Is Necromancy Practical?

[Volos]

I've been thinking alot about necromancy, and how raising an army of undead soldiers might be achieved. Since I'm a DM with a strong focus on story and plot, I've been tackling the problem from a logical standpoint rather than from a rules-based one. But I've hit a stumbling block. :smallfrown: How does one get enough corpses to make the classic undead army of doom? I'll explain where I'm coming from. :smallsigh:

Let's say you're a necromancer. You've studied the dark arts, collected fell power, and now are going to attempt to raise your first undead. You dig up a grave, kill someone, or find a willing subject; then you cast your arcane ritual and create a zombie/skeleton/ghast/whathaveyou. It works, and all seems to be going great. :smallamused: Only problem is that in order to take over the town/region/world, you're going to need a much larger force. This is where you fail. There aren't going to be nearly enough dead bodies at hand for you to succeed in your task. Why? Because you studied the dark arts. :smallannoyed:

I'm sure you've got a :smallconfused: look on your face right now, but just bear with me for a moment. You studied the dark arks in order to be able to raise the dead. That means the knowledge of the dark arts was out there. It's safe to assume that the horror stories of what those powers did are still in the horror stories of the common folk as well. If by just discovering these fell spells, you've gotten the urge to make an undead army; who's to say the person who invented/discovered them before you didn't try to do the same? Well the commoners are a superstitious bunch. After the heroes/gods saved the day the first time it didn't take much prompting to make them change their ways... namely cremating all of their dead. People, pets, leftovers from the butcher shop; all of it goes to the flame. :smalleek: So where were you going to get that huge undead army from again?

I need a reasonable way to explain why/how the common folk won't burn their dead to counter any possible undead uprising. Religion won't work, as any undead hating deity (the type commoners worship) would tell them to do so from day 1. Practice and custom would bend toward survival, hence the blanket policy for cremation. The more I think, the more it makes sense for them to take as many steps as possible within their means to stop dead people from popping out of the ground.

[Urpriest]

You're assuming necromancy is danger #1 to the world at large, when outside Wightocalypse shenanigans that's unlikely to be the case. Mass cremation takes resources, and goes against various D&D religions (I doubt the church of Wee Jas would be too pleased with it for example). The commoners are unlikely to bother with it, especially since anyone whose body remains has a hope of being resurrected.

[Connington]

I agree that cremation should be a big thing in most fantasy setting with zombies. However, there are workarounds. Some communities will be too isolated and/or poor to construct funeral pyres. If the society keeps slaves, that's an excellent place to look. And of course, if you can't find any corpses, the best solution is to make some!

[Daer]

find old crypt for source of skeletal warriors, or try spread diseases or cause some other deadly disaster. Or if possible get two kingdoms to fight each other.

and then work as body gatherer , get good cart and horse and move along towns ringing bell and shouting "Bring out your dead. " or hire some people to collect them (and kill them when they come for payment!)

[Tyrrell]

It does depend on the game used. If you can cast a ritual spell to create a thousand corpses without needing to kill living people then the dynamics of raising an undead army change greatly (that's a spell from Hermetic Projects (http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG0299.php) which came out two weeks ago).

[Frozen_Feet]

In real life, corpses were burned, decapitated or pre-emptively staked and their feet tied for the exact purpose of preventing their rise as malignant undead. :smalltongue: So, it's not any stretch that common folks under any fear of undead would do similar things to keep Granny from being raised as a zombie.

However, cremation isn't always practical. It takes a lot of firewood, which is essential to everyday life as well. Which is why burying bodies under earth or piles of stones became more commonplace.

Graverobbing still isn't very practical for purposes of getting an undead army, as it takes a lot of effort to remove earth from bodies, and lots of them are going to be decomposed beyond usefulness. Unlike in the movies, those zombies are not going to dig themselves out for you - the crushing pressure of even few meters of earth prevents any movement necessary for that. (And really, do you see Burrow speed in those stats?) Though it does get progressively easier the more undead servants you have to do your dirty work for you.

This is why, instead of corporeal undead, you summon a host of ghosts from the beyod. :smalltongue:

[Antonok]

Well, theres always homeless people, beggars, other races/creatures...

Just find a couple drifters, kill and raise them, find a small townwith no police type force, have your couple minions make quick works of them, raise, rinse, repeat.

Theres multiple ways to raise an army of undead outside grave/crypt robbing. You just have to think about it and be patient.

[Aidan305]

Well, theres always homeless people, beggars, other races/creatures...

Just find a couple drifters, kill and raise them, find a small townwith no police type force, have your couple minions make quick works of them, raise, rinse, repeat.

Theres multiple ways to raise an army of undead outside grave/crypt robbing. You just have to think about it and be patient.

This. Even if you're impatient, You're a powerful necromancer, that's a small relatively defenceless village. Let's make some minions.

[Radar]

For starters, necromancy is more efficient as a way of recycling your and your enemy's soldiers then a way of creating an army from scratch. In such a situation it can be immensly effective - you more or less overtake any military forces sent against you.
Aside from that, incorporeal undead don't need a working skeleton as an ingredient. Even if commoners will burn their dead, it won't change anything for you.
If making ghost, wights and such is too difficult, you can travel through wilderness and turn dead animals into undead - skeletal boars or bears could be fairly effective.

If you wonder, why an undead apocalypse didn't happen yet, many a necromancer could say And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling heroes!

[Starshade]

Some ideas I got:

- People can step forward and volunteer, and get some boons/payment in return for serving in the city's undead army, as an sentient undead raised after he have lived trough his life.

- You make lesser undead out of casualities of war. Use raise dead on your own soldiers, make zombies out of your enemies!

[Kaeso]

Creating and upkeeping an army of undead is the easiest thing ever.
1. You create an undead from a corse
2. The undead kills somebody
3. Animate the corpse
4. Your two undead kill two people
5. Animate both corpses
6. Your four undead kill four people
7. Animate all four undead

etc. etc.
This is the beauty of an undead army: every enemy you kill doesn't only mean one soldiers less for the opposing army, but also one soldier more for your army.

[Coidzor]

Go to a city with canals or any similarly high mugging/murder per capita.

Plenty of corpses for the taking, only problem is getting them.

Bonus points if the river is so filled up detritus and clutter that the bodies don't so much sink so much as sloe vaguely and slowly downward.

