Mean Girls, Part 2/3
Paladin may be capital-G Good, but I still wouldn’t want to adventure with the guy. As we established way back in this one, our gold-plated aasimar is the Lawful Stupid alignment. It seems that applies to interpersonal relationships as well as adventuring.
It’s become something of a cliché in recent years, but I’d like to add to the dogpile of popular opinion: the phrase “it’s what my character would do” is no excuse for breaking Wheaton’s Law. If there’s no way your dude would ever consent to party up with the morally gray adventurers of the multiverse, maybe you should reconsider your life choices. That’s because “what my character would do” is infinitely less important than “what’s fun for the group.” Like we said in Mean Girls, Part 1/3, there are any number of ways to justify a paladin/necromancer team-up. The same goes for barbarian/wizard issues (“Thrud hate magic!”) and rogue/people who own things problems (“Ima steal your stuff. Get used to it.”). If everybody else has to change to accommodate your creative vision, you’re not staying true to the character or somehow preserving the integrity of the fiction. You’re being selfish.
Now that said, I can hear the army of counterexamples charging for my castle gates. Why should the paladins of the world have to change? They’ve got codes and oaths to uphold! And to that I say, “Good call.” This mess is a two-way street, and it should never fall solely on one dude’s shoulders to make the change.
Remember when I mentioned on Monday’s comic that I’m dealing with exactly this issue? Well full disclosure: It wound up being a moot point thanks to scheduling problems for my paladin friend. However, the solution we both favored was a compromise. My necromancer would have given up the explicitly evil animate dead spell while the paladin agreed to turn a blind eye to the questionably evil necromantic servant ability. Both characters bent a little, and neither one broke because of it.
As for the short-lived relationship between Paladin and Necromancer, it looks like failure to compromise will have consequences. What manner of consequences?
Just you wait and see.
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Ugh, this comic makes me unhappy just because it seems to be playing into all the worst stereotypes of a Paladin-player. I think I’ve ranted about this before, but whatever happened to goodly characteristics such as mercy, empathy, understanding, compassion, & justice? I realize that the Paladin class gives you more starting background than something like a Rogue or Fighter, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still build a multi-facted, nuanced character. There should be more options on your dial than just “kill it with holy-fire!” and “preachy lecture”.
I do like the “You’re being selfish” bit in your rant, which brings me to Necromancy. I feel like players may not give it enough special consideration, in that they treat it just like any other branch of magic while it’s really not. I’m on board with it not being designated “always evil”, any more than a fireball is evil- it’s a tool, if an exceedingly dangerous one. But messing around with corpses is icky, and should be treated as such.
Have you ever seen a dead body? The only time I have was at a funeral, and there was still something vaguely unsettling about a recently-deceased, well-preserved corpse. The half-rotting depictions that you see it most media should induce a reaction like any other movie-monster, i.e., terror, maybe mixed with disgust. The smell alone would likely compel saves to avoid being overcome with nausea. Getting other people to “OK” your necromancy should, in the majority of cases IMO, be like trying to get people on board with some really socially-unacceptable sexual fetish. It’s an uphill battle because people are going to start off being skeeved out (or worse) and almost nothing you can say is going to improve their opinion of you.
But in most parties, if you’re NOT a Paladin or Cleric, people tend to like “eh, live and let live” when that sort of response would really be pretty far outside the norm. You can see my roleplayer shining through here- most systems have some version of “always evil” or “uses evil magic” attached to their Necromancers, but very few seem to delve into the why beyond “because the gods said so” or where necromancy’s place would be in a standard society and I feel like that’s a missed opportunity. Or if your society (setting) is NOT standard, then you might have to turn things around and explore where the Paladin would stand in such a game, where they got the “necromancy bad” part of the creed, and maybe make THEM the social outcast instead.
Well, first of all, props to you for having a personality on top of being a Paladin – most of them I’ve met/heard about sadly lack that quality.
Other than that, in Golarion at least (and I imagine in most settings), Necromancy is evil for mainly one thing – disturbing the dead for selfish reasons. Sadly, in Pathfinder that is something you have to bend around if you want to play a non-evil Necromancer who animates dead.
However, I personally don’t see why an animated corpse would be a bad thing otherwise. Sure, you get the peasant rabble crying out because they’re ignorant, thinking of it as some sort of curse or misfortune – when in reality it’s just manipulating a construct of organic matter with magic (assuming you’ve bent around the abusing-souls lore). If you used Telekinesis to do it, the masses would think the same.
