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I came up with a concept for using bound souls, except the souls are willing. Certain cultures/religions believe in serving the living even in death that it's a good thing, like watching over family. Basically your magic/divine power is used to give the soul the power to inhabit and control a corpses and gain abilities or just form in general in the case of incorporeal undead. The caviot to this is you won't be just creating and releasing undead hordes, you'll be limited in how many undead you can have by your level like normal but must always maintain control. The big part of that makes the use of creating undead evil is that your forcing a soul to do your bidding and its torture doing so.
I always liked the narration at the start of the Chronicles of Riddick. "They are an army unlike any other... crusading across the stars toward a place called UnderVerse, their promised land - a constellation of dark new worlds. Necromongers, they're called. And if they cannot convert you, they will kill you. Leading them, the Lord Marshal. He alone has made a pilgrimage to the gates of the UnderVerse... and returned a different being. Stronger. Stranger. Half alive and half... something else. If we are to survive, a new balance must be found. In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil." Given that in the D&D universe their are graduations of both Good and Evil then it is entirely possible that evil characters may well find themselves opposing an even greater evil. Sometimes evil can go places and do things good cannot.
Very good point. Then there is also the point about moral limitations: All else being equal, evil beats good because it is willing to do things that the good side won't do. Thus, if you cannot beat evil by being more powerful than it, the only option left is to beat it at its own game (and hope you can come back from it).
@@tomtom7955 well, yes. Evil eats everything. But, the nature of competition is that the strong eat the weak. So this process doesn't make evil weaker. It makes it stronger. Always.
@@ChristnThms the Blood War is the cannon reason why the demons and devils dont rule the multi-verse, they are to busy fighting each other. Evil can work together it just usually doesn't last once 1 party reaches its goal or if backstabbing offers greater rewards.
@@tomtom7955 yes and no. Yes, the blood war between devils and demons is what prevents either of them from gaining sufficient foothold to dominate. No, this doesn't disprove the idea that evil eating itself makes it stronger overall. One thing has nothing to do with the other. The reason that the bloodwar maintains balance is BECAUSE no amount of good can overcome either evil. The reason the bloodwar continues is that the strong get stronger and the weak get eliminated. That means that even if Good allied with one side to defeat the other, whatever remained would rise in power. Minus sufficient opposition, it would grow, and being cannibalistic, only the strongest would be able to rise. The inherent limits to good are exactly why the bloodwar is necessary in canon.
Dark Heroes and Anti-heroes definitely belong in D&D. They litter our fiction and appear in movies, TV, comics and the like. The best heroes are flawed heroes, because they express the imperfection that defines the human condition. They show the struggle with our own demons while tackling outward ones. And let's be honest, there's no person who would face the dangers of any world over and over and just remain a total optimist with a soul like a shiny nickle. Unless you're Captain America...and I hear he has some issues... Further to that, if "dark heroes" aren't allowed, like you said (but expanding upon it) then why do we have Drow, Duegar, Half-Orc, Goliath, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Fallen Aasimar, certain Genasi, Chromatic Dragonborn, and other races as options? Why do we have Vengeance Paladins, Assassins, Draconic Sorcerers who tap the power of Chromatics, Warlocks, Necromancers and arguably Evokers (making a living on just blowing people up isn't exactly heroic either) as classes? Matt Mercer's Blood Hunter is an excellent example. The world of D&D is a dangerous place. Sometimes you have to be a bit of a monster to hold other monsters at bay. And that's no only okay, but plausible. What's NOT plausible is the dogmatic approach to "all paladins are lawful good" nonsense. I thank Gary Gygax for all he did to bring D&D to the world, but some of that old dogma based on his singular perspective is still a problem. I'd like to address the Necromancer argument as well. Let's just lay it out. Animate Dead does use the remains of people. However, the view on those remains comes from mainly a modern view based on our current religions of the world. Ancient cultures didn't always view this as an issue, and I can state confidently that we are also impressing those views on a fantasy world of out own creations - therefore the views in that world are up to us to build. So stating that "in fact, most religions" should actually be re-expressed as "in fact, we have no records on how the church of Umberlee/Torm/Chauntea/etc deal with their dead in Ted's world of (insert name)" Additionally, the long dead remains of Skeletons WOULD HAVE NO SOULS because the body has been laid to rest a long time. Any afterlife discussions have already played out for good or bad. It could be argued the same exists for Zombies. If you doubt that, look up spells like "Raise Dead" and the like when it talks about "returning a soul to the body". It wouldn't have to rejoin the body if it was already there. Any liberties being taken to trap the soul there are subjective and not expressed in any text. Further to that point, stating that the soul is trapped there "because you think it is" when it isn't, followed by allowing spells that need to rejoin the soul to the body is not only counter to logic, but contradictory. Pick a side of the fence. Therefore pigeon-holing a Necromancer as Evil and yet stating "yes, but my Old One Warlock bound to Cthulhu is just misunderstood" or "Yes, but my Chaotic Neutral Assassin only kills BAD people" is ludicrous. All made a decision. All do questionable things. Singling out the Necromancer without doing the same for every class that draws upon energies from questionable sources...that's just hypocrisy. But WHY are they doing it. That's the key. And yes, I'm aware that "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."... that's where Ghost Rider came from. I get it. But if you want to tell a meaningful story, having a flawed and possibly broken hero is the path to better storytelling if you let it. Otherwise heroes like Wolverine and Deadpool wouldn't be so beloved.
Yeah, I also love using Evil Necromancers as bad guys, they're a great foe in a classic campaign. But I don't like the idea that x-Ability is good while X-Ability is bad. How is a Death Cleric using Inflict Wounds more evil than a Light Cleric who throws Fireballs at people. A necromancer who uses only the material body of someone, not their soul, is "always" a bad guy. But a wizard that captures and binds an elemental to become a slave is a good guy. Now these are examples of things that need to be hashed out between a player and DM and can change from scenario to scenario. I just think that a video on Dark Heroes shouldn't be about how certain dark characters can't be heroes based on their abilities. (Though I do enjoy the video and love the Nerdarchy crew)
Mike Gould Totally in agreement here. I've loved Necromancy and undead since before I even got into roleplaying (huge horror fan since childhood, and Poe was my favorite author up until I discovered Lovecraft in college), so I've always believed in the idea that Necromancers can be good. I had even started writing a novel waaaaay back in high school that had a "good" Necromancer who was essentially the Gandalf of the story in terms of the amount of important information he knew (including a prophecy that he discovered his childhood friends would be fulfilling - or so he hoped, since the land depended on it) except he was still young and inexperienced, and he didn't become a Necromancer by choice (he nearly died in the prologue from a fall, and a master Necromancer took him in to save him with his magic. Unfortunately, it meant that the character had to learn to wield the powers of life and death and - as was the usually tradition of all Necromancers in the world - eventually had to absorb his mentor's spirit and power). In one early scene, he animated the bodies of fallen creatures - mostly of dead aggressors - to protect a village from destruction. When the threat was over, he had the undead perform "cleanup" tasks like digging graves and collecting the dead before laying them back to rest and burning the bodies. It's all about the combination of both intent and actions. Granted, some DMs are adamant in considering Necromancy evil, in which case I offer my arguments once and then just avoid that role and stick to Abjurers, Diviners, Enchanters, and Illusionists. (I am a very support-role type of Wizard player) :) EDIT: for the record, I got into roleplaying through AD&D 2nd Ed back in '95 during Freshman year in high school.
Cleary dwarves dont like necromancy in gryffongaff. yeah im pretty sure an egyptian or aztec culture would be fine with necromancy spells. its culture/is the sould involved/is it voluntary? i love the idea of necromancers bringing your soul back to your body or a relative/friends body for the funeral as a final goodbye. the town gets wiped out during the funeral and the necromancer has all the villagers ghosts begging him to help them get vengeance. so he puts them in dead animals and enemies for combat.
Not to mention, Ted's a little hypocritical in how stance on raise the dead and stuff because THAT'S WHAT HE DOES when he would Speak with Dead. Not to mention, some of what they talk about the Necromancer stuff, comes off as a little hypocritical when some of them even use several Necromancy Spells. Speak with Dead being one of them, Spare the Dying being another.
Ofcourse the dark heroes and the ant-heroes belong in dnd. players should be allowed to play their character anyway they want, and a lot of people like darker options. obviously the dark heroes can work well in groups, you've got batman in the justice league, and Deadpool has been an official member of the avengers before and helps out the X-Men all the time. Wolverine starts off as an anti-hero. I mean, even if you're going to do explicitly evil things you can still work in a party of good characters, you just have to keep the evil secret. Also, when I run necromancers I just say the soul is gone and i'm just using the empty husks, so I really don't believe it's evil.
I'm playing a 'dark' hero in my current campaign. I'm a Oath of Conquest Paladin, a gnome set from the Feywild to conquer the domain of a god in the Material Plane. It's awesome. First peasant I met got conquered... permanently. My rule at the table when I run a game is: you can play whatever you want, so long as your character is a team player and is willing to work with the other players' characters. I've had evil necromancers and warlocks, and they created some of the best roleplaying in the last fifteen years of DMing. It's not D&D specific, its DM specific. If the DM can work with it, it works.
I ran a NE druid among a LN, LG, and NG party and it worked. I showed the LN a deadwood forest and said 'this is what happens when I don't cause wildfires in overgrowth, people and animal be damned, and he grudgingly understood it was for the best. I was just focused on keeping the circle of life and death spinning in a world focused on stopping it. I just kept the plague-causing under wraps, in big cities I'd just nod to my DM sometimes and it was understood what I spent downtime doing. the trick is that stuff was kept kinda background, like the monk's weapon addiction or the pally trying to convert people at every opportunity and downtime. unless the group asked why or it was relevant, it wasn't the focus. I think a good chunk of the issue is some people doing it for attention. not 'I wanna play an interesting new character" but "Everyone look how cool and edgy I am." trying to hog the spotlight, kinda gives the others a bad rep. I just like playing grey characters sometimes because I like the philosophy and ambiguity, right actions for wrong reasons or vice versa.
I actually like playing Lawful Evil characters because "if questioned" I could easily "lie" and say that my character was Lawful Neutral because of how essentially their PHB Descriptions are. Though while it was a good story that Ted brought up, they never actually talked about a Rogue Assassin, like say a Hired Assassin or even an Assassin whom had either the Urban Bounty Hunter or even Outlander (Bounty Hunter) Background.
Humanoid is probably the most popular enemy of the rewritten ranger, because it's the most prevalent monster type in most adventures. Having to choose a couple types in the PHB version weakened it significantly; most of the enemies you face will end up being humanoid for a significant part of the game. Gnolls, goblinoids, orcs, all of the playable races, kobolds and half-dragons, lizardfolk, merfolk, and heck, even lycanthropes are classified as humanoid. So there's actually nothing dark about favored enemy humanoid unless you use the PHB version and select a non-monstrous type. And even then, you can have really good reasons (this area is thick with bandits, and I've had years of experience rooting them out with the local guard; or, we get a ton of drow trying to invade, assassinate, or plot against us from these caves, so someone has to track them down). It all comes down to how you use it.
Yeah that’s a good call. I picked Undead and Dragons for my Gloom Stalker Ranger so far. I spent a whole battle of one of my last sessions running around a dark room shooting arrows at the enemies that I was invisible to. (Gloom Stalker is invisible to all enemy opponents’ darkvision)
This inspired me to make a D20 roll list for the justification of your character being edgy, dubious or even downright evil: [01] Aversion to Predictability Sure, I could just go around doing everything everyone would expect of a hero. But you have to be at least a little bit strange in this world, or else others would know what you're going to do before you do it! Does that involve being a little bit against the common good at times? Yes it does. [02] Desperate Need If I didn't keep doing it, I'd die! So can you really blame me? I don't like it, but I have no choice! [03] Devil's Friend Demons, am I right? Horrible evil things, you'd agree? And who keeps them at bay? Who protects everyone from these chaotic forces? Those lot who fight them, that's who! They want nothing short of a structured paradise, and we should want it too. [04] Directable Menace I'm going to do what I do no matter where I am and that's just my free choice and you can't stop me. So best you send me in the direction of something bad, since if you don't, I'll just hang around here, and you don't want that. [05] Drama Fanatic Sure, we could just walk out of here and everything would be alright with the world. But that wouldn't mean anything! Where's the big heroic moment in that? Who got to sacrifice something? No, too easy. Stories must be told about this day, and so I must give the enemy this chance by making this stupid decision! [06] Ethical Rejector Morality? Pah! Utter fiction. Everyone does what they want, and anyone who argues otherwise is lieing or deluded. Now join me or don't, while I embark on this interesting experience I'll personally benefit from. [07] First Believer Oh, you think I have funny ideas about the world that don't make any sense and add up to a potentially destructive picture of right and wrong? Well Early Ignus already told me what's what, and you telling me something different now isn't going to change my mind. I never change my mind! [08] Freedom's Purist Telling others what to do is wrong. We should simply hope that everyone behaves in harmony with each other. If we don't do that, we're no better than conquerors! And I'll stand against anyone trying to control someone else - no matter the situation! [09] Grave in Soul and Deed The most foul thing to exist is the undead. Clearly. And the most important thing in life is proper respect for the dead, and proper observation of ritual in order to ensure they're never tampered with. Obviously. And how do you go about maximising respect for the dead? Why, by making more dead people to respect. It just stands to reason. [10] Grim Replacement If I didn't do it, someone else would. Better it be me, so I can do it in the least destructive way possible. They ought to thank me, not hate me. Without me it'd be so much worse! [11] Hint of Nature I'm a good character, and most of the stuff I do is good! You've seen that! But damnit, I'm still a goblin. So when the situation demands it, I'm still gonna BE a goblin. [12] Hipocratic Compartmentalist Hey one side calls the other evil, the other calls us evil, I don't care. If you're in front of me, I'll heal you. If you go on to do evil, that's on you. I did good, and that's good enough for me. [13] In-House Horror I'm the best person I could be! So what if I love being cruel, if I salivate over killing, if I delight whenever someone else suffers? The fact that I use it for good gives me the excuse I need to keep doing it. So be as uncomfortable as you want - I am fully justified. [14] Misplaced Loyalty Oh, I absolutely will fight the forces of evil in this world. But dread emperor Fleshrender? She's an absolute darling! She'd never hurt a fly! I refuse to believe she doesn't have a justification for everything she has me do. [15] Naturalistic Indulger I don't know why I do the things I do, it's just the way I am. You can't deny what you are inside. [16] Sidearm of the Law Understanding be damned, you break the law, you suffer the consequence! It is a simple and effective premise, and I follow it to the letter. [17] Sporting Chancer Come on, you guys. This is too one-sided. I'm sure in our position, Evilbeard the Slaughterer would give us a fair shake! So that's why I let his informants go. Why even test your skills if it's not a test? Oh, the victims? Well yeah sure I guess, but never mind them, let the glorious battle begin! [18] Taboo Rider You may not like it, but I don't see why it's so bad. So if you can't show me what harm I'm doing in the world, it's merely a case of one set of sensibilities versus another. [19] Tool Incarnate I'm just following orders. I don't kill, I am merely something weilded to kill by others. You want me to do good in the world? Then weild me yourself. [20] True Ruler The task of conquering the world may require a lot of evil, but once it's all said and done, I will rule over a greater realm than could ever have been hoped for before. I know this deep inside. Everyone else will find out for themselves, and thank me later.
