Aura

[nerdforchrist77]

Ok my question has to do with the item "Phylactery of positive channeling". The thing is, it has a moderate necromantic aura. How can a good aligned cleric use this if it has that kind of an aura. And if indeed a good cleric can use it, then what is the point of an aura?

[Greenish]

Necromantic doesn't mean evil. In the earlier editions, healing spells were necromancy. It's just a school of magic.

[Malimar]

Necromancy isn't evil. [Evil] spells are evil, but not all things of the necromancy school are [evil]. Many things that affect undead (including things that negatively affect undead, such as disrupt undead) can be found in the necromancy school. Necromancy isn't just creation of undead, it's all sorts of powers having to do with death and life and undeath. (In the olden days, healing spells used to be necromancy instead of conjuration. They changed this, probably because of the very same widespread "necromancy=evil" assumptions that are tripping you up now.)

All magic items have an aura relating to whatever school of magic is most relevant to the item. An item's aura is mostly to help identify it (e.g., when using detect magic, you might succeed at the spellcraft check to identify the aura but not at the spellcraft check to completely identify the item, in which case you'd at least know that the phylactery has something to do with death or life or undeath). That was a bigger deal in early 3.5e (when identifying items was hard and expensive) than it is in Pathfinder and late 3.5e (where identifying items is generally easy and cheap).