exalted necromancy?

[buttcyst]

does casting necromancy spells count as evil acts even if they don't have the evil descriptor? caster with an exalted feat has several necromancy spells picked but has NG alignment.

[geekintheground]

if it doesnt have an [evil] descriptor, then no it isnt evil. HOWEVER you can have npc's THINK its evil (my DM is doing this, the npc in question will only help us if we're good and we need her help)

[Gildedragon]

if they don't have the [evil] descriptor they are not an inherently evil act.

edit: swordsaged

[ArcturusV]

Well, it's really a setting issue. Some settings count the Negative Energy that undead are fueled by as basically the magical equivalent of toxic sludge. Just having that around is making the world a worse place. That's why undead are Evil, destroying them is a Good act, etc.

If that's not an issue in your setting, then Necromancy doesn't really have Evil problems, just social taboo problems about the sanctity of the deceased.

[Slipperychicken]

In my personal opinion, even of it isn't truly evil, making negative energy-powered undead is bad enough that an [Exalted] person wouldn't go for it.

As long as it isn't negative energy and hurting souls or causing needless suffering, it should be fine.

[MrNobody]

Like lots of other things, necromancy it's not evil by itself. There are good uses and bad uses of this school, as for every other school.

The evidence is given by Book of exalted deeds: in the new spells introduced by the book you can find different necromancy spells, even between ULTRA-GOOD "sanctified spells".

I'm talking about Affliction, Secure corpse*, Phoenix's fire, Last judgement, Righteous glare, Sicken evil, Divine sacrifice*, Sanctify the wicked, Martyr's blood, Healing touch.

Those spell I marked with * don't even have the "good" descriptor, but still they are in BoED.
So i think casting necromancy is not a truely evil act by itself, but is more likely to become evil.

Ability drain, for example, is not something good since you are stealing vital energy form the target. BUT if you choose to paralize and arrest an enemy draining his DEX score to 0 insted of killing him (using Evocation or conjuration spell), this is a Good choice, IMHO.

At last, the only exalted characters that are prevented form using most of necromancy spell are those ho chose "vow of nonviolence" and "vow of peace". In fact, quoting from BoED Vow of nonviolence:


To fulfill your vow, you must not cause harm or suffering to humanoid or monstrous humanoid foes. You may not deal real damage or ability damage to such foes through spells or weapons, though you may deal nonlethal damage. You may not target them with death effects, disintegrate, pain effects, or other spells that have the immediate potential to cause death, suffering, or great harm.

This explicitly prevent those character form using most of necromancy spell, but for the effect they have, not because they are from that school. The use of Players handbook "False Life" spell is still legal.

[undead hero]

Take the metamagic feat Purify Spell and cast evil spells all day long?

I think purify adds the good descriptor to spells.

[Slipperychicken]

Take the metamagic feat Purify Spell and cast evil spells all day long?

I think purify adds the good descriptor to spells.

It doesn't, however, remove the [Evil] descriptor, which makes casting the spell an evil act. Casting a spell with both [Evil] and [Good] descriptors would be an Evil act.

[Fouredged Sword]

I am so going to have to make a exalted dread necromancer who uses purified necromancy spells to raise undead with a good aura.

Just for the look on the party paladin's face.

[graymachine]

There's a section at the beginning of Libris Mortis that deals with this very issue; essentially, it discusses determining whether or not necromancy is inherently evil for your campaign and walks you through the consequences of that. I highly recommend giving it a read.

[Coidzor]

Similarly, the Tome of Necromancy (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=34248) by Frank and K has an interesting perspective on the alternative takes on necromancy and various undead.

[mangosta71]

I am so going to have to make a exalted dread necromancer who uses purified necromancy spells to raise undead with a good aura.

Just for the look on the party paladin's face.
Unless my memory is faulty, you have to be Good to take exalted feats, and Dread Necromancers have to be non-Good.

[Coidzor]

Unless my memory is faulty, you have to be Good to take exalted feats, and Dread Necromancers have to be non-Good.

At creation, which is rather nebulous anyway to the point of waveability if certain other criteria are met. They suffer no penalties for becoming Good and are not actually prevented from becoming Good.

If using necromancy spells isn't categorically evil, but only evil in specific cases, then they can become Good after char gen anyway. Depending upon how mindless undead work, they can even be minion-masters and maintain a good alignment.

[Fouredged Sword]

Or just make mummies.

