You are the GM for a fantasy campaign. During character creation...

Oh for fuck's sake. We're not playing D&D, yhere is no easy magic here. Next time listen when I present the setting.

"Necromancy involves the enslavement of a spirit in a desecrated corpse which means that the soul inhabiting the corpse no longer can rest peacefully and will now go on to unleash evils on the word. That is, unless that's the specific spirit you're now forcing to perform menial tasks for you. You can't simply 'animate' a corpse without putting something in it or disturbing the dead. In fact, there was an empire within recorded history who tried to do what you're proposing on a wide scale within recorded history of the setting, and they are not only considered to be one of he most vile realms to have ever existed, but their experimented is the source of much of the hardships currently going on in the east; especially the great number of masterless undeads that still inhabit the wilderness and attack anyone they come across in confused anger. So no, Tim, you can't be a good necromancer, because necromancy is never good."

You're player #3. You can't will things into the world from a meta standpoint. Your character has to do that.

If it was that easy to use zombies as cheap labour it would have been done 1.000.000 years ago.

I will let you TRY this player #3 but you will have to fight, debate and master 1.000.000 years of history, various hospitaler institutions, guilds, religions, science, actual living gods, hidden organizations and whole nation states, empires, heroes and rebels that have organically and rationally come to the OPPOSITE conclusion you have made regarding zombie labour.

>How do you react?

You've got a long and difficult road ahead of you unless you go down to the Yuan-Ti empire's lands where they have no problem with it.

Why is this not a real char?

I have this as a side-quest, but never used it.

Players encounters a feud where the living makes crafting and arts, and their undead family members harvest the crops. It all started after the feudal lord recovered from a disease years ago, where he said to had a vision. Everyone is happy and well fed. The feudal lord died from the disease, arising as a ghoul. When the undead is too much broken to work the fields, he is eaten by the feudal lord.

The players doesn't have to do anything, it is more of an experiment and a side-quest. Dealing or not with this won't change in anything the main quest.

So, do other DMs not limit the power of undead in some way? I've generally made undead work only temporarily, require some form of energy for continued function, or some other such limitation on their usefulness. But it seems like the general consensus on Veeky Forums is that undead are free labour, and that there's no reason beyond petty superstition for why all work isn't done by zombies.

I'd have the corpses revolt against their master for exploiting them as slaves.

If your idea and solution were so simple, and sound, any of the past heros would have already succeeded. You're certainly welcome to try, but do know there maybe consequences that will fall on you and those who associate with you, tread carefully.

>and that there's no reason beyond petty superstition for why all work isn't done by zombies.

The main reason why- even if it were accepted- is because spellcasters who can control enough HD undead are so rare that it would not be economically feasible.

Because NPCs don't just get to choose to get PC classes. "Welp, tired of being a serf/blacksmith/slave-soldier/whatever. Suppose it's time I went and got a couple of levels of Wizard and specialize in conjuration like mom always said I should."

Cogent points, friend! That's why there is already an Empire that utilizes necromancy en masse to bolster its economic output and as such is now a huge threat to the rest of the geopolitical region, who in response now loathe necromancy even more.

This is why I don't play these faggy games with faggy DM's. Supposed to be about having fun but then you have these smug ass DM's shutting everything down thats not an exact generic character they expect.

It's because like most other things involving magic, people tend to ignore the fact that there are limitations. They treat magic in - universe as the way we would view it out of- as an x-per day memorizing spell system that you put spell components into and get out magic, rather than viewing the mechanics as an abstraction. If the game world really worked the way mechanics implied it did, the world would be much different.
It also assumes everyone but the PCs are incompetent, because in reality the number of times a bunch of answer-to-no one renegades saved the world can be counted on one hand.

1. Wizards in my setting have limits. Making even 20 permanent zombies will kill the necromancer. Literally. And if he is undead himself he won't be able to create them at all.

2. Intelligent undead are either sociopathic monsters that delight in eating people (because they need it to survive) and especially wizards or they are wizards themselves. Or both. Most of the time both. So they have a lot to say about someone trying to put them on menial labour.

