Are necromancers necessarily evil?

[Tlamila]

We get a load of "Necromancy is literally the worst" in the Alchemist storyline.
That said, black magic is also considered just as bad, and yet the WoL learns it and in the end authorities even get convinced that in the right hands it's not that bad, so eh, they'd have grounds for it if they wanted.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Nothing is stated. There are theories which say each boss is from a FF game (The first is a character from FF6 and the necromancer boss is Lena from FF5) but nothing else. Not even a confirmation if they're summoned from other shards, timelines, or other universes.

Elidibus states that he's using the Exarch's summoning spell to half-summon heroes from other Shards; not enough to give them full free will, but enough to bring their power over and turn them loose on the Scions, so that he can draw on their fervor to empower his own primal Warrior of Light form. Third cutscene in the quest "The Converging Light" in the Unending Journey. So while the bosses are based on designs from previous games, as FF games do all the time, these versions are from other Shards.

[ElizanderNorisse]

You are free to create evil protagonists in any game you care to develop and sell to the public. This specific game has decided not to do that. And it's fine.

And it’s also fine to change certain things in a game.

Heroes in FFV aren’t evil by the way.

[CaptainLagbeard]

The problem with trying to add in a Necromancer class is that most of the whole re-animating the dead and what not is the part that's really generally frowned upon by most people...
And anything else one might attribute to the class in terms of "dark magic" more or less could also be rolled into Black Mage.

[Thorio]

I don't think we are necessarily evil.

[Lauront]

The problem with trying to add in a Necromancer class is that most of the whole re-animating the dead and what not is the part that's really generally frowned upon by most people...
And anything else one might attribute to the class in terms of "dark magic" more or less could also be rolled into Black Mage.

For as long as they want to keep a focus on the three elements for that though, it won't happen other than Xeno and Foul, neither of which it is clear what they are. Don't get me wrong - I'd like it if they took the job in that direction, but I just don't see it. Besides, this game lacks specs for the very reason that they can add jobs to cover these sort of niches/branching paths. So I don't see the issue with them adding, say, a DOT-based or otherwise time-based darkness job, a la Gaia, and having it draw on darkness and dark transformations/(voidsent?) summonings (even if just serving as spell animations), as opposed to one of the classic elements, which are covered by BLM, RDM and SMN. I would very much like a spellcaster similar to RPR. And before someone says "go play RPR", nope, I already do and still want a caster like this.

[Mikey_R]

I don't see it as necessarily good vs evil, it is more of a morality question. If a game's world is built in a way that the people find necromancy normal, just a part of everyday life, then there is clearly going to be no issues, however, FFXIV has setup it's world that raising the dead is morally wrong, the dead should be left in peace. This is why a Necromancer that raises the dead is probably not going to happen at all.

As for the FFV Necromancer, they do not raise the dead, the learn spells from killing certain enemies and what do the spells do? elemental magic with a status attached. The only reference to the undead are the fact that, if you are a Necromancer, you have the undead status. You don't raise the dead to fight for you, so it isn't the same as what the OP was looking for.

Going back to that, if you had a Necromancer that only used Ice spells, do you really think that would make people happy? Or do you think they would push back and say, that isn't a Necromancer.

Bloodspells I could see, however, I suspect it would have a different name if a job in that vein were to come about.

As for comparing to other jobs, White and Black magic were heavily restricted/forbidden to try and prevent another War of the Magi, DRK used darkness, yes, however, that power comes from their emotions. Reaper's voidsent does harvest the souls that you kill, but they are dead, irregardless anyway, so it is no different than what we do now.

Necromancer is just not going to happen as most people would expect it to and if they do give it another theme, I would hope that they give it a new name, just so that it doesn't give people false expectations.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Necromancers don't necessarily have to be evil or a bad person. There are a few stories I'd come across where one was actually trying to help people or was a good person at heart. However generally with those stories said character is normally avoided or treated as a sort of pariah because they are a necromancer due to the whole defilement of the dead aspect.

[Aluja89]

Or maybe they just changed their minds...?
I still think there are arguments to be made as to why Necromancer is different but I mean they're not under any obligation to add them either.

All this talk about Yoshi-P's or the devs in generals supposed hypocrisy and stupidity etc is just kinda irrelevant and unnecessary.
Not everyone will agree where the line is drawn and what is worse than the other, and especially in regards to Necromancers there just are hurdles that you run into both thematically and also in terms of irl cultures that you don't run into with other Jobs.
If people wanna disagree with the reasoning that's fine but they never promised that they were going to add them and then took it back nor are they under any sort of obligation to add them.
It may be as simple that they don't want to add them and are looking at other Jobs instead.



It's only double-standards if he agrees with your view on where the line is drawn.
It's not double-standards if he believes that Necromancers crosses the line but DRK and RPR don't.
And like I've mentioned there are cultural reasons that can influence this and be the deciding factor.
And even that aside there are just personal views and opinions too, this isn't some kind of a matter of fact.

I dunno why we can't talk about these things without becoming so insanely petty about it and taking weird personal jabs at the devs.
It's the same with the story too people act like their interpretations and views of events and characters are some objective fact that everyone else must or do adhere to and then go ballistic about it.
And apparently it can't just be a disagreement and simply a matter of opinion, no it must be some personal fault on the writers and of the people who didn't have the same issue.
It's just weird...

Yes, it is a double standard and not just in what he deems evil.

We're talking about a man so obviously biased it's ridiculous people like you don't see it.

He made healers braindead but will keep adding complexity to his main job.
He homogenizes tanks so people like him can play it once in a while.
He buffs his job in PvP then makes up excuses for why he did it, AFTER he got to Crystal on all JP DCs with BLM when he should've been the first person to stop that patch from going live.
He ruined the story in EW too because he wanted to get it over with.

This is the man that went on GCD for a whole hour on how to run an MMO only to disregard it all:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRZ_4H0OK60

He's a hack, a biased hack that hasn't done anything new in 10 years because he knows his ideas are most likely terrible, considering all his achievements can be summed up by him copying WoW.

[Allegor]

While Reaper and Dark Knight use morally questionable methods for good, or at least anti-heroing, necromancy is explicitly mentioned through questlines like Alchemist or White/Black Mage (I THINK it was mentioned in the ARR msq at some point too?) to not only being morally evil, but harmful to the environment as well. That said, the "art of necromancy" isn't limited to only puppeteering corpses or playing Frankenstein, and can be interpreted through other means, such as, say, conversing with, pacifying, or summoning willing spirits, or channeling their powers through a medium, like a shaman or spiritist....though when said like that, it loosely sounds more like a healer to me lol

I think it's safe to assume that Reaper is as close as we'll get to a 'traditional' necromancer though.