Chaotic good necromancer

Again with the good necromancer bullshit in D&D?
Please, please, stop.
Let evil be evil, for once.

Know who else are a relatively reliable work force?

The unceasing automatons that exist out on the front fucking yard of fantasy land, you twit.

Get it through your head; this is not a contest between OP and Veeky Forums about how to make a Good (NG, LG, or CG) Necromancer, because that's exclusively up to the DM if that's viable.

Nor is this is not a thread about making loads of money by exploiting undead, which itself is a dick move on the part of the player and is thusly worthy of actively shitting on.

This is about a mechanical question, nothing more.

you know who doesn't have family that get uppity when their loved ones die due to lax safety standards?

The dead.

Know who else are a relatively reliable work force?

Constructs, fucking constructs. But no, necromancy is way cooler, so fuck it, I'm going to reanimate the dead body of my own sister in order to protect my frail caster ass, and be a chaotic -fucking- good speshul snowflake necromancer.

Then, I'll gestalt to be a cleric of the "lord of inevitable end", which is totally a title a NG/CG/CN god would have.

Lemme quote something for you, might get through your head.

>He [the DM] suggested the "lord of the inevitable end" or somesuch. Can anyone throw me a bone here?
>He [the DM] suggested the "lord of the inevitable end" or somesuch.
>The DM suggested the "lord of the inevitable end."

OP, while of course relying upon shitty character ideas as is an OP's wont, decided, WITH AGREEMENT FROM HIS DM, that the undead thing would work.

Now, Undead, they've got their own shit, but as is mentioned in some other places in this thread, the thing an Necromancer has over a Construct lord is that the former has something to commune with; that is to say, he can speak with the spirits of the fallen to learn shit. It's a wider field, that is thusly more useful in situations where you're not around corpses and shit.

Most Constructs, on the other hand and as you're probably aware, are notoriously dumb as fuck.

They also, unlike controlled undead in 3.5/PF editions, have a literal percentage dice chance to go bug-shit insane and start smashing people

Undead are edgy, yes. But capable of being a decent enough character idea, provided that OP doesn't shit the bed and is actually a decent enough roleplayer? Maybe.

Thing is, no, it's not a decent enough character idea. Let me tell you why:

> Character is from a town of primarily devoted to study and magic. All physical labor is performed by the undead

So, the living never do physical work

> every citizen of this city signs in their will not just what should be done with their property after death, but what they want to be raised to do after death (farming, plumbing, woodworking/production jobs etc.)

Yet, when they die, their souls are ripped from whatever afterlife they have in order to have their bodies do things they never did in life. As a work force, they're literally brain dead apprentices.

> The undead raised by these people are specially created to be remarkably well preserved, and lifelike. and the utmost care is taken to respect the dead.

So, they even cost a whole lot, both in resources and maintainance.

> The character's undead companion is his sister, who died a few years ago, and was employed as a pipe in an organ at the local opera.

So, a non-combatant is reanimated, so that miss speshulgirl doesn't have to fight and taste first hand the formative morning star strikes to the face that every adventurer needs in order to grow. Furthermore, it's the PC's sister, so that adds a whole new level of sibling hate, every sibling would love nothing more than to be reanimated because the party decided to fuck with a red dragon's shit.

> He suggested the "lord of the inevitable end" or somesuch.

That's a Evil god title if I've ever seen one. Might strecht it a bit, LN, but come on, let's be real.

I'll agree with you on the whole speak with the dead thing, but reanimating the deceased seems an idea that a CG PC would abhor. The personal freedom is erased, the dead are only there to obey the PC, and get no choice whatsoever.

OP is a faggot, of course, and a newbie. The GM's an idiot. The character however? It's pure, undiluted shit.

>Yet, when they die, their souls are ripped from whatever afterlife they have in order to have their bodies do things they never did in life. As a work force, they're literally brain dead apprentices.

This really does depend on the setting, man.

>So, they even cost a whole lot, both in resources and maintainance.

Yeah, that's a bit of retardation I can't quite wrap my head around either; I mean, that shit is going to probably stink to high heaven when the rot sets in, regardless of the amount of preservation.

>So, a non-combatant is reanimated, so that miss speshulgirl doesn't have to fight and taste first hand the formative morning star strikes to the face that every adventurer needs in order to grow. Furthermore, it's the PC's sister, so that adds a whole new level of sibling hate, every sibling would love nothing more than to be reanimated because the party decided to fuck with a red dragon's shit.

