Necromancy and Golems

My friends and I recently were arguing over whether or not a necromancer would be able to create a golem through putting life energy into mud or stone or other objects. Another interpretation would be tethering a spirit into the mud or dead tree in order to provide it animation and servitude. What are your thoughts on this matter?

I like the take that necromantic animation is easier because of the higher availability of amenable spirits to animate things

finding a formerly human ghost/spirit/soul(or fragment thereof) that wants a meat-suit to walk around in for a while, and convincing it to follow orders seems a whole lot easier than finding a raw elemental, convincing something that might not have comprehension of humanity enough to understand you to animate something person-shaped for long enough to be meaningful etc.

basically, they do the same thing, but one produces high volume, low shelf-life, low overall ability per minion.

and the other has a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher cost and production time for a higher quality minion...

Huh. A legitimately interesting and thought provoking question on Veeky Forums Don't see many of those anymore.

Depends on the type of necromancy. If it's simple reanimation, in which you imbue a spiritual vessel(a body) with magic, then probably not without finegling, such as creating mud out of bone powder and applying it as an exoskeleton to a vessel, or making it entirely out of bone and blood, which is what we call a Flesh Golem.

If, however, you're doing Spirit Binding, in which you lash a soul to a vessel then force it to obey your will, the process is much simpler. It's the same process by which you create possessed armor, or a Helmed Horror. When you consider that a lich can bind his soul to anything to make a philactery, the science is a lot more forgiving.

If a necromancer can reanimate a useless lump of rotting flesh it stands to reason they can reanimate a useless lump of mossy dirt.

It's all the same stuff at the end of the day.

If they could do it that easily, then Necromancers would never use skeletons or zombies as minions. Too tedious to go murdering and graverobving when a pile of sticks and mud will give you a servant that isn't covered in disease and won't freak people out.

It could be harder to animate things other than corpses though.

A human soul or whatever naturally fits into a body so it only takes a little power. A construct, while potentially more powerful/useful, is unnatural (in terms of souls at least) and therefore requires more juice to get it working.

Perhaps a flesh golem could be a sort of compromise. Originally human, so familiar to the soul(s) but purpose built for combat or labour.

Necromancy specifically refers to magic geared towards the deceased, as well as their spirits.

I think it's a bit of a stretch, golems seem more like a "Communing with the spirit of the earth" rather than a spirit of a deceased thing.

Do you think that a Golem or mud creature would have to be formed beforehand into the shape of a humanoid, or would the spirit naturally form into a humanoid shape within the mud?

Another question is do Necromancers have an easier time with skeletons or human bodies because they have residual life energy? If the skeletons have been long dead, would they really have residual life energy?

It's more that they're a previous vessel able to hold spiritual energy. A battery stores power better than a copper cube, though both are able to hold electricity.

the former question runs
>"a spirit would be difficult to find that would be able to properly operate a humanoid golem because the spirit type may not naturally form as a humanoid"

and the later goes
>"a zombie, with a spirit from a dead humanoid would already know the basics of operating a humanoid form"

in the former case, the spirit would either take a significant period to figure out the movement. once it did however, it would be a superior option.

and in the latter case the spirit would start out able to operate, but it would be operating in a deteriorating outer shell.

>and in the latter case the spirit would start out able to operate, but it would be operating in a deteriorating outer shell.

Yes, but inside of that mass of rotting flesh is a skeleton. A sexy, sexy skeleton...

Necromancy is all about manipulating life energy, typically in an unnatural fashion.

It stands to reason that golems would fall under that purview, considering that mindless undead are basically just golems utilizing dead matter.

Also, Diablo 2 totally had necromancers creating golems wholly out of various materials (clay, metal, fire, and blood specifically).

Its kind of a "depends on the setting" question, but I've seen it done both ways.

In some cases, the vessel must be carefully crafted beforehand. It seems to me, usually when this is the case, the resulting golem is fairly permanent, and also totally subservient. Only following orders. More like a magic robot.

The other case is when the spirit or elemetal animates something to fit with their form. In this case its usually depicted as being temporary, and more individualistic than the other example.

As for working with bodies being easier, I think that for the most part necromancy deals with mortal spirits of the dead. Because of this they find it easier to animate flesh and bone, since it at least resembles their prior forms. Even easier if it is in a state that makes sense to animate, an intact dead body as opposed to a blended hunk of flesh. Animating something inanimate, AND that doesn't make sense to animate like a hunk of stone or dirt, would require very strong spirits or many spirits to work, and therefore a very strong necromancer.

a skeleton at a massively different mass with less inertia behind every action, prone to powdering, and grinding if you don't keep the joints lubricated or the cartilage intact .

no thank you...

