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Is there a particular lore reason on why the necromancer class is not unholy only or at least barred from holy? Is it under the same logic as t he *summon undead* spell, or is it something else?
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Well, for one thing you're not creating the undead (zombies and the like) which is an unholy act. You're repurposing dead matter (bones, blood, spirit) temporarily which probably doesn't have the same metaphysical implications.
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Unholy implies a special commitment to serving the will of the lower planes. There's nothing about the necromancer that requires or even necessarily implies such a commitment.
That went away with alignment
No where did i mention alignment. I am talking about sanctification, because the create undead ritual is unholy, compared to summon undead spell which is not.
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Summon Undead is also temporary (i.e. not unholy) as opposed to permanent like Create Undead (which is unholy).
That's the distinction. You're dipping into the river of souls for a little energy here and there and letting it flow back when you're done. This does not upset the delicate balance of the universe or hasten its demise like permanently creating undead does.
Yeah, i was thinkking it was because its a summon undead-like spell
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It feels there should be an option (likely an Uncommon feat & certainly barred by PFS) for a Necromancer to become Unholy. That wouldn't need to be playtested though, and might run into the wall that even themed Sorcerers w/ good/evil Bloodlines can't get Holy/Unholy Sanctification except sideways via MCD Cleric or Champion, which might be what wannabe-Unholy Necromancers need to do too.
Not sure it's worth one's Dedication, especially with few (if any?) Consecrated spells in Occult, but it's on theme if that's what one wants.
Aren't all undead unholy? And thus your thralls and their attacks would count as u holy as well.
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Aren't all undead unholy? And thus your thralls and their attacks would count as u holy as well.
Nothing in the Necromancer kit is Unholy.
Aren't all undead unholy? And thus your thralls and their attacks would count as u holy as well.Nothing in the Necromancer kit is Unholy.
Is there no general rule saying that undead are unholy?
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Is there no general rule saying that undead are unholy?Aren't all undead unholy? And thus your thralls and their attacks would count as u holy as well.Nothing in the Necromancer kit is Unholy.
There used to be lore that all created undead are evil (now unholy) but some naturally occurring undead are not. Non vengeful ghosts who go peacefully when their business is done are generally not unholy, for example. And there is an entire town of skeletons in the cairn lands created when a protective ritual collided with the powers released in that land and things got really weird, resulting in them all being turned into (non-evil / non-unholy) skeletons.
There used to be lore that all created undead are evil (now unholy) but some naturally occurring undead are not. Non vengeful ghosts who go peacefully when their business is done are generally not unholy, for example. And there is an entire town of skeletons in the cairn lands created when a protective ritual collided with the powers released in that land and things got really weird, resulting in them all being turned into (non-evil / non-unholy) skeletons.Is there no general rule saying that undead are unholy?Aren't all undead unholy? And thus your thralls and their attacks would count as u holy as well.Nothing in the Necromancer kit is Unholy.
Sounds like the exceptions that prove the rule.
Is there or is there not a general rule stating that undead are unholy?
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Nothing in the Undead trait or descriptions of the undead mandate that they're unholy, though a significant number of undead creatures are unholy in the bestiary.
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Like you can be a skeleton PC who is holy. So there's nothing about "being undead" that's unholy. The thing that's always unholy is "creating (permanent) undead."
I definitely think there's something about being undead that tends to make you unholy by default. Certainly we've heard that undead instincts default to evil and it's hard for undead to choose not to be (and remaster-wise that's roughly equivalent to being unholy for these purposes). I don't think undead have to be always unholy, and it's clear that there are some who are not (whether because they're temporary creations or otherwise), but undead do seem to default toward unholy energies, presumably as a consequence of the forces in their creation.
That said I don't think the necromancer necessarily gains anything having their tralls (or themselves) be labeled unholy by default. Summon Undead shows precedent that there's some way of creating temporary undead that avoids making them unholy, I'd just like to know more about the lore behind some of that.