I feel like the discussion is a bit misplaced. The "dark hero" is in fact the fallback mode of the standard PC (regardless of actual alignment, class, or archetype). PCs live by violence,. They solve many of their problems by using violence. They are more often than not unmoored from society (that's what being an "adventurer" means). It's hard, under those circumstances, not to incline toward a pretty dark outlook, as Mike Gould says here. It's usually a pretty small step from "I'm a hero helping people" to "I will slay, often preemptively, whoever gets in my way". As an example: I'm currently running a game of mostly good (possibly all good - haven't checked lately) characters. They have come under attack by some ruffians (and probably, their patrons in town) for investigating a house that serves as the ruffians' base. After being beset by these critters on 3 occasions, the gloves have come off. The ruffians stormed the house (which the PCs are currently occupying, and failed. After the battle, the party slaughtered the survivors (several were unconscious but alive, one was charmed and cooperating). Were these evil acts? The acts of dark heroes? Were they entirely predictable, and similar to what happens in most games, where the PCs feel threatened? Are they likely to recur, now that the PCs have essentially learned that trusting other people often leads to problems? To pose these questions is, to some extent, to answer them.
So true. The nick name murder hobos exists for a reason. I like to play with the gray area between good and evil as a DM because that fact of the violent nature of adventuring.
It was evil to kill those who could not fight back. They could have turned over to authorities or found some other way to keep those npcs out of the way without murder. Selling them into slavery or whatnot, while not a good act, still allows one to not kill the grunt without having them have a high chance of coming back. There were other options available besides killing them. Casual killing just seems to me to be a fairly standard evil act. Sometimes neccessary in a brutal world but not a good act. One of those situations where you have to ask yourself is the gain from committing this vile action worth the blood on your hands. Evil people wouldn't care, neutral people may have a rather pragmatic look. But a good person should feel dirty.
I sympathize with that alignment read, but there are additional complications. One, the authorities in town are suspicious of the PCs, because they have been (rightly) accused of sorcery, which the authorities regard as evil (regardless of intent or outcome). Two, one of the members of the Town Council (i.e. someone having an important voice) was in fact a sponsor of the smugglers the PCs defeated, so reporting to the authorities is likely to bring problems for the party. And, there are four PCs, and keeping watch over four prisoners would have been difficult. But yes, on the whole, it was an evil act - the only question is, was it a necessary evil?
Boris Stremlin Interesting. Yes, that does fit necessity pretty well. But still if any of the characters were good they should be guilt ridden because of it. You still killed those who only posed a threat in the increased complication they brought to your life. Killing people to make things simpler is pretty standard evil henchman behavior. At what point does it stop being pragmatism and starts being outright evil? Maybe that can be a thing that actually gets introduced. The question of where the line really is, as each character sees it.
Anti-Villains can be even more interesting than Anti-Heroes though in that they usually fall under the pragmatist type of true neutral. They are villains with heroic goals in mind usually and it is their methods that are questionable because they do the things good heroes can't or won't. They can be even more dedicated and noble than the heroes.
I actually really like the analogy between a warlock and Ghost rider. That’s how I look at the relationship. When a warlock uses power, he is using power that HE has and was granted. Unlike a cleric who prays to their god for each spell. The warlock isn’t praying to the fiend that granted it to him for every eldritch bolt. Sort of like ghost rider, he made a pact with the devil for his power but he isn’t asking the devil for the specific power to transform every time he wants too. Having established this, we can assume that since the power is now theirs, the warlock for the most part can do what they want with the their power so long as the bargain they made is still met.
I see there is a lot of room for villains or anti-heroes. heck there's even room for anti-villains. that's one thing I love about D&D it doesn't limit players or DMs. the only limitations are what the DM and players agree upon. heck sometimes even players put limitations upon themselves when trying to create a character that's in their mind.
My argument for a good Necromancer "My country is being attacked. We must defend ourselves. We have graveyards full of our countrymen who have already passed on. Why would i not raise them to defend us, rather than risking the lives of thousands of my living countrymen. As our enemies fall on the battlefield, i shall raise them as well to sustain and bolster our defenses, whilst not risking the lives of our loved ones. LONG LIVE KARRNATH!"
I love heroes of all kinds of flavors. I really enjoy making characters make difficult moral choices. In one of my games, I had a semi-heroic necromancer. He would take on jobs to slay bandits. This is how he got his corpses for his undead minions. I don't think Necromancy is evil in its self. It's a tool like any other, but it does come down to the setting. One idea I have is someone should play a necromancer in a zombie apocalypse setting. This is one situation where necromancers would be valued. They would turn the undead against each other, and in general, be able to effectively deal with undead.
This was a fun video. Great topic about how to be creative with a character and how you can create great depth in your character. I recently came up with a great character concept that I hope I can play some day. Paladin of vengeance with the resurrected background. (Not sure if you have seen this one before) Background idea is that he was a son of a knight or lord who raised him to be a man of great character. His father became a vampire and became evil and then turned the son. The son had the strength of character to refuse his fate and embraced the rising sun to destroy himself and save his soul. Many years later he is resurrected. Maybe by a family member that knew of the ancestor and needed him to return to end a family curse. Or maybe the Raven Queen wished it to use him as an agent against the undead. Maybe to even end his vampire fathers existence. Can be some great roll playing. Maybe he is broody, or maybe savors every moment of life having this second chance. I would love to play this one.
I think the magic itself is also worthy of investigation when determining whether a class is truly bad or evil, and so it will depend on the setting. In my setting, necromancy and the dark arts in general draw on negative energy, and negative energies by their very nature is anti life, and so when you animate a corpse, you temporarily bind the creature's soul to their reanimated corpse in order for it to function, which means there's a difference between 'merely animating a pile of bones' to 'raise undead', the latter being much easier and powerful but also more damning. This means that even if you start out as the nicest guy on the block; if you channel negative energies through yourself, they will slowly change you, sapping feelings of warmth and compassion, and stirring unknown desires for pain and sadness that will feed directly back into the negative plane. When you animate a corpse, you'll still be chaining someone's soul to a terrible existence of undeath, even if only temporarily, something they'll experience as an unliving nightmare as they are reduced to unlife as a creature of sheer death and destruction. You might start out as the happiest, most-cheerful party-loving neophyte of the dark arts ever, but, if you continue on that damned path, you'll invariable lose that glow and vigor, becoming more grim and dour, as any joy of life is sapped from your being. It is really only a matter of time, and even the most kind and strongly willed person can at best merely delay the inevitable. Hence, good people would never accept the dark arts and necromancy, and would shun even its most petty manifestations. The only time a good person might honestly consider it would be if the world was about to end at the hands of soul-stealing demons who'd put every soul in the multiverse to eternal suffering and nothing else worked, in which case, necromancy would be the lesser evil.
When I think of a Good Necromancer, I immediately think of Yorick from LoL He was once a monk that survived a surge of a dark plague that transformed a once beautiful land into a place of pure evil. While he survived he wasn't unscathed and was now plagued by the dead constantly following him. He now uses the power of darkness to raise undead and speak with spirits to fight against these evil monstrosities that overun the island to keep them from leaving while slowly withering away the more he uses these abilities. I can imagine something like being incorperated into D&D
I disagree with the necromancer point. It all depends on how the necromancer is played (Eg, Letting the dead run loose, or keeping them under control. Asking to raise the body using speak with dead, vs stealing the body.) The spells in the PHB, in my mind, would not bind the soul, as it is using magic to animate the body much in the same way magic is used to summon creatures. If it bound the soul, then you would have to argue that the Reincarnate spell wouldn't work on them, as reincarnation uses a part of the body to create a new body and summon the soul, which wouldn't work if it was bound to it's old corpse. This also applies to True Resurrection, which does not have an "is not undead" requirement like it's lower level counterpart. Additionally, resurrection spells (Which are considered to be good by many) are necromancy spells- Revivify, Resurrection, True Resurrection etc.
Not to mention, of the Necromancy Spells, only a few actually involve creating undead. The rest are like debuffs, deal damage or really have nothing to do "with raising the dead" like Astral Projection. Bestow Curse as well as Blindness/Deafness would be such Necromancy Spells that would be a debuff. The Cantrip "Chill Touch" and "Circle of Death", while yeah, deal Necrotic Damage, don't deal with the dead. Plus, like you point out, how is it Speak with Dead, which essentially raises the dead to speak with it. Yeah, after the spell is done, they return to being dead, but the spell still captures the dead person's soul & stuff. Plus, how is Animate Object (targeting empty suit of armor) any "better" then Animate Dead. Also, at times I feel [no disrespect intended/implied] that some of the Nerdarchist are hypocritical when it comes to Necrotic Damage. Cause in one of their Live Discussions they answered my question of a Shadow Dragonborn, born from Shadowfell, and they (including Ted) seemed to like the idea of the Breath Weapon dealing Necrotic as well as it having Necrotic Resistance. But in this video, Ted at least, seems to be really against Necrotic Damage, when it comes from a School of Necromancy Wizard.
I almost forgot, but why are the Conjure Spells (Celestial/ElementalAnimal/Fey/Minor Elemental/Woodland Beings) seen as being any "better" then the Animate Dead/Create Undead? Plus one could easily argue that Control Weather Spell is more dangerous then most of what Necromancers do, even the Transmutation Spell, Disintegrate, is more dangerous.
Maybe this should be explained thematically. Like the necromancy spells are just that, spells. Where as stuff like resurrection is maybe literally calling on a god to intervene. A game of higher powers, ya know? Course that opens up a discussion on who would win if there are multiple gods involved...
Jacob Freeman I don't think so. If that was the case, the Divine Intervention ability would not be quite so special. Also, the Death Curse of ToA would not be such a threat (as I imagine it doesn't effect those risen by gods)
That necromancer example is the biggest reason WHY people wanna do these things! some of us don't wanna be the same superhero elf/human/dwarf shuffling the same few heroic shades and classes around. I wanna be Doctor Gob, Centaur for Disease Control, Varkopf the LE game show host. I WANT to take that necromancer or Orc and say 'what kind of exciting new thing can I come up with?" that 'but what if' of a character we thought of and don't often see. if you don't see the concept around you but like it, that's the perfect sign to start making! dark heroes and antiheroes have just as much place as any other concept- fits but not in all campaigns. if this is a bog standard 'you are all varying shades of super good and fight dragons to save damsels' campaign then sure, not the right place. same way that dark sun's not made for wizards or some worlds don't have gnomes. but there's room for characters to dig into the deeper shades of grey.
One of my current party is a warlock of the fiend who's thus far: - Helped take down a crime lord. - Helped stabilize a nation at war. - Slain monsters and villains to save his friends and allies. - Shown courage, and placed his life on the line. He's also a sinister, extortionist bastard who slits throats as a first resort, cruelly animates the dead for intel, and legitimately thinks the best way to help the city of Darrow is to become its new crime lord. I love the villain, and he's an integral part of the story - the dude who makes the goblin rogue building a flesh golem seem tame and friendly by comparison. Evil characters ftw.
Not to mention, until the Necromancer animates or creates undead, how would anyone know that they are a Necromancer? Heck, what if said Necromancer decided NOT to take Animate Dead & Create Undead and instead studies the School of Necromancy as a way to extend/preserve life &/or "cheat death" (Clone Spell essentially cheats death), would said Necromancer still not be "liked" by some of the Nerdarchists?
I don't think any class or subclass is inherently evil, but any of them can be played evil. A fiend pact Warlock can be entirely good in motive (Ghostrider). A life Cleric can be evil (Hitler had plenty of doctors, the Inquisition was full of priests). An outright assassin can be good (modern special forces often are). A devotion Paldadin can ultimately serve evil if manipulated and deceived. Yet, that might cause him to change to a conquest or vengeance oath in order to right the wrongs you performed, and thus serve good. Really, motivation is everything.
Thank you for another great video guys! Regarding the ongoing necromancer debate, I have a few ideas:- You come from a culture where the body is only seen as important/special whilst living, when dead it is no more important than any other material thing. If I remember correctly, you said in one video about lizardfolk that they would happily eat the body of a dead comrade or use it for some other practical reason - why not animate it? As to summoning the souls of the dead, why does it have to be souls that were happily at rest? Maybe a person lived a wicked life and saw the error of their ways to late so were sent to Hell for eternal punishment. You summon them to give them a chance to serve The Good and so redeem themsleves so that they can pass on to Heaven. Even if they don't get to do that at least they get a brief respite from eternal torment. As to non-evil necromancers in fiction, there is the ones in the Diablo games and the eldar in Warhammer 40k using wraith guard and wraith knights.
This is entirely dependent on the comfort zone, mores, preferences, and style of the group in question. What you guys are really asking is "do dark heroes and anti-heroes belong in *our* D&D?" A lot of the early inspirational material for fantasy role-playing games, including D&D, had grittier heroes. Farfd & The Grey Mouser, Conan the Barbarian, Elric are all high-profile grey morality characters with a bit of edge to them. Many of the protagonists from the Falling Kingdoms, Song of Fire and Ice, and Thieves' World series aren't a bunch of shiny Dudley do-rights, either. To switch genres, let's be honest about Han Solo: he's a drug runner, thief, and occasional pirate who shoots first and asks questions later. He's just handsome, charming and follows the trope of "always does the right thing in the end" so we overlook his very serious flaws. It depends on what kinds of characters and stories you want at your table. I was a part of a long-term group that was mostly lawful good, but had a lawful evil mage in its ranks. He was a pacing, brooding, scowling, plotting, ruthless genius. He was obsessed with amassing arcane secrets and power, and maintained in difficult circumstances the ends justified the means (e.g., torture, assassination, poison, piracy, etc). But, he always kept his word, never betrayed his friends or retainers, dealt honorably with honorable foes, and would do anything to protect the simple folk in the village that grew up around his tower. He was also smitten by the party lawful good cleric, who wielded a great deal of influence over him.
