GlupiiGoose

All very good points. And I do not disagree with any of them. Handwavium works. My own personal limitation however is that I game with the same group of guys I have been gaming with for over 30 years. We are old curmudgeons and many are, shall we say, set in our ways? I need to have set rules in place for things whenever possible both to satisfy my player base and to keep boundaries. I have learned over time that my players will often find loopholes and exploit them if I am not careful. All of the points made here are more than valid and I appreciate every one of them. I just need to be more rigid than most I guess when it comes to these sorts of things. Thanks all for the great feedback!

I was going down the same road as you in my thinking LW. I think what I will do is differentiate between active and inert corpses. And all the necro spells that raise undead will specify that an active corpse must be used. That way the transform should be enough. Let me know what you think of this too. I was thinking about making the transform (both ways) cumulative and that they either have to overcome the body of the corpse or the points used to transform it, whichever is higher. So if a Priest takes the time to work his magic on a body and builds to say 20 points of transform, even though the corpse only had 10 body, if a necromancer wants to overcome that with an opposite spell, it must beat 20 points rather than the 10 in the corpse itself? Obviously this would be a rare case since most casters are not going to take the time to just do this willy nilly for every corpse they find (or make). But for the occasions for when they want to make the effort, it can be done. Also thinking about creating items that they can make and place in an area that have an area affect suppression of necromantic magic intended to raise undead so that if they want they COULD make a graveyard more resistant to being used by a necromancer. Thoughts appreciated.

Good point. I would think a reverse spell or a version of the same spell would be done by a necromancer. In my game the competing magics would be Blessed and VooDoo. And yeah, it would not be hard in either case, to do an entire cemetery but would take time and effort in game as that would not be the direct target of this type of spell. It is more aimed at a one body per casting type of magic. Not any priest would be able to do it but only those with "Blessed" powers. That is why it is not a wide spread thing.

I am running a Weird West campaign and there are holy casters in it. My player who is playing one wants a spell for his spell pool that he can cast that will consecrate a dead body so it can not be used in any necromantic rituals to create undead with it. The only reasonable way I could think to do this is us a transform to change the body from a dead body to a "Inert Body" that would make it unsuitable as a spell component for necromantic spells. Can anyone think of a better way to do this I might be missing?

Alright! Glad to hear. My gaming group of 30+ years lost our real guru on the system in 2011 when he died. He was such a walking encyclopedia of the rule sets (even co wrote the Traveler Hero books that never got to be published) that running a game was not hard with him at the table. But with his passing we have not really wanted to try it without him. Recently I decided it would be good for me to go back and try and pick it up as it will allow me to focus on one system for all the genres. The rest of the folks enjoy playing but running has been a bit daunting. I have like 25+ books at my disposal so have resources but sometimes am not sure what to even look for. So glad to not be alone anymore.

Howdy, is there anyplace on the forums for folks who still play 5e to gather, ask questions, and work through things?