Necromancy - class or not?

Summary:

Is necromancy a class, or something a class does?

Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 14 Dec 2010 02:14

Necromancer is one of the classes we're most sure of. People are already playing with mechanics and arguing party role, so the answer to this question is probably a forgone conclusion. However, I did want to throw it out there so we can at least consider it.

In 'Worlds and Monsters' undead and their creation are very specifically tied to the shadow power source. However, that's something that started to change very soon after 4e's release. In 'Open Grave', the 4e undead monster book, a sidebar describes undead created through magic, and it seems that almost anybody can do it. It specifically calls out arcane users enacting forbidden rituals, divine users calling on dark gods, even psionic or ki users having ways to create undead.

This suggests necromancy not so much as a class, but as something that a class can do, like dealing fire damage or turning invisible or summoning monsters. This doesn't preclude having an entire class based on performing necromancy, but as an alternative, perhaps necromancy a more general skillset that just happens to be more strongly associated with the shadow power source, something multiple classes within the source could do well. Shadow casters or dancers could be masters at creating and manipulating incorporeal undead. duskblades might have a 'death knight' type build with corporeal undead servants, and so on.

I don't know, I just wanted to throw it out there. Like I said, it's probably a forgone conclusion, but it's still something worth contemplating and making a considered choice about.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 14 Dec 2010 02:18

Just to be clear, I'm a huge necromancy fan. I'm not suggesting there shouldn't be a necromancer, what I'm asking is if instead necromantic elements or necromancy oriented builds might be better incorporated into multiple shadow classes, making it a sub theme of the power source as a whole rather then the gimmick of one particular class. You could look at it as me asking why have just one necromancer class? Why not two or three?

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

OskarOisinson 14 Dec 2010 13:37

While I appreciate your points, I think there's a distinction to be made between someone who merely uses necromancy and someone who has mastered it to the point of relying on it almost exclusively. If you take a look at the Wyrd/Witch class and the Undead Familiar feat, there are examples of how we might eventually incorporate necromantic elements into other classes but the necromancer itself should, I think, be a fully developed class, being the Master of Death.

With the Wyrd/witch, we were thinking about having some sort of oracular/divination based build which would draw on traditional necromancy (communion with dead spirits for the sake of knowledge) for inspiration.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 14 Dec 2010 15:14

Fair enough. Like I said, it's pretty much a forgone conclusion. I do like the way our necromancer is shaping up. But I do remember the early arguments over what role was appropriate, with individuals arguing controller, leader, striker, and defender, and I remember thinking "if the concept is so general that it could be any role, then maybe it should be broken up into separate, more distinct concepts".

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Chameleon X 15 Dec 2010 13:04

I'm seeing both of your points, and I think they're both valid. Certainly a Necromancer would represent the Master of Necromancy just like an Artificer is the master of enchantment and the Fighter is a master of "hit-with-bricks". At the same time, the argument over roles does seem to indicate that multiple concepts could be broken down from the general "Necromancer" idea, similar to how the 3.5 Druid became the Shaman and Warden as well as the 4.0 Druid.

The mere fact that we have three variants of the Necro already (and I'm prepared to add another one) indicates that we should probably be asking what exactly we mean by "Necromancer".

As for myself, I see a Necromancer as a master of Shadow Magic in its most potent form. I see the Necro raising undead hordes, blasting enemies with wracking disease and pestilence, clouding their minds with dark thoughts and the despair of the shadowfell, and choking the life out of them with vampiric darkness. All of these things could be focused into different classes, but I always was a fan of classes like the Bard or Artificer which could have a number of different playstyles incorporated into the same class.

If anything, I'd be happy to split off the illusion aspect into a Beguiler class, and save a handful of fear and illusion spells for the Necro.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 15 Dec 2010 14:55

I, on the other hand, see the necromancer class not as the master of 'shadow in its most potent form' or 'undeath in all possible forms' but rather the master of channeling shadow magic through physical bodies, rather then manifesting it as loose shadowstuff. Sort of like the distinction between necromancy and dark magic in Warhammer fantasy. Dark magic is dangerous and corrupting to those who weild it directly, necromancers insulate themselves from this danger by filtering the magic through corpses.

