Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jnrhayz 09-03-04, 10:29 AM	I have been wanting to develop a background for a Necromancer(probably cleric, mage, going towards mystic theurge to max spell ability). I was thinking a person who through his cleric learning (probably some death diety) believes that when someone is dead there soul is gone. So, he wants to use skeletons and other mindless undead to do menial labor and improve the lives of the common folk. He fights endlessly against "sentient" undead, but believes that the other could be used for the betterment of all races. For alignment I was thinking Chaotic good, but raising dead as a violation of good would make him Chaotic Neutral at best. I was thinking Chaotic because(from advice I gave to someone else) he would be trying to bring about the fall of a class system so that all men (and women and all other races) would be equal and enjoy the same lifestyles. Money would not be needed and all that other communist stuff. My problem is that my past has made me hate the Chaotic Neutral alignment. After so many bad experiences where people think they can do whatever they want you lose faith in something. However, I truly believe he would make a good Chaotic(willing to do whatever it takes to realize his dream) Neutral(because creating undead is evil in D&D). Anyway, any help with filling up the background or alignment arguements would be appreciated.
aleshandre 09-03-04, 11:58 AM	You have no doubt heard the cliche, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions". He could very well be Chaotic Evil, but has a sincere desire to make life easier for others. Although making life easier for others isn't evil, the means by which he is trying to accomplish it can be. This is a matter of the actions - not motivations determine the alignment. He may even be completely convinced that his plan is for the good of all humanity, but in the end, the results could (and likely would) result in a worse outcome than letting the existing class system to stay in place, due to necromancy becoming more prevelant and accepted and the newer necromancers seeking for personal power instead of the general good.
jnrhayz 09-03-04, 12:28 PM	Well, I thought of that actually, but according to the D&D rules evil is primarily defined by selfishness. I don't know really, it is one of those crazy alignment doesn't work well situations I think. He is trying to help society = Good He is violating the precepts of good(creating undead) = evil He would do other things to help society, but like any neutral character he does evil stuff also. So as long as I maintain a balance (which is never easy) then he should be okay. I guess that raises another question. Can the only thing he do be create undead and still be considered neutral. Should he in every other aspect of his life do only good? He wants to bring about the fall of one society and create a new one = Chaotic (now), but after some progress will change to neutral and then lawful as his society becomes a reality. He also fights undead that don't fit in his society and if he actually accomplished creating a new society he would create laws against those actions probably will severe penalties. I think he would start Chaotic Neutral (because he is actively trying to end the current lawful system), but he wants to create a new system (communist type system) which would make him lawful at that time. I can't figure it out. Any more help would be appreciated.
Eyes in the Darkness 09-03-04, 06:02 PM	The raising of undead for these purposes presents an unusual problem in that it presents a couple of "easy out" problems, namely: 1) While using those that died of natural causes (disease and old age) or from unplanned accidents (ranging from a fall off a horse to being a soldier in battle) will provide a good supply of bodies with which to raise skeletons and zombies, what if you need more bodies to fuel the revolution? The character could begin to justify "planned collections" of "enemies of the revolution", along with the families of enemies if he slides too far down the slope of justification. 2) The chaos created by a regime change has a rather negative effect on society. Is your character really causing all this trouble for the good of his fellow man, or for his own selfish and megalomaniacal desire to control the world? 3) Related to #1, what if the necromancer branches off into summoning demons and devils? After all, they are quite powerful creatures that could surely speed up the changes required to push society in the direction it needs to go. Summoning celestial creatures might work except for the fact that they will not particularly appreciate being asked to do things by someone who in their eyes does nothing but evil. 4) Finally, even if your necromancer truly feels in his heart that his activities are not evil in raising dead, or if he does other deeds to help offset the damage done, the average person is just going to see him as some wicked grave robber who wants to cause a great deal of pain and suffering by toppling the current power structure. This negative opinion will weigh heavily on him and make him feel that any means are necessary to get his message through the thick skulls of those around him. Despite all these reasons, I still like this character, for he has some interesting flavor to him. Actually, I have a campaign world in the works where the evil descriptors have been removed from the animate dead and create undead spells and an entire society is based around the creation of undead to serve as laborers and guardians of the knowledge of the past. Sort of like how the ancient Egyptians would save money their entire lives to be mummified when they died, the people of this society save up for years so as to pay for reanimation afterward. The thing is that since their religion despises the traditional gods of the world, they would prefer to have their souls bound to a corpse reanimated by negative energy. Of course, vampires and ghouls are rare in their society because they are seen in a poor light for requiring the lives of the living. Really, unlike a lot of other evil things, undead are tricky because they depend on a great deal of cultural factors, whereas things like murder are universally seen as evil. However, if you want to play an undead raising necromancer in a world where that sort of thing is looked down upon, you must be extremely careful with the choices you make, lest you slide down an evil path.
