Why necromancy such a meme type of magic?

Because in typical DnD it' super powerful and can potentially break the game, so autists and grognards masturbate over the idea of playing their super special ultimate necromancer character while failing to realize tht in 99% of settings necromancy is considered an illegal dark art punishable by death and their super perfect character isn't going to be able to do anything because they won't even be capable of the most basic social interactions or acceptance in civilized society if people learn the truth. Much like the grognards themselves.

Yeah people get ABSOLUTELY TRIGGERED when necromancy and its users' alignment is being questioned or mentioned. It is a surefire bait of guaranteed 300+ replies.
I just did it right now too

Shit, this is definitely going into my book of campaign ideas.

Ladies and gentlemen, Chaotic Evil Paladins

It's not about alignments though. It's that messing with the dead is, in most settings that have actually been good enough to get published (basically retarded homebrew doesn't count here), Necromancy is considered socially unacceptable. It also happens to be very powerful mechanically. Grognards have a habit of not caring about context as long as it can make their character powerful, even if that context would basically make their player unplayable from an actual roleplaying perspective.

It's kinda the same as the whole "vampires are cool" phenomenon that's invaded literature recently. Yup, it's "cool" to be a super powerful blood sucking parasite that's basically an animated corpse with no soul. Not like curses are supposed to be BAD or anything, unless by "bad" you mean BADASS!

>in most settings that have actually been good enough to get published
This triggers me.
The quality of a setting doesn't correlate in any way with it being published.
The widely known settings either come from a well-established company, or with its own gaming system.

It's also known that 99% of homebrew is shit yet 100% of homebrewers think their super special setting where dark magic is "good" is the 1% that's not shit.

What in the name of your mom's undead sweaty taint does that question even mean, you jackass??

I don't know to whom it is known, maybe to you. Most people have the ability to realistically evaluate their work.I also wonder where this idea that all homebrewers make dark magic good came from, personal traumatic experience?

>99% of homebrew is shit
99% of homebrew is less developed than commercially sold settings because they are made on pure enthusiasm and in spare time. If this is what you meant to say, then I can agree.

>Most people have the ability to realistically evaluate their work.

/thread

strawpoll.me/12152284/r

most people believe that we should allow good necromancers

because necromancy is cool

Fuck that, making it both in my own setting.
Orcus being a dick and a whole bunch of goodly knights/crusaders/mercenaries who were too noble to die and let that fucker take over. Made their own magocratic city where that's run by CR 15+ undead while the living study and better themselves or be artisans while skeles work in the fields.

Literally every good teacher or successful writer you talk to will tell you that you're the worst judge of your own work and that feedback from other people is ESSENTIAL to developing and refining your craft.

Relying on only your own feedback leads a self-intensifying feedback loop of personal bias where you steadily get worse and worse and don't even see it.

It's just a special case of the alignment restriction question. Most people will agree that alignment restrictions are bad and damaging to roleplaying.

At this point you're getting into the realm of "yeah, killing innocents should be a morally good class because people think killing innocents is cool."

You're literally talking about magic that unnaturally ties a soul to a decaying body to be used as an energy source while forcing to be obey your whims in some kind of existentially fucked up magical slavery. Yes, this is all a "good" thing somehow.

why dont you just use mindless skeletons like a normal person?

>necromancy is exactly what I describe it to be, all the other interpretations are wrong and fake!

Because if they're truly mindless, does the fact that they're a skeleton really make it any different than creating a golem or something? Is it really even necromancy at that point?

This is pretty much excepted as a universal and common understanding of what necromancy is. This isn't some high grade philosophical issue here...

This thread really needs this story.

>excepted
jej

But no, that's not true.

>golems are the domain of necromancy in diablo
skeletons do what they are told, if you tell them to give alms to the needy they will

>This is pretty much excepted as a universal and common understanding of what necromancy is
Oh, if you say so, oh high and mighty authority, than who am I to argue.

300+ replies guaranteed!