'My' necromancer then would focus on corporeal minions and spells that blight, corrupt, or plague their enemies, physical effects on physical forms, and would leave animate shadows, incorporeal undead, and fear/illusion/teleport powers to other shadow classes. Oh, it would still have these things, but they wouldn't be the primary focus of the class. "summon shadow" as a daily power, but not class features for shadows as minions or pets. "disguise undead" illusion as a utility power to ease urban interaction, but not invisibility or phantasms. "terrifying aura" providing minor debuffs to enemies adjacent to minions, but not "fear" as a powerful direct target spell.

Now, you wouldn't then have one class that can fulfill every aspect of the necromancer concept. You would have an obvious class to go to for that concept, but other aspects could be found elsewhere. Sort of like how fighter provides an obvious choice for a weaponmaster, but aspects of a weaponmaster concept can be found in other classes as well, not only other martial classes, but also classes in other sources like the swordmage, barbarian, or even the monk.

So if you wanted corporeal undead and disease spells on a caster body you'd play a 'necrocarnate', if you wanted curse abilities and maybe a single undead mount or bodyguard you'd play a 'duskblade', and if you wanted incorporeal undead and fear spells you'd play a 'witch' or 'shadowcaster' of some type.

However, I was a bit late on this wiki bandwagon, and this basic kind of 'what does the shadow power source mean, what does necromancy mean, how will we organize the classes as a whole, what concepts should stand as their own classes and which should instead be incorporated as themes of one or more other classes' questions don't seem like they were ever asked. It looks, at least to someone who jumped in late, like the project went straight to mechanics design for individual classes, which to me isn't promising. I mean, we may have not liked the power point mechanic itself, but you can't deny that having a single mechanic shared across all the classes within the psionic power source gave them a unique, coherent identity. It doesn't look like this project was willing to slow down at the start and consider whether or not something like that might be worth considering.

In any event, we do already have three versions of the necromancer, and my ideas on the subject seem rather unpopular. Posting additional variants at this point, or asking people to pull back and consider the power source as a whole before diving into individual class concepts, seems like a waste of effort. At this point I'm not trying to change the fundamental concepts so much as influence what I see as important individual aspects within them (the necromancer should 'animate' the dead, not simply 'summon' them, etc).

Last edited on 15 Dec 2010 15:28 by Malisteen Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Omnirahk 15 Dec 2010 16:10

There's nothing wrong with having witches command shadows, duskblades with an undead mount/sidekick, and the like, but it still feels insufficient. The reason we're making a devoted necromancer class is because it's such a strong archetype - we're making one class whose entire schtick is necromancy, but we are also giving the option to other classes. It's kind of like how the druid focuses on the Primal Beast - this class focuses on just a single aspect of the power source. Other classes can draw on it, but there's a higher level of devotion here.

As for the summononing undead rather than creating them, I think it's mostly a mechanical preference. If you're a necromancer, you need to find some way to deal with all of your features being about having an army of undead that you need to hide when you go to the city. An illusion to disguise them has been suggested, but it feels forced. And what about when you're at a banquet or something and an attack against the king is launched? You'd need to somehow hide an army among the guests, and not raise suspicions. I've never heard this argument made, but it just feels like too much of a headache for the class to be forced to deal with this. Not saying we can't make a paragon path or alternate feature to allow this, but summoning undead just feels more practical. Plus, it has a potent image factor. If you create undead, they're always with you. But if you summong them, you can have zombies tear themselves up from the ground around you. Awesome image.

