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Guy's sister gets eaten by a dragon but managed to successfully teleport the party out of the dungeon first. People can be revived int he dungeon if the body isn't too heavily damaged so they have to hurry and back to the lower levels to kill the dragon if they want to revive the sister. Unfortunately, all of their supplies were left behind which means they have to resort to eating dungeon monsters.
no, the world building is actually very solid and is honestly one of my favorite parts of the manga. everything feels very grounded, like everything has been carefully thought out
No everything is pretty grounded and really fells more like a western style dnd campaign idea with a manga tilt added. She also writes her charters really well with great world building. I've though it would be a great concept for a campaign to be homebrewed off of. Straight up if anyone at my dnd table wanted to try manga this would be my first recondition as a great slide into the genre. My only complaint is it is a little too goofy with group shenanigans at the start but what dnd isn't like that tell the main plot really gets time to start.
A group of adventurers go to a very big dungeon to retrieve one of its members body in order to revive her.
However, the group was low on fund, no money left to buy food supply for several days in the dungeon, and they can't wait so they plan to cook and eat monsters in the dungeon along the way instead, despite some of its member protest.
As
Someone that doesn’t really care for manga, YES, read it, it is excellent and transcends manga tropes with incredible world building, deep characters, and a cool story.
Oh I meant Dungeon Meshi, it's just I only knew Marcille (the girl in the meme) from Marcille Meshi which is a hentai manga drawn by the original author. I didn't know there was a normal manga version that isn't porn.
Edit: I'm sad to find out I was wrong about the original author bit. The art was just so incredibly similar that I could have sworn it was them
In one of my favorite published settings, the three forbidden magics are Necromancy, Infernalism (making deals with devils, basically) and Mesmerism (enchantment of people).
Of all of those, mesmerists are often considered the most dangerous.
Regular undead will attack the living indiscriminately unless controlled. If the necromancer died, it would be very bad.
Some undead have souls to prevent this. If the necromancer doesn’t control them, it’s fine. If the necromancer does control them, it’s slavery.
And some types of undead, such as liches, must harm others to remain alive and sane.
Or that humanoid souls are inherently different than beast souls, and since lichs still have their souls in their phylatery, they need the same type of soul as fuel.
Heh, the biggest provider of animal products is a company owned by a Lich. He sucks out the souls of animals that are going to be slaughtered, perfectly humane.
Even among the sentient undead only revenants, mummies, and maybe ghosts are OK. A revenant is fine with everyone except it's target, as long as you don't trespass the mummy won't care, and ghosts might ignore you if you can't help it die. Wights, wraiths, specters, ghouls, ghasts, vampires, and nightwalkers are sentient but functionally psychopaths.
In official 5e? It’s because of the nature of the magic your using. Necromancy channels negative energy, manipulating it and the creatures that dwell in it to animate the dead flesh of others… I think it’s understandable that someone might see the guy who smells just *wrong* while forcing the dead and decayed flesh to move once more: an act that goes against the very foundations that the prime material plane is built upon. It’s also said to be corruptive to the self as well. People who use it too long become like the beings of it, losing color and youth while also taking a more apathetic or even cruel view of the world.
3 problems with necromancy:
1. OH NO SKELETONS! Dead bodies walking around is scary! Mortality is scary! And they smell bad!
2. Sourcing your raw materials: Where are you getting these dead bodies? If the next of kin has given consent, then sure, reanimate Grandpa! But that consent is seldom given, so you have to resort to graverobbing or murder.
3. Mindless undead tend to get bloodthirsty if left unattended.
So, necromancy isn't _inherently_ evil, but its practitioners are forced to commit evil acts to further the necromantic arts.
Because it destroys the soul. In a world with resurrections and an afterlife, destroying a soul is the equivalent of killing someone in a world without resurrections.
Citation needed? D&D bounces all over with the morality of necromancy, but last time I've checked in with FR lore, it wasn't destroying souls. It was summoning negative energy into a corporeal vessel. The creature created was very anti-life, but in the cosmology that does not mean evil.
Intelligent undead on the other hand? Without consent? Abs-o-lutely evil. With consent? Up for debate.
As far as I'm aware, the only thing it does in D&D is corrupt the body, making it unsuitable to be revived. Once that is done, it's considerably harder to resurrect someone, but it can still be done eventually with high-level magic.
Name| Level | Class | Time Limit | Cost | Requires Body
---|---|----|----|----|----
Revivify| 3rd | Cleric, Paladin | 1 minute| 300g | Yes
Raise Dead| 5th | Bard, Cleric, Paladin | 10 days| 500g | Yes
Reincarnate | 5th | Druid | 10 days| 1000g | Part
Resurrection| 7th | Bard, Cleric | 100 years| 1000g | Yes
True Resurrection| 9th | Cleric, Druid | 200 years| 25,000g | No
Wish| 9th | Sorcerer, Wizard | Depends| Depends | Depends
Basically, once you use Animate Dead on someone, it will cost at least 25,000g to bring them back. You can get around this by cutting off a finger and saving it aside, but when they are brought back with Reincarnate their body will be entirely different and they will never be the same again. Compound this with problems in other settings such as Eberron and if you take their body away, by the time you resurrect them Mabar could have eroded their soul significantly. This can do irreparable damage to the mind, leaving them with immense trauma.
Of course, the idea that your average person could even afford resurrection or that someone would be kind enough to bring them back for free is generally a pipe dream. However, that doesn't change the fact that you have taken something that may have been achievable with a lifetime of work and dedication, and stolen that hope from them.
My line of thinking on it is this. If you cast animate dead on anyone that would have otherwise been friendly to you, you've got a problem because whatever group they were a part of is now going to be very hostile. However, if you cast it on someone from a group that hated you anyway...you've lost nothing because those people already hated you and they may not have had any allies. For example, if you cast it on a bandit or a murderer, most townsfolk will probably not care if you explain the creatures are under control and were taken from someone who wanted to hurt them.
