There's a guard in one of the Ravnica stories who takes out a life insurance policy to ensure his ghost will stick around and solve his own murder. I love when magic is mundane and commonplace like that in fantasy.
also in amonkhet they have the undead do all the manual labour. farming, construction, embalming other undead. they even have necro-alchemists on innistrad who fuel their weapons on souls. mtg undead are fun.
The Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix is heavy on the necromancy and is phenomenal. It revolves around sort of an anti-necromancer using necromantic magic to put the dead to back into Death, generally using music based magic.
I mean if we sign a contract saying I will give you X amount of money per year/month for the right to use your body after your death for manual labor/ whatever else we agree in the contract is it really evil tho if you signed it with full consent?
@@avlaenamnell6994 ah but what if body and soul are intrinsically linked so that you're trapped within the body until it decomposes. Then you're trapped for eternity doing grunt work unable to escape or communicate 🤔😝
In Pathfinder 2e's setting of Golarion there is a Necrocratic nation of Geb in which vast majority of menial work is done by mindless zombies. There are farms where zombies work the fields and so on. It is also an absolute nightmare to live for one of the Quick, living, because many of the undead do need to feast on the living. So there are also farms of living kept up by the Blood Lords of Geb to sustain the population of intelligent undead.
The Locked Tomb series kinda has Necromancer cops, also just very good. The construction company that uses undead is the Overlord Light Novel series, they actually talk about a lot of practical uses for undead. Also, the creation of the latter series was relatable as the author wanted to GM a tabletop for his friends but none were able to play cus of work... so he wrote a book about it instead.
Arcanum Steamworks and Magik necromancy works like that. Need to solve a murder resurrect them, and ask them who did it? Then tell the authorities their ghost said so... and it also has undead "legaly" used in the workforce.
Some settings don't allow evidence gained by magic to be permissible in court, for a variety of reasons - Speak With Dead, Zone of Truth, Scry, that sort of thing
To the Necromantic debt, the Dustmen (Dusties) of the Planescape setting (ie D&D) offer the Dead Contract as a means to bolster their workforce, paying people a sum immediately and collecting the body for use after death. Some of these contracts are indefinite, and theres even a quest in Planescape Torment to liberate a body from its contractual obligations (legally or violently).
You can even sign one of these contracts yourself at the beginning of the game to make some money. And of course, they Dustin's can't collect because you are immortal.
Not to be the person who chimes up with a random rpg resource book but, I do so because I love it. Hallowfaust: City of Necromancers is pretty much exactly what you were describing re: "Why not use the dead for labour? Etc"
The powers of the NecroTomicon have finally been unleashed!! *Edit:* If you want to see a Necromancer Construction Company, the Netflix _Castlevania_ series does that.
Usually when they do necromancy in fantasy settings and stuff it depends on how the system works are you recalling the souls of the dead and making them into an undead minion or are you just reanimating a lifeless corpse? Because like in most recent series I'm reading Reincarnated as a Sword (10/10 series and show) in that world I remember correctly souls instantly go to the afterlife and so when people do necromancy magic they just animating lifeless corpses with magic rather than recalling souls and what not.
8:51 I remember reading A Familiar Dragon by Daniel Hood as a younger man, and in the first book during a murder investigation they used a medium to commune with the spirit of the murdered. It wasn't admissible in court as evidence, but it usually gave the detectives a good starting point.
Kinda recently in a DnD campaign im in we sourced the money to fund a skeletal pirates tuition for magic college so he could learn necromancy to ressurect his like 50 year companion undead dog. "plot" happens and we end up almost 200 years later and he's setup a thriving business where he ressurects pets for people through the post. Good ol Jack Marrow
There's a Web Serial called The Wandering Inn that involves necromancy a fair bit (though not as a main focus), and at one point it talks about a cabal trying to set up a farm worked by undead, kind of an undead hippy commune.... but it didn't work so well, cuz foxes and stuff kept stealing bones and the skeletons kept getting stuck in mud.
The book Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is heavy on the necromancy, and incorporates the kind of thing you mentioned with undead construction workers! It's a very necromancy focused society in that series of novels!
I mean, necromancy in dnd is still kind of frowned upon so a legit undead workforce would be hard to keep profitable. However, players can do whatever they like with necromancy, so players using undead as a workforce isn't far fetched. There are a lot of spells in dnd that would do that much more effectively however. Unseen servant alone could replace like 50 zombies, and they would all be zombies without a soul because you can't revive someone if they aren't willing to be revived in dnd, except maybe with the wish spell. You can animate the dead body but that won't be useful for complex or even slightly complex things like construction.