Tis a sad day when common definitions can't even be considered as reliable common sense anymore, but whatever, continue to make your shitty special-snowflake homebrews where all your stuff is unique and different from common understanding. The autism in this topic has become too much for me.

>common definition
>it's not actually common

Why is everything a meme these days? Oh look, I took a shit, is defecation a meme now? Everyone does it, after all

>Good necromancers

posting one of the founders of necromancer heroes in the mainstream

Only if said necromancy includes that skeletons are basically robots with zero upkeep and supplied with a mind that understands complex instructions such as what are "alms" and who are "needy" but with no will of their own to make judgments. I am not even going to get into the part on how complex a mind it requires to use weapons to "attack" an enemy, let alone be an organized army of skeletons capable of fighting as a unit without accidentally hacking each other or just bumping into each other all the time which even normal people require a great deal of military training to do.

Skeletons (and golems too) are always said to be "mindless" while at the same time being equivalent of robots with extremely sophisticated AI at the levels of animals at the very least. While nobody calls animals mindless. Being "mindless" should also mean that they can NOT do complex tasks especially not in masses. Yes it is "magic" I know that but the two things still do not add up.

skeletons are usually depicted as having no initiative beyond defending themselves if attacked

It can not bear enough repeating that all homebrew is extremely shit, except for maybe the 0.1% that actually is an effort created by an expert who also play tests their shit.

In fact, I would argue that going out and going through the whole work of homebrewing something colossal (like, a wholesale setting or system) requires you to turn off the part of your brain that critically analyses every single word you write down or it just won't get done.

Just remember, even though 99.9% of it shit, 100% of homebrewers thing that THEIRS isn't and they'll totally be able to make money selling it on drivethru RPG or Patreon and all DMs in the world are going to bend over backwards to use their homebrew instead of their own.

What are you talking about? Homebrew is universally great, like the stuff on this wiki for example. All top quality stuff.

dandwiki.com/wiki/Chronomancer_(5e_Archetype)

>you make a weapon out of solidified time

Nothing pisses me off quit as much as magical summoning weapons. Especially when it makes no god damn sense.

>Chaotic Evil Paladins
>Not Paladins of Rape

At least you tried.

Yes, THAT is the broken part of that class and not the fact that you can take like 3 turns in combat by level 2.

this motherfucker is how you should play a "good" necromancer. he's not good, he just happened to line up with good forces this time around. after all, what good is necromancy if there's no one alive to do it, as the undead in that setting were either their puppets of that of demons

>in most settings that have actually been good enough to get published (basically retarded homebrew doesn't count here), Necromancy is considered socially unacceptable

I actually really like the take that the Dunmer have in Morrowind, where they revere ancestors. Getting the temple to raise granny as a bonewalker to guard the ancestral tomb isn't seen as necromancy; its just her doing her bit for the family. Of course necromancy is illegal if you are a filthy outlander N'wah.

>Most people have the ability to realistically evaluate their work.

...

Shit, I should get in on this scam. If only I extensively homebrewed!

Nah, the joke is that most people don't actually make any money off it (despite their best efforts to) because nobody wants their shit and the only homebrew most DMs allow is their own stuff anyway. How many times have you honestly seen a DM allow someone else's homebrew (not counting their own players)?

You shouldn't have brought this wiki up motherfucker

dandwiki.com/wiki/Metal_Elemental_(3.5e_Creature)

I dare you to find one single creature in all history of games that is less than a billion times worse than this

ForeverDM here. I don't homebrew, I need extreme convincing in the form of blowjobs or liquor and I will CONSIDER reading homebrew and I tend to mix up modules (but then again, GOOD modules are extremely easy to mix up or are even intended to be played mixed like, CoS)

So you got me there. I was being facetious, though if it was a profitable scam, it is definitely something I should have considered.

>How many times have you honestly seen a DM allow someone else's homebrew (not counting their own players)?
I haven't seen it any more than people trying to make money off their homebrews.

