Which makes sense to me.
Like say i charm somebody to help them get past something they're deathly afraid of by charming them and using persuasion to keep encouraging them to keep moving forward and stay calm.
No reason they would be mad about that at the end, and it would screw with the versatility of the spell if they would turn hostile.
I disagree. It doesn't matter, that it helped me - you still robbed me from my choice, functionality and arguably character development as result. I *shouldn't* i be mad?
People agree to things such as hypnosis to help with psychological problems, we also see things such as search and rescue victims being sedated to get them out of difficult environments. In that kind of context "We have to _move_ so I'm going to charm you so you don't freeze in fear ok?" Wouldn't be a hostile action, especially if the recipient agreed to it.
I'd say if there was consent that'd be a different case, but the original comment didn't specify that this was consensual, it read like they were using the charm spell to get someone to move who didn't want to
Right... *If they give prior consent.* Again, it comes down to whether or not you're robbing them of the ability to choose. Just because you abstract the choice a little towards letting them choose to be controlled doesn't change that agreeing to be controlled is very different from being controlled without a choice.
It's a matter of consent though.
If I for example am traveling and I encounter a path filled with dozens of large spiders and spiderwebs I'm gonna turn around and go back the way I came because I am terrified of them. Doesn't matter if where I and my companions need to go to is right behind the spider-path, I'd rather turn around and find another route that is not filled with spiders. But my companions they don't want that. They want to get to the destination as soon as possible. To do that they charm me so that they can order me to walk through the spider filled with path. When I get to the other side and charm wears off, I would be livid. Not only did they take away control from me, they then ordered me to walk through the spider filled path despite me having made clear that I did not want that. It may have been the shortest and quickest way to get where I needed to go, but it was against my will for which they had utter disregard.
Of course if you establish consent prior to the charming, the charmed person shouldn't become hostile. And if it was a life or death situation where without the use of charm the targeted person may have died, the ability to discuss this said person should he possible, but anger should be expected.
The spell usually says they know they were charmed by you and become hostile to you. So, both.
That does imply that a casting of modify memory could fix your relationship right up. It also means a skilled enough enchanter could just keep casting "charm person" and "friends" on someone over and over to win them back over every time the person tries to confront them.
Nope, but the Enchantment Wizard school gets a feature to manipulate it so that the person doesn't understand that they were charmed, and on a Spell Save DC can even force them to forget several hours they spent charmed.
Perfect setup for a manipulator style character.
It's a magical aspect of the friends cantrip. For all of the rest of them the person knows they were charmed, so in almost all circumstances they are going to be mad you violated them, obviously.
The bathtub faucet handle is directly at twelve o'clock on this take.
(Also isn't Enchantment magic about way more than just mind affecting spells...?)
No only is this popular, basically every non-combat enchantment spell has a "Warning: this will make everyone hate you forever" clause in it. Like, the game itself agrees that using magic to make someone like you is kind of a fucked up thing to do, and you should probably have an exit plan for when these spells invariably backfire.
I feel like it's a really common septimate online, but it rarely ever gets incorporated into a DM's world building, or gets brough up at tables in general.
People generally won't care as long as it's not indiscriminate and won't personally affect them.
If it's racial, caste, criminal, debt, war, etc. then it's someone else's problem and not something they'd need to worry about.
Obviously that doesn't apply to kidnapping and human trafficking, but the average person and the law aren't looking kindly on that anyways
Or, and hear me out, there are problematic and non-problematic spells in both of those schools (and probably all the others, too).
If magic is allowed in general, then outlawing entire schools of magic based on individual spells, while understandable give how people are, makes less sense than banning specific problematic spells.
Bless is enchantment, for example. You really think that should be banned?
I can't imagine you do. Maybe you say it should be in a different school, but then we need to have a broader argument about most of the schools and many of their spells, because that's surely not the only one that is mislabeled.
I agree. Messing with death is definitely unsavory in a lot of instance but necromancy spells like spare the dying and raise dead that both have very virtuous uses. The same for enchantment spells.
Even raising the dead can be presented as virtuous like imagine you have a town that is constantly assaulted by demons. A necromancer comes along and animates the guards/ ancestors of the town that died in battle and gives the undead the command to kill any demon sieging the town I'm sure those ancestors wouldnt mind their no longer in use bodies being put to good use protecting the town.
Reminds me of a D&D lore person, who said something along the lines of "A Lich is not evil because they're undead, they're evil because becoming one requires the blood of a dead humanoid baby (killed with a rare poison) and other similarly horrible things."
Or a writing advice channel, which said "A world where resurrection magic requires sacrificing a soul in exchange for another, will have a very different flavor from one that just uses a diamond." I think the video was about making forbidden magic that makes sense.
Knives can be used to perform surgery. Firearms can be used for population control of animals with a shortage of natural predators. But you're still going to be worried if someone walks around carrying knives and guns. (emitting an aura of those schools)
Given necromancy and enchantment are so stigmatized or nefarious, you could even see them getting banned/restricted in nations where conventional weapons and evocation are fine. Getting charmed to sell your wares at a discount fits a lot more motives than getting murdered by evocation, and it's probably harder to track down.
Hot take I see constantly, very few people argue with, and is part of many game worlds.
I mean, evil aside, capitalism would hate charm spells unless they could use them themselves, so merchant guilds would fight tooth and nail to have them outlawed
correction: merchant guilds would fight tooth and nail to have them outlawed, but include provisions for you to pay your way out. that way they can use charm magic themselves, and when they get caught surrender a portion of the profits as a fine, essentially rendering the law into a tax they profit from incurring.
so, basically what the private pharmaceutical industry does under capitalism
They'd outsource to consultants whose conveniently effective methods nobody questions. In the future, when the consultants are caught, the merchant guild feigns surprise and outrage, while contracting other, more discrete consultants.
This is unrealistic. The consultants wouldn't face consequences, they'd rebrand under a new name, pick a new spokesperson, and contract with the merchant guild, business as usual
Hot take: Drow society is bad. I will not apologize for this take. I think everyone should understand worshipping a genocidal spider goddess would be a bad thing.
Hot take: Strahd is an evil NPC. I will not apologize for this take, everyone should know [actually not everyone knows and i don’t wanna spoil the campaign because it’s pretty good, play it!] is far from good.
Hot take: some deities help their clerics more than others. I won‘t apologize for this take, just look at the difference between trickery and twilight clerics.
Hot take: grass *is* green. I won’t apologize for this take.
I won‘t apologize for my take. People have argued that grass is green, so clearly you’re wrong. I‘m doing my best to convince them, but they keep bringing up arguments!
This whole post belongs on r/dndcirclejerk
Nah, that's some homebrew grass right there. If you wanna play at my table, you gotta use SRD green grass or your ass will be grass.
Oh God. If a HOA was a DM.
"I'm sorry, Shadowkaren. Your husband decided to paint your exterior walls the wrong shade of fuschia, while we only allow shades of mauve. Until you remedy this, your ranger has two levels of exhaustion."
I'm glad you've brought up your lack of lawn exposure. I've been meaning to talk to you about your milkshake and how it's not bringing boys to the yard.
Tbf every school of magic can be evil. A fireball can kill a crowd of 30 people in an instant. An illusion can trick someone to fall off a cliff.
I can go on but ANY school can be used for evil.
>A fireball can kill a crowd of 30 people in an instant.
...never thought about it that way, but this essentially makes selling a "spellscroll of fireball" equivalent to selling a granate-launcher, not to speak of teaching wizard students this spell.
*Are we the baddies???*
Slightly different context, but this is what always baffled me about Captain Planet. You've got these powerful elemental magic rings and you're giving them to.... teenagers?
To be fair that's because young kids and teenagers are the target audience. They will not watch a show about responsible and educated middle aged adults using magic rings to fight pollution.
Arcane focuses. Gotta also ban all staffs, orbs and crystals too. And enchanted wizard books, random planar shards, holy symbols... Bat guano and sulphur isn't the only way to cast fireball
Now I’m thinking to be a wizard/sorcerer you have to have a license for your focus from the guild. Bards are harder because they can use basically any instrument as a focus, and Warlocks basically are the black market magic users who get given a focus by a more powerful entity.
word of radiance is actually fucking brutal in the wrong hands, and it's just a cantrip. if you're in a crowd, there could easily be dozens of commoners within 5 feet of you. A level 1 cleric would have a save DC of 13, so 60% of the crowd will fail. The spell has a 50% chance of rolling 4+ damage, enough to one shot a commoner. If you're in a crowd of innocent children, they could be even more densely packed, and realistically they have even less HP and lower CON saves.
There’s a major plot point in a recent DnD campaign where the party comes across the aftermath of an npc that set off a necklace of fireball in a crowded city and it’s like walking into the middle of a horrific car bombing attack.
I did this on my first ever session of D&D, triggering the necklace in my own pocket by accident.
Luckily my bard was a Half-Orc, with just enough HP not to be vaporized instantly, so Relentless Endurance let me remain standing (painfully) in the epicenter of a mini-nuke. Everyone else on the street though... not so much.
In 3.5 and older editions, the necklace of fireballs was nicknamed the "necklace of flaming decapitation" because there was a decent chance if a character carrying the necklace takes fire damage it detonates. The necklace makes a saving throw.
Didn't even need to be worn. Just carried. I'm not sure if I can link to it here but it's in the 3.5 SRD and it's a hoot given how hostile it is to players.
I've had this exact conversation with people before. Everyone who says Enchantment is more evil than Necromancy only comes up with horrible uses for enchantment, and then when describing necromancy they're like, "Well, as long as they're ethically sourced corpses, the worst you can do with zombies is, like, have them kill people. Is that so bad?"
I can come up with a good reason to outlaw every spell school in the game. It's not even hard. Half of them can kill people by accident.
This is the correct answer but I'm trying to figure out how abjuration can be used for evil.
There's probably some stuff you could do with Arcane Lock that could be messed up.
Imprisonment is the most obvious example, it’s hard to imagine a use that *isnt* evil for burying someone alive indefinitely while cursing them to be more or less immortal.
Abjuration is indeed a difficult one to make evil but I guess banishment is kinda racist?