Two of my favorite characters in books are dark heroes that I think fit very well. The idea beings they are chosen to be heroes because they are "strong in the broken places." Waylander and Jon Shannow from David Gemmell's books are great dark heroes that I think ultimately work, great examples of flawed heroes.
On necromancy, I loved the Eberron Elves of Aerenal that use necromancy as sort of ancestor worship and "benevolent" "consensual" necromancy. Again, "desecrating corpses" is a big reason for not doing necromancy, but it could also be worded in a more positive light as "Borrowing the power of the deceased to help the living". One example may be raising a dead farmer to gain his support in fighting off the bandits that killed him, and then afterwards giving his body a proper burial and respects. It can actually bring up a lot of interesting conversations, like asking permission from the deceased to use his body.
A good necromancer (or death cleric) that is a follower of a deity/philosophy like Osiris, that uses death and protection themes. They raise undead armies, for specific purposes, to defend people, and when they are done they put the zombies back. Either as a house rule a necromancer is allowed to cancel their own animate spell, or the player developed/asked from their deity a spell that would allow them to easily dispel their own animation. I could see it as a ritual: a ceremony burying the dead.
Gravity Falls- Mabel "what did I say" Dipper " don't raise the dead" Mabel "what did you do?" Dipper - head hung low "raise the dead" zombies, Zombies everywhere.
One concept I want to try out is the Oathbreaker Paladin of an EVIL god. A paladin that once served an evil god but turned their back on them and is now looking for a new god to serve. Combine that with the fallen aasimar trying to earn their wings and it's a one-way ticket on a feels train. On that note though, I played a lawful evil character in a group of mainly good/neutral characters. It didn't end well for her (or half the party for that matter), but the players themselves had an absolute blast. We all knew what we were getting into and we had frequent discussions. It's all about communication
If you want a death priest that is about balance and not about undead, look at the Grave domain from Unearthed Arcana. It's in the Cleric: Divine Domains pdf with the Forge and Protection domains.
I once played a Great Old One warlock that basically got his pact by accident. He more or less stumbled upon some cultists performing a ritual, and since Great Old Ones tend to alter reality with their presence, he got a bit of that eldritch power fused to himself without the Great Old One even noticing. Basically his whole point was trying to find a way to get rid of it, because the things he saw because of it were driving him crazy. It was meant to be more of a comedic character, basically just your normal person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had cosmic powers thrust upon him. Btw, on the topic of necromancers, there actually was a good-ish necromancer in the recent MtG storylines with Liliana Vess, and she did raise the dead and use zombies as her slaves all the time. I'm saying good-ish because she helped the heroes, but still had selfish reasons for it (her reasons were mostly getting rid of a demonic pact, so your typical warlock plot basically).
One of the biggest things I loved about 1st Edition was that healing spells came from the Necromancy school. This created a clear and defensible path for claiming a non-evil necromancer. The way that this has been changed has made it much more difficult to justify.
One of my characters is a mercenary fighter who has seen two different groups wiped out. She now kills enemies unless they have information or are worth money alive. She's dark, but not evil. She has just found it practical to not allow enemies to get the chance to bring revenge and ambush her and her friends later. Not someone I want to play all the time, and I explain her stance to new characters joining our party, but she has her place in the world and has saved too many good characters to not be considered a hero at this point.
The idea of a dark eldritch knight reminds me of Ezra Bridger from Star Wars Rebels. He's a Jedi padawan who also spent time apprenticed to Maul. That relationship added a darker influence to his character.
I stand proudly in the pro Anti-Hero and Dark Hero side. My friend and I are playing an Oathbreaker Paladin and a Necromancer Wizard in our next campaign and we intend to ask the following questions; is it evil to fight fire with fire? Is it evil for us to break taboos in pursuit of the greater good? At what point have we gone too far? Do the ends justify the means? Should be an interesting and fun campaign, we also have a couple of homebrew classes in there (as the friendly neighbourhood rules lawyer it fell to me to help convert two characters from older editions into 5e, the Bloodrager became a subclass of the Barbarian but the Magus became a whole new class from the ground up with a mana point system for combining sword and spell).
Ultimately, it comes down to the campaign, the DM, and the players. There can be a fine line between anti-hero or dark hero, and villain. The closer one gets to that line, the greater the chances of that dark hero or anti-hero becoming, or being seen as, a villain.
I had a lawful evil character that took the personal code interpretation of lawful very seriously. In exchange for his freedom he swore an oath to help and support one of the good aligned party members. Now I had a justified character reason for NEVER betraying the party despite the evil alignment. He was effectively bound to help the forces of good but could easily handle the more squeamish of tasks. Ultimately I think thats the key point about dark/anti heroes or evil in a heroic party. The character needs to be able to satisfy the player-group contract that the character is going to be a team player. If you can satisfy that condition and continue satisfying that condition there shouldnt be any issues and opens the door for interesting RP possibilities.
The Bards Tale novels have a Necromancer, that ends up becoming a Bard. I play a CN Orc Necromancer that raises the corpses of those that the party kills as bodyguards. His tribe uses the zombie and skeletons to help defend the tribe. Most familiars of the tribes Necromancers are the spirits of now deceased Necromancers.
Jynx C. Good question. Prolly not. But Deadpool was okay with having that blood on his hands and it kept everyone else from having to debate what was the ethical thing to do with Francis. It does put them in a tough bind in any later situations where Deadpool might be the guy to keep an eye on someone since you just know he would choose what would simplify the situation most. Deadpool is not a good guy. He is a mercenary assassin. So you know he won't be tore up by ethical questions. But we love him because he also, deep down, does care about what is right. Just don't leave him alone with tacos or people he may feel need a good killing.
it's almost an automatic assumption. "save the princess" becomes translated to "kill the bad guy that imprisoned her". seldom does anyone even consider diplomacy are bargaining. only a few times have players asked why she was imprisoned to begin with. maybe it is justified. of course, this doesn't make for a game that would be interesting to most players.
In AD&D Ravenloft there's a good version of the Necromancer called Spiritualist that is more engaged with communicating with the dead and helping them pass on.
I'd like to point out that in the UA there's the Shadow Origin sorcerer . I also have in my group a high elf necromancer who's into the mysteries of life . Yes she has a undead ( skeleton warrior ) familiar and will raise undead if absolutely necessary, but OTOH she also has through the Magic Initiate feat a healing spell and a skilled medic.
Dante Galand, from the Cycle of Arawn, is essentially a cleric of a death god. Sometimes he heals people. Sometimes he kills small creatures and reanimates them as temporary familiars to spy on people. Sometimes he raises fallen soldiers who have just been trying to kill him to fight against their former comrades. So far I've never seen him animate any human who hasn't been trying to kill him a few minutes beforehand. That strikes me as an acceptable anti-hero, and not outright evil.
I played a necromancer with a few levels of grave domain cleric. He styled himself as a scholarly priest, and he worshipped the god of life and death, Arowan was the gods name and the main aim of this priest was repairing the lines between life and untimely death. He would pray to his god after the party killed someone to determine if it was their time and depending on what portents the god provided, he would either commit them to a blessed grave and if it wasn't their time he would cast spare the dying and then just not tell anyone as he loosely covered them with dirt and leaves to later wake up and maybe do something better with their time, or if it wasn't their time but they had lead wicked lives By what the portents said they would be raised as skeletons until the god sent portents that indicated that they had run out the clock on the time they had left and hopefully they had been part of doing enough good to possibly earn them a better lot in the afterlife. At this point their remains would be dispelled of magic blessed and committed to a blessed grave with mold earth. The character was also able to mediate the party out of what would have been a party wipe when they happened upon a mage tower comprised entirely of sentient undead.
The way I get around the taboo of raising the dead is that people can donate their bodies to adventurers like how people will donate their bodies to science or medicine. I also have it so that, while magic not souls animate the dead, but using souls make it easier, so both are a possibility.
With the Necromancer thing, even if a soul is used to animate the body it doesn't "have" to be that persons soul nor does it even have to be a non-evil soul. You could be a necromancer that only makes undead thralls from the enemies the party faces.
My idea of an antihero is a Chaotic Evil Drow from a family of Fiend pact warlocks. She secretly sought out a Fey patron to avoid the damnation she thought was inevitable with a Fiend pact. What she did not anticipate was her Patron being honorable, if not necessarily good, and expecting her ... client(?) to do the same. So her plan to usurp a higher up in her House went slightly awry, she fled to the surface for her life and now forced to be a hero... But she isn't going to be nice about it!
My hot take on necromancy. The reason raising or animating the dead is an evil (or at least non-good) act is because death is universally a sacred rite of passage, and you are interrupting its sacredness, not letting the dead rest in peace, preventing it from passing on, ect. It is much more than just trapping a soul or tapping negative energy, but what that means to society. It is almost always an act of defilement, if not to the community, than at least to the family of the deceased. Arguments can be made for spells like Gentle Repose or Resurrection, or even Inflict Wounds, but IMHO if the spell creates an undead creature, it is inherently a willful non-good act.
Currently, I'm playing a "Redemption Story" PC based on Les Mis' Jean Valjean. She was shown mercy by a group of Clerics of Ilmater. When those kind clerics were viciously attacked and killed... she was left in a state of moral crisis -- wanting to do right by the clerics but not sure how. So, I have a very jaded; somewhat anti-social; criminal-background... Paladin. Oath of Vengeance simply because she is so hyperfocused right now on simply getting "justice" for the fallen clerics.
An oathbreaker paladin who broke his evil oath for redemption. A neutral assassin who takes money for kills, but chooses his contracts carefully - declining overly evil or chaotic contacts. A shadow monk whose abilities have simply developed this way. A neutral necromancer who sees corpses as tools that can be used to further their goals rather than as a person. Or something like the Adams family where the ancestors are protecting them in their eyes. Oath of vengeance could just be batman.
In my game I had only angels be able to resurrect and grant immortality, but the mortals tried to unlock this abilty which produced necromancy, which made the magic holy. Of course most people saw it as an abomination, but the neceomancers were just trying to stop death
Warlock's to me are not all Dark Hero types. Though most get painted that way. One concept that has been on my mind for playing that I haven't had the chance is actually a Fey Pact Warlock. The Desire of the Arch-Fey Patron is just to be able to reach the Material plane and have an effect there. while that's not necessarily a good thing it's not necessarily a bad thing either. Then adding onto it the Moon Bow and perhaps something like Aspect of the Moon Invocations. Searching out ways to create passage for such a primal and powerful being in exchange for power doesn't have to be evil or Dark. Even if some might say it might not necessarily end in the happiest of ways.
I’m playing in a game filled with dark heroes. We have an exiled orc, an ex bandit, the token good guy (who up until recently was useless), a drunk king of a fallen nation, a monk who I orphaned, and a necromancer/ mad scientist. In general everyone gets along, no one likes the monk (who up until becoming a vampire was “LG” though that’s questionable)
Hey Dave, slightly before the twelve minute mark you said, "how often do you see heroic necromancers in novels?". Well my good sir, i recommend that you go read the book "Hold Me Closer Necromancer". It is a FanTastic Novel about a teen who finds out that he has some "strange" powers. Best portrayal of a goodly aligned necromancer that I've honestly ever seen.
Devan Hanks there's also miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children, one of the kids is a necromancer and even though he starts of a bit creepy he is a good guy and uses his powers to fight the bad guys
One of the better classes to play to get a "good" necromancer is taking a Theurgy Wizard with the Death Domain Cleric and NOT raising undeads. That way you can use your high-damage necromancy spells without being forced to be using undead minions.
I'm a new player but in my eyes there is no "good hero" in D&D. In most cases you kill the enemy. Yes, it's self defense because they attack first but we still kill them outright. We rarely let anyone alive, and when we let someone alive to interrogate, we kill them after that. The question should be: Do good heroes belong to D&D.
yes! I'd like to see this video. most players seem to dislike the LG characters (especially paladins) because it limits options. how do you play a LG character in a way that is fun for the player and the group as a whole?
@@linus4d1 I play a Dragonborn Paladin (Black Dragon Type) who is a little bit slow in the head and has anger issues. After a session of Curse of Strahd he made a pact with Tiamat to escape Barovia. But the fog messed him even more up in the head Now he talks like Anton Chigurh form No Country for Old Men with any NPC he meets even the one he has a positive opinion. The party have always to keep an eye on him so he doesn't start to murder everyone he find annoying.
ive had a character who was an evil warlock because his patron demanded he be evil but he confessed to the parties cleric who he was and why was a warlock and said whenever you see him doing something evil and cruel to knock him out or stop him and my character would only pretend to resist so he wouldn't have to disobey his patron but still didn't kill anyone
I had a cleric/assassin of Anubis. My part of the campaign was real dark. There were good characters in the party, so my character did a lo t of things behind the scenes. By one of my killings, I accidently got the party leader wanted for murder.
I'm looking to run an Oath of Treachery paladin from the arcana unearthed series. The idea being that while this person is pretty much amoral when it comes to their personal ethics, they're just really attached to their adventuring companions - wanting them to achieve their desires and seeking their approval. Sometimes they stray into the seriously morally compromised to help party members reach their goals without their knowledge or approval.