[Calanon]

I've been thinking alot about necromancy, and how raising an army of undead soldiers might be achieved. Since I'm a DM with a strong focus on story and plot, I've been tackling the problem from a logical standpoint rather than from a rules-based one. But I've hit a stumbling block. :smallfrown: How does one get enough corpses to make the classic undead army of doom? I'll explain where I'm coming from. :smallsigh:

Ah this takes me back to one of my first games (My DM explained the Schools of magic to me and I fell in love with Illusion then I realized I like Necromancy a little more) Necromancy is often viewed as a 2nd rate school, Hell my friend Always bans Necromancy and Enchantment whenever he specializes and thats understandable, I mean Necromancy doesn't start becoming good until you can cast spells like Enervation and Animate Dead so around 7th or 8th level which if you specialized in Necromancy means you don't have Illusions/Enchantment or Evocations to fallback on. Personally I ban Illusion if the game is going to be spanning centuries if not then I ban Enchantments so i can use Shadow Evocation to still do damage.

Anyway lets continue the story, Until about 7th level I was getting the short end of the stick until...


Let's say you're a necromancer. You've studied the dark arts, collected fell power, and now are going to attempt to raise your first undead. You dig up a grave, kill someone, or find a willing subject; then you cast your arcane ritual and create a zombie/skeleton/ghast/whathaveyou. It works, and all seems to be going great. :smallamused: Only problem is that in order to take over the town/region/world, you're going to need a much larger force. This is where you fail. There aren't going to be nearly enough dead bodies at hand for you to succeed in your task. Why? Because you studied the dark arts. :smallannoyed:

In most games I play Magic is considered Illegal and punishable by death, In my eyes this is complete justification for murdering people to get your "army of the dead" personally I prefer casting the standard Enervate on the Commoner :smallamused: to get a Wight and then dominate the Village slowly but surely Using Animate Dead to dominate a Village takes to long :smallannoyed: I kind of wish Zombies could make other humans or creatures into Zombies just by attacking or biting them or whatever...



I'm sure you've got a :smallconfused: look on your face right now, but just bear with me for a moment. You studied the dark arks in order to be able to raise the dead. That means the knowledge of the dark arts was out there. It's safe to assume that the horror stories of what those powers did are still in the horror stories of the common folk as well. If by just discovering these fell spells, you've gotten the urge to make an undead army; who's to say the person who invented/discovered them before you didn't try to do the same? Well the commoners are a superstitious bunch. After the heroes/gods saved the day the first time it didn't take much prompting to make them change their ways... namely cremating all of their dead. People, pets, leftovers from the butcher shop; all of it goes to the flame. :smalleek: So where were you going to get that huge undead army from again?

Some religions are against cremation of the dead (The Church of Wee Jas to be specific) so your results may very, If your campaign is centered around a wide spread worship of Pelor or Heronious then its completely understandable to burn the dead but you can bet the Cult of Vecna and Cult of Orcus will find some way to get undead minions (The Cult of Vecna uses Undead because the Undead keep secrets all to well and the Cult of Orcus uses Undead as a way to venerate there Master) The most common method to acquire dead bodies is to get some yourself through murder and other tricks.


I need a reasonable way to explain why/how the common folk won't burn their dead to counter any possible undead uprising. Religion won't work, as any undead hating deity (the type commoners worship) would tell them to do so from day 1. Practice and custom would bend toward survival, hence the blanket policy for cremation. The more I think, the more it makes sense for them to take as many steps as possible within their means to stop dead people from popping out of the ground.

The stupid thing is that you can't find a justifiable reason to NOT cremate the dead besides the whole "They can still be bought back!" but honestly? What commoner family would have enough money to bring back a loved one? the answer? None, they would just be able to find peace in the knowledge that the commoner might have just rolled up an Adventurer class.


tl;dr The best method to obtain dead bodies to make your own :smallbiggrin:

[Loren]

I think you're on to something here.

In a setting where magic is widely availible cermating corpse is not particularly labour intensive, it would just require some rituals or spells. Going bout things slow wouldn't work too well either. People start to notice unusually high murder rates and do something about them (although this might work with low level adventures, the players shouldn't be facing the sharpest knives in the drawer afterall).

Following along immediately behind a battle or sever plague seems like the best opinion as it would allow the necromancer to get to the bodies before the religious or civil authorities did.

Alternatively, the necromancer in question could be the first one, so no protective measures would be in place. One way to go about accomplishing this is having the necromancer move to an isolated, underdeveloped region (like the Spanish in the New World). A more heavy handed method would be to eliminate necromancy from the setting except if the NPC necromancer is the source.

[TheCountAlucard]

I've been thinking alot about necromancy, and how raising an army of undead soldiers might be achieved.Depends on the game.


Since I'm a DM with a strong focus on story and plot, I've been tackling the problem from a logical standpoint rather than from a rules-based one.Fair enough...


But I've hit a stumbling block. How does one get enough corpses to make the classic undead army of doom? I'll explain where I'm coming from.Who says they have to be classic animate undead zombies? Said undead army could be ghosts, for example.


Let's say you're a necromancer. You've studied the dark arts, collected fell power, and now are going to attempt to raise your first undead. You dig up a grave, kill someone, or find a willing subject; then you cast your arcane ritual and create a zombie/skeleton/ghast/whathaveyou. It works, and all seems to be going great. Only problem is that in order to take over the town/region/world, you're going to need a much larger force. This is where you fail. There aren't going to be nearly enough dead bodies at hand for you to succeed in your task. Why? Because you studied the dark arts.I disagree, but I'll get back to that after tackling your premise.


I'm sure you've got a :smallconfused: look on your face right now, but just bear with me for a moment. You studied the dark arks in order to be able to raise the dead. That means the knowledge of the dark arts was out there. It's safe to assume that the horror stories of what those powers did are still in the horror stories of the common folk as well. If by just discovering these fell spells, you've gotten the urge to make an undead army; who's to say the person who invented/discovered them before you didn't try to do the same?Excuse me - you're the DM; the history of the world is yours to decide. You are the person to say that the person who invented them didn't try to do the same.