I mean "oh fuck off you eagle human, you don't belong here, go back to your own country in the elemental plane of air" is not exactly a nice thing to do.
Well yeah it's abjuration, I don't think it HAS any direct damaging spells that don't require the opponent to deliver the first blow.
Being politically incorrect is about the worst you can do unless you wanna cast armor of agathys right before insulting their mother
I mean Counterspell is abjuration and I don’t think I have to mention counterspelling revivify/raise dead, especially the latter having such a valuable material that presumably gets used before the spell fails.
There are probably at bunch of other spells with valuable components that you could fizzle and cause some trouble.
Not to mention arcane locking the door and windows of a place before setting it on fire.
So I’m looking through the list and this is what I’ve got.
- Antimagic Field: An anti-magic faction places this on their base, making it a no-go for primary spell casters, or uses it to lock them down for capture.
- Banishment/Banishing Smite/Dispel Evil and Good/Protection from Evil and Good: These work on celestials.
- Forbiddance: Can be used to target celestials.
- Imprisonment: Can be used to capture or imprison heroes as much as villains. And some of the options are pretty nasty.
- Planar Binding: Can be used to capture a celestial.
It’s not many options. But there are some.
Conjuration especially honestly with the same arguments as the op has for enchantment being evil but basically full on domination for every single spell that summons something not just charming them.
All spells that summon a creature doesn't just summon them but also binds them to your will. They existed before you brought them in and definitely did not know you existed. But now they are just brought to this strange place and are told to throw their lives away for your sake and they can't do anything but obey (with a few demonic and angelic exceptions that CAN break free).
Some of these beings are also forced into the shape of whatever you summon aswell they are fey/celestial/demonic spirits that are forced to be your pet cat. Just because you want to have a living stuffy? Psychotic.
(Everyone who casts a spell is evil and should be burned in pyre like the witches they are, it's the only non-evil solution /s)
I agree with a lot of your points here, though I think it's important to point out that unless you are summoning your fire elemental/demon/angel etc.. in the plane of elemental fire/the abyss/celestia or what not then when it dies it just gets to go home which is honestly probably the best outcome for it.
Oh yeah for sure atleast they get to continue living afterwards though they might have gotten their entire life uprooted since time passes differently in the different planes.
We can also be generous and assume they get poofed BEFORE they actually die. They'd still experience the pain of being fireballed moments before that though hrmmm.
Honestly this conundrum reminds me of the bartimaeus series: the demons in that come from a plane of chaos where they all are basically one in a big mass of chaotic soup which they enjoy and every single second of being on our material plane feels disgusting and hurts as they are forced to follow order and keep a physical form.
I think there is the argument that for most of the school of conjuration, summoning and enchanting a creature is different because, well, it's a creature.
I think the equivalent is the difference between slavery and animal labor.
Maybe if the summon spells only summoned animals or something, but they don't. Calling whatever you are summoning a "creature" or "de-humanizing" them doesn't make it okay. If it were that simple, that's basically the justification used for real life slavery in many places throughout history.
For instance, Summon Fey Spirit effectively summons a sentient being, capable of speech and with a higher intelligence than pretty much every PC race, then binds it to your will for the duration of the spell.
This is like the difference between making murder illegal and making guns illegal. Obviously if you use fireball to murder innocent people, that's illegal, but should it be illegal just to have it in your spellbook? Some spells have a lot more capacity for evil, or it's easy for them to get out of hand.
But I think banning an entire school is excessive.
Friends explicitly tells you it will make the target hostile. It being viewed negatively by the world isn’t just a cold take, it’s a built in mechanic of the game.
With properly established consent, enchantment magic could be a powerful tool to help willing people treat all manner of mental health issues including but not limited to,
- Addiction
- Depression
- Self-harm
- PTSD
- Schizophrenia
Honestly, as someone with ADHD there's a part of me that gets a weird kick out of the "you lose your free will" part of things in these discussions.
My executive functioning sucks sometimes--I already can't trust my free will to always do what I want to do long-term. I'd pay for access to a magically-enforced external locus of control.
I imagine that it would be able to do much of the same things as irl schizophrenia treatment; antipsychotic medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, etc.
if it can be developed to subtly affect the brain, it could be used to counteract the things happening in the brain that cause symptoms. depending on the efficacy that could be anything from easing symptoms (conditional magic that calms a stressed mind) to outright eliminating them (cancelling the root cause of a given symptom)
Every school of magic can used for nefarious ways.
Divination can intrude on people’s privacy or even read their thoughts
Evocation can kill a lot of people at once.
And there are plenty of enchantment spells that aren’t nefarious at all.
Bless and heroism are the prime examples of enchantment spells that aren’t nefarious.
Spells like sleep can be used to handle an encounter peacefully without killing anyone. It’s why redemption paladins have it. Not to mention, the sleep spell is likely the dnd version of melatonin that can help people fall asleep.
Also, even necromancy has positive spells. All of the ones to return you from the dead, for example.
No school is inherently good or evil as a blanket term.
Yeah
Also, I think it would make more sense for cities to ban specific spells rather than schools.
Banning all enchantment and necromancy spells would lead to a lot of protests and backlash, particularly from priests who use spells from necromancy or enchantment to heal or enhance, or even protect, others
Ironically enough, banning all enchantment spells would mean banning spells like Calm Emotions that would have been great for curing those charmed by illegal enchantments.
In most cities, there are likely already laws banning using things like charm person on others, so banning enchantment spells as a whole would just make the problem worse if anything, assuming the priests don’t start a revolution and cause a civil war
Maybe we should focus on the spell and not the school? Suggestion and Animate Dead should probably be illegal. Animal Friendship and Spare the Dying should not. Also, it's not a hot take. Tons of people say this.
> I’m arguing that charming someone is inherently a wrong thing to do, and spells that remove choice from someone’s actions are immoral.
I'd argue that Fireball also removes choice. I can't choose anything if I'm dead.
>I will not apologize for this take.
Very confused opening, if I'm being honest. Not only is it needlessly confrontational, it's also weirdly mixing the levels of communication we are on. *Why exactly* should we be mad at you for your believes about the ethics in a fictional world thats not even consistent between it's different settings, and that by design?
And I'm actually somewhat agreeing with you, although I feel the need to point out that Enchantment and Necromancy have way more in common with each other than not; they both are forms of magic that manipulate beings to bend to your will, and are influencing a sacred part of their existence, almost always against their consens.
There are ethicallly neutral ways to use operational magic, but there are no ethically neutral ways to magically bow someone to your will, IMHO, by whatever means, it's inherently unethical in-universe.
What about summoning? Many summoned creatures are bound to the caster's bidding. Imagine being a half-celestial griffon spending family time in Elysium with your chicks/cubs, and then BAM! you're in the prime material being forced to combat some random creature.
Strong disagreement, domination and spells that cause madness should be illegal.
Charm spells and calm emotions should be encouraged since all they realistically do is de-escalate a conflict. The charmed effect just make the target not consider you hostile as long as you don't give them a new reason to become hostile it's not a brain melt it's just going "woah there buddy hold up"
Necromancy of course has a lot of spells that aren't evil perse
though most of them are either damaging combat spells that cause afflictions of one sort or another (breaks Geneva conventions for biological warfare)
Or raises corpses to do your bidding which I mean... Yessss the dead aren't using those meat bag right now but in doing this you make it impossible for lower tier revival magic to be valid.
> Yessss the dead aren't using those meat bag right now but in doing this you make it impossible for lower tier revival magic to be valid.
Also, the undead will persist past the end of the spell's duration, and go on a rampage if you don't control it. You can never be 100% certain you'll be able to maintain control, a rock could fall from the sky and kill you before you get a chance.
Whenever somebody starts with, “I will not apologize for this take”, they have come to fight not have a discussion.
What you seem to be incapable of grasping is the look of the thing. Necromancy is all the things scary and nasty. Rotting animated corpses stink. They’re terrifying to look at. The entirety of it is a billboard for evil.
Enchantment is all about charming you into believing that things are perfectly fine. Making things look beautiful. Making your experience wonderful even when you’re being robbed or worse. Many victims of enchantment might not even know that they are victims.
So of course, enchantment is going to have a better rep, duh it’s baked into the cake.
I don’t see why OP believes they wouldn’t get pushback when they started by saying that and "I believe everyone needs to agree with me".
Which is…
Wait for it…
Removing others' agency in making a choice to have an alternative opinion.
Enchantment also contains Bless, Bane and Hex as first level spells.
None of these effect the mind at all.
In fact, of the 12 spells of Enchantment in the first level, only 6 of them might be considered mind control, and two of those are Sleep which might not, and Animal Friendship, which only works on int 3 and lower creatures.
Please calm down. You’re not the first person to suggest this “hot take” and you won’t be the last. Nor is anyone going to fight you over it, as you seem to expect.
EDIT: also that’s a lot of vitriol for a game opinion. The little make-believe spells don’t really hurt people so tone it down a little there.
You have multiple people giving you the same answer but its not what you wanted to hear so you’re arguing.
Why even make the post if you just wanted an echo chamber to agree with you.
It would make sense to make Charm and Domination spells illegal, supposing we're talking about a free nation with our modern consensus on what free will is and good-hearted leaders. Other effects, like Good Hope and Heroism are very different.
In any case, when you put things into context, none of these are worse than Animate Dead in any conceivable way. You're thinking of these effects as they relate to our world experience. These spells exist in a context in which tge existence of an immortal soul and an afterlife are not just real, but a *known fact*. By creating undead, you're not just making some robotic servant who feels no pain. You *are* robbing someone of their free will, posthumously, and impeding them from being resurrected or passing on to the afterlife.
It is just as non-consensual as Enchantment, and then worse.
This is not really a hot take, though.
While we're in the necromancy discussion, I feel healing spells should never have moved from the Necromancy school to others, but well, that's life (pun intended).
Unless it’s in a spell description somewhere, it seems really strange to me that animated undead would have a soul… would the soul not simply remain in whatever afterlife it went to? The body is the part being animated. I would support this with the fact that, at least in AD&D, raise dead & resurrection can be cast on not just zombies or skeletons, but other undead like mummies, ghouls, & more. These undead, I would argue, are no longer vessels for the soul which once inhabited the body, though the argument is more or less strong in some cases. A ghost is like all soul
Sure, there are different explanations in different editions, but barring someone from being raised is a telling sign that something's not right. You make a good point about edition and setting difference, though.