And yes, by modern-day standards, we have a certain respect for the deceased and their remains. Do you see that in Golarion and similar worlds? Perhaps when talking about their loved ones, but otherwise not so much. It’s not uncommon to have bandit/pirate/goblin corpses displayed on pikes or hanged publicly and left to rot. Many communities even appreciate the showmanship of death and execution. Would they, thinking about it logically, be opposed to using those corpses to literally drive other bandits/pirates/goblins away by using them as weapons? Because that’s what they are – animated weapons made of corpses. And even if they’re not okay with any of this, why does that matter, exactly? Good and Evil is not a “what-do-the-dumb-masses-think” sort of thing, it’s a literal side you take that has a visible effect on you. I personally don’t care about whether a random farmer throws tomatoes at me because he thinks I’m some evil aspiring undead-ruling overlord that has a soul torture fetish. I want an option to pursue Necromancy without it being inherently hurtful or evil, so the Paladin doesn’t have a reason to smite me down.
And about the disgust/rotting/health concerns – is it unheard of that a high-level Wizard would be able to keep his tools clean and preserved from rotting? I’ve seen this argument before, but it’s a bit closed-minded in my opinion. You’re sticking to the classic evil-necromancer stereotypes, but the point is Necromancers that stray away from that concept. Why isn’t Necromancy just a branch of magic like the others? Animating corpses doesn’t have to be icky if you don’t make it. And on that topic, why would them being “icky” even translate to Evil? Do you know what else is icky? Alchemists mutilating their own bodies and sprouting tentacles, Barbarians roaming around with most-likely unclean weapons and armor covered in disease, Bards that have courted every girl in every town they’ve passed through. takes breath. Hermit Druids that have never been part of society and walk around with fleas, don’t even get me started on Shifters or Ratfolk, or for that matter any adventurer that has recently been through a sewer.
Very true, and who’s to say that the necromancer wouldn’t ‘care for his tools’? There’s probably some necromancers who embalm their zombies to help dampen their stench and preserve them, then gives out a proper burial once he’s done with them. Hell, some necromancers might even try to find the person’s family. You never know what might happen.
An Egyptian themed necromancer that acts subservient to his creations could be a lot of fun. Perhaps the spirit of Pharaoh Het-het is the force that keeps reanimating new corpses, and the “lowly priest” necromancer treats them with reverence.
“I must preserve the new vessel of my master’s spirit! Hand me the Febreze bottle. No, the gallon one!”
I was thinking he more or less thinks all bodies,whether or not their host was good or bad, deserve a proper burial once he’s done with them, and uses old techniques (i.e. embalming) to preserve them so they don’t spoil as fast before he’s done using them. Still, your idea has something going… 🙂
I -like this idea.
I’m gonna -use- this idea.
Ima run a quick copy + paste from a comment I wrote in the last comic:
In other words, you can invent ways to work around the smell and the public outcry and the inherently evil stuff. But for me, the real concern is whether bending the setting to that extent breaks the fiction for the other guys at the table. It’s not just about coming up with a plausible reason. It’s about coming up with a plausible reason that everyone else can buy into. Socially acceptable necromancy can work in a setting, but can it work in your setting and with your fellow players? That’s a lot harder to deal with. As you and Deepbluediver so ably demonstrate, there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue, but I’m willing to bet the two of you could come up with a way to enjoy a paladin/necromancer duo at the same table.
For my money, I like the white necromancer from Kobold Press quite a bit for this purpose. If you want a well-thought-out method to include good necromancy in your games, cannibalizing some of those mechanics for other classes or adopting them wholesale is a solid option.
I don’t object to having a setting with socially acceptable necromancy, I just want that to be baked into the world from the start. In fact I’d love to see what someone does with that; maybe using necromantic minions as cheap labor to push the setting out of the standard medieval knights-and-wizards theme into a psuedo-steampunk-fantasy setting, kind of like the Tippyverse scenario.
But if your reaction is something along the lines of “oh yeah Necromancy is totally dark and evil and spooky but no one else complains so neither should the Paladin”, that’s being a tad inconsistent for my taste. The only reason you even need a “white necromancer” is because it seems like no one at WotC ever thought about any necromancy that wasn’t grim-dark/cackling-laughter evil in the first place.
Check out Geb in Golarion:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Geb
It’s still evil, but at least it’s creative.
