Meme necromancer uses undead for physical labor to build a utopia for the living

>Meme necromancer uses undead for physical labor to build a utopia for the living.
>Only as a twist, it turns out the souls of the dead are still bound to their bodies, and are prevented from moving on because of this.
>They are still aware and can feel everything, just not move or communicate in any way without magical means.
>The Necromancer knows this, the people benefiting from undead slave labor do not.
>The Necromancer isn't even forcing them to mistreat their ancestors, he's just enabling it. They could chose to treat them respectfully and they don't.
>The Necromancer thinks it's actually hilarious when people die and finally learn the horrible truth.
>The Necromancer's player insists this behavior is true neutral, not chaotic or evil in any way.

Thoughts?

I was okay with all of that until it was revealed it was both a player, and one claiming to be neutral.

>Necromancer's player insists this behavior is true neutral
Alighnment is decided through the actions of a player
if you behave in a way that does not befit your alignment, dont bitch when the gm changes it and the paladin starts to get twitch

Definitely evil. Non-Chaotic I'll give him, but forcibly binding a soul with no way to communicate and benefiting from the forced labor?

Totes evil. And that's not even considering that individuals are not aware of what will happen and thus cannot have agreed to a contract. If there a contract and people died knowing and accepting of what would happen, there would be a case for Neutral.

Alignment is a shit system that doesn't add anything to the game except stupid arguments.

Player sounds like "slavery isn't evil" user.

>"Muhahaha, I have proven that you are all horrible people because I didn't tell you that the labor force actually has souls and feelings! Don't you feel bad about the things you did?"

I would say to stab him for being such a dumbass, but I'm fairly certain he stole this entire character concept from some AI-revolution sci-fi series, so I can't pin the blame entirely on him.

>Alignment is a shit system that doesn't add anything to Veeky Forums except stupid arguments.
FTFY. I'm convinced that 90% of the time players are intelligent enough to utilize, or NOT utilize alignment effectively in real games. The other 10% are all hypotheticals posted on Veeky Forums... or the results of Veeky Forums players in Game Finder causing these arguments to happen.

>Conceals the truth while finding it laughable
Neutral Evil.

Depends on how the slave was enslaved. If given a fair chance like trial by combat or indebted himself its not evil at all. Should of been stronger / smarter. Its only evil if they were kidnapped or trapped.

Depending on how long the zombies last and how much the living benefit prior to becoming zombled, it might be neutral or even good from a purely utilitarian perspective. He's clearly just being a dick though.
What does the alignment matter though? He's not a paladin so he's not gonna fall by acting like a cunt. It's up to the other players to react.

that's neutral evil, I dont give a fuck what your player says

Tech support here, have you tried NOT letting Veeky Forums play in your games?

>AS A TWEEEST
It's not a twist at all. It's an overused cliche so you can say "See, in my setting, necromancy is evil!"

It is Neutral.
Neutral Evil.

At this point necromancy NOT being evil is overused too, given Veeky Forums's fucking boner for it.

IMO, temporarily summoning the dead can be good if done respectfully (you are temporarily depriving them of rest) but raising skeletal armies for selfish or frivolous reasons or exploiting skeli labor should definitely be worth a smiting or two.

Necromancy used for good is overused. Neutral necromancy is not used a lot.
Either you have the necromancer wanting to create an utopia with dead slaves, or necromancer wanting to destroy everything.
I rarely see both good and evil use of necromancy in a setting.

Yeah, I would say a neutral or even good character could say, animate the corpses of a few bandits they just fought in order to help fight off the next wave of them that showed up. That'd be more of a last-resort thing though, and it's odd for the character to know it in the first place.

Still, as long as they're only using it rarely as a combat spell for when they have a bunch of corpses and need a quick first line of defense for another ambush, then it's fine. It's when you let them linger or try to amass them that it becomes evil.

You know what I really don't see being used a lot? The 90% of Necromancy spells that don't involve raising undead being used for good.

It's always about summoning zombies and skeletons in every case. No one ever has their undead-hunting mage who knows how to stun or unravel undead and learned necromancy in order to better fight them.

I'm fine with these kinds of necromancy. Necromancy fraught with peril where you make contact with the dead, ask them for advice, or commune with them as respected ancestor spirits.

Neutral Necromancy makes more sense really IMO, it's hard to get much more neutral than Death. Something that happens to everyone regardless of their alignment.

IDK, animating people you just killed is kind of insulting. Seems Chaotic Neutral to me, even under extreme circumstances, I'd say it's pushing you in that direction.

Make Necromancy Shamanic again.

>Neutral Necromancy makes more sense really IMO, it's hard to get much more neutral than Death. Something that happens to everyone regardless of their alignment.

How would Neutral Necromancy work? Would they be maintainers of graveyards and crypts and defenders of the veil being pierced no matter the reason?

>animating people you just killed is kind of insulting

So was them and their friends attacking you in the first place. In that circumstance, you're not denying their rest for more than a few minutes anyway, and you're also only using them to counteract the current threat that they were a part of.

It's not the most honorable thing in the world, but neither was waves of bandits ambushing you.

