Convince a DM to allow a Dread Necromancer?

[silverwolfer]

So in any typical party, (this is a play by post game not local) , you end up with some sort of holy do gooder, be it cleric or whatever. An the Dm wanting to avoid evil stuff, or chaotic newts .

What sort of general arguments would you give, to convince DM's to allow a Dread Nec, among the party with the usual anti dead , dead is evil sort of thinking among the cleric/pallys, without it being a train wreck for the party.

[Andreaz]

Question why they have to be evil when most undead can't even act on their own.

[Snowbluff]

Question why they have to be evil when most undead can't even act on their own.
QTF.

Or play a Wizard until the DM cries for mercy, then tell him the DN would have been better balanced.

[silverwolfer]

Not about power balance , it is about roleplay balance.

As for why are undead evil/not evil ....well just a arch trope that is d&d greyhawk

[Snowbluff]

....well just a arch trope that is d&d greyhawk

Too many errors. Can't read. I think. Are you trying to tell us this is a Greyhawk campaign.

Not about power balance , it is about roleplay balance.

As for why are undead evil/not evil

Fluff is mutable. I think you'll live without an undead army, anyway. If anything is is giving your DM logic-cooties, ask him why burning someone alive with a fireball isn't evil when Fear and SoD are.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Or play a Wizard until the DM cries for mercy, then tell him the DN would have been better balanced.Please don't do this. Wrecking a game intentionally to teach a DM a lesson makes the game less fun for everyone involved, not just the DM.

Definitely question the alignment of undead. Being mindless, it seems that a lot of them should fall under the rule (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/description.htm) that:

Animals and other creatures incapable of moral action are neutral. Dogs may be obedient and cats free-spirited, but they do not have the moral capacity to be truly lawful or chaotic.
If undead aren't evil by nature, creating them shouldn't be an evil act in and of itself. If you're creating undead to feed your own ambitions or spread pain and panic, it's evil. If you're using them as foot soldiers to fight a some great evil, I don't see any reason it shouldn't be considered a good (or at least neutral) act.

Maybe you could play a guy who makes contracts with people, giving money either to them now or to their families when they die (a sort of life insurance deal) in exchange for the rights to animate their bodies. It would would be easy to sell a character like that as lawful neutral or even lawful good if his purposes are noble.

[Twilightwyrm]

Simply avoid the abilities that let you animate dead, and stick to those that cause status effects and damage. You play your character as someone that studies death and negative energy, but does not use it for evil. If your DM/players take umbrage, simply argue that death, in and of itself, is not any more evil than a snake or spider. Scary, dangerous even, but not inherently evil. If they want precedent, cite Charon, Osiris and Anubis, both guardians of the dead, neither evil (Osiris is even listed as Lawful Good in Deities and Demigods). You're a guardian of the dead, unlike those other necromancers that abuse their power to wake the dead from their rightful slumber.

[Hopeless]

What about the one who goes around to make sure these people aren't raised into undead by insuring they would have to deal with your dread necromancer first if they want to start raising an army of the undead the fact that you're using an army of the dead to fight the really vile evil should amount to something after all?

The difference?

Your undead only retaliate against attacks on them, the regular undead prey on life... whats better someone keeping the regular folk safe every night or having them sleep awful uncomfortably knowing someone out there is playing with their ancestor's remains?

[Snowbluff]

Please don't do this. Wrecking a game intentionally to teach a DM a lesson makes the game less fun for everyone involved, not just the DM.

I disagree. Every campaign I have ruined was fun to had by all.

"How did you do that?"
"I am wizard, Nick."
"Why did you do that?"
"I don't care. Can you unban ToB now?"

"Holy crap, Snowbluff."

"It was kind of like watching a giant shark and a giant octopus fight. Except I was a hydra and the other thing was the kraken."

Broken games can be fun, if only because of how dysfunctional they become.

[Khedrac]

A concept I have considered for a character is a DN starting Lawful Neutral but who will end up LE (and probably be hunted down and killed by the rest of the party - possibly).
The character sees himself as an upholder of law and justice (yes to law and no to justice, but there you go). In his mind (and possibly the DM may like it enough to add a country where this is so) execution is not a viable punishment for law-breakers - someone just comes along and resurrects them if they are powerful enough. So instead he turns law-breakers into undead - they cannot be raised until the undead are put down, and then only by the more powerful spells.

I would not play him as a minion-mancer - you end up taking far too much of the group's play-time on your actions, but having one or 2 minions around for trap detection etc. should not be over-powered. Also whilst the loss of a minion is a shame as it means they can now be raised, the extra punishment their soul has been through might teach them something.

As I see it the character is deluding himself and is slipping down the path to evil. This is not inevitable - the rest of the party might be able to convince him it's wrong, though where one would end up then I don't know. Also for this reason it might be best suited to a level-capped game.