[Lynnalynna]

Within the Magic of Incarnum book, they actually approach this flavorwise while talking about re-flavoring the Necrocarnate Prestige Class to fit for a good aligned character vs evil one. Saying that necromancy could work for good aligned and exalted characters by saying you are summoning things like Honored Dead (think the Norse Enharjar), and fueling them with a special form of positive energy vs negative energy. It was basically a way to rework your undead and necro spells, a little bit of reflavoring and a lot of bit of GM-May-I, but a way around things.

[Arael666]

I had a similar discussion with my DM, maybe it will help you somehow.

He argued that negative energy is "evil" (creates undead, inflicts wounds, etc).

I argued that negative energy is an element, such as fire, water or positive energy. Even the plane is called "elemental plane of negative energy". Thus, you can't treat negative energy as "evil" the same way you can't treat fire as "evil".

In your case, a school of magic per se can't be evil. Is conjuration, ilusion and transmutation evil? No. Then why treat necromancy difently?

P.S. the DM "won" the debate with the "my world, my rules" argument. Can't beat that one.

EDIT: If my memory is correct, cure spells used to be from the necromancy school. Anyone care to check that?

[Coidzor]

If your DM is down on exploring vanilla necromancy and determining its actual ethical basis or does so and decides it is straight-up evil and so is any other use of negative energy, then there's at least one homebrew option that you could look into proposing, the Redeemer of Regrets (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9994058&postcount=14), which nicely ties in with the suggestions of using Deathless.

[Fouredged Sword]

In my games, necromancy is evil. That said, enchanters are considered even worse.

It is posible to USE necromancy without being evil. If you stick to spells that don't break the rules (negative levels, ability drain, poison, raising dead creatures, ect), but it is the effects of the spells that are evil, not the spells themselves.

Killing a bunch of commoners with a fireball is just as evil.

[Rhynn]

You might talk your GM into replacing your undead with deathless. This would go well with the awesome "Honored Dead" idea Lynnalynna suggested. There's fairly few differences between the types, comparing them...

Deathless are subject to energy drain.
Deathless can't run. (That's a weird one, and I'd probably remove or ignore it as DM!)
For deathless, rebuking acts as turning, turning acts as rebuking/bolstering.


It seems like an equal trade; indeed, the deathless type is strictly weaker, absent considerations of how common evil and good clerics are. (If you're an exalted necromancer, your enemies are more likely to be evil clerics than good or even neutral clerics.)

[Coidzor]

In your case, a school of magic per se can't be evil. Is conjuration, ilusion and transmutation evil? No. Then why treat necromancy difently?

P.S. the DM "won" the debate with the "my world, my rules" argument. Can't beat that one.

EDIT: If my memory is correct, cure spells used to be from the necromancy school. Anyone care to check that?

A better example would be Enchantment, which is largely about denying people free will or outright mindraping them into your playthings, and yet dominate isn't evil, but using it in certain ways certainly is evil, like nonconsensual sex or a disposable murder-patsy.

Pretty poor reasoning though, and one that anyone who has to resort to it deserves to be called on, since it means they can't actually justify the reasoning behind their setting design and won't admit to having never considered something.

Generally though, it's only an issue if he's inconsistently treating it as evil as per standard RAW. If he's applied the necessary fixes to make negative energy evil across the board and positive energy good across the board, well there you go then. Frank and K go into that a bit, actually, which is one of the reasons I'm so fond of the Tome of Necromancy.

I believe so, though I don't have the materials to check for myself. This is the general consensus of people who've played earlier editions when it's come up though.

[Rhynn]

In AD&D 2E, cure light wounds and the rest were indeed Necromancy spells (of the Healing Sphere, a separate cleric classification). I'm pretty sure 3.0 made it Conjuration already, but can't be arsed to dig out my 3.0 PHB from the basement.

[Arael666]

Generally though, it's only an issue if he's inconsistently treating it as evil as per standard RAW. If he's applied the necessary fixes to make negative energy evil across the board and positive energy good across the board, well there you go then. Frank and K go into that a bit, actually, which is one of the reasons I'm so fond of the Tome of Necromancy.

I would be completely ok with that, if that were the case. My DM is a good guy, but tends to use "I think it should be like this, then it will be like this" way too often. Generaly, the good campaings he writes make up for that flaw.

[Gildedragon]

+1 on the enchantment issue. If any school merited the [evil] tag that'd be it, followed by conjuration. Dominating people is super sketch in the best of cases.

Necromancy, for the most part is no worse than any other school, as its spells are a hodgepodge of all of them: enervation seems transmutation-y, summon and create undead seem conjuration-y, etcetera.