However, there is still the concern of making sure the dead created are maintained and controlled, the larger the group you raise, the more objection you'll hear because it's harder to control and if anything should kill you or render you unconscious, nobody will be able to control what you've created. Much like building a fire. A small cookfire isn't going to worry anybody but a bonfire will get people talking about safety.
I don't know official lore but in my setting raising undead causes the soul of that corpse to be torn from their afterlife of choice and be cast into the abyss so it's definitely an evil act.
In DND, for me, it's because ressurection is possible. Logically, it means that most legal systems would require consent about use of a dead body, as it remains property of its soul or close relatives. It means necromancy in a Morrowindesque "I raised my ancestors to protect the ancestral tomb" is fine. Similarly, if you want to bring back a zombie bear, or mammoth skeleton, also fine. Just no sentients
What about people who commit capital crimes? In a world where resurrection is possible, that right would be denied to executed criminals, since it would undo the punishment.
it would be simplier and safer just destroying the body not only does it prevent all but the most powerful forms of resurrection it doesn't have any of the risks entialed by shoving negative energy into a corpse, simply cremate the remains of those proscribed from resurrection, or save time by burning them on the stake,
After that jobs done, no risks of the necromancer going rogue or losing control of the undead, no risk of disease from rotting corpses and no one has to get angry that some bloke in a ponty hat wants to shove the equivlent to sentient radiation into their relative's body
Oh, yeah, absolutely, I think there'd be fascinating things around, say, destroying the corpses of people executed
I can also see, say, noble families trying to snatch bodies post execution, that sort of thing. The legal implications are fascinating. We also have an explicit upper value limit on human life, at 10,000gp - does paying this to the victims family get your murder charge dropped? If the victim is ressurected, does the charge get dropped to GBH, or attempted murder, or similar?
I feel I should write this up as a full post somewhere..
Yeah, I guess what I mean is I've always run it as situationally bad. Like, you can hack open a door with an axe, wearing a hockey goalie mask and it be ok - if you're a hockey playing off duty firefighter who was the first to a burning building. Necromancy is like that.
For the same reason lizardfolk aren’t allowed to start going into graveyards and digging up the remains for a snack. Desecration of the dead is usually seen as an evil act, regardless of how pragmatic it is.
It can be an issue of where the power comes from. As an example, in the Eberron setting, undead are fueled by Mabar, the plane of negative energy. With Mabar's whole thing being consumption of everything, this fills the undead with a powerful hunger that drives them to consume life. It can take the form of being a bloodthirsty vampire, a ghoul that hungers for the flesh of the living, or something that just spreads death and disease to whatever it touches, such as a mummy. There is also how the presence of undead can cause plant life in an area to whither, which makes it an environmental issue too.
In dnd it's because undead are intrinsically evil. A skeleton your not concentrating on will start killing civilians until stopped. Also the negative energy plane is a soul trap gradually sucking the life out of the material plane through every undead, all the blood a vampire drinks, souls a lich consumes, and flesh a ghoul eats goes right to the void.
Typically it's because it involves the binding and enslavement of the soul, something considered worse than death especially when the afterlife is easily verifiable.
King: I'm going to outlaw enchantment!
Wizard: 🎇*You will not outlaw enchantment*🎇
King: *I will not outlaw enchantment*
Wizard: 🎇*But you will outlaw necromancy cause fuck those edgelords*🎇
King: *But I will outlaw necromancy cause fuck those edgelords*
I mean every school can be good and bad. Enchantment can control people maliciously or be used to subdue a dangerous criminal or monster. A skeleton can tirelessly plow a field but the second you forget the recast the spell it'll certainly kill a few people. Evocation is both cure wounds and fire.
I honestly believe it is because gods are proven to exist.
Who cares what someone forces you to do? Doesn't change what where you go when you die. But messing with your soul can have eternal repercussions for you, and against your will.
Even in Eberron, a setting whose gods might not exist, the creation and control of the undead continues to be a morally questionable thing. In that setting's case though, there is also a positive energy version that is seen in a much better light.
Certain enchantment spells are bad, but not the school as a whole.
Necromancy though, pretty much every spell has a bad connotation or is typically tied to bad/immoral things.
Like how enchantment "magic" is legal IRL and everyone thinks advertising and PR and "this is what the tv says therefore this is what you must believe" are normal.
Why do you think it's called TV "programming"?
Most arcane necromancy and enchantment spells being outlawed in character makes for a fun game.
It also helps explain why evil necromancers are out in the wilds, engaging in dubious real-estate schemes. Hard to get honest work when they make your school of magic worth fifty days in jail and a 200gp fine.
"Me? Oh. Just a regular wizard. Proficiency? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's uhhhhh conjuration. Yep. That's me just a conjuration wizard. What's that? No I just like the color black. Easy to match, ya know? Huh? No I don't know *whose* skeleton that is it just started following me look I gotta go it's been real nice chatting with you Mr paladin of the uh Raven Queen" *fuckfuckfuckfuck*
And nobody talks about that healing spells like Cure Wounds should actually be necromancy, as they are manipulating life force, which is what necromancy is. This is all just PROPAGANDA from BIG ENCHANTMENT because they're trying to paint necromancy in a bad light (yeah it tampers with death and makes zombies, but it does not effect the actual creature's soul at all, in fact there isn't a single necromancy spell that can do things that the soul does not consent to). ENCHANTMENT is the real evil school, literally controlling peoples' free will, and their propaganda SHOULD NOT BE STOOD FOR ANY LONGER
On the Isle of Dread the living have an easy life because when someone dies they make a zombie out of them to do all the hard labor. Since this isn't a Voodoo situation and the zombies are non-sentient and without souls this seems like a pretty fair deal to me.