But really, I think there's an easy (enough) solution to this debate. Put a sidebar with the necromancer, presenting alternate rules where you do create, not summon. It's just a few alterations to the rules. Include a pros vs cons discussion, and mention you should work with the DM to find out if the creating undead variation will be appropriate for their game. Everytime I think about this, though, I get a headache. Creating rather than summoning just seems to be more hassle than it's worth. I wouldn't want to deal with it. I think that's the unspoken consensus most of us reached - correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Greatfrito 15 Dec 2010 16:21

I agree with the entirety of the above post (Omnirahk's).

But I'd like to make a special point of:

But really, I think there's an easy (enough) solution to this debate. Put a sidebar with the necromancer, presenting alternate rules where you do create, not summon. It's just a few alterations to the rules. Include a pros vs cons discussion, and mention you should work with the DM to find out if the creating undead variation will be appropriate for their game.

!!!
Brilliant!

Creating rather than summoning just seems to be more hassle than it's worth. I wouldn't want to deal with it. I think that's the unspoken consensus most of us reached.

This was my mindset coming into it, what I started with on the forums, and it was also already in place with the Necromancer (A, in retrospect) framework that deathfork put together for us. Since no one had questioned it, I was also under the "unspoken consensus" presumption.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 15 Dec 2010 16:53

I just prefer 'spoken consensus' is all. I'd like to see that these aspects were considered before we became married to particular mechanical structures. Again, as an example, some sort of shared mechanic or resource for our shadow classes wasn't even considered before work started on the individual classes themselves, and now it's too late.

As for the creation vs. control: how are zombies busting up out of the ground at a royal banquet? There aren't any dead bodies there. And why is the sentinel druid's bear there?

I understand the issues with having undead around all the time, and summoning is an easy fix. But that fix looses an aweful lot of the flavor of the necromancer in the process. By comparison, look at the PHBII druid. Shapeshifting is its thing, but actually having different animal stats is difficult. So instead when the druid shapeshifts nothing changes. Their speed doesn't change, their size doesn't change, they can't fly if they shapeshift into a bird. They just have access to one set of powers in person form and a different set of powers in animal form, and the latter is the same whether they turn into a bear or a snake or a hawk or a wolf or a cloud of insects.

Mechanically it might work, but I challenge you to play a PHBII druid and actually claim that the mechanics 'feel' like you're taking on different animal shapes at all.

Mechanically, summoning works. But thematically, it just doesn't feel necromantic to me. As a necromancer I want to struggle with hiding my undead. I want to pick through the corpses of fallen monsters to find ones that would make good servants, even if the only thing that I keep when I animate them is their size. I want to be able to say "this zombie was the orc warlord who killed timmy, that skeleton was the evil cult leader who gave us so much trouble a while back." That's a big part of the fun of being a necromancer in the first place.

I get that summoning is easier, but I thought the whole point of this endeavor was that we thought the HoS builds couldn't adequately represent the concepts we're dealing with. I thought the whole point of making them their own classes was that we'd have the design space to come up with solutions to these issues that don't sacrifice the core principles of the archetypes.

Are actual necromancers, who create actual undead servants from the corpses of the monsters they actually fight, really something that the 4e game structure is incapable of delivering? If I want to play a real necromancer, do I really have to go back to 3.5?

For the record, I like how the necromancer here is shaping up. I don't mean to imply that I think it should be scrapped. But since you're working with a new class you have the design space to come up with original mechanics to reflect the concept of the necromancer. Use it! Don't take the easy way out and deliver a 'spooky summoner' before you've even tried to make an actual necromancer work!

Last edited on 15 Dec 2010 17:25 by Malisteen Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

OskarOisinson 15 Dec 2010 20:22

Omni, I like your idea of a sidebar.

@ Malis, I hope you haven't felt discouraged by (mostly my) counter-points to a lot of your suggestions, just so you know, whenever any of us do that, it's not to shut out an opinion or whatever, it just means we need more convincing. That's how it's been working thus far at least. Me and frito initially had some fairly long debates about aspects of the necro but now they're mechanically very similar because we have reached some kind of consensus on many points through argument.

