With Necromancy, after activating the creature you've raised, you roll a power die. If you don't roll an enhancement, the creature dies.

With Undying, when a creature dies, you roll a power die. On a surge, it is brought back to life and restored to full wounds.

See where I'm going with this?

Does Undying work to prevent a creature restored via Necromancy from expiring? If not, why not?

Osaka said:

You can only use necromancy on small, NORMAL monsters. I believe the only monsters with undying are MASTER skeleys, sorcerors, and ogres...so...I think it's a non-issue.

If you've been using necro on master monsters, you've been doing something wrong.

I recall reading at least one quest where normal (non-master) skeletons and sorcerers have Undying (or some modified form of it) by special quest rules.

And, interestingly, the rules for the Necromancy ability specifically point out that in order to reanimate a monster in the first place, you have to kill it and it has to stay dead, in the event of Undying.

Assuming that you can find a legal monster to reanimate that does have Undying, my guess is that the expiration on the Necromancy ability would be intended to function like all other instant death effects in the game; that is, it ignores undying because it effectively inflicts infinite damage* (see: Divine Retribution, rolling boulders, crushing walls, etc.). Of course, it doesn't actually say that, like it does in the other cases, so an argument could also be made that this should be an exception.

* Yes, I know that infinite damage isn't the same as ignoring Undying in RtL, but it is in the context in which each of those special cases was designed.

It did occur to me after my post that there is at least one quest where undying is granted to a normal monster. WoD has one where all skeleys and sorcerers come back on a blank (quest 5, I think...it's the one that ends with the "wall of bone".

My thoughts are this (take or leave them): Something which you have necro'd has inevitably failed its undying roll and ceased to be. Only through your skill in wizardry can you use your power to re-animate this monster's corpse. Its undying power was lost to it when it crumbled to the groud, so your determined concentration is feeding its essence and that alone. If you fail to keep your dark, sorcerous hold over it it goes back to the bones it was, regardless of any other abilities it had.

Anyway, since surges were pointed out in the example and since I don't know of any instance of a normal monster which has undying with a surge, I was concerned Osaka missed the part about normal monsters. Since the WoD quest came before Necromancy in AoD, I assume they didn't even consider that the issue might come up. If you want to let a skelly or sorcerer stay alive in that quest if you also roll a blank...I don't think your overlord's gonna worry about it that much. Skeletons and sorcerors aren't exactly hard to kill..even if a blank might save them...so you can just get another one.

In the unlikely event that a player is ever in control of a monster with Undying via Necromancy, I see no rules conflict as written. Check to see if the creature dies as usual with Necromancy, then make an Undying roll to see if it comes back. As no wounds are dealt per se , none would be applied after the fact. From my perspective this seems like the simplest interpretation of the rules, allowing both abilities to work unaffected by eachother.

Ah, I now see where we were going wrong... My friends read "normal unnamed monster" and didn't realize that was two different things... So now we're playing the game correctly ;-)

Another instance where the necromancy and undying combo could come up is with one of the dark relics, which gives undying to every monster to which you deal the killing blow.

Osaka said:

I don't actually see that one being an issue because I believe it only states that all monsters you attack are considered to have undying. They would lose that undying ability once you killed them and they failed their undying roll...since you cannot animate them/use your necromancy unless something stays dead.