Really though, I think it's because necromancers have been the big bad of so many pulp S&S stories since the dawn of S&S that we can't help but joke about them anymore. Sure, maybe a creature that raises the dead was super spooky in the 30's and 40's, but by now we've been over them so many times they're just silly and meme-worthy. Also, spoopy skellingtons.

he was actually pretty righteous, fighting for what he believed in, and wanting to stop people who wanted to throw the natural balance out of order

What's so bad about it?

I'll never understand why people can't balance homebrew. Everyone shits on it but it really just is not that hard to create a concept, test it out, and tweak it until it fits. Goes for new rules or straight up new content such as classes. And if the DM+Players all agree the new thing makes the game better? Fine, it'll work for your group. You're good to go. If not? Scrap it. Losing content you designed is part of DMing. Move on. It really is that easy, most people just can't get their head out of their asses long enough to do it.

This shit just sounds kinda retarded honestly. A lot of things that thematically seem as if they shouldn't go together.

>Most people have the ability to realistically evaluate their work

Congratulations, I think you win "most retarded post of the day".

The sad part is, most homebrewers ACTUALLY THINK LIKE THIS.

One of the main reasons homebrew settings suck ass is that the creators think that their setting has to be super special and unique. They avoid common tropes just because they're common, even if it detracts from their homebrew. Combine this with lack of time/resources, and you have yourself a steaming pile of shit the creator is personally invested in and will defend vehemently.

>They avoid common tropes just because they're common
The alternative is not avoiding it and producing a pile of mammoth shit that was stale before your mother was born. How this can appeal to anyone but the most disconnected grognards I have no idea.
>grognards
>tg
Okay, I think I found the problem.

That's a bullshit mentality and you know it. All good settings and stories come from building off of previous settings and stories. You're allowed to use common tropes; if you can execute them well. Experimenting with 'unique' ideas is good and necessary, but when it becomes the basis of speculation for your setting it's bad 99% of the time. There are many reasons why homebrewed settings sucks and this is one of them. Trying to be super unique and being doomed to failure.

>all these elitist faggots screeching that homebrews suck

LOL, go and tell it to your DM. I hope you enjoy playing with imaginary friends, because that's what you're gonna be doing next.

>All good settings and stories come from building off of previous settings and stories
They come from taking ideas from the previous generation of fantasy and doing new things with them. Which, in actuality, most people don't even bother with. In fact, most homebrews are indeed mammoth shit with no attempts at uniqueness. Or very lazy attempts like reversing the stereotypes so that we have shit like drunken elves and elegant dwarves. True uniqueness is extremely rare. And it never sucks like you described it, if only because it adds some novelty.

D&D skellingtons, if left to their own devices, will try to murder everything they can.

As usual, it depends on the setting.

...

Got really annoying in my homebrew when one of the players repeatedly attempted to gain access to and use my OC dark magic donut steel, despite me making it abundantly clear that it was actually a horrible horrible mistake to do so, and the only people who were using it were doing so because they (arrogantly) thought they could control it, and were all wrong.

>Most people have the ability to realistically evaluate their work.

Holy fuck, part of me thinks this is so stupid that it has to be bait, but a bigger part of me thinks you're actually earnest about being this retarded.

Because most people can't deal with or don't understand what challenge is supposed to be, so the stuff they homebrew up is "perfect" with no weaknesses, or token comic-book style weaknesses that aren't really weaknesses and will either never come up or are easy to cover.

...

>meme magic

I think I'm dying.

DMs generally make homebrew to adress balance issues in the game or make the game easier to run. Honestly you can barely even call it homebrew.

Most player homebrew is "HURRDURR I WANA PLAY A RETARDED ANIME CHARACTER FROM MY FAVORITE VIDYA GAME WITH TIMESPACE HYPER VAMPIRE DRAGUN MAGIC!"

>mememancy
>memetic weaponry

Neutral, I could allow, but good? You'd have to really stretch the limits here, or have a setting that specifically allows good necromancy.