Well the commoners are a superstitious bunch.So make them superstitious! Found a society with a religion based on ancestor-worship! Make it clear that only the dead worthy enough to stay behind as ghosts get to do so. The bodies of the dead can be animated and put to work on mundane labor, allowing the people the freedom to pursue higher learning at your necromantic cathedrals.

Now, the tricksy part that no one knows is that every person who dies in your society has his soul trapped in some special MacGuffin you have prepared, and while you let a few become actual ghosts, you have the rest socked away on a secret demiplane as a howling spectral horde, or burned to produce magical items to equip the others, or compressed down to gems of black onyx to animate corpses.


After the heroes/gods saved the day the first time it didn't take much prompting to make them change their ways... namely cremating all of their dead. People, pets, leftovers from the butcher shop; all of it goes to the flame. :smalleek: So where were you going to get that huge undead army from again?This is only the case if you've written the backstory to do so; again, you're the DM.


I need a reasonable way to explain why/how the common folk won't burn their dead to counter any possible undead uprising.My above example works; in this case, they put the dead to work for them, and to them, it's totally not an evil thing.


Religion won't work, as any undead hating deity (the type commoners worship) would tell them to do so from day 1.Who says they have to worship him? Again, you're the DM.


Practice and custom would bend toward survival, hence the blanket policy for cremation. The more I think, the more it makes sense for them to take as many steps as possible within their means to stop dead people from popping out of the ground.Do I have to keep saying that you're the DM?

[tyckspoon]

You can also just not get too hung up on having humanoid undead. Hang out in the woods for a while and get yourself some bears/boars/wolves- they'll probably actually be more dangerous than standard 1 HD human skeletons/ 2 HD zombies, which frankly really suck. Buy some beefy dogs from whoever local is breeding them, use them to hunt your dangerous animal raw materials, and when they get killed/too injured to be useful raise them too. Heck, if you have the appropriate Corpse Crafter feats (the one that makes them do a little bonus energy damage and the one that makes them explode in a negative energy burst when destroyed) you can just raise a flock of chickens or sparrows or anything else small and expendable, and those'll take down a village of Commoners just fine. It doesn't have the style of the traditional Dark Necromancer Ordering Forward The Horde of Your Ex-Loved Ones, but if practical necromancy is your concern? It works. (And we'll just pretend that all the other things that make it near-impossible to raise a meaningful Undead Horde in D&D RAW don't exist for now, I guess.)

(For non-D&D specific, it still basically works; unless your setting's necromancy can only be used on human[oids] for some reason, just hunt down and raise some predator animals/herbivores with unusually nasty defenses as your first few undead. They will usually be much more helpful to you than humanoid bodies with no natural weapons and no intelligence unless the only thing you need is literally mindless unskilled labor.)

[Cerlis]

I'd say for the same reason why we dont prevent *Demographic that harmed us in the past* from immigrating into our country.

Just cus one necromancer back in the day created an undead army is no reason to go all crazy with the undead prevention, just like cus one German back in the day when crazy with a nazi army is no reason to go crazy with the german prevention.

Not an exact parallel but i hope you get the point.

Unless necromancy is as common as it is in innistrad, then its not reasonable to assume it would ever happen to your small town.

----------------

but its a very good point and when result in i think a good plot device. So many times the big bad is looking for a weapon or a secret spell. But what if the "ticking time bomb" as it where, was say.....a ancient battlefield where the remains of thousands err....remain.

In any single town , even if he made off with your whole graveyard, thats probably a dozen usable corpses at best. You'd either have to take one and skit to stay secret or grab all and run and hope they dont tell the village down the road.

But a whole 2 or 3 armies worth of unguarded corpses.... Heros better get to that battlefield before he has a chance to assess his assets.

[Pokonic]

Also, the joy about necromancers is that they always seem to produce apprentices after a few good years of working around. As such, sending one of your men to raise a graveyard while you work on summoning the souls of the dead to make your core, spectral undead. As such, by the time your little necromancer has presumably sneaked his way into the graveyard and raised the dead there, your main force of ghosts and such can basicly kill everyone there. Hence, it could be said that basic necromantic tactics of wait-and-raise are not exactly productive, focusing on not bodies but on souls is.

[Calanon]

Also, the joy about necromancers is that they always seem to produce apprentices after a few good years of working around. As such, sending one of your men to raise a graveyard while you work on summoning the souls of the dead to make your core, spectral undead. As such, by the time your little necromancer has presumably sneaked his way into the graveyard and raised the dead there, your main force of ghosts and such can basicly kill everyone there. Hence, it could be said that basic necromantic tactics of wait-and-raise are not exactly productive, focusing on not bodies but on souls is.

Any good Necromancer worth his mettle will be secretly working on a secret weapon to dominate [Insert Nation's name] Personally? I enjoy using Flesh Colossi to be used as a distraction while I send a band of my soldiers (Wights or something) to assassinate the king and his heir thus throwing the nation into chaos allowing it to be conquered with even greater ease by my nation, a Theocracy dedicated to me and only me :smallamused: thus allowing me to obtain a moderate level of divinity giving me greater control over my now "fledgling" nation. After this conquest of the world will be simply by abusing the siege engines known as the Colossi... Then all show know true power under the heel of [insert Evil Wizards name here]

[Saladman]

I'm definitely in the pro-cremation camp. As was pointed out already, we went nuts with the anti-undead precautions in a world without undead. A world with actual undead isn't going to be so blase about this as to say, "oh, well, it was just the one village that one time, we won't bother ourselves".

But I like the ancient battlefield idea. Just the knowledge of the location becomes a valuable commodity, obscured in vague language by historians, sought by necromancers, perhaps even guarded by some obscure order of scholastic paladins, ripping key pages out of chronicles for their own secret archives.

The broader challenge is just that core rules, as written necromancers aren't very well equipped to raise armies of the dead to begin with. But this is where spell research becomes your friend. Especially under the old D&D idea of trading greater difficulty in casting time, components or specificity for a lower spell level versus power. Imagine a spell that animates every corpse and skeleton in a 1 mile radius under the caster's control, but only on the anniversary of their death, and that takes an hour to cast, in the dark of night. (4E of course gets to the same point with a ritual.) One undead army, or one adventure for the PCs, ready to go.