Maybe it's as simple as Pharasma doesn't care if the undead doesn't stick around for more than a minute (though I'd be disappointed a little if holy/unholiness really just came down to Pharasma's preferences) or maybe it could be that summoned undead aren't "real" and so aren't made with real unholy forces.
(Although this does kind of make me scratch my head about how summoned undead are made in the first place... if you can create a temporary humanoid body with void energy, why can't you create a temporary humanoid body with vitality? This question doesn't really cone up with most summon spells because they're mostly different orders of creature, but something about making a dead guy out of magic makes it seems strange you can't do a living guy the same way... of course, the OOC reasons are sufficiently obvious why we'd never get such a spell, but still, the worldbuilder in me wants answers)
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IMO the designers are going into a direction that the holy vs unholy war is not nescessary related to vitality and void context and to undeads.
The idea that's in general unholy creatures like to use undeads as tools or due Urgathoa is unholy alighned and that holy creatures avoid to use undead in order to respect the deads make the general impression that undeads is nescessarily related to unholy (and probably most of Golarion population makes this association) but at last since the remaster this is not the case. Also Pharasma hates the existence of undeads (specially those who interefer into the normal cicle of the souls) but she avoid to enter into the holy vs unholy war.
The necromancer class going in this ways is basically going in same direction. As necromancer they usually don't care about outher planes dispotes between holy vs unholy they just want to control their undeads independetly (and I know that Pharasma disaproves) including thats one reason to use occult and not divine tradition.
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Mechanically, as someone else already stated, all "Unholy" means is that you are dedicated to the lower planes, and divinities usually described as selfish and evil. Binding and enslaving souls, the normal use of of creating permanent undead, would be considered unholy because at the very least it ties to two lower plane deities, Urgathoa and Asmodeus.
HOWEVER since most of the mechancis of the Necromancer do not involeve the creation of permenant undead, simply a manipulation of vitality and void energies, and occasional slight delay of the undead, the class does not fall under that definition.
I would even go so far as to desire a non-unholy variant of Create undead, maybe something along the lines of "Grant Undeath" for neutral parties to create free willed undead, that requires the consent of the creature being made into undead. While this would violate the flow of souls, and piss off Pharasma, she, as has been pointed out, is outside the holy/unholy dichotomy.
The legacy necromancy concept goes away when Paizo made the remaster so I don't think that's a good reference here.
About the lore of undead trait (please don't use fluff, some designers doesn't like this term because this can hurt moral in their work to create a immersive set when someone simply calls it as fluff) it's pretty generic considering that many undead doesn't even have a soul.
Anyway just like wizards, bards, psychic and some sorcerers can summon undeads and have nothing with unholy nothing prevent the necromancers to do the same. Maybe you can get a cleric archetype and follow Urgathoa and take your unholy trait but the base necromancer being neutral is fine to me.
Shoot I never thought of this but damn!
Back in the early days of Golarion/PF1/breaking from WotC, (I believe) James Jacobs made a comment about happily ditching non-evil undead, and that even mindless undead would be evil w/ none of that ancient protector Elf undead stuff. Of course that's what, a couple decades ago? And other worldbuilders take part too, adding stories unlocked by allowing exceptions.
And so we have exceptions.
Perhaps ethereal phantoms (or entities possessed by same) or some other afterlife designation would've helped separate the two concepts. But that's assuming it'd be more than semantics when the concepts intertwine, though we do have some.
Heck, not even all fiends composed of the substance of Evil itself are evil, though typically that tiny set is Unholy re: mechanics (at least in conversion, not having seen any post-Remaster yet). Same with made-of-goodness-itself angels falling, though oddly they seem to totally flip sides/mechanics. Asmodeus knows his business.