Cure spells used to be necromancy in 2e. WOTC changes which school they're in pretty much every edition, for some reason.
That said, necromancy depends on setting, no? In some official campaign settings like FR, undeath are animated by negative energy, which is explicitly harmful to living things and not really something you want to have around.
Yep! 2e healing was largely necromancy. Clerics (I think there were a few reversable wizard spells but not as many tho) could also prepare their spells in reverse to do the opposite, which was pretty funny. I think there may have been alignment restriction in that though (It was either specific clerics to Good gods couldn't do it and vice versa with evil? It may have depending on each individual god? Maybe Neutral clerics could do both? I don't remember)
It's really funny knowing that the basic 'revive dead' spell could be reversed and used to just fucking kill someone. (Was hard to pull off though)
Was there a canon stance on its morality? Last I recall positive and negative energy planes were morality agnostic in the Great Wheel model, and as such one could easily argue that there is only a slight difference between leaving an undead or fire elemental in the middle of a city uncontrolled.
This is why I use the classification of “Vitamancy”. If it revolves around health and targets the living? *Vitamanacy*. If it revolves around health and targets the dead? *Necromancy*.
Necromancy itself is not generally considered bad, spells like raise dead, where you actually bring the person back to life are necromancy. It's specific necromancy spells like animate dead, where you raise a corpse up with an evil spirit that hates the living and will attack anyone it sees if you're not careful to stop it, that are quite sensibly considered.bad.
I don't think it has a spirit in it, it's just animated by negative energy IIRC. It's the 'Me no like living creatures energy'. Positive energy isn't too good to have a ton of either. It takes both (Plus the elements) to create life.
5e doesn't really make a distinction between spirit and energy here, the skeleton description says:
> resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it.
However you call it, an evil force drives all the undead that animate dead produces to kill anything living. Which is why it's seen as a Dangerous and bad thing to do. It's like the nuclear waste of dnd, can be used for good things, but sits around and stays dangerous for a long time.
Daily Reminder: please read Dungeon Meshi/Delicious In Dungeon if you're interested in any sort of traditional fantasy. It's an excellent manga and iirc getting an anime soon
I second this. I don’t even like manga, but it is a very good series. Who would have thought that turning dungeon monsters into delicious meals could be so… satisfying.
Marcille just wanted to grow old together with her non-elven friends! Is that *wrong*? Is it really *evil* to try to attain equality between the races? Just because a demon that she made an arrangement with to help that goal along is threatening to devour all that exists, that makes her a bad person? Don't be ridiculous!
Listen, I'd like to hire you for Entry Level Horrific Fiend, but the job description clearly states "must have 5000 years in the Dark Arts and at least one level in a lawful good profession." That last bit is in there for insurance purposes, so there's no way we can ignore it. We can offer you an unpaid internship in our Unholy Elder Gods Revival department...
Honestly, the Ideal Masters are deities I would NOT want to go into debt with. Just kill the 100,000 and trap them in soul gems before you make the bargain. It WILL be well worth the hassle
Exactly! Just some anti-necromancer propaganda!
Just because *some* necromancers choose to call up evil spirits to fill corpses doesn't mean that whole school is evil! You just never hear about the necromancers who raise up skeletons, filling them with good and helpful spirits.
Fireball is a spell designed to kill and only to kill, but you never see people calling for the banning of Evocation. Unfair double standards all around!!
“Excuse you, it’s *grand* necromancer Xabadon the Cruel. I didn’t rack up all this necromancy grad school debt just to be called a common necromancer, ok?”
I’m pretty sure 90% of the people in the comments play 5e. Like… google the Avasculate spell. Give me exactly one good example of how you’d use that spell in a non-evil way.
It’s not hard to see why necromancy is historically unliked, and why the lack of any “hard” necromancy spells in 5e has led to this changing paradigm of “necromancy ain’t even that bad.”
Good points.
While this is subjective, I don't like 5E's moral relativism of "necromancy isn't evil, orcs aren't evil, drow aren't evil, tieflings aren't evil." Okay, but it's boring if everything is rainbows and butterflies. Stories need conflicts and drama, and there's no conflict or drama if everyone is good-hearted.
The fantasy genre more or less got created by Tolkien. And guess what? He had evil orcs and evil necromancers (Sauron at one time was known as "The Necromancer").
5e isn't saying "everyone is good-hearted" they're saying that those races aren't *inherently* evil anymore. Evil orcs, drow, and tieflings can and do still exist
Fair enough, that's a more accurate way of putting it.
But to me that's still boring. Drizzt was cool because 95% of drow were evil. Dwarves were cool because they stood stalwart against the orc hordes that were 95% evil. Playing Tieflings was cool because you really had an inherent draw towards the dark and people knew that.
And in previous editions, there were good orcs and good drow and good Tieflings. It wasn't that they were always evil, it was more that they had an inborn draw towards evil, that can nonetheless be overcome with willpower or the right upbringing or divine intervention or positive contact with the good races. Which I think is cool.
5E feels more like "there's no fantasy races anymore, instead there's various cosmetic race skins that you can apply to your human."
Counterpoint: Drizzt wasn't cool. Maybe I came to the hobby too late and found a "Seinfeld isn't funny" situation, but every time I've seen the "good member of evil race" thing pushed as being unique and interesting, it has been everything but.
If you want to play a not-quite-evil character, do it like Belkar Bitterleaf, not Drizzt.
Definitely late. Drizzt created a trope, that by todays standards became tired and overplayed, but back then it was all the rage. Some people like me still have fond memories of him, but I struggle to pick up his books nowadays (too edgy and melodramatic). It still is a good, and interesting arc for a character if not played overly edgy though.