And you may see an arms race as well. Sticking with spell research, if I'm a necromancer in a country with customary cremation, I'm going to see if I can do anything with that. Say a custom spell that animates a being's ashes as an incorporeal undead under my control. Ghost equivalents are tricky depending on the campaign's cosmology- if the soul's been claimed by a god I may get nothing. So I trade down in spell level for a less powerful, non-intelligent undead, really just a coherent cloud of ash animated by negative energy. Then I start stealing urns.

[Crafty Cultist]

I'm under the impression that cremation would be to costly to be practical. Dismembering a corpse might be more reasonable, but it could always be that the beliefs of the people in a setting consider such things disrespectful to the dead.

I also agree with the undead animals theory. Reanimating a pack of skeletal wolves could certainly give you the means to terrorise a small isolated settlement, especially if you co-ordinate their actions effectively.

[Doppelganger]

1. You don't really agree with the Count. The point of the question is, given this world setup, how do you get an undead army, not what world setup would make it convenient to get an undead army. In this world, you assume the background provided, and work from there.

2. There is a cleric spell called general of undeath that increases how many undead you can control. You don't have the source book on hand right now, but you do think that it was somewhere around +5xcleric level HD of undead, and lasted for 24 hours. (it's an 8th level spell) That might make the traditional hoard of dead loved ones army a little more practical. An arcane version, specificaly one that dictates that the extra undead can't have more than 3 HD a piece, or can only be basic zombies/skeles or something like that, but you get 10xlevel bonus HD would make giant undead armies possible, and explain why high level wizards use human skeletons instead of making much better undead out of them.

3. Yes, humans did take precautions against the undead. However, staking, disembowelment, etc... wouldn't stop the body from being animated. And are you really playing in such a high magic world that every bean farmer knows the exact ways reanimation works? You think it unlikely, to say the least, that everyone knows how to effectively disable corpses so that they can't be raised. There's bound to be misinformation or the unobservant out there. However, burning/staking/etc...ing the dead would probably happen once they started to move again. But by then it's too late (MWAHAHAHAHA!) and you have your army. Until the army is at their door though, the peasants are unlikely to be completely scrupulous about destroying every scrap of once living matter.

4. However, assuming that everyone in the world knows to burn the dead, not everyone is going to burn everything that dies, ever. A quick jaunt through the woods will find literally thousands of corpses within a couple feet of the surface. Sure, they won't be human corpses, but they don't need to be (and if you want to suggest that your people burn those to, than you are rapidly approaching the point where disposing of its dead is the main activity of civilization, something that has never happened). Also, what about the poor? Hermits? Those lost at sea? Even if you aren't patient enough to find a fair number of people who died and where never found, you can just find any place where normal business is disrupted, or disrupt it yourself. Indeed, if you want a plot ark, a necromancer destabilizing society to disrupt the corpse wagons and crematoriums, and thus get their hands on some bodies, might work.

5. You could always use more powerful undead (fewer corpses needed to make a dangerous force) or incorporeal undead.

6. In summary: there will be corpses available, if there aren't they can be made available, and if that isn't an option, you can make do with the few you can get.

7. Oh! If you have enough time, you can just capture some humans (or lions, or something else fairly threatening) and breed your own future undead. Sure, you need to wait centuries to get a decent number, but you're a necromancer. If you can't slow down your aging, you don't deserve the title.

[Aneurin]

To me, the solution is obvious.

The world is very anti-undead. They cremate a lot, or otherwise prevent the dead from being granted unlife.

You are a necromancer. You need to get around this.

What do you do?

You start your own burial/cremation service and use Major Image a lot.



As an alternative, create a cult of immortality and offer to raise anyone who wants to be raised into a new immortal form, with an option on living out a natural life if they wish. Your necromancer could even believe this to be true if you like.

[Pokonic]

Any good Necromancer worth his mettle will be secretly working on a secret weapon to dominate [Insert Nation's name] Personally? I enjoy using Flesh Colossi to be used as a distraction while I send a band of my soldiers (Wights or something) to assassinate the king and his heir thus throwing the nation into chaos allowing it to be conquered with even greater ease by my nation, a Theocracy dedicated to me and only me :smallamused: thus allowing me to obtain a moderate level of divinity giving me greater control over my now "fledgling" nation. After this conquest of the world will be simply by abusing the siege engines known as the Colossi... Then all show know true power under the heel of [insert Evil Wizards name here]

My personal favorite necromancer that I had my PC's fight was one who found a large, well-used hole to the Underdark. He dumped some foul zombifing brew down there to raise a army. It worked. Now, even after his death, there is a pit on the surface of the world where ghouls endlessly toil in the pit to make more of the brew, all while powerful undead fester within miles apon miles of tunnels. Duerger, Drow, Aboliths, Dragons, Beholders, no race is immune from being converted by the stuff. There is now praticly vats of the stuff, and its now being produced now in the underground cites.

All the guy wanted was a steady flow of flesh-bags. What he got was a nation that runs verticaly, and is now expanding in all directions but up. The former necromancers inteligent undead now run the place, and he is now worshiped post-mortem as a god. Of course, he never intended for this to happen, but there not saying that.

[Mordar]

find old crypt for source of skeletal warriors, or try spread diseases or cause some other deadly disaster. Or if possible get two kingdoms to fight each other.

One of my favorite stories (that I created/ran) was an introduction to RoleMaster adventure that was centered on exactly this premise. A naughty necromancer, secreted away in a ruined forest keep wanted to raise an army of the undead (cue favorite evil genius foibles). After working long and hard to fan the flames of war between two neighboring countries, they appear to be on the verge of sealing a peace with the obligatory marriage between prince and princess. So, our necromancer does what any reasonable person would do...kidnapped the princess on the way to meet the prince and staged it so that it appeared soldiers from the Prince's kingdom did the deed (placing blame with a specific faction that was potent and had previously been a "hawk"). Sure, it has its flaws, and the patience of the royal families won out (because they waited for the adventurers to investigate before moving to open war), but not every evil plan comes to pass.

[Calanon]

My personal favorite necromancer that I had my PC's fight was one who found a large, well-used hole to the Underdark. He dumped some foul zombifing brew down there to raise a army. It worked. Now, even after his death, there is a pit on the surface of the world where ghouls endlessly toil in the pit to make more of the brew, all while powerful undead fester within miles apon miles of tunnels. Duerger, Drow, Aboliths, Dragons, Beholders, no race is immune from being converted by the stuff. There is now praticly vats of the stuff, and its now being produced now in the underground cites.