Unseen servant only a strength of 2 while skeletons have 10. With a strength of 2 that servant wouldn't be able to pick anything up over like 10lbs or something. Not to mention you have to command the unseen servant every time, while skeletons can be given simple tasks they will continue to do until told otherwise You'd just use Animate Dead, and skeletons because zombies are slow (and smelly). Simple things like mining or hauling things from one place to the other are well within the bounds of what you could command undead to do. The whole not having a soul isnt a problem if your just using them for labour And Speak With Dead would work for detective work, it just animates a recent corpse for the sole purpose of asking it questions
@@dancinshroom7735 Strength of 2 means they can lift 60lbs. Unseen servant will do a task until it is complete. Both spells require a bonus action to command the servant. Unseen servant is formless, meaning it can move through walls to complete tasks and you have the bonus of not having a rotting corpse walking around your job site. Animate dead is also a 3rd level spell, which would require a stronger wizard than unseen servant who would charge more for the casting. And finally, the DM decides what the skeleton or zombies stats are, not the book. The books just have a template of the creature, but the dm could decide that corpse you used was so brittle that it's arms and legs turned to dust as you were casting the spell and the skeleton or zombie has a strength of 0. Unseen servant always has a strength of 2.
@@Sinsults 60lbs isnt much to be able to carry, its like a rock thats ~21cm to a side (assuming rock density of 2.7g/cm3) Again use clean skeletons not smelly zombies. You can clean the bones before casting the spell Also the DM does NOT choose the statistics, its the statistics given in the monster manual. As the spell states Youd have to have a asshole of a DM decide your skeleton pet is worthless the moment you cast it. It has a strength of 10 in every other situation. A DM could decide a ton of things but to decide that what you worked hard to do is worthless is a huge dick move Yes animate undead is a higher level skill but its also way better then unseen servant which is why its higher Now where unseen servant is limited It only has a range of 60ft and ends if you ask it to move further or if you move more than 60ft away while its out doing a task It only lasts a hour and takes 10mins to ritual cast, so If you stayed up 24/7 you could at max have 5-6 ongoing servants moving within 60ft of you (and you cant move while ritual casting) It cannot go through walls like you say, because conjuration spells have to have "line of effect"' so if you break that by making it go through something solid the spell ends Now where animate undead works better at 3rd level you can have 4 skeletons under your control for 24hrs and it only takes 1min to set it up, not 10mins to set up a single one servant for a hour The skeletons can push, carry, move up to 300lbs (as per the monster manual, now if your DM is a dick and gives you shit stats thats on him, its more than reasonable to use monster manual stats) Skeletons have unlimited range so you could tell the 3 of them to dig at a mine, the 4th to clear rubble and then go chill at the pub Also its reasonable to assume the skeletons would understand more simple tasks as they actually have a INT and WIS score. Still "simple tasks" but more complex ones
@@dancinshroom7735 The DM *does* choose the statistics. The spell states specifically "The DM has the stats for the creature" not "the monster manual has the stats for the creature". Yes, some DMs pull all their creatures straight out of the monster manual and don't bother to alter them, but that is boring and predictable. You lose control of the undead from Animate Dead after 24 hours unless you cast the spell again. That means a level 5 wizard could have two undead that they would have to cast two level 3 spells on a day to keep under their control. Meanwhile Unseen Servant is a level 1 spell that can be cast by a level 5 wizard 9 times just using spell slots. Not being concentration, that means you could have an hour of 9 Unseen Servants, who could definitely get a lot more done than 2 skeletons could in triple that time. Then you could ritual cast that spell as many times as you want the rest of the day because ritual spells only take ten minutes to cast and you don't have to keep up the ritual after that to keep the spell up because Unseen Servant isn't concentration. So in a day, one wizard could have 2 skeletons or technically around 145 Unseen Servants. (24 hours, at 6 casts an hour using ritual casting, plus 9 from spell slots. Minus a few ritual casts due to time taken between casts to instruct still existing servants). You're getting, at minimum, 5 skilled but not very strong laborers every hour. Unless you're building a pyramid, they're going to be getting a lot more done than 2 skeletons could. You don't seem to actually understand how ritual casting works and you're using rules for conjuration spells that don't exist in 5th edition. There is no "line of effect" for any spells. Most spells require line of sight to cast, but once the spell is cast then unseen servant is free to move about even out of your sight, as long as it stays within 60 ft. I'm going to assume you're just talking about Pathfinder rules, or something, since that's the only source I could find that talked about rules for conjuration spells. I am, however, only talking 5e because that's the edition I am most familiar with.