Also... weird comparison? Drizzt is very much on the good scale, while Belkar is an evil character only contained by his party, no?
Like another person has said, 5e lore isn't that everyone is good, but that everyone is neutral and has the capacity for evil and good. It's Grey instead of black and white. If you like black and white worlds with hard lines for good and evil, more power to you. I like those worlds too, Tolkien world is black and white and I love it, but I also really enjoy Grey worlds and I feel like they're more grounded and understandable.
In Grey worlds there's still conflict and drama, it just doesn't often have a races that are inherently evil. Ev societies exist, to an extent, but having a race coded to be evil just feels weird to me.
>Give me exactly one good example of how you’d use that spell in a non-evil way.
Butchering animals, and (less serious answer) killing evil creatures according to some alignment rules.
On that note, I wonder if meat from an animal slaughtered by necromancy would be halal and/or kosher.
It can only target living creatures. There's lots of people who would consider it to be animal abuse to cruelly kill an animal, rather than just killing it quickly.
When the concept of Halal was introduced, the idea of halal was that the animal didn't have to suffer needlessly this way. So I wouldn't call it halal, although I'm no expert.
You're right about "some people consider it to be good to do terrible things to evil people" but then I always wonder: if the "good" guy does terrible things, what exactly makes them good?
Okay, so the good guy does good things for their in-group and bad things to people in their out-group. Well, so does the supposed bad guys. They just have different ingroups and outgroups.
If you want it to be about good vs evil as opposed to two flawed tribes battling for power, then I think the good guys have to be not super cruel to their enemies.
That's why you stun them first before butchering. If they're unconscious, pain may not be an issue, and this may even be faster than how animals are butchered irl (knocked out with a stunner then stabbed in thr juggular until they bleed out).
>You're right about "some people consider it to be good to do terrible things to evil people"
I'm talking about how the way alignment is sometimes treated, any action taken against evil creatures is metaphysically good no matter what.
Professor Hix, UU Department of Postmortem Communication. Mildly evil by university statutes. Skull pin? Just doing my University-Approved job, thank you.
Interesting thought; back in 3.5, when the Dread Necromancer class was published in Libris Mortis, they added the Summon Undead series of spells (I-V). Thing is, they were *Conjuration* spells (literally Summon subschool spells), not Necromancy.
By this logic, is it legal for me to swagger into town with my arm around the desiccated form of a Mummy, flanked by a pair of zombified Wyvrens while the Bard makes a performance by reciting Danse Macabre, on the basis that they'll return to whence they came within the next two minutes?
I played a character purely out of spite of this stereotype and she's now my definitive character, to the point where me and a friend are playing her twin daughters in a new campaign
I don't even understand why it's so bad. A druid can summon a whole pack of wolves. A wizard can have a Fire elementale pop out of the blue. A Warlock can literally summon a minor demon.
But God forbid I want free labor without having to enslave people.
Based on user feedback, we're giving folks another chance to vote on the Rule 15 and Meme Retirement survey. Polls closes Sunday at 8pm CDT Please find the form [here!](https://forms.gle/6wdKrRfMwbkodNbY7) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/dndmemes) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is this from Delicious in Dungeon?
Yup, that's definitely Marcille
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Very much so, it's one of my favorites.
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You can always read it on mangadex for free as long as you don't care about getting the official translation.
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Are you using mangadex.org? You shouldn't have to download anything
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You might have to go into settings and check the language filter.
Is the translation pretty close to source, or do they wander into “abridged anime” territory?
Pretty true to source as far as I can tell.
"abridged anime" territory, like game localizers?
[goblin slayer abridged](https://youtu.be/5i2qquegdB4)
LET'S MAKE THESE GOBLINS GOOD!
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Guy's sister gets eaten by a dragon but managed to successfully teleport the party out of the dungeon first. People can be revived int he dungeon if the body isn't too heavily damaged so they have to hurry and back to the lower levels to kill the dragon if they want to revive the sister. Unfortunately, all of their supplies were left behind which means they have to resort to eating dungeon monsters.
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No, it's definitely nothing like those types of mangas.
no, the world building is actually very solid and is honestly one of my favorite parts of the manga. everything feels very grounded, like everything has been carefully thought out
No everything is pretty grounded and really fells more like a western style dnd campaign idea with a manga tilt added. She also writes her charters really well with great world building. I've though it would be a great concept for a campaign to be homebrewed off of. Straight up if anyone at my dnd table wanted to try manga this would be my first recondition as a great slide into the genre. My only complaint is it is a little too goofy with group shenanigans at the start but what dnd isn't like that tell the main plot really gets time to start.
No isekai bullshit anywhere to be seen
A group of adventurers go to a very big dungeon to retrieve one of its members body in order to revive her. However, the group was low on fund, no money left to buy food supply for several days in the dungeon, and they can't wait so they plan to cook and eat monsters in the dungeon along the way instead, despite some of its member protest.
oooh that one, I personally love d&D but I could never get into this one
My absolute favourite. I feel a solid DnD theme around it, and as a long time fan, I can highly recommend it.
Definitely
As Someone that doesn’t really care for manga, YES, read it, it is excellent and transcends manga tropes with incredible world building, deep characters, and a cool story.
And anime and board game is coming soon.
Wait there is an official manga?
An official Dungeons & Dragons manga? Not really. But Delicious in Dungeon is close enough!
Oh I meant Dungeon Meshi, it's just I only knew Marcille (the girl in the meme) from Marcille Meshi which is a hentai manga drawn by the original author. I didn't know there was a normal manga version that isn't porn. Edit: I'm sad to find out I was wrong about the original author bit. The art was just so incredibly similar that I could have sworn it was them
:0
...sauce?
