Is it possible to play as a Good-aligned Necromancer who doesn't raise the dead?
I think there are a lot of options there. It is an entire school of magic with many spells available to it. Even if summoning undead intrinsically drains life from the universe or something else reprehensible, there should still be some options, right?
Which system, edition, and setting?
In before OP is a pathfaggot.
Depends on which edition.
Pretty sure 3.5 and shit has a whole list of spells (maybe the entire Necromancer library) that are straight up marked [Evil].
5th ed and maybe Pathfinder you are golden unless your DM has his hard on for some really specific lore.
You'd need a place that just happens to have a lot of undead in it
The term "necromancer" has a lot of baggage associated with it nowadays. If you really want to play a good aligned character that messes around with necromantic stuff without zombies and skeletons and the like, at least call it something else, because you'e barely playing a necromancer at that point.
Necromancer is manipulator of negative and necrotic energy. Some priests make better "liches" than mages.
You don't have to raise a single dead thing in your life. The knowledge does not mean you have to do shit. But you will end up with something like evoker with weird alternative to healing spells.
He's a skeleton remainderer. When a dastardly necromancer starts robbing graves to fuel his army, he hunts him down and takes control of his skeleton horde to use them for good and properly either return or recycle their parts.
Your personal favorite, or failing that at least the non 3.X editions. That has so many books we'd be stuck here all day.
Wait are you the OP?
Why the fuck are you asking this garbage "I only know fantasy through /a/nime and its distillation of tropes" question.
Of fucking course you can be a good Necromancer. That's 100% based on the setting. D&D and other shit assume Necros to be evil cuz of general "fucking with the dead is icky" and throwing on "their magic is literally fueled by the anguished cries of souls trapped in torment."
Just talk with your GM and everything is golden.
The term originally referred to those who practice divination via consulting with the dead, so yeah. Not to mention I'd imagine that hero cults and ancestor worship, putting down and putting to rest the undead, and general mortuary ritual and practice could all blend together nicely into a tradition that respects the dead as sources of wisdom and experience to be honored, protected, and to have their eternal rest maintained
An idea I had for a Spirit-Magic-using group in Mythras was a society of necromancer-bards(/griots/skalds/whatever) who learn the stories of the great heroes from the past straight from the source.
I just see so many threads talking about Good and Evil Necromancers, but they always center around one thing and only one thing, and that's raising undeas and controlling them.
Good Necromancer threads always boil down to 'well if they're not powered by the souls of the damned, we can industrialize!'
I thought it'd be interesting to have a thread about the 99% of necromancer spells that don't involve creating skeletons for a change.
>False Life
>Cause Fear
>Gentle Repose
>Speak with Dead
Be the spookiest detective.
If you're an unimaginative pathfaggot, yeah
You could use your ability to talk to spirits and do stuff to help them pass on without going CLEAVE AND SMITE.
esentially this.
So be *ACTUAL* wizard batman?
YES
>pic very much related
it's done and done right.
cause the best way to fight a necromancer is to be one yourself so you know all their tricks.
>Good-aligned Necromancer
Spiritualist. Summon heroic spirits and talk to the dead for info.
Weren't healing spells from necromancy school back in early editions
in a cosmology that just treats it as a manipulation of life energies this makes sense.
I have been fond of the term "necromonger" for that sort of thing.
a necromancer is a person who does divination with the dead
see a necromonger works with or deals in death or the dead.
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I blame those books for making me obsessed with wanting to play necromancer characters. I've never understand the nerdgins who say "It says EVIL next to the spell so you have to be EVIL *wheeze*"
No fucking imagination.
I wanted to for a little longer than that, but picking those up on Veeky Forumss suggestion last year reminded me how much I wanted to do a necromantic archer character...
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>necromonger
Aren't those the bad guys from that one Riddick movie?
skeletons are the signature move of necromancers
its their kamehameha, their spell that sets them apart from being spooky laser beam shooters, spooky diviners, or spooky debuffers
its the spell that automatically singles put a person as being a necromancer at a glance, if you only have 10 seconds sell the concept, skeleton army is the best thing to tell people
as for good necromancers, the original necromancer was in fact good, the ones who divine the future from bones
although there are no shortage of good necromancers, they are also mostly of the skeleton raising variety, since skeletons are cool, the most famous example being the one from diablo 2
they called themselves that yes.
Note that I can only speak for 5e.
ALL the resurrection spells are necromancy. Every single one, from Revivify all the way up to True Resurrection. Hell, you could go Grave Domain cleric (Unearthed Arcana) without too much trouble. The typical fluff is that they despise undead, preferring to make sure that dead die at their proper time (not before, not after), and that they don't come back as undead.
That could be perfect for you, because the entire "sweetness and light" cleric list is still applicable to you.
Necromancy also includes most of the curse and sickness spells (Contagion, Blight, Ray of Enfeeblement), so you could (alternatively) be a necromancer that understands the cost of raising undead and doesn't do it anymore.
Maybe your character tried to use undead as cheap labor to do good, but it backfired and killed everyone he/she cared about. So now you wander the land, destroying undead and trying to stop people from making the same mistakes you did.
Hell, maybe you once tried for lichdom and realized how much of a perversion of nature that was, and now you try to destroy every bit of necromantic knowledge you come across.
Pic related?
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Wouldn't shock me. The healing ones aren't in 5e, but the resurrection spells are. Even the ones that bring the soul back too.
Necromancy doesn't seem so bad when it's your cleric doing it.
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The Old Kingdom series is awesome. I went back to reread it recently, and the worldbuilding was way more interesting than I remembered it being.
Although I don't think the latest books are as good as the initial trilogy, but are worth it for tidbits like the implication that Ancelstierre, The Old Kingdom and the apocalyptic wasteland are all completely different but somehow physically contiguous worlds