As to your point about summoning, I think Omni's idea of a sidebar is a good fix if we can't all reach consensus on this. For me, the summoning option makes more mechanical sense but also makes a lot of flavour sense too in that, you are still summoning things 'from the beyond' and it is left up to you as to how you flavour that. In my mind, the summoning works by summoning already existing undead from the netherworld of the Shadowfell, rather than necessarily animating them. However, I didn't want to totally abandon the the idea that you could animate them so I added a caveat under the 'Special' line in the summon undead power that allows you to use pre-existing corpses to make your summoning easier, the flavour being that it takes less effort to animate a pre-existing corpse than to summon undead from another plane. Likewise, you could easily say that, having animated an already fallen foe, that they can now be summoned from the beyond along with your other minions for future battles. If you REALLY want to animate something and have it stick around, you could also use the Undead Servitor ritual and flavour daily powers for (corporeal) undead so that the servitor can attack and stuff. Though I know this all is probably not what you want to hear.

If you feel strongly about it, I would recommend that you try to come up with alternative mechanics of your own and put them to the community for critique as I think what a lot of our problem is with what you're proposing is we just don't see either 1) mechanically how it would be plausible without radically departing from the already existing pet classes or 2) we are attached to the mechanics we have put a considerable amount of time to develop (at least Frito and I are).

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Omnirahk 15 Dec 2010 20:24

Good for making us ask that question. But you make me grit my teeth everytime you call this necromancer a "spooky flavored summoner." It definitely feels different from any other summoner, since you're actually commanding an entire horde of minions, rather than being stuck to commanding one creature at a time. As for zombies bursting up through the floor in a banquet hall, I'm trying to recall where I've seen it before, but I'm sure I've seen one example of zombies clawing their way up indoors where they really have no right to be, and I remember it working pretty well - somehow managing to do so without breaking my sense of immersion. And it's easier when you allow it to be summoning. Basically, the necromancer could be plucking them from the Shadowfell, animating nearby corpses, or binding shadow to local detritus (which really is mostly dead flesh in an advanced state of decay). I feel it's reasonable to say that a necromancer used to adventuring has learned all three - just to make sure he can always summon an army in a pinch. And THAT does feel necromancer-y.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 16 Dec 2010 22:14

Oh, it's a different summoner. But it's still a summoner.

Hiding your undead (he's just quiet and smelly, honest), picking through fallen enemies for raw materials, having favorite minions (that zombie's the orc warlord who gave us so much trouble, that skeleton's the young dragon that was terrorizing the village), that's all a big part of the fun of being a necromancer. Summoned minions, to me, just doesn't get the feel accross.

I'll try my hand at some of my own suggestions (though I fear overcluttering the project with too many necromancer variants) when I'm done with finals. There's got to be something there….

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

OskarOisinson 17 Dec 2010 00:19

I would recommend trying to more or less go on what we have now and limit your efforts to realizing a kind of minor mechanical variant for what you would like to see if that's possible. So far, though there are basically two primary versions of the necro we're looking at, most of the elements are fairly similar so we're basically just fine-turning the chassis at this point. It would get confusing if a whole nother model popped up now. Also, keep in mind that the two current models are very stream-lined at this point so adding too many additional mechanics might over-complicate things. (Again, not saying this to be discouraging, please go wild if you like but, the two models we're looking at now have already evolved from about 5-7 initial models and have both incorporated a lot of community input.)

That said, with the present model (necro C anyway), I still think there's room for the sort of role-playing situations you're talking about, i.e. there are definite advantages to keeping up most of your minions all the time (maybe -1 so you could change your aspect if need be), in terms of combat effectiveness. While you can still unsummon them if need be, that gimps you if you're taken by surprise so there's lots of room for necros who would insist on always having minions around. Likewise, if you want to have 'favorite minions' maybe just make a sidebar with suggestions about how to make that and these other ideas of yours work. We could maybe even do an 'Unearthed Arcana' set of variant rules if people want to play a true 'Re-animator' Necro.