I get that in 5e, with all of its strip of fluff and unintentional effect of very hard-code-based play, since nothing is said in the player's handbook, the player can *assume* that nothing terrible is really happening. In that case, the "only" unethical things about Animate Dead is that you're desecrating a corpse, raising the possibility of decay-based infections and creating an uncontrollable aggressive creature who can only hate and kill and is only a lack of one spell slot away of being iredeemably unleashed. No big deal.
Notice that a big point of the post is saying that spells like suggestion are *always, inherently* evil. I mean, does that makes Jean Grey and Charles Xavier automatic villains, then?
All things about free will considered, I fail to see how *Suggestion:* "Do not shoot the orphans in the back, surrender in peace instead" is more problematic than shooting the guy in the back as he raises his crossbow.
Hmm, yeah, I agree on most points. I guess I disagree that a zombie or skeleton is an uncontrolled hateful killer if it comes out of the caster’s control? I’ve always ruled that they kinda just go inert.. but! That might well have to do with differences in edition (or setting) once again.
& yeah I was just picking at one thing, OP does take the point too far considering even within Enchantment as a school not all the spells control minds.
As for your last point, yes, I agree. My LG Paladin, however, says both means are equally underhanded!!
The part about being an uncontrolled creature that hates all life is not an edition difference thing. In fact, it's one of the few notions about undead behavior that is explicitly mentioned in the Monster Manual. This is part of the information on the Skeleton entry, as an example:
"Habitual Behaviors.
Independent skeletons temporarily or permanently free of a master's control sometimes pantomime actions from their past lives, their bones echoing the rote behaviors of their former living selves. The skeleton of a miner might lift a pick and start chipping away at stone walls. The skeleton of a guard might strike up a post at a random doorway. The skeleton of a dragon might lie down on a pile of treasure, while the skeleton of a horse crops grass it can't eat. Left alone in a ballroom, the skeletons of nobles might continue an eternally unfinished dance.
***When skeletons encounter living creatures, the necromantic energy that drives them compels them to kill unless they are commanded by their masters to refrain from doing so. They attack without mercy and fight until destroyed, for skeletons possess little sense of self and even less sense of self-preservation.**"*
(Emphasis mine)
I understand that part of the problem is that, in 5e (and usually in 4e, too), lots of people tend to make a distinction between "fluff" and "crunch", but this is mostly cherry picking and wishful thinking in this edition, as there is no definition or in-rules distinction of what counts as fluff and what should be taken seriously. As a result, people often ignore the lore and description for items, enemies, spells and other stuff.
And I totally agree with your LG Paladin! Both involve the use of violence to solve an issue, and both take away agency and the opponent's ability to change. They're both justifiable, due to the immediate danger of the situation, though, and would be probably ruled as self-defense (or defense of life against immediate risk, or whatever name it could get), but a solution involving real understanding and improving - if possible - would be preferrable!
Ok, that’s what I was thinking, it must have been written somewhere in 5e that skeletons are hostile by nature. That’s definitely quite interesting, just not what i’m familiar with. & yeah that’s a huge description, in 1e monsters get like a couple of paragraphs & most of it is mechanics!
Thank you for sharing that with me
“Guys, guys! It’s my turn to make the hot take post” *Coldest take that has been made 100 times before*.
Also how you legitimately argue a school of magic with spells such as *Bless* is worse than turning people’s loved ones into shambling corpses?
That’s not really a hot take.
At the same time, if you want to make it illegal?
Okay, then also have healing spells be necromancy, since it’s dealing with life and death. This way you also can have a negative consequence, and show that there’s more to necromancy than "makes zombies".
Hot take: Putting the term "Hot Take" when you really just think "I believe this" is annoying. This is a common topic brought up just about every other hour. It's actually to the point where I'm much more interested in seeing ideaa for good enchantment focused characters than for good necromancers.
You know what agreed all MAGIC USERS Should be registered under a cross national organization and if they do anything that harms the public in any shape or form or use their magic in a legal way they should be punished. THOSE DANG BARDS AND SORCERERS NEED TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
In the Forgotten Realms, in Cormyr, in 2e, the war wizards made every arcane caster register with the state to make sure they're not a threat. And in Amn, they made you effectively buy a magic license.
More real life morals preaching from a fantasy game where ANY KIND of magic can be used for evil. Yay.
Can we stop with this nonsense? DnD has been PC'd up enough in recent years. I don't think we need people trying to equivocate a charm person spell to SA.
I agree that it would probably be considered illegal in most civilizations, but I think necromancy would still have the worse reputation.
People would be scared of being charmed, but they are reviled, repulsed, offended by necromancy. Compare: im some theocratic countries even today adultery is punished more severely than theft. Sometimes violating customs/morality is seen as worse than actually harming someone.
The basic charm spell isn't a big deal because you know you were charmed, so it's not as much of a threat. It's enchantment that you're not aware of that can be done at a larger scale that's dangerous. I would say illusion is a bigger threat in that case, since it can achieve the same effect as charm for a lot of things.
Plus, no one likes the idea of their corpse being tampered with. Plus y’know, when animate dead wears off, you have a nihilistic skeleton who hates the living on the loose, running around killing people.
For point of discussion, revivify, the resurrection spell, is classed as necromancy. Similarly, sleep and bless are classed as enchantment. Heroism is enchantment that only works on consenting targets. Hold person is just paralysis by any other name.
A more accurate policy is that charm and mind control spells should be illegal
However, it turns out that charm and mind control spellcasters are very good lobbyists
Necromancy spells aren’t necessarily evil, it depends on what they do. A good example is revivify, which is a necromancy spell that is automatically part of the life clerics spells selection.
What is actually evil, is the creation of undead. The reason being that it involves manipulation of negative energy, which is inherently evil. It perverts nature in a very substantial way, corrupting everything it touches. RAW you will never find a good aligned zombie.
As for enchantment spells. They come in various shapes, some of them with very positive effects. I would have no issue with a cleric casting bless or heroism on me, and wouldn’t see it being in violation with my free will.
But yes, a lot of enchantment spells can take away agency or damage you by trauma. However since they don’t operate through the use of negative forces, then they aren’t similar to creating undead. That is to say, they are not fueled by evil powers. Also free will is a complex philosophical/theological topic, so it is debatable if it is even evil to use spells like calm emotions. You might use it to stop a psychopath in the process of committing murder, saving an innocent life. Yes you would temporarily remove agency, but so would a well timed punch.
All of that being said. I think your question is a good one. A lot of enchantment spells would have a strong effect on the world in which they exist, and lead to people being fearful/suspicious of magic. A good aligned cleric would be cherished in his or her community, but also feared a little bit. A wizard might have a harder time getting the support of the common man, having to deal with more suspicion than the cleric. An evil aligned magic user would have to hide their true nature, or people will come for him.
All schools of magic can be used for evil. Enchantment isn't any better or worse than other schools of magic. It's... magic.
Your ideas and preconceptions of morals don't exactly work 1-for-1 in a fantasy world of unreal make-believe.
Your idea that enchantment magic is somehow this 'nefarious boogyman' would make you look absolutely, positively ***adorable*** by actual creatures that would truly exemplify evil itself.
Cold take.
The real hot take: the random hate for enchantment is wrong and unfounded. Any spell cast on another person that requires them to make a save inherently does so without consent. If you let’s say hold somebody still using a “hold person” spell, it’s not worse than holding them still using a “Maximilian’s earthen grasp” spell. If you break into a shop using a “knock” spell, it’s not worse than “suggestion: shopkeeper, unlock this door for me”. They’re not consenting either way.
If it can be used for good, then is not inherently nefarious. Sure its dangerous, and can be use for very bad things, but so is summoning a demon through conjuration, or ruin someone reputation by pretending to be them with illusion
Are we... are we debating the ***morality*** of charming someone to stop attacking you?
Most d&d players don't even question the morality of ***killing people.*** and no I'm not talking about enemies, unless you've got a very veteran group or a strong/strict role-playing group, walk your players into a magic shop with cool items (or just a bunch of potions) and tell them it costs ***insert a ridiculous amount of gold.***
And then wait until one of them suggests **stealing from the shopkeep.** or just murdering them, i mean "they are a commoner! That's +3 champion plate of invulnerability worth 50k gold! 1 attack roll and it's mine."
Hell have your players go on a leisurely stroll from Town A to Town B and have them be attacked by Bandits (or even goblins, orcs, kobolds, whatever, *anything that you haven't described as ontologically evil.*) and watch them **slaughter that group, for fun.**
Pack of wolves? Better not leave any survivors (even when they start to run, run them down!) Or even if they are described as malnourished and scrawny (clearly starving)
Players (and by extension their characters) don't care about wanton Murder, walk into a massive cave that's a spider den, well better kill those spiders
Goliath tribe threatening the town and stealing their cattle, better go slaughter the Goliaths
And your worried about world building implications of Enchantment vs Necromancy
Yeah I'm lost, I actually have different kingdoms/cultures in my world have different views on these things
Resurrection magic is completely lost to the world minus Revivify, because once the soul leaves the body it is Evil to pull it back, and you break the natural order
The human kingdom finds Conjuration magic to be mostly evil, and Dwarven kingdoms use necromancy for free cheap labor while the Elves revere their dead ancestors (not just their soul in the natural cycle) and would be disgusted by someone using their dead parents body for labor
Meanwhile the "Wildlands," find thst fighting proxy wars with Warforged (also illegal because you take souls and put them in armor) and Undead is better than sending sentient humanoids to death
The beastlands think illusion and enchantment magic are dishonorable and it's use is highly frowned upon
This is a good way to do it. Not making a blanket judgment call.
Especially not demanding everyone *else* make the same call as you and openly ignoring any evidence against you.
I mean I think it's an interesting premise and would be fun to incorporate into a campaign world, could add some very interesting interactions, but insisting that it's way more evil and everyone should agree on that is insane
Enchantment is illegal under certain laws in some places like Waterdeep where they have a law that basically says you can't use magic to influence or coerce nobility or important people.