Mancer 09-04-04, 01:03 PM	I don't think this character is evil at all. Yes, Eyes in the Darkness, the first and third points you cited are valid, but until such time as it comes to that, his character is in the clear. As far as the second point is concerned, all revolutions create chaos, but that doesn't mean they aren't always justified. As to your fourth point: just because someone percieves him to be evil doesn't make him so. There have been plenty of heroes who have commited thankless good deeds: its practically a staple of comic book superheroes. Jnrhays, if you really want to have a character of good alignment, go ahead and do so. If your DM later changes your alignment, so be it, but this guy really sounds like he has good intentions. If he was truly "willing to do whatever it takes to realize his dream," then he would have no qualms about raising intelligent undead. Also, fighting an unjust system isn't neccessarily chaotic, although it is arguably unlawful. I'd say the PC described so far is of NG or N alignment. Maybe I'm just misinterpreting him, though.
jnrhayz 09-07-04, 10:09 AM	Well, his hatred from *intelligent* undead basically stems from my not so great understanding of the undead creation spells. Are the souls trapped in all undead or just intelligent undead? I will have to look that up. Also, intelligent undead could (after centuries of unlife) decide they should be the masters and not the servants. Basically he is trying to create what in our world would be robotic slaves. Except they are skeletons. Depending on how the DM ran the campaign would determine whether he slid toward evil or not. I mean if everywhere I went I was persacuted and attacked and no progress at all with anyone in the world he would probably become discouraged, but that is more of a roleplaying through various situations thing. I have actually thought of trying to use the gentle repose? I don't know, it is a spell that keeps the body from decomposing, and then creating zombies that look like people to be butlers and such and you remove a lot of the I hate undead stuff because they look like people. Of course that would be a good way to introduce them into society. I have a lot more questions than answers right now about where to start...
krichaiushii 09-07-04, 05:14 PM	It could work. The Scarred Lands setting has Hollowfaust - a city of similar-minded necromancers. An excellent citybook overall, and worth checking out for other methods of fleshing out your ideas. Regardless, staging a revolution to install a new ruling party might be chaotic at first, but as the end result is lawful, perhaps neutral is best - to start with. Or let him be lawful neutral. Lawful has some precendent because LG paladins regularly overthrow anything-evil aligned governments to establish their own enlightened rules, so why not treat your necromantic uprising the same way.
TheEnder 09-07-04, 06:12 PM	why not chaotic good? Good necromancers are rare in D&D, but they have been known to pop up. "Creating undead is never a good act". I don't see why this has to be. The guide is not infallible. It doesn't make any sense for your character to be evil at all the way you're describing it. Make him the alignment you thing best fits his personality, not what fits his specialty school/profession. It sounds like it will makes for an interesting PC.
Ranthanas 09-07-04, 07:18 PM	It works only if you houserule. Some twit gave Animate Dead and related spells the [evil] descriptor in 3.5, thus blocking the concept. *sigh* Still, many neutral people think they are good. I'm in favour of houseruling this rule out of the way. At that point good (and probably misunderstood) necromancer becomes a fun concept. Probably works better with the cleric mechanics than the wizard ones due to negative energy clerics being able to rebuke/command undead. Mystic Theurge probably isn't worth it.
