The Necromancer Problem

"Doctor Orpheus, could you tell the court what it is that you do? You're a type of magician?"

"Well, if you must call me that, yes. But if you are after mere parlor tricks you will be sorely disappointed, for if I reach behind your ear, it will not be a nickel I pull out, BUT YOUR VERY SOUL!"

Necromancer is another class that fits in with our bad boys from before. While the paladin and the Jedi are more thematically related, they still share a common problem with the necromancer: They carry a lot of baggage, cause a lot of arguing, but we keep wanting to play them because they're SO COOL. After I go a little bit into the history of the "class", I'm going to discuss the problems in a bullet point format, since we've actually got a lot of little problems that end up supporting the major issue: The idea that necromancers are universally and undeniably evil. More on that later, but it's somewhat bogus. Often people will compromise and say you can play a necromancer so long as you don't do any of its awesome cool stuff. Doesn't exactly sound fun.

The Necromancer's story actually begins in second edition. Before that, the only specialized wizard was Illusionist, and even then it only existed in the same vein as Assassin and Paladin: A subclass that was more powerful but more difficult to get into. Second Edition introduced School Specialists as a basic option: Deny yourself two other schools to get bonus spell slots in your chosen school. This was super popular and the grand-daddy of more modern character customization, which 1e and 2e was quite lacking in. Those bonus spells and the minor buffs to spell save DCs meant you could seriously focus on a particular school, and the lack of two other schools often didn't sting as much as it sounds like: Back then, divination was quite a thin school, and while transmutation had useful buffs, it had plenty of niche-y spells a wizard didn't necessarily need. Third edition not only kept specialization, but brought feats, prestige classes, and a boatload of awesome necromancy spells, some of which were so powerful that they were altered in later spell collections. There was well thought out source like Libris Mortis, and utterly retarded but mechanically effective classes like the true necromancer. Third edition also made the necromancer's signature spell, Animate Dead, easier.

So third edition was a heyday for necromancers, but it actually brought along some new problems and exacerbated some old ones, as you'll see below. Without further ado, let's get to pointing out some bullshit with those bullet points.

One: The Dead Themselves. So yeah, this is the one argument you're never going to win. There are setting specific exceptions, but undead are evil because the negative energy plane they get their power from is inherently evil. Sorry. Despite the fact that no setting has rules for unintelligent undead breaking your control(no, not even Ravenloft) and despite the fact that something that's completely unintelligent can't actually be evil, you are still utilizing and manipulating evil creatures. In addition to that, a lot of undead creatures(some of which you have access to) are ridiculously evil in nature. I've said it before while we were talking about villain design, but most game designers really go ham when describing and fleshing out undead monsters.

So why do I routinely forgive and/or handwave this one? Well. I did already give both reasons, technically. Firstly, there is no way for an unintelligent undead to buck your control, and even intelligent ones only get one save a day. If they were evil creatures who twisted your commands or could get loose at any moment I'd be far more willing to entertain this idea that things like Animate Dead are objectively evil. They do what you say, and nothing else. Period.

In addition to that, the idea that skeletons and zombies are evil by association with the negative energy plane is in conflict with the rules themselves. A positive wisdom score means they are capable of interpreting your commands. Charisma means they can discern the difference between themselves and others. Lack of an intelligence score means they are incapable of drive. Every zombie movie you've ever seen has zombies that possess at least an INT score of 1. They have a basic drive to kill and eat people and extremely poor but existent reasoning skills. Hell, in the Return of the Living Dead series, they have (semi)rational conversations. If a skeleton or zombie in D20 goes uncontrolled, it would logically either complete its final commands ad infinitum, or stand around doing absolutely nothing. It has no drive or predisposition to evil. It can't. An intelligent creature can absolutely be unnaturally twisted toward evil by becoming undead. I don't agree that it should be the blanket that D20 games make it into, but it's possible. An unintelligent thing can't have a ding-dang alignment.