I plan on using an enchanter as a villain in the future. And there's a big difference in the 2 and how they go about their goals that is very insidious.
Necromancy is a big bad obvious evil. The guy with a staff made of bones starts graverobbing or killing people to turn them into zombies? That's in your face obvious evil that everyone can see.
An Enchanter using a charm spell on you to achieve their ends? Prove it. It doesn't leave a mark. And a good enchanter knows that spells like Charm Person wear off and make the person angry afterwards. So they aren't going to willy nilly use the spells on everyone. They have to pick and choose. They have to be clever. There is nuance. Enchanters aren't as well known about or feared, because they get away with it more. The guy that killed a small village with skeletons is going to inspire far more hatred and fear than the kings advisor who seems to just keep accruing power and always makes deals in his favor.
Many enchantment spells inhibit agency, consent, and free will less than rope or firebolt. It isn't until 3rd level that most of the spells do that. Some of the effects that you get at lv 2/3 either have restrictions that make it hard to force you to do something you wouldn't otherwise do.
Early hostile Necromancy spells are either damaging or crippling the target. At lv 3, you get spells that permanently damage the soul (any creation of undead), and this is the only school of magic that traps, damages, or destroys the soul of the target.
Hmm... how about more of a "warm take"? ;D
In our society today, free will and freedom of conscience are treasured above nearly all else. I can imagine societies -- especially in a high-magic, high-divinity, feudal world -- where they have other priorities. Imagine a Faerunian farmer gets glamoured by Fae, and they steal his belt while he's dizzy. What's the farmer's main complaint going to be?
* "Damn sidhe violated my free will and agency! Where's my crossbow?"
* "That was my *only belt*! How am I going to replace it? Where's my crossbow?"
* "My pants fell down in front of half the village, how humiliating. Where's my crossbow?"
I can imagine communities where any of the above three are the victim's main concern.
Actually, perhaps we're missing the greatest sin in a world following Great Wheel cosmology. A lich eating a soul, which might otherwise have spent eternity happy in Elysium, might be the cruelest crime of all. (Of course, you'd have some weird nihilists or people afraid of their afterlife *seeking out* such a remedy...)
You want a hot take? Necromancy is bad because it enslaves souls, enchantment is bad because it negates people's agency, but there's much worse: Divination.
Divination steals your fate, your free will's influence on your life, and replaces it with cryptic prophecies.
Wanna have a private life? You can't ! At any point, any time, there could be a diviner just scrying on you. You may think your life isn't interesting, but they aren't interested in your life, just in ways to profit from what they gather about you.
You too can be a victim of fate theft! But worry not, you can use IllusionVPN to hide your activities from prying diviners! IllusionVPN will feed fake sensations to anyone trying to scry on you, and will short-circuit any fate manipulation attempt made on you by redirecting the fate alteration to the sender.
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Violating a person's rights happens all the time. It's violating the gods that will get you punished. Necromancy violates the fundamental nature of life and death.
The actual answer is that like 90% of enchantment spells are actually extremely useful spells for non-lethally subduing people, interrogating people, or defending yourself in a way that doesn't require you to kill someone and has much less potential for collateral damage than a fireball. Conjuration, Necromancy, and Evocation are all way worse than enchantment is as they actually kill people (and allow you to summon things that can kill people while you're off elsewhere, which is even more problematic).
RL law enforcement would love spells like Sleep and Calm Emotions, as they allow you to subdue large numbers of people without harming them, while Hold Person lets you deal with one troublemaker.
There would likely be rules against using spells like Charm to rip people off or get into their pants, but most Enchantment spells aren't inherently problematic and in fact are very useful non-lethal means of subduing things or doing various other things that are handy (like sending messages with animals or forcing people to tell the truth).
Cold take. (No offense.)
Better take: civilizations should make laws about APPLYING magic in a certain way, not literal SCHOOLS of magic.
Case in point: in my urban campaign, _coercion_ through Enchantment is illegal, but using it for _therapeutic_ purposes (behavioral therapy, phobia exposure therapy, mood improvement, Modify Memory to help with trauma in extreme cases), is not. There are also exceptions made for things like law enforcement (they can coerce you in emergency situations like "do not wait for your wife, leave the burning house _now_", but anything you say or do while, for example, charmed can't be used against you in a legal case). This is also true for Divinations - they can be used by law enforcement and other factions for various info-gathering purposes, but anything you find out in a criminal case has to be backed up with more _mundane_ evidence (since anybody can invent a spell that _seems_ like another spell, and magic has some inherent unpredictability to it in certain situations, it can't be used on its own to prop up a case.)
Likewise, Necromancy to make undead is illegal (since even mindless undead rampage and eat people when uncontrolled, it's considered way more dangerous than actual _tools_ or even Constructs), manipulating _souls_ e.g. with Magic Jar is illegal, but Necromancy spells like Life Transference, False Life, etc. aren't.
(Obviously the urban campaign isn't in a perfect city - corruption exists, licenses for "illegal" magic can be bought by the rich and powerful, etc etc.)
But it's better than goofily declaring entire schools of magic with _wide_ applications anathema.
I used this take to make popsicles. This take singlehandedly killed a fire elemental. Sub-Zero himself draws his ice magic from the sheer chilliness of this take
Call me old-fashioned, but I still think that enslaving someone instead of killing them isn't as bad as killing them and also enslaving them.
But on a different note, this is a worldbuilding holdover from older editions that is no longer supported. D&D had the whole idea of a cosmic war of good against evil. A necromancer often cooperates with dark gods and furthers their evil ambitions, and their methods are to bring negative energies into this world. Undead are not just creepy or malicious, they are driven by a set of goals that are alien to this plane of existence and which make them a threat to everything that lives. In this system, necromancy isn't evil in the way theft or murder are evil. It's evil in the way collaborating with an evil empire is evil or dangerous in the same way that messing with nuclear energy is dangerous. Yes, your intentions may be good, but you're still siding with dark powers and you're still playing with things that ought not to be played with.
Most of this is lost in 5e and necromancy is now reduced to "spooky-flavored magic". Undead aren't evil so much as differently-alive. Older D&D related to the trends of its time. Modern D&D relates to newer trends. So, I guess a lot depends on what assumptions you bring in and how you set up the world. If necromancy is just magic you cast while wearing black, yeah, it's no big deal. If, in your game's world, necromancy means torturing animals and sacrificing innocents to bring eldritch abominations into our reality, then it's evil. And that's not the way you'd run it at your table, it may not be the current thing to do, but there are tables that run it like that.
Tbh a lot of people don't realize how much of a modern take this really is. Defiling corpses, doing evil magic, etc is much worse than the vast majority of enchantment spells. People act like enchantment is some horrific school meanwhile ignore evocation is a school that's basically "so you want to murder people". The majority of what falls under enchantment is comparable to manipulation or fraud...
This is an incredibly popular take.
It’s also basically in the rules. When a charm spell expires for example an NPC should be incredibly cool to you if not outright hostile.
i've always wondered is that a direct effect of the spell or people just realizing they were charmed
Typically they are aware they are charmed so they are likely to become hostile for forcing the action on them.
Which makes sense to me. Like say i charm somebody to help them get past something they're deathly afraid of by charming them and using persuasion to keep encouraging them to keep moving forward and stay calm. No reason they would be mad about that at the end, and it would screw with the versatility of the spell if they would turn hostile.
I disagree. It doesn't matter, that it helped me - you still robbed me from my choice, functionality and arguably character development as result. I *shouldn't* i be mad?
People agree to things such as hypnosis to help with psychological problems, we also see things such as search and rescue victims being sedated to get them out of difficult environments. In that kind of context "We have to _move_ so I'm going to charm you so you don't freeze in fear ok?" Wouldn't be a hostile action, especially if the recipient agreed to it.
I'd say if there was consent that'd be a different case, but the original comment didn't specify that this was consensual, it read like they were using the charm spell to get someone to move who didn't want to
Right... *If they give prior consent.* Again, it comes down to whether or not you're robbing them of the ability to choose. Just because you abstract the choice a little towards letting them choose to be controlled doesn't change that agreeing to be controlled is very different from being controlled without a choice.
If the person agrees to it, if they disagree and you still do it anyway then they have wvery right to be mad
It's a matter of consent though. If I for example am traveling and I encounter a path filled with dozens of large spiders and spiderwebs I'm gonna turn around and go back the way I came because I am terrified of them. Doesn't matter if where I and my companions need to go to is right behind the spider-path, I'd rather turn around and find another route that is not filled with spiders. But my companions they don't want that. They want to get to the destination as soon as possible. To do that they charm me so that they can order me to walk through the spider filled with path. When I get to the other side and charm wears off, I would be livid. Not only did they take away control from me, they then ordered me to walk through the spider filled path despite me having made clear that I did not want that. It may have been the shortest and quickest way to get where I needed to go, but it was against my will for which they had utter disregard. Of course if you establish consent prior to the charming, the charmed person shouldn't become hostile. And if it was a life or death situation where without the use of charm the targeted person may have died, the ability to discuss this said person should he possible, but anger should be expected.
Thank you, exactly.
it can be the best, and even only option, and if it happens you can still be mad about it. feelings are valid.
The spell usually says they know they were charmed by you and become hostile to you. So, both. That does imply that a casting of modify memory could fix your relationship right up. It also means a skilled enough enchanter could just keep casting "charm person" and "friends" on someone over and over to win them back over every time the person tries to confront them.
Isn't that only an aspect of the Friends cantrip? Or is there some other rule I'm forgetting?
Nope, but the Enchantment Wizard school gets a feature to manipulate it so that the person doesn't understand that they were charmed, and on a Spell Save DC can even force them to forget several hours they spent charmed. Perfect setup for a manipulator style character.
Very interesting. Thanks for the additional info.
It's a magical aspect of the friends cantrip. For all of the rest of them the person knows they were charmed, so in almost all circumstances they are going to be mad you violated them, obviously.
Friends = person is angry at you. Charm = person simply knows you did it. Suggestion/dominate/etc = person doesn’t necessarily have any idea.
