Necromancy. What even is it?
Disclaimer, I am rather new to this system and have only been GM'ing games in Pathfinder for about a year and a half, so my game knowledge is not the greatest. I am learning more day by day though.
I started my longterm campaign about a year ago with the knowledge that as time goes on necromancy would become a large part of the campaign, and the large threats would all be necromancers of some variation, so I began looking into necromancy a couple months ago. As a hint to this upcoming revelation I gave my players a grimoire called, Instructions for lasting agony, which causes a new effect for any harmful necromancy spells cast through it. Now here's the kicker.
I couldnt find anything on Foundry, the VTT we use for every session, about what quantified as a "necromancy" spell. There just wasn't a tag for it, and no page listing all the spells. So of course I went to the good ol' archives and guess what? There was a page that included a handy tag for necromancy specifically. "Great!" I thought to myself, before diving into the page and slowly realizing the most glaring issue i have come across yet.
It was a MESS. Only 74 spells were listed as necromancy spells, which with my background in D&D seemed outrageously low considering this game has probably 3 or 4 times more spells in it. I had to take a step back and reevaluate the situation. "What makes a necromancy spell is probably different in this system" I thought to myself again, only to find out that I dont think there was any thought put behind what a necromancy spell is either. At least not on this page.
Heal is not a necromancy spell. Neither is Harm. Yet Healing Well and Soothing Spring are both considered necromancy spells. Also, spells that make ZERO sense are listed as necromancy spells, like Magic Stone, Steal Voice and even Cleansing Flame are all necromancy! Why is Magic Stone, a spell about throwing rocks real good, a necromancy spell?!
And finally there's the spells that SHOULD be necromancy spells, like Bind Undead, Rouse Skeletons and even SUMMON UNDEAD which are completely left out of the page. What is the point of a page of necromancy spells if you dont include the necromancy spells?!
Now I know the intention is probably that all of these spells are categorized properly SOMEWHERE out there, or they were intended to be necromancy spells but just got lost in the mix of the massive amount of content this game has. I dont think any of this is malicious or lazy, just unfortunately an afterthought. But then where am I supposed to find a credible definition of what a necromancy spell actually is? With so much content and books to sort through, how am I supposed to know how to run necromancy here?
I know the Necromancer class is coming out with the next major book, so i really hope this is something thats clarified with an errata on spellcasting, but until then how would you classify necromancy? What is and is not a necromancy spell?
https://2e.aonprd.com/Traits.aspx?ID=117
The page on Necromancy from AoN I am referencing here.