The theory i was given when i asked some1 about necromancers (granted i asked them about it for 3.5 not 5e) was that the souls of the dead that u raise are instead of being sent to there Deity are sent to "The Wall" or "The Void" where the Deity's get the material to make new souls. Currently i am trying to make a 3.5 game that has the Necromancer as a queen of a kingdom and ruled with the idea that mindless undead are an untapped resource and when guided can be made to till the fields and save the commoners from having to suffer and allows the kingdom to do more with less land bc they have more manpower to cover it. There's also a secret to the kingdom that i dont wanna put here that on the off chance one of the players see it and destroys a plot line im trying to make. But over all the common rule at the table for my groups is that animate dead used on some1 who was evil isn't an evil spell bc then there soul would go to an evil god, but if u have some1 in the party that dies and doesn't wanna be animated and u do it anyways then it is treated as an evil action tho not always making you evil from just that if lets say its a situation that if you did not do that you would die so you did it to survive. Altho i did buy an NPC (who sold themselves not being sold as a slave) to animate as a dread warrior when they died but that was at the end of a game and never came up as to being evil or not but that could be a fun topic.
the whole last bit, about the Oath of Vengence? I've played that. only, he's kinda sorta dead inside. death doesn't mean anything but an end for a person. killing someone who is hurting someone else is his first instinct now, instead of a last resort. Its caused problems in the past, like challenging a bunch of back alley thugs and brutally ripped them to shreds because they were intimidating a woman who they had cornered alone. to be fair, he stabbed the first one, and let them know their death was imminent, but still. he only did it because it was the fair thing to do, not be he personally wanted to give them a warning. what he WANTED was to kill them, because quite frankly, if they weren't smart enough to figure out they were about to die and were obviously not repentant, then its what they deserved; even then, it wouldn't have been a problem if he hadn't of used magic to force the last guy to attack him when he obviously wanted to run away. anyway, he's been pretty much on the front lines of a war that only exists for the party. he never wanted to fight it, and in fact switched parties because he was bound to protect the new parties sorcerer by geas magics when she essentially saved his life from a hella diabolical poison that he just couldn't save his way out of. basically was tricked into tying his soul to hers so that they shared con scores, which let him use her con saves and spend her con instead of his own when he was down to like, 2 left of his own. as it was, took us both weeks to get better, but in the process she basically cursed him with the inability to let himself die. He is now suicidal and unable to let himself die, but tries anyway by throwing himself against the biggest and meanest villians he can find, not caring if he falls, but unable to stop himself from fighting his way back out of anything. Over the years, he has thrown himself into a volcano to save someone else he didn't know, barely managing to haul himself out of a lava flow and claw his way out, leapt from the side of a 600 ft cliff to clip the wings of a dragon that was going to kill the party, riding it into the ground in a blaze of glory... then crawled away before passing out; ran through a valley made of some sort of glass that tore at him while crystaline phaze spiders with razor sharp legs kicked and scrabbled around him, trying to buy time for the party to escape because we were boned, and then survived in a crevase for the night in freezing tempuratures while fending off the rest of the spiders, until the party came back for him the next day. (the sorcerer knew he wasn't dead, cause still sharing Con stats). each time he always had just the right thing to let him survive, and each time he fails to die heroicly he gets a little more darker. the last time it happened was when he thrust himself into the midst of combat with an army of deamons led by an uncontrolled and unleashed balor over the harbour of baldurs gate, trying to call the focus of as many of these deamons as possible so that the dock workers and city dwellers had time to flee or at least barracade themselves in whereever they were, and give themselves a fighting chance. I mean, that last one was kind of the parties fault... that one still eats at him. it involved catching an old party member (of his, from the first group, that apparently got almost entirely wiped out while killing off an assassins guild shortly after he was basically kidnapped by geas magic) who he had been seeing; in fact, it was her that told him to go, because she had shit to do that my character wasn't going to like, and we would meet back up afterwards. well, that never happened. years (and I mean YEARS) passed, and she thought I was dead. anyway, she killed off the assassins guild with the help of an associate wizard of hers (who had cause to hate the party of people I was currently with) and basically between them became the leaders of the most successful thieves guild and merchant house in the country. not that the two were known to be associated, but still. anyway, we finally get back to her, after being stuck walking the planes for way too long, and she runs. her associate, (now her lover in the story) doesn't like us doing what he views as pulling her away from him (my char had been with her before, if I haven't mentioned that before) so after we catch her in a forcecage (she is one HELL of a thief, you have to go to the extreme to catch her) to get a word in edgewise, we find out she's pissed that I've survived this long and NOT come back. also that she's learned that I'm a paladin now (I was a bard/thief when we parted ways) and she thinks i'm back now just to stop her (that associate of hers, selectively scrying and putting the images in her brain, I suspect with modify memory to change the smallest details to damn my character) Then a Balor is gated in above us. hell of a distraction, summoned by the associate, while he gates her out and replaces her with some sort of slime monster (arcane gate, I think, from his nearby lair). So yea. Kinda my fault. a lot of people died in a city that, years ago, I had very painstakingly avoided starting a war in so that people didn't just die that like for someone elses fight. that actually is what woke my character up and made him start trying again. since then he's got the girl back, but the wizard associate is in the wind. He's probably still watching her, I know he sometimes casts magics on her when we're not looking somehow. she's not telling either, but my character has an insight of +15 a perception that is just as high (in fact, his passive perception is 32 I think, so I don't miss much there.) anyway, its kinda complicated at this point, and the politics of it all are all over the place, but i'm pretty sure she's still head of the thieves guild, which is ok so long as she is following the 'rules' and her guild isn't breaking them either... at least for now. I don't care if they're stealing money and making bank hand over fist, I just care if they step over the line and people are suffering for it. and they've always made a point of looking after the little guys, making sure they have a solid power base amongst the people, which is fine by me.
Actually there are 2 fantasy book series i thought about when i watched this video. 1st one is Glen Cook - Black Company. 2nd one written by Nik Perumov - Keeper of the Swords. Glen Cook wrote about band of mercenaries with a lot of dark humor :). Nik Perumov wrote story about necromancer that tried to fought against greater evil.
We actually have a Necromancer in our current party of heroes. And the way he's being played its that he generally only raises the corpses of evil doers and by raising these evil people and forcing them to act as his minions and fight for good, he is punishing them for their evil deeds.
I think a lot of people misinterpret what the Oath of Vengeance means/represents. In the group I play with, my character is an Oath of Vengeance Paladin, but he's a Paladin first and his oath second. When we were playing through the 5e starter set, most of the Goblins/Goblinoids we encountered were simply taken into custody and shipped to Neverwinter to be brought to Justice. He always tries to seek a non-violent end to confrontations, but has little conscience in dealing with truly evil beings. We recently encountered a group of Gnolls. No quarter was offered, and none were spared as in 5th Gnolls are all irredeemably Chaotic Evil. The other party members were surprised when I said we needed to burn the bodies and take the heads as trophies.
Made a lawful evil knight who was always nice and kind to others and was loyal to his kingdom to a near fault, he just had one tiney little problem. He really hated people who threatened the citizenry and really adored violent destruction of evil. Sure it was just evil he fought but he reveled in killing off threats to there last. Kinda seen as a complete monster to woodland monster races that he more or less genocided. Yet no one complained. Its good to be a knight beloved by the populace as you wipe goblin child blood off your armor. XD
There was a kit in the Necromancer handbook for 2nd edition that was good and he had to be good by alignment (maybe even Lawful good) and he knew necromancy so he could fight the undead.
I'm not very tempted to play an anti-hero but this was one of my favorite discussions you guys have had in a while makes me really tempted to play a warlock in Tomb of annihilation brand new to the games and I only got to play maybe three sessions before I had to jump into the DM roll
I love the idea of a non-evil necromancer, maybe neutral good or true neutral. But basically they are like a spirit shaman or voodoo priest that ties spirits to bodies, especially spirits that want to live for a while or good spirits that want to help good heroes. So essentially instead of forcing spirits to a body they try to convince a spirit and if they need to force the spirits to win a battle they feel awful and use speak with dead to apologize and thank the spirits
Ive had this idea on the back burner for a while now, a lawful good necromancer. To sumerize; they just don't have morals. "No magic is evil, only those who use it for evil" And while they are polite enough to not have zombies in town, they wont hesitate to use necromancy. Genuinely nice person but completely hopeless when (usually paladins and clerics) try to explain that raising the dead is "wrong". I have a backstory written too, but ill leave that for when I get to play them!
A necromancer could be a redemption story you delve into the dark arts to become powerful enough to defeat an evil lord and will only animate people who served him willingly whom you have killed. Making them work in their death to right the wrongs of their life. You use the spells and negative energy to destroy his servants and won't put the people you are protecting at risk.
Death Cleric and Necromancer could be played like a "medium". You could be like that dude on TV who sees everyone's dead relatives. Ask people dumb questions like"what does the number 22 mean to you" or say things like "I am hearing a name, Do you anyone with the letter e in their name. Yeah there here and they want you to know they are safe". "Please remember to donate the church fund"!
Imho it depends on the setting. In a nobledark or grimdark setting like Warhammer Fantasy? Sure, the word demands from people to be assholes to survive. In a noble bright setting? Not so much. About warlock - fighter/celestial warlock makes a great "paladin"
chronicles of the necromancer, a book series where the main character is a good aligned necromancer. calling ghosts to help instead of animated corpses
Friend of mine had a nuetral good necromancer in Curse of Strahd and had the funniest philosophy about raising the dead."It's just a Barovia thing guys I swear when we get back to Faerun I'll let it go!" funny ass shit!
I was once DM for a homebrew setting where the characters were servants of a True Neutral Cosmic Entity that was a shadowy figure with a black goat head who tasked mortals with collecting the souls of the wicked. I called it Schattenzieg. His realm exists outside of time and space and he has been called many names throughout history: Baphomet, Pan, Azrael, Satan, The Black Goat of the Woods, Krampus, The Reaper, and more. Schattenzieg sent the party to stop Humpty Dumpty from exacting the Salem Witch Trials. This just set the whole party up to be antiheroes. One character was a warlock (Any patron would have worked for Schattenzieg) of Schattenzieg. This warlock befriended an invisible black baby goat sent by Schattenzieg to guide the party. At one point he knocked a guy down and the invisible goat sat on the prone man. Without skipping a beat this warlock leaned in and said "You feel that? That is the wait of your sins." This character was basically a man who knew he was wicked but vowed to fight for Schattenzieg until there was no wicked men left to kill at which point he would take his own life. Another character was Lizzie Borden who was ripped from her time by Schattenzieg.
It should be pointed out that not all Warlock patrons are evil or creepy. Some Fey , for instance, are good . In UA there's the Undying Light patron ( e.g. the Positive Energy Plane.).
Personally I feel like it's completely ok for player characters to be antiheroes. In fact given the choice I'll play an antihero before a hero any day. In fact I'd say a large percentage of D&D player characters would classify closer to antiheroes.
When it comes to necromancy a good example of a neutral necromancer who attempts to do good is the main character in the book moon of the spider. It's is set in the diablo universe and explains how in that setting necromancers attempt to keep the scales balanced between life and death so they are just as likely to raise the dead to fight for them as they are to put souls to rest.
While I was watching this I thought about making npc bartender being dwarf, a paladin of vengeance and Mathew Mercer's gunslinger I think it would be cool do as this x monster hunter kinda class a bit a van helsing vibe
As long as you're not detracting from the group, I think players should be free to make whatever they like :) Even chaotic evil is doable as long as you work it out with your fellow players and your DM
I'd actually would say, base on the PHB Descriptions, the Lawful Evil would be the most easiest to do as their description is extremely similar to that as a Lawful Neutral. Even "Hired Assassin" Rogue Assassins would be able to easily "fit in" as they could simply have their "Contracts" happen during downtime (if need be), or between Sessions, etc. Heck, coincidentally, one of their Contracts could be for a person that happens to work for whomever the current Villain would be for their Campaign.
I had fun playing my CE character, she did whatever she felt like doing at the time ^.^ We worked it out so the party Wizard would make sure my character had an outlet for her destructive tendencies, or plenty of booze when we needed to lay low ^.^
On the anti hero part of things I think that they absolutely belong in D&D and are important for adding nuance and perspective to the game. Don't be a lime light hog, be a team player, your schemes will never come to fruition if you meet with an untimely demise because you ran afoul of someone you were working with who has a narrower view of the world. Villains are the heroes who lived long enough to experience loss, or become disillusioned with the world. Heroes tend to have a naïve view of the world. They think they're the good guys in their story even though they are easily the villain of some one else's. Really the difference between a hero and a villain can be as thin a line as rich or poor and the proper application of desperation.
I wanted to play a Vampire Hunter. But the closest was a Ranger with Undead as a favoured enemy. So instead of people seeing a dark archetype people will see instead Robin Hood because of how the ranger is perceived.
In dealing with the idea of playing a good necromancer, many of the discussed ideas were a good start (using speak with dead or helping souls move on). But while raising the dead is normally considered evil, what if a town is going to be overrun or is being attacked by a warband of some type? Perhaps raising some of the village's dead is the best way to save the village... calling their souls back to defend their home one final time. Or finding a travelling band that have been killed by bandits and raising the bodies to kill the bandits, thereby achieving vengeance for the unjustly killed? Perhaps under the right circumstances a normally evil act could be considered good... or at least that's what the necromancer tells himself. :>
One idea I liked for good necromancer was swapping the need of corpses for wicker men or stick effegees. To make a zombie you need a scarecrow, this would take time and money, for a skeleton a stick effegee maby with some rope or face markings once again taking time. As for the abilities some can be changed target wise such as dominate dead working only on constructs or allowing the easier creation of one
I know this video is old but I play a neutral evil death domain cleric who seeks to keep a balance between life and death to prevent a massive exitintion by excess of death or excess of life, she makes sure things dies when it is planed to then to die, nor before nor after, she gives a peaceful death to the ones who embrace it but horrible one to who reject or avoid death, she rises dead from a group she is hunting to help in the hunt and bring dread to them, she hates and seeks to destroy sentient undead because they eluded death grasp, non sentient ones are just reanimated bodies the sentient ones still have their soul, she workship a god of death nerull but we homebrew him to have this sort of philosophy and emphasize the fact that evil can be something misunderstood with doing what it is needed, she gives a proper burial to anything she kills and have some chants and ritual to help their souls rest and get to the reincarnation cycle, she actually has a downtime job helping the local clerics to maintain the graveyard and give peace and ease the pain of the dying.
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I came up with a concept for using bound souls, except the souls are willing. Certain cultures/religions believe in serving the living even in death that it's a good thing, like watching over family. Basically your magic/divine power is used to give the soul the power to inhabit and control a corpses and gain abilities or just form in general in the case of incorporeal undead. The caviot to this is you won't be just creating and releasing undead hordes, you'll be limited in how many undead you can have by your level like normal but must always maintain control. The big part of that makes the use of creating undead evil is that your forcing a soul to do your bidding and its torture doing so.
Had a bard that became a Warlock because the summer fey was hot.
GG
That took me a minute
Help I'm a pleb and need context
Wyatt Strahan The _summer_ fey was _hot_
Typical Bard.
I always liked the narration at the start of the Chronicles of Riddick.
"They are an army unlike any other... crusading across the stars toward a place called UnderVerse, their promised land - a constellation of dark new worlds. Necromongers, they're called. And if they cannot convert you, they will kill you. Leading them, the Lord Marshal. He alone has made a pilgrimage to the gates of the UnderVerse... and returned a different being. Stronger. Stranger. Half alive and half... something else. If we are to survive, a new balance must be found. In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil."
Given that in the D&D universe their are graduations of both Good and Evil then it is entirely possible that evil characters may well find themselves opposing an even greater evil. Sometimes evil can go places and do things good cannot.
Very good point. Then there is also the point about moral limitations: All else being equal, evil beats good because it is willing to do things that the good side won't do. Thus, if you cannot beat evil by being more powerful than it, the only option left is to beat it at its own game (and hope you can come back from it).
@@ChristnThms evil also has a tendency to eat itself because it has no scruples. ex. the blood war .
@@tomtom7955 well, yes. Evil eats everything. But, the nature of competition is that the strong eat the weak. So this process doesn't make evil weaker. It makes it stronger. Always.