Well, I'd keep her joints well lubricated, knowhatimsayinbro?

You can't really apply traditional physics to reanimated skeletons. There's literally nothing that could make them move beyond magic (due to the lack of muscles), which completely nulls a lot of traditional issues.

Some things to ruminate on for those who don't really play D&D from a PFG player:

Flesh Golem Construction
The pieces of a flesh golem must come from normal humanoid corpses that have not decayed significantly. Assembly requires a minimum of six different bodies—one for each limb, the torso (including head), and the brain. In some cases, more bodies may be necessary. Special unguents and bindings worth 500 gp are also required. Note that creating a flesh golem requires casting a spell with the evil descriptor.
CONSTRUCTION
Craft Construct (feat), animate dead (necromancy spell), bull's strength, geas/quest, limited wish, creator must be caster level 8th; Skill Craft (leather) or Heal DC 13; Cost 10,500 gp

Clay Golem
A clay golem's body must be sculpted from a single block of clay weighing at least 1,000 pounds, treated with rare oils and powders worth 1,500 gp.
CL 11th; Price 41,500 gp
CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Construct, animate objects, bless, commune, prayer, resurrection, creator must be caster level 11th; Skill Craft (sculptures) or Craft (pottery) DC 16; Cost 21,500 gp

Bone Golem
The golem's body consists of bones from at least a dozen Medium or larger skeletons. The bones must be treated with oils and shellac worth 1,000 gp.
CL 9th; Price 41,000 gp
CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS
Craft Construct, geas/quest, limited wish, telekinesis, and either animate dead or animate objects, creator must be at least caster level 9th; Skill Craft (sculpture) or Heal DC 15; Cost 21,000 gp

Stone Golem
A stone golem's body is chiseled from a single block of hard stone, such as granite, weighing at least 3,000 pounds. The stone must be of exceptional quality, and costs 5,000 gp.
CL 14th; Price 105,000 gp
CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Construct, antimagic field, geas/quest, limited wish, symbol of stunning, creator must be caster level 14th; Skill Craft (sculpture) or Craft (stonemasonry) DC 19; Cost 55,000 gp

a thought occurred to me as I was making some hot chocolate.

a problem that EITHER a necromancer OR a golemist would have...

HOW DO YOU AFFORD EQUIPMENT?

not every cadaver is going to be a buried warrior with his family axe and shield, a fledgling necromancer would either have to have a money source or they'd be sending little more than shamblers with no equipment

income for golem sized weapons comes from where?

sure they have some combat effectiveness with bite and unarmed strike attacks, but where do you get weapons?

never said they were less strong.

said they had less inertia.

I can lift and throw a skeleton ~5 yards with ease.(it was an amusing college experience)

unless the magic somehow gives them weight this can be why skelles are lower level dangers(unless they're archers or similar)

I find this interesting and helpful as I am running a 3.5e game soon...

From this we see that animating something that bears flesh requires a specialized necromancy spell in order to craft a golem. Whereas when animating a piece of material such as stone or clay we use different spells. Low level golems require animated object which gives a minor semblance of "life" to an object by imbuing it with magic programming and minor shapeshifting. Higher level and more powerful constructs require such things as limited/lesser wish, polymorph any object, and other far more powerful spells that can program life into certain materials.

Affording a golem: You don't if you're just starting out. Quite literally you need to acquire rather expensive materials that come from specialized shops and either bodies from unscrupulous gravediggers or you dig them up yourself. And the same is true for creating undead. The spell requires an onyx gem worth 25G per HD, which is destroyed upon use, and that's a very expensive item to raise the dead with if you're just a small time necromancer working out of a city. In real world money that onyx is going to go for 2500 dollars just to raise a 1 HD zombie. Golems get into the hundreds of thousands each.

So really, if you're going to be making golems or undead, you're going to be a someone who is getting financed by another person to craft things. Or your stealing money and jewels from rich people. Basically, your a rare sucker who probably came from a rich family with too much money and who sent you off to wizard school.

>they expensive

perhaps true but once you get past that small initial investment of 25G and a corpse you have someone else who can dig up the bodies for you.

so the real trick is how do you take that initial investment and use it without ending up with angry neighbors pitchforking you for sending little undead jimmy into town for more onyx and a quart of milk.

so the real trick is starting with undead and working your way up to golems...

a farm run entirely with zombies that don't actually need to eat or have shelter can probably out-produce a farm full of people.

you sell the extra crops and order more onyx...

eventually, you have the cash to try your hand at a golem, and by then you also have cash enough for equipping the zombies...

you can in diablo 2

the idea is that the crude simulacrum of life that is a skeleton, can be refined further and more sophisticated

Generally, putting life energy into objects is how you make a golem in the first place. It's just that the golem is premade.