So I'm going to warn the player that his character is either delusional or should get ready for a couple of decades of magic research that may or may not bear any fruits.

Yeah, go ahead and see how people react when your "good" necromancer tells them he can build them an utopia if only they'd let him control all means of labor, industry, and the military.

>love it
>roll it
>have him chased by a tight assed no fun paladin that is just hankering to smite his undead raising ass

>I'm playing a good necromancer
Fine.
The rest can be her mission in life, but good luck actually getting people to go along with it.

In my setting, necromancers are either preists of the Tyrant of Bones, or are hunted by him. If the player wants to be the former, that's fine although the Tyrant only permits so many undead to be raised by his followers. Perhaps they could work out some kind of pact to be allowed more undead, but the Tyrant has little interest in altruism for the living. If they opt for the latter they're likely to spend the rest of their short life running from the attention and assassins of an angry god, assassins who are very good at hunting down defiant necromancers.

that's fine. As long as he is aware that creating undead is evil and may change his alignment regardless of how he acts - he may act good, but his alignment will detect and invariably evil - aand nothign and nbo one trusts the undead. He must also be aware that udnead which are uncontrolled don't just 'stand there and do nothing'. They have self awareness and the will to act, and the only thing they have to act on is the impulse of evil. That they are mindless means they will do the most basic form of evil possible: kill everything.

If he's okay with that, then he's welcome to try and take over the world, because trying to take over economies and ways of life is still trying to take over the world, no matter how altruistic you paint it.

Now I've got to make Undead Soviet Russia
>In Soviet Russia, dead bury you!
>Undead is more productive because is spending no time drinking. Problem is keeping necromancer sober, because he is spending ALL time drinking.
>We are not needing to send you more rations. If you are dying, that means more people to work farm.

Whatever pay or benefits that would go to the undead doing the work have no need of them, so they should just go to those whose jobs they replaced

>It also assumes everyone but the PCs are incompetent,
Unfortunately, most players seem to have this assumption, and feel actively threatened by worlds in which most NPCs have at least some idea what they're doing. Then they chimp out badly.

I actually have seen a player going full on Necro Hitler crossed with most rabid Darwinist. Population lived only for one purpose - to die. They were literally his little zombie production factories. Farming, clothing and so on were given to living people to do - so that they will do at least something, and everything else was done by zombies under supervision of necromancer officers.

Any rebellions and so on were squashed. Sometimes literally, when he used a giant tank to drive over rebels.

Point out that the moment he starts talking about using intelligent undead he's crossing into slavery/serfdom territory unless he's going to pay them, which is kind of defeating the purpose of this whole endeavor.

>Any rebellions and so on were squashed. Sometimes literally, when he used a giant tank to drive over rebels.
What? Where the fuck did he get/make a tank?

For me, it's the same reason why everyone in the setting doesnt volunteee to get turned into Werebears or something else that has a ton of upsides and little downsides. Because thematically, it's really stupid to assume that there only factors at play with doing something like that are what is written in the rulebook and nothing else.

The fact that it's feared due to superstition is exactly why it's a bad idea to use in a fantasy world. Superstitions in fantasy worlds tend to be rather true. Plus, from a storytelling standpoint, dealing with somebody walking around wanting to be some great harbinger of change while they rob graves and,vivisect corpses just reeks of a very modern and gamist viewpoint. It's applying our modern day dulled senses of what would be reasonable and trying to apply it to the masses of a fantasy setting.

>Implying the "good necromancer" isn't a generic character at this point that any DM expects

This. The 'good person uses bad powers for good reasons' has been around since before someone coined 'subversion'.

He was Necro Hitler. He controlled a whole country. Whipping up some engineers to build him a giant tank was just a hobby for him. A great man should have a great hobby, no? He liked squashing rebellions in a tank while drinking tea.

When I said Necro Hitler I meant that he was a german (in game world german not real world) guy that built a new Reich on a pile of corpses. Still moving corpses.

Remind the player that they are going to be constantly harassed by the Council of Death and Shadow, and possibly the Coalition of the Living Impaired as well. They have an image to maintain.

I used to play a character just like this myself.