How your players and NPCs approach anything is in large part determined by the setting you create for them, yes. But then you also have to actually explain what assumptions you are making and what, if any, effects it had on the world at large.
Unless you explicitly state that you are gaming in a different-type setting, then most people will expect your fantasy world to conform to the world as they know it. And in my experience a world that’s “99% the same except for this one thing that’s radically different” tends to strain player’s credulity more than a world that’s 99% different. People find themselves asking “how is everything the same except for this one thing that had no setting-altering effects”, whereas they tend to be more accepting when EVERYTHING is different because NONE of their basic assumptions hold true.
In D&D, you usually get standard medieval fantasy setting 7-alpha, with a few inviolable rules stated in the text and very little supporting evidence of why things are supposed to be that way. In some ways it almost seems custom-designed to engender inter-player conflict, and that’s what I don’t like.
Regarding the Undead: I feel like, at best, the undead should hit that uncanny-valley level that you get in videogames where something walks like a human and talks like a human, but is very VERY clearly not human, which in turn unnerves people. (racial bonus to intimidate, penalty to diplomacy?)
But anyway, most undead in media aren’t portrayed at their best, and most players don’t bother to roleplay things out like you described (in my experience). If that’s the way Necromancy works in your setting, then it probably wouldn’t have the reputation that it does that makes it “evil” (and causes inter-party conflicts).
So if it doesn’t have that reputation, then there shouldn’t be a problem. And if something has else has conspired to grant it that reputation, then you should figure out how that fits together into your world. The fact that someone can play an exception to the rule doesn’t seem like it would instantly invalidate everyone else’s preconceptions about them. But that’s just my 2cp.
That’s totally fair. I think that, in this interaction, the player that’s looking to change the setting should have some humility: “Hey guys, I was hoping to play this character concept. I know it messes with the setting a little, but I was hoping you could work with me on it.” If that change does indeed screw up the game world for everybody else, I think that player should be OK with a, “Sorry man. I don’t think that works for us.” In cases where it’s one player who thinks necromancy is all evil all the, one player who wants to make it work, and no other strong opinions, I think the setting can be useful as a sort of tie-breaker vote: “Lore says that necromancy is capital-E Evil here. Sorry man. Shelve it until we can start a homebrew campaign.”
If you’ll forgive a little good-natured sarcasm: “The Handbook of Heroes would never play into stereotypes! Our stable of highly original characters like Paladin, Ranger, and Fighter feature deep, multi-dimensional personalities that are in no way designed to reflect specific player types.”
*starts furiously writing more Necromancer scripts*
Those weirdly unrealistic reactions always confuse me. I mean, remember that one time my character threw up after seeing the aftermath of a Reaver attack? That seems like a more sensible depiction than the typically hard boiled, “I ignore the smell and train my light on the shadows.” I think players do this as an ease-of-play thing. Over time, it begins to feel like creepy magic is socially acceptable, just because you want your sessions to be about more than townspeople freaking out. I think this one’s on the player for the greater part: If you’re going to do creepy death magic, you should expect to be unpopular. But if it’s important for the GM to retain that “sensible NPC reaction,” then those consequences have to be real.
I feel like some parts of the game are left intentionally vague so that individual GMs and players can color in missing pieces themselves. For example, your suggestion of a non-standard setting where paladins are something like anti-magic Luddites for rejecting necromancy sounds awesome. That’s too specific to print in a source book, but the vagueness gave rise to a really cool setting idea on your part. That seems like “working as intended” in my book.
Regarding stereotypes: the fact that I’m unhappy shouldn’t be taken as a criticism. If anything, the fact that I’m emotionally invested in the comic is a sign of good writing.
Regarding dead bodies: you could make the argument that the party, being adventurers, are more inoculated against weird, creepy (dead) stuff and less likely to take offense at necromancy. Also less likely to take offense at all the OTHER dangerous magic and murder-hobo-ism your standard party brings to the table. But it seems to me as if no one who isn’t a divine spellcaster EVER objects, and all divine casters are required to object. It’s like there’s no middle ground!
Regarding settings: Here’s the thing though- if your Paladins are always good and your Necromancers are always evil, THAT IS ALREADY SETTING-BUILDING!
One of my biggest complaints about 3.5 and D&D in general is its inconsistency. It’s like they declared certain things to be evil and other to be good, and then the first time someone asked “why?”, D&D threw up it’s hands and shouted “figure it out for yourself!” I feel like you should either build the setting or not build the setting, but don’t try to do it half-way.
re: reaction to corpse. that is what the Dead Template is for:
https://koboldpress.com/friday-funny-the-dead-template/
That is awesome and I love it.
