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Necromancy Doesn't Deserve the Hate! Ethics and Magic
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- Опубліковано 14 сер 2024
- While many people think necromancers are always evil, it's not the magic that is evil, but those that use it. How evil or ethical is magic or certain kinds of magic as a whole? Please enjoy my ethical rant on magic.
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Problem is most people think of necromancers as raising an army of zombies. Honestly, a necromancer would probably have lot's of utility work as an investigator, consultant or lawyer. Making them mundane instead of megalomaniacs would go a long way.
Died without a Will? Call up their soul. Didn't say goodbye to loved ones? Some people would jump at a chance to give a speech at their own funeral. Someone died mysteriously? What better witness than the victim. There's always those sketchy, but not technically evil services, like reanimating an indentured servant cause he had the audacity to get run over by a wagon half-way through his contract. Criminal necromancers blackmailing the dead for information/money would be interesting, and it would make body disposal easier if the body got up and walked itself into a bog.
My favorite is the dead being used for workplace PSAs, like a WARAMP foundation but for the dead. "I was decapitated because I disregarded OSHA rules, don't let it be you."
I thought up a character that was literally just this. Just being a helpful worker. He would always have speak with dead up and would use his abilities to recon/survive dungeons and when all is said and done, he'd carry them home, fulfill their last will and testimony, maybe even help the family they left behind find closure, and then give them a peaceful burial
I saw the title and I just thought of a Necromancer showing a powerpoint presentation on why necromancy is cool and not "morally wrong" and that they should let him back into wizard school.
I had a DM who would use modify memory to delete whole sessions from our memories. It absolutely took away our agency. It was like a worse version of "it's what my character would do" because he basically made it so it was "it's what YOUR character would do cos they don't know what you know anymore".
"Your CHARACTER" seems more appropriate
This has to be one of the craziest DM moments I've ever heard. Do you mind if I ask for more about this story? How did they just completely wipe entire sessions out of your party's mind? The spell slots that would take would be ridiculous
@@smilesschemes he home-brewed the memory wipe devices from the movie Men In Black into his game and the fighters guild members would use it on us so that we didn't know that we had completed the bounties.
It wasn't said whether is was an in game reason for the fighters guild members to keep the gold they would have owed for the completion of the bounty, so we could only assume he just wanted to delete the session because it went so poorly.
The previous session he gave us a bounty to return a bounty for an elf (dead or alive) and fight a monster and didn't tell our party (4 level 3 characters) that it was a CR17 Nagpa.
It paralysed 3 of us and one shot the artifacer to death in one round.
There was zero drama or ceremony to the death. It was like, "OK so that's 76 damage, you're dead. Who's turn is it?"
Myself and the other paralysed members were put in chains and I was lucky enough to talk the Nagpa into letting us help them lift their curse (with some very high persuasion rolls), since of course they knew that fighting them or escaping wasn't an option. I also convinced them to bring the body of our bounty along on their cart as payment and we'd delay the problem of our escape. We weren't allowed to bring the body of our dead member or heal them.
One of us teleported off the cart further down the road and I kept them talking and distracted. We had a really good plan to get the other two party members off the cart but before we could say it, the DM says that a toll way appears out of nowhere. They arrest the Nagpa. They say that they're the fighters guild who gave us the Bounty in the first place and that the was a huge reward for the capture of the Nagpa too. I rolled a nat 20 persuasion check to get the bounty for the Nagpa aswell at the elf bounty. They agree.
But instead of giving us the bounty they wipe our minds on the cart.
The member who teleported off the cart met back up with us in town and told us of everything that happened, so we knew what happened to us again.
We were giving the DM the benefit of the doubt, so we took the bounty notice to the fighters guild and said we're here to collect our bounties. We know they have the body and the Nagpa in custody.
And he wiped all our minds again.
One of our party had died and we had succeeded in not TPKing to a CR17 monster as level 3s and our reward was being gas lit.
We knew we didn't have memories from before we left the fighters guild. We knew a day was missing from our memories. We knew we were injured and dirty from the road, and we had loot from other encounters we didn't remember from the road and were missing spell slots. And we knew that a member of the party was missing.
But we were expected to just pick another thing off the bounty board instead of looking for the missing party member and treating the fighters guild as the main bad guy.
It was blithering.