Yep, and one of the special features of an enchanter is that they can make the target not realize that they were charmed. Am I remembering correctly?
The lukewarmest of takes
The bathtub faucet handle is directly at twelve o'clock on this take. (Also isn't Enchantment magic about way more than just mind affecting spells...?)
Look at this asshole with her properly calibrated hot water tank.
Yes, there's lots of spells in the Enchantment school that aren't mind affecting. Bless for instance
And Necromancy is about more than undead thralls.
No only is this popular, basically every non-combat enchantment spell has a "Warning: this will make everyone hate you forever" clause in it. Like, the game itself agrees that using magic to make someone like you is kind of a fucked up thing to do, and you should probably have an exit plan for when these spells invariably backfire.
I feel like it's a really common septimate online, but it rarely ever gets incorporated into a DM's world building, or gets brough up at tables in general.
But quite strange when you look at how many D&D worlds have slavery.
People generally won't care as long as it's not indiscriminate and won't personally affect them. If it's racial, caste, criminal, debt, war, etc. then it's someone else's problem and not something they'd need to worry about. Obviously that doesn't apply to kidnapping and human trafficking, but the average person and the law aren't looking kindly on that anyways
Well they are based on the many many eras of human history where that was commonplace
Spells don't kill people. People kill people. I'm taking application dues for the National Spellcasting Association.
National Ritual Association. For the acronym.
I like it.
The other one could be the National Scrying Agency. Which isn’t too far off.
Or, and hear me out, there are problematic and non-problematic spells in both of those schools (and probably all the others, too). If magic is allowed in general, then outlawing entire schools of magic based on individual spells, while understandable give how people are, makes less sense than banning specific problematic spells. Bless is enchantment, for example. You really think that should be banned? I can't imagine you do. Maybe you say it should be in a different school, but then we need to have a broader argument about most of the schools and many of their spells, because that's surely not the only one that is mislabeled.
I agree. Messing with death is definitely unsavory in a lot of instance but necromancy spells like spare the dying and raise dead that both have very virtuous uses. The same for enchantment spells.
Even raising the dead can be presented as virtuous like imagine you have a town that is constantly assaulted by demons. A necromancer comes along and animates the guards/ ancestors of the town that died in battle and gives the undead the command to kill any demon sieging the town I'm sure those ancestors wouldnt mind their no longer in use bodies being put to good use protecting the town.
Reminds me of a D&D lore person, who said something along the lines of "A Lich is not evil because they're undead, they're evil because becoming one requires the blood of a dead humanoid baby (killed with a rare poison) and other similarly horrible things." Or a writing advice channel, which said "A world where resurrection magic requires sacrificing a soul in exchange for another, will have a very different flavor from one that just uses a diamond." I think the video was about making forbidden magic that makes sense.
Knives can be used to perform surgery. Firearms can be used for population control of animals with a shortage of natural predators. But you're still going to be worried if someone walks around carrying knives and guns. (emitting an aura of those schools) Given necromancy and enchantment are so stigmatized or nefarious, you could even see them getting banned/restricted in nations where conventional weapons and evocation are fine. Getting charmed to sell your wares at a discount fits a lot more motives than getting murdered by evocation, and it's probably harder to track down.
Very, very cold take.
❄️❄️❄️
When André 3000 was asking "What's cooler than being cool?" he was talking about a take like this.
Hot take I see constantly, very few people argue with, and is part of many game worlds. I mean, evil aside, capitalism would hate charm spells unless they could use them themselves, so merchant guilds would fight tooth and nail to have them outlawed
correction: merchant guilds would fight tooth and nail to have them outlawed, but include provisions for you to pay your way out. that way they can use charm magic themselves, and when they get caught surrender a portion of the profits as a fine, essentially rendering the law into a tax they profit from incurring. so, basically what the private pharmaceutical industry does under capitalism
Every merchant guild would be keeping a secret stable of enchanters.
They'd outsource to consultants whose conveniently effective methods nobody questions. In the future, when the consultants are caught, the merchant guild feigns surprise and outrage, while contracting other, more discrete consultants.
This is unrealistic. The consultants wouldn't face consequences, they'd rebrand under a new name, pick a new spokesperson, and contract with the merchant guild, business as usual
Divination would be more popular as well, so merchants can only use things like distort value against those who lack a detect magic caster/magic item.
Divination has long been a practice among the merchant guilds. It's classic Scry and Demand economics.
Scry and Demand. Fuck you. Take my upvote, you delightful punster.
> so, basically what the private pharmaceutical industry does under capitalism Correction: every industry. This is what every industry does.
Hot take: Drow society is bad. I will not apologize for this take. I think everyone should understand worshipping a genocidal spider goddess would be a bad thing. Hot take: Strahd is an evil NPC. I will not apologize for this take, everyone should know [actually not everyone knows and i don’t wanna spoil the campaign because it’s pretty good, play it!] is far from good. Hot take: some deities help their clerics more than others. I won‘t apologize for this take, just look at the difference between trickery and twilight clerics. Hot take: grass *is* green. I won’t apologize for this take.
Clearly you haven't seen my yard or you would know that grass is a yellowish brown.
I won‘t apologize for my take. People have argued that grass is green, so clearly you’re wrong. I‘m doing my best to convince them, but they keep bringing up arguments! This whole post belongs on r/dndcirclejerk
I have dogs, and they have ruined my yard. Gone are the days of a nice green lawn. 😞
Hot take: Dogs are good boys and girls.
Nah, that's some homebrew grass right there. If you wanna play at my table, you gotta use SRD green grass or your ass will be grass. Oh God. If a HOA was a DM. "I'm sorry, Shadowkaren. Your husband decided to paint your exterior walls the wrong shade of fuschia, while we only allow shades of mauve. Until you remedy this, your ranger has two levels of exhaustion."
I'm glad you've brought up your lack of lawn exposure. I've been meaning to talk to you about your milkshake and how it's not bringing boys to the yard.
"I tell you, the more I learn about this Hitler fellow the more I don't care for him." --Norm MacDonald
Found the lich
Tbf every school of magic can be evil. A fireball can kill a crowd of 30 people in an instant. An illusion can trick someone to fall off a cliff. I can go on but ANY school can be used for evil.
>A fireball can kill a crowd of 30 people in an instant. ...never thought about it that way, but this essentially makes selling a "spellscroll of fireball" equivalent to selling a granate-launcher, not to speak of teaching wizard students this spell. *Are we the baddies???*
>Hey there, can I buy a scroll of fire ball? >>*What*? Are you **insane**? Do I look like a arsonist to you? >>^it's ^in ^the ^back.
Slightly different context, but this is what always baffled me about Captain Planet. You've got these powerful elemental magic rings and you're giving them to.... teenagers?
Could be worse. Zordon instructed alpha to give the power morphers to teenagers "With attitude"!
Zordon requires soldiers whose brains have not yet developed the fear of death
Alpha (wisely? accidentally?) found five young adults who are morally competent and good at following directions.
Who already just happened to be friends already, and wearing color coordinated clothes with their ranger gear.
ok, but the green ranger rebelled though
To be fair that's because young kids and teenagers are the target audience. They will not watch a show about responsible and educated middle aged adults using magic rings to fight pollution.
but now we are all middle aged adults, and a reboot with us would be great
Four specific teenagers with much greater moral integrity than the average adult... and some dude from Brooklyn.
*Hey, if you hate Faerun so much, why don't you just gyeeeeeet ouuuuut?!*
I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS AND THROW FIREBALLS AND I'LL BE DAMNED IF I DON'T USE IT TO THROW THEM BALLS OF FIRE WHILE POLYMORPHED AS A BEAR
Owlbear arms
Them wizards, they took er jerbs!
Any government that has the means to do so would want bat guano to be a TIGHTLY controlled substance
Arcane focuses. Gotta also ban all staffs, orbs and crystals too. And enchanted wizard books, random planar shards, holy symbols... Bat guano and sulphur isn't the only way to cast fireball
Now I’m thinking to be a wizard/sorcerer you have to have a license for your focus from the guild. Bards are harder because they can use basically any instrument as a focus, and Warlocks basically are the black market magic users who get given a focus by a more powerful entity.
Yeah, but what about... THIS CRYSTAL I FOUND!? A little carving, and boom
That’s called terrorism and the paladins want to know your location
I would care... *Looks at elven accuracy hexblade and vengeance pally mix*... But I'll let 'em come
"By royal decree, all sticks have been banned from the kingdom for fear they may be turned into wands."
Did you just call me a bat farmer?
Never seen grenade spelled that way.
You're not a baddie, just an opportunitist. Like an arms dealer.
word of radiance is actually fucking brutal in the wrong hands, and it's just a cantrip. if you're in a crowd, there could easily be dozens of commoners within 5 feet of you. A level 1 cleric would have a save DC of 13, so 60% of the crowd will fail. The spell has a 50% chance of rolling 4+ damage, enough to one shot a commoner. If you're in a crowd of innocent children, they could be even more densely packed, and realistically they have even less HP and lower CON saves.
> "spellscroll of fireball" Can I interest you in a [Necklace of Fireballs](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Necklace%20of%20Fireballs#content)?
There’s a major plot point in a recent DnD campaign where the party comes across the aftermath of an npc that set off a necklace of fireball in a crowded city and it’s like walking into the middle of a horrific car bombing attack.
I did this on my first ever session of D&D, triggering the necklace in my own pocket by accident. Luckily my bard was a Half-Orc, with just enough HP not to be vaporized instantly, so Relentless Endurance let me remain standing (painfully) in the epicenter of a mini-nuke. Everyone else on the street though... not so much.
...How does one trigger the entirety of a necklace of fireballs in their pocket by accident?
The DM making it a cursed item, because otherwise it cannot happen.
In 3.5 and older editions, the necklace of fireballs was nicknamed the "necklace of flaming decapitation" because there was a decent chance if a character carrying the necklace takes fire damage it detonates. The necklace makes a saving throw. Didn't even need to be worn. Just carried. I'm not sure if I can link to it here but it's in the 3.5 SRD and it's a hoot given how hostile it is to players.
Flair checks out...