…And he’s not wearing the “Zombies were people too” button!
Sorry Necromancer, I know it’s a natural urge to try and change those “Good boys”, but it’s just not meant to be.
Also: Sorcerer is alive!? So much for being short on staffing and needing a replacement.
Wait… When did Sorcerer die?
When he appeared to be conspicuously absent from almost every single strip featuring the rest of the Anti-party, would be my guess.
Well shit.
*starts furiously writing Sorcerer scripts*
Ge didn’t, it’s just that his last appearance was in August.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/wild-magic
We’ve discussed this before. Apparently Most of the time the single panel format means a full anti-party would be too much real-estate, so since Sorcerer has a boring design Laurel draws the rest.
I need to start a spreadsheet to track character appearances. August is too damn long ago, especially for such a popular class.
Hey, Wizards has only just recently started looking in the direction of the Warlord as a mere subclass, and 5E released in 2014.
If they can delay putting off a mechanically interesting and flavor-distinct class, then you can put off using the “Like a Wizard but…” class.
Now that I think about it, is that the reason why Inquisitor’s party is only 3 PC strong? So that they can all be used in the same panel without making it too crowded?
Ima be honest: They’re three members strong so that gender-swapped Fighter could join them in the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comics over on the Patreon. The manageable party size on this side of the pay wall turned out to be an added bonus.
I believe died back in the desert (low FORT save due to wimpy CON).
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/key-item
Fortunately, death is cheap and his grandmother pulled some strings to get him back.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/family-ties
Once again, I am reminded that I need to run some kind of contest where you guys can put multiple panels together to form a new story.
Which always struck me as odd. Shouldn’t the person who channels the innate magical power coursing through their bodies be a Constitution Caster? Them casting with their charming personalities is just goofy.
From a design perspective I get it. It would make Sorcerers more SAD than actual SAD characters to be Constitution casters, but from a flavor perspective them being Charisma casters is dumb.
It apparently came aboot because when Wizards was designing 3X they needed more uses for Charisma besides the party face now that you weren’t expected to amass an army of followers based on how charismatic you are and your level. They didn’t make the Bard a Fullcaster because 3X was the era of bad design. Instead their solution was to pull the Sorcerer.
If anyone tells you Sorcerers are “Iconic” explain to them that they were a hastily designed add-on to the worst edition.
Well, my two cents on Sorcerers and Charisma is that Charisma is a poorly defined stat to begin with. It starts as pure social presence according to the skill list, but somewhere around Use Magic Device and a couple of other odd mechanics in 3.x became a kind of “Soul” stat, thus influencing magic and other mechanics that it wasn’t really supposed to in the first place.
Bard kinda has too much other stuff going on to be a full caster. It’s got better Hit die and Skills, and a better BAB. The concept of a Bard in 3.X was grandfathered over from 2nd, where the Bard was a Thief/Fighter/Mage Crossclass. So the idea of a bard was a guy who can kinda fight, a guy who can kinda do the skills thing, and a guy who has a little bit of magic; who for some reason plays music. To me, the grand failure of the 3.x bard is that it is trying to be too many things.
Now, I will concede that Sorcerer just feels bad. The daily versatility it gets does not feel like it balances against the “I’ll come back tomorrow” versatility of the Wizard, especially with the rules for leaving prepared spell slots open and the number of magical items that allow Wizards to circumvent their weakness.
For an interesting look at a Constitution based caster, take a look at Pathfinder’s Kineticist. It is a Warlock-like class that brings a bit of strangeness and a lot of flavor to the concept.
The Bad Person Inside of Me wants to know what was it that pushed her over the edge – the “we don’t like your pets” bit, or the “we don’t like your personality” one. The Bad Person Inside of Me is a little wierd, but we make it work.
On a semi-related note the strip made me realized that I don’t recall ever seeing a PC cry. Which sort of makes sense, I guess, most tabletop rpgs are all about empowerement, and crying is usually the opposite of that. Still, it feels kind of odd – the characters will rage, scream, despair against the cruel, unfeeling word – but such a simple, basic expression of emotions seems more often than not to be beyond their grasp.