There is some cognitive dissonance when an enchanter that routinely dominates fellas can be Exalted, or at least good; whereas a necromancer who merely uses one of the six elements to boost the workforce, and reduce drudgery is at best neutral and oftentimes evil if not vile.

At my table [healing] is necro, and most of its spells that had the [evil] tag loose it, as elemental planes are unaligned. The creation of certain undead (the hungry or inherently murderous ones: morhg's, vampires, wights, ghouls, shades, etc) keeps the tag.
Then again I do allow evil clerics to spontaneously heal and turn, and good clerics to inflict and rebuke (or even cure and rebuke vs inflict and turn)

[buttcyst]

Thank you for the input, I agree on most arguments, I am going to do some reading in libris mortis and tome of necromancy. ultimately, the player in question isn't raising undead or anything like that, but spells like contagion, poison, and a few others like that are all necromancy. I have instructed my player to read this thread because I found it tat insightful towards good v evil spellcasting in general. I'll do my homework and who knows, I may just add any wisdom I gain from my research and just keep this thread going.

[WarlockLord]

As far as animating the dead goes, this (http://dndtools.eu/spells/champions-of-valor--28/animate-with-the-spirit--305/) and a few spells to create deathless exist.

[Psyren]

You could use the good-aligned Necrocarnate adaptation (MoI pg. 135) to play a Vivicarnate - raising powerful zombies but with exalted flavor. You'd also be a powerful frontliner/skillmonkey in your own right.

[tyckspoon]

Thank you for the input, I agree on most arguments, I am going to do some reading in libris mortis and tome of necromancy. ultimately, the player in question isn't raising undead or anything like that, but spells like contagion, poison, and a few others like that are all necromancy. I have instructed my player to read this thread because I found it tat insightful towards good v evil spellcasting in general. I'll do my homework and who knows, I may just add any wisdom I gain from my research and just keep this thread going.


Those spells are not evil because they're Necromancy, they're evil because (at least according to the Book of Exalted Deeds) the use of poison and disease as weapons is inherently evil (although I've never seen a good justification for why stabbing somebody with a poisoned sword is evil while simply stabbing the same foe is not, assuming said foe is a legitimate target for stabbing in the first place. Diseasing them is rather more nasty.) A character using such methods will not necessarily change alignment and can be solidly good, but will not maintain the standard of Exalted Good.

[ArcturusV]

Note that the Poisons thing, it explicitly mentions "harmless" poisons aren't evil, such a Drow Sleep Poison and Oil of Topor that merely KO people.

I think the Poison is Evil is more derived from the Mercy and Sadism sort of angle. Poisons are, well... not fast acting (Even the quickest in game usually takes a good half an hour to come to full effect). And poisons are probably in world very, very painful. Being poisoned isn't some relaxing slip into the darkness, it's being in agony knowing you are going to suffer more until some ultimately terrible fate befalls you (like Blindness, Death, etc) unless you are lucky.

Course, in game mechanics poisons aren't quite that bad. But that's probably the reason it's "Evil". You're killing someone, slowly, painfully, and drawing out their suffering. As opposed to just sticking them with your sword again to end their life admittedly painfully, but much quicker and cleaner. You're hitting them with a poisoned dart and watching them struggle to try and save themselves for an hour or so.

[Chronos]

Poisons are, well... not fast acting (Even the quickest in game usually takes a good half an hour to come to full effect).
The standard for a poison, followed by all of the poisons in the SRD, is an initial effect, then a secondary effect (usually but not always a repeat of the initial) one minute later. I'm not aware of any which takes as long as a half an hour, and they all have a significant portion of their effect immediately.

[ArcturusV]

One of those times where old edition knowledge crept into my mind. Nevermind.

Still, one minute, 10 rounds. That's a lot of time to watch someone scramble around in agony.

[Coidzor]

One of those times where old edition knowledge crept into my mind. Nevermind.

Still, one minute, 10 rounds. That's a lot of time to watch someone scramble around in agony.

Or be paralyzed, or get more and more out of it until they lose consciousness.

Only Con damage kills, and if Con damage is going to be used, you're going for something front-loaded which will likely kill most nigh-instantly.

Wis damage puts people to sleep, Cha makes 'em catatonic, and Int damage makes them unconscious, and strength and dex damage both paralyze in different ways.

Though I'm really confused as to why they'd be watching the victim running around for 10 rounds without some kind of combat scenario. Which would mean they'd be combining it with more traditional measures or multiple doses.... or running away to let the secondary damage take effect, I suppose.