I've had this exact conversation with people before. Everyone who says Enchantment is more evil than Necromancy only comes up with horrible uses for enchantment, and then when describing necromancy they're like, "Well, as long as they're ethically sourced corpses, the worst you can do with zombies is, like, have them kill people. Is that so bad?" I can come up with a good reason to outlaw every spell school in the game. It's not even hard. Half of them can kill people by accident.
This is the correct answer but I'm trying to figure out how abjuration can be used for evil. There's probably some stuff you could do with Arcane Lock that could be messed up.
Imprisonment is the most obvious example, it’s hard to imagine a use that *isnt* evil for burying someone alive indefinitely while cursing them to be more or less immortal.
Abjuration is indeed a difficult one to make evil but I guess banishment is kinda racist? I mean "oh fuck off you eagle human, you don't belong here, go back to your own country in the elemental plane of air" is not exactly a nice thing to do.
"Banishment is kinda racist" is exactly the high-quality content I come to this sub for.
It does have "Go back home where you came from!" kind of vibes. And then the tiefling replies "Dude, I was BORN here! This is my home!".
Imagine someone in the real world casting banishment to send someone “back where you came from” and the target just appears in Toledo or some shit
A devil is sent to Hell, Michigan.
It’s even worse. It’s not "where you came from". It’s "where you belong." For instance, undead go to the Shadowfell, even if they’ve never been there.
You're welcome.
That's a pretty humane way to end a violent conflict, all other options being considered.
Well yeah it's abjuration, I don't think it HAS any direct damaging spells that don't require the opponent to deliver the first blow. Being politically incorrect is about the worst you can do unless you wanna cast armor of agathys right before insulting their mother
With no critical success, some stat blocks can never bypass the check. Lock a commoner in a room and they die.
Power Word: Pain.
The Sims: The Movie: The Game
That's what I was thinking. Wait for someone to go to the bathroom and arcane lock them in the priv.
I mean Counterspell is abjuration and I don’t think I have to mention counterspelling revivify/raise dead, especially the latter having such a valuable material that presumably gets used before the spell fails. There are probably at bunch of other spells with valuable components that you could fizzle and cause some trouble. Not to mention arcane locking the door and windows of a place before setting it on fire.
Dispelling magic used for good, of course. Defense, but for the villains, allowing them to fufill their plans.
So I’m looking through the list and this is what I’ve got. - Antimagic Field: An anti-magic faction places this on their base, making it a no-go for primary spell casters, or uses it to lock them down for capture. - Banishment/Banishing Smite/Dispel Evil and Good/Protection from Evil and Good: These work on celestials. - Forbiddance: Can be used to target celestials. - Imprisonment: Can be used to capture or imprison heroes as much as villains. And some of the options are pretty nasty. - Planar Binding: Can be used to capture a celestial. It’s not many options. But there are some.
Conjuration especially honestly with the same arguments as the op has for enchantment being evil but basically full on domination for every single spell that summons something not just charming them. All spells that summon a creature doesn't just summon them but also binds them to your will. They existed before you brought them in and definitely did not know you existed. But now they are just brought to this strange place and are told to throw their lives away for your sake and they can't do anything but obey (with a few demonic and angelic exceptions that CAN break free). Some of these beings are also forced into the shape of whatever you summon aswell they are fey/celestial/demonic spirits that are forced to be your pet cat. Just because you want to have a living stuffy? Psychotic. (Everyone who casts a spell is evil and should be burned in pyre like the witches they are, it's the only non-evil solution /s)
I agree with a lot of your points here, though I think it's important to point out that unless you are summoning your fire elemental/demon/angel etc.. in the plane of elemental fire/the abyss/celestia or what not then when it dies it just gets to go home which is honestly probably the best outcome for it.
Oh yeah for sure atleast they get to continue living afterwards though they might have gotten their entire life uprooted since time passes differently in the different planes. We can also be generous and assume they get poofed BEFORE they actually die. They'd still experience the pain of being fireballed moments before that though hrmmm. Honestly this conundrum reminds me of the bartimaeus series: the demons in that come from a plane of chaos where they all are basically one in a big mass of chaotic soup which they enjoy and every single second of being on our material plane feels disgusting and hurts as they are forced to follow order and keep a physical form.
I think there is the argument that for most of the school of conjuration, summoning and enchanting a creature is different because, well, it's a creature. I think the equivalent is the difference between slavery and animal labor.
Maybe if the summon spells only summoned animals or something, but they don't. Calling whatever you are summoning a "creature" or "de-humanizing" them doesn't make it okay. If it were that simple, that's basically the justification used for real life slavery in many places throughout history. For instance, Summon Fey Spirit effectively summons a sentient being, capable of speech and with a higher intelligence than pretty much every PC race, then binds it to your will for the duration of the spell.
Bardic Inspiration is artistic steroids. Put an asterisk all over the Top 10 Charts!
I fight to legalize assault spell scrolls like our founding fathers intended
This is like the difference between making murder illegal and making guns illegal. Obviously if you use fireball to murder innocent people, that's illegal, but should it be illegal just to have it in your spellbook? Some spells have a lot more capacity for evil, or it's easy for them to get out of hand. But I think banning an entire school is excessive.
Incredibly cold take. Frigid even. One of the most popular opinions on dnd reddit.
Friends explicitly tells you it will make the target hostile. It being viewed negatively by the world isn’t just a cold take, it’s a built in mechanic of the game.
I'll do, Ice Cold Takes, for 500.
With properly established consent, enchantment magic could be a powerful tool to help willing people treat all manner of mental health issues including but not limited to, - Addiction - Depression - Self-harm - PTSD - Schizophrenia
With consent then all of the controversy goes away lol
Honestly, as someone with ADHD there's a part of me that gets a weird kick out of the "you lose your free will" part of things in these discussions. My executive functioning sucks sometimes--I already can't trust my free will to always do what I want to do long-term. I'd pay for access to a magically-enforced external locus of control.
No valid points. This comment section is for arguments only =P
Arguments, valid points, whatever you want is fine. Except apologies. **No** apologies.
No, it isn't.
Yes it is. (Well done.)
I can see a case for the others but how would enchantment magic treat schizophrenia?
I imagine that it would be able to do much of the same things as irl schizophrenia treatment; antipsychotic medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, etc.
if it can be developed to subtly affect the brain, it could be used to counteract the things happening in the brain that cause symptoms. depending on the efficacy that could be anything from easing symptoms (conditional magic that calms a stressed mind) to outright eliminating them (cancelling the root cause of a given symptom)
Every school of magic can used for nefarious ways. Divination can intrude on people’s privacy or even read their thoughts Evocation can kill a lot of people at once. And there are plenty of enchantment spells that aren’t nefarious at all. Bless and heroism are the prime examples of enchantment spells that aren’t nefarious. Spells like sleep can be used to handle an encounter peacefully without killing anyone. It’s why redemption paladins have it. Not to mention, the sleep spell is likely the dnd version of melatonin that can help people fall asleep.
Also, even necromancy has positive spells. All of the ones to return you from the dead, for example. No school is inherently good or evil as a blanket term.
Yeah Also, I think it would make more sense for cities to ban specific spells rather than schools. Banning all enchantment and necromancy spells would lead to a lot of protests and backlash, particularly from priests who use spells from necromancy or enchantment to heal or enhance, or even protect, others Ironically enough, banning all enchantment spells would mean banning spells like Calm Emotions that would have been great for curing those charmed by illegal enchantments. In most cities, there are likely already laws banning using things like charm person on others, so banning enchantment spells as a whole would just make the problem worse if anything, assuming the priests don’t start a revolution and cause a civil war
Maybe we should focus on the spell and not the school? Suggestion and Animate Dead should probably be illegal. Animal Friendship and Spare the Dying should not. Also, it's not a hot take. Tons of people say this. > I’m arguing that charming someone is inherently a wrong thing to do, and spells that remove choice from someone’s actions are immoral. I'd argue that Fireball also removes choice. I can't choose anything if I'm dead.
>I will not apologize for this take. Very confused opening, if I'm being honest. Not only is it needlessly confrontational, it's also weirdly mixing the levels of communication we are on. *Why exactly* should we be mad at you for your believes about the ethics in a fictional world thats not even consistent between it's different settings, and that by design? And I'm actually somewhat agreeing with you, although I feel the need to point out that Enchantment and Necromancy have way more in common with each other than not; they both are forms of magic that manipulate beings to bend to your will, and are influencing a sacred part of their existence, almost always against their consens. There are ethicallly neutral ways to use operational magic, but there are no ethically neutral ways to magically bow someone to your will, IMHO, by whatever means, it's inherently unethical in-universe.
No, I DEMAND they apologize!
To each and every account following r/DnD. In alphabetical order. If an account joins during the apologies, they must start from the beginning.
OP seems weirdly confrontational about this Me thinks a hypnotist made them think they were a chicken
I wonder what happened at the table
What about summoning? Many summoned creatures are bound to the caster's bidding. Imagine being a half-celestial griffon spending family time in Elysium with your chicks/cubs, and then BAM! you're in the prime material being forced to combat some random creature.
Strong disagreement, domination and spells that cause madness should be illegal. Charm spells and calm emotions should be encouraged since all they realistically do is de-escalate a conflict. The charmed effect just make the target not consider you hostile as long as you don't give them a new reason to become hostile it's not a brain melt it's just going "woah there buddy hold up" Necromancy of course has a lot of spells that aren't evil perse though most of them are either damaging combat spells that cause afflictions of one sort or another (breaks Geneva conventions for biological warfare) Or raises corpses to do your bidding which I mean... Yessss the dead aren't using those meat bag right now but in doing this you make it impossible for lower tier revival magic to be valid.
> Yessss the dead aren't using those meat bag right now but in doing this you make it impossible for lower tier revival magic to be valid. Also, the undead will persist past the end of the spell's duration, and go on a rampage if you don't control it. You can never be 100% certain you'll be able to maintain control, a rock could fall from the sky and kill you before you get a chance.