EX: You could say that by keeping some personal object (or body part) of a vanquished foe, you can recall them at will from the dead in any of the three forms. (This would then just basically entail superficial characteristics like appearance/clothing.)

In this instance, your undead minions basically become the 'spirits of the dead' given worldly form by your shadow magic, which is very in keeping with the traditional necromancer if not exactly full-blown re-animator style. My fear with your concept is that the mechanics will become cumbersome or redundant in relation to other classes and the Necros B and C respectively. I guess I can't really see how you could do the sort of things you're describing and not change minions from a conjuration, which would basically wreck the models we have up.

Another minor point: Some people don't want to deal with the RPing situations you're describing and the way it is, that choice is there for them, albeit at a minor combat disadvantage.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 18 Dec 2010 01:43

I like a lot of the concepts we're working with right now. I'll take a crack at trying to work my ideas into a variant of them and post it this weekend. Finals are in, all A's for me! Hurray! I've got 8 hours work tomorrow, but I'll be able to give this work some real effort on Sunday.

On monday or tuesday my article proposal for Dragon will be officially rejected, so I'll post those ideas then. It's mostly background stuff about how one gains shadow powers in the first place, similar to the heresies article I posted in these forums (I'm more of a fluff guy then a mechanics guy, can you tell?), but it does have some ideas for backgrounds that potentially could be worked into themes even if desired. If not, well, backgrounds are still a part of the game, if a minor one, that might warrant a place in our project. I can say they'd fit with pretty much any version of the classes we use, as long as they still replace part of their soul with a fragment of the Shadowfell as per the basic description of the shadow power source.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 18 Dec 2010 16:46

Alright, here's the variant I'm working on, I'm not putting it in the necromancer page comments yet, needs a bit more fleshing out, plus I'm not sure if it warrants a separate page or would be better discussed here in the forums or some such. Anyway:

Instead of summon undead, animate corpse/minion. Works functionally the same, but requires corpse. The minion maintains the targets size (limit small or medium at 1st level) Also, when minion is destroyed, it returns to an inert corpse state, any or all minions can be returned to corpse states as a minor action? Free action as part of casting animate corpse? (ie, return existing minions to corpse state, raise as new version?). Specifically call out that these minions are crated via the necromancer's life force, and share the necromancer's alignment.

Scales w/ level: # of minions at a time, also size of target-able corpse (small or medium heroic, + large or tiny paragon, +huge epic

Modified by corpsecrafter feats. Ex. "Wings of Death (epic feat, corpse crafter), if you target the corpse of a creature that had a fly speed when it was alive, the minion gains a fly speed (clumbsy) equal to its normal speed as a minion.

2nd example: "Hulking Death", heroic feat, corpse crafter. you may target corpses of creatures one size larger then normal with animate minion (ie, up to large at heroic, huge at paragon, gargantuan at epic).

3rd example: "Death's Pale Steed", heroic feat, corpse crafter. If your animate minion power targets the corpse of a creature that had the mount keyword, the minion may have the mount keyword and may be ridden by your allies. While ridden, you do not control the minion. Instead your ally controls the minion as per the rules for mounted combat. It still counts against your limit of # of minions at a time.

new free Necromancer Ritual: Corpse Token, casting time 5 mins? usable any number of times during rest? Reduces one lifeless corpse to a small token - generally finger bones, teeth, small carving, vial of blood, whatever, necromancer's choice. Arcana DC to identify a corpse token. Corpse tokens can be dropped into any adjacent square and targeted by any spell or effect as though they were the original corpse (also useful for other potential corpse-fueled powers? Corpse explosion?). A number of new medium humanoid corpse tokens can be prepared during a long rest without material (it is assumed that the necromancer raids graveyards, cobbles smaller animal corpses together, or imbues inorganic material with energy from the shadow fell).