@@ChristnThms the Blood War is the cannon reason why the demons and devils dont rule the multi-verse, they are to busy fighting each other. Evil can work together it just usually doesn't last once 1 party reaches its goal or if backstabbing offers greater rewards.
@@tomtom7955 yes and no. Yes, the blood war between devils and demons is what prevents either of them from gaining sufficient foothold to dominate.
No, this doesn't disprove the idea that evil eating itself makes it stronger overall. One thing has nothing to do with the other.
The reason that the bloodwar maintains balance is BECAUSE no amount of good can overcome either evil. The reason the bloodwar continues is that the strong get stronger and the weak get eliminated. That means that even if Good allied with one side to defeat the other, whatever remained would rise in power. Minus sufficient opposition, it would grow, and being cannibalistic, only the strongest would be able to rise.
The inherent limits to good are exactly why the bloodwar is necessary in canon.
Dark Heroes and Anti-heroes definitely belong in D&D. They litter our fiction and appear in movies, TV, comics and the like. The best heroes are flawed heroes, because they express the imperfection that defines the human condition. They show the struggle with our own demons while tackling outward ones.
And let's be honest, there's no person who would face the dangers of any world over and over and just remain a total optimist with a soul like a shiny nickle. Unless you're Captain America...and I hear he has some issues... Further to that, if "dark heroes" aren't allowed, like you said (but expanding upon it) then why do we have Drow, Duegar, Half-Orc, Goliath, Kenku, Lizardfolk, Fallen Aasimar, certain Genasi, Chromatic Dragonborn, and other races as options? Why do we have Vengeance Paladins, Assassins, Draconic Sorcerers who tap the power of Chromatics, Warlocks, Necromancers and arguably Evokers (making a living on just blowing people up isn't exactly heroic either) as classes? Matt Mercer's Blood Hunter is an excellent example.
The world of D&D is a dangerous place. Sometimes you have to be a bit of a monster to hold other monsters at bay.
And that's no only okay, but plausible. What's NOT plausible is the dogmatic approach to "all paladins are lawful good" nonsense. I thank Gary Gygax for all he did to bring D&D to the world, but some of that old dogma based on his singular perspective is still a problem.
I'd like to address the Necromancer argument as well. Let's just lay it out. Animate Dead does use the remains of people. However, the view on those remains comes from mainly a modern view based on our current religions of the world. Ancient cultures didn't always view this as an issue, and I can state confidently that we are also impressing those views on a fantasy world of out own creations - therefore the views in that world are up to us to build. So stating that "in fact, most religions" should actually be re-expressed as "in fact, we have no records on how the church of Umberlee/Torm/Chauntea/etc deal with their dead in Ted's world of (insert name)"
Additionally, the long dead remains of Skeletons WOULD HAVE NO SOULS because the body has been laid to rest a long time. Any afterlife discussions have already played out for good or bad. It could be argued the same exists for Zombies. If you doubt that, look up spells like "Raise Dead" and the like when it talks about "returning a soul to the body". It wouldn't have to rejoin the body if it was already there. Any liberties being taken to trap the soul there are subjective and not expressed in any text. Further to that point, stating that the soul is trapped there "because you think it is" when it isn't, followed by allowing spells that need to rejoin the soul to the body is not only counter to logic, but contradictory.
Pick a side of the fence.
Therefore pigeon-holing a Necromancer as Evil and yet stating "yes, but my Old One Warlock bound to Cthulhu is just misunderstood" or "Yes, but my Chaotic Neutral Assassin only kills BAD people" is ludicrous. All made a decision. All do questionable things. Singling out the Necromancer without doing the same for every class that draws upon energies from questionable sources...that's just hypocrisy.
But WHY are they doing it. That's the key. And yes, I'm aware that "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions."... that's where Ghost Rider came from. I get it. But if you want to tell a meaningful story, having a flawed and possibly broken hero is the path to better storytelling if you let it.
Otherwise heroes like Wolverine and Deadpool wouldn't be so beloved.
The old guard likes things the old way. 5th Edition was designed to get rid of a lot of these old misconceptions, but people still hold on to them.
Yeah, I also love using Evil Necromancers as bad guys, they're a great foe in a classic campaign. But I don't like the idea that x-Ability is good while X-Ability is bad. How is a Death Cleric using Inflict Wounds more evil than a Light Cleric who throws Fireballs at people. A necromancer who uses only the material body of someone, not their soul, is "always" a bad guy. But a wizard that captures and binds an elemental to become a slave is a good guy.
Now these are examples of things that need to be hashed out between a player and DM and can change from scenario to scenario. I just think that a video on Dark Heroes shouldn't be about how certain dark characters can't be heroes based on their abilities. (Though I do enjoy the video and love the Nerdarchy crew)
Mike Gould
Totally in agreement here. I've loved Necromancy and undead since before I even got into roleplaying (huge horror fan since childhood, and Poe was my favorite author up until I discovered Lovecraft in college), so I've always believed in the idea that Necromancers can be good. I had even started writing a novel waaaaay back in high school that had a "good" Necromancer who was essentially the Gandalf of the story in terms of the amount of important information he knew (including a prophecy that he discovered his childhood friends would be fulfilling - or so he hoped, since the land depended on it) except he was still young and inexperienced, and he didn't become a Necromancer by choice (he nearly died in the prologue from a fall, and a master Necromancer took him in to save him with his magic. Unfortunately, it meant that the character had to learn to wield the powers of life and death and - as was the usually tradition of all Necromancers in the world - eventually had to absorb his mentor's spirit and power). In one early scene, he animated the bodies of fallen creatures - mostly of dead aggressors - to protect a village from destruction. When the threat was over, he had the undead perform "cleanup" tasks like digging graves and collecting the dead before laying them back to rest and burning the bodies.
It's all about the combination of both intent and actions. Granted, some DMs are adamant in considering Necromancy evil, in which case I offer my arguments once and then just avoid that role and stick to Abjurers, Diviners, Enchanters, and Illusionists. (I am a very support-role type of Wizard player) :)
EDIT: for the record, I got into roleplaying through AD&D 2nd Ed back in '95 during Freshman year in high school.
Cleary dwarves dont like necromancy in gryffongaff. yeah im pretty sure an egyptian or aztec culture would be fine with necromancy spells. its culture/is the sould involved/is it voluntary? i love the idea of necromancers bringing your soul back to your body or a relative/friends body for the funeral as a final goodbye. the town gets wiped out during the funeral and the necromancer has all the villagers ghosts begging him to help them get vengeance. so he puts them in dead animals and enemies for combat.
Not to mention, Ted's a little hypocritical in how stance on raise the dead and stuff because THAT'S WHAT HE DOES when he would Speak with Dead. Not to mention, some of what they talk about the Necromancer stuff, comes off as a little hypocritical when some of them even use several Necromancy Spells. Speak with Dead being one of them, Spare the Dying being another.
Ofcourse the dark heroes and the ant-heroes belong in dnd. players should be allowed to play their character anyway they want, and a lot of people like darker options. obviously the dark heroes can work well in groups, you've got batman in the justice league, and Deadpool has been an official member of the avengers before and helps out the X-Men all the time. Wolverine starts off as an anti-hero. I mean, even if you're going to do explicitly evil things you can still work in a party of good characters, you just have to keep the evil secret. Also, when I run necromancers I just say the soul is gone and i'm just using the empty husks, so I really don't believe it's evil.
Plus, I'm already wearing my eyeliner.
Lord MurderKitten im always wearing eyeliner
anyway they want .. but the other characters and the dungeon master have to have fun too. DnD is a team sport.
I'm playing a 'dark' hero in my current campaign. I'm a Oath of Conquest Paladin, a gnome set from the Feywild to conquer the domain of a god in the Material Plane. It's awesome. First peasant I met got conquered... permanently. My rule at the table when I run a game is: you can play whatever you want, so long as your character is a team player and is willing to work with the other players' characters. I've had evil necromancers and warlocks, and they created some of the best roleplaying in the last fifteen years of DMing. It's not D&D specific, its DM specific. If the DM can work with it, it works.
I ran a NE druid among a LN, LG, and NG party and it worked. I showed the LN a deadwood forest and said 'this is what happens when I don't cause wildfires in overgrowth, people and animal be damned, and he grudgingly understood it was for the best. I was just focused on keeping the circle of life and death spinning in a world focused on stopping it. I just kept the plague-causing under wraps, in big cities I'd just nod to my DM sometimes and it was understood what I spent downtime doing.
the trick is that stuff was kept kinda background, like the monk's weapon addiction or the pally trying to convert people at every opportunity and downtime. unless the group asked why or it was relevant, it wasn't the focus. I think a good chunk of the issue is some people doing it for attention. not 'I wanna play an interesting new character" but "Everyone look how cool and edgy I am." trying to hog the spotlight, kinda gives the others a bad rep. I just like playing grey characters sometimes because I like the philosophy and ambiguity, right actions for wrong reasons or vice versa.
I actually like playing Lawful Evil characters because "if questioned" I could easily "lie" and say that my character was Lawful Neutral because of how essentially their PHB Descriptions are.
Though while it was a good story that Ted brought up, they never actually talked about a Rogue Assassin, like say a Hired Assassin or even an Assassin whom had either the Urban Bounty Hunter or even Outlander (Bounty Hunter) Background.
The Hunter Ranger Archetype can be pretty dark too, especially if your favored enemy is humanoid.
Ranger Roy that is my fovoured emeny.
Humanoid is probably the most popular enemy of the rewritten ranger, because it's the most prevalent monster type in most adventures. Having to choose a couple types in the PHB version weakened it significantly; most of the enemies you face will end up being humanoid for a significant part of the game. Gnolls, goblinoids, orcs, all of the playable races, kobolds and half-dragons, lizardfolk, merfolk, and heck, even lycanthropes are classified as humanoid. So there's actually nothing dark about favored enemy humanoid unless you use the PHB version and select a non-monstrous type. And even then, you can have really good reasons (this area is thick with bandits, and I've had years of experience rooting them out with the local guard; or, we get a ton of drow trying to invade, assassinate, or plot against us from these caves, so someone has to track them down). It all comes down to how you use it.
Yeah that’s a good call. I picked Undead and Dragons for my Gloom Stalker Ranger so far. I spent a whole battle of one of my last sessions running around a dark room shooting arrows at the enemies that I was invisible to. (Gloom Stalker is invisible to all enemy opponents’ darkvision)
Worlds okayest DM... Damn is that a great and funny T-Shirt :D
Nacht Physik ArmorClass10.com has great shirts.
Nerdarchist Dave
This inspired me to make a D20 roll list for the justification of your character being edgy, dubious or even downright evil:
[01] Aversion to Predictability
Sure, I could just go around doing everything everyone would expect of a hero. But you have to be at least a little bit strange in this world, or else others would know what you're going to do before you do it! Does that involve being a little bit against the common good at times? Yes it does.
[02] Desperate Need
If I didn't keep doing it, I'd die! So can you really blame me? I don't like it, but I have no choice!
[03] Devil's Friend
Demons, am I right? Horrible evil things, you'd agree? And who keeps them at bay? Who protects everyone from these chaotic forces? Those lot who fight them, that's who! They want nothing short of a structured paradise, and we should want it too.
[04] Directable Menace
I'm going to do what I do no matter where I am and that's just my free choice and you can't stop me. So best you send me in the direction of something bad, since if you don't, I'll just hang around here, and you don't want that.
[05] Drama Fanatic
Sure, we could just walk out of here and everything would be alright with the world. But that wouldn't mean anything! Where's the big heroic moment in that? Who got to sacrifice something? No, too easy. Stories must be told about this day, and so I must give the enemy this chance by making this stupid decision!
[06] Ethical Rejector
Morality? Pah! Utter fiction. Everyone does what they want, and anyone who argues otherwise is lieing or deluded. Now join me or don't, while I embark on this interesting experience I'll personally benefit from.
[07] First Believer
Oh, you think I have funny ideas about the world that don't make any sense and add up to a potentially destructive picture of right and wrong? Well Early Ignus already told me what's what, and you telling me something different now isn't going to change my mind. I never change my mind!
[08] Freedom's Purist
Telling others what to do is wrong. We should simply hope that everyone behaves in harmony with each other. If we don't do that, we're no better than conquerors! And I'll stand against anyone trying to control someone else - no matter the situation!
[09] Grave in Soul and Deed
The most foul thing to exist is the undead. Clearly. And the most important thing in life is proper respect for the dead, and proper observation of ritual in order to ensure they're never tampered with. Obviously. And how do you go about maximising respect for the dead? Why, by making more dead people to respect. It just stands to reason.
[10] Grim Replacement
If I didn't do it, someone else would. Better it be me, so I can do it in the least destructive way possible. They ought to thank me, not hate me. Without me it'd be so much worse!
[11] Hint of Nature
I'm a good character, and most of the stuff I do is good! You've seen that! But damnit, I'm still a goblin. So when the situation demands it, I'm still gonna BE a goblin.
[12] Hipocratic Compartmentalist
Hey one side calls the other evil, the other calls us evil, I don't care. If you're in front of me, I'll heal you. If you go on to do evil, that's on you. I did good, and that's good enough for me.
[13] In-House Horror
I'm the best person I could be! So what if I love being cruel, if I salivate over killing, if I delight whenever someone else suffers? The fact that I use it for good gives me the excuse I need to keep doing it. So be as uncomfortable as you want - I am fully justified.
[14] Misplaced Loyalty
Oh, I absolutely will fight the forces of evil in this world. But dread emperor Fleshrender? She's an absolute darling! She'd never hurt a fly! I refuse to believe she doesn't have a justification for everything she has me do.
[15] Naturalistic Indulger
I don't know why I do the things I do, it's just the way I am. You can't deny what you are inside.
[16] Sidearm of the Law
Understanding be damned, you break the law, you suffer the consequence! It is a simple and effective premise, and I follow it to the letter.
[17] Sporting Chancer
Come on, you guys. This is too one-sided. I'm sure in our position, Evilbeard the Slaughterer would give us a fair shake! So that's why I let his informants go. Why even test your skills if it's not a test? Oh, the victims? Well yeah sure I guess, but never mind them, let the glorious battle begin!
[18] Taboo Rider
You may not like it, but I don't see why it's so bad. So if you can't show me what harm I'm doing in the world, it's merely a case of one set of sensibilities versus another.
[19] Tool Incarnate
I'm just following orders. I don't kill, I am merely something weilded to kill by others. You want me to do good in the world? Then weild me yourself.
[20] True Ruler
The task of conquering the world may require a lot of evil, but once it's all said and done, I will rule over a greater realm than could ever have been hoped for before. I know this deep inside. Everyone else will find out for themselves, and thank me later.