9:16 Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura has a mechanics which allows to raise spirits of the dead and talk to them for more info. It even has a crime investigation questline which gets a lot easier with this spell.
*The incredible classic Arcanum CRPG has the necromancer thing!* A Necromancer playthrough is very strong because a lot of the quests will allow you to resurrect people to ask them questions such as who killed them if they know. Another very strong method is to kill people you need information from and resurrect them to demand the answers.
Tom, I recommend reading The Death Mage that doesn't want a Fourth Time. Dude uses souls for construction, can talk to dead spirits and uses that a few times to solve crimes. Very good web novel, would recommend always
Same. There's also an update to HoloCure that's planned for the end of January, so even more good times and hopefully that'll mean more Tom Lore shenanigans as well!
The webcomic "The weekly roll" has a necromancer that did that death tax thing where he raised the bodies of people after they died in exchange for paying them when they're alive.
There's a silly story called The Blue Mage Raised by Dragons, written by Virlyce, has a necormancy society. I believe they do something where you can give your body to the government, and all the jobs are done by skellies. The idea gets more fleshed out in the second book. But I remember it being a silly book all around, would recommend.
On the subject of necromancer construction companies, my DnD-setting I use for the current campaign I'm running has a whole civilization based around the concept of licensed necromancy, with a strong economy borne from undead labour and construction (and they're sort of good/neutral city-states, not weird dark evil boys).
Police investigators using Raise Dead magic would be pretty useful tbh. Perhaps for ethical reasons it's more a temporary summoning of their spirit. Pretty sure the ghost guy in Hellboy 2 did something like that.
Not quite the same but the Castlevania series on Netflix does a great job of having complex and realistic necromancer characters. Isaac has a phenomenal journey in which he navigates the social stigma of being a Forgemaster, and the fear and hate and kindness and surprises in people. And Hector grapples with the age old quandary of being with your dommy mommy gf at the cost of dogging the boys.
Chronicles of the Necromancer series by Gail Z Martin has necromancers as a venerated position. Not exactly cops but they do mediate between living and dead.
Yes Tom, depending on the setting you could absolutely utilize necromancy like that. Unfortunately most settings just kinda... forget that things like that exist, or intentionally pretend that players are the only ones allowed to have cool stuff and assume NPCs can never have class levels or abilities, or they get lost in the whole "anyone who does necromancy is cartoonishly evil and tries to conquer the world bleeeh" stuff, or their world is dominated by some oppressive church that ensnares most of the population in it's BS like in the real world.
In the game Arcana: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, you can play as a necromancer doing detective work who raises the dead and just asks them how they died.
Old game (at least in my mind because it came out a couple of months after I was born), but in Planescape Torment, which is set in the universe of DnD, there's a faction called the dustmen that actually give out dead contracts where you sign it, they give you money, and then they resurrect your corpse (they call them shells) to do menial labor such as construction. Also if you like old CCRPGs look into it it's a real diamond in the rough, it's had a remaster and looks good for a game that came out in 1999, but be warned the UI is still classic old computer game so it's kind of unpolished.
Necromancy isn't evil, it is a useful tool, back in my homeworld, we use it regularly, there are things that are evil though, but they're not directly necromancy, they can be used in conjunction with necromancy, but that's that, I mean, soulbinding is heavily frowned upon, because souls are supposed to run free, and while it's true that souls are an infinite resource, forcing someone to be soulbound to a rotting corpse is pretty vile, and the natural soulbinding that procreation makes, is good, but unless you have a good contract, or are forced via the law to be forcefully in service after death, soulbinding isn't regularly used. There's a lot of vile things one can do, that makes your premises of servitude seem like child's play, such as merging souls together.
It's funny that tom is talking about necromancy used in more mundane ways, because in the lore of the world that I'm building there is a form of sanctioned Necromancers who can do a few services (while being watched by inquisitors maintaining rules and regulations). For example, there are the dead speakers who for a fee, allow you to spend a day with a dead family member's ghostly remains. Another example of necromancers being a part of society is that a person can elect to allow necromancers to buy their body upon death and send the money gained to benefactors in a will (e.g. a father giving his estate to his son can also give his son extra money by selling his corpse), then the necromancers can either rent out the corpse to physical labor or use the corpse for medical experiments to improve medicine and anatomy. There are issues in the world with some unsavory sanctioned necromancers strong-arming poorer families into selling relative's remains for less than ideal prices, but then when an inquisitor is doing their job properly, those necromancers can be fined, imprisoned and even have their sanction status taken away from them. A necromancer practicing necromancy without being sanctioned by the inquisition are generally executed
I love how Tom pays no attention to the game, but instead goes on a basically fifteen minute ramble about how necromancers, a body with spells that are *automatically* classed as evil in traditional D&D, and who often have soul absorbing powers *and* associate with the undead, who are also traditionally evil, need not be evil and instead pay poor people money throughout their lives to commit sacrilegious acts with their corpses in construction sites! Really, he puts so much thought into ‘evil is the new good’ and so little into the game! :-)
10:00 I think the idea of benevolent or consensual necromancy exists but is controversial. The first people to think of it were quite impressive and original, but eventually too many people started having the idea and now the fantasy subreddits or whatever will get mad when you say that you want benevolent necromancers. Just want them to be evil.
