Corpse Chatter: Why Necromancy should be dangerous.

 Necromancy ought to be more dangerous.

The mood and tone of a game with supernatural elements should be dark, brooding and fearful. Things move about in the dark. And houses really are haunted, by vile things that murdered and tormented in life and have not improved with death. 

Making contact with such an entity should not be a quick, ten-second fix. It requires preparation, ritual, ceremony. Possibly sacrifice, to tear a tiny rip in the Veil between the worlds, in order to let something else back through. And the necromancer is the only one who can determine if that something is the same thing they intended to come through. That alone takes time. 

The wrong spirit can be summoned. Or the right spirit might be dominated by a more powerful one. A demon even.  

Possession also ought to be a genuine potential negative outcome of any seance. By which I mean, of course, any time a magic user tries to communicate, negotiate, interact with the dead. This stuff should never  be just a spell slot. It ought to be a ritual every single time, however short a ritual, and that should be the only way to ever 'cross the veil'. That is how Necromancy is different from other schools of magic and why you normally can't do Necromancy and other types of magic... 

Tricky, malevolent spirits or demons might try to learn a necromancer’s name during the ritual, to use as leverage, later. Because ordinarily they just wouldn't know exactly who had summoned them, but if they can trick you into telling them, then it gives them the power to track down your dead relatives, or the ghostvine more generally, and track down who is related to you and where you are and how to best make your life miserable. 

Possess your cat. 

Sounds petty, but you know, cats can go either way at the best of times... 

Start haunting your mum... 

How often do necromancers ever get called out to bust a haunting? Why not? In a fantasy world with necromancery-shit going on all the live-long day, we know that shit's real. We know the haunting isn't somebody's imagination and that poltergeists are a real threat to the peace and sanity of the household. How come we never get aggressive, strategic hauntings going down?

During these rituals, of course, ‘friendly’ souls - the spirits of those who were friends in life, or who have something to gain from the interaction, ought to be much more easily dealt with than hostile spirits. 
Mechanically, this should work like testing for Reactions from monsters, where the circumstances of the summoning strongly influence the outcome. Despite the description of the spell ‘Speak With The Dead’ (‘Speak With Dead Souls’), ‘friendly’ spirits might give more information than was strictly requested, if the circumstances are right. Hostile spirits will lie, deceive by omission, equivocate and manipulate wherever possible.

{Outright Friendly, Somewhat Friendly, Neutral, Somewhat Hostile, Outright Hostile.} 

 Summoning the dead should be risky.