I feel like the discussion is a bit misplaced. The "dark hero" is in fact the fallback mode of the standard PC (regardless of actual alignment, class, or archetype). PCs live by violence,. They solve many of their problems by using violence. They are more often than not unmoored from society (that's what being an "adventurer" means). It's hard, under those circumstances, not to incline toward a pretty dark outlook, as Mike Gould says here.
It's usually a pretty small step from "I'm a hero helping people" to "I will slay, often preemptively, whoever gets in my way". As an example: I'm currently running a game of mostly good (possibly all good - haven't checked lately) characters. They have come under attack by some ruffians (and probably, their patrons in town) for investigating a house that serves as the ruffians' base. After being beset by these critters on 3 occasions, the gloves have come off. The ruffians stormed the house (which the PCs are currently occupying, and failed. After the battle, the party slaughtered the survivors (several were unconscious but alive, one was charmed and cooperating). Were these evil acts? The acts of dark heroes? Were they entirely predictable, and similar to what happens in most games, where the PCs feel threatened? Are they likely to recur, now that the PCs have essentially learned that trusting other people often leads to problems?
To pose these questions is, to some extent, to answer them.
So true. The nick name murder hobos exists for a reason.
I like to play with the gray area between good and evil as a DM because that fact of the violent nature of adventuring.
The really good players will learn how to walk the tightrope that stretches across that gray area.
It was evil to kill those who could not fight back. They could have turned over to authorities or found some other way to keep those npcs out of the way without murder. Selling them into slavery or whatnot, while not a good act, still allows one to not kill the grunt without having them have a high chance of coming back. There were other options available besides killing them. Casual killing just seems to me to be a fairly standard evil act. Sometimes neccessary in a brutal world but not a good act. One of those situations where you have to ask yourself is the gain from committing this vile action worth the blood on your hands. Evil people wouldn't care, neutral people may have a rather pragmatic look. But a good person should feel dirty.
I sympathize with that alignment read, but there are additional complications. One, the authorities in town are suspicious of the PCs, because they have been (rightly) accused of sorcery, which the authorities regard as evil (regardless of intent or outcome). Two, one of the members of the Town Council (i.e. someone having an important voice) was in fact a sponsor of the smugglers the PCs defeated, so reporting to the authorities is likely to bring problems for the party. And, there are four PCs, and keeping watch over four prisoners would have been difficult. But yes, on the whole, it was an evil act - the only question is, was it a necessary evil?
Boris Stremlin Interesting. Yes, that does fit necessity pretty well. But still if any of the characters were good they should be guilt ridden because of it. You still killed those who only posed a threat in the increased complication they brought to your life. Killing people to make things simpler is pretty standard evil henchman behavior. At what point does it stop being pragmatism and starts being outright evil? Maybe that can be a thing that actually gets introduced. The question of where the line really is, as each character sees it.
12:15 *COUGH COUGH* GRAVE CLERIC *COUGH COUGH* 13:47 *COUGH* *COUGH* RAVEN QUEEN *COUGH COUGH* CLERIC OF THE RAVEN QUEEN.......... *COUGH*
Anti-Villains can be even more interesting than Anti-Heroes though in that they usually fall under the pragmatist type of true neutral. They are villains with heroic goals in mind usually and it is their methods that are questionable because they do the things good heroes can't or won't. They can be even more dedicated and noble than the heroes.
I actually really like the analogy between a warlock and Ghost rider. That’s how I look at the relationship. When a warlock uses power, he is using power that HE has and was granted. Unlike a cleric who prays to their god for each spell. The warlock isn’t praying to the fiend that granted it to him for every eldritch bolt. Sort of like ghost rider, he made a pact with the devil for his power but he isn’t asking the devil for the specific power to transform every time he wants too. Having established this, we can assume that since the power is now theirs, the warlock for the most part can do what they want with the their power so long as the bargain they made is still met.
I see there is a lot of room for villains or anti-heroes. heck there's even room for anti-villains. that's one thing I love about D&D it doesn't limit players or DMs. the only limitations are what the DM and players agree upon. heck sometimes even players put limitations upon themselves when trying to create a character that's in their mind.
Develops highly deadly race-specific poison:
"OMG that's genocidal!"
"So? Who would miss orcs n' goblins anyway? They'd do the same to us."
Aragorn in LOTR invokes an ancient vow to get an army of undead to fight for him. Heroic necromancer.
My argument for a good Necromancer
"My country is being attacked. We must defend ourselves. We have graveyards full of our countrymen who have already passed on. Why would i not raise them to defend us, rather than risking the lives of thousands of my living countrymen. As our enemies fall on the battlefield, i shall raise them as well to sustain and bolster our defenses, whilst not risking the lives of our loved ones.
LONG LIVE KARRNATH!"
I love heroes of all kinds of flavors. I really enjoy making characters make difficult moral choices. In one of my games, I had a semi-heroic necromancer. He would take on jobs to slay bandits. This is how he got his corpses for his undead minions. I don't think Necromancy is evil in its self. It's a tool like any other, but it does come down to the setting. One idea I have is someone should play a necromancer in a zombie apocalypse setting. This is one situation where necromancers would be valued. They would turn the undead against each other, and in general, be able to effectively deal with undead.
This was a fun video. Great topic about how to be creative with a character and how you can create great depth in your character. I recently came up with a great character concept that I hope I can play some day. Paladin of vengeance with the resurrected background. (Not sure if you have seen this one before) Background idea is that he was a son of a knight or lord who raised him to be a man of great character. His father became a vampire and became evil and then turned the son. The son had the strength of character to refuse his fate and embraced the rising sun to destroy himself and save his soul. Many years later he is resurrected. Maybe by a family member that knew of the ancestor and needed him to return to end a family curse. Or maybe the Raven Queen wished it to use him as an agent against the undead. Maybe to even end his vampire fathers existence. Can be some great roll playing. Maybe he is broody, or maybe savors every moment of life having this second chance. I would love to play this one.
For heroic necromancers, you have the ones in Diablo along with Anita Blake (before the author lost her mind anyway)
I think the magic itself is also worthy of investigation when determining whether a class is truly bad or evil, and so it will depend on the setting.
In my setting, necromancy and the dark arts in general draw on negative energy, and negative energies by their very nature is anti life, and so when you animate a corpse, you temporarily bind the creature's soul to their reanimated corpse in order for it to function, which means there's a difference between 'merely animating a pile of bones' to 'raise undead', the latter being much easier and powerful but also more damning.
This means that even if you start out as the nicest guy on the block; if you channel negative energies through yourself, they will slowly change you, sapping feelings of warmth and compassion, and stirring unknown desires for pain and sadness that will feed directly back into the negative plane. When you animate a corpse, you'll still be chaining someone's soul to a terrible existence of undeath, even if only temporarily, something they'll experience as an unliving nightmare as they are reduced to unlife as a creature of sheer death and destruction.
You might start out as the happiest, most-cheerful party-loving neophyte of the dark arts ever, but, if you continue on that damned path, you'll invariable lose that glow and vigor, becoming more grim and dour, as any joy of life is sapped from your being. It is really only a matter of time, and even the most kind and strongly willed person can at best merely delay the inevitable.
Hence, good people would never accept the dark arts and necromancy, and would shun even its most petty manifestations. The only time a good person might honestly consider it would be if the world was about to end at the hands of soul-stealing demons who'd put every soul in the multiverse to eternal suffering and nothing else worked, in which case, necromancy would be the lesser evil.
When I think of a Good Necromancer, I immediately think of Yorick from LoL
He was once a monk that survived a surge of a dark plague that transformed a once beautiful land into a place of pure evil. While he survived he wasn't unscathed and was now plagued by the dead constantly following him. He now uses the power of darkness to raise undead and speak with spirits to fight against these evil monstrosities that overun the island to keep them from leaving while slowly withering away the more he uses these abilities.
I can imagine something like being incorperated into D&D
I disagree with the necromancer point. It all depends on how the necromancer is played (Eg, Letting the dead run loose, or keeping them under control. Asking to raise the body using speak with dead, vs stealing the body.)
The spells in the PHB, in my mind, would not bind the soul, as it is using magic to animate the body much in the same way magic is used to summon creatures. If it bound the soul, then you would have to argue that the Reincarnate spell wouldn't work on them, as reincarnation uses a part of the body to create a new body and summon the soul, which wouldn't work if it was bound to it's old corpse. This also applies to True Resurrection, which does not have an "is not undead" requirement like it's lower level counterpart.
Additionally, resurrection spells (Which are considered to be good by many) are necromancy spells- Revivify, Resurrection, True Resurrection etc.
Not to mention, of the Necromancy Spells, only a few actually involve creating undead. The rest are like debuffs, deal damage or really have nothing to do "with raising the dead" like Astral Projection. Bestow Curse as well as Blindness/Deafness would be such Necromancy Spells that would be a debuff. The Cantrip "Chill Touch" and "Circle of Death", while yeah, deal Necrotic Damage, don't deal with the dead.
Plus, like you point out, how is it Speak with Dead, which essentially raises the dead to speak with it. Yeah, after the spell is done, they return to being dead, but the spell still captures the dead person's soul & stuff. Plus, how is Animate Object (targeting empty suit of armor) any "better" then Animate Dead.
Also, at times I feel [no disrespect intended/implied] that some of the Nerdarchist are hypocritical when it comes to Necrotic Damage. Cause in one of their Live Discussions they answered my question of a Shadow Dragonborn, born from Shadowfell, and they (including Ted) seemed to like the idea of the Breath Weapon dealing Necrotic as well as it having Necrotic Resistance. But in this video, Ted at least, seems to be really against Necrotic Damage, when it comes from a School of Necromancy Wizard.
I almost forgot, but why are the Conjure Spells (Celestial/ElementalAnimal/Fey/Minor Elemental/Woodland Beings) seen as being any "better" then the Animate Dead/Create Undead? Plus one could easily argue that Control Weather Spell is more dangerous then most of what Necromancers do, even the Transmutation Spell, Disintegrate, is more dangerous.
You can entice the grognard to play 5e but you can't change his views on necromancy
Maybe this should be explained thematically. Like the necromancy spells are just that, spells. Where as stuff like resurrection is maybe literally calling on a god to intervene. A game of higher powers, ya know? Course that opens up a discussion on who would win if there are multiple gods involved...
Jacob Freeman I don't think so. If that was the case, the Divine Intervention ability would not be quite so special. Also, the Death Curse of ToA would not be such a threat (as I imagine it doesn't effect those risen by gods)
That necromancer example is the biggest reason WHY people wanna do these things! some of us don't wanna be the same superhero elf/human/dwarf shuffling the same few heroic shades and classes around. I wanna be Doctor Gob, Centaur for Disease Control, Varkopf the LE game show host. I WANT to take that necromancer or Orc and say 'what kind of exciting new thing can I come up with?" that 'but what if' of a character we thought of and don't often see. if you don't see the concept around you but like it, that's the perfect sign to start making!
dark heroes and antiheroes have just as much place as any other concept- fits but not in all campaigns. if this is a bog standard 'you are all varying shades of super good and fight dragons to save damsels' campaign then sure, not the right place. same way that dark sun's not made for wizards or some worlds don't have gnomes. but there's room for characters to dig into the deeper shades of grey.
One of my current party is a warlock of the fiend who's thus far:
- Helped take down a crime lord.
- Helped stabilize a nation at war.
- Slain monsters and villains to save his friends and allies.
- Shown courage, and placed his life on the line.
He's also a sinister, extortionist bastard who slits throats as a first resort, cruelly animates the dead for intel, and legitimately thinks the best way to help the city of Darrow is to become its new crime lord. I love the villain, and he's an integral part of the story - the dude who makes the goblin rogue building a flesh golem seem tame and friendly by comparison. Evil characters ftw.
Not to mention, until the Necromancer animates or creates undead, how would anyone know that they are a Necromancer? Heck, what if said Necromancer decided NOT to take Animate Dead & Create Undead and instead studies the School of Necromancy as a way to extend/preserve life &/or "cheat death" (Clone Spell essentially cheats death), would said Necromancer still not be "liked" by some of the Nerdarchists?
I don't think any class or subclass is inherently evil, but any of them can be played evil. A fiend pact Warlock can be entirely good in motive (Ghostrider). A life Cleric can be evil (Hitler had plenty of doctors, the Inquisition was full of priests). An outright assassin can be good (modern special forces often are). A devotion Paldadin can ultimately serve evil if manipulated and deceived. Yet, that might cause him to change to a conquest or vengeance oath in order to right the wrongs you performed, and thus serve good.
Really, motivation is everything.
Thank you for another great video guys!
Regarding the ongoing necromancer debate, I have a few ideas:-
You come from a culture where the body is only seen as important/special whilst living, when dead it is no more important than any other material thing. If I remember correctly, you said in one video about lizardfolk that they would happily eat the body of a dead comrade or use it for some other practical reason - why not animate it?
As to summoning the souls of the dead, why does it have to be souls that were happily at rest? Maybe a person lived a wicked life and saw the error of their ways to late so were sent to Hell for eternal punishment. You summon them to give them a chance to serve The Good and so redeem themsleves so that they can pass on to Heaven. Even if they don't get to do that at least they get a brief respite from eternal torment.
As to non-evil necromancers in fiction, there is the ones in the Diablo games and the eldar in Warhammer 40k using wraith guard and wraith knights.
This is entirely dependent on the comfort zone, mores, preferences, and style of the group in question. What you guys are really asking is "do dark heroes and anti-heroes belong in *our* D&D?" A lot of the early inspirational material for fantasy role-playing games, including D&D, had grittier heroes. Farfd & The Grey Mouser, Conan the Barbarian, Elric are all high-profile grey morality characters with a bit of edge to them. Many of the protagonists from the Falling Kingdoms, Song of Fire and Ice, and Thieves' World series aren't a bunch of shiny Dudley do-rights, either. To switch genres, let's be honest about Han Solo: he's a drug runner, thief, and occasional pirate who shoots first and asks questions later. He's just handsome, charming and follows the trope of "always does the right thing in the end" so we overlook his very serious flaws. It depends on what kinds of characters and stories you want at your table. I was a part of a long-term group that was mostly lawful good, but had a lawful evil mage in its ranks. He was a pacing, brooding, scowling, plotting, ruthless genius. He was obsessed with amassing arcane secrets and power, and maintained in difficult circumstances the ends justified the means (e.g., torture, assassination, poison, piracy, etc). But, he always kept his word, never betrayed his friends or retainers, dealt honorably with honorable foes, and would do anything to protect the simple folk in the village that grew up around his tower. He was also smitten by the party lawful good cleric, who wielded a great deal of influence over him.
I once played a neutral Necromancer. He dissected corpses in order to make tomes on anatomy. He was more of a surgeon than a traditional Necromancer.