Pushing Daisies and I Zombie are basically what your looking for. Bring the dead back to ask em who killed em, though IZombie she's gotta eat the victims brain
Could have sworn there was a tv show or two where the guy talks to the dead to solve crimes, sorry for the vagueness of it. Doesn't the comic book character John Constantine do that too?
Daily reminder that Tom is an amazing person and to thank him for all he has done/will do - Day 1122 OOO very fun, cool to see the 3D style :D Oh now I love Tom's Necromancy Cops/Detectives and Undead Workers and such ideas XD rather fun and would love to see explored Oh now the Tracking Map at the end, showing where you went is a really fun idea I love :D
Okay, this is massive spoilers but I literally cannot mention the name of the franchise without it being a spoiler. So you're just going to have to deal with the fact that I'm spoiling something in this: The first Phoenix Wright game. The final case of the original game had the cops go to a spirit medium to find out whodunnit from the ghost of the murdered person. I can't say more or it would be WAY TOO spoilery and ruin the entire surprise.
There's a guard in one of the Ravnica stories who takes out a life insurance policy to ensure his ghost will stick around and solve his own murder. I love when magic is mundane and commonplace like that in fantasy.
also in amonkhet they have the undead do all the manual labour. farming, construction, embalming other undead. they even have necro-alchemists on innistrad who fuel their weapons on souls. mtg undead are fun.
I like how Tom described the plot of Pushing Daisies with Necromancer Detectives.
He also missed that speak with dead is a spell in D&D
Thank you for this
Yes. TY! Was here to talk about the same thing. Tom would probably like it. Lee Pace is the 'necro' 😆
I like how he Described Gideon the Ninth in the whole "Indentured undead servants" thing
The Old Kingdom Series by Garth Nix is heavy on the necromancy and is phenomenal. It revolves around sort of an anti-necromancer using necromantic magic to put the dead to back into Death, generally using music based magic.
Love that series, and the Abhorsen look like they're basically Cops for Necromancers, as opposed to Necromancer-Cops
Read that series in secondary school, in the completely wrong order, i went Lirael then the third and first books
Tom: why do necromancers always have to go full evil
Also Tom: we should magically force people to work even after they're dead
🤔🤔
is it evil if their soul isnt in the body and the body is just a mindless automaton?
@@avlaenamnell6994 becoming a soulless husk and mindless automaton is the natural progression of working in retail so yes its still evil 😂
@@TheDreadedScotsman but if you as your spirit is in heaven and your bones are just doing manual labour then its fine :P
I mean if we sign a contract saying I will give you X amount of money per year/month for the right to use your body after your death for manual labor/ whatever else we agree in the contract is it really evil tho if you signed it with full consent?
@@avlaenamnell6994 ah but what if body and soul are intrinsically linked so that you're trapped within the body until it decomposes. Then you're trapped for eternity doing grunt work unable to escape or communicate 🤔😝
In Pathfinder 2e's setting of Golarion there is a Necrocratic nation of Geb in which vast majority of menial work is done by mindless zombies. There are farms where zombies work the fields and so on.
It is also an absolute nightmare to live for one of the Quick, living, because many of the undead do need to feast on the living. So there are also farms of living kept up by the Blood Lords of Geb to sustain the population of intelligent undead.
In the old D&D setting Jakandor the Charonti would also reanimate their dead for work and battle.
This is a thing even in the 1e Pathfinder's Golarion as well. Just wanted to leave that note =)
@@ILuvKonata I know but 2e did shine some more light on it with Impossible Lands and Blood Lords.
The Locked Tomb series kinda has Necromancer cops, also just very good.
The construction company that uses undead is the Overlord Light Novel series, they actually talk about a lot of practical uses for undead.
Also, the creation of the latter series was relatable as the author wanted to GM a tabletop for his friends but none were able to play cus of work... so he wrote a book about it instead.
Arcanum Steamworks and Magik necromancy works like that. Need to solve a murder resurrect them, and ask them who did it? Then tell the authorities their ghost said so... and it also has undead "legaly" used in the workforce.
