding undead via feat requires channeling negative energy. The command undead spell would be fine except it is an arcane spell.
Conceptually, I have a necromancer character in a home game that might work. He is a social climbing arcanist who is explicitly not a stereotypical death-obsessed Urgathoan; he is just... extremely practical. He will not create humanoid undead or intelligent undead; intelligent undead are far too unreliable and humanoid undead is both rather weak and extremely controversial. Monstrous humanoids and animals make great bloody skeletons, however.
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There's a challenge for you: Come up with a valid RP explanation for a paladin/necromancer multi-class that doesn't violate your pally code. Don't worry if it's mechanically effective for now.
Hint: The answer is a LOT easier than many people realize.
You'd avoid [evil] spells. : even in PFS paladins can't do that.
But people go into necromancy for the cool undead minion. Not the debuffing.
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There's a challenge for you: Come up with a valid RP explanation for a paladin/necromancer multi-class that doesn't violate your pally code. Don't worry if it's mechanically effective for now.
Hint: The answer is a LOT easier than many people realize.
You'd avoid [evil] spells. : even in PFS paladins can't do that.
But people go into necromancy for the cool undead minion. Not the debuffing.
Correct. Since when most people hear Necromancer they think undead minion raiser and not Necromancy Specialist. I have the starts of a GM baby Dhampir Cruoromancer that is going for very high save DCs on the spells like Blindness and Boneshatter.
My other Necromancer is very much master of undead horde style. I find creating your undead army is better suited for APs though.
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Within the bounds of the literal challenge, the obvious solution is to make a holy necromancer who doesn't create undead, but rather destroys them. But I'm not sure that's what was intended.
That's exactly what I meant. Not all necromancy has to do with creating and controlling undead. A paladin with levels in wizard with the necromancy specialization would be a paladin/necromancer. They could use necromancy for stuff like Cause Fear and False Life, without dealing with undead at all. Nothing un-paladinish about those spells.
But people go into necromancy for the cool undead minion. Not the debuffing.
I beg to differ. My only PC with Spell Focus: Necromancy doesn't do anything with undead. He's a negative channeling "bad touch" cleric, so he can spontaneously cast the inflict spells, which are Necromancy. He also uses Blindness/Deafness, Bestow Curse, and other necromancy debuffs.
Actually, undead are something of a weakness for him, because he doesn't really have anything that he can use against them. That's when he pulls out the wands of Bless and Cure Light Wounds, and hopes the rest of the party is better against undead than he is.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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There's a challenge for you: Come up with a valid RP explanation for a paladin/necromancer multi-class that doesn't violate your pally code. Don't worry if it's mechanically effective for now.
Hint: The answer is a LOT easier than many people realize.
You'd avoid [evil] spells. : even in PFS paladins can't do that.
But people go into necromancy for the cool undead minion. Not the debuffing.
Technically speaking my Shadow Oracle is capable of casting an evil spell and multiclassing into Paladin. Its a quirk of the revelation but still you don't even have to avoid the whole not being able to cast an evil spell.
EditAlso phantoms are close enough though the best synergy with Paladins are the JoJo phantoms.
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There's a challenge for you: Come up with a valid RP explanation for a paladin/necromancer multi-class that doesn't violate your pally code. Don't worry if it's mechanically effective for now.
Hint: The answer is a LOT easier than many people realize.
You'd avoid [evil] spells. : even in PFS paladins can't do that.
But people go into necromancy for the cool undead minion. Not the debuffing.
Technically speaking my Shadow Oracle is capable of casting an evil spell and multiclassing into Paladin. Its a quirk of the revelation but still you don't even have to avoid the whole not being able to cast an evil spell.
Edit
Also phantoms are close enough though the best synergy with Paladins are the JoJo phantoms.
That is one serious edge case, though.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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That is one serious edge case, though.There's a challenge for you: Come up with a valid RP explanation for a paladin/necromancer multi-class that doesn't violate your pally code. Don't worry if it's mechanically effective for now.
Hint: The answer is a LOT easier than many people realize.
You'd avoid [evil] spells. : even in PFS paladins can't do that.
But people go into necromancy for the cool undead minion. Not the debuffing.
Technically speaking my Shadow Oracle is capable of casting an evil spell and multiclassing into Paladin. Its a quirk of the revelation but still you don't even have to avoid the whole not being able to cast an evil spell.
Edit
Also phantoms are close enough though the best synergy with Paladins are the JoJo phantoms.
You can also be a partial Lich paladin which is a pretty hilarious combination for a multiclass.
Edit:Also a vampire Paladin.
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A fun bit of role-play I have used with my necromancer - it relies on either some buy-in from the Paladin or Pharasmin (Playing a bit naive, or abiding by the results of a bluff-vs-sense motive roll): I lie my Osirion Necromancing A@@ off.
"No, the arts of necromancy have advanced so far in Osirion that I am not using an evil spirit to animate this corpse. It is more of a construct than an undead. Not inherently evil." IF they buy it (If the player agrees to buy it...) I have fun keeping the zombie out of line of sight whenever the paladin casts detect evil for the rest of the scenario.
At a table of reasonable players, there is usually a way for everyone to have fun.
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Why did your character buy 5 wayfinders and 5 forged field commissions?
*suggestion* "it would be much safer if you joined us before the barbarian's next turn...*
Mook 1 *drools* "it would be much safer if I joined you before the barbarians next turn"
Mook 2 "hey, I know i'm not enchanted but can i sign up too?"
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I still wanna see a Dhampir Paladin and see how much he loathes being a Paladin and having access to Lay on Hands.