Two of my favorite characters in books are dark heroes that I think fit very well. The idea beings they are chosen to be heroes because they are "strong in the broken places." Waylander and Jon Shannow from David Gemmell's books are great dark heroes that I think ultimately work, great examples of flawed heroes.
On necromancy, I loved the Eberron Elves of Aerenal that use necromancy as sort of ancestor worship and "benevolent" "consensual" necromancy. Again, "desecrating corpses" is a big reason for not doing necromancy, but it could also be worded in a more positive light as "Borrowing the power of the deceased to help the living".
One example may be raising a dead farmer to gain his support in fighting off the bandits that killed him, and then afterwards giving his body a proper burial and respects.
It can actually bring up a lot of interesting conversations, like asking permission from the deceased to use his body.
A good necromancer (or death cleric) that is a follower of a deity/philosophy like Osiris, that uses death and protection themes. They raise undead armies, for specific purposes, to defend people, and when they are done they put the zombies back. Either as a house rule a necromancer is allowed to cancel their own animate spell, or the player developed/asked from their deity a spell that would allow them to easily dispel their own animation. I could see it as a ritual: a ceremony burying the dead.
Gravity Falls- Mabel "what did I say" Dipper " don't raise the dead" Mabel "what did you do?" Dipper - head hung low "raise the dead" zombies, Zombies everywhere.
Now I want to play an Hellsing Ultimate Adbriged Alucard type.
One concept I want to try out is the Oathbreaker Paladin of an EVIL god. A paladin that once served an evil god but turned their back on them and is now looking for a new god to serve. Combine that with the fallen aasimar trying to earn their wings and it's a one-way ticket on a feels train.
On that note though, I played a lawful evil character in a group of mainly good/neutral characters. It didn't end well for her (or half the party for that matter), but the players themselves had an absolute blast. We all knew what we were getting into and we had frequent discussions. It's all about communication
Simple phylosophy from Western movies "You can do a deadman no wrong"
If you want a death priest that is about balance and not about undead, look at the Grave domain from Unearthed Arcana. It's in the Cleric: Divine Domains pdf with the Forge and Protection domains.
I once played a Great Old One warlock that basically got his pact by accident. He more or less stumbled upon some cultists performing a ritual, and since Great Old Ones tend to alter reality with their presence, he got a bit of that eldritch power fused to himself without the Great Old One even noticing. Basically his whole point was trying to find a way to get rid of it, because the things he saw because of it were driving him crazy. It was meant to be more of a comedic character, basically just your normal person who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and had cosmic powers thrust upon him.
Btw, on the topic of necromancers, there actually was a good-ish necromancer in the recent MtG storylines with Liliana Vess, and she did raise the dead and use zombies as her slaves all the time. I'm saying good-ish because she helped the heroes, but still had selfish reasons for it (her reasons were mostly getting rid of a demonic pact, so your typical warlock plot basically).
One of the biggest things I loved about 1st Edition was that healing spells came from the Necromancy school. This created a clear and defensible path for claiming a non-evil necromancer. The way that this has been changed has made it much more difficult to justify.
One of my characters is a mercenary fighter who has seen two different groups wiped out. She now kills enemies unless they have information or are worth money alive. She's dark, but not evil. She has just found it practical to not allow enemies to get the chance to bring revenge and ambush her and her friends later. Not someone I want to play all the time, and I explain her stance to new characters joining our party, but she has her place in the world and has saved too many good characters to not be considered a hero at this point.
The idea of a dark eldritch knight reminds me of Ezra Bridger from Star Wars Rebels. He's a Jedi padawan who also spent time apprenticed to Maul. That relationship added a darker influence to his character.
I stand proudly in the pro Anti-Hero and Dark Hero side. My friend and I are playing an Oathbreaker Paladin and a Necromancer Wizard in our next campaign and we intend to ask the following questions; is it evil to fight fire with fire? Is it evil for us to break taboos in pursuit of the greater good? At what point have we gone too far? Do the ends justify the means? Should be an interesting and fun campaign, we also have a couple of homebrew classes in there (as the friendly neighbourhood rules lawyer it fell to me to help convert two characters from older editions into 5e, the Bloodrager became a subclass of the Barbarian but the Magus became a whole new class from the ground up with a mana point system for combining sword and spell).
Ultimately, it comes down to the campaign, the DM, and the players.
There can be a fine line between anti-hero or dark hero, and villain. The closer one gets to that line, the greater the chances of that dark hero or anti-hero becoming, or being seen as, a villain.
I had a lawful evil character that took the personal code interpretation of lawful very seriously. In exchange for his freedom he swore an oath to help and support one of the good aligned party members. Now I had a justified character reason for NEVER betraying the party despite the evil alignment. He was effectively bound to help the forces of good but could easily handle the more squeamish of tasks.
Ultimately I think thats the key point about dark/anti heroes or evil in a heroic party. The character needs to be able to satisfy the player-group contract that the character is going to be a team player. If you can satisfy that condition and continue satisfying that condition there shouldnt be any issues and opens the door for interesting RP possibilities.
The Bards Tale novels have a Necromancer, that ends up becoming a Bard. I play a CN Orc Necromancer that raises the corpses of those that the party kills as bodyguards. His tribe uses the zombie and skeletons to help defend the tribe. Most familiars of the tribes Necromancers are the spirits of now deceased Necromancers.
Was it a just cause for Deadpool to kill the villain at the end of his movie? How often do D&D heroes let villains live?
Jynx C. Good question. Prolly not. But Deadpool was okay with having that blood on his hands and it kept everyone else from having to debate what was the ethical thing to do with Francis. It does put them in a tough bind in any later situations where Deadpool might be the guy to keep an eye on someone since you just know he would choose what would simplify the situation most. Deadpool is not a good guy. He is a mercenary assassin. So you know he won't be tore up by ethical questions. But we love him because he also, deep down, does care about what is right. Just don't leave him alone with tacos or people he may feel need a good killing.
Vengeance or greed are typical gaming plot hooks. I think the average D&D character/player is already an anti-hero by Hollywood standards.
it's almost an automatic assumption. "save the princess" becomes translated to "kill the bad guy that imprisoned her". seldom does anyone even consider diplomacy are bargaining. only a few times have players asked why she was imprisoned to begin with. maybe it is justified. of course, this doesn't make for a game that would be interesting to most players.
In AD&D Ravenloft there's a good version of the Necromancer called Spiritualist that is more engaged with communicating with the dead and helping them pass on.
I'd like to point out that in the UA there's the Shadow Origin sorcerer . I also have in my group a high elf necromancer who's into the mysteries of life . Yes she has a undead ( skeleton warrior ) familiar and will raise undead if absolutely necessary, but OTOH she also has through the Magic Initiate feat a healing spell and a skilled medic.
Dante Galand, from the Cycle of Arawn, is essentially a cleric of a death god. Sometimes he heals people. Sometimes he kills small creatures and reanimates them as temporary familiars to spy on people. Sometimes he raises fallen soldiers who have just been trying to kill him to fight against their former comrades. So far I've never seen him animate any human who hasn't been trying to kill him a few minutes beforehand. That strikes me as an acceptable anti-hero, and not outright evil.
I played a necromancer with a few levels of grave domain cleric. He styled himself as a scholarly priest, and he worshipped the god of life and death, Arowan was the gods name and the main aim of this priest was repairing the lines between life and untimely death. He would pray to his god after the party killed someone to determine if it was their time and depending on what portents the god provided, he would either commit them to a blessed grave and if it wasn't their time he would cast spare the dying and then just not tell anyone as he loosely covered them with dirt and leaves to later wake up and maybe do something better with their time, or if it wasn't their time but they had lead wicked lives By what the portents said they would be raised as skeletons until the god sent portents that indicated that they had run out the clock on the time they had left and hopefully they had been part of doing enough good to possibly earn them a better lot in the afterlife. At this point their remains would be dispelled of magic blessed and committed to a blessed grave with mold earth. The character was also able to mediate the party out of what would have been a party wipe when they happened upon a mage tower comprised entirely of sentient undead.
The way I get around the taboo of raising the dead is that people can donate their bodies to adventurers like how people will donate their bodies to science or medicine. I also have it so that, while magic not souls animate the dead, but using souls make it easier, so both are a possibility.
With the Necromancer thing, even if a soul is used to animate the body it doesn't "have" to be that persons soul nor does it even have to be a non-evil soul. You could be a necromancer that only makes undead thralls from the enemies the party faces.
My idea of an antihero is a Chaotic Evil Drow from a family of Fiend pact warlocks. She secretly sought out a Fey patron to avoid the damnation she thought was inevitable with a Fiend pact. What she did not anticipate was her Patron being honorable, if not necessarily good, and expecting her ... client(?) to do the same. So her plan to usurp a higher up in her House went slightly awry, she fled to the surface for her life and now forced to be a hero... But she isn't going to be nice about it!
My hot take on necromancy. The reason raising or animating the dead is an evil (or at least non-good) act is because death is universally a sacred rite of passage, and you are interrupting its sacredness, not letting the dead rest in peace, preventing it from passing on, ect. It is much more than just trapping a soul or tapping negative energy, but what that means to society. It is almost always an act of defilement, if not to the community, than at least to the family of the deceased. Arguments can be made for spells like Gentle Repose or Resurrection, or even Inflict Wounds, but IMHO if the spell creates an undead creature, it is inherently a willful non-good act.
The s Scarred Lands setting ,Hollowfaust. Best example of a necromancer best civilization hands down. Every alignment represented as a necromancer.
There's the joke: We will avenge my dead brother! Elf-- you have my bow! Dwarf-- you have my axe! Necromancer--and your brother!
Currently, I'm playing a "Redemption Story" PC based on Les Mis' Jean Valjean.
She was shown mercy by a group of Clerics of Ilmater. When those kind clerics were viciously attacked and killed... she was left in a state of moral crisis -- wanting to do right by the clerics but not sure how. So, I have a very jaded; somewhat anti-social; criminal-background... Paladin. Oath of Vengeance simply because she is so hyperfocused right now on simply getting "justice" for the fallen clerics.
An oathbreaker paladin who broke his evil oath for redemption.
A neutral assassin who takes money for kills, but chooses his contracts carefully - declining overly evil or chaotic contacts.
A shadow monk whose abilities have simply developed this way.
A neutral necromancer who sees corpses as tools that can be used to further their goals rather than as a person. Or something like the Adams family where the ancestors are protecting them in their eyes.
Oath of vengeance could just be batman.
In my game I had only angels be able to resurrect and grant immortality, but the mortals tried to unlock this abilty which produced necromancy, which made the magic holy. Of course most people saw it as an abomination, but the neceomancers were just trying to stop death
Warlock's to me are not all Dark Hero types. Though most get painted that way. One concept that has been on my mind for playing that I haven't had the chance is actually a Fey Pact Warlock. The Desire of the Arch-Fey Patron is just to be able to reach the Material plane and have an effect there. while that's not necessarily a good thing it's not necessarily a bad thing either. Then adding onto it the Moon Bow and perhaps something like Aspect of the Moon Invocations. Searching out ways to create passage for such a primal and powerful being in exchange for power doesn't have to be evil or Dark. Even if some might say it might not necessarily end in the happiest of ways.
Heroic necromancer, that's literally Abhorsen, by Garth Nix. But the Abhorsen was very anti raise dead.
I’m playing in a game filled with dark heroes. We have an exiled orc, an ex bandit, the token good guy (who up until recently was useless), a drunk king of a fallen nation, a monk who I orphaned, and a necromancer/ mad scientist. In general everyone gets along, no one likes the monk (who up until becoming a vampire was “LG” though that’s questionable)
Hey Dave, slightly before the twelve minute mark you said, "how often do you see heroic necromancers in novels?". Well my good sir, i recommend that you go read the book "Hold Me Closer Necromancer". It is a FanTastic Novel about a teen who finds out that he has some "strange" powers. Best portrayal of a goodly aligned necromancer that I've honestly ever seen.
Devan Hanks there's also miss Peregrine's home for peculiar children, one of the kids is a necromancer and even though he starts of a bit creepy he is a good guy and uses his powers to fight the bad guys
One of the better classes to play to get a "good" necromancer is taking a Theurgy Wizard with the Death Domain Cleric and NOT raising undeads. That way you can use your high-damage necromancy spells without being forced to be using undead minions.
I'm a new player but in my eyes there is no "good hero" in D&D.
In most cases you kill the enemy. Yes, it's self defense because they attack first but we still kill them outright.
We rarely let anyone alive, and when we let someone alive to interrogate, we kill them after that.
The question should be: Do good heroes belong to D&D.
yes! I'd like to see this video. most players seem to dislike the LG characters (especially paladins) because it limits options. how do you play a LG character in a way that is fun for the player and the group as a whole?
@@linus4d1 I play a Dragonborn Paladin (Black Dragon Type) who is a little bit slow in the head and has anger issues.
After a session of Curse of Strahd he made a pact with Tiamat to escape Barovia. But the fog messed him even more up in the head
Now he talks like Anton Chigurh form No Country for Old Men with any NPC he meets even the one he has a positive opinion.
The party have always to keep an eye on him so he doesn't start to murder everyone he find annoying.
ive had a character who was an evil warlock because his patron demanded he be evil but he confessed to the parties cleric who he was and why was a warlock and said whenever you see him doing something evil and cruel to knock him out or stop him and my character would only pretend to resist so he wouldn't have to disobey his patron but still didn't kill anyone
I had a cleric/assassin of Anubis. My part of the campaign was real dark. There were good characters in the party, so my character did a lo t of things behind the scenes. By one of my killings, I accidently got the party leader wanted for murder.
I'm looking to run an Oath of Treachery paladin from the arcana unearthed series. The idea being that while this person is pretty much amoral when it comes to their personal ethics, they're just really attached to their adventuring companions - wanting them to achieve their desires and seeking their approval. Sometimes they stray into the seriously morally compromised to help party members reach their goals without their knowledge or approval.