Some settings don't allow evidence gained by magic to be permissible in court, for a variety of reasons - Speak With Dead, Zone of Truth, Scry, that sort of thing
Could you list some of the reasons you know?
To the Necromantic debt, the Dustmen (Dusties) of the Planescape setting (ie D&D) offer the Dead Contract as a means to bolster their workforce, paying people a sum immediately and collecting the body for use after death. Some of these contracts are indefinite, and theres even a quest in Planescape Torment to liberate a body from its contractual obligations (legally or violently).
You can even sign one of these contracts yourself at the beginning of the game to make some money. And of course, they Dustin's can't collect because you are immortal.
Not to be the person who chimes up with a random rpg resource book but, I do so because I love it. Hallowfaust: City of Necromancers is pretty much exactly what you were describing re: "Why not use the dead for labour? Etc"
I came here to recommend Hallowfaust as well. One of my favorite locations for a campaign :D
The powers of the NecroTomicon have finally been unleashed!!
*Edit:* If you want to see a Necromancer Construction Company, the Netflix _Castlevania_ series does that.
Would you like a berry?
This is a pretty good game, the unlocks are cool, I really like how it handles upgrading weapons to their better forms.
Yeah, it looks like it basically plays like Holocure, except with 3D-ish instead of pixels.
Usually when they do necromancy in fantasy settings and stuff it depends on how the system works are you recalling the souls of the dead and making them into an undead minion or are you just reanimating a lifeless corpse? Because like in most recent series I'm reading Reincarnated as a Sword (10/10 series and show) in that world I remember correctly souls instantly go to the afterlife and so when people do necromancy magic they just animating lifeless corpses with magic rather than recalling souls and what not.
8:51 I remember reading A Familiar Dragon by Daniel Hood as a younger man, and in the first book during a murder investigation they used a medium to commune with the spirit of the murdered. It wasn't admissible in court as evidence, but it usually gave the detectives a good starting point.
Kinda recently in a DnD campaign im in we sourced the money to fund a skeletal pirates tuition for magic college so he could learn necromancy to ressurect his like 50 year companion undead dog. "plot" happens and we end up almost 200 years later and he's setup a thriving business where he ressurects pets for people through the post. Good ol Jack Marrow
The Dresden files series has necromancer detectives in a few of the books actually.
There's a Web Serial called The Wandering Inn that involves necromancy a fair bit (though not as a main focus), and at one point it talks about a cabal trying to set up a farm worked by undead, kind of an undead hippy commune.... but it didn't work so well, cuz foxes and stuff kept stealing bones and the skeletons kept getting stuck in mud.
In everybody love large chests, there is a 'good' necromancer who makes a prior arrangement for their corpses. Fighting for an army.
In "The Wandering Inn" one of the good guys is an undead king who basically runs a Utopia by using skeletons to do all the menial work.
The book Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is heavy on the necromancy, and incorporates the kind of thing you mentioned with undead construction workers! It's a very necromancy focused society in that series of novels!
I find the idea that Tom is the guy the local lord sent in to quell an undead tax revolt endlessly entertaining
I mean, necromancy in dnd is still kind of frowned upon so a legit undead workforce would be hard to keep profitable. However, players can do whatever they like with necromancy, so players using undead as a workforce isn't far fetched. There are a lot of spells in dnd that would do that much more effectively however. Unseen servant alone could replace like 50 zombies, and they would all be zombies without a soul because you can't revive someone if they aren't willing to be revived in dnd, except maybe with the wish spell. You can animate the dead body but that won't be useful for complex or even slightly complex things like construction.
Unseen servant only a strength of 2 while skeletons have 10. With a strength of 2 that servant wouldn't be able to pick anything up over like 10lbs or something.
Not to mention you have to command the unseen servant every time, while skeletons can be given simple tasks they will continue to do until told otherwise
You'd just use Animate Dead, and skeletons because zombies are slow (and smelly). Simple things like mining or hauling things from one place to the other are well within the bounds of what you could command undead to do. The whole not having a soul isnt a problem if your just using them for labour
And Speak With Dead would work for detective work, it just animates a recent corpse for the sole purpose of asking it questions
@@dancinshroom7735 Strength of 2 means they can lift 60lbs. Unseen servant will do a task until it is complete. Both spells require a bonus action to command the servant. Unseen servant is formless, meaning it can move through walls to complete tasks and you have the bonus of not having a rotting corpse walking around your job site. Animate dead is also a 3rd level spell, which would require a stronger wizard than unseen servant who would charge more for the casting. And finally, the DM decides what the skeleton or zombies stats are, not the book. The books just have a template of the creature, but the dm could decide that corpse you used was so brittle that it's arms and legs turned to dust as you were casting the spell and the skeleton or zombie has a strength of 0. Unseen servant always has a strength of 2.