Huh. You make an interesting point. All of the visual culture associated with the hobby is empowering. The covers of the books promise heroic people doing heroic things, and vulnerability doesn’t usually enter into the equation. I can’t think of any of our characters crying before either. Well…not sincerely:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/drama
I guess it’s up in the air how much people want to deal with that sort of thing in a session. For example, my own necromancer was flung Samurai Jack style into the future. When he found out his poor old dad had died a pauper in the past, it was an emotional moment. The scene where I asked a fellow PC, “Do you ever think about your family? What became of them back in the past?” it was brushed off pretty quickly.
Player expectations, man. We all want to be heroes. Few of us want to be vulnerable.
If you want to see a PC cry, go watch Dice Camera Action. (The episodes first show up on Twitch, but they all get put on Youtube) Chris Perkins is fueled by PC tears.
I actually made a PC Guy in one of my Shadowrun Games i GM. It was a really well Evil Situation on my part as a DM. Well you see the Character is one of this Honor Code Bound Dudes, a Young Elf Mystic Adept. In on of the previous Runs he killed a Guard during a Fight with a Spell, but he forgot to erase his magic Signature.
On an unrelated Situation, he later found himself stranded on a Deserted Island, and was later “rescued” by an Evil Magic Organization, who covered the Tracks for him and tracked him down via Magic.
Now these Guys also took some Blood from him while he was their “Guest”, and they also happend to be the Johnsons of his next Shadowrun. A Shadowrun he couldn’t refuse because these Guys could blow him up with Ritual Magic any time they pleased.
So the Mission was to abduct a Daughter from her Family, but only after she awaked, which would happen soon. (These Guys were Heavy in Seeing the Future Stuff, Spells als inacurrate as these are.) Yeah it turned out this Girl was the Daughter of the Guard he killed in the earlier Run, which was only a few weeks past.
Upon having to watch this very very sad Family, he broke ito Tears, because of all his Guilt, but he couldn’t refuse the Job, because that would mean his Death. I really drove the pain in by describing as exactly as possible, and them pretty much having to watch them until, the Child awakens. As a DM it’s nice to have a few Moral Characters like that, aaaaaaaah how you can make the Suffer, it warms my Evil little Heart.
But wait it gets better! Apparently the Family had some huge Depts, but the Guard had recently taken a Big assignment (the Job where he got killed), which would pretty much cover that Debt. But now that he was killed,… the Yakuza knocked on the Door demanding their Money back a threatning the Guards Widow.
More Guilt—> Dude crys even more.
In the End, they killed the Yakuza abducte Team, and they abducted the Daughter themselves. In the End they wanted to know what happend to the Widow and her Second (younger) Daughter afterwards, so they did some digging after the Job. They found out the Yakuza got them Widow and the Second Daughter, and forced them into “Paying their Debt” via working in a Illegal Yakuza Bordello. (Yess the Child as well, these Guys are sick i know.)
Upon hearing that they contacted the Sisters of Mercy (An all Female ParaMilitary Gang, who tries to protect Woman and Children from abuse in the Barrens, they rountinly Attack Yakuza/Mafia Bordellos.) These Gals didn’t need much convincing, and after some Slaughter they torched the Bordello and freed all “Workers.”
Yeah thats how i drove a Moral PC to Tears, i don’t think he will ever forget. Mooks are also People, they also had lives before you mowed them down. Sorry for the long post.
I love paladins, but I very rarely get to play one (I’m normally roped into being the party’s toolkit character as a spellcaster or rogue). So the paladin I actually get to play is on a Roleplay server of World of Warcraft. The Paladin faith there, ‘The Light’, is all about connecting to others – since its a philosophy rather than an actual religion, there’s a bit of leeway.
In the D&D Paladin Code of Conduct, I sort of feel there’s a bit of a “loophole” where paladins can associate with Evil in the name of redeeming them, so that’s sort of what I wanted with my RP’d paladin. Not a judgemental sort – a holy warrior who wants to show that people can commit to Law and Good while still having a fantastic life. Being on the same side as demon-pacted Warlocks, vile reanimated Death Knights, corrupted Demon Hunters and Old God-calling Shadow Priests sort of puts a wall on zealotry.
But being the guy who can go: “I don’t approve of what you’re doing, but I’m willing to tolerate it for now in the name of greater good. Would you like to talk about it?” Still being friendly and charismatic, and taking his new “friends” abilities into account when planning adventures. Feels properly Paladin-y without being a Lawful Jerk.
