Would a necromancer that only summons spirits be viable way to play?

I think that would make them even more evil, at least if we assume raising zombies don't involve binding their souls souls, and that you summon them against their will.

A good spirit summoner would probably help restless spirits by finding out who murdered them etc. but that's obviously lame since it doesn't involve using spirits to hurt your enemies.

This thread was just an excuse to post that picture anyway, but whatever.

Subversion is meaninglesa when the subversive versiom becomes the norm.

It's like Redeemed Demons, I absolutely abhore the idea of "good" demons because it's always the sex demon. Always. Why not make it actually interesting and redeem a pit fiend or a chain devil?

As long as you are not forcing them to act against their own accord and are helping them to move on then there is nothing evil about it.

>Concerned about being good or evil
>Not just having all your alignments set to "Greek"

fucking plebs

>Why not

There's a fairly compelling argument why it's always cute demons.

Why not just refluff Necromancy the way they do it in GrimGrimoire, where its a magic about communing with the restless spirits and giving them mana/work in order to allow them to eventually rest in peace once they finish their job as Anti-Demon Soldiers.

I mean, judging from your pic you're already a weeb, so why not rip fluff for a setting from a weeb videogame?

Then again, considering who you are, you probably don't actually play tabletop games, and you just made this thread as a pointless argument starter, because /pgg/ is too busy arguing over Starfinder to entertain you with the usual arguing

>Subversion is meaninglesa when the subversive versiom becomes the norm.

But then you can subvert the subversion.

But the negative energy

nigga 3.5 was years ago.

>He doesn't know about Pathfinder

So fucking sick of good necromancers.

What happens if you do it to people who don't want to pass on, but want to help out their folks?

What happens if you call out to souls who are willing to come and help out, not those who just want to sleep?

>Why are people so fixated on figuring out how to make necromancers not evil?
I've noticed this too. I guess it's part of the overall trend to just be unique (you know, like everyone else)

It's just energy, are you going to assign morality to electricity or UV radiation?

then you aren't bad probably. If the souls all want to be undead then sure, that is probably fine.

>It's just energy
Not in DnD, it isn't.

Assuming you're talking about ghosts that can still actually function mentally and aren't just wailing with pain, the negative energy aspects won't matter as much. They aren't passing on anyway, but they also aren't attacking the living randomly.

I can guarantee that if OP has said 'Shaman' instead of Necromancer, nobody would have any sort of problem with it.

>I can guarantee that if OP has said 'Shaman' instead of Necromancer, nobody would have any sort of problem with it.

I actually wanted to say: "Just play some spiritual guy instead or something".

Did a good necro beat you up or something? Yeesh.

Well, functionally the same thing, if you're using Necromancer as just someone who talks to spirits, and then that person just makes deals with them.

Necromancers, especially in the classical sense, ARE some spiritual guy.

Honestly, these threads are getting obnoxious, both with people trying to find 'loopholes' to play a 'good' necromancer, but also with people who forget that even in D&D it's really only animating corpses or creating new undead that's evil.

Using Speak with Dead and Diplomacy on a ghost to gain a follower isn't.

Better question, how can we make Necromancers MORE evil?

I'm thinking we make them Tax Collectors who go around to the deceased and basically call up souls from their eternal rest to pay off their monetary debts through zombie labour.

I made it so necromancy in my setting actively destroys the soul of a person's body, since it has to override all the will of the dead person with the necromancer's. Thus, you end up with them being empty husks after the fact from their service as robots.

It's mainly because shaman and necromancer doesn't have the same flavor in most fantasy setting, like in warcraft to cite the most popular. A shaman will talk and make deal with spirit (who aren't always ghost so there is also that) when a necromancer will force a ghost to do what he wants, or even kill somebody and force his ghost to serve him.

That's literally what the Orzov guild does, also Ravnica was probably the only good thing to come out of magic's new lore mtg.gamepedia.com/Orzhov_Syndicate

I don't know if I would exactly call Ravnica 'new' lore. The original block was quite a while ago, and it happened before Cold Snap, Time Spiral, and the introduction of Planeswalker cards.