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My understanding is that the reason undead tend to be evil, is that when you try to animate a body using void energy it doesn't work right. The circuits that Vital Energy uses to make things live aren't wired for Void energy, it works but there are faults. It's sort of like pouring frying oil in the gas tank, it will create combustion and push pistons, etc., but there are going to be problems. One of the things that affects all undead is that they all feel some kind of absence that becomes a craving which, if not sated periodically, robs the undead creature of its agency. For vampires it's blood, for ghouls it's flesh, for liches it's forbidden knowledge, etc.
But the Necromancer also doesn't have this problem since you're not creating undead that last longer than the purpose you have for them.
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It's possible you are using "ambient spirit stuff" that flows slowly to the river of souls from lower life-forms constantly dying, and your skill at the Necromantic arts allows you to amass a bunch of it, stick it in an unfamiliar container, and make it do what you want.
Like "Inevitable return" seems to suggest that you're taking stuff before it gets too far down the road to the afterlife. But you can't hold it there indefinitely, since that thrall has a set expiration.
About the lore of undead trait it's pretty generic considering that many undead doesn't even have a soul.This is again a stumbling block in the lore. If we really believe that all undead-creation is violation of the flow of souls and corrupts a soul, then absolutely every undead has a soul, and actually the same as the body owner (which one otherwise? randomly taken from vicinity?). Or Pharasmins have no leg to stand on in forbidding creating skeletons for example.
Besides, now all undead must have a soul for spirit damage to work on them.
Aand undead PCs definitely have souls and they can be skeletons and zombies and are not that special lore-wise (while they are special).
Good point yet not everything that is vulnerable to Spirit damage have a soul. That's the case of most animals, beasts and elementals. They have spirit but not really a soul. Many undeads have fragments or are echoes of their souls and they don't really will go to the river of souls.
Pharasmins tends to be conservative and prejudiced dealing with undeads due the high probability of their summoners tends to not have scruples about not use other souls as tools or disrespect the deads (and many others death deities followers like Anubis thinks the same).
There's an entire fun philosophical discussion about the usage of void energy and necromancy that could be explored in the setting as background specially when you have a necromancer in PC in the game.
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I mean, one reason Pharasmins are not especially nuanced on the undead question is that you want Doctrinal matters to be unambiguous and easily understood by people who are not experts on metaphysics.
After all, most undead that a layperson will encounter are going to be something like "skeletons or zombies" which raise a lot fewer questions for a devout Pharasmin than "the spirits of the ancestors hang around and watch over the community until there is no one left who remembers their name" does.
Are ancestor spirits inherently undead? The impression I got from the Tian Xia books is that ancestor spirits only start to become undead if they get corrupted or otherwise become malignant in some way. Having part if the soul linger for a while just seems to be part of the cycle of reincarnation.
I am significantly too lazy to type all of "flavour text" every time.
The word "lore" is one letter fewer. Perhaps more suitable to everyone's tastes?
Are ancestor spirits inherently undead? The impression I got from the Tian Xia books is that ancestor spirits only start to become undead if they get corrupted or otherwise become malignant in some way. Having part if the soul linger for a while just seems to be part of the cycle of reincarnation.
Emphatically no, however the iruxi ossature mentioned happens to be so. It seems the normal course of runs: Corpse > Phantom on its way to the Boneyard (sometimes gets lost) > Shade sent off to its final rest, but if a Phantom experiences enough negative pull, it succumbs to the pull of the void and is warped into something more malevolent and ruled by hungers.
Naturally this is more of a 'ghost' kind of order of events, but I imagine any time an undead creates another it just skips to the finish line.
(There's also technically a little conflict where souls in some sources are not supposed to become shades until explicitly after jsugement, so the only shades in the Boneyard are those sorted there, but some other sources describe the souls awaiting judgment as a kind of shade, too. My preference is to use shade liberally but it may not be strictly accurate. Also there may be some differences between a vanilla unjudged soul and a proper phantom.)
Either way, point is that undead ancestor spirits is probably the exception to the norm, and it's possible some examples of non-evil undead never should have been undead powered by void energy but just spirits of the dead.