Necromancy

[Asmodai]

actually nekro is 'of the body' (used for necromancy), biology is 'life study' and pertains to the study of all life, not just humans or things with a body. but the real reason why i would steer clear of it is due to that it literally means one of the other circles of magic. it is kind of like calling death magic 'mortamancy' due to the connection with the term mortal, and its connection with death.

While the Greek meaning of the word Nekro might have been 'of the body', although in searching I find multiple conflicting statements saying it referred specifically to dead bodies, that's neither here or there. Many words in English have changed meaning over time from that of their original root word. If you crack open a modern English dictionary and look through the words starting with Necro- I think you'll find the vast majority, if not ALL of them, deal with death. Necro- means Death in English now. Bio means life but not in they way they are using. Bio means life like plants, animals, and yes humans but they school they propose I do not believe is limited to humans either. The school they call "Life" does not mean what bio means. It is NOT plants and animals, they have a separate Nature school for that it is not about the body it's about positive energy, things like holy, angels, etc. I hesitate to say "Good" because they are trying really hard to separate it from some sort of morality but they have been clear that is it NOT nature which Bio- is and so there is no conflict.

At the end of the day it doesn't even really matter what the root words mean. Most people aren't going to know or care enough to research it. The problem is that Necromancy is a commonly used term in many fantasy and magic oriented games meaning death today. It's going to be familiar to a lot of people and changing what it means is going to be confusing. If you don't believe me just look through these forums as many have already gotten mixed up between the different Death and Necromancy schools... to most they are synonyms. I don't believe many, if any, games at all use the term biomancy so it's not something people are going to be so easily confused about. The fact that it deals with all living things fits the idea of animating bodies, mutating living creatures, healing and harming life.

there is also ptomamancy, or corpse divination/magic (not specific to human corpse though like nekro).
somamancy, or body mancy (specifically the physical body, though not limited to humans).
anthropomancy, or human mancy (perhaps the most literal to the magic circle itself, though it does lack a sort of ring to it).
maimancy, or stain/defile mancy (nothing to do with bodies, but if the magic does a lot of disease/miasma stuff maybe).

The school we are talking about renaming, while it includes animating dead bodies, is not about death or corpses specifically. A spell that takes a perfectly healthy living lion and a perfectly healthy living eagle and merges them to create a Griffon would be a spell in this school. Such a spell has nothing to do with death or humanity. It is taking two living creatures and combining them and I believe the name biomancy is very appropriate for this.

[jamoecw]

as for 'typical in games,' i am pretty sure you mean video games because warhammer 40k uses the term biomancy for a specific discipline of psyker. if you do a google search you will find plenty of house ruled biomancy for different pnp games, sometimes a derivative of medical science, sometimes just life magic.

my point is that if you want to have a nonstandard magic, have a nonstandard name with it, so i would argue against necro as well. the point of renaming it is to avoid confusion.

[Spellcaster]

Maybe all magic in game should be redefined, we have to many problems with stereotypes it seems (like 4 classical elements, in d&d arcane and clerical magic, cant know life and death spells or any 2 oposing schools). I think that for example necromancy meant (depends how much in past you go like 1, 5, 10 or 450 years) in europe rituals to summon spirits of dead since its belived they live in diffrent way and so can tell future (or maybe where you burrid your gold before you died, grandpa). then there are zombies who came from vodoo i guess, but we can probably count frankenstein to here but with no involment of magical energy, well there is one supossed interepretation that real life zombies are peoples given paralisys toxin or similar, so wrongly called dead and when digged back are given anti toxin but given also substance witch disable higher resoning, have trouble to think, so good non rebeling slave. there is book and movie on book. there is a book by brandon sanderson where are "zombies" are frealy used in one nation or at least city-state for cheap labor (every person have i guess tiny part of soul not strongly connected to rest of it, one or more part are needed to give life to object, rope that strangle peoples, create zombie or other) its named warbreaker.

now is d20 witch is used for ruleset of units just rules or rules + d20 d&d role (by your uses it seems 2., and i thought 1.), it also bring just too much headache, just to bring more of oil on flame, forget good and evil description of specific races in implementation, or give it in backstory of race + units and building of specific flavor, of couse there is diplomatic "moraly neutral" code of "honor" (used to much usuly to make stupid mistakes, like honor before reason, lawful stupid, when lawful good go tu much on lawful and become sometimes lawfull evil or neutral in best for second) like no breaking treatis in suprise attack but say it clearly 1-2 turn it over, so no attacking "allies" and similar, no using special technology/spells like in alpha centaury chemical weapons (attack bonus, but realy hurts population if defender is in city) and/or units like planet busters/nukes (it dont remove city and units, it remove them and make with apropiate reactor huge crater filled with water)
so best to and maybe diplomatic code of honor, and log hystory (you dont have information on nation you met first time), spy are probably non apropiate, but stealth units and spells to spy city can be usefull, so you get info in sugested for "aly with race x for n turns, broke treaty with y, suprise attack on z... only if you send spy to that race, allied and have diplomatic chanel with race x,y,z chance to know it as rumor if you just met them (traveling peasents) or you are that x,y,z race (but than only parts about you, unless above conditions are true) to much work but only sugessted for so called "ideal" that and working diplomacy not ai randomly saing give me your city and you have dragons around his capital or other idiocity