I play a dhampir paladin of Shelyn in an AP. He started out not knowing he's a dhampir (his family line just has a long legacy of individuals who do not heal very well - they were, in fact, all dhampirs with Life-Dominant Soul) and found it out after a couple of adventures.
He enjoys having Lay on Hands but it is sometimes both painful and hilarious how he can use LoH to heal fewer HP than he has dice in his LoH.
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I have the starts of a GM baby Dhampir Cruoromancer that is going for very high save DCs on the spells like Blindness and Boneshatter.I love applying the Cruoromancer's Sickening Infusion to Boneshatter.
Be sure to print out the page for Boneshatter. IME most GMs have book checked me on it.
I use Boneshatter on my human Necromancer, and yeah I have had a number of GMs ask about it.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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Rather than expect players to square the circle of not being allowed to be evil but having to tolerate actions performed by fellow players that the game says are evil, anything with the [evil] descriptor should be banned or they should be priced to reflect that the descriptor doesn't represent a restriction.
Its a bit more complicated than that as it more has to do with the church of Pharasma being a bit overzealous and kind of obnoxious in fluff. They barely tolerate the non-evil ways to interact with undead*.
*The real life use of that term and not the Golarion use in which their is a dichotomy.
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It's not "more complicated".
If you're sitting down to a PFS table as a player, you have to acknowledge that your PC is choosing to be a "Pathfinder first", and a "everything else second".
Pathfinders cooperate. They know that a party may be composed of 1) a Pacificst, 2) a Warlord of Gorum, 3) a Fire Elementalist, 4) a Water Elementalist, 5) a Paladin, and 6) a Necromancer.
And they're going to make it work.
Have fun with your roleplay, but *nobody's* RP gets to trump anyone else's.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Massachusetts—Boston Metro
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It's not "more complicated".
If you're sitting down to a PFS table as a player, you have to acknowledge that your PC is choosing to be a "Pathfinder first", and a "everything else second".
Pathfinders cooperate. They know that a party may be composed of 1) a Pacificst, 2) a Warlord of Gorum, 3) a Fire Elementalist, 4) a Water Elementalist, 5) a Paladin, and 6) a Necromancer.
And they're going to make it work.
Have fun with your roleplay, but *nobody's* RP gets to trump anyone else's.
Im just responding to the weird concept that the evil descriptor is somehow a balancing concept more than it is an in fluff description. In fluff it really has nothing to do with evil which makes the whole role playing excuse kind of obnoxious.
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Your first example doesn't really work. You don't raise someone as a vampire. Vampires form exclusively from vampirism as far as I can tell. I certainly can't find any necromancy spells that let you create a vampire.
I won't debate the blood drinking thing. I certainly think ritualistically drinking blood in order to gain power is evil, but I suppose that's subjective.
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Yeah! Spells that involve tearing off parts of people's souls and stuffing them in bodies to serve your will (create undead) or drinking someone's blood in order to learn their spells (blood transcription) aren't evil in the least!
No more so then the spells that burn victims to death, spells that jerk the victim's skeleton around in their body, spells that enslaves free willed planar creatures to die for you, or spells that strip victims of their free will or agency. Let's real-talk for a moment here; a vast majority of the spells in the game has no place in a civil society since they are purely destructive, many of them horrifically so.
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Yeah! Spells that involve tearing off parts of people's souls and stuffing them in bodies to serve your will (create undead) or drinking someone's blood in order to learn their spells (blood transcription) aren't evil in the least!No more so then the spells that burn victims to death, spells that jerk the victim's skeleton around in their body, spells that enslaves free willed planar creatures to die for you, or spells that strip victims of their free will or agency. Let's real-talk for a moment here; a vast majority of the spells in the game has no place in a civil society since they are purely destructive, many of them horrifically so.
There's a difference. F!#&ing with souls or cannibalism are Evil and that's tied into the spells.
Just being destructive isn't Evil, otherwise weapons would be Evil too.
Yeah! Spells that involve tearing off parts of people's souls and stuffing them in bodies to serve your will (create undead) or drinking someone's blood in order to learn their spells (blood transcription) aren't evil in the least!No more so then the spells that burn victims to death, spells that jerk the victim's skeleton around in their body, spells that enslaves free willed planar creatures to die for you, or spells that strip victims of their free will or agency. Let's real-talk for a moment here; a vast majority of the spells in the game has no place in a civil society since they are purely destructive, many of them horrifically so.
Depends on how you interpret civil.
I mean, guns are purely destructive, and they're considered acceptable.
Swords too.
That said, I agree that those spells aren't really an issue, for the most part.
Expcally the ones that create new, concious beings, like ghouls.
Still don't get the always evil thing.
You cannot be a sentient, free willed creature and "always" an alignment. It doesn't work.
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Soul enslavement is quite a bit different than using burning hands or boneshatter to kill an evil orc raiding a village.
Spells like charm person can be evil depending on how you use them, but aren't inherently so. Planar Binding isn't inherently either. Its certainly an inconvience to drag that outsider to you, but not inherently evil. Especially considerring any good aligned caster is going to bargain for its services, not simply try to enslave it.
Basically most of your examples have nothing inherently evil about them and are all about how you use them. Trapping a piece of someone's soul inside a corpse and forcing it to linger on is inherently evil though.
There are countless ways you could have gotten permission to take that peice of somone's soul.
Indeed, imagine that a samurai desired to aid thier master, even in death, and gave permission to be raised as an undead for as long as thier master is alive.
Still evil, because of reasons.
*adds a loyal beyond death samurai to the list of chsrecters to play when they have a game*