Two: Conflating alignment with cultural norms. Woah-ho, isn't it awesome that we already discussed what alignment means? A lot of people like to say that raising the dead is an objectively evil act. They say that because desecrating or manipulating the bodies of the dead is taboo in most real world societies. However, we all know that Evil is self motivation above others. Something being taboo is a societal construct, and while it's shitty to disregard societal rules, it's not evil. No, societal structure and trends are the purview of the Ethical axis of alignment. In other words, it's not exactly evil to raise the dead, it's just not very lawful. Even then, a lawful character can justify his actions any number of ways, such as purchasing the grave plots, using monsters killed in self defense or using mass graves or battlefields still littered with dead.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself why it's still an evil act if being performed by a person from a society that has no reverence for the dead. If it's objectively evil, then you're declaring that person's society evil solely for having no rules for internment of the dead. That would imply we're judging their society by comparison to our traditional Western Christian society. Which would be subjective. Alignment isn't a subjective "feel" though, it's a set of rules to put things into categories.

Three: Spell selection and spell alignment tags. But all these spells have the evil descriptor, so it's an evil act to cast them. The thing is, spell descriptors are used solely to denote how spells interact with other spells or targets. It is not a commentary on what sort of action it is to cast the spell. Neither is the fact that certain gods will not grant certain spells a commentary on the morality of those spells, since this is not expressly stated in any book. If you disagree with me, you are wrong and did not read the book.

Glad we got that one out of the way.

That all being said, in most systems the necromancer being "A Master of Life and Death" really isn't a proper title due to spell selection. It's more like "A Master of Life and Death". They get a lot of spells which sound really visceral and nasty, like Wrack which debilitates by causing immense pain, or Wail of the Banshee which straight up kills a shitload of people. Some supplements tried to give them some stuff like heals, but even the "life" bit turns creepy with spells like Clone obviously being pretty unnatural. I can't blame people for judging a book by its cover in this instance.

But.

Necromancy does get a really unfair wrap here. We forgive other spell schools and their horrifyingly awful spells because they aren't so obviously evil. There's not much difference between Wail of the Banshee and Meteor Swarm when you really think about it. Baleful Polymorph and Blindness are permanent spells in some editions. 3.5 has a spell that literally boils your blood, that's a transmutation spell. Spells just have horrifying implications sometimes, and normally we forgive it because most PNP games aren't intended to be a morality play. It's really easy to pin "evil" on the spooky spells, though.

Four: Shorthand for Evil. All the big bad evil dudes are necromancers, man. Kel'thuzad and the Lich King himself, The Horned King from The Black Cauldron, Quan Chi from Mortal Kombat...when you see a necromancer in something it's usually a safe bet that they're an evil motherfucker. Hell, the only one who's not evil that I can think of is Doctor Orpheus. The rest are just player centric options like in Diablo or Guild Wars that make no comment on morality.

This is because these creators are using shorthand. Remember when I talked about that? It's devious, but you can do some really simple things to get the viewer/player feeling the way you want them to. Necromancy is one of those because of our societal taboo against messing with the dead. It's excellent shorthand. The moment you see the Lich King raise that frostwyrm from the ice, you know he's bad news, even if you're not consciously thinking it. Blizzard also uses other little tricks like the look of his armor, the mournful music, and his dead father's ironic narration to paint a picture, but you could watch the segment on mute and still get the same impression of him.

Again, they're playing on our societal views when they do this. Unfortunately, this isn't good enough to declare a necromancer evil in a game with a bunch of different cultures and societies in it. That's simply not what alignment is.

Five: Player Motivations. Necromancer gets kind of the same problem as evil alignment in some ways. You can always count on a player to want to do the cool thing, in anything. In addition to big damage and big battle-tilting effects, they often want to do stuff that really has no direct impact on the game: things like trick shots, clever tactics, neat class abilities, or things like raising armies, conquering kingdoms...et cetera. New players, you'll notice, will often go straight for the cool thing without regard to their effectiveness. The necromancer has a lot of "cool things" associated with it that are often in the context of evil like raising an army of the dead or torturing living people. There's also the idea of raising intelligent dead like mummies or ghouls or even turning yourself into a lich, which does have evil implications in 3.X and PF. There's also all the associations with necromancers: they're often characterized with black robes and skulls, putrid cauldrons full of slime, and an utter disregard for human life. Basically, players who choose necromancer are often doing evil things because of thematic association, and not because of some objective declaration that the whole class is rotten. Necromancer's strong association toward evil is...mostly because it has a strong association toward evil. People want to play the big bad guy for a change, because characters like the Lich King are so cool.

So that's it for this week, I hope I properly articulated why the "Necromancer Problem" is mostly bullshit. Like the paladin, all this requires is for people to chill out and try to discard their preconceived notions about the class and look at the facts. I'm starting to see that a lot of baggage these classes carry is just that: Baggage.