I played it neutral good, a travelling salesman. Lots of small villages have repetitive manual labor choirs, whether pushing a wheat mill, or plowing, or carrying water up from the local stream.

What I did was animate a hand full of skeletons from the adventure parts of the game, and I'd dress them up like stuffy men, or scary crows. And I sold them as labor saver golems. Told them they will only follow extremely basic combats, and before I turned them over, I set them up with base commands to never defend themselves from attack and to never attack anything.

It went pretty well, I sold an entire labor force to a regional baron for pecan harvesting, and once we had our own fortress, I staffed it with awakened skeletons poly morphed into mannequins wearing armor.

so the nobleman gets some undead workers and then pays the peasants anyway?

Well, this is what most necromancers are like in my new setting, and one of my homies is playing one in the upcoming campaign, so I'd be pretty satisfied about it.
I'd be suspicious in any other case, though.

but econom-
>muh magic
ohhhh.

Yeah. And,it might be an interesting character if they actually want to deal,with the drawbacks of using,evil magic so extensively.

But they never do. It's always just wanting to be able to make bone robots for free unthinking followers.

>Necromancer
Old and busted.
Fleshwarpers are the new hotness
>What, you're having problems with famines because of Merrow building a dam upstream?
>Lemme just slap some plant powers on your cows. Boom, they now feed on sunlight and the milk is strawberry flavored
>Admittedly 1 in every 10 born will need to be put down by the local guard but hey, progress amirite?
>Some kids cat is stuck up a tree? Don't worry kid, I got this
>Give the kid spider legs so he can climb the tree and get his cat back
If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.
If you crossbreed a man with a fish, his entire family line can eat from the bounty of the oceans for the rest of time.

Replace the nobleman with a wight tasked with the distribution of wealth among the living, I guess. Some sort of reverse-taxman.

>replace the nobleman
More like replace the necromancer. Who do you think you get your funding from? Oh, right, we're ignoring economics.

Because if there's anything history has taught us, it's that automating entire industries never has deleterious effects on the labour class.

You'll have to overcome the fact that most people don't want to be around undead or see their dead friends and family reanimated. Stealing the deceased is definitely an evil act, so you'll have to negotiate with those unscrupulous, desperate or callous enough to entertain such an idea. Corpses tend to act as breeding grounds for disease and vermin, so you'll probably have to spend a lot of time cleaning and preserving them unless you want to travel in a cloud of buzzing flies, not to mention the smell. Then there's maintenance, since dead bodies don't naturally regenerate and you're going to have a hard time finding replacements whose living relatives are willing to let you take them. I suppose you could just animate animal and monster corpses, but you're really going to have a hard time combatting the image of an evil necromancer when you're followed everywhere by a bunch of orcs or wolves in varying states of decay.

But I like the idea, user. Just don't expect it to be easy.

You're assuming that a man that can create his own workforce out of corpses is reliant on economics. If reagents are required for the permanent animation of undead, there's nothing to keep him from having his undead harvest that reagent. Most magicians exist outside of economics.

That's very close to Sine Requie's Russia

Most towns have a necromancer, but they don't deal with the whole creation of zombies or skeletons because that summons the Deathblight, which is bad.

They instead help the living speak with the dead, which is useful for consulting with the past and seeking their knowledge, and is especially useful for murder investigations.

Necromancy spell lists mostly involves empowerment done by spirits and speaking with the dead, and if you want to raise skeletons or zombies you'll have to find some really old tomes, and will literally die of deathblight in the next few minutes if you actually manage it.

I'd say ok but throw a shit ton of prejudice their way.

Back to your lab, Fran.

I mean, if the reagents are some sort of cheap gemstone that is in a mine you don't own, the skeletons still cant get it for free.

>Hat
>Sickle
>Undead warriors
10/10, would waifu.

So your literal answer is 'throw more skeletons at it'?
Boy, I'd hate to see what happens when you run out of skeletons.

>raise more skeletons

Well obviously he gets his skeletons to cultivate more skeletons by breeding and harvesting humans for their bones.
Because he's an altruist, you see.

You'd need to put a necromancer in a very specific situation for them to run out of skeletons and zombies to turn into unfaltering servants.