All the guy wanted was a steady flow of flesh-bags. What he got was a nation that runs verticaly, and is now expanding in all directions but up. The former necromancers inteligent undead now run the place, and he is now worshiped post-mortem as a god. Of course, he never intended for this to happen, but there not saying that.

...Do you mind sharing the recipe for that brew? I have some mortals I want to... turn undead... :smallamused::smallwink:

[QuidEst]

Well, there are a few ways I would consider handling this. I think the problem can add a lot to your character.

It's been pointed out that cremation is difficult. If an area has been left alone for a while, well, they might start just burning the bodies. The result isn't the best choice out there, but if a pile of bones works, heavily charred remains should do fine.

You might also work with the DM to allow your character to be a little… innovative.
Blast Shadow for Pathfinder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/blast-shadow)
Ash shade from Phoenix Requiem (http://twilightswarden.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/729.jpg)
Phoenix Requiem actually took the fact that people were cremated and used /that/ to make the undead.

Even in areas that are more thorough in their rites, that's under normal conditions. Poison the water supply, or introduce a plague, and there are too many bodies.

Your point about pets was well-made. A would-be necromancer can get his start with wild animals. It's a pathetic, measly little collection that is easily overpowered if he's found out. Throw on a few illusion spells, though, and he now has a means of getting those never-missed back-alley dwellers. Makes for a more engaging story, having him claw his way up. Also, awesome visual of a pale, scrawny necromancer surrounded by rat, fox, and dog skeletons.

If you want something really fun, though, convince some villagers to go along with it. Find somebody, anybody who's done something so awful that they should be made to pay into the afterlife. (And if there isn't one handy, necromancers have a few madness options available.) Look, see how the hardened criminal repays his debts, laboring for the community, tirelessly digging trenches, moving heavy loads, and never so much as lifting his head? Surely, this is a far better justice! Give a little time for them to get used to it, and don't push it. Have the dead criminal (or better yet, a spare body if you have one) kill somebody and frame a recently-pardoned criminal. New body. Keep it up, with variations each time, but as soon as he's asked to leave, he should throw as much doubt on the possibility that it was him (acting a little hurt), and leave quietly. Travel far to a new place, have the undead dig themselves shallow graves to bide their time in, and repeat. Eventually, he hits a turning point where the villagers ask him to leave and he returns that night with his small army and finishes the small village off as they sleep.

Really, though, the best thing a necromancer could ask for would be a tribal-scale war. The enemy has committed such atrocities! Do they deserve funereal rites? No! If they conquer "us", think of what they will do- women and children sold off as slaves, the old killed off. We must not lose, then- their own fallen shall fight against their former allies! Feigning patriotism, exaggerating or fabricating another group's crimes, or even pretending that the undead are being raised by the enemy and that he is "taking control" of them will allow your character to work with impunity. Bonus points for pulling off something like the Battle of Thermopylae (better known these days from "300"), but with dead warriors defending a tactical position to protect their homelands after their death. Makes the character look like a hero, and he can pretend to let them go to their rest, untouched by fire and safe from any who would try to raise them. (Bluff check!)

If all else fails, he can always spread rumors about the powerful "Head of Vecna"…

[Wiwaxia]

Relevant:
http://i44.tinypic.com/2yjr43o.png

But yeah, I'd go with zombie animals --> make your own bodies if this necromancer is relatively low level, and raise a battlefield for a more powerful necromancer.

Non-corporeal undead are great and all, but sometimes you just need rank-and-file cannon fodder.

[Tyndmyr]

The stupid thing is that you can't find a justifiable reason to NOT cremate the dead besides the whole "They can still be bought back!" but honestly? What commoner family would have enough money to bring back a loved one? the answer? None, they would just be able to find peace in the knowledge that the commoner might have just rolled up an Adventurer class.

Well, the reason for this is the whole undead = soul trapping thing. So, you're apparently denying that soul their rightful afterlife. I could easily see that as evil.

[Shadowknight12]

As an alternative to what everyone else is saying, make all undead intelligent and free-willed (like liches or vampires), and give them a periodically (daily, weekly or hourly) will save to break free from the necromancer's control. Even if the DC is in the skies, a natural twenty would eventually save and your newly-raised zombie, skeleton or ghast is now free and utterly pissed at you (also handily explains free-roaming undead as random encounters). Even without meddlesome heroes or superstitious commoners, you have inherent risks in the dark arts that would send quite a few overconfident necromancers to an early, if utterly foreseeable, grave.

[Pokonic]

...Do you mind sharing the recipe for that brew? I have some mortals I want to... turn undead... :smallamused::smallwink:

Take one beholder eye stalk, twenty pints of elven blood, and two dragon paws (preferably of the shadow kind). Boil in stangent water for several days, scraping off the greenish cheese-like substance off the top every few hours. Add a pound of halfling flesh (to taste), and now all you have to do is to infuse it with negative energy for a month or so. After that, you now have a vat of the stuff to infect around 40-45 people, not counting contamination. If its injested directly, it turns you into a free-willed ghoul, not a zombie.

[LibraryOgre]

I need a reasonable way to explain why/how the common folk won't burn their dead to counter any possible undead uprising. Religion won't work, as any undead hating deity (the type commoners worship) would tell them to do so from day 1. Practice and custom would bend toward survival, hence the blanket policy for cremation. The more I think, the more it makes sense for them to take as many steps as possible within their means to stop dead people from popping out of the ground.

I actually wrote a blog entry on why people might not burn undead. Briefly, it's the assumption that corpses that are more or less "intact" are more useful to their deities, and that grave goods are useful to the spirit in the afterlife (i.e. if you're buried with a lot of money and weapons, when you go to where ever you're bound, you have lots of money and weapons).
http://rpg-crank.livejournal.com/37072.html

However, the typical ways of raising mass armies of undead? Either extremely high-powered spells that will wake an entire graveyard, or the "Wightocalypse"... Create a wight under your control. Armor and protect him as he's going to be very important... since he's going to be killing a lot of people and turning them into wights. The wights he creates will be under his control, and thus under yours. The wights they will create will be under their control, and thus under yours. Wights are not the most powerful of undead, but they're more than a match for a small village, and then you have a lot more wights. 8th level wizards with fireballs can, on average, make cinders of them (4d12 v. 8d6). With wizards, your best bet is overrunning.

