Dread Necromancer Spell

[Vaern]

I've got a friend who's playing a dread necromancer in some random game he's in. His party is pretty poorly optimized and doesn't have any decent healer or any way of coming back from the dead, so I thought I'd draw up a quick spell that could either allow his character to fill that role and make the party function on a competent level or allow him to drive the game completely off the rails. It's kind of a toss-up.

Reanimate
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Dread 6
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 hour
Range: Touch
Target: Dead creature touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None; see text
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

You call a creature's soul back to its body and bind it with negative energy, giving it a perverted semblance of life. The subject is considered to be alive, not undead, and retains its original creature type and abilities. You can reanimate a creature that has been dead for no longer than one day per caster level. The subject's soul must be free and willing to return.
This spell functions like raise dead, except as noted here. A reanimated creature's life force is fueled by negative energy, and as such it is healed by negative energy and harmed by positive energy as if it was an undead creature. When a reanimated creature dies, it is considered to have been turned into an undead creature and destroyed for the purpose of spells such as raise dead or resurrection. The subject gains no other penalties, benefits, or traits of the undead type.

Material Component: Black onyx gems worth a total of at least 5,000 gp.


Essentially, it's a variant of raise dead that gives the subject the effect of tomb-tainted soul. It would effectively allow the dread necromancer to play the healer... after a particular member of the party has died. There is a lawful good character in the party, so I figured giving them an [Evil] resurrection spell that requires the subject to willingly embrace undeath might stir up a bit of extra drama for them.

[Segev]

A little on the powerful end for arcane magic, but thematic. Why is it [evil], though? I'm not disputing that it could be, but it always bugs me that that tag is slapped on with no thought other than "I want to make this a wicked thing to cast." For one thing, animate dead is [evil], and even good-aligned non-necromancers can cast it on occasion without turning neutral, let alone evil. So using this spell on your fallen ally? Mildly icky, at worst. Still way preferable to leaving him dead!

If you really want to drive home the moral quandary, it needs to actually do something that resonates as "evil" as part of casting it. Either the effect needs to do so - perhaps only evil people can return, and anybody who willingly returns (knowing this spell's effects, which it would tell them before they accept) changes alignment to evil if it wasn't already. That's ham-fisted, but not out of theme.

Perhaps it requires a sacrifice of a creature of the same type (though not necessarily HD/level; this is about the murder, not about the balance of power) to bring back the target. A humanoid for a humanoid might do, or you could get more specific and require the same race (elf for an elf) or even subrace (wood elf for a wood elf).

Now, if you're okay with the good Dread Necromancer not feeling too guilty about it despite the [evil] tag, this is probably fine for your game's purposes as-is.

[Vaern]

I've always imagined the creation of undead creatures as being generally evil because using negative energy to manipulate the dead is harmful to the subject's soul, and that the reason that raise dead can't revive someone who has been turned into an undead creature and destroyed is because their soul is damaged to such an extent that the spell is no longer effective. This is why spells that create undead are evil. You can argue that you can use a zombie to serve the purpose of good and therefore the use of the spell is justified, but nevertheless, the process of creating that zombie defiles the subject's body and scars its immortal soul and that is evil. This spell doesn't go so far as animate dead, what with the desecrating a corpse to turn the subject into a mindless servant and all that, but it still leaves a deep enough mark on his soul to prevent low-level resurrection spells from functioning properly.
In the first draft of the spell, the subject "gains the effects of the tomb-tainted soul feat," and if he failed to qualify for the feat (by ceasing to be of a nongood alignment) then he would lose its effect, causing the negative energy binding his soul to his body to deal 1d4 points of damage per hour until he either died or did something to change his alignment to neutral or evil again. But I ultimately scratched that off for the sake of simplicity. Directly referencing the feat and its requirements like that in a spell of instantaneous duration may have resulted in someone at their table thinking that the spell actually gives them the feat and thus allowing them to qualify for the tomb-born feats which require TTS as a prerequisite, for example. I figured the way it is now would be sufficient to discourage good characters from wanting to take advantage of it.

[Aniikinis]

I've always imagined the creation of undead creatures as being generally evil because using negative energy to manipulate the dead is harmful to the subject's soul, and that the reason that raise dead can't revive someone who has been turned into an undead creature and destroyed is because their soul is damaged to such an extent that the spell is no longer effective. This is why spells that create undead are evil. You can argue that you can use a zombie to serve the purpose of good and therefore the use of the spell is justified, but nevertheless, the process of creating that zombie defiles the subject's body and scars its immortal soul and that is evil.

Not to seem rude, but I'd like to point out that unless something states that it harms the soul, it probably doesn't. Negative energy is no more evil than positive energy is good, they're amoral sources of energy. The only reason that negative energy gets such a bad rap, and the opposite for positive, is that the vast majority of life that exists in most settings is powered by positive energy and thus it's more of a polarity issue rather than a moral one. Also, I never understood why Wizards made mindless undead Evil when they used to be True Neutral under TSR. The only reason I can see why creating undead could be evil, other than nonsense fiat explanations, is that the process of desecrating the corpse is seen as unclean and abhorrent to the typical fantasy society.

And before anyone points out that mindless undead supposedly attack things when left alone and loathe the living or something like that, there are creatures with Intelligence scores that do the same or worse and count as True Neutral.