@@Sinsults 60lbs isnt much to be able to carry, its like a rock thats ~21cm to a side (assuming rock density of 2.7g/cm3)
Again use clean skeletons not smelly zombies. You can clean the bones before casting the spell
Also the DM does NOT choose the statistics, its the statistics given in the monster manual. As the spell states
Youd have to have a asshole of a DM decide your skeleton pet is worthless the moment you cast it. It has a strength of 10 in every other situation. A DM could decide a ton of things but to decide that what you worked hard to do is worthless is a huge dick move
Yes animate undead is a higher level skill but its also way better then unseen servant which is why its higher
Now where unseen servant is limited
It only has a range of 60ft and ends if you ask it to move further or if you move more than 60ft away while its out doing a task
It only lasts a hour and takes 10mins to ritual cast, so If you stayed up 24/7 you could at max have 5-6 ongoing servants moving within 60ft of you (and you cant move while ritual casting)
It cannot go through walls like you say, because conjuration spells have to have "line of effect"' so if you break that by making it go through something solid the spell ends
Now where animate undead works better
at 3rd level you can have 4 skeletons under your control for 24hrs and it only takes 1min to set it up, not 10mins to set up a single one servant for a hour
The skeletons can push, carry, move up to 300lbs (as per the monster manual, now if your DM is a dick and gives you shit stats thats on him, its more than reasonable to use monster manual stats)
Skeletons have unlimited range so you could tell the 3 of them to dig at a mine, the 4th to clear rubble and then go chill at the pub
Also its reasonable to assume the skeletons would understand more simple tasks as they actually have a INT and WIS score. Still "simple tasks" but more complex ones
@@dancinshroom7735 The DM *does* choose the statistics. The spell states specifically "The DM has the stats for the creature" not "the monster manual has the stats for the creature". Yes, some DMs pull all their creatures straight out of the monster manual and don't bother to alter them, but that is boring and predictable.
You lose control of the undead from Animate Dead after 24 hours unless you cast the spell again. That means a level 5 wizard could have two undead that they would have to cast two level 3 spells on a day to keep under their control. Meanwhile Unseen Servant is a level 1 spell that can be cast by a level 5 wizard 9 times just using spell slots. Not being concentration, that means you could have an hour of 9 Unseen Servants, who could definitely get a lot more done than 2 skeletons could in triple that time. Then you could ritual cast that spell as many times as you want the rest of the day because ritual spells only take ten minutes to cast and you don't have to keep up the ritual after that to keep the spell up because Unseen Servant isn't concentration. So in a day, one wizard could have 2 skeletons or technically around 145 Unseen Servants. (24 hours, at 6 casts an hour using ritual casting, plus 9 from spell slots. Minus a few ritual casts due to time taken between casts to instruct still existing servants). You're getting, at minimum, 5 skilled but not very strong laborers every hour. Unless you're building a pyramid, they're going to be getting a lot more done than 2 skeletons could.
You don't seem to actually understand how ritual casting works and you're using rules for conjuration spells that don't exist in 5th edition. There is no "line of effect" for any spells. Most spells require line of sight to cast, but once the spell is cast then unseen servant is free to move about even out of your sight, as long as it stays within 60 ft. I'm going to assume you're just talking about Pathfinder rules, or something, since that's the only source I could find that talked about rules for conjuration spells. I am, however, only talking 5e because that's the edition I am most familiar with.
9:16
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura has a mechanics which allows to raise spirits of the dead and talk to them for more info.
It even has a crime investigation questline which gets a lot easier with this spell.
Tom just once again describing the entirety of _Planescape: Torment_ word-for-word with his corpse loan deal. Classic Tom.
*The incredible classic Arcanum CRPG has the necromancer thing!* A Necromancer playthrough is very strong because a lot of the quests will allow you to resurrect people to ask them questions such as who killed them if they know. Another very strong method is to kill people you need information from and resurrect them to demand the answers.
Tom, I recommend reading The Death Mage that doesn't want a Fourth Time. Dude uses souls for construction, can talk to dead spirits and uses that a few times to solve crimes. Very good web novel, would recommend always
i think tom hasn't seen overlord and it shows
I've played SO MUCH holocure that its hard to play games with aimed weapons when I cant do the facing thing. They really did innovate the gameplay
Same. There's also an update to HoloCure that's planned for the end of January, so even more good times and hopefully that'll mean more Tom Lore shenanigans as well!
love the interface in this, really welcoming
The webcomic "The weekly roll" has a necromancer that did that death tax thing where he raised the bodies of people after they died in exchange for paying them when they're alive.
divinity original sin had necromancy detectives kinda...