(we add nation who look ancient greek, but have slave pens that give manufactory bonus, hmm its buidable if you conquer city especialy non human one, but no slave troops ala gladiators and similar, and i'm sure real ancient greeks did practice it, unfortunalty dont we also asociate with them democratic city states (but only males i think were alowed) for examples, how similar are they to stereotype in fantasy of high man in that case, except when they use arhitecture and armor/ weapons style of greeks)

now paladins being controlled by evil wizard, lets be pessimistic and try to make most simplistic archetype of paladin, yes? that is higly trained and with best equipment troops and maybe touche of supernatural to imprve them supernatural "evil", brainwashed by religion or other ideology, so if his holy teaching is that some race is evil you nedd good/strong explanation for him to not genocide that race when they belevie its evil, becouse in fantasy we have ABSOLUTE good and evil, and except some plot twist that give good character from evil race, race just cant help itself but be evil and there is no other way, unless its to powerfull and cant be killed so you maybe exile them to other plane and seal it until mcguffin is in pieces

i see more trouble in life wizards (sumon angels) MoM humans as alies of wizard whose primary race is dark elves, when its mentiond as above (on another case there is no diplomatic wictory (or is it with conquest and only allies alies alive? i doubt), only conquest and spell os mastery to banish wizards, so all players are backstabing traitors in the and (even high man and elves turn on each other in the end this way))

[Morloc]

Forgive me for contributing to this pretty late...

Some comments on the thread so far...

1) "We want to get rid of the stigma associated with necromancy"Pfff! ...and by "stigma" you obviously mean boundless respect and admiration

2) "Please no good and evil stuff. I rather have a morally ambiguous game. We already broke the orc stereotype, lets not use another one. I don't even want angels and demons so I don't care if the got mixed."

Let's just slippery slope that and just give every unit a number. Once I upgrade my "19"s I shall rule the cosmos!!
Good and evil add flavor just as various factions/races do. While it's true that in real life such labels are sometimes ambiguous, I can imagine nothing (and I mean NOTHING) more boring than playing a treatise on relativism. In the fantasy world we can define and see absolutes!...intrinsic beings stoking reverent awe, or unbridled terror. From a gameplay perspective in MoM or other games, I always thought it was better to have the diametric limitations. It meant something when you chose Life or Death magic. Could there be a little checkbox in the game setup which says: "Disable alignment restrictions"?....Sure there could be!

Necromancers (from an self-proclaimed expert on the subject)...

They're about the undead. When they can't create or control the undead, then they are at least especially effective when fighting or avoiding the undead. You definately want the ability to raise and dominate non-corporeals. You might be able to heal, but it's likely to have an, unpleasant cost. You won't be able to raise the dead, at least not as a living being.

They're about curses, plagues, darkness and icy cold. Much of their magic is subtle, but persistent. By the time a foe realizes they are in trouble, it's usually far too late. The grave is dug, the tombstone carved and the weight of fate itself drags the victim to their unforgiving demise.

With a penchant to do much evil, the necromancer often aligns with Darkness, but this is not absolute. A practitioner of these arts might find himself serving Good...if Good can suffer his methods.



-Morloc

[Darkmancer]

If you want to move away from the "necro" and want to deal more with sacrifice/modification, how about blood magic.

[Spellcaster]

well in diablo 2 they seem to be true neutral they are playable class to kill games enemies, possible "hero" of game. they use minions (melle and sorcerour skeletons, golems and reanimated enemies), curses and poison/bone spells.

[Lubricus]

Sorry to chime in this late in the process - I've been on the fence for some time, but have joined the new Kickstarter with a vengeance!

I'd like to put forth the name "Chiromancy" for magic pertaining to skeletons. It literally means "magical manipulation of bones", so it should fit. Might not be perfect for the rest of the Necromancy stuff, though.

[Darkmancer]

Sorry to chime in this late in the process - I've been on the fence for some time, but have joined the new Kickstarter with a vengeance!

I'd like to put forth the name "Chiromancy" for magic pertaining to skeletons. It literally means "magical manipulation of bones", so it should fit. Might not be perfect for the rest of the Necromancy stuff, though.

Chiro isn't bones its latin for hands, so Chiromancy is hand magic besides being a possible euphemisum for masturbation it also covers thing like palm reading. There's a lot of prefixs to apply for bone/skeleton/flesh but none of them sound good or fit. If it's zombies or blighting magic its people automatically think and go to necromancy which is probably the most recognised of the "magic types" its odd they are trying to rename it.

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Btw is anyone else return key not working on the forum?

[Lubricus]

You're right, of course. It should be "ossimancy" or something to be about bones. I have no idea how I made that mix-up...

[Darkmancer]

Possibly Chiropracty which is basically the manipulation of bones mixed in with a dose of BS.