It’s a lot easier to go adventuring in mixed [alignment] company when you look at what the evil character does rather than what they are. Shouting, “Fiend pact? Die evil-doer!” at the warlock rather than teaming up with her to destroy the dragon besieging the town is the sort of thing that gives paladin players a bad name. Good on ya for not being that guy.
By the same token though, supposedly chaotic neutral PCs that go around murder-hoboing for the lols is a lot harder to put up with when you’re rocking a pally.
I’d like to think that for some aspect of it, its realizing that no one else in my party swore a Paladin oath. So I can’t exactly hold them to Paladin standards.
You’ve got me curious now. How do you handle it when Thief goes thieving or Fighter goes murdering the innocent? Is your paladin morally obliged to step in?
Generally speaking, its convincing the Thief that he’d get richer having the Paladin pay him to “confiscate” the Warrior’s weapons until we go adventuring again then playing hide-and-seek the rest of the time.
Alternatively, giving them other things to do. Telling the thief he can steal from corrupt nobles or evil people we’ve scouted out together (as long as the Paladin gets a share to give to charity) – as for the bloodthirsty Warrior, there’s normally a fighting ring or a gang of killers at the docks. I just have to detect evil until I find them and set the Warrior loose.
A few towns of “helping them find the right targets” and they start doing it automatically. Though it helps if you’re the diplomatic sort. Peasants and innocents start seeing the Thief (who robs from the evil rich and suddenly the poor get some much needed help) and the Warrior (who comes into town and the crimerate plummets) as heroes and treating them accordingly. Then it becomes positively reinforced. Perhaps its a bit… sneaky for a paladin, but its proving effective.
^ This guy knows how to paladin. Doing the gods’ work right there.
Aw…
Yeah, honestly I feel like the classes should have caveats built in as examples of how to make this work for players and GMs who might struggle with such things.
Just taking it as-is, it’s like you make a thing and then say nobody can play with it unless they want a whole host of problems…
I get not having information overload, but as you point out above, this is not a lone issue with only these two classes.
Good call with the classes themselves having caveats. So often that sort of thing is buried in DMGs, but this is really a player issue. I think the problem may lie in treating players like an audience rather than active participants in creating the game. There’s maybe one article in ten that focuses on “how to be a good player” rather than “how to be a better GM.”
Fair point.
Thankfully for me, I play with several people who aren’t shy at all about calling me out for being a less than good player.
That’s what we need. DnD sessions for growing better players! 😛
Heh there could be support groups for power gamers and the like!
“Hi my name is Tom and I haven’t made an over-optimized character in three weeks.”
Hi Tom!
“My name is Kat, and I…I fell off the wagon last week. I just couldn’t help it when I realized Racial Heritage and Fast Learner could be used to make a Sorceress who gets both Extra Spells Known and a bonus to enchantment spell DCs as she levels… So I’m turning in my pin and starting over. Sigh“
Awww. The poor poor Girl. Stop making me feel sorry for her damn it! Somebodey please sick a Purity Legion Enforce on this Guy. Strip his damn his connection to the Holy Stuff away i say! Maybe then he will come to his Senses. Though i doubt it.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/n-r/purity-legion-enforcer/
lol. Laurel and I felt like such a jerkfaces knowing that this was coming when you commented that you shipped them. (Spoilers: I do too.)
Don’t worry, i enjoy it actually. When Art/Script/Books evoke Emotions in me I am always a bit happy, because it means, these things touched my Heart (as cheese as that sounds) a bit.
For example, there was one anime titled the Tower of Druaga. In the Second season i really liked the Character Henaro. (Spoiler:) When she got killed right before the end, when i TOTALLY didn’t expect it it was utterfly FURIOUS and sad, and didn’t watch the Last tow Episodes of the Anime for Two Weeks.
But later i realized, hey i got so angry about something Fictional? God Damn mustis this good because otherwise i would never have gotten so worked up about it. So in the End thanks! If the Tragedy, makes the Audience Sad/Angry, thats a Sign thats it’s well made. =)
Good taste in anime. Any time I can see D&D style dungeon crawling on the screen I’m a happy camper.
Thanks!
This is the reason why i always laugh when some one says he only play good alignment characters. They are a barrel of laughs because many people play legal-good in a way called Hypocrite-good. I then to play evil, or neutral at least, PC and when i make some nasty things i am honest and accept that i am a really horrible person and also my characters. Others just make the VERY SAME THINGS and call themselves good, rationalizing genocide, murder, arson and pillage on the name of GOOD. Paladin is doing the very same thing, if Necromancer is evil i can choose to force her to be good, if someone lets say Blackguard forces some one to be evil then he is a monster worth of destroy, and once dead look at this shiny new sword, and that couch, and the carpets. They would look awesome in my castel.