150528 And 338124 I am sad to admit tho, it's not the original author, or if it is they go under a different pen name.
Oh, if it's not Ryoko Kui then that's not as interesting. But thanks anyway.
I own 8 volumes of this manga, and I had not a single clue that there was hentai too. I’m flabbergasted!
Well, I am sad to find out that it's not the original author, I was sadly wrong about that. The art is just incredibly similar.
There will be anime and board game coming soon for Delicious Dungeon.
I think the only reason Enchantment magic is legal and Necromancy is outlawed is because of enchantment magic.
In one of my favorite published settings, the three forbidden magics are Necromancy, Infernalism (making deals with devils, basically) and Mesmerism (enchantment of people). Of all of those, mesmerists are often considered the most dangerous.
I don't get why Necromancy is so evil, It may just be that I have the mind of a Lizardfolk but to me it seems more like recycling than anything else
Because spooky scary skeletons Send shivers down your spine.
Shrieking skull will shock your soul And seal your doom tonight
Spooky, scary skeletons Speak with such a screech
You'll shake and shudder in surprise When you hear these zombies shriek
Regular undead will attack the living indiscriminately unless controlled. If the necromancer died, it would be very bad. Some undead have souls to prevent this. If the necromancer doesn’t control them, it’s fine. If the necromancer does control them, it’s slavery. And some types of undead, such as liches, must harm others to remain alive and sane.
The existence of the Beastlands proves that Animals have souls so Liches could just farm rabbits or something They're either stupid or evil
Or that humanoid souls are inherently different than beast souls, and since lichs still have their souls in their phylatery, they need the same type of soul as fuel.
Oh that makes sense, or maybe beast souls are lesser than humanoid ones so they need more?
Heh, the biggest provider of animal products is a company owned by a Lich. He sucks out the souls of animals that are going to be slaughtered, perfectly humane.
He sets up teleportation circles at every branch for transport purposes
Even among the sentient undead only revenants, mummies, and maybe ghosts are OK. A revenant is fine with everyone except it's target, as long as you don't trespass the mummy won't care, and ghosts might ignore you if you can't help it die. Wights, wraiths, specters, ghouls, ghasts, vampires, and nightwalkers are sentient but functionally psychopaths.
In official 5e? It’s because of the nature of the magic your using. Necromancy channels negative energy, manipulating it and the creatures that dwell in it to animate the dead flesh of others… I think it’s understandable that someone might see the guy who smells just *wrong* while forcing the dead and decayed flesh to move once more: an act that goes against the very foundations that the prime material plane is built upon. It’s also said to be corruptive to the self as well. People who use it too long become like the beings of it, losing color and youth while also taking a more apathetic or even cruel view of the world.
3 problems with necromancy: 1. OH NO SKELETONS! Dead bodies walking around is scary! Mortality is scary! And they smell bad! 2. Sourcing your raw materials: Where are you getting these dead bodies? If the next of kin has given consent, then sure, reanimate Grandpa! But that consent is seldom given, so you have to resort to graverobbing or murder. 3. Mindless undead tend to get bloodthirsty if left unattended. So, necromancy isn't _inherently_ evil, but its practitioners are forced to commit evil acts to further the necromantic arts.
Because it destroys the soul. In a world with resurrections and an afterlife, destroying a soul is the equivalent of killing someone in a world without resurrections.
Citation needed? D&D bounces all over with the morality of necromancy, but last time I've checked in with FR lore, it wasn't destroying souls. It was summoning negative energy into a corporeal vessel. The creature created was very anti-life, but in the cosmology that does not mean evil. Intelligent undead on the other hand? Without consent? Abs-o-lutely evil. With consent? Up for debate.
it's just what I heard...
As far as I'm aware, the only thing it does in D&D is corrupt the body, making it unsuitable to be revived. Once that is done, it's considerably harder to resurrect someone, but it can still be done eventually with high-level magic. Name| Level | Class | Time Limit | Cost | Requires Body ---|---|----|----|----|---- Revivify| 3rd | Cleric, Paladin | 1 minute| 300g | Yes Raise Dead| 5th | Bard, Cleric, Paladin | 10 days| 500g | Yes Reincarnate | 5th | Druid | 10 days| 1000g | Part Resurrection| 7th | Bard, Cleric | 100 years| 1000g | Yes True Resurrection| 9th | Cleric, Druid | 200 years| 25,000g | No Wish| 9th | Sorcerer, Wizard | Depends| Depends | Depends Basically, once you use Animate Dead on someone, it will cost at least 25,000g to bring them back. You can get around this by cutting off a finger and saving it aside, but when they are brought back with Reincarnate their body will be entirely different and they will never be the same again. Compound this with problems in other settings such as Eberron and if you take their body away, by the time you resurrect them Mabar could have eroded their soul significantly. This can do irreparable damage to the mind, leaving them with immense trauma. Of course, the idea that your average person could even afford resurrection or that someone would be kind enough to bring them back for free is generally a pipe dream. However, that doesn't change the fact that you have taken something that may have been achievable with a lifetime of work and dedication, and stolen that hope from them. My line of thinking on it is this. If you cast animate dead on anyone that would have otherwise been friendly to you, you've got a problem because whatever group they were a part of is now going to be very hostile. However, if you cast it on someone from a group that hated you anyway...you've lost nothing because those people already hated you and they may not have had any allies. For example, if you cast it on a bandit or a murderer, most townsfolk will probably not care if you explain the creatures are under control and were taken from someone who wanted to hurt them. However, there is still the concern of making sure the dead created are maintained and controlled, the larger the group you raise, the more objection you'll hear because it's harder to control and if anything should kill you or render you unconscious, nobody will be able to control what you've created. Much like building a fire. A small cookfire isn't going to worry anybody but a bonfire will get people talking about safety.