[Slipperychicken]

Another idea, which may have been mentioned before, is to market the service to feuding lords. If they don't dig it, find a more desperate/crazy leader and start with him. For violent conflict, necromancy is a dream come true.

[Mystify]

I see 2 main ways.

1: Battlefeilds. Lot of people just killed each other, lots of bodies laying around, and it will take time for them to burn them all.

2: Attrition. Your zombies kill somebody, you raise them. Work in stealth for a while, kidnapping people off the streets, until you can kill an entire town at once. Then do so, and raise them, and now you have a small army.

The trick is figuring out a way that a REAL army can't just swoop down and wipe out your gaggle of undead.

[GolemsVoice]

You can also go to places where huge battles have been fought, especially if the corpses have not been buried, or only in mass graves (because burning thousands of casualties is messy). Most spells that raise the dead don't particularly care about the state of the bones, as long as you've got a whole skeleton, and even if not, I bet battlefields are overrun with spirits (people who died under gruesome circumstances, even better if it was a betrayal or an especially crushing defeat), which are a lot harder to get rid of than the physical bodies. Bam! Instant army.

Also, what others said: work your way up from people outside of communities, small farms, vilages, larger villages etc.

The beauty of undead soldiers is that you can hide them almost anywhere, and you don't need to care about logistics for food and water, and they won't desert, don't need to be payed etc. So grab some people and retreat, and slowly build your army. At first, people likely won't even notice. The trick is to hide long enough to become powerful. But even a small village might give you 100 people, and that's something. Undead also don't care about the fighting qualities of the person. So while a village might only be able to put up a few defenders, because they leave the fighting to able-bodied men, you can take everyone! The women, the old people, the livestock, everything!

[Slipperychicken]

For acquiring bodies, another idea is to post bounties with the local graverobbers. A gold per body seems reasonable if more overt methods aren't working. Be sure to make yourself anonymous via Alter Self, similar magic, or masks if you're feeling showy.

[Calanon]

For acquiring bodies, another idea is to post bounties with the local graverobbers. A gold per body seems reasonable if more overt methods aren't working. Be sure to make yourself anonymous via Alter Self, similar magic, or masks if you're feeling showy.

This seems to risky, honestly I would prefer to get the bodies myself through murder or some other evil act. Buying the bodies would be to costly... Maybe 10sp per body seems fine...

[Mystify]

This seems to risky, honestly I would prefer to get the bodies myself through murder or some other evil act. Buying the bodies would be to costly... Maybe 10sp per body seems fine...
Compared to the 25gp/HD for the animate dead spell, the cost is minor. Also, 1 gp/body and 10sp/body are the same thing, so revised the statement to the same thing.

[Calanon]

Compared to the 25gp/HD for the animate dead spell, the cost is minor. Also, 1 gp/body and 10sp/body are the same thing, so revised the statement to the same thing.

Floops >_> that 0 wasn't supposed to be there :smalltongue:

He's trying to make an army of the dead on a budget so every gp counts, (WBL of 7,000gp allows for the creation of 280HD worth of Zombies/Skeletons with animate dead and thats assuming you plan to use nothing else BUT zombies (Which for a Necromancer is idiotic, since you can just use Enervate to make a few wights and then use Command Undead on the original)

The Wightopocalypse is the cheapest and most effective way to make an Army of the Undead :smallsmile:

[Zeru the Dark]

One of my players once played a tiefling Necromancer by the name of Silas who was so successful that even after his death, our group is still playing through dealing with the consequences of his rise to power. It's dang easy to raise an undead army, provided you are sufficiently powerful and high level to do so. Step one, find some savage humanoids, and use them to attack the local population you wish to raise(I leave the specifics of how you are going to do that to you, the methods are many). Step two, raise everything you can from ensuing battles. Step three, now use your undead to attack isolated villages, and raise everyone in those villages. Pretty quickly, you get an army of undead.

Alternate plans include raising or enslaving an undead that creates spawn and unleashing it on commoners, raising only creatures of a culture that have no care about the dead(savage humanoids work well), and making death cults of people that are brain-washed into serving you in eternal undeath. Of course, this is all assuming that you need to take these steps...you could always come from a culture where undead and necromancy are not a problem(sort of ancient egyptian mummy-kings style or Thrane from Eberron). Not to mention that if you're powerful enough to raise an army of undead, chances are you're powerful enough to kill an army of commoners on your own.

[GolemsVoice]

Also, especially in D&D, necromancers will have access to a wide array of other spells, not just necromancy ones. Those can be used to create corpses, especially in ways that makes cremation unlikely or impossible, to get others to create corpses, or to get others to not make corpses unusable.

[Coidzor]

Well, the reason for this is the whole undead = soul trapping thing. So, you're apparently denying that soul their rightful afterlife. I could easily see that as evil.

Yes, but that interpretation is not really what you'd call iron-clad for puppet-style undead anyway.

[Siegel]

There is also the idea of getting the dead of the farmers. Tell them you raise 1-2 for them as work animals. They might be a bit slower than oxen but they don't need food.

Hell, i really really like the idea of a undead based economy. They are the cheapest laborers around. This could be a great setting to use in a fantasy world.
Also a god of Gold, Wealth and Undead is a cool image.

[GolemsVoice]

It's also probably all kinds of Evil, at least if we accept that undead are generally Evil. If not, it's totally cool. They probably don't even smell worse than the livestock.

[Calanon]

There is also the idea of getting the dead of the farmers. Tell them you raise 1-2 for them as work animals. They might be a bit slower than oxen but they don't need food.

Hell, i really really like the idea of a undead based economy. They are the cheapest laborers around. This could be a great setting to use in a fantasy world.
Also a god of Gold, Wealth and Undead is a cool image.

If i remember correctly I recall Vecna's Kingdom using Undead as slaves for physical labor which allowed for greater Arcane, Economical, and Academic discovers. Can't remember where I heard this from and I'm not sure if it'll work in practice but It sounds like it would...

[Gahrer]

Hell, i really really like the idea of a undead based economy. They are the cheapest laborers around. This could be a great setting to use in a fantasy world.