Oh man that's the worst! I had a DM who literally put us all in cages without any chance of escape then when we all decided to just sit there then they decided to let us roll for something I can't remember now it was my character too lol. I think he was able to try to convince the guard to give him the key, my character was a cocky rogue assassin who has NO charisma I had like a -2 ... rolled like a single digit but it passed ... then we couldn't go into any door but what they wanted - just very frustrating lol - a GOOD DM is such a gem you gotta hold on to them for sure lol
Funny that you made a video about this, I pretty much made a Chaotic Netural War Cleric that dipped into Necromancy Wizard. She's not evil, but her goddess (the Morrgian) literally allowes her to be a battle Junkie who will happy swing her hammer and use the dead to help her and her party. Hell, when she was in a different TTRPG system, she literally looked at a evil, just turned devout preist to a different death god that was hers and said "... dude I literally healed this warrior from dying multiple times and our god let me. Chill the fuck out with the sarifices." And she did like our lawful Wizard, just thought he needed to maybe convert to her god since his luck with his spells were horridable (being once an wizard apprentience herself). So She wasn't going to just turn on her party and go evil just to support a guy who once followed a rigid Lawful god and went to the compleate other extreame that just happened to be her god. She cared more about freedom, not the rigid concept of "Oh because this god is about death, you aren't going to use heal." It's the reason why she stopped being a Wizard, she saw them too rigid and stuffy for her liking.
Now how the Necromancy comes into play, She's honestly just intresting how things work between life and death and kinda sees the undead as "another chance at life" if it works out they become sentiant. But if that undead attack her, you sure as hell going to smash their heads in because a fight is a fight, and she thrives on fights, cackling all the way. Also who wouldn't be amused to see a Necromancer Cleric use speak dead to the victum in question of a trial and just watch everyone just watch in horror how she does not do the whole pious thing. "What? The victum wanted to have a view choice words to their murderer! Just giving them the chance to so they can move on. Oh and they won't turn into a Wraith. They seem cool, rather not smash their heads in because of it."
I love this story of your character! Thank you for sharing it. And I'm glad that so much of the philosophy of this video was found in, and enjoyed in, your character too
In many settings necromancy is straight up damning the souls of the raised by either destroying them or preventing them from entering the afterlife. Something like that is pretty evil, no matter how you use it.
Fair. Granted I guess it depends on what setting you're playing in as well as what spells you end up using
I think the main reasons why necromancers get bad reps are 3 things - 1, people are not really comfortable with the subject of death, 2, zombies have been ingrained into people's minds as evil mindless beings that just want to kill and eat, and are associated with the stereotype of necromancers, and 3, desecrating corpses is generally frowned upon, and so using said corpses as tools is even more frowned upon. This is just my thinking on why society paints necromancers as evil, I think they can be basically anything, and I'm actually playing a necromancer right now in one of my campaigns, who has saved the party quite a few times.
For point 2, its not just Zombies but undead of all kind appearing in myths legends and folk tales across the world and history tend to be malevolent 8/10 times give or take.
@@garrisonmoncher5461 Well there are actually quite a few mythologies that have good zombies or people who have come back from the dead, but the media has decided to make them scary
In D&D, society didn't paint necromancy as evil, the gods of the world has determined that creating undead is an evil act, noone in D&D believe necromancy is evil, granted commoners probably won't be able to see the difference
That tracks that it would be zealous religious ideology that would decide that something was inherently evil or not
I agree. Sincerely, Taka the Lich
It's even more weird when you look into official D&D lore.
Necromancers create a factotum of life using negative energy that has no free will or emotions, like a computer program. But that's evil.
Golem construction involves the binding of a thinking, feeling elemental in an artificial form and stripping it of its free will to serve as slave labour for the one who ripped it from its home plane. But that's morally neutral.
In the Dungeons and Dragons great wheel cosmology, where morality is an objective fact as clear as the cardinal directions, it is considered more ethical to use slaves imported from another far away land than it is to automate a job.
Oh wow. I'll be looking into this bit of lore a lot more
Does this legitimately shock you? Dnd writing is dumb sometime
listening to this I was thinking on things like harry potter where a curse that only causes pain is unforgivable but rape drugs (sorry, love potions) can be bought even at a joke shop.
using a curse to cause instant, painless, death is unforgivable but boiling your blood or crushing your bones is just a school prank.
necromancy has this abusive hate because people feel uncomfortable dealing with the dead. they fear the unknown and lack the skills, power and knowledge to use necromancy properly.
there's a joke I read somewhere about the use of necromancy:
on a trial
judge: do you have any witness of your claim?
lawyer: yes, your honor. I raise the victim.
besides, it sure sucks when you are that enemy but raising as part of your army your enemies is a good way to save your own soldiers/companions from being hurt.
a priest heals the injured. a necromancer prevents the party from being injured.
