Necromancy, clerics and their dieties.

Vyris · 12-26-05, 08:14 AM

I'm becoming more and more befuddled by the whole necromancy thing.

In the spell description often you see necromancy in the 'school' field, which I am of the opinion that the school only applies to arcane spellcasters, as a clerics powers are derived directly from their diety. There are spells like create undead and such that I can imagine a good aligned diety wouldn't grant at all, and ones like slay living, that I think a diety like Vorax would be opposed to since it removes the martial aspect from cobat.

But, then there are spells like Bane, which reduces combat effectiveness, destruction, etc. Theres a lot of spells that don't seem to me to be placed correctly in schools. For instance, wouldn't it make more sense, that since slay living is necromancy that raise dead would be as well? Instead it is a conjuration. And the summoned creatures for Vorax are dwarven heroes, which I may be wrong but I have been told that they are dead heroes from Vorax's glorious halls, isn't summoning a dead warrior somewhat necromantic?

Anyhow, I'm just looking to see what other people think, maybe get Pankoki or Ed or Leanthar to chime in as well. I'm of the opinion that necromancy in and of itself isn't evil, but that it should fall within reason for the character to use it. Like my example above, Vorax probably would not grant his followers a spell that reduced an enemy to a near death state, or killed them outright through magical means, because it would be counter to his ethos, but I don't see why Vorax would frown apon using Bane or similar prayers that reduce the combat effectiveness of your foes.

Thoughts please.

Vyris

Wintersheart · 12-26-05, 08:49 AM

Great I am not the only one, I had been thinking of posting a question along the same lines.

Personally I am of the opinion that spells involving the manipulation of positive or negative energy should be necromantic and this includes healing spells. I do not understand why healing spells are conjuration - the only only impression it leaves me is a cleric holding a mail-order catalogue of bodyparts.

Would be nice to hear the offial layo word on this

Dorganath · 12-26-05, 08:58 AM

I don't know if this helps or not, but Necromancy is magic that deals with manipulating life, which can include protecting life as well as destroying it.
Summons that call undead or fallen heros or whatever are not necromantic but rather conjuration, as they call across the planes for the creature that is brought forth.�
Now, a Good-aligned cleric would probably not cast Animate Dead because using a fallen corpse as a mindless automaton is pretty not Good.� On the other hand, Death Ward is necromantic and is frequently used by Good-aligned clerics to protect one's party.
You're correct that Necromancy is not inherently Evil, but often those who specialize in it are.� And since we have such a rich deity system here, we can see conflicts such as you describe from followers of one deity to the next.

Leanthar · 12-26-05, 09:01 AM

Well stated Dorganath.

Lucius · 12-26-05, 09:09 AM

In my humble opinion as a traveling monk (

), Necromancy deals with death and negative energy. All spells of that school deal with either of those (Fear spells being the more badly placed ones).

Healing spells use positive energy, and they dont create it from nowhere, so theyre Conjuration spells. This is how the PnP D&D explains those schools, and it sounds good to me.

I agree that some deities wouldnt allow a few spells. In the PnP description of those, they usually point out an alignment (for example, Holy Word is good-aligned). Casting a spell of a certain alignment, specially when your a cleric, is an act of that alignment. So if a cleric of Toran animates a corpse, the evil act would break the dogmas of the deity and bye bye divine spells.

I cant think of a way to implement this on NWN other than GMs witnessing the act. I hope this helped, even though I'm not very sure on it myself (no skill points for Knowledge: Divine :P)

Edit: I have to type faster :P

Wintersheart · 12-26-05, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Dorganath - 12/26/2005 7:58 PM

I don't know if this helps or not, but Necromancy is magic that deals with manipulating life, which can include protecting life as well as destroying it

This would be my understanding as well but then shouldn't cure light/moderate/serious/critical wounds and heal be necromancy rather than conjuration which NWN lists them as?

lonnarin · 12-26-05, 10:56 AM

yeah, in D&D history outside of NWN, healing spells have almost always been Necromancy based. Also, certain necromancy spells when cast would likely make an Aeridenite do a little happy dance when cast... ie: Undeath to Death, which does mass damage/instantaneous destruction to deadites.

It's all how you use the spells that depict whether they're good or evil. Raising a zombie from a peacefully resting corpse? Bad. Pointing a negative energy ray at Milara's groin and opening fire?

Righteous.

steverimmer · 12-27-05, 12:51 AM

I think that one of the main problems is that necromancy outside of Layonara and the D&D world is nothing at all to do with 'manipulating life' but is about manipulating death and the dead.� It is also closely related to divination as well in RL occult history.� It's meaning seems to have been changed in the D&D world which causes a lot of misconceptions unfortunately.� Personally I've always thought that they never should have used the word 'necromancy' in the game, in the context that it is used simply because of this.
Anyway here are a couple of links which tell you a bit about the non D&D 'lore' of it for anyone who is interested.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10735a.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necromancy