[ArcturusV]

Well, I wouldn't use poison in combat anyway. By the time they are really succumbing, you're likely to have already killed them. So the typical scenario I see it used in is Assassinations. Someone's prepped one attack to take you down. Death Attack + Poison, a dart/arrow, etc. They're plinking you with a toxin from 500 feet away, and can't easily follow up if the guy ducks behind cover.

I've never really seen rules for Multiple doses. Not like I can poison some guy's roasted boar and put 10 doses of an ingested poison in to take effect.

So you gotta figure that damage is, well, not pleasant. Like seeing someone on a hallucinogenic because they ate the wrong stuff out in the forest. It is NOT just slipping into a daze or something. It is terrible, terrible stuff to see. Or a Paralytic toxin, it isn't just some numbness that takes you cleanly. You spend your time in fear and panic.

I just can't imagine that poisoning is easy or clean. Just because you're being KOed by it (Through stat damage) doesn't mean the way into that lala land is really pleasant.

Then again, that's probably personal flavoring rather than RAW. But I don't think most people would argue something like losing 1d6 Int or being paralyzed is necessarily pleasant. And it makes sense for why poisons would be [EVIL]. Killing someone isn't evil. But torturing them and drawing out their suffering IS evil.

[Coidzor]

Well, I wouldn't use poison in combat anyway. By the time they are really succumbing, you're likely to have already killed them. So the typical scenario I see it used in is Assassinations. Someone's prepped one attack to take you down. Death Attack + Poison, a dart/arrow, etc. They're plinking you with a toxin from 500 feet away, and can't easily follow up if the guy ducks behind cover.

Then you're not using strong enough poison or enough of it, aside from con damage which is dealing damage as part of softening up the HP of the enemy.

If that's your best bet then you've already given up on trying to seriously kill them anyway. :smallconfused:


I've never really seen rules for Multiple doses. Not like I can poison some guy's roasted boar and put 10 doses of an ingested poison in to take effect.

Multiple attacks, multiple instances of dex damage, paralyzed enemy. Live capture with less of the general fuss of trying to use nonlethal or other means.


So you gotta figure that damage is, well, not pleasant.

Not pleasant, sure, but nothing worse than being butchered while still alive, so you haven't really argued anything there, and neither has WOTC.


Like seeing someone on a hallucinogenic because they ate the wrong stuff out in the forest. It is NOT just slipping into a daze or something. It is terrible, terrible stuff to see. Or a Paralytic toxin, it isn't just some numbness that takes you cleanly.

Depends on how much damage they take at once. An animal taking 2 int damage when it has only 2 int to start with, for instance. How are you going to fit all of that into 6 seconds without being narmy by somehow drawing a distinction between that and jabbing metal skewers through their eyes and gizzards and the like.

A bad trip isn't necessarily the same as wis damage anyway. That's at the DM-call level.

How do you know? Most venomous animals use stuff like neurotoxins, not paralytic ones, so there's no good realworld analogs of which I'm aware.


You spend your time in fear and panic.

Oh, you mean like when people are trying to kill you. :smallamused: Making people feel fear or panic isn't evil when you use intimidate. Or cast Cause Fear... Or have them tied up or under the effects of hold person when they "know" that their death is imminent.


I just can't imagine that poisoning is easy or clean. Just because you're being KOed by it (Through stat damage) doesn't mean the way into that lala land is really pleasant.

Again, neither is being bloodily butchered into tiny pieces by the party barbarian.


Then again, that's probably personal flavoring rather than RAW.

Yep.


But I don't think most people would argue something like losing 1d6 Int or being paralyzed is necessarily pleasant.

Way to strawman. No one's claiming it's a bed of roses. Just that it's not significantly worse and in some cases better than tearing people apart with claws and teeth and steel.


And it makes sense for why poisons would be [EVIL]. Killing someone isn't evil. But torturing them and drawing out their suffering IS evil.

Evidently many of us disagree with your assertion that this is self-evident.

Again, the damage is in 6 seconds. And then again in one minute. There's no drawing out their suffering involved. You'd have a better argument with Pathfinder, which broke the effect of poisons and disease up over the course of several rounds.

[pyromanser244]

ArcturusV, the problem I see with your argument is that you're assuming the intended use of the poison. there is nothing pleasant about being stabbed and bleeding to death is arguably more horrible than most poisons. yet how often do Good and even Exalted people leave their enemies to just that fate? death is horrible, but once we've decided to inflict it the tools used is so much fluff. at least as far as morals go.