I like the idea of a well meaning necromancer, he is really nice and doesn't understand why people suddenly freak out when they see his work
The theory i was given when i asked some1 about necromancers (granted i asked them about it for 3.5 not 5e) was that the souls of the dead that u raise are instead of being sent to there Deity are sent to "The Wall" or "The Void" where the Deity's get the material to make new souls. Currently i am trying to make a 3.5 game that has the Necromancer as a queen of a kingdom and ruled with the idea that mindless undead are an untapped resource and when guided can be made to till the fields and save the commoners from having to suffer and allows the kingdom to do more with less land bc they have more manpower to cover it. There's also a secret to the kingdom that i dont wanna put here that on the off chance one of the players see it and destroys a plot line im trying to make. But over all the common rule at the table for my groups is that animate dead used on some1 who was evil isn't an evil spell bc then there soul would go to an evil god, but if u have some1 in the party that dies and doesn't wanna be animated and u do it anyways then it is treated as an evil action tho not always making you evil from just that if lets say its a situation that if you did not do that you would die so you did it to survive. Altho i did buy an NPC (who sold themselves not being sold as a slave) to animate as a dread warrior when they died but that was at the end of a game and never came up as to being evil or not but that could be a fun topic.
the whole last bit, about the Oath of Vengence? I've played that. only, he's kinda sorta dead inside. death doesn't mean anything but an end for a person. killing someone who is hurting someone else is his first instinct now, instead of a last resort. Its caused problems in the past, like challenging a bunch of back alley thugs and brutally ripped them to shreds because they were intimidating a woman who they had cornered alone. to be fair, he stabbed the first one, and let them know their death was imminent, but still. he only did it because it was the fair thing to do, not be he personally wanted to give them a warning. what he WANTED was to kill them, because quite frankly, if they weren't smart enough to figure out they were about to die and were obviously not repentant, then its what they deserved; even then, it wouldn't have been a problem if he hadn't of used magic to force the last guy to attack him when he obviously wanted to run away.
anyway, he's been pretty much on the front lines of a war that only exists for the party. he never wanted to fight it, and in fact switched parties because he was bound to protect the new parties sorcerer by geas magics when she essentially saved his life from a hella diabolical poison that he just couldn't save his way out of. basically was tricked into tying his soul to hers so that they shared con scores, which let him use her con saves and spend her con instead of his own when he was down to like, 2 left of his own. as it was, took us both weeks to get better, but in the process she basically cursed him with the inability to let himself die. He is now suicidal and unable to let himself die, but tries anyway by throwing himself against the biggest and meanest villians he can find, not caring if he falls, but unable to stop himself from fighting his way back out of anything.
Over the years, he has thrown himself into a volcano to save someone else he didn't know, barely managing to haul himself out of a lava flow and claw his way out, leapt from the side of a 600 ft cliff to clip the wings of a dragon that was going to kill the party, riding it into the ground in a blaze of glory... then crawled away before passing out; ran through a valley made of some sort of glass that tore at him while crystaline phaze spiders with razor sharp legs kicked and scrabbled around him, trying to buy time for the party to escape because we were boned, and then survived in a crevase for the night in freezing tempuratures while fending off the rest of the spiders, until the party came back for him the next day. (the sorcerer knew he wasn't dead, cause still sharing Con stats). each time he always had just the right thing to let him survive, and each time he fails to die heroicly he gets a little more darker. the last time it happened was when he thrust himself into the midst of combat with an army of deamons led by an uncontrolled and unleashed balor over the harbour of baldurs gate, trying to call the focus of as many of these deamons as possible so that the dock workers and city dwellers had time to flee or at least barracade themselves in whereever they were, and give themselves a fighting chance.
I mean, that last one was kind of the parties fault... that one still eats at him.
it involved catching an old party member (of his, from the first group, that apparently got almost entirely wiped out while killing off an assassins guild shortly after he was basically kidnapped by geas magic) who he had been seeing; in fact, it was her that told him to go, because she had shit to do that my character wasn't going to like, and we would meet back up afterwards. well, that never happened. years (and I mean YEARS) passed, and she thought I was dead. anyway, she killed off the assassins guild with the help of an associate wizard of hers (who had cause to hate the party of people I was currently with) and basically between them became the leaders of the most successful thieves guild and merchant house in the country. not that the two were known to be associated, but still. anyway, we finally get back to her, after being stuck walking the planes for way too long, and she runs. her associate, (now her lover in the story) doesn't like us doing what he views as pulling her away from him (my char had been with her before, if I haven't mentioned that before) so after we catch her in a forcecage (she is one HELL of a thief, you have to go to the extreme to catch her) to get a word in edgewise, we find out she's pissed that I've survived this long and NOT come back. also that she's learned that I'm a paladin now (I was a bard/thief when we parted ways) and she thinks i'm back now just to stop her (that associate of hers, selectively scrying and putting the images in her brain, I suspect with modify memory to change the smallest details to damn my character)
Then a Balor is gated in above us. hell of a distraction, summoned by the associate, while he gates her out and replaces her with some sort of slime monster (arcane gate, I think, from his nearby lair).
So yea. Kinda my fault. a lot of people died in a city that, years ago, I had very painstakingly avoided starting a war in so that people didn't just die that like for someone elses fight. that actually is what woke my character up and made him start trying again. since then he's got the girl back, but the wizard associate is in the wind. He's probably still watching her, I know he sometimes casts magics on her when we're not looking somehow. she's not telling either, but my character has an insight of +15 a perception that is just as high (in fact, his passive perception is 32 I think, so I don't miss much there.) anyway, its kinda complicated at this point, and the politics of it all are all over the place, but i'm pretty sure she's still head of the thieves guild, which is ok so long as she is following the 'rules' and her guild isn't breaking them either... at least for now. I don't care if they're stealing money and making bank hand over fist, I just care if they step over the line and people are suffering for it. and they've always made a point of looking after the little guys, making sure they have a solid power base amongst the people, which is fine by me.
Actually there are 2 fantasy book series i thought about when i watched this video. 1st one is Glen Cook - Black Company. 2nd one written by Nik Perumov - Keeper of the Swords. Glen Cook wrote about band of mercenaries with a lot of dark humor :). Nik Perumov wrote story about necromancer that tried to fought against greater evil.
We actually have a Necromancer in our current party of heroes. And the way he's being played its that he generally only raises the corpses of evil doers and by raising these evil people and forcing them to act as his minions and fight for good, he is punishing them for their evil deeds.
I think a lot of people misinterpret what the Oath of Vengeance means/represents. In the group I play with, my character is an Oath of Vengeance Paladin, but he's a Paladin first and his oath second. When we were playing through the 5e starter set, most of the Goblins/Goblinoids we encountered were simply taken into custody and shipped to Neverwinter to be brought to Justice. He always tries to seek a non-violent end to confrontations, but has little conscience in dealing with truly evil beings.
We recently encountered a group of Gnolls. No quarter was offered, and none were spared as in 5th Gnolls are all irredeemably Chaotic Evil. The other party members were surprised when I said we needed to burn the bodies and take the heads as trophies.
Made a lawful evil knight who was always nice and kind to others and was loyal to his kingdom to a near fault, he just had one tiney little problem. He really hated people who threatened the citizenry and really adored violent destruction of evil. Sure it was just evil he fought but he reveled in killing off threats to there last. Kinda seen as a complete monster to woodland monster races that he more or less genocided. Yet no one complained. Its good to be a knight beloved by the populace as you wipe goblin child blood off your armor. XD
There was a kit in the Necromancer handbook for 2nd edition that was good and he had to be good by alignment (maybe even Lawful good) and he knew necromancy so he could fight the undead.
I'm not very tempted to play an anti-hero but this was one of my favorite discussions you guys have had in a while makes me really tempted to play a warlock in Tomb of annihilation brand new to the games and I only got to play maybe three sessions before I had to jump into the DM roll
I love the idea of a non-evil necromancer, maybe neutral good or true neutral. But basically they are like a spirit shaman or voodoo priest that ties spirits to bodies, especially spirits that want to live for a while or good spirits that want to help good heroes. So essentially instead of forcing spirits to a body they try to convince a spirit and if they need to force the spirits to win a battle they feel awful and use speak with dead to apologize and thank the spirits
Ive had this idea on the back burner for a while now, a lawful good necromancer. To sumerize; they just don't have morals. "No magic is evil, only those who use it for evil" And while they are polite enough to not have zombies in town, they wont hesitate to use necromancy. Genuinely nice person but completely hopeless when (usually paladins and clerics) try to explain that raising the dead is "wrong".
I have a backstory written too, but ill leave that for when I get to play them!
The necromancers in the Old Kingdom Series are heroic figures, but I see them as falling more in line of a Grave Domain Clerics
There's a Diablo II novel where the protagonist is a Necromancer named Zeal. The story includes a leachface undead cult, demons, and even a cloaker
A necromancer could be a redemption story you delve into the dark arts to become powerful enough to defeat an evil lord and will only animate people who served him willingly whom you have killed. Making them work in their death to right the wrongs of their life. You use the spells and negative energy to destroy his servants and won't put the people you are protecting at risk.
Death Cleric and Necromancer could be played like a "medium". You could be like that dude on TV who sees everyone's dead relatives. Ask people dumb questions like"what does the number 22 mean to you" or say things like "I am hearing a name, Do you anyone with the letter e in their name. Yeah there here and they want you to know they are safe". "Please remember to donate the church fund"!
Imho it depends on the setting. In a nobledark or grimdark setting like Warhammer Fantasy? Sure, the word demands from people to be assholes to survive. In a noble bright setting? Not so much.
About warlock - fighter/celestial warlock makes a great "paladin"
chronicles of the necromancer, a book series where the main character is a good aligned necromancer. calling ghosts to help instead of animated corpses
Friend of mine had a nuetral good necromancer in Curse of Strahd and had the funniest philosophy about raising the dead."It's just a Barovia thing guys I swear when we get back to Faerun I'll let it go!" funny ass shit!
I was once DM for a homebrew setting where the characters were servants of a True Neutral Cosmic Entity that was a shadowy figure with a black goat head who tasked mortals with collecting the souls of the wicked. I called it Schattenzieg. His realm exists outside of time and space and he has been called many names throughout history: Baphomet, Pan, Azrael, Satan, The Black Goat of the Woods, Krampus, The Reaper, and more. Schattenzieg sent the party to stop Humpty Dumpty from exacting the Salem Witch Trials. This just set the whole party up to be antiheroes. One character was a warlock (Any patron would have worked for Schattenzieg) of Schattenzieg. This warlock befriended an invisible black baby goat sent by Schattenzieg to guide the party. At one point he knocked a guy down and the invisible goat sat on the prone man. Without skipping a beat this warlock leaned in and said "You feel that? That is the wait of your sins." This character was basically a man who knew he was wicked but vowed to fight for Schattenzieg until there was no wicked men left to kill at which point he would take his own life. Another character was Lizzie Borden who was ripped from her time by Schattenzieg.
13:45 this reminded me of Greg the Grim Reaper from Conker's Bad Fur Day: he hates undead, more than he hates cats!
Wee Jas is a LN goddess of death worshiped by necromancers and is a good way to play a necromancer that can function in a good-neutral party.
It should be pointed out that not all Warlock patrons are evil or creepy. Some Fey , for instance, are good . In UA there's the Undying Light patron ( e.g. the Positive Energy Plane.).
Personally I feel like it's completely ok for player characters to be antiheroes. In fact given the choice I'll play an antihero before a hero any day. In fact I'd say a large percentage of D&D player characters would classify closer to antiheroes.
Necromancer could just be a Spiritual Shaman who calls the spirits of his ancestors to aid him in battle by reviving their bodies, minds and spirits
When it comes to necromancy a good example of a neutral necromancer who attempts to do good is the main character in the book moon of the spider. It's is set in the diablo universe and explains how in that setting necromancers attempt to keep the scales balanced between life and death so they are just as likely to raise the dead to fight for them as they are to put souls to rest.
While I was watching this I thought about making npc bartender being dwarf, a paladin of vengeance and Mathew Mercer's gunslinger I think it would be cool do as this x monster hunter kinda class a bit a van helsing vibe
As long as you're not detracting from the group, I think players should be free to make whatever they like :)
Even chaotic evil is doable as long as you work it out with your fellow players and your DM
I'd actually would say, base on the PHB Descriptions, the Lawful Evil would be the most easiest to do as their description is extremely similar to that as a Lawful Neutral. Even "Hired Assassin" Rogue Assassins would be able to easily "fit in" as they could simply have their "Contracts" happen during downtime (if need be), or between Sessions, etc. Heck, coincidentally, one of their Contracts could be for a person that happens to work for whomever the current Villain would be for their Campaign.
I had fun playing my CE character, she did whatever she felt like doing at the time ^.^ We worked it out so the party Wizard would make sure my character had an outlet for her destructive tendencies, or plenty of booze when we needed to lay low ^.^
On the anti hero part of things I think that they absolutely belong in D&D and are important for adding nuance and perspective to the game. Don't be a lime light hog, be a team player, your schemes will never come to fruition if you meet with an untimely demise because you ran afoul of someone you were working with who has a narrower view of the world. Villains are the heroes who lived long enough to experience loss, or become disillusioned with the world. Heroes tend to have a naïve view of the world. They think they're the good guys in their story even though they are easily the villain of some one else's. Really the difference between a hero and a villain can be as thin a line as rich or poor and the proper application of desperation.
I wanted to play a Vampire Hunter. But the closest was a Ranger with Undead as a favoured enemy. So instead of people seeing a dark archetype people will see instead Robin Hood because of how the ranger is perceived.
In dealing with the idea of playing a good necromancer, many of the discussed ideas were a good start (using speak with dead or helping souls move on). But while raising the dead is normally considered evil, what if a town is going to be overrun or is being attacked by a warband of some type? Perhaps raising some of the village's dead is the best way to save the village... calling their souls back to defend their home one final time. Or finding a travelling band that have been killed by bandits and raising the bodies to kill the bandits, thereby achieving vengeance for the unjustly killed? Perhaps under the right circumstances a normally evil act could be considered good... or at least that's what the necromancer tells himself. :>
Good guy necromancer idea: Faust VIII from Shaman King, who only became a necromancer initially to revive his dead wife.
One idea I liked for good necromancer was swapping the need of corpses for wicker men or stick effegees. To make a zombie you need a scarecrow, this would take time and money, for a skeleton a stick effegee maby with some rope or face markings once again taking time. As for the abilities some can be changed target wise such as dominate dead working only on constructs or allowing the easier creation of one
I know this video is old but I play a neutral evil death domain cleric who seeks to keep a balance between life and death to prevent a massive exitintion by excess of death or excess of life, she makes sure things dies when it is planed to then to die, nor before nor after, she gives a peaceful death to the ones who embrace it but horrible one to who reject or avoid death, she rises dead from a group she is hunting to help in the hunt and bring dread to them, she hates and seeks to destroy sentient undead because they eluded death grasp, non sentient ones are just reanimated bodies the sentient ones still have their soul, she workship a god of death nerull but we homebrew him to have this sort of philosophy and emphasize the fact that evil can be something misunderstood with doing what it is needed, she gives a proper burial to anything she kills and have some chants and ritual to help their souls rest and get to the reincarnation cycle, she actually has a downtime job helping the local clerics to maintain the graveyard and give peace and ease the pain of the dying.