Again, you're dead right on this one.

So, really, the only thing I think we disagree with is the whole 'reanimation' itself bit, and that's only because you're working in a setting where it actively ruins a person's chance to go to the afterlife.

Hm. I kinda wonder how a PC might manage to do a LG/CG/NG Necromancer, not one who reanimates, but one who simply communes with the dead and puts them to rest and shit. . . you'd probably need to a Cleric or something, right? Would it even be plausible with a Wizard? Or would you need to go full PF and just make a Spiritualist or something?

> This really does depend on the setting, man.

Well, I would think that there's no reason whatsoever to reanimate a body as a mindless undead and having it work jobs that require a modicum of self awareness without someone to direct them. If there is someone that does, however, he's just a necromancer ordering around decaying bodies (and having them handle the food production, it seems), an undead slavemaster, one might say.

As for the "white" necromancer, well, there was a Repose domain for Clerics in "Gods and Demigods", I think? Don't really think it's possible as a wizard, maybe as a sorcerer with the BoED prestige class, but I can't for the life of me remember if it could take the necessary spells.
dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Repose_Domain

>How would [CG necro] even work?
The necromancer doesn't coerce the spirits of the dead to serve. He persuades them, and does so for a good reason:

>You know that bastard king who razed your land and orphaned your children?
>My mates and I are gonna take him down. Hard.
>But we're gonna need your help to do it.

Hmmmm. I was thinking once about a more good aligned necro (not chaotic good, but at least neutral good) that instead of simply raising the dead forcibly, he contacts them via the necromancy that was originally talking with spirits and then persuading them to be his partners (of their own free will that is).

I honestly think that these necros could be actually great to play without doing anything evil. Or especially stupid evil.

The whole "necromancy-supported utopia" concept is inherently flawed.

First, it assumes that citizens will be okay seeing their dead family members toiling away on things. I don't see many people stuffing their relatives nowadays so that seems like a sticking point. And imagine if your grandma's zombie gets crushed in a construction accident. Set sail for PTSD City.

Second, it assumes that walking corpses aren't a major health hazard. How are diseases being contained? How are people stopping maggots from infesting them? How are they stopping really hungry animals from just eating them?

Third, it ignores the fact that undead-raising spells are the nukes of fantasy settings. None of the utopia's neighbors are going to be happy about a sizable force of undead that can be used as an army.

Fourth, there are a lot of ways for caster with bad intentions and/or intelligent undead to hijack all those lovely undead workers this utopia has lying around.

tl;dr necromantic utopias are dumb

have a god similiar to hades from percy jackson

he respects the dead, and their domain. but he is not evil, skeletons are either bones animated by underworld energy, or are serving terms set by the god. he understands that life only has meaning BECAUSE it ends.

death isnt inherently evil, since without it, life would be impossible as the world is overrun by 20 billion people, life and death are a neverending cycle, and necromancy is studying this cycle. animating dead is not the end goal, but simply one of the tricks a necromancer learns while studying the nature of mortality, on the road to the ultimate understanding of life itself, the best necro spell is true resurrection, an unambigously helpful spell, that represents the necromancers ultimate understanding of death, so much that hades allows a soul to return, putting of death, at least for now, the god of death wont worry about your various feeble attempts to hold off death, your time comes eventually, and you might as well buy some time to accomplish your goals

>First, it assumes that citizens will be okay seeing their dead family members toiling away on things. I don't see many people stuffing their relatives nowadays so that seems like a sticking point. And imagine if your grandma's zombie gets crushed in a construction accident. Set sail for PTSD City.
hence why you use skeletons. No recognition problems there!

if their culture, over the course of generations, relied on undeath they would be a lot more loose with their stances on the dead. they might actually be puzzled that other cultures throw away a perfectly good skeleton, rather than use it

they would have see skeletons as simply another resource to be used, and would see bbeg skeleman armies as an abuse of necromancy, rather than blame necromancy whole sale

Undead armies don't kill people, evil wizards leading undead armies kill people

meanwhile, in the neighboring countries
>Muh Necromacy is a religion of Peace

if the god of death was neutral or good, there no reason to believe his followers would be more or less peaceful than any other religion, the followers

Allahu deadbar!