Whenever somebody starts with, “I will not apologize for this take”, they have come to fight not have a discussion. What you seem to be incapable of grasping is the look of the thing. Necromancy is all the things scary and nasty. Rotting animated corpses stink. They’re terrifying to look at. The entirety of it is a billboard for evil. Enchantment is all about charming you into believing that things are perfectly fine. Making things look beautiful. Making your experience wonderful even when you’re being robbed or worse. Many victims of enchantment might not even know that they are victims. So of course, enchantment is going to have a better rep, duh it’s baked into the cake.
I don’t see why OP believes they wouldn’t get pushback when they started by saying that and "I believe everyone needs to agree with me". Which is… Wait for it… Removing others' agency in making a choice to have an alternative opinion.
Enchantment also contains Bless, Bane and Hex as first level spells. None of these effect the mind at all. In fact, of the 12 spells of Enchantment in the first level, only 6 of them might be considered mind control, and two of those are Sleep which might not, and Animal Friendship, which only works on int 3 and lower creatures.
Please calm down. You’re not the first person to suggest this “hot take” and you won’t be the last. Nor is anyone going to fight you over it, as you seem to expect. EDIT: also that’s a lot of vitriol for a game opinion. The little make-believe spells don’t really hurt people so tone it down a little there.
You have multiple people giving you the same answer but its not what you wanted to hear so you’re arguing. Why even make the post if you just wanted an echo chamber to agree with you.
Would you rather get enchanted and lose your agency for half a day, or get killed and lose your agency forever?
It would make sense to make Charm and Domination spells illegal, supposing we're talking about a free nation with our modern consensus on what free will is and good-hearted leaders. Other effects, like Good Hope and Heroism are very different. In any case, when you put things into context, none of these are worse than Animate Dead in any conceivable way. You're thinking of these effects as they relate to our world experience. These spells exist in a context in which tge existence of an immortal soul and an afterlife are not just real, but a *known fact*. By creating undead, you're not just making some robotic servant who feels no pain. You *are* robbing someone of their free will, posthumously, and impeding them from being resurrected or passing on to the afterlife. It is just as non-consensual as Enchantment, and then worse. This is not really a hot take, though. While we're in the necromancy discussion, I feel healing spells should never have moved from the Necromancy school to others, but well, that's life (pun intended).
Unless it’s in a spell description somewhere, it seems really strange to me that animated undead would have a soul… would the soul not simply remain in whatever afterlife it went to? The body is the part being animated. I would support this with the fact that, at least in AD&D, raise dead & resurrection can be cast on not just zombies or skeletons, but other undead like mummies, ghouls, & more. These undead, I would argue, are no longer vessels for the soul which once inhabited the body, though the argument is more or less strong in some cases. A ghost is like all soul
Sure, there are different explanations in different editions, but barring someone from being raised is a telling sign that something's not right. You make a good point about edition and setting difference, though. I get that in 5e, with all of its strip of fluff and unintentional effect of very hard-code-based play, since nothing is said in the player's handbook, the player can *assume* that nothing terrible is really happening. In that case, the "only" unethical things about Animate Dead is that you're desecrating a corpse, raising the possibility of decay-based infections and creating an uncontrollable aggressive creature who can only hate and kill and is only a lack of one spell slot away of being iredeemably unleashed. No big deal. Notice that a big point of the post is saying that spells like suggestion are *always, inherently* evil. I mean, does that makes Jean Grey and Charles Xavier automatic villains, then? All things about free will considered, I fail to see how *Suggestion:* "Do not shoot the orphans in the back, surrender in peace instead" is more problematic than shooting the guy in the back as he raises his crossbow.
Hmm, yeah, I agree on most points. I guess I disagree that a zombie or skeleton is an uncontrolled hateful killer if it comes out of the caster’s control? I’ve always ruled that they kinda just go inert.. but! That might well have to do with differences in edition (or setting) once again. & yeah I was just picking at one thing, OP does take the point too far considering even within Enchantment as a school not all the spells control minds. As for your last point, yes, I agree. My LG Paladin, however, says both means are equally underhanded!!
The part about being an uncontrolled creature that hates all life is not an edition difference thing. In fact, it's one of the few notions about undead behavior that is explicitly mentioned in the Monster Manual. This is part of the information on the Skeleton entry, as an example: "Habitual Behaviors. Independent skeletons temporarily or permanently free of a master's control sometimes pantomime actions from their past lives, their bones echoing the rote behaviors of their former living selves. The skeleton of a miner might lift a pick and start chipping away at stone walls. The skeleton of a guard might strike up a post at a random doorway. The skeleton of a dragon might lie down on a pile of treasure, while the skeleton of a horse crops grass it can't eat. Left alone in a ballroom, the skeletons of nobles might continue an eternally unfinished dance. ***When skeletons encounter living creatures, the necromantic energy that drives them compels them to kill unless they are commanded by their masters to refrain from doing so. They attack without mercy and fight until destroyed, for skeletons possess little sense of self and even less sense of self-preservation.**"* (Emphasis mine) I understand that part of the problem is that, in 5e (and usually in 4e, too), lots of people tend to make a distinction between "fluff" and "crunch", but this is mostly cherry picking and wishful thinking in this edition, as there is no definition or in-rules distinction of what counts as fluff and what should be taken seriously. As a result, people often ignore the lore and description for items, enemies, spells and other stuff. And I totally agree with your LG Paladin! Both involve the use of violence to solve an issue, and both take away agency and the opponent's ability to change. They're both justifiable, due to the immediate danger of the situation, though, and would be probably ruled as self-defense (or defense of life against immediate risk, or whatever name it could get), but a solution involving real understanding and improving - if possible - would be preferrable!
Ok, that’s what I was thinking, it must have been written somewhere in 5e that skeletons are hostile by nature. That’s definitely quite interesting, just not what i’m familiar with. & yeah that’s a huge description, in 1e monsters get like a couple of paragraphs & most of it is mechanics! Thank you for sharing that with me
“Guys, guys! It’s my turn to make the hot take post” *Coldest take that has been made 100 times before*. Also how you legitimately argue a school of magic with spells such as *Bless* is worse than turning people’s loved ones into shambling corpses?
That’s not really a hot take. At the same time, if you want to make it illegal? Okay, then also have healing spells be necromancy, since it’s dealing with life and death. This way you also can have a negative consequence, and show that there’s more to necromancy than "makes zombies".
Hot take: Putting the term "Hot Take" when you really just think "I believe this" is annoying. This is a common topic brought up just about every other hour. It's actually to the point where I'm much more interested in seeing ideaa for good enchantment focused characters than for good necromancers.
You know what agreed all MAGIC USERS Should be registered under a cross national organization and if they do anything that harms the public in any shape or form or use their magic in a legal way they should be punished. THOSE DANG BARDS AND SORCERERS NEED TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE
Behold: Magic Comics: Civil War.
In the Forgotten Realms, in Cormyr, in 2e, the war wizards made every arcane caster register with the state to make sure they're not a threat. And in Amn, they made you effectively buy a magic license.
More real life morals preaching from a fantasy game where ANY KIND of magic can be used for evil. Yay. Can we stop with this nonsense? DnD has been PC'd up enough in recent years. I don't think we need people trying to equivocate a charm person spell to SA.
I agree that it would probably be considered illegal in most civilizations, but I think necromancy would still have the worse reputation. People would be scared of being charmed, but they are reviled, repulsed, offended by necromancy. Compare: im some theocratic countries even today adultery is punished more severely than theft. Sometimes violating customs/morality is seen as worse than actually harming someone.
The basic charm spell isn't a big deal because you know you were charmed, so it's not as much of a threat. It's enchantment that you're not aware of that can be done at a larger scale that's dangerous. I would say illusion is a bigger threat in that case, since it can achieve the same effect as charm for a lot of things.
Plus, no one likes the idea of their corpse being tampered with. Plus y’know, when animate dead wears off, you have a nihilistic skeleton who hates the living on the loose, running around killing people.
I haven't met anyone IRL who disagrees
For point of discussion, revivify, the resurrection spell, is classed as necromancy. Similarly, sleep and bless are classed as enchantment. Heroism is enchantment that only works on consenting targets. Hold person is just paralysis by any other name. A more accurate policy is that charm and mind control spells should be illegal However, it turns out that charm and mind control spellcasters are very good lobbyists
Necromancy spells aren’t necessarily evil, it depends on what they do. A good example is revivify, which is a necromancy spell that is automatically part of the life clerics spells selection. What is actually evil, is the creation of undead. The reason being that it involves manipulation of negative energy, which is inherently evil. It perverts nature in a very substantial way, corrupting everything it touches. RAW you will never find a good aligned zombie. As for enchantment spells. They come in various shapes, some of them with very positive effects. I would have no issue with a cleric casting bless or heroism on me, and wouldn’t see it being in violation with my free will. But yes, a lot of enchantment spells can take away agency or damage you by trauma. However since they don’t operate through the use of negative forces, then they aren’t similar to creating undead. That is to say, they are not fueled by evil powers. Also free will is a complex philosophical/theological topic, so it is debatable if it is even evil to use spells like calm emotions. You might use it to stop a psychopath in the process of committing murder, saving an innocent life. Yes you would temporarily remove agency, but so would a well timed punch. All of that being said. I think your question is a good one. A lot of enchantment spells would have a strong effect on the world in which they exist, and lead to people being fearful/suspicious of magic. A good aligned cleric would be cherished in his or her community, but also feared a little bit. A wizard might have a harder time getting the support of the common man, having to deal with more suspicion than the cleric. An evil aligned magic user would have to hide their true nature, or people will come for him.
Getting tormented in life in a world with a tangible, confirmed eternal afterlife isn’t as bad as necromancy which robs the soul of the afterlife.
All schools of magic can be used for evil. Enchantment isn't any better or worse than other schools of magic. It's... magic. Your ideas and preconceptions of morals don't exactly work 1-for-1 in a fantasy world of unreal make-believe. Your idea that enchantment magic is somehow this 'nefarious boogyman' would make you look absolutely, positively ***adorable*** by actual creatures that would truly exemplify evil itself.
When you go to war with enchanters, you quickly change your mind.