Adv. over straight summoning:

• Actually animating corpses, like a proper necromancer.

• can incorporate some of base creature's stats into minion, mostly feat based so can be largely ignored if desired.

• Reanimating fallen minions strongly conveys the implacable nature of undeath

• Corpses in item form - can be handed out by DM

Addressing Concerns:

• what about when I'm in a banquet? Minions can be restored to corpses and converted to easily hidden/transportable form. Spare minions or minions w/ alternate traits can be kept in storage form.

• What about replacing lost minions in battle? Just re-raise downed minion - again, strongly convys the inevitable/implacable nature of undead/necromancy.

• What if I can't find any corpses, or don't want to bother collecting them? Can restock on base 'medium humanoid' tokens during long rest.

Disadvantages, w/ comments

• more complicated then just summoning: it is more complicated. But it's also the class's primary gimmick, so it can afford to be, and provisions are made to minimize hassle for those who don't want to deal with it.

• Minions animated from tokens start adjacent to if you don't drop them out beforehand. Honestly, probably a good call. At will walls as a minor action placeable anywhere w/in range is already potentially too strong. Adds tactical element if PCs have time to prepare for combat - bury/hide/drop tokens in chosen squares before luring enemies into ambush.

Thoughts?

Last edited on 18 Dec 2010 16:50 by Malisteen Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Greatfrito 18 Dec 2010 17:58

Actually animating corpses, like a proper necromancer.
Except, outside of gathering new abilities when you need, but don't have (Flying feat, but no flying enemies) them yet, it's not actually animating corpses. Your solution to it more or less negates the concept.

If you instead call your "tokens" a "Fetish" (new implement type), and say it's required for summoning, and that you can only summon adjacent… you wind up with the exact same mechanics.

Don't get me wrong, I think you're going about it in a "balanced" fashion - but maybe that's the point. In balancing it, you're really just reducing the differences to fluff, and the requirement that your DM give you foes with certain abilities in order to validate your feat choices. You're still taking feats to "unlock" abilities - you just also have to be provided with the right corpse. You're still able to "summon" on the fly without a wagon full of corpses - you just need to have spent a length of time "reducing" some corpses beforehand.

I'm trying to think of a parallel to the existing game. Hm. Maybe this: It's like putting in the mechanical requirement that a Wizard research and study in order to use his spells. It's just kind of assumed, or worked into the game in a non-mechanical fashion (if you want to).

If you take the Necro (B), you can do the same thing. "I spent time beforehand gathering corpses, and "reducing" them to tokens, and I summon from those."

EDIT: Material components. That's the parallel I was thinking of. Hard to remember it, though, when it's been completely stripped out of 4th edition. :-p

EDIT2: Artificers. Artificers use physical objects in many of their powers, yet aren't required to actually buy/find/build the necessary components. It's left to fluff.

At will walls as a minor action placeable anywhere w/in range is already potentially too strong.

Try it - at this point, I can vouch for (B)'s methods not being "too strong" (even with the Vicious necro placing 3 minions at the start of combat). You might get an "opportunity attack" the first round (which isn't much of a big deal, now that it's toned back to an immediate action), and if you win initiative, you might hit a lot of foes with an attack. But it's no worse (and likely actually weaker) than any other controller with a good-sized burst attack.

Last edited on 18 Dec 2010 18:28 by Greatfrito Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 18 Dec 2010 19:30

A) one key aspect is you do get [i]something[/i] from the base creature - the size - even without feats.

B) the issue of taking feats and not being able to use them isn't so big a deal. Once you have a corpse you have it. If it dies as a minion, it goes back to being a corpse. you can put it in your pocket and take it out later. Kill a dragon? cool, raise it as a minion. Next level, take the flying minion feat, kill your dragon minion, re-raise it as a flying minion. Take the feats for what you have already, for the most part. If one doesn't get used, retrain it. That's one of the nice things about feats in 4e - they're allowed to be a bit more situational that way.

