Mummy Dust!

[*Embersworn]

Well, WoTC made some of the Necromancy spells into evil acts because they're either fueled by the Negative Plane or require pilfering the souls to make a better undead which is bad one way or another. At a first glance it does look like a logical change.

They did produce a few contradictions this way because their Manual of the Planes is still using the Great Wheel and Sigil so it has both the Dustmen faction present AND the Negative Plane being one of the building blocks of the multiverse but the editorial never was the strongest part of the 3.x editions.

But assigning an alignment any other than neutral to a non-sentient undead was possibly the biggest fumble since they're as much capable of any notion of good or evil as is any other kind of magical automaton. You don't have any stance or choice in such matter if your Int score is a big round 0, to begin with... :X

But those editions are full of contradictionary materials down to having difficulties in deciding which model of the multiverse they're using if you're going to play your campaigns by the book, so... *shrug*

[*Mezzy]

The Negative energy plane is not evil.

[*Embersworn]

No, it's not evil by any means. It's just an energy type.

But in 3.x the Negative Plane is described pretty much as an antithesis of everything that exists and lives so using it is equaled to pumping a radioactive waste into the Prime Material. So the spells based around it were re-classified as evil (but strangely, not all of them...).

But by the Great Wheel cosmology the Negative Plane is just a basic substance of the 'verse the same way other Inner Planes are and you can't really get rid of it any more than you can or should get rid of Fire or Water.

It's already present in everything on the Prime Material so it's not debalancing anything any more than hurling fireballs around is throwing the 'verse into the Fire Plane...


I don't think it was all written with much though given, really.

[*Bloodlines]

I would have to agree with Ariella that it all comes down to the descriptors of the spell but I also believe it depends on motivations. Necromancy is just a school of magic and the act of performing necromantic magic isn't evil. Druids for example have the spell Finger of Death, which is Necromancy but the descriptor is Death. Spells like Create Undead that summon and/or manifest undead creatures have the descriptor of Evil. This means that the spell is "powered" by evil, which is a thing of substance in the D&D multiverse. So, summoning an undead is indeed some dark stuff and would upset people, but is the character evil for it?

Given that this is Planescape, morality is always going to blur and be a bit unusual. We have angels and demons that hang out in the same bar, after all.

While my characters have their views on necromancy, my mindset as a DM in a PnP campaign would be a bit different. I would ask why the character is a necromancer or is performing spells with the Evil descriptor. For example, goodly aligned necromancers could be the type of necromancer that wants to know as much as they can about the undead in order to use that magic to destroy as much undead as they can. Evil necromancers learn the creation of undead to boost their personal power. It comes down to Selfishness vs Selflessness.

EDIT: Granted, and sorry if anyone missed this bit, there are of course certain magics that a goodly necromancer should NEVER do, like Ariella mentioned, such as messing with a person's soul or performing a spell that requires an evil ritual, like sacrificing an innocent or things like that. There are just spells out there that are too nasty to be justified. Conjuring up a skeleton or a corpse you find in the wilderness is one thing, but performing a ritualistic sacrifice of an innocent, even if to destroy a greater evil? It's pragmatic, but it's not a goodly act. Regardless of intent, it is an evil act. There are no "neutral" points in D&D. There are a lot of villains that see themselves as the good guy when in reality they are not.