Hey this is my first post
I'm currently playing a tiefling paladin with the soul seer racial ability
It allows the use of death watch a necromancy spell without the evil description
He is a paladin of Iomedae
Is he allowed to use his spell like ability without loosing his alignment of LG or his powers from Iomedae.
I'm looking for examples in Raw before chatting with the Gm
Also anything on Iomedae view of non evil necromancy
Thank you
Nothing in Iomedae’s Paladin code forbids the use of spells from the necromancy school. You are forbidden from using evil spells. Deathwatch is not evil.
Spells without alignment descriptors do not inherently affect your alignment (and it takes a lot more than one casting to cause an alignment shift).
The effect of deathwatch is simply the ability to visually see a targets life force allowing you to know if it is living, dead, undead, non-living (constructs), or precisely how injured it is. There is nothing inherently evil about it or the way it can be used. Deathwatch will never cause an alignment shift under any circumstance.
It's a common misconception, but the necromancy school is not in itself evil. Even though someone at WotC didn't get that and moved the healing spells to conjuration (even though "Necromancy spells manipulate [...] the life force."), the school itself is perfectly fine for a Paladin to cast from. Indeed, there are 13 necromancy spells on the Paladin list, including a Paladin-only-spell. Iomedae's Paladin code doesn't contain any notion that necromancy spells are an issue, either.
The difference between necromancy and necromancy is an important one to understand.
Indeed… not everything in the necromancy spell school is “Necromancy”… “Necromancy” is command over the dead and manipulation of corpses. In fact the Summon Monster spell from the Conjuration school can be considered an act of Necromancy if used with the Skeletal Summoner feat even. Also, ask Derklord pointed out, Cure spells were at one point in time part of the necromancy school because necromancy (the school) is defined as manipulation of life energies, and healing falls entirely inside that category.
As a point of note… there do exist lore explications for the moving of cure spells from the Necromancy school to Conjuration[healing]… the lore reasons basically boil down to “they are still actually Necromancy school spells, and Conjuration[healing] is just Necromancy in disguise.”
As the other have said there is nothing inherently evil about necromancy. Some necromancy spells are evil, but not all of them. I don’t think there are any necromancy spells with the good descriptor, but there are plenty of them that good casters use all the time. A lot of necromancy spells can be used weaken you opponents and are often a better way for a good character to take out an opponent.
What could be more good then reducing a villains ability to harm innocents instead of outright killing them? Ray of Enfeeblement is a necromancy spell and is very good at reducing the offensive ability of your opponents. Casting this on an opponent can allows the party to take out an attacking creature without having to kill it.
Speak with dead can also be used to question someone who has been killed to identify the creature that killed them. Using it this way to ensure that the wrong person is not blamed for a crime would also probably be considered a good act.
In the case of the death watch a paladin can definitely use this for good. The most obvious use would be to be able to determine if a creature is undead and therefor a threat to life. It can also be used as a quick way to determine who is severely wounded and in need of healing. Being able to quickly determine who needs healing is something incredibly useful to a paladin.