[RPG] Is necromancy necessarily evil in 5e or Forgotten Realms

dnd-5eforgotten-realmsnecromancy

With Forgotten Realms being the default setting for 5e, I am curious if there is the possibility for a necromancer, specifically a wizard, to be considered not evil:

  1. In terms of alignment

  2. In terms of how they are viewed by the general populace.

I haven't seen any rules specifically pointing out necromancers as evil, but going over the list of necromancers in the Forgotten Realms Wiki the closest thing to non-evil is someone who was impersonating a neutral character before they revealed themselves as evil.

So, would it be thematically reasonable to have a neutral or even good necromancer, interested in manipulating life forces without explicit malicious intent? Would it be possible to do the same, while summoning undead?

Best Answer

From the description of the Necromancy school in the basic rules v1 (emphasis mine)

Necromancy spells manipulate the energies of life and death. Such spells can grant an extra reserve of life force, drain the life energy from another creature, create the undead, or even bring the dead back to life. Creating the undead through the use of necromancy spells such as animate dead is not a good act, and only evil casters use such spells frequently.

It seems like you can assume necromancy is evil unless a usually good spellcaster uses it infrequently. The key is in the "frequently". I think it's up to your GM to say if animating deads once a day is considered frequent enough to make you evil.

Generalizing about necromancy is a matter of survival for common folks. The crazy dude in town digging graves and experimenting with corpses is not necessarily evil, but you'd be a fool to assume he's not. In almost all the settings I know (I'm not the most literate about FR but I've never read anything about a good necromancer) necromancy is either straight evil or shady...really shady. Unless NPCs have affiliations or knowledge of the contrary, they will be suspicious of necromancers.

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