The third book of the Deaths Gate Cycle (Fire Sea) does this. It depicts a (extremly creepy) society where everyone are raised when they die. Lots of manual labour are done by undead and the necromancers are highly respected. I can highly recommend thoose books.

[Set]

Whether or not cremation is expensive in the setting, this is a fantasy world, and there are tons of cheap ways to get rid of corpses, such as green slime or whatnot. Cultures that want to get rid of their bodies will do so, even if they just practice 'sky burial' and then gather up the bones a month later and seal them in mud 'mummies,' so that even if someone digs up the bodies, they then have to break them out of their fake brick bodies (without breaking the bones), which seems like a crazy amount of work for a 1 HD skeleton. Feeding bodies to sacred animals (such as crocodiles or bears or whatever) could also be an option. Grinding bones up to make 'bone china' is yet another option. Depending on the culture, stripping away the flesh and binding the bones and baking them into mummies might be considered respectful (as it was in Egypt and South America). Some cultures still save bones of their departed, which would frustrate necromancers looking for a complete skeleton.

If the local cultures are careful, in one of dozens of ways, regarding the remains of their dead, a necromancer might find it useful to put a few ranks into Knowledge (history), to locate ancient battlefields, from before this sort of thing was done, or from a time when there were simply too many corpses all at once to do anything other than leave them to rot (ruined city, felled by plague, etc.).

Note that the animate dead spell requires line of effect. All that artwork you see of necromancers in graveyards, with skeletons and zombies bursting up from the ground around them? You can't do that. The spell won't reach them, and even if it did, they won't be strong enough to punch their way to the surface.

Another factor is how weak skeletons and zombies are, relatively. By the time a wizard can make them, at 7th level, they are essentially baggage-handlers, useful only to replace a pack mule. A zombie hydra might be a handy thing to have, but a zombie human is more trouble than it's worth to dig up, and a waste of perfectly good onyx to animate.

Animate dead is pretty much junk, by the time you get it. Yeah, it's the iconic necromancer 'thing,' but the game mechanics fight against you tooth and nail.

Snagging control of a shadow (and, eventually, a greater shadow), on the other hand, totally changes the game. A surprising number of creatures can't even fight back against it, and, thanks to poorly written create spawn rules, that sort of undead can destroy the world in a couple of weeks.

And that, IMO, is the number one problem with the necromancer. It was never designed to actually be played. Some things (animate dead) are utterly pointless. Other things (create spawn) are 'designed for monsters' and ridiculously overpowered in the hands of PCs. Most GMs will step back and prevent you from destroying the game world with your first shadow, but few of them will go the other way and make less broken undead mechanically useful, or worth the onyx needed to animate them.

[Mystify]

Whether or not cremation is expensive in the setting, this is a fantasy world, and there are tons of cheap ways to get rid of corpses, such as green slime or whatnot. Cultures that want to get rid of their bodies will do so, even if they just practice 'sky burial' and then gather up the bones a month later and seal them in mud 'mummies,' so that even if someone digs up the bodies, they then have to break them out of their fake brick bodies (without breaking the bones), which seems like a crazy amount of work for a 1 HD skeleton. Feeding bodies to sacred animals (such as crocodiles or bears or whatever) could also be an option. Grinding bones up to make 'bone china' is yet another option. Depending on the culture, stripping away the flesh and binding the bones and baking them into mummies might be considered respectful (as it was in Egypt and South America). Some cultures still save bones of their departed, which would frustrate necromancers looking for a complete skeleton.

If the local cultures are careful, in one of dozens of ways, regarding the remains of their dead, a necromancer might find it useful to put a few ranks into Knowledge (history), to locate ancient battlefields, from before this sort of thing was done, or from a time when there were simply too many corpses all at once to do anything other than leave them to rot (ruined city, felled by plague, etc.).

Note that the animate dead spell requires line of effect. All that artwork you see of necromancers in graveyards, with skeletons and zombies bursting up from the ground around them? You can't do that. The spell won't reach them, and even if it did, they won't be strong enough to punch their way to the surface.

Another factor is how weak skeletons and zombies are, relatively. By the time a wizard can make them, at 7th level, they are essentially baggage-handlers, useful only to replace a pack mule. A zombie hydra might be a handy thing to have, but a zombie human is more trouble than it's worth to dig up, and a waste of perfectly good onyx to animate.

Animate dead is pretty much junk, by the time you get it. Yeah, it's the iconic necromancer 'thing,' but the game mechanics fight against you tooth and nail.

Snagging control of a shadow (and, eventually, a greater shadow), on the other hand, totally changes the game. A surprising number of creatures can't even fight back against it, and, thanks to poorly written create spawn rules, that sort of undead can destroy the world in a couple of weeks.

And that, IMO, is the number one problem with the necromancer. It was never designed to actually be played. Some things (animate dead) are utterly pointless. Other things (create spawn) are 'designed for monsters' and ridiculously overpowered in the hands of PCs. Most GMs will step back and prevent you from destroying the game world with your first shadow, but few of them will go the other way and make less broken undead mechanically useful, or worth the onyx needed to animate them.
If you build for it, you can get impressive armies of undead following you. Sure, commoner zombies and skeletons are pathetic; but try war troll skeletons, or a skeletal hydra, and then get a dozen of them. Throw on the right feats, and they can dominate the party. The fighter feels useless, since there is not 10 creatures that does his job, and the casters can just lounge around while the army destroys everything.
Bonus points if you have a mass-buffer who's effects can help your mindless undead.

[Blue Bandit]

If your trying to justify the existence of a massive undead army, why not have your necromancy create a new fast acting disease that can wipe out a whole city. That way no one will be left to bury the dead and your necromancer can raise them at his leisure. If you hit a major metropolis you could easily aquire 30,000 or more corpses. This is actually the plan from one of my players in an evil campaign I'm running. It's his goal to use the Pestilence Domain so he can be a carrier of an infectious disease but be be immune to the effects himself. That way he can walk into a town, infected everybody, wait till they die, then raise the corpses.

[bloodtide]

I need a reasonable way to explain why/how the common folk won't burn their dead to counter any possible undead uprising. Religion won't work, as any undead hating deity (the type commoners worship) would tell them to do so from day. Practice and custom would bend toward survival, hence the blanket policy for cremation. The more I think, the more it makes sense for them to take as many steps as possible within their means to stop dead people from popping out of the ground.