>yfw the necromancers are waiting to use the skeleton inside you

>necromancerlickinglips.gif

You people don't know shit about D&D.
Necromancy CANNOT be good in D&D. No matter what you are inviting more negative/necrotic energy into the world and dragging life closer to death.
Using undead for the best of all possible reasons is Neutral.

even if you are a saint who gives to charity, puts others above himself, fights all evil great and small, always willing to help those in need, kind and considerate to all sapient beings, and never indulges in excess of any vice, and is always gentle around those prejudiced against him while forgiving them in case they resort to violence and never using inordinate force ro defend himself, but just so happens to have animate dead, finger of death, and clone in his arsenal?

I always thought magic is a tool, only as good or as bad as the one wielding it

>a saint
>having animate dead, finger of death, and clone in his arsenal

Pick one.

whats stopping you?

Depends on the setting obviously but typically necrotic and abysal magic is inherently corrupting and destructive both the user and everyone around them. I think the only way to do a good necromancer would be someone who draws power from channeling there ancestors.

Alignment
Gods
The setting
Paladins
The DM
D&D canon

1d4chan.org/wiki/Millennial_King
/thread

iirc 5e made the "evilness" of necromancy more vague.

Like, the evil keyword isn't on the spells anymore so it's open to be more setting-specific

Why does someone say this shit about necromantic magic being a pollutant in every thread about necromancers? I've never seen those rules in the core books of any edition of D&D, and even so it's moronic unless you apply it equally across the board.

Throwing around to many fireballs causes rifts to open to the elemental plane of fire, healing to much causes a chance for the positive elemental plane to bleed through and make everyone burst into light when they hit double HP, and so on.

Hoo boy, you guys didn't get back before I had to get to work. Let's take it from the top.

First: The idea I had was that necromancy channels negative energy, in this case, the negative energy that comes from the emotions of grief, depression etc. that comes with losing a family member, and while the spell itself might not be "good" from any point of view, the good that is done as a result would counter-act this.

2: I have no fucking clue about DnD gods, the DM threw that one out trying to find one that was both okay with clerical powers and necromancy. I have no clue what "the lord of the inevitable end" is, but the DM stated he was true neutral, alignment-wise. If there's a better god for what we're going for here, let me know.

3: Yes, the people from this city don't get along with their neighbors, they find the willful destruction of a ready workforce to be extremely wasteful.

4: These undead do not have souls bound to them, The person dies, goes to the afterlife, and the remains are used for labor.

Finally, it's DnD, and I don't know the version, but probably 3.5.

...

Nowhere is it written that necromancy is evil. The only reference is spell descriptors in 3e, and those explicitly have no effect unless called upon by another supernatural effect.

Saying that raising skeletons is evil is like saying that walking into a playground and casting Holy Word is good. Now, releasing skeletons into the wild, that's evil.

That seems stupid, if the souls of the dead are not bound to the bodies then they essentially just flesh golems in which case why not use golems or constructs that are more suited to labor? A human body falls apart pretty quickly after death.

Alignments are dynamic; if you do enough good deeds, you can go back to the side of good. That said OP, you probably aren't going to start as CG: you'll have to consistently do good to climb up the alignment ranks, and lots of "real" good characters will mistrust you until you can prove to them and yourself that you are indeed on their side.

Could be an interesting personal quest: I'd allow you to start as CN with negative alignment and then proceed to let you do good to gradually clear your name; it would be an interesting reversal of the paladin situation, where a character is specifically trying to alter their alignment.

>the negative energy that comes from the emotions of grief, depression etc. that comes with losing a family member

You should actually read up on what negative energy is.

>even if you are a saint who gives to charity, puts others above himself, fights all evil great and small, always willing to help those in need, kind and considerate to all sapient beings, and never indulges in excess of any vice, and is always gentle around those prejudiced against him while forgiving them in case they resort to violence and never using inordinate force ro defend himself, but just so happens to have animate dead, finger of death, and clone in his arsenal?
Yes. Full stop.
>I always thought magic is a tool, only as good or as bad as the one wielding it
It isn't. It can be intrinsically good or evil.

The extreme lengths people go to justify necromancy completely destroys the "ultimate pragmatist" concept they themselves push.

Shits retarded yo.

