Raise Dead as Necromancy

[LightlyFrosted]

I know this has been discussed before, but the jury has always seemed a little open to the idea, so I'm throwing this idea in again.  I'd suggest/request that healing spells in general, but Raise Dead and other associated 'restore life to a fallen ally' spells in specific be moved to necromancy, from Conjuration, where.. well, I'm not entirely certain why they're there to begin with.

The nearest explanation I've gotten for why healing spells are conjuration spells is that they 'conjure' positive energy to heal someone.  By this logic, I'd think that healing spells would actually fit better under evocation - granted, most evocation spells tend to deal horrific burn scars or suchlike, but it IS about bringing forth magical energy.  In contrast, you ARE affecting someone's state in the whole living/dead thing, by removing possibly scarred or dead tissue, and replacing it with shiny pink healed tissue, or something along those lines.

Raise dead, to extend this, actually entails bringing someone back to life from the dead.  Unless you're conjuring their spirit back into their body, and then conjuring their wounds closed (or vice versa..), it would strike me as being somewhat more cut-and-dryly necromantic.  You are reversing the terrible effects of something-or-other, and restoring life to someone where no life remained.

I'll grant you that necromancy has had somewhat of a bad rap, so far as 'evil' is concerned.  However, this isn't to say that all necromantic spells need to be evil - just that some of the less moral ones are.  The distinctions between the schools of magic aren't just sentimental ones though: be it through scribing, or through the specialist mage's banned schools of magic, schools of magic have an in-game effect beyond a moral one.

I'll grant you that I'd stand to benefit if this change were brought about, but I only make the argument because I think it would make sense.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Others will likely go into this debate in even greater detail, but those same folks (and you might as well) will recall that originally all healing spells were of the Necromancy school, but for whatever reason (some say so that DnD writers could even further delineate good and evil), they were moved to Conjuration in 3rd edition DnD (on which NWN is based, obviously).

As for the new, non-DnD interface to which Layo will be moving, it's yet to be defined what school they will belong to or even if magic will be defined in terms of "schools."

[lonnarin]

I think the reason they moved it was because they revamped the essence/mechanics of how it restores life.  Before it was simply necromancy, since per that school's definition, it animated that which was dead and inert.  The fact that most healing harms beings formed from necromancy though poses the point that the essential energies used in the healing spell must be different in some manner.  Whereas Necromancy brings corpses "back to action", it does so by infusing them with negative energy and manipulating the manner in which a body can sustain itself without a soul present (or one corrupted).  Healing became conjuration because essentially what you are doing is conjuring positive energy to the plane and infusing it to a life force as a means of recharging it.  Why then isn't necromancy just conjuring too then, since it no doubt conjures negative energy from another plane in much the same manner, just oppositely charged?  *shrugs*  I think it mostly has to do with our gamers love for Necromancy itself and scary necromancers as it has to do with semantics.  Technically necromancy is just conjuring energies as well, but something in which how it manipulates the usage of the *soul*, which remains unaffected by healing spells may be key in the definition for that school.

This is just my guess anyhow.

[LightlyFrosted]

Well, yes and no.  If you are using the spell 'raise dead', then you are affecting the *soul*, and if you're summoning and mucking about with energies, then it's evocation and arbjuration respectively.  Conjuration really doesn't come into play here unless you're actually SUMMONING something.

[Dorganath]

"Summoning" is a subset of Conjuration.

Melf's Acid Arrow, for example, is Conjuration.

Taken generically, Conjuration is taking something that is not here and bringing it here.  Or, taking something that is here and moving it elsewhere (i.e. Teleport)

Just want to clear that up a little.  How it impacts the above discussion I leave to the rest of you....for now.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

well isnt raise dead "summoning" the soul back from the planes of the lost and returning it to the body much like Resurrection (though of course far more powerfully)

[LightlyFrosted]

Well yes, but how is that differentiated then from Necromancy?  If Necromancy is a subset of conjuration, then either there shouldn't be a school for Necromancy, or everything that falls under both the potential headings of conjuration and necromancy should be necromancy.