TheEnder 09-07-04, 09:46 PM	yeah but wizard necromancers are the real powers. They are the ones who dedicate themselves to the science of death, experimenting... creating zombies, undead monsters, and the like. Clerics power more has to do with evil/good and the power of their god than any real interest in the science.
amethal 09-08-04, 06:34 AM	I see him as neutral good. A person who has identified how he can be force for good in the world, and has plans for the betterment of everybody's lives, but doesn't have a preference for lawful or chaotic methods to bring this about. This would assume that your character would be equally happy to achieve his goal by lobbying the current rulers into passing laws to make his activities legal, or by flouting the laws against creating undead "for the common good". Then I'd follow the suggestions made in other posts, and ask the DM to rule that creating mindless undead is not an evil act. I wouldn't worry if he decides to keep it as evil though. It would be fun to roleplay a neutral good character as his repeated evil acts drove him towards true neutral, and then a true neutral who had to constantly be as good as possible in order to avoid his evil undead creation driving him towards neutral evil. Finally, the character could descend into neutral evil, and start carrying out the other fun acts suggested in previous posts, such as consorting with fiends, whilst the character is convinced that he is still neutral good and he cannot believe how so many people can't recognise that everything he does is for the common good. I haven't played d20 Star Wars for ages, but I seem to remember that using the force to drain energy from an enemy's blaster gains you a dark side point, even if the foe was just about to use the blaster to murder a child. In the same vein, "core" D&D seems to assume that using negative energy eventually makes you evil, regardless of your motivations.
amethal 09-08-04, 07:58 AM	Just stole an idea from another thread. I take it they don't have to be humanoid skeletons? For instance, could use skeleton oxen for ploughing, skeleton beavers for tree chopping etc. No doubt the local druids wouldn't appreciate it (even if the animals had all died of natural causes - and to a druid natural causes includes being killed for food) but it might make the villagers a bit more comfortable with the idea.
jnrhayz 09-08-04, 10:21 AM	That is a great idea about raising animals. I will talk to the DM about the evil descriptor on spells. He is an old school DM. I don't really know about 2nd edition necromancy, but that is what he will make his decision from. I thought of making him lawful neutral and working to change the system from within (maybe making it lawful in one village for testing and slowly changing the laws), but the current DM is insane when it comes to alignment. Anything lawful is not a good option to start with.
TheEnder 09-08-04, 07:27 PM	I base my answers mainly on 2nd edition, and I would think an "old school" 2nd edition DM would be more open to this idea. I also think amethal makes a good point about everyone just assuming that anyone who deals with the negative energy plain = evil .
ronyon 09-13-04, 11:19 PM	Hey, welcome to the better living through necromancy club! I Have played only death priests since 3.0 came out, and it is a blast! Dont want to animate the bones of sentiants? Use racoons, they are small, and can be argued to have opposable thumbs, or at least a good grip! The undead horse eats nothing, works tirelessly and can run all day long! Do the math on travel times for creatures and your will find that over land travel assumes less than top speed -The undead stage coach will change travel forever! Better still, think Babba yaggas Hut, the ultimate atv. Taxidermy is a must, I usually assume a creatures pelt can be made into a disguise ,hiding leather armor, with the right skills. In combat , have them flank or aid for your allies, or make them into flaming oil kamikazies-but only in a pinch. Most aplications benifit from the use of skeletons, but zombi are stronger and more durable. Do not neglect the use of ghosts, they are powerful and not nessisarilly evil! Ghost cohort makes for great role play... Hallowfaust rocks, very believable necrocity, an not evil, but it is ruthlessly Lawful. As for the good evil thing-PLAY YOUR CHARACTER NOT YOUR ALIGNMENT! Mother Teresa was notorious for taking blood money from bad men, with no qualms.Real peaple kill to save lives and make love to ruin them. No game can change that, besides if theifs can become rouges, LG, and still sneak attack, then a few Good necros can make the world a better place .
Malawain 09-15-04, 05:27 PM	Creating a mummy to protect a tomb. Good or evil? Becoming a Baelnorn. Good or evil? In Eberron they have undead animated with positive energy, try looking into that.