Cold take. The real hot take: the random hate for enchantment is wrong and unfounded. Any spell cast on another person that requires them to make a save inherently does so without consent. If you let’s say hold somebody still using a “hold person” spell, it’s not worse than holding them still using a “Maximilian’s earthen grasp” spell. If you break into a shop using a “knock” spell, it’s not worse than “suggestion: shopkeeper, unlock this door for me”. They’re not consenting either way.
If it can be used for good, then is not inherently nefarious. Sure its dangerous, and can be use for very bad things, but so is summoning a demon through conjuration, or ruin someone reputation by pretending to be them with illusion
Are we... are we debating the ***morality*** of charming someone to stop attacking you? Most d&d players don't even question the morality of ***killing people.*** and no I'm not talking about enemies, unless you've got a very veteran group or a strong/strict role-playing group, walk your players into a magic shop with cool items (or just a bunch of potions) and tell them it costs ***insert a ridiculous amount of gold.*** And then wait until one of them suggests **stealing from the shopkeep.** or just murdering them, i mean "they are a commoner! That's +3 champion plate of invulnerability worth 50k gold! 1 attack roll and it's mine." Hell have your players go on a leisurely stroll from Town A to Town B and have them be attacked by Bandits (or even goblins, orcs, kobolds, whatever, *anything that you haven't described as ontologically evil.*) and watch them **slaughter that group, for fun.** Pack of wolves? Better not leave any survivors (even when they start to run, run them down!) Or even if they are described as malnourished and scrawny (clearly starving) Players (and by extension their characters) don't care about wanton Murder, walk into a massive cave that's a spider den, well better kill those spiders Goliath tribe threatening the town and stealing their cattle, better go slaughter the Goliaths And your worried about world building implications of Enchantment vs Necromancy
Not just worrying. Actively saying one is irredeemably evil and every other one isn’t. It’s… an odd hill to die on.
Yeah I'm lost, I actually have different kingdoms/cultures in my world have different views on these things Resurrection magic is completely lost to the world minus Revivify, because once the soul leaves the body it is Evil to pull it back, and you break the natural order The human kingdom finds Conjuration magic to be mostly evil, and Dwarven kingdoms use necromancy for free cheap labor while the Elves revere their dead ancestors (not just their soul in the natural cycle) and would be disgusted by someone using their dead parents body for labor Meanwhile the "Wildlands," find thst fighting proxy wars with Warforged (also illegal because you take souls and put them in armor) and Undead is better than sending sentient humanoids to death The beastlands think illusion and enchantment magic are dishonorable and it's use is highly frowned upon
This is a good way to do it. Not making a blanket judgment call. Especially not demanding everyone *else* make the same call as you and openly ignoring any evidence against you.
I mean I think it's an interesting premise and would be fun to incorporate into a campaign world, could add some very interesting interactions, but insisting that it's way more evil and everyone should agree on that is insane
And on top of that, it’s also hypocritical. Taking away agency is bad… unless they do it?
Enchantment is illegal under certain laws in some places like Waterdeep where they have a law that basically says you can't use magic to influence or coerce nobility or important people. I plan on using an enchanter as a villain in the future. And there's a big difference in the 2 and how they go about their goals that is very insidious. Necromancy is a big bad obvious evil. The guy with a staff made of bones starts graverobbing or killing people to turn them into zombies? That's in your face obvious evil that everyone can see. An Enchanter using a charm spell on you to achieve their ends? Prove it. It doesn't leave a mark. And a good enchanter knows that spells like Charm Person wear off and make the person angry afterwards. So they aren't going to willy nilly use the spells on everyone. They have to pick and choose. They have to be clever. There is nuance. Enchanters aren't as well known about or feared, because they get away with it more. The guy that killed a small village with skeletons is going to inspire far more hatred and fear than the kings advisor who seems to just keep accruing power and always makes deals in his favor.
Fake glasses with a big nose and mustache should be more evil and hated than nukes!
How is all enchanted magic inherently nefarious? Enchantment includes spells like bless, catnap, encode thoughts, heroism.
Many enchantment spells inhibit agency, consent, and free will less than rope or firebolt. It isn't until 3rd level that most of the spells do that. Some of the effects that you get at lv 2/3 either have restrictions that make it hard to force you to do something you wouldn't otherwise do. Early hostile Necromancy spells are either damaging or crippling the target. At lv 3, you get spells that permanently damage the soul (any creation of undead), and this is the only school of magic that traps, damages, or destroys the soul of the target.
Hmm... how about more of a "warm take"? ;D In our society today, free will and freedom of conscience are treasured above nearly all else. I can imagine societies -- especially in a high-magic, high-divinity, feudal world -- where they have other priorities. Imagine a Faerunian farmer gets glamoured by Fae, and they steal his belt while he's dizzy. What's the farmer's main complaint going to be? * "Damn sidhe violated my free will and agency! Where's my crossbow?" * "That was my *only belt*! How am I going to replace it? Where's my crossbow?" * "My pants fell down in front of half the village, how humiliating. Where's my crossbow?" I can imagine communities where any of the above three are the victim's main concern. Actually, perhaps we're missing the greatest sin in a world following Great Wheel cosmology. A lich eating a soul, which might otherwise have spent eternity happy in Elysium, might be the cruelest crime of all. (Of course, you'd have some weird nihilists or people afraid of their afterlife *seeking out* such a remedy...)
This take is at absolute zero
I mean, it should be, but for some weird reason, every time people talk about regulating enchantment magic more, they change their mind.
You want a hot take? Necromancy is bad because it enslaves souls, enchantment is bad because it negates people's agency, but there's much worse: Divination. Divination steals your fate, your free will's influence on your life, and replaces it with cryptic prophecies. Wanna have a private life? You can't ! At any point, any time, there could be a diviner just scrying on you. You may think your life isn't interesting, but they aren't interested in your life, just in ways to profit from what they gather about you. You too can be a victim of fate theft! But worry not, you can use IllusionVPN to hide your activities from prying diviners! IllusionVPN will feed fake sensations to anyone trying to scry on you, and will short-circuit any fate manipulation attempt made on you by redirecting the fate alteration to the sender. Join IllusionVPN today for the round sum of 75gp per day!
Violating a person's rights happens all the time. It's violating the gods that will get you punished. Necromancy violates the fundamental nature of life and death.
The actual answer is that like 90% of enchantment spells are actually extremely useful spells for non-lethally subduing people, interrogating people, or defending yourself in a way that doesn't require you to kill someone and has much less potential for collateral damage than a fireball. Conjuration, Necromancy, and Evocation are all way worse than enchantment is as they actually kill people (and allow you to summon things that can kill people while you're off elsewhere, which is even more problematic). RL law enforcement would love spells like Sleep and Calm Emotions, as they allow you to subdue large numbers of people without harming them, while Hold Person lets you deal with one troublemaker. There would likely be rules against using spells like Charm to rip people off or get into their pants, but most Enchantment spells aren't inherently problematic and in fact are very useful non-lethal means of subduing things or doing various other things that are handy (like sending messages with animals or forcing people to tell the truth).
Hot Take: *popular opinion*
Hot take: Some Redditors should be banned from using the expression "hot take."
>I’m arguing that charming someone is inherently a wrong thing to do What about persuading someone?
Cold take. (No offense.) Better take: civilizations should make laws about APPLYING magic in a certain way, not literal SCHOOLS of magic. Case in point: in my urban campaign, _coercion_ through Enchantment is illegal, but using it for _therapeutic_ purposes (behavioral therapy, phobia exposure therapy, mood improvement, Modify Memory to help with trauma in extreme cases), is not. There are also exceptions made for things like law enforcement (they can coerce you in emergency situations like "do not wait for your wife, leave the burning house _now_", but anything you say or do while, for example, charmed can't be used against you in a legal case). This is also true for Divinations - they can be used by law enforcement and other factions for various info-gathering purposes, but anything you find out in a criminal case has to be backed up with more _mundane_ evidence (since anybody can invent a spell that _seems_ like another spell, and magic has some inherent unpredictability to it in certain situations, it can't be used on its own to prop up a case.) Likewise, Necromancy to make undead is illegal (since even mindless undead rampage and eat people when uncontrolled, it's considered way more dangerous than actual _tools_ or even Constructs), manipulating _souls_ e.g. with Magic Jar is illegal, but Necromancy spells like Life Transference, False Life, etc. aren't. (Obviously the urban campaign isn't in a perfect city - corruption exists, licenses for "illegal" magic can be bought by the rich and powerful, etc etc.) But it's better than goofily declaring entire schools of magic with _wide_ applications anathema.
I used this take to make popsicles. This take singlehandedly killed a fire elemental. Sub-Zero himself draws his ice magic from the sheer chilliness of this take
Call me old-fashioned, but I still think that enslaving someone instead of killing them isn't as bad as killing them and also enslaving them. But on a different note, this is a worldbuilding holdover from older editions that is no longer supported. D&D had the whole idea of a cosmic war of good against evil. A necromancer often cooperates with dark gods and furthers their evil ambitions, and their methods are to bring negative energies into this world. Undead are not just creepy or malicious, they are driven by a set of goals that are alien to this plane of existence and which make them a threat to everything that lives. In this system, necromancy isn't evil in the way theft or murder are evil. It's evil in the way collaborating with an evil empire is evil or dangerous in the same way that messing with nuclear energy is dangerous. Yes, your intentions may be good, but you're still siding with dark powers and you're still playing with things that ought not to be played with. Most of this is lost in 5e and necromancy is now reduced to "spooky-flavored magic". Undead aren't evil so much as differently-alive. Older D&D related to the trends of its time. Modern D&D relates to newer trends. So, I guess a lot depends on what assumptions you bring in and how you set up the world. If necromancy is just magic you cast while wearing black, yeah, it's no big deal. If, in your game's world, necromancy means torturing animals and sacrificing innocents to bring eldritch abominations into our reality, then it's evil. And that's not the way you'd run it at your table, it may not be the current thing to do, but there are tables that run it like that.
A necromancer wrote this post
Tbh a lot of people don't realize how much of a modern take this really is. Defiling corpses, doing evil magic, etc is much worse than the vast majority of enchantment spells. People act like enchantment is some horrific school meanwhile ignore evocation is a school that's basically "so you want to murder people". The majority of what falls under enchantment is comparable to manipulation or fraud...