For that matter, there's a fairly good argument that any form of magic is in fact a subset of conjuration, but I digress.

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

but what soul is necromancy using  i always see necros as puppet masters, giving their undead magically knowledge like a golem, hence why skeletons dont get back up after you kill them, you cut the strings

[ShiffDrgnhrt]

besides, in DnD, there are defined limits to how long after deatha soul can be rebound to abody, so looking at necros asdoing the same wouldnt work. theyare tetheringtheundead body with       negative energy as a sort of puppets strings andinfusing thebody with a singular will (sorry my keyboard at work sucks...)

[lonnarin]

Basically the only difference between the two is that one involves positive energy, the other involves negative energy, and that while necromancy corrupts and changes a form imbued, healing restores them to their previous glory.  Besides these very subtle mechnical differences, the difference is mostly sociological.  You can raise Bob the paladin with healing, he rises, he smiles and blesses you... hello Bob!  You animate him with necromancy and he becomes a zombie or wraith... stop eating my brains, Bob!  So in practicality terms, there is a big difference.  One makes you all springtime fresh and smelling of Pinesol, the other turns you into a life-void blight on the force where you need the unnatural energies of another plane or the blood, body and souls of the living to continue.  As Shiff mentioned above, necromancers are basically animating bodies by tethering them to the negative energies of another plane, whereas raising somebody is finding *their* old soul and putting it back where it was last after fixing the old body.  

Even if an undead creature retains his old life memories, its merely the neurons in his brain being spurred to action by negatively charged energy.  The essence of thier being and that which makes them who they were in life has already passed on into the next realm, and attempting to heal or reattach their old soul will disrupt these false energies and cause the undead form to fall lifeless again.  This is why some sentient undead like vampires die instantly when you chop their heads off.  Other forms of undead like zombies and skeletons are more or less just puppets controlled by strings of dark energy.  Sever those strings and they fall, smash them to pieces and they're too destroyed to matter.  Then things like ghosts and wraiths are when the old soul leaves the body, yet is corrupted and warped by dark necromantic energy.  These lost souls are no longer the spark of life but rather the anti-spark of an energy negatively charged.  They wander around lost, unable to go to whichever plane they should be in when they die.

Of course according to the Forgotten Realms, if you worship a god, your reward is that he consumes your soul like some eternal vampire, and not following one means you get eternal life in the Wall of the Lost in Kelemvor's tower.  I'm not entirely certain what happens to souls here, or the subtleties of positive and negative planar cosmology... so if you want any concrete answer in that regard, ask Ed.  He mentioned something about how higher and lower planes differ in function via the frequency of all matter and energy on the plane, so I imagine these factors effect eachother mich in the same matter as matter/antimatter warpdrives do; Both are matter, just one's ions are charged one way and the other circles the opposite direction.  Planar frequency therefore determines the nature of all matter and energ from that plane, and how it so interacts with matter and energy from other planes.

[Dorganath]

Heh guys....Necromancy deals with life energies and the manipulations thereof.   That means it can take as well as restore "life" to the dead. It's not "conjuring" negative energy to bend to your whims, however.

Personally, I disagree with the move away from Necromancy for healing spells, but I understand it was done for perception and overall spell school balance reasons. *shrugs a bit*

As far as Raise Dead/Resurrection go, you're calling one's soul back from wherever it goes when the body dies.  Necromancy could make the body "live" again, but it would typically be soul-less

[EdTheKet]

And the answer to the question that gave rise to this thread: I agree, it'd make sense for healing to be necromancy, but in this incarnation of Layonara which is based on DnD, we'll stick with whatever explanation 3rd edition has given for it (even if there is none).

So while I also think it should be in necromancy, we will not be changing it.