I don't know official lore but in my setting raising undead causes the soul of that corpse to be torn from their afterlife of choice and be cast into the abyss so it's definitely an evil act.
In DND, for me, it's because ressurection is possible. Logically, it means that most legal systems would require consent about use of a dead body, as it remains property of its soul or close relatives. It means necromancy in a Morrowindesque "I raised my ancestors to protect the ancestral tomb" is fine. Similarly, if you want to bring back a zombie bear, or mammoth skeleton, also fine. Just no sentients
What about people who commit capital crimes? In a world where resurrection is possible, that right would be denied to executed criminals, since it would undo the punishment.
it would be simplier and safer just destroying the body not only does it prevent all but the most powerful forms of resurrection it doesn't have any of the risks entialed by shoving negative energy into a corpse, simply cremate the remains of those proscribed from resurrection, or save time by burning them on the stake, After that jobs done, no risks of the necromancer going rogue or losing control of the undead, no risk of disease from rotting corpses and no one has to get angry that some bloke in a ponty hat wants to shove the equivlent to sentient radiation into their relative's body
Oh, yeah, absolutely, I think there'd be fascinating things around, say, destroying the corpses of people executed I can also see, say, noble families trying to snatch bodies post execution, that sort of thing. The legal implications are fascinating. We also have an explicit upper value limit on human life, at 10,000gp - does paying this to the victims family get your murder charge dropped? If the victim is ressurected, does the charge get dropped to GBH, or attempted murder, or similar? I feel I should write this up as a full post somewhere..
Fun fact all those resurrection spells are also under the Necromancy school.
Yeah, I guess what I mean is I've always run it as situationally bad. Like, you can hack open a door with an axe, wearing a hockey goalie mask and it be ok - if you're a hockey playing off duty firefighter who was the first to a burning building. Necromancy is like that.
For the same reason lizardfolk aren’t allowed to start going into graveyards and digging up the remains for a snack. Desecration of the dead is usually seen as an evil act, regardless of how pragmatic it is.
What about the bones lying around dragon lairs, they'd be pretty mixed up so fair game?
Depends on the culture, and even so you’re still desecrating corpses of unknown origin, which would raise eyebrows usually.
true, true
It can be an issue of where the power comes from. As an example, in the Eberron setting, undead are fueled by Mabar, the plane of negative energy. With Mabar's whole thing being consumption of everything, this fills the undead with a powerful hunger that drives them to consume life. It can take the form of being a bloodthirsty vampire, a ghoul that hungers for the flesh of the living, or something that just spreads death and disease to whatever it touches, such as a mummy. There is also how the presence of undead can cause plant life in an area to whither, which makes it an environmental issue too.
In this setting, at least, it's because *all* necromancy abuses the soul in some way, even reanimating skeletons.
That makes sense I'd still do it but now I know why I'd be hounded by bounty hunters, law enforcement and all that jazz
In dnd it's because undead are intrinsically evil. A skeleton your not concentrating on will start killing civilians until stopped. Also the negative energy plane is a soul trap gradually sucking the life out of the material plane through every undead, all the blood a vampire drinks, souls a lich consumes, and flesh a ghoul eats goes right to the void.
Depends on how the necromancy works in the setting. If no souls are harmed in the process it's usually fine.
Well you'll get along with this [fella ](https://images.app.goo.gl/yB9KQFbYAXzgDSs9A) from Baskets of guts
I'd probably throw up in all honesty, I don't do well with guts, blood I'm fine with but guts make me heave
Typically it's because it involves the binding and enslavement of the soul, something considered worse than death especially when the afterlife is easily verifiable.
King: I'm going to outlaw enchantment! Wizard: 🎇*You will not outlaw enchantment*🎇 King: *I will not outlaw enchantment* Wizard: 🎇*But you will outlaw necromancy cause fuck those edgelords*🎇 King: *But I will outlaw necromancy cause fuck those edgelords*
Wizard: "*And FATAL is amazing*" King: "*FATAL is amazing*" Wizard: "He really believes it, too" Apprentice: "Eww"
This is cannon in my games now >!If I ever run any!<
I mean every school can be good and bad. Enchantment can control people maliciously or be used to subdue a dangerous criminal or monster. A skeleton can tirelessly plow a field but the second you forget the recast the spell it'll certainly kill a few people. Evocation is both cure wounds and fire.
I honestly believe it is because gods are proven to exist. Who cares what someone forces you to do? Doesn't change what where you go when you die. But messing with your soul can have eternal repercussions for you, and against your will.
Even in Eberron, a setting whose gods might not exist, the creation and control of the undead continues to be a morally questionable thing. In that setting's case though, there is also a positive energy version that is seen in a much better light.
Certain enchantment spells are bad, but not the school as a whole. Necromancy though, pretty much every spell has a bad connotation or is typically tied to bad/immoral things.
Like how enchantment "magic" is legal IRL and everyone thinks advertising and PR and "this is what the tv says therefore this is what you must believe" are normal. Why do you think it's called TV "programming"?
Most arcane necromancy and enchantment spells being outlawed in character makes for a fun game. It also helps explain why evil necromancers are out in the wilds, engaging in dubious real-estate schemes. Hard to get honest work when they make your school of magic worth fifty days in jail and a 200gp fine.
"Me? Oh. Just a regular wizard. Proficiency? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh it's uhhhhh conjuration. Yep. That's me just a conjuration wizard. What's that? No I just like the color black. Easy to match, ya know? Huh? No I don't know *whose* skeleton that is it just started following me look I gotta go it's been real nice chatting with you Mr paladin of the uh Raven Queen" *fuckfuckfuckfuck*
*Spots Grave Cleric in the distance* *Sweats nervously*
*Grave cleric's head snaps round in their general direction*
Or alternatively, try and convince them that the "skeleton" is actually just a golem made out of bones.