About the comic itself, are your sure that Paladin doesn’t have levels on rogue, because that is a huge 100D20 backstab whit all the dice naturals critics.
I always think about Magic: The Gathering when this stuff comes up. In particular I’m looking at the weaknesses of White as a philosophy:
https://mtg.gamepedia.com/White#Weaknesses
Yeah that is a thing i like about Magic: The Gathering, each color has good and bad things, white and black are not good and evil. D&D, pathfinder and others on the family are too simple with evil. if you are evil you are a backstabbing jerk. I play a lot of evil PC, i play neutral evil and intelligent evil, i don’t betray my fellow party members, very often a least, i don’t kill them, if i don’t have a way to resurrect them. I am the token evil teammate i help the party in sinister ways and all have fun. Sometime someones play in a way that my neutral evil PC and myself start laugting out loud because they are even more evil than me. Some of the best and more funny of the PC my party have played are the ones when they listen to me and let of worrying about morality. That kind of games are not for everyone, but they are funny with complex pc and a lot of good remenbers afterward. Good is not bad, but sometimes it’s the same good old thing of ever and ever.
I’m a fan of her joining Team Bounty Hunter. The motif is already there! Plus, there’s precedent…my inquisitor was suspicious for a while, but finally agreed to let the party witch put a scar on and make a wax image of him. There were disagreements until then, it was great fun.
What motif is that? Cleavage?
Well, if you equate women with cleavage, then yes, I suppose so.
I was going with the (mostly) non-base class women who are allowed moral ambiguity in their methods. Ranger is base class so it’s not perfect, but it’s still pretty solid.
Is the consequence going to be Paladin getting kicked off his own team?
Heck, maybe this isn’t a “get two opposing PC characters on the team” story-arc at all. Maybe it’s a “I’ve gotten bored of this class and am switching characters” story!
Kick Paladin off his own team? That sounds like an evil act to me!
*casts detect evil on Ramsus*
You detect: Thinks Alignments Are Roleplaying Training-wheels and Refuses to Have Any.
=P
Waited until Part 3 was up to respond. That’s because it touches on my answer: Depending on how you use ’em, alignments can be interesting world building tools rather than RP aides. The problem is that they’re so damn contentious that even this usage gets overshadowed by argumentative paladins.
Ugh. Alignments.
Lawful: You view actions with respect to how they affect society.
Chaotic: You view actions with respect to how they affect individuals.
The problem is Good and Evil. The exact same action can be considered good or evil based on the motivations for performing it. (How do you even define those motivations for a PC?) And Lawful and Chaotic view things from drastically different perspectives as well.
A Lawful Good person could view the actions of a Chaotic Good individual as Evil because of harm to society, regardless of benefit to any given individual. A Chaotic Good person could view the actions of a Lawful Good person as Evil because of harms to the individual, regardless of supposed benefits to the society.
For example, a Lawful person might consider slavery to be acceptable, while a Chaotic might view slavery as evil. How does a Lawful Good paladin that enforces the kingdom’s laws (which includes slavery) even work?
A warlord that conquers a kingdom of orcs might be viewed as good, while a warlord that conquered a kingdom of elves might be viewed as evil, even if the actual actions taken were exactly the same in both cases.
The tax collector is likely Lawful Evil. Does the paladin start smiting during tax season? An evil overlord could be exactly what’s necessary for a stable society. Does the paladin start a crusade against this “rightful authority”?
What does it even mean to be evil? Murder? Good alignment people kill all the time. Killing for money? See the bounty system. Theft? Viewed very differently between Lawful and Chaotic. Summoning an evil god? Sure, but now you just shifted the goalposts to defining what an evil god is. Madness and insanity? Shouldn’t even be on this chart at all; it’s an entirely separate axis.
The sum total of what’s defining Necromancer as evil is some note in the player’s handbook that says animating (but not raising) the dead is evil. But why is it evil? There is no answer. “Because.”
People fall back on Lawful Stupid paladins because when you really take a hard look at the system, there is no reasonable way to not be Lawful Stupid and still retain their existence as a paladin.
Figure out a better way to distinguish good from evil. I could write a very long essay on this.