I get that sometimes being of the wrong alignment can cause some unintentional conflict, but why can't people who want to be necromancers deal with the fact that they're going to be considered evil by most people they meet, or neutral at best? Because in most settings, no one wants grandma's bones being used to swing a halberd at you, and necromancy uses corruptive evil magic, or the only way to learn it is from evil people.

Because it is a natural tendency for people to want the only best in everything and leave out the bad parts.

Necromancy is seriously underutilized in comparison on how all encompassing it is in the folk lore.

You can get warlock like powers and knowledge from the dead either with or without strings attached, you can rise them up in various forms, you can cheat death yourself, curse people and so on.

Generally the only thing people don't normally do is a DnD staple of necrobolts and lifedrain with the first rarely happening at all and the later being mostly associated with witchcraft.

Necromancy is generally also much less evil than some other forms of magic like communing with devils and stealing luck and power which happens with European witchcraft (African witchcraft being more about ruining people's life for no gain at all).

Dominions 4 has good, bad and ugly of necromancy.

You have Ctis for whom the necromancy is just daily business, Ermor that fucks it all up, Inca expys that are lead by mummy mafia, Agartha who use zombies and skeletons as automatons and everything in between.

Not everybody who uses necromancy raises the undead. I mean, that's probably the most iconic Necromancy effect but they've also got a decent direct damage/debuff/instadeath suite that isn't really any more evil-seeming than roasting your enemies alive with Fireball (though it does have more spooky overtones). And for the undead, really, it comes down to your spiritual assumptions about them.

"Y'know how druids get all uppity about how they 'use every part' of whatever fluffy thing they killed most recently? Well, I figure I do the same thing more or less, but with whatever I've got to go against to keep peace in the land and tea in the pot. Deal with one orcish warband, and I've got an undead orcish warband to throw at the next one. Faster than golemcraft, and cheaper too, and it keeps our people off the front lines at least when I'm involved with a skirmish. That's how it's supposed to go. Sometimes, when things get really dire, it's the bones of fallen friends that have to take another swing at the enemy. I tried to talk the magistrate into a corpse donor registry, but it didn't take, so consider that strictly as necessary. Their souls? Long gone, usually. Well, at least if you count a few minutes as long, but the point is whatever they used to be vacated the premise. But with the right incantation I can see if someone who's passed on is inclined to chat with those of us still hanging around. Puts food on the table in peacetime, that does."

>spend lifetime learning magic
>and VERBOTEN NECROMANTIC SEKRITS
>turn myself into a lich
>fuck yeah, time to procrastinate
>FOREVER

Wait homebrewing is wrong now ? I thought Veeky Forums liked worldbuilding and all ?
Obviously most people here are not professionnal writers but I don't think many people are pretending to be writers.
Or is it something like people writing fanfictions as a hobby being inherently wrong and jaded adulescents finding almost everything edgy and cringey ?

As a forever GM? Edgelords really.
I've been asked all of these
>What's the darkest magic I can use?
>What's the most forbidden technique in the setting?
>What magic is associated with fear and death?
>What allows me to devour souls
>What allows me to kill gods?
>What is usually the opposite of holy magics and the divine?
>What is the closest I can get to a Shinigami?
>What allows me to use the bones of my enemies as weapons?
>What is the most misunderstood form of magic?

Lemme take a crack at these

>What's the darkest magic I can use?
Illusion, lets you create zones of absolute darkness
>What's the most forbidden technique in the setting?
Raping an opponent's children to damage their morale
>What magic is associated with fear and death?
Pyromancy. Shit can get way out of control.
>What allows me to devour souls
Ok this one does actually sound like Necromancy, or possibly a form of witchcraft if you want to go the Hocus Pocus route
>What allows me to kill gods?
Depends on the setting. Usually requires a macguffin.
>What is usually the opposite of holy magics and the divine?
Atheist antimagic
>What is the closest I can get to a Shinigami?
Illusion magic lets you make all the imaginary friends you want, some that can even kill people
>What allows me to use the bones of my enemies as weapons?
Basic crafting knowledge
>What is the most misunderstood form of magic?
Cryptomancy

One setting my DM(well, my group, the DM was big on the whole "collaborative story" thing) made the setting's Hobgoblins be a mostly necromancy focused society.