There's a silly story called The Blue Mage Raised by Dragons, written by Virlyce, has a necormancy society. I believe they do something where you can give your body to the government, and all the jobs are done by skellies. The idea gets more fleshed out in the second book. But I remember it being a silly book all around, would recommend.
tom needs to try out soulstone survivors.
it's a real step up in gameplay to the standard survivors games
In some of the Mistborn stories there are immortals who offer to pay someone for the use of their bones after death.
Great video as always. I like how it had the recap at the end. This game looks like a fun one.
The WebComic (there is a dubbed version by "56 Scratch" on YT) Weekly Roll has at least 2 Necromancers who are very much into tax evasion.
Great times. Loved this game. Cool graphics on top of the same old gameplay (that we of course love and adore)
Surely there is already a 200 page fanfic about Tom, the Necromatic Detective, in the works.
On the subject of necromancer construction companies, my DnD-setting I use for the current campaign I'm running has a whole civilization based around the concept of licensed necromancy, with a strong economy borne from undead labour and construction (and they're sort of good/neutral city-states, not weird dark evil boys).
Police investigators using Raise Dead magic would be pretty useful tbh.
Perhaps for ethical reasons it's more a temporary summoning of their spirit.
Pretty sure the ghost guy in Hellboy 2 did something like that.
Imagine the dystopia, the poor are even forced to sell their own bodies after death in order to make ends meet.
I've made an entire town that is being constructed by a necromancer construction worker while rebuilding after a war.
3:39 Perfect bedroom talk
Blue wizard on a graveyard map instantly reminds me of Solomon's Graveyard.
Thank you for reminding me that this game series exists. I must have played 100+ hours when the very first version came out.
Yeah my first thought as well! God the good old days of lightning + magic missile combo on the iPod and desperately trying to survive :D
Not quite the same but the Castlevania series on Netflix does a great job of having complex and realistic necromancer characters. Isaac has a phenomenal journey in which he navigates the social stigma of being a Forgemaster, and the fear and hate and kindness and surprises in people. And Hector grapples with the age old quandary of being with your dommy mommy gf at the cost of dogging the boys.
Chronicles of the Necromancer series by Gail Z Martin has necromancers as a venerated position. Not exactly cops but they do mediate between living and dead.
I think the merry gentry book series touches on that sort of necromancy to figure out who dun it but it's been years since I've read them
Yes Tom, depending on the setting you could absolutely utilize necromancy like that.
Unfortunately most settings just kinda... forget that things like that exist, or intentionally pretend that players are the only ones allowed to have cool stuff and assume NPCs can never have class levels or abilities, or they get lost in the whole "anyone who does necromancy is cartoonishly evil and tries to conquer the world bleeeh" stuff, or their world is dominated by some oppressive church that ensnares most of the population in it's BS like in the real world.
In the game Arcana: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, you can play as a necromancer doing detective work who raises the dead and just asks them how they died.
Old game (at least in my mind because it came out a couple of months after I was born), but in Planescape Torment, which is set in the universe of DnD, there's a faction called the dustmen that actually give out dead contracts where you sign it, they give you money, and then they resurrect your corpse (they call them shells) to do menial labor such as construction. Also if you like old CCRPGs look into it it's a real diamond in the rough, it's had a remaster and looks good for a game that came out in 1999, but be warned the UI is still classic old computer game so it's kind of unpolished.
Necromancy isn't evil, it is a useful tool, back in my homeworld, we use it regularly, there are things that are evil though, but they're not directly necromancy, they can be used in conjunction with necromancy, but that's that, I mean, soulbinding is heavily frowned upon, because souls are supposed to run free, and while it's true that souls are an infinite resource, forcing someone to be soulbound to a rotting corpse is pretty vile, and the natural soulbinding that procreation makes, is good, but unless you have a good contract, or are forced via the law to be forcefully in service after death, soulbinding isn't regularly used.
There's a lot of vile things one can do, that makes your premises of servitude seem like child's play, such as merging souls together.
A "good" necromancer is basically a "medium" , would only contact the dead but woudln't raise undead out of respect.
Uploaded 8 seconds ago! I have never been this early. I can now die complete.