The reason necromancers have such an easy time raising the dead is that there's some intrinsic link between the body and the soul, which makes them easier to glue back together with a little necromancy and spit-shine.

And I forgot, if you need monsters for your game that might be just a tad bit more powerful for 3.5, PF has their entire rule set online with a huge number of monsters to use. I left out like 36 more golems they have, my favorites the cannon golem.

The thing is, those zombies aren't really all that useful for farm labor. They can only understand simple instructions (farming is actually a bit complex when you really break it down movement wise), and are going to get rot all over the produce too. They are very much like clumsy simple robots fueled by unnatural magics with rotting flesh falling off them. In addition it's a minimum 25 gp per zombie, with most people going for around 50 or 75 gp onyx's. Shit gets expensive quickly.

Incidentally I fucking hate that D&D still has not done any fuckign research and told us any rough sizes or weights or shapes or anything for the fuckign gemstones. Hell, i'd be fine if they just made something up too, it worked for oldschool D&D.

>What are your thoughts on this matter?

I'm pretty sure that would just create an Earth Elemental or Treant respectfully.

The difference (for me) from a Golem and an Elemental is the source magic. An Elemental could be considered a "naturally occurring" Golem in that spirit/natural magic exposes itself to the elements during climatic expressions: Volcanoes, Typhoons, Earthquakes, etc.
A Golem on the other hand is exposed to deliberate Arcane magic; usually via the construction process using runes or magical parts. A Golem is more in line with a "magical robot".

A Golem exposed to long term spiritual energy will slowly develop into an Elemental; losing much of it's original purpose while gaining a will of it's own and adapting to the natural world around itself.

>Another question is do Necromancers have an easier time with skeletons or human bodies because they have residual life energy?

You're thinking about this the wrong way: A Necromancer doesn't use "life energy" to make undead- if you were to saturate a corpse in natural magic the body will either decompose immediately or be revived.

>HOW DO YOU AFFORD EQUIPMENT?

Necromancers have a tendency to dramatically snowball out of control if left alone: animate some dogs/wolves, kill people, animate people, have them kill more people, repeat. The part where things get out of control is when your undead horde creates enough background "miasma" from the negative energy that they begin creating zombies without your assistance. Completely ruined Zombies can be recycled into Skeletons.

>a farm run entirely with zombies that don't actually need to eat or have shelter can probably out-produce a farm full of people.

Again, this is just me, but no.
Undead emit miasma which is a scentless, tasteless, poisonous waste gas produced by the undead.
Miasma spreads disease and with a few exceptions (pumpkins) kills vegetation- this is why haunted woods have dead trees.

is MIASMA an edition/game specific thing?
if yes then where?

It's setting specific i think and it's complete bullshit in D&D's FR at least necromancers use whatever the spell says they use sometimes negative plane energy and sometimes positive, for instance Resurrection is a necromancy spell, as is Raise Dead.

>is MIASMA an edition/game specific thing?
>if yes then where?

Miasma is the term I've been using for any kind of polluting area effect from using "negative energy" (after the original ye olde medieval miasma), but as a specific game mechanic it's appeared in the following games (that I can list off atm):

D&d, Pathfinder, and the Wow Rpg/Warcraft series (Fel magic does it as well, but that's beside the point.)

>it's complete bullshit in D&D's FR at least necromancers use whatever the spell says they use sometimes negative plane energy and sometimes positive, for instance Resurrection is a necromancy spell, as is Raise Dead.

The point though is that making a zombie or a spooky skeleton uses negative energy and makes pollutes the area around the spooky undead to be more negative- the plane of shadow has a similar effect.
I'm only being so strict about this particular thing because EVERYONE has this habit of taking out all the "reprecussions" of raising the dead so they can make their "utopian zombie factories" and write masturbatory stories about how necromancy is misunderstood.

It'd be like if someone wrote a bunch of stories about nuclear energy, but ret-conned the threat of nuclear meltdown and then still had people scared about nuclear energy. Clunky analogy, but hopefully you get my point.

>It's setting specific i think and it's complete bullshit in D&D's FR
seems like it.

personally, I feel that if the zeds are dropping flesh in the fields then that's indirect fertilizer(flesh by itself is a bad fertilizer, but scavenger-scat is) if anything a necro-tended crop might be slightly higher yield.

I always think of magic as modern science. The necromancer is a specialist, someone who dedicated his life (and probably un-life) to studying a specific field of magic. He may be one of the best at creating zombies and such but that doesnt mean he can tamper with golems or create the absolute best magic items, there are specialists for those fields and he would need their assistance.

