The Value (or Lack Thereof) of Necromancy

Make all Necromancy spells also have a Drain effect. Make Create Undead on Permanently Dead Bodies a Permanent effect. Make the Drain spell reduce your Max Body to 10.

I -especially- like #2, because it gives a better mechanical explanation as to how necromancers have tons of minions.
 
Which is why Death spells, Prisons, Paralysis, Sleep spells, and Feebleminds are totes illegal. To keep them balanced in the hands of players.
I mean, the decision for Necromancy to be illegal is a thematic one. Ideally Necro should offer players nothing significantly stronger than what they can get elsewhere, but offer those things more easily. I think Mike V would back me up on that. The problem is that the game has evolved away from that, both because legal TKOs are plentiful and Drain is no longer the cheapest available such effect because it moved from 5th level to 8th some time ago when Purify became a panacea, didn't get stronger. Honestly, Purify become so potent is a big part of what makes Necro less effective now.
 
Which is why Death spells, Prisons, Paralysis, Sleep spells, and Feebleminds are totes illegal. To keep them balanced in the hands of players.

Oh, I more than agree that there is a proliferation of one shot takeouts just now, and it vastly devalues the perceived benefit of Necro going straight to body.
 
Make all Necromancy spells also have a Drain effect. <snip> Make the Drain spell reduce your Max Body to 10.

Which resolves first?

  • Cause Light Wounds does 2 body, then hits you with Drain, which reduces your max body to 10? Why do the damage at all?
  • CLW does a Drain, which reduces you to 10 body max, then you take 2 damage?

The former ends up with weird math. ("Okay, I took 30 body leaving me at 5, and am drained, but now I can only heal up to 10." vs. "Okay, I took 30 body, leaving me at 20, and am drained, and now I'm actually at 10 body")

The latter seems like anything above a CSW is "Take an Eviscerate, a Drain, and can only heal up to 10".


Also, Chaos Blade becomes unworkable for necromancers with a metabolism.
 
I think Seth was suggesting that necromantic damage leaves a residual effect equal to how Drain currently works, and for Drain to be converted to something bigger. Call it Advanced Drain.
 
I also suggest tripling the damage of the Cause <X> Wounds spells, but also have them do 1-5 Chaos damage (Light, Wounds, Serious, Critical, Mortal) to the caster (excluding Bane/Reflect caster wooginess) to make it more significant when an NPC comes out throwing Necromancy. i.e. That person is sacrificing their own essence to cast Necromancy and it adds incentive to turn yourself into an Undead.
 
Not to mention that every NPC (and the braver PC) necromancer worth the title would just Reverse Life Force themselves and heal/take no damage from it while not being overtly undead. :D
 
Please understand that the following is worded very carefully.

I personally agree that Necromancy isn't scary in the game at this time. I personally further agree that there is no incentive as a player to be tempted to use necromancy because its effects are easily replicated via means that are not illegal. Finally, I personally agree that addressing those two concerns should be a priority.
 
*chuckles* I understand you're speaking as Dan the person, not Dan the Owner just like I talk as Ben the person, not Ben the plot member here. I personally also agree to all of your statements. :)
 
Scratch that. Doing that in addition to a Drain effect would really wreck people.

You could downgrade side effect a bit to replicate the disease effect when hit with any necro spell (where you cannot run for 5 minutes). This will also eliminate a rarely used spell (that lvl 1 disease spell).
 
If I was playing an NPC necromancer, I'd use Disease all day long.

....I..might have to keep that in mind...
 
I have found that the moment you make something illegal or otherwise tell the general populace you cannot do this, a rather sizable amount of the player community just want to do that themselves. I have witnessed many times I call "the PC exemption" in games. All undead must be destroyed on sight. Well except Jim. You see, Jim is a PC who found a powerful rit that transformed him into a greater undead who fights on our side so we'll leave Jim alone.

I have seen games where PC's have cast Chaos magic with the full knowledge that at the end of the fight, they'd be put to death (Of course in Alliance that isn't as bad as it sounds as I've actually witnessed people take deaths instead of paying a fine). But at least the player made the noble sacrifice when the only option they saw was chaos. Even turned themselves in. Others have tried to hide the fact and use it on the sly to be the 'bad boy' of the good guys and I've witnessed as many people turn a blind eye as much as they've also enforced the law against necromancy. I've also seen and heard of and in the past witnessed people trying to find ways to make it legal within their areas despite the game wide rule of it being illegal.

I think though that if Necromancy was turned into more of a powerful force, more players will begin to look at using it when things get tough. And the more players that use it, the less harsh penalties will become IG because upsetting players is a major issue that people do their best to avoid. You'll receive arguments along the lines of "Plot threw X out at us and the only way we could have reasonably stopped it is with necromancy. We shouldn't be punished for something that they forced us to do."

It's a delicate thing to give the temptation of forbidden power to players - especially in a system that encourages increasing one's power in any way possible.
 
I'm okay with a system that encourages more PC deaths, especially more highbie PC deaths.
 
I agree, however a certain amount of care needs to be taken to avoid every PC death becoming a 'customer service issue'.
 
Putting out drain effects off of 1st level spells must never happen. The cures are too high level and scarce and one necromancer can wipe a town. Then no one plays your plot, because they are waiting for reset. Always remember when you are trying to make something scary you are using a mechanic to elicit an emotion. Always a bad idea.

Joe S.
 
I'm okay with a system that encourages more PC deaths, especially more highbie PC deaths.

I find that trying to target highbies systemically just results in lowbie deaths. Highbies get that way because they play smart, not because the system can't kill them. Further, you pretty much have to break the system and steam roll them anyway to make a death stick.

That there's anyone on Seattle staff that holds that attitude is part of the reason I still won't travel back there for a game.
 
I find that trying to target highbies systemically just results in lowbie deaths. Highbies get that way because they play smart, not because the system can't kill them