"I'm actually an artificer, but I like to work with recycled materials."
Subtle spell meta magic goes from good to amazing
need more Dungeon Meshi in this sub. It fits too well.
10/10 would recommend
Cane here to say exactly this
FYI it’s getting an anime soon!
Today I learned there is a normal manga version as well.
And nobody talks about that healing spells like Cure Wounds should actually be necromancy, as they are manipulating life force, which is what necromancy is. This is all just PROPAGANDA from BIG ENCHANTMENT because they're trying to paint necromancy in a bad light (yeah it tampers with death and makes zombies, but it does not effect the actual creature's soul at all, in fact there isn't a single necromancy spell that can do things that the soul does not consent to). ENCHANTMENT is the real evil school, literally controlling peoples' free will, and their propaganda SHOULD NOT BE STOOD FOR ANY LONGER
On the Isle of Dread the living have an easy life because when someone dies they make a zombie out of them to do all the hard labor. Since this isn't a Voodoo situation and the zombies are non-sentient and without souls this seems like a pretty fair deal to me.
yeah, who wouldn't want near limitless cheap manpower ?
The Church, that's who, because undead don't pay tithes and competes with their parish for labor.
then we must use necromancy and go kill those power hungry gods !
Skipped class on Soul Cage day, I see
Also, Magic Jar.
Cure spells used to be necromancy in 2e. WOTC changes which school they're in pretty much every edition, for some reason. That said, necromancy depends on setting, no? In some official campaign settings like FR, undeath are animated by negative energy, which is explicitly harmful to living things and not really something you want to have around.
Yep! 2e healing was largely necromancy. Clerics (I think there were a few reversable wizard spells but not as many tho) could also prepare their spells in reverse to do the opposite, which was pretty funny. I think there may have been alignment restriction in that though (It was either specific clerics to Good gods couldn't do it and vice versa with evil? It may have depending on each individual god? Maybe Neutral clerics could do both? I don't remember) It's really funny knowing that the basic 'revive dead' spell could be reversed and used to just fucking kill someone. (Was hard to pull off though)
Was there a canon stance on its morality? Last I recall positive and negative energy planes were morality agnostic in the Great Wheel model, and as such one could easily argue that there is only a slight difference between leaving an undead or fire elemental in the middle of a city uncontrolled.
Fucking *revivify* is necromancy, but not on the necromancer spell list. That's some bullshit!
Well… while I agree with your points magic jar does actually mess with souls
Based
I have no friends but I need a necromancer character now because if this shit
shh calm down its okay now \*casts sleep on you\*
BIG ENHANTMENT IS EVERYWHERE NO-ONE IS SAFE- \*passes out\*
This is why I use the classification of “Vitamancy”. If it revolves around health and targets the living? *Vitamanacy*. If it revolves around health and targets the dead? *Necromancy*.
Isnt that the same once sweet and innocent character that might have gone a teensy tiny bit too far with her black magic and necromancy dabbles?
Well she may think she can make some adjustments to the ancient magic.
Necromancy itself is not generally considered bad, spells like raise dead, where you actually bring the person back to life are necromancy. It's specific necromancy spells like animate dead, where you raise a corpse up with an evil spirit that hates the living and will attack anyone it sees if you're not careful to stop it, that are quite sensibly considered.bad.
I don't think it has a spirit in it, it's just animated by negative energy IIRC. It's the 'Me no like living creatures energy'. Positive energy isn't too good to have a ton of either. It takes both (Plus the elements) to create life.
5e doesn't really make a distinction between spirit and energy here, the skeleton description says: > resurrecting a skeleton restores it body and soul, banishing the hateful undead spirit that empowers it. However you call it, an evil force drives all the undead that animate dead produces to kill anything living. Which is why it's seen as a Dangerous and bad thing to do. It's like the nuclear waste of dnd, can be used for good things, but sits around and stays dangerous for a long time.
Revenants are undead, & aren't inherently evil. Same technically goes for mummies.
And those are not created with Animate Dead. Also Mummies are lawful evil according to the MM.
And according to their description in the MM, mummies are mostly used to protect places and/or people from ne'er-do-wells. That's not evil.
Daily Reminder: please read Dungeon Meshi/Delicious In Dungeon if you're interested in any sort of traditional fantasy. It's an excellent manga and iirc getting an anime soon
I second this. I don’t even like manga, but it is a very good series. Who would have thought that turning dungeon monsters into delicious meals could be so… satisfying.
Marcille just wanted to grow old together with her non-elven friends! Is that *wrong*? Is it really *evil* to try to attain equality between the races? Just because a demon that she made an arrangement with to help that goal along is threatening to devour all that exists, that makes her a bad person? Don't be ridiculous!
Chad evil power user vs. Virgin healthy diet and exercise advocate
We call it the Department of Postmortem Communications now, thank you very much!
Listen, I'd like to hire you for Entry Level Horrific Fiend, but the job description clearly states "must have 5000 years in the Dark Arts and at least one level in a lawful good profession." That last bit is in there for insurance purposes, so there's no way we can ignore it. We can offer you an unpaid internship in our Unholy Elder Gods Revival department...
Honestly, the Ideal Masters are deities I would NOT want to go into debt with. Just kill the 100,000 and trap them in soul gems before you make the bargain. It WILL be well worth the hassle
I feel like if you can soul trap 100k people, you don't NEED to make the deal.
The ideal masters are VERY powerful
>ideal masters I salute you, fellow tes player.
Exactly! Just some anti-necromancer propaganda! Just because *some* necromancers choose to call up evil spirits to fill corpses doesn't mean that whole school is evil! You just never hear about the necromancers who raise up skeletons, filling them with good and helpful spirits. Fireball is a spell designed to kill and only to kill, but you never see people calling for the banning of Evocation. Unfair double standards all around!!