Your entire thing is taking any fun for a player that wants to play a necromancer, out of the game. I don't give a shit if you don't like a zombie, or skeleton, factory, that's not the way negative energy works in any setting I'm aware of negative energy is literally Entropy in D&D and most any setting made for D&D. You making entropy something that makes people sick, rather that kill them by universal heat death, is bullshit in my opinion.

How about reanimated plants? It is dead tissue after all. A necromancer should be able to raise it. Its an interesting concept at teh very least; a necromancer controlling undead plants.

>negative energy is literally Entropy in D&D and most any setting made for D&D.
>you making entropy something that makes people sick, rather that kill them by universal heat death, is bullshit in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure you're contradicting yourself, because all I'm reading out of this is you UNDERSTAND how negative energy is basically entropy/destroys positive energy, but you don't actually want it to behave like entropy.

Really, though, my main point of conflict still stands: you want basically want to ret-con or otherwise ignore any of the consequences of using necromancy/negative energy.

No entropy is a slow process that isn't going kill anyone alive right now, I know how it works fucker. All I was saying is that you, because you personally, don't like the idea of raising the dead, you want to punish people more than base 5e D&D would. Which is, not at all, because Arcane magic itself has no alignment or penalties for use. Want to know why it's that way? because Mystra said so. The consequences for using Necromany are primarily social, as in coming from society, NOT the GODS of magic.

>are primarily social
I might argue the "angry spirits want to rip your lungs out" point.

but thats mostly a quibble

yeah but usually you're not messing with the souls of the departed at least in Faerun, those are safely in their chosen god's realm or the fields of the faithless in Kelemvor's realm.

thats faerun.

I was thinking more Sabriel or the Dresden Files

and for the idiot pointing at sabriel THAT IS ALL MAGIC that has that effect, not just necromancy.

Which is why I said at least in Faerun it's that way, if you're referring to the guy I was arguing with, that makes more sense than just necros having that penalty, then it's just wizards of any stripe that are dangerous, which is fair.

It won't kill anyone in our universe because there is so much free energy floating around for us to use.

But what if instead of getting our energy from the Sun, we mostly produced our own. We call it "positive energy". And that positive energy has a tendency to become unusable to us over long periods of time. You can think of it as going stale, but basically it's the same entropy that energy in our universe is subject to.

Negative energy simply speeds up the process of entropy because it is the literal manifestation of positive energy entropy. And we don't have a Octillion ton ball of positive energy sending its energy to us from above. We only have our few billion tons of biomass to draw from. Then that entropy will have an effect a to sooner than it would on our chemical energy.

Necromancers do not deal with life energy, they deal with negative energy.

I understand how entropy works, thank you, I know that it only affects a closed system. If scientists are right, and heat death is how the universe ends, that would mean our universe is a closed system. This would mean no-one in any fantasy system or setting that is part of a multiverse like D&D is has anything to fear from heat death because energy can be drawn back into any given plane at any given time. if the multiverse itself is a closed system it would go plane by plane, although with a few that are known to be infinite this is of couse not d&d.

Necromancy can bind a dead spirit to a construct and dominate it. But I think it would require Transmutation magic to provide the means of locomotion to the golem. And maybe some other types of magic.

Can a necromancer do it? Yes. Can someone who only casts necromancy spells do it? I don't think so.

I'm talking about a separate kind of energy that can't be freely turned into our universe's energy but still suffers from entropy. And this energy doesn't travel very well. Maybe positive energy can be easily transferred between two bodies within a few hundred feet of each other, but it can't go much farther without living things nearby (a blade of grass or a bug or bacterium are too small and weak to store or transfer positive energy to any significant degree).

Mud, stone, and other traditional golems aren't animated by life force, they're animated by bound elemental spirits, most often pulled directly from whatever elemental plane they're native to. In this case, the elemental spirit is animating a body that is closely similar to the form it usually takes within its own elemental plane. A character who reanimates dead bodies by binding human souls to them might have this as a restriction.

Technically speaking, necromancy does not work with life force. They work with negative energy which is basically the opposite of life force, to create unlife, that which exists opposite to and in opposition of life. In some systems (including DnD), necromancers don't even work with human souls, and intelligent undead are not the same person who was using the body previously even though they have access to the person's memories. They're just advanced undead who can use the body's brain. If you kill a person, cut off just enough from the body to resurrect them, and then animate the dead body as an intelligent undead with the person's memories, you can still resurrect the leftovers and have the original person back alongside the undead imposter that has all their abilities and memories, only with more evil and a hankering for flesh.

Our universe is a closed system, that as far as we know, has no holes to another universe or a greater multiverse, in the forgotten Realms, D&D's primary setting, magic freely moves energy from one plane to another VERY fucking easily. what point are you trying to make?

Depends on the setting.

In Diablo: Yes.