In my mind the material componants are pretty essential to the necromancer concept. Fundamental to it. The idea is to make the material componant portable. It was suggested that I come up with a variant that could be included as a sidebar - ie, little to no mechanical distinction from the core necromancer, and that's what I've tried to set forward here. That's why the practical mechanics of it are only very little changed. If I were designing the necromancer from scratch, there'd be a wider variation, but I'm not. I wasn't in on the ground level discussion here, so I don't get to do that.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Greatfrito 19 Dec 2010 09:12

one key aspect is you do get something from the base creature - the size - even without feats.

Still has a level requirement though. Scaling available minion size at those levels has the same effect.

But:

It was suggested that I come up with a variant that could be included as a sidebar - ie, little to no mechanical distinction from the core necromancer, and that's what I've tried to set forward here.

If that's the intent (a variant): screw it, and rock right on. As far as I'm concerned, as long as its set in a sidebar, I have far fewer personal restraints about making it something more complex, or more DM-reliant, than most folks would use.

Though it does sound a bit like "poke-mans" ;-) - "gotta catch 'em all", right?

I kid, I kid! (Well, no, it does sound like pokemon a bit - but that's not a bad thing. :-D )

Last edited on 19 Dec 2010 09:22 by Greatfrito Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 19 Dec 2010 13:07

being a bit like pokemon is again somewhat deliberate.

Again, though, the point of the variant is to give the play some feeling of connection between dead enemies and new minions, some sort of mechanical reinforcement of the necromancer concept, without which they are merely a different brand of summoner.

With the default, I had been told that it was too complex, and it didn't matter. If players wanted to think they were animating the dead, they could complain. The problem is that we then have a necromancer that has to be refluffed to be a necromancer, when to me the entire point of this project in the first place was to not have to refluff a summoner. We're already getting a refluffed summoner from Heroes of Shadow.

I'm working on three variants, this is one of them. After I've finished fleshing these variants out and posted them, I'll let the necromancer be and focus my attention on the Shadowcaster and on fluff & background articles.

Last edited on 19 Dec 2010 13:09 by Malisteen Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 19 Dec 2010 15:09

I posted a couple variants in the NecroC page. I ended up dumping corpse tokens as more hassle then they're worth, and instead offered corpse lights as a more minor, sidebar type variant and animate/summon as a more significant variant - really another take on the necromancer class.

These are pretty much the last of my suggestions for the necromancer, though I'll stick around for comments, and I'll again suggest changing the final name of our class to 'necrocarnate' to distinguish it from the wizard build.

After this, I'll be focusing on fluff and the shadowcaster. Despite my lengthy discussion, I really do like the necromancer we have now, so if none of my suggestions are adopted I won't be bitter or anything, I'd just rather work on an element of the project that hasn't been so firmly established yet.

Last edited on 19 Dec 2010 15:11 by Malisteen Show more

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Kais3000 21 Dec 2010 12:32

I posted this in the "magic items?" thread and it seemed largely ignored so I will put it here also.

"Ki foci are exactly what the wyrd/witch and the necromancer use. A ki focus isn't energy from within the body, it is an item that can be enchanted to give the character strength. In the case of these shadow classes these can be anything like a skull or a hand. Necro and witch should both have ki focus as an implement type and we should have a side bar about how a ki focus can be fluffed as a skull/hand/whatever."

tl;dr Necromancer's should have staff and ki focus as their implement types.

Re: Necromancy - class or not?

Malisteen 21 Dec 2010 15:02

I could see that, although I still like the idea of scythes as implements for necromancers - whether they get scythlements as default or whether there are a couple specific staff implements for necromancers that are also scythes.

Don't worry about posts not being replied to yet. Everyone's still focused on the classes themselves, and attention will spread out from there as the classes are firmed up.

Last edited on 21 Dec 2010 15:03 by Malisteen Show more