[silverwolfer]

Anyways...........

Maybe the suggestion of being an undertaker is not a bad idea.

[Flickerdart]

Why do you want to play a necromancer in a game where the DM wants to avoid evil stuff, and the PCs see undead as evil? If you want minions, be a summoner or something, and save your DN for another game.

[Dragvandil]

Depends on the DM. Since you seem to need to be able to justify this, i have a feeling he is big on Role play and story.

The best argument, is that if a party is always doing lawful good things, it gets boring and devolves in to a hack-n-slash, same with any other alignment. Eventually there is no drama and the characters/story becomes bland and boring. "Look at us, agreeing on almost everything." but where you really want to be as a party, is neutral. Ideally true neutral. This adds weight and drama to the choices made in the story and it makes role play a much bigger central thing. It creates tension and distrust, and even scheming.

Adding this char in gives a much sturdier leverage point for inter-party drama and can create fuel for more role play. And it makes the party need a reason to stick together (D&D syndrome is bad. Lawful neutral often gets a bad rap as being the "Soldier mentality", but really almost every player/character has that mentality. "Well this is what we are doing, so i am going to do it." its practical, but if you can avoid it, you get more interesting Role Playing experience.) which stmulates the DM to be a better writer and create motivation for the individual characters and the group as a whole. Which, again, leads to better Role play and drama.

And speaking as a DM, a party that is rubbing each other the wrong way is more interesting, even if we are using soldier mentality to justify why they are together. Events and battles become more interesting and more challenging when your characters react stronger to the stimuli.

In brief. More unique motivation means more interesting EVERYTHING. If a Pally has to heal you, he isnt just healing you he is creating a plot point that can change both of each others views towards each other by building camaraderie.

[Dragvandil]

also, who isnt a sucker for an evil person doing good? Hellboy, Ghost Rider, Sons of Anarchy, Breaking bad, etc. You dont even have to go to far out, look at Drizzt and Zaknafein. "I'm a Drow, I make devils and demons winche and flee in fear, but look at me overcoming adversity and prejudice and being good!"

The anti-hero is almost a cliche at this point, theres even a comedy coming out, "Warm Bodies" which looks AMAZING btw I think they are going in a fun fresh new take on their genre.

[Answerer]

Heroes of Horror discusses in an official capacity how a necromancer can avoid being Evil. Dread Necromancers are explicitly not required to be Evil, just barred from going all the way to Good.

If there's a Paladin in the party, he's going to have a problem with that "knowingly associated" clause (assuming that fighting alongside your mindless minions counts as association), but frankly that's a problem with the Paladin class, not the Dread Necromancer class. One's class should not be telling the rest of the party what they're allowed to play.

[Amnestic]

Just because "(Mindless) Undead aren't evil" doesn't mean that the goody-two-shoes won't still have problems with it. You're still desecrating corpses and people tend to get a bit squicky over that, especially "good guys". I'ma echo what Flickerdart said - if the DM isn't a fan of Dread Necro because of party composition/RP reasons (rather than mechanics), you may be better off just playing a summoner archetype (whether that be Cleric, Wizard, Druid or the actual PF Summoner) character and saving a DN for another game.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Heroes of Horror discusses in an official capacity how a necromancer can avoid being Evil. Dread Necromancers are explicitly not required to be Evil, just barred from going all the way to Good.

If there's a Paladin in the party, he's going to have a problem with that "knowingly associated" clause (assuming that fighting alongside your mindless minions counts as association), but frankly that's a problem with the Paladin class, not the Dread Necromancer class. One's class should not be telling the rest of the party what they're allowed to play.

It should also be noted that the associates section of the paladin class is -not- part of the code of conduct. It's a seperate entry just below the code. If you insist on taking it as RAW instead of misplaced RP advice, then it reads as the paladin is -incapable- of associating with evil characters. His own class feature would compel him to leave the group if someone evil joined. In which case, you get to ask the DM why he gets to limit everyone else's choices instead of anyone else getting to limit his.

Anyway, if the DM is willing to allow a necromancer wizard be in the game he shouldn't have a problem with a DN. They're functionally equivalent. As long as the DN doesn't actually raise any undead he's just a powerful debuffer of a list caster. Only on hitting level 19 when he creates the phylactery he's going to use to become a lich at 20 does his class choice become a problem. Between few campaigns surviving to that level and even fewer PC's surviving to that level in a campaign, that issue is such a long way off that it's not worth considering at character creation or for whether the class should be allowed.

[nedz]

Play a Sorcerer, take the appropriate Spells and Feats and put some ranks into Perform(Reggae). The required hairstyle is just fluff anyway.