Are necromancers necessarily evil?

[Raoabolic]

im not sure but i remember reading somewhere that its because of other cultures not being ok with stuff like undead or skeleton's that they don't do it

It's just China that has a stick up there when it comes to spooky skeletons (along with other things...). SE is the japanese Activision and China brings in the yen, combine that fact with the fact that the devs seem to have trouble when it comes to making an actual pet class and you have a clear picture of why we are not getting a necro class any time soon. That said:
DO NOT ADD PUP TO XIV DEVS, I SWEAR, IF YOU DO THAT I WIll probably make a post about it on the official forums and be huffy about it for 30 seconds or so before realizing it wasn't a matter of if, it was a matter of when. /shrug

[Jettinson]

I mean, even though it is rad summoning a bunch of skeleton warriors or zombies etc for fight, I can see why they won't bother.

Maybe make a job that just relies on memories of the fallens which at that point is a different thing.

[Lauront]

It's no bias; You're "using" other people's bodies to do your bidding. If you want to look at the morality of necromancy using Haidt's Moral Foundations as a guide necromancy is AT LEAST on the negative end of the Liberty/Oppression and Sanctity/Degradation scales. That's why it's viewed to be "evil." Generally, we believe that the dead have been put "to rest." Necromancy is not only bringing them back from that rest but also controlling them to do your bidding.




The problem with "creative thinking" is if you have a job that already has a certain set of expectations, if you deviate from those expectations people are going to be disappointed. Even IF the job is incredibly fun, if you start showing off a "Necromancer" job that doesn't have an army of undead pets following it around, people will wonder why it's called a Necromancer at all. You'd be better off calling that job a "Green Mage" since it fits better with the expectation of that job.

Considering the job has not featured to any significant extent in the series to really set such expectations, I don't see it as a big problem - Yoshi has already said they would need to begin leaning more on newer jobs as they go forward. The issue of taking a creative approach did not prevent them from creating RDM in a different vein to its prior implementations, even if spiritually all the main ingredients are there, and the same goes for SAM, where there were multiple possible implementations of it, and they opted for a specific one, i.e. DPS. Make it fun and make the rationale compelling, and the problem isn't that great - and that is even with the existing lore in 14 setting some expectation as to what the job does. With that said, sure, you can call it something else. "Void mage", "time mage" (a la Gaia), etc. I'm not going to get hung up over the name. Again, I just want a darkness powered caster in the vein of RPR.

[Kranel_San]

I mean, even though it is rad summoning a bunch of skeleton warriors or zombies etc for fight, I can see why they won't bother.

Maybe make a job that just relies on memories of the fallens which at that point is a different thing.

Now you made me want a FFXIV version of GW2 Revenant class

[Deveryn]

Ethics aside do we really trust SE to be able to make a necromancer class?

Necromancer by in large is a pet class and we've all seen what SE has done to the pet classes over the years.
They have no idea what to do with them, how to keep them balanced, so they're gutted constantly, reworked, and essentially the pets have just been made into a sentry gun that you summon.
They don't have any actual interaction anymore.

I think for the most part any excuse SE gives for not making a necromancer class is just a cover for their inability to make actual pet classes and they don't want to deal with that anymore now that they know the precedent.
Even if they did make the class it would effectively be the exact same as the other pet classes but with different visuals.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of gameplay though, it might feel like playing bard & smn put together.

I've been a fan of pet classes for years, but pets have always been a tricky problem in MMOs. I've seen all kinds of terrible bugs as developers try to make pet classes, from all sorts of pathing issues to being insta-killed by an errant non-combat entity.

XIV is no exception because of the sheer amount of mobs one has to contend with in one battle. It's just less of a headache for all parties when things become as simplified as they are.


As for why they won't put necromancer in the game, you need only look to their culture and that of their neighbors. Consider the fact that the Korean market gets a very different version of the game that's released a whole half year later. Looking to past FFs is poor justification just because those were different games and a different time. They're really trying to cater to a global audience here, so care must be taken to respect everyone.

[Lufir]

Must the necromancer be someone who raises the dead? Or just a category that has some schools of magic under it? Ice (Frost) is an element often associated with death in many media. Would it be an issue if a school of necromancy focuses on using frost spells instead of utilizing zombie minions? Another example would be blood-themed spells, which focus on stealing the enemies lifeforce to empower your own.