"It's just a prank bro."
Yeah honestly... those alternatives in harry potter are way more messed up.
I LOVED my gnome wizard who was a necromancer she was the sweetest! She said hi to everyone, she loved everyone and did her best to help all she really wanted was a friend so she did make zombies they never attacked anyone, or even protected Bim (my wizard) her command was always to run away and to save themselves ... she also used healing spells that would take her own health away to give to everyone else ... just loved her lol - and not a necromancer but I also played a death cleric who again was just lovely albeit a bit creepy lol - also I have NEVER wanted to kill off or change a single character I've ever played I don't understand why people want to do that?
I love this story!
And i feel like sometimes, players want to kill off their characters simply because they're not enjoying them as much as they thought they would. If they're locked in to playing a game for a long period of time, they'll probably want to play something they'll like for a long time.
'Necromancy isnt bad, it all is'
Lollll
It do be like that tho
I think most Evocation spells are more evil than most Necromancy spells
Fire hurts a *lot*
But yeah as you said, it's all tools
"Ima cast this spell that will burn everyone alive," vs "Ima cast this spell that lets me talk to this old dead guy."
I remember a post on reddit about a magic system based on seasons, so fire magic would be summer magic, ice winter, etc. and necromancy was under spring, because spring is the return of life. For example, Jesus was resurrected during spring.
That's a really cool take on it. I assume winter would be ice or even death magic and then fall would be decay magic??? Or something like that
@@smilesschemes Fall did have that, so you could make things rot or rust
Cool cool
"Necromancy isn't evil" is a common take these days, although I've heard a couple deep-dives into lore where necromancy is, on a cosmic scale, inherently evil. Trapping or destroying eternal souls, harvesting power from the flow of energy into the negative energy plane, etc
From our character's perspective on the material plane, ignoring where souls might be headed in the afterlife, necromancy is very benign.
One could even argue that being a Lich isn't inherently evil - perhaps you only sustain your existence off of evil individual's souls, while you yourself do no harm?
But if you don't have a full understanding of the affairs of gods, you might find that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Don't be surprised when your soul larva is sold at auction in Hades.
Before anyone claims necromancy is benign, I'd invite them to think about what WOULD make it evil. Are any of those how it works in your campaign?
There's a hundred questions you could ask, and a half dozen answers to each of them. Depending on what those answers are, undeath could be Evil, a dick move, or completely harmless.
What makes it different from using Animate Objects on a pile of bones? What IS a soul? Do elementals have souls? Goblins? Devils? Angels? What happens when you summon fey creatures and sacrifice them in combat? Where do people go when they die? Why do some of them haunt us as ghosts? Do souls ever get reincarnated? What do the gods want? What do the gods fear? Where did the gods come from? Where does the power to raise dead come from? What's the difference between raising a zombie and resurrecting someone? Why do the gods hate necromancy? Is it some of the gods, all of the gods, just a handful with personal prejudices, or maybe they're all fine with necromancy -- "it's just a tool, can be used for good or evil".
This opens up so many other questions and I love it
I want to point out on the negative energy thing. It's like the infinite hotel, negative energy will destroy the multiverse and there is a countable infinite number of necromancers. However, the multiverse is uncountably infinite and there are more realities than there are necromancers drawing power. Even if we go down to just one world, the amount of power is always greater than the amount of necromancers or the world would have already begun to rot, since necromancy is something obviously old and commonly practiced. So in short...negative energy won't destroy the multiverse...the gods just don't like mortals messing with the dead. In which case it becomes a question as to why.
a skeletons first action if left without a master is to attack people, totally not evil guys it's just misunderstood.
That skeleton's probably just going through a lot. If you sat them down, and talked it out, maybe we could all just understand one another and get along
@@smilesschemes I wouldn't use your advice even with living people
I play oath of unlife paladin which is basically lawful good necromancer who enlightens the living, helps people, and rids evil from the world.
I like it
@@smilesschemes look up the oath of unlife
I love to play necromancers in role-playing games and you put it exactly how I feel near the end of the video. I hate that I'm kind of just roped in with evil characters, sometimes I get the connection, but other times it's dumb
It's like, "I have the potential to do all this other stuff with my character, but if I do it I'll be labeled as evil, but if I don't do it, then I'm weak, underpowered and lost a lot of my character's inspiration and flavor for playing them..."