They were partially based on the Mongols, and had a very serious ancestor worship thing going on.

The ruling group was a collection of their great, strongest, wisest, and/or otherwise especially important generals in their history known as the Immortal Shogunate, raised as Liches.

We only ran into one of those fuckers once and we basically just immediately high-tailed it. Hobgoblins were tough as nails in this setting, and having one of their spooky undead generals riding at the front of the pack made us not want any part of that raid.

What's a good counter argument to someone who keeps harping that paladins have to be some type of lawful alignment?
He also said that they have to be lawful because the guys that made 5e said so after 5e was published in some interview or Q/A or something

Probably the last one. Everyone's heard all the good stories, they're jaded now. They want to go back to the good old days when morality in games was black and white and people didn't keep trying to make everything evil good and everything good evil.

>Wait homebrewing is wrong now ? I thought Veeky Forums liked worldbuilding and all

That was at least two years ago.
Now we just don't like what others like.

>Now we just don't like what others like.
>Now
Wrong, that has been so since Veeky Forums became a thing.

......damn....fuck that DM
The general description is a little all over the place for those things

>breaking news Veeky Forums doesn't like things

This is the classic example on how some people think necromancy works. That you can just use the dead as super sophisticated, all purpose, zero upkeep, robots to do all complicated physical labor for free and there is no downside and strings attached to it at all. Nothing should come without a cost especially powerful magic.

I can only speak for myself, but I can't balance homebrew because the only system I know well enough to homebrew for is completely broken in and of itself.

There's just no point.

So you can throw a fireball that crashes castle gates, and that is fine and ethical and comes without a cost except your casting slot. But raise one skeleton, and you're EEEVUUUUUULLLLLL

If you raise a skeleton and just animate it like a puppet, you're probably not saving any effort, since I imagine you'd have to consciously control the skeleton

If you raise a skeleton and give it autonomy, depending on the setting, this could or could not be evil. In settings without golems or other similar creatures, you're probably doing this by binding someone's soul to the skeleton and forcing it to do your bidding. This prevents them from reaching the afterlife and is pretty objectively evil. In settings that DO have golems and such, and creatures can be made autonomous through non-necromancy means, I can't think of a good explanation for why doing the same with a skeleton or corpse is wrong other than potential desecration of the dead (which is more of a cultural thing, but you're not harming anyone).

Being a lich isn't inherently evil in itself, but almost all settings that have liches have unspecified, brutally evil rituals required to BECOME a lich, such that anybody who actually manages to succeed is probably evil and has their soul stained by those actions.

I'm lumping goblonoids in with dorfs. Maglubiyet kicked the bucket and when left without direction they were driven into inhospitable areas, forced into conflict with shit leaking out of the underdark. Dorfs, needing more dudes to do the same, took em in and adapted their lawfulness for their own uses. Hobgobbos are obviously east asian in culture with a very strict but superstitious culture. They do the surface work so dorfs can stay below ground. The mountain range they live in, however, has its northernmost section right next to Manifest, a city state made from the undead houses guarding the "wraithgate" to the Raven Queen from Orcus. I should probably give them a touch of necromancy just by proximity honestly.

If we're talking D&D and its derivative fantasy settings, then they're animated by outright anti-life.

Each skeleton is a direct connection to the negative energy plane, drawing warmth and life from the world by their mere existence. Undead as geoengineering project?

And, if they somehow slip the chain, then their base drive is to kill anything living that crosses their path. Like a rabid animal.

Then, of course we get into the whole ancestor desecration and that sort of thing.