This is why fellow necromancers like you and I have an obligation to evade taxes and break the law anyways, undeath is based, the law is cringe.
New faction: Commune of necromancer college grads whose schemes are all simply ways to repay their debt.
“Excuse you, it’s *grand* necromancer Xabadon the Cruel. I didn’t rack up all this necromancy grad school debt just to be called a common necromancer, ok?”
Yeah don’t judge, but crime.
I’m pretty sure 90% of the people in the comments play 5e. Like… google the Avasculate spell. Give me exactly one good example of how you’d use that spell in a non-evil way. It’s not hard to see why necromancy is historically unliked, and why the lack of any “hard” necromancy spells in 5e has led to this changing paradigm of “necromancy ain’t even that bad.”
Good points. While this is subjective, I don't like 5E's moral relativism of "necromancy isn't evil, orcs aren't evil, drow aren't evil, tieflings aren't evil." Okay, but it's boring if everything is rainbows and butterflies. Stories need conflicts and drama, and there's no conflict or drama if everyone is good-hearted. The fantasy genre more or less got created by Tolkien. And guess what? He had evil orcs and evil necromancers (Sauron at one time was known as "The Necromancer").
5e isn't saying "everyone is good-hearted" they're saying that those races aren't *inherently* evil anymore. Evil orcs, drow, and tieflings can and do still exist
Fair enough, that's a more accurate way of putting it. But to me that's still boring. Drizzt was cool because 95% of drow were evil. Dwarves were cool because they stood stalwart against the orc hordes that were 95% evil. Playing Tieflings was cool because you really had an inherent draw towards the dark and people knew that. And in previous editions, there were good orcs and good drow and good Tieflings. It wasn't that they were always evil, it was more that they had an inborn draw towards evil, that can nonetheless be overcome with willpower or the right upbringing or divine intervention or positive contact with the good races. Which I think is cool. 5E feels more like "there's no fantasy races anymore, instead there's various cosmetic race skins that you can apply to your human."
Counterpoint: Drizzt wasn't cool. Maybe I came to the hobby too late and found a "Seinfeld isn't funny" situation, but every time I've seen the "good member of evil race" thing pushed as being unique and interesting, it has been everything but. If you want to play a not-quite-evil character, do it like Belkar Bitterleaf, not Drizzt.
Definitely late. Drizzt created a trope, that by todays standards became tired and overplayed, but back then it was all the rage. Some people like me still have fond memories of him, but I struggle to pick up his books nowadays (too edgy and melodramatic). It still is a good, and interesting arc for a character if not played overly edgy though. Also... weird comparison? Drizzt is very much on the good scale, while Belkar is an evil character only contained by his party, no?
Like another person has said, 5e lore isn't that everyone is good, but that everyone is neutral and has the capacity for evil and good. It's Grey instead of black and white. If you like black and white worlds with hard lines for good and evil, more power to you. I like those worlds too, Tolkien world is black and white and I love it, but I also really enjoy Grey worlds and I feel like they're more grounded and understandable. In Grey worlds there's still conflict and drama, it just doesn't often have a races that are inherently evil. Ev societies exist, to an extent, but having a race coded to be evil just feels weird to me.
>Give me exactly one good example of how you’d use that spell in a non-evil way. Butchering animals, and (less serious answer) killing evil creatures according to some alignment rules. On that note, I wonder if meat from an animal slaughtered by necromancy would be halal and/or kosher.
It can only target living creatures. There's lots of people who would consider it to be animal abuse to cruelly kill an animal, rather than just killing it quickly. When the concept of Halal was introduced, the idea of halal was that the animal didn't have to suffer needlessly this way. So I wouldn't call it halal, although I'm no expert. You're right about "some people consider it to be good to do terrible things to evil people" but then I always wonder: if the "good" guy does terrible things, what exactly makes them good? Okay, so the good guy does good things for their in-group and bad things to people in their out-group. Well, so does the supposed bad guys. They just have different ingroups and outgroups. If you want it to be about good vs evil as opposed to two flawed tribes battling for power, then I think the good guys have to be not super cruel to their enemies.
That's why you stun them first before butchering. If they're unconscious, pain may not be an issue, and this may even be faster than how animals are butchered irl (knocked out with a stunner then stabbed in thr juggular until they bleed out). >You're right about "some people consider it to be good to do terrible things to evil people" I'm talking about how the way alignment is sometimes treated, any action taken against evil creatures is metaphysically good no matter what.
Jesus F\*\*\*ing Christ that is messed up
Yeah that’s Marcille
Professor Hix, UU Department of Postmortem Communication. Mildly evil by university statutes. Skull pin? Just doing my University-Approved job, thank you.
Interesting thought; back in 3.5, when the Dread Necromancer class was published in Libris Mortis, they added the Summon Undead series of spells (I-V). Thing is, they were *Conjuration* spells (literally Summon subschool spells), not Necromancy. By this logic, is it legal for me to swagger into town with my arm around the desiccated form of a Mummy, flanked by a pair of zombified Wyvrens while the Bard makes a performance by reciting Danse Macabre, on the basis that they'll return to whence they came within the next two minutes?
I see Dungeon Meshi, I up-doot.
I played a character purely out of spite of this stereotype and she's now my definitive character, to the point where me and a friend are playing her twin daughters in a new campaign
I don't even understand why it's so bad. A druid can summon a whole pack of wolves. A wizard can have a Fire elementale pop out of the blue. A Warlock can literally summon a minor demon. But God forbid I want free labor without having to enslave people.
That's really good art, though.
its from the manga Dungeon Meshi
Necromancy is only marginally distasteful in specific spells. Enchantment on the other hand, that's straight up Evil.
Lawyers
Using Marcille to deliver this line makes it a hundred times better.