@@smilesschemes yeah exactly, like for instance I'm playing pathfinder with a group of friends and apparently in the universe there are forms of necromancy that are morally good but weak, and forms of necromancy that are morally wrong but strong (and some strong and morally correct, but not many). Which in the universe I understand, necromancy involving making a soul undead slowly sets the universe towards a reset. BUT my goals aren't evil, I just want to make alcohol and to grow the town our adventure takes place around. While in my party we have also have characters that are seen in the more 'good guy' kind of aspect, yet they also have made way more morally grey decisions that you could say is evil. Like I get it, if I practice necromancy it's slowly making the universe reset faster, but it's kind of already going to happen so.... you know....
Love necromancy as a concept. Wish more games had more in-depth mechanics on necromancy both in ttrpg and video games
Same, but a lot of the time it's the same generic "i raise an undead army" kinda vibe
@@smilesschemes yeah it's always bare bones (pun intended). Summon a generic skeleton/zombie regardless of what you're raising from the dead. Like we can't even have summons that reflect the thing we're using necromancy on which is a little sadge. If I could find an rpg with a good necromancy system I'd be so happy
There's a lot of homebrewing it needs even in dnd. One issue with mechanics I have is what you talked about, you can't do anything with other types of undead. All you can use with animate dead is humanoid lookin skelebois
Heres the thing theres 2 takes on necromancy on the whole making undead A. The undead is simply the body being animated with magic and the will of the caster or B. The body has the soul or a fragments of it pushed back in the body and those not so morally not great or even theres the 3rd i go with the body being animated with magic and the brain included if it hasn't been scrambled those the memories are included as a shadow of the original being
Those takes are definitely more on the grim side, even with this argument, those sides are hard to ignore
The ethical practice of necromancy - that is conjuring spirits that WANT to work with you and not forcing them to - has many benefits to it.
1) You spend less time and energy trying to assert and maintain control over them. Plus, those willing to work will have passion into their actions, possibly improving their strength.
2) This does not earn you a bad rap amongst the living or the dead. Whether you're a medium solving a murder, or a general who is asking his soldiers for one last stand against evil.
3) It's much, much safer. Not only would people go from hostile to wary, or wary to accepting, the spirits of the afterlife will be waiting for you with open arms... not claws.
Every magic that can harm someone is evil, people don't understand that for some reason.
Use your undead army to rebuild destroyed cities
The Good Necromancer is one of my favorite archetypes to play.
The only non-evil school of magic is Abjuration, as it's the only one that focuses on protection instead of committing war crimes.
Good as an alignment bars using enchantment, divination and transmutation, as they "strip the dignity of a creature."
Evocation is a school entirely focused on the destruction of life.
The process of raiding ancient tombs and random monsters of gold is motivated by greed and thus evil.
So if I want to collect a few skeletons and fight fire with fire. That's my prerogative.
The only thing I took away from this is that you haven't thought hard enough about how to commit war crimes with abjuration.
*Laughs in Planar Binding, and Glyph of Warding
I mean... if we are going to be killing goblins, orcs and bandids anyway, why NOT raise then as zombies?
Makes sense, makes sense
Book of the dead: awakening.
Is a book by RhinoZ is about a necromancer that is trying to do the right thing.
Thank you for the recommendation!
@@smilesschemes no worries, it's good to RAISE awareness for honest necromancy. ~^
When it comes to an IU PoV with established settings like DnD or Pathfinder, a part of it is just what "undeath" means in the greater setting as a whole. How such magic interacts with lifeforce, souls, the afterlife, or the like. To say nothing of just settings where "good" and "evil" are less subjective social constructs, so much as scientifically measurable forces of nature, with entire dimensions literally made of them. Mechanics like necromancy getting a buff in some random Evil dimension kind of removes it from even being a question of "ethics".
Take DnD's Evening Glory. Even trying to be a "nice" goddess of undeath, a lot of what makes her up... isn't really all that "good". More just "non malevolent"... and even that's kinda iffy when you get into her priest being Liches. Hell, the main thing that even gives "live forever with your love in undeath" any merit at all, is just how much of a crap shoot a lot of the other DnD afterlives seem to be. Without that, her whole pitch would come off as way more manipulative by nature.
It's like how a hypocritical god can have both murder and public service in their portfolio, but regardless of what draws any particular worshiper to them, said god is at the end of the day their own independent being. With their own wants and motives, and thus the worshiper has no real say in what aspect of them shows up that day.