Practice and custom would bend toward survival!?! How many examples would you like where this does NOT happen.


Before say at least the 1900's graveyards were not all that common. Sure they existed, but they were not the 'full scale warehousing megaliths' you find in countries like the USA. And to bury a person, by hand, is hard(go dig a six foot deep pit and bury a rock to see for yourself). So fire was very commonly used to get rid of dead bodies. But even so, lots of people die everyday, and not all of them get noticed...

It does make sense to take steps to stop undead.....but, people just don't make sense. For example, a couple years after an undead army apocalypse everyone would have no problem burning dead bodies and such. But after five years, ten years, fifty years, or a hundred years or more...well people don't quite follow the 'old rule' anymore. Just about the whole of human history shows this....

[Roderick_BR]

Well, even if ALL villages/towns in a given place will do it, you can still travel to far away lands, finding a place where this superstition didn't start, or faded away long ago. Someone may have some old graveyards with a nice stack of bodies to use as ammunition.

[ZeroGear]

Easyest method?
Step 1: find two nations who are ready to go to war.
Step 2: get two nations to go to war against each other.
Step 3: go to battlefield and animate dead bodies of soldiers.
Step 4: hire adventurers to kill some big game, such as hydras, dragons, or other things.
Step 5: animate corpses of said big game.
Step 6: kill the adventurers and animate their corpses.
Step 7: start killing smaller towns of nations weakened from war, such as those you used to start your army.
Step 8: go after other nations and take over the world.

I think that should summ up the process nicely.

[mhensley]

hmm... idea for adventure

Wizard hires adventurers to wipe out a local nest of kobolds/goblins/orcs/whatever. The group later learns that the wizard was a necromancer who just wanted a bunch of dead guys to raise. Now they have to go deal with him.

[Whybird]

There's also the option of finding a group of bandits (human, orc, goblin, or otherwise) who aren't averse to fighting alongside the undead and making their leader an offer: Take me in, make me a lieutenant, and when your men fall I'll raise them to bolster your ranks. Plus, when your enemies fall I'll raise them to bolster your ranks. What's more, I'll leave them under your control, so I can't even betray you with them.

Then, he's leading a force which has something like two skeletons to every fighter, reveal that the undead aren't under his control after all and take charge yourself.

[icefractal]

Actually saw an interesting point on this, a while ago. People who are powerful enough to animate the dead are also powerful enough to just fireball the town square and make a bunch of corpses. Or maybe they stick to more subtle means, picking off a few people each night, but the result is the same - dead villagers, and the zombie army gets made anyway.

So villagers don't cremate their dead, because they need them as "ablative armor" against wandering necromancers.

Larger cities with strong guardians don't have to worry about that, so maybe the dead are cremated there. In fact, they'd probably prefer the villages did it as well, but they don't usually have enough resources to support them in doing so.

[Asdity]

Say there's a kingdom that was once in a great war with a nomadic horde of warriors. The kingdom's brave defenders defeated the horde by engaging them in a swampy area, where the horde's numbers and mobility-based tactics worked against them. Digging a horde's worth of bodies from a swamp was considered too much work, so they were left and forgotten.

And surely that nomadic horde had their sacred burial ground, knowledge of which they took to their swampy graves. The best of the horde were obviously buried with their finest weapons and armors, and maybe even their horses.

And then there are those whose bodies were never found. Settlers traveling through snowy mountains or scorching deserts, hunting parties tracking the great beasts or ships lost in the storms. There is bound to be records of lost people, and a dedicated necromancer should be able to find them.

[Mr.Moron]

As for the cremation thing, just get creative with it.

Magic had an interesting solution in their recent set.

The world is beset by monsters of all kinds including zombies raised by necromancers, but nobody cremates. Why?
Cremation has the tendency to create very angry ghosts. You'd just be trading one problem for another, with the added bonus of subjecting the soul of the person to an afterlife of eternal torment as said angry ghost.

Unless you're looking to stick 100% to a purely "standard" setting here you could invent any number of things. Off the top of my head:

-Smoke from cremation lingers and forms "Black Clouds" which can either rain corruption or be collected by necromancers for making super-undead.

-Cremation angers a powerful god that your typical commoner doesn't worship. However that god is more than capable of sending his and/or her angry wrath at them for any mass cremations.

-The act of desecrating a body in any fashion (including cremation) condemns those who do it to a life of misfortune. If you burn many, the world conspires to kill you very soon after.

-Variant of above, burning a body slowly curses the area around it. If you've burned one body, only a few feet are cursed. By the time you've burned 100 nothing will grow within a mile.

-Bodies just aren't flammable. In order to reduce a corpse to ash, the person has to burned to death. People resist this for obvious reasons, many fresh bodies are left lying around in the wilds as the elderly & sick flee.

-Necromancy is a new art, just gifted to the practitioner by a dark god. Nobody knows to protect themselves from it yet.

-The world is filled with large dangerous village eating monsters. While dangerous killers destructive the monsters are ultimately an incarnation of nature/life/whatever. They only eat live flesh and the dead (even bones) are inherently repellent to them. The only way to keep your village from getting eating is to build a graveyard around it. Even roads are lined with graves.

-Pretty much anything else.

[Slipperychicken]

If i remember correctly I recall Vecna's Kingdom using Undead as slaves for physical labor which allowed for greater Arcane, Economical, and Academic discovers. Can't remember where I heard this from and I'm not sure if it'll work in practice but It sounds like it would...

Labor even cheaper than living-slavery will pretty much destroy incentives to make labor-saving devices. Rome was a good example of this, using the first steam engine as a toy because labor was so cheap.

[Vinyadan]

Well, if powerful necromancers were far away in the past, then it is possible that people aren't protecting themselves anymore.

An example: after the ugly and powerful necromancer Bullo almost destroyed the empire, laws were issued to address the problem (such as, "corpses must be burnt"). Five hundred years passed and the empire fell on its own. Then a new religion rose, which was against cremating people; this religion comes from an area far away from the empire and never had any trouble with undead. Also, Bullo is dead and all his books supposedly destroyed. However, it turns out that some books survived and the EvilMan found them. So, he is currently the only large-sized necromancer.

The other option is that necromancy is something new and never seen before (although players might start laughing at the idea).