(Another thought: Properly consecrated bodies should not be raisable by a necromancer. If the necromancer can get bodies, then the local church is not doing its job, and they are the incompetent/evil ones to sic the paladin on.)
I agree with your point on a necromancer just using any body they want. If you want some ‘tips'(I’ve never played a necromancer, these are just tips from a guy who played a Rakdos Cultist in D&D, long story, who had to re-learn morality) on how to safely find suitable bodies without pissing off fickle superstitious NPCs and PCS:
Strat 1: Ask Permission. Fairly straightforward. May need help from a fellow PC to help out, specifically a Cleric too vouch for you or someone with high CHA. If done right, you may gain access to bodies of criminals.
Strat 2: Ask thy spirit. Basically, find a ways to communicate with the spirit of the body you want to raise and ask for permission. If you can’t talk with the spirit, ask the family. Better yet, talk to the spirit AND their family. You could potentially give the family some closure! 🙂 (NOTE: DO NOT BIND THE SPIRIT TO THE BODY WITHOUT PERMISSION! THAT’S NUMBER 3!)
Strat 3: Reliving Glory. Basically a combination of the past two. Will probably be best with the body and spirit of a mighty warrior(talk to DM about making powerful undead, like a revenant that levels with the party.). Will need permission from town, family, and spirit to pull off, especially if spirit and body belong to that of a hero, but when done right, could allow the spirit to relive the glory days! Just be sure to release the spirit when the body dies or when it wants to leave, otherwise you’re an asshole.
And that’s my guide to moral ressurection! Just remember! If clerics do it, so can you! And if they say otherwise, remind them that they do basically the same thing!… in a kind way of course…
So Thematthew and I are debating if this Zombaby is the same one (leftmost) from when Necromancer first showed up. I think it’s a different one since it appears to be smaller and the coloration of the stitched areas are switched. He does not. We need an answer to this (false) life or (un)death question.
It is the same zombaby, but I think I messed up on the reference and switched the colors! The size change is intentional, I thought they were a bit too big compared to her in their first appearance.
Reading through all this discussion regarding Necromancy raised my curiosity, so I hopped onto d20pfsrd and used their Advanced Spell Search to check how many spells with the evil descriptor exist for each school across all sources. Necromancy obviously had the most (42/204), divination has Blood Transcription (drink a slain spellcaster’s blood to potentially get one of their spells known), but the most interesting to me was Enchantment.
Evil descriptor Enchantment spells? Zero out of 191.
Dominate Person, Malicious Spite, Bleed for Your Master, Unnatural Lust- nope, not evil.
Forcing your familiar/animal companion to take a hit for you or compelling someone to hate another person enough to slander, demean, financially injure, and/or kill- not evil.
It’s the only spell school without a single Evil spell in it. Every other school has their share (even if Necromancy has more than double the next highest). Kinda odd to me.
Also, to satisfy anyone else’s curiosity, here’s the totals for each school:
Abjuration- 8
Conjuation- 19
Divination- 2
Enchantment- 0
Evocation- 10
Illusion- 3
Necromancy- 42
Transmutation- 6
Good research! I know that Enchantment often comes up in these conversations, so it’s especially interesting to see that nothing in it is officially considered an evil act. I wonder if anyone over at Paizo has ever tried to go back and do this kind of descriptor tag research?
Haven’t found anything from Paizo directly, but I have noticed on the forums there the main arguments I’ve seen so far boil down to two main arguments.
1) It’s not evil because the book says so (i.e. no Evil descriptor).
2) It’s not evil because the spell can be used for non-Evil purposes whereas the simple act of creating undead is Evil because see 1.
Then there’s the Druid of the Circle of Spores From Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica, who… also runs on the ‘Death is Natural’ conceit though more from a ‘Death can lead to New Life’ angle. You know: ‘We die, become the grass, the elk eat the grass, we eat the elk’ and so on.
Dude… You need to roll up a leonin druid in that setting:
http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?name=+%5BLeonin%5D
Strain your vocal chords doing a James Earl Jones impression all campaign. It’ll be awesome!
If I were in her shoes, I’d march in there and give Paladin a piece of my mind. And a big ol’ slap.
Necromancers: experts in the art of the bad touch.
You know, I just noticed that Necromancer never fixed her makeup after this. She kept it this way.
:'(
Poor Necromancer.
To be completely fair, people who live in a world where zombies and skeletons are a thing and do not cremate their dead are really dumb.