Yeah, and that shit is boring as hell. No sane DM would take the DM setting so seriously to include the obnoxious aligment rules. They would imply that you could go, cast Dictum in the middle of an orphanage, murder all the Neutral and Chaotic children and BAM, that was totally, 100% Lawful. Spell descriptor, fampai.
A Good Necromancer is just a good guy who puts magic back in skellies and re-animates them. Full stop, it ain't difficult. The Negative Energy stuff should exist only if you heavily include Planescape in your setting. In every other case is boring and flawed.

>and those explicitly have no effect unless called upon by another supernatural effect.

> The descriptors are acid, air, chaotic, cold, darkness, death, earth, electricity, evil, fear, fire, force, good, language-dependent, lawful, light, mind-affecting, sonic, and water.
>Most of these descriptors have no game effect by themselves, but they govern how the spell interacts with other spells, with special abilities, with unusual creatures, with alignment, and so on.
>with alignment

From this we can infer that casting spells tagged with Law, Chaos, Good, or Evil, are themselves Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil acts.

>They would imply that you could go, cast Dictum in the middle of an orphanage, murder all the Neutral and Chaotic children and BAM, that was totally, 100% Lawful. Spell descriptor, fampai.

No it wouldn't, you don't know what the actual fuck your talking about.

>No sane DM would take the DM setting so seriously to include the obnoxious aligment rules. They would imply that you could go, cast Dictum in the middle of an orphanage, murder all the Neutral and Chaotic children and BAM, that was totally, 100% Lawful. Spell descriptor, fampai.
Your example is retarded. That would be an incredibly Lawful act, in the metaphysical sense of abiding with the concept of Law.
It wouldn't necessarily be legal (Lawful alignment doesn't have anything to do with the laws of the land), but eliminating neutrality and chaos from the multiverse? Unendingly Lawful.

Plenty of people utilize D&D's default settings and thus its default alignment system.

(me)
I should also note it would be colossally Evil so only bloodthirsty tyrants would do such a thing. (You know, to enforce their rule. Lawful.)

Dudes, really? Metaphysical, absolute order? Defined by what? Same with Good, Evil and Chaos. I can do with dragons, magic and monsters, but this stuff totally breaks my suspension of disbelief.

>Defined by what?
Defined by the not-abstract-in-the-least metaphysical force that permeates the universe as represented best by the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus.

The alignments are not some contextual ephemeral thing for philosophers to discuss, but tangible and measurable forces that act on the world.

Yes, it is incredibly lawful - but only if they have a REASON and a CAUSE to do so. Randomly doing so is also Chaotic, which means your god will take issue - as in perhaps smite you, or worse, strip you of spellcasting. Remember the source of that power? Yeah, it has opinions and they don't necessarily match yours,even if it isn't actually a deity.

And it is also extremely evil, which could also piss your god the fuck off.

Traditionally every character followed a god, that god was the literal moral compass for your character, no lawful deity would be cool with what you've just described.

You need more Dragonlance and less Paizo in your life.

>And it is also extremely evil
It's also extremely stupid, very very few lawful evil deities wouldn't get pissed the fuck off too.

Let me alert you to one issue.

If your game is PF, Aminate Dead is Evil.

Not because of the spell descriptor, as much as you are making immortal, undying killing machines that will go out and murder people if you lose or give up control of them. Unlike 3.5, 4e, or 5e, PF skeletons and zombies are of the same general bent as vermin, oozes, and unintelligent plant monsters, except instead of hunger, they are motivated by evil, because that's what they are. That means they instinctively go out and kill living things because they are driven to perform evil instead of eat things, and no other reason. They have more willpower than oozes and vermin, and more self awareness than them as well.

So, if you're not playing PF, ask if the GM will make Animate dead non-evil. If you're playing PF, don't fucking animate dead things.

The DM already said he was fine with his character concept so for OP's purposes the entire alignment debate over necromancy is a waste of space.

DM overrules/dictates all of those things, so really, if the DM gives the okay, it's cool.

Or are you one of those stupid sperglords who is willing to actively shit on different ideas than your own simply because it hurts to live in a world where people, god forbid, think differently from you?

Depends on the edition. 5th edition doesn't say finger of death or clone or evil, although I'm sure it still says animate dead is.

These are people who literally responded to the title, nothing more; they may be safely ignored, as they are sperging out about Necromancy based upon shit that is clearly not the setting the DM is running.

This guy has some good points that apply across the board.

These guys have some points depending on the setting, which may or may not include this one.

Everything else is up to personal discretion.