It's funny that tom is talking about necromancy used in more mundane ways, because in the lore of the world that I'm building there is a form of sanctioned Necromancers who can do a few services (while being watched by inquisitors maintaining rules and regulations). For example, there are the dead speakers who for a fee, allow you to spend a day with a dead family member's ghostly remains. Another example of necromancers being a part of society is that a person can elect to allow necromancers to buy their body upon death and send the money gained to benefactors in a will (e.g. a father giving his estate to his son can also give his son extra money by selling his corpse), then the necromancers can either rent out the corpse to physical labor or use the corpse for medical experiments to improve medicine and anatomy.
There are issues in the world with some unsavory sanctioned necromancers strong-arming poorer families into selling relative's remains for less than ideal prices, but then when an inquisitor is doing their job properly, those necromancers can be fined, imprisoned and even have their sanction status taken away from them. A necromancer practicing necromancy without being sanctioned by the inquisition are generally executed
"Speak with dead" in D&D ;)
Much more interesting than vampire survivors or 20 minutes till dawn
I love how Tom pays no attention to the game, but instead goes on a basically fifteen minute ramble about how necromancers, a body with spells that are *automatically* classed as evil in traditional D&D, and who often have soul absorbing powers *and* associate with the undead, who are also traditionally evil, need not be evil and instead pay poor people money throughout their lives to commit sacrilegious acts with their corpses in construction sites!
Really, he puts so much thought into ‘evil is the new good’ and so little into the game! :-)
You should play a rogue like called monster train
Def much more easy to make sense of whats happening than vampire
Would watch much more of this
10:00 I think the idea of benevolent or consensual necromancy exists but is controversial. The first people to think of it were quite impressive and original, but eventually too many people started having the idea and now the fantasy subreddits or whatever will get mad when you say that you want benevolent necromancers. Just want them to be evil.
Pushing Daisies and I Zombie are basically what your looking for. Bring the dead back to ask em who killed em, though IZombie she's gotta eat the victims brain
Instead of a reverse mortgage, it's reverse life insurance
Top gamer tip: try avocado with a little bit of marmite on toast! Very tasty
I like how Tom's asking *us* to tell him if there's a strafe button when he could just go to the controls menu and check himself xD
Wanna see some of the updated vampire survivors too! :D
this just looks like 3d vampire survivors...
Glad they increased the speed of the game, man it was painful before!
Necromancer cop literally exists in Critical Role Campaign 3.
Not a fan of these types of games but I will say the music is legendary.
Could have sworn there was a tv show or two where the guy talks to the dead to solve crimes, sorry for the vagueness of it. Doesn't the comic book character John Constantine do that too?
I liked the Grim Noir trilogy for some fun necromancy.
To play, you'll need friends, but not like good friends, because as soon as you start playing, everyone will hate you.
that game looks amazing :OOOO
Daily reminder that Tom is an amazing person and to thank him for all he has done/will do - Day 1122
OOO very fun, cool to see the 3D style :D
Oh now I love Tom's Necromancy Cops/Detectives and Undead Workers and such ideas XD rather fun and would love to see explored
Oh now the Tracking Map at the end, showing where you went is a really fun idea I love :D
Okay, this is massive spoilers but I literally cannot mention the name of the franchise without it being a spoiler. So you're just going to have to deal with the fact that I'm spoiling something in this: The first Phoenix Wright game.
The final case of the original game had the cops go to a spirit medium to find out whodunnit from the ghost of the murdered person. I can't say more or it would be WAY TOO spoilery and ruin the entire surprise.
As an Ace Attorney fan this is exactly what I thought about when Tom was doing his talking
Check out - spell book demon slayer. It's one of the better vampire survival games, and the sound track rocks
Can't wat to see more!
Aaaaand another game bought. Damn it Tom!
10:00 So Planescape Torment?
Yes! More plz
This game just seems like vampire survivors but made in unity
A quarter of the games Tom plays are "survivors clones." There are hundreds on Steam alone.
How invested are you in the Wave Survival genre?
In this video Tom basically advocates for slavery.
oooo there seems to be twitch integration for this too
superchill anytime soon?
The music kinda reminds me of Orcs Must Die!
I imagine this game has a hololive style lock your aim in a direction button
*A-Bam*
WOOOO!
Have you had a chance to play soulstone survivors?
bam!
More?
obama and welcome everybody
so runescape 3 and orcs must die combined?!?!?
Tooooommmmmm
yehj
Lots of dog poop talk, did somebodies dog poop on Tom's lawn?
I guess a game with necromancy police is Elder Scrolls Online? I mean its just a simple fine system nothing really in depth.
Literally yet another just reskin of Vampire Survivors... This is why theres so few good games nowadays. Everyone just copies the good ones.