I would say yes, a necromancer has to deal with dead reanimation/undead minions or else why have the prefix of necro? Sure, you can toss them a few ice or blood spells, but their core identity has to be necromancy. Without dealing with the dead, that'd be like a pyromancer who doesn't specialize with fire. It just wouldn't make sense to me, personally.

[RitsukoSonoda]

I would say yes, a necromancer has to deal with dead reanimation/undead minions or else why have the prefix of necro? Sure, you can toss them a few ice or blood spells, but their core identity has to be necromancy. Without dealing with the dead, that'd be like a pyromancer who doesn't specialize with fire. It just wouldn't make sense to me, personally.

Makes about as much sense as killing fire elementals as a Black Mage by casting fire spells on them. :P

[SturmChurro]

I don't know about FF necromancers, but you can write a necromancer to not necessarily be Evil. For example: the lore behind Dragon Age: Inquisition's necromancer.

[Shougun]

Haven't read all the posts, but I imagine the classic "But Yoshida said we can't be evil jobs" with no actual quote to back it up. The only quote that can be found, so far, strictly speaks in context of the CITY.. which means people are putting words into Yoshida's mouth by saying the WoL can't be something evil akin (like Thief, which people have used to stretch to anything and everything they're not interested in).

So in context of can we be necromancer because it's bad?.. I don't think that is relevant to as much as if it makes sense to the game. Naturally we do have a lot of forbidden aspects to Necromancer, so a full out and about Necromancer would be technically awkward. Though there were very similar comments people said about a beast like race, when trying to shut that down (as you'll see lore is often used as a way to tell people things cant be done).

Moreover then I think it would matter if you can 'make it' make sense, and if it's even worth making it make sense. I definitely believe you can make it make sense, just now you have to make it worth it lol.

Personally more directly on the concept of if it's evil or not, I think raising the unwilling humanoid dead is a bit awkward. IF I was making a necromancer like job I'd probably focus on the occult concept more than raising dead bodies. Can have necromancer like vibes, including say summoning rotting-like voidsent, blood magic, ravens, tendrils, eldritch magic, shadows, curses, soul magic potentially, etc. But probably not skeletons, to me- I think making lore sense of most of those other things could be done relatively easily... but summoning standard skeletons from the ground approaches a sort of body slavery that I might avoid lol (for FFXIV, works wonderfully in Diablo like games).

I would add such arguments I had on the concept of Reaper as well, where people suggested it's impossible because of the above unproveable quote (can't be evil/do bad/off kilter things)- to which I referenced the many times where Reapers are good in real life mythological stories and to which we're not even bound to (can easily make a new trend in an old concept).

Hopefully going out of the way to not electric boogaloo the things Black Mage, Dark Knight, and Reaper have done (another reason I mention things like blood magic, ravens, eldritch, curses, occult, etc which can provide a new kind of imagery).

[KurohNeko]

Reaper sort of destroys any counter argument when, all necromancy and undead in the game ARE Voidsent. Raising the dead involves either re-animating the corpse or letting a Voidsent possess it from what I've seen as literally all intelligent Voidsent we fight raise the dead. I also found it really really weird how you keep seeing little tid-bits about people being arrested and executed for ritual summoning if you read the desc of the succubus wind-up or any of the lore books in some of the dungeons. And yet we, the WOL form a contract with one and openly use him and the only thing we got is Y'sthola in the newest quests bringing it up as a passing remark in how she noticed that we formed a contract with a Voidsent and that we are the exception to the rule in having a working relationship with one. And that's it, no admonishment, Vitra doesn't condone us for it, nothing. When according to whatever laws there are we are breaking some felonies and should be executed.

And as you said, Black Magic is also seen as a no-no lore wise and was BANNED. We started turning that around and stuff but it was still BANNED. Dark Knights get a pass as they didn't really have much of an order or effect on the world and were seen as a rare oddity and the bigger issue with them was vigilantism. But reapers, literally summon demons.

The real issue with the Necromancer class as good tho is due to the fact Asians have a hard on for not messing with corpses. You don't desecrate the dead, that's a very very big no-no and Yoshi-P and the gang are Japanese. So they're probably worried about how their Jap players would take it.