[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Hide

That would be my take too.

When I think of this necromancer, I remind of Jack Skelington from Nightmare before Christmas. It is a similar situation. One day Jack decided he wanted to take on the roll of a more colorful beign (Santa Claus)...

He was good, charismatic and cool; but from the human point of view, he also was fearful or scary. And that conception resulted from many years of folklore rooted on “culture”. So, making the advantage switchable sounds like switching on and off a part of folklore. The citizens of Halloween Town (his home) loved Jack because in Halloween Town the monsters had a different culture.

For starters, maybe in your setting there is a day of the year when it is safe talking to necromancers, such as Halloween or Day of the Dead (when some people are permissive with dread and death and/or spirituality).

Another example would be Set from the Egyptian pantheon. He was considered good until the lower and high Egypts became one. But that was the result of the transformation of society. We also have Hades, God of the Underworld. Some see him as a “bad guy” after the rendition the Christian Underworld, or Disney’s Hercules, or Saint Seiya’s saga of Hades. But originally, you could say the opposite, he was a “God of abundance”, because the gifts of nature (food, good, etc.) come from the soil, the ceiling of the Underworld.

The thing is that the idea of “being fearful”, here, changed because people/culture changed. So the advantage itself should not be switchable because it would be like making an aspect of culture switchable (that is what I think towards “switchable”).
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Except of course by successfully disguising what you are. The necromancer who travels to a town where they are unknown and refrains from necromancer couture or displays of that power can ditch their regard at least for a time.