"Necromancy should be used to serve the living!"

"Necromancy is a dread force that will end this planet!"

"...see, I think both sides have good points. Why not compromise?"

And thus, necro-liberalism was born.

I hate you, I hate everything about you, I hate that term, and I hate that I laughed.

>that term
???

Necro-Liberalism.

They would be Shamans, resolving conflicts between the worlds of the living and the dead, and helping those who are stuck between worlds.

Ghosts haunting things? Necromancer finds out why they are so mad, and helps them move on. Living people need to access the wisdom of their ancestors? Necromancer summons the right spirits to answer their questions.

All these services are offered in exchange for money, some of which goes to the necromancer, and some of which is sacrificed to the spirits who were summoned. Gods of death and balance are very keen on the idea of borrowing and fairness. Don't try and cheat a Necromancer, it never ends well.

And when the bad kind of Necromancer raises an undead army, and thus starts throwing the natural balance into disarray, they'll assist good aligned clerics in stopping the threat. This is the one service they will in fact preform for free, because it is correcting for a greater evil.

And I suppose they would also object should a Good Necromancer raise mindless dead to perform labor?

Guardians of the Dead. Allrighty.

Yes. If you go way back to the classical era, death was seen neither as a gateway to paradise nor a punishment, but a completely neutral passage into another existence, usually overseen by intensely legalistic, stern, but fair gods who would judge the deceased and protect them in equal measure. Death is the king who oversee's all, and everyone answers to it eventually.

In FR D&D you had Jergal, the original God of death, who was intensely legalistic and neutral, and fatalistic having seen the end of the universe and was simply waiting for it. He gambled away his powers on ten pins - mostly because he couldn't be assed to deal with his rather huge portfolio which also dealt with all kinds of other shit - giving birth to the original Dread Three: Bane, Myrkul, and Bhaal, the gods of tyranny and intrigue, natural death and necromancy, and murder respectively (Jergal having originally ruled over all aspects and causes of death)

Jergal lowered himself to the position of lesser god in this way, and serve as Seneschal to a procession of death gods, weathering out FR's tumultuous divine progression with stoic ease. It's heavily implied he 'lost' his powers on purpose to avoid dealing with all the shit he knew was coming so he could focus on his work - recording and preserving every thing that died, until the very last.

Yes, that's another violation of the natural order. They might also object to people trying to become immortal, but it's not as big a deal, because they can kill a Lich whenever it's convenient. Death is very patent.

>And I suppose they would also object should a Good Necromancer raise mindless dead to perform labor?

Yes, because those people earned their rest. You motherfuckers have not. How fucking selfish are you, enslaving the bones of your ancestors to till your fields and mortar your bricks? It wasn't enough they dragged you out of swaddling cloths, raised you, fed you? You have to leech off of them forever?

You make parasites of men, and demean the dead into tools.

What if you get consent of the dead?

The dead belong to the realm of the dead. Get the permission of the Gods.

guess he's the new villain now

evil or neutral the guys probably dead either way

NO GODS NO MASTERS... EXCEPT OUR NECROMANCER OVERLORD.

Not any different from corporate moguls.

There's nothing chaotic about this.

It aint Lawful, that's for sure. And one might say that by disrupting the natural law of death and life, one is being chaotic.

>The dead belong to the realm of the dead
Fuck you. I'll respect the wishes of the dead.

>How would Neutral Necromancy work?
The dead can opt out at any point.

Like this

>neutral necromancy

...I wrote this a long time ago pertaining to neutral/good necromancy.
>don't worry, it's less than 2 pages.
what is Bob's alignment?

because I am also a little vain.
would you use a character like this?
what are your thoughts on changes/additions/corrections?
what is your opinion of the character goal "immortality for the purpose of a long happy and calm retirement"

But that's counter to the idea that you're enslaving them. If Grandpa wants to stick around and help his family make ends meet during a famine forcing him to fuck off is violating his will, not binding him to a golem for a bit of extra help.

Didn't the old lore also hint at him being some kind of disgusting alien creature from an entirely different dimension (or at least some kind of old one that predates even the gods) who just found the concept of life and death interesting, hence his obsession with recording it despite knowing the end of all things?

Spec Ops the line all over again...

See, it is this shit right here that makes the struggle so real. ffs. By Her Light And Lash, if I have to hear about one more case of "oh, binding the souls of the dead is totally fine lol" I'm gonna... gonna... take holy orders or something. Then I might get something more energetic than pamphlets and good wishes for people.

A THOUGHT
>in the world there are only so many souls.
>reincarnation is just what happens here.
>necromancers bond the spirits(or fragments thereof) of the dead to make undead
>eventually enough necromancers binding enough spirits has an effect on birthrates(livestock, and wild animals included)
>spirits stay bound until the undead is destroyed (even after the necromancer is killed)
>slowly, fewer and fewer new people exist

in this wasteland of the dead every smote undead is a spirit saved.

would you play this setting?

...

10/10

It is somewhere between LE, LN and NE.
Since alighnment is horrible mechanic which operates on "points" he can stay TN if he works his ass of doing good things in spare time. How many orphanages does he run?