Fire wizard. Fire wizard with a phobia of skeletons and zombies. Well, and undead in general. He goes around and torches all the undead that necromancer raises.

Sorry man, Necromancers are evil by default. All that negative energy rots your brain, you know?

Pick something else.

But if you're relying on skeletons to get the components, then that wouldn't add up

The necromancer sends lots of tiny, insignificant undead that cost very little to animate after the pyromancer one at a time, with each one politely asking him to stop being so destructive and mean.

Literally every evil necromancer started out thinking like that. Most people lack the breadth of mind to think of themselves as bad guys or even potential bad guys, even in a world of objective, observable moral forces. Everyone is the hero of their own story. In other words, everyone would write "good" on their character sheet.

So I'd let him go on calling himself good, but over time, as his experiments get more and more out of control and the all-consuming hatred of the Negative Energy Plane seeps into him and all his works, he may find that the alignment on his character sheet does not correspond to his alignment in the game world.

>unusually wet season causes all the workers to rot where they stand
>plague of vermin attracted by dead flesh strip zombies to the bone and cracks their bones for marrow
>peasant uprising spawned by poor starving jobless ex-farmers overwhelms the mindless undead workers
>High Dreadlord conscripts all your constructs to join in the war effort against those ignorant savages who don't want to follow the gospel of necronomics

sure it would, you just need production to exceed, what would we call it, employee turnover?

"Good necromancer" is generic.

Inverting tropes is a trope in and of itself. Smart barbarians, altruistic thieves, etc

>dip skeletons in lacquer
>undead cats
>new volunteers
>lets be honest this was always the endgame

Well, you're literally making his job easier for him, unless you think a pyromancer has a kill limit and will shut down after a certain point

Well, guess it's time to Hollowfaust it up.

>Use skeletons to gather reagents
>Run out of skeletons
>It's fine, I'll just use all these reagents I don't have because I now lack skeletons

Something isn't adding up

>good necromancer
I would ask him what god his cleric is aligned with.

"Hmm... Lemme see your sheet real quick..."
>Examine the Advantages and Disadvantages they took
"Okay, I'll let you play this, but you need to take Contacts: Black Sun and Powerful Enemy: Inquisition, for obvious reasons. Also, when dealing with the Black Sun guys, there's going to be a 50/50 chance that they disagree with your thoughts, because they're more about the military applications of the undead."

>Replace the nobleman
And that's why the "good" necromancer is going to die. You're calling yourself the good guy, while your goal is forcing a complete social upheaval on a society unprepared for and outright against the ideas you propose.

Also you're desecrating the dead, something people generally do not take kindly to.

A good necromancer isn't very interesting, considering how they're just a normal necromancer with less entertaining villainy and more persecution and preachiness about half-understood lessons on ethics and economics.

No. There is no such thing as good necromancy in my game. EIther you will bring me another character, or you will not play.

Well why did you let production values slip to the point of having no skeletons left? That's just shoddy planning.

No no no, you've got it all wrong. We're not STEALING corpses and desecrating them, we have people sign contracts! Because people are happy to literally sell their own grandmas to me and the rate of people willing to do that far outstrips the rate of attrition my manual laborers will suffer!

God damn, could you imagine? With the cost of funerals getting some Necro to buy the bodies of your loved ones would be the best thing ever.

Fuck you, Hollowfaust is terrible.

Taking advantage of the poor, that's very noble of you.

It's hard to plan for out of work peasants with clubs smashing random work groups or disgruntled adventurers blasting them apart out of some sense of morality.

Ah, but don't you see? Elderly grandmothers make the best labor force. As we know, the elderly have the strongest bones, and the fact that our surplus of labor will only let people live longer and healthier loves means even more elderly corpses...eventually

So, cheaper than a golem and nonsentient undead don't require souls to make, unlike the aforementioned golems which are powered by bound elementals driven to agonizing insanity. Sounds like a decent plan if you can get the general populace to accept that sort of thing, and remember thst intelligent undead are people, with all the usual rights and responsibilities. And punishments.