Everything you said is accurate. Shamans talk with all sorts of spirits. Necromancers focus on the dead. Most necromancers would be forceful about it.

However, it would be 100% possible for a Necromancer to not be forceful about it, and simply use their magic to speak with the dead and cut deals with them like a Shaman instead.

There's no real reason why it wouldn't work, except for getting hung up on the name of the class and insisting that it can't be good even by avoiding the specifically evil spells and methods.

its only evil as you want it to be

if you go with diablo style necromancy, where the skeletons are just crude proto-flesh golems, and necromancy is just another art form that is used to examine the endless cycle of life and death than good and evil necromancers can both exist
indeed, the frank and blase view the diablo 2 necromancer had towards death meant that he went to hell and back without losing his sanity

if you deliberately make necromancy as evil as possible, making an ad hoc explanation for every reason or argumeny to make it evil, than it becomes considerably harder to do so
but no matter how edgy you make necromancy, people will still want to be a necromancer because you have to realize that summoning skeletons is really cool but the average player doesnt want to be evil

so really its a mix of "depends on the setting" and how much you want to limit the players choices

there is also the tiny detail of PCs always acting (or at least claim to) in a good manner no matter how big you draw EVIL all over their charcter sheets, you really have no control over how they act, they can act like skeleton ghandi and there really isnt anything you can do to dissuade if they do so

I consider anything Mirrodin and beyond new magic

>or you raise the dead bodies of previously loved ones and make a mockery of them

What? like force them to do silly dances, wear silly outfits? Engage in acts they would never have done in life (like ordaining gay marriages)

if he comes from a place where they have different outlooks on dead bodies, then he may find you the crazy one, since from where he is from he is honoring them by giving their bodies purpose and doing his civic duty of recycling bodies

Yes it's possible but you will always have to deal with what people expect a class to do because they have always saw them like this in the games they played, the book they read and the movie they saw. Another exemple would be the difference between a druid and a shaman, there ins't really any but people will expect to find shaman with barbarian and druid with elves.

Mockery as in that person you loved in life's decomposing body doing mindless labor or weaponized to kill people on command, all the while moaning or whatever awful noise the animated dead make.

Depends on the mechanics of necromancy in the setting, and on the specific nature of the spirits.
Yanking peacefully resting souls out of the afterlife to use as minions? Evil.
Enlisting the aid of existing restless ghosts for a time, then helping them find rest? Not evil.
Calling up willing spirits to aid you in accordance with pacts/oaths/ancient tradition and releasing them upon completion of their service, such as the use of ancestral ghosts in Morrowind? Not evil.
Manipulating the circumstances of someone's life behind the scenes so that they will die miserable and unfulfilled, creating a restless ghost you can then control while presenting the outwards appearance of compassionately aiding the unhappy dead? Totally evil.

Depends on system depends on setting

>or whatever awful noise the animated dead make.

it'd mostly be farting from internal gas build ups.

Which sounds all fun and childish until you realise that the gas build up would be in weird places, like under bits of the skin and degassing would happen when the skin finally pops.

It's even more fun to play when you add in incest and spaghetti.

Still evil though

Well there's always Pathfinder. You can play a Spiritualist who calls back the soul of someone dead, but oh hey necromancy is evil so instead of a ghost that wanted to come back, you get a Phantasm, a degraded human soul that's still an Outsider because it never completely passed on, just got their mind ruined by their time being dead, leaving them easy to enslave and driven by all consuming rage, jealousy, fear or other negative emotions.

But they totally aren't evil because they're outsiders instead of undead.

That hat would fall over her head due to the wight of the crown and since it's so long that smug little shit would be trapped innside her own hat.

all of this
also:
>calling upon the spirits of your ancestors to aid you in battle, or feed you ghost magic from the Other Side.
there, necromancy isn't evil