>there's no reason beyond petty superstition for why all work isn't done by zombies.
Yeah, no reason at all.
>Don't worry peasant, you don't have to work anymore. This decaying corpse will bring you all of your food now.
>All fields are rotten and fallow within a year, peasants all dead of plague.
No problem at all.

I'm glad you're finally seeing things our way. Now, if you'd kindly sign your Contract Of Habeas Corpus and pay the mandatory 5-gp licensing fee, we can wrap this session up and pay you the 7 gp we determined your body is worth!

But user, those are 100% harmless and clean unded that don't cause any problems just because they're animated by forces of evil and death.

My response?

No, raising even a skeleton or zombie in innately an evil act, nevermind the greater undead. A skeleton or zombie bereft of orders will seek out the nearest living thing and attempt to kill it. It's inherently dangerous, basically a rabid dog that you're convincing to do a few tricks. If you ever lose control of one of them, it could end in disaster.

This is why skeletons and zombies are Evil, not Neutral. They are innately opposed to life.

If you want to have some kind of magical robot force to improve lives with, then what you're looking for is Transmutation and Animate Objects. Random objects are even more plentiful than corpses, and an animated object bereft of orders will simply stand in place, harmless to everyone. If you really must go for MAXIMUM EDGE, Animate Object will even work on a corpse.

>Intelligent undead

Intelligent undead are also innately evil.

>and her motivation is simple altruism.

If her motivation was simple altruism, then she would have become a Transmuter, not a Necromancer. It is impossible to learn about Necromancy and not know that undead are all innately evil, dangerous monsters. If your character learned all of this and continued to study how to animate dead anyway, then they're stupid. And a wizard isn't supposed to be stupid.

He just has to prepare Gentle Repose... several dozen times every week or so. It'll be fine and not prohibitively intensive for a workforce large enough to manage a few farms!

>It's hard to plan for out of work peasants with clubs smashing random work groups or disgruntled adventurers blasting them apart out of some sense of morality.

Why wouldn't you plan for those eventualities? What kind of bone stockpile are you working with if you can't handle the yearly Shrink? Peasants are easy, kill them and take their bones. Adventurers can be a pill, but all you have to do is pretend to be some other wizard and give them a quest to go raid some lich's tomb. You won't hear from them again.

Yeah, all you have to do is buy a corpse, strip all the flesh off the corpse, wash the corpse, bleach the corpse, lacquer the corpse, and maintain constant control over it for the rest of your life until it goes mad upon your death.

What could be more simple and impossible to mess up?

You don't use zombies you dunce, you use skeletons.

>Why wouldn't you plan for those eventualities?

That's what they all say, until it happens and their plans fell short. Good luck bluffing that high-wis cleric while you're in the center of your undead labor town by the way.

Oh come now, you forge a letter requesting they visit some other wizards tower (your summer home) and talk to them there. And besides, high wisdom clerics are never as sharp as they think they are.

I have played something similar. As a GM jsut think how this works in your world. If their is a Zombie Plague then no one will trust you and you will always be fighting or have to cage your Undead. If it's a typical Magic World; then it depends on the area's beliefs both in Religion and general morality.

>Peasants are easy, kill them and take their bones.

What amuses me is that you are saying this while probably honestly still thinking that you're going to improve the lives of peasants.

Seriously, it's not a large step from "kill peasants who attack my skeletons" to "preemptively slaughter this village, my workforce needs replenishing", to

"THESE FOOLS!!! Don't they see how I am going to improve their lives?! They're supposed to understand...I'LL MAKE THEM UNDERSTAND! Skeleton Army! WE MARCH TOMORROW! AND 'ERE THE NEW MOON RISES, I SHALL BE THE KING!"

Neat. Expect heavy resistance in game.

>improve the lives of peasants
Was that the theme? I guess i got a little too capitalist.

>high wisdom clerics are never as sharp as they think they are.

They've certainly got more insight than your autistic necromancer ass has bluff, along with just getting lazy and asking god who they should be killing every ten minutes.

And of course, that's assuming the adventurers don't simply opt to destroy all the skeletons in an attempt to lure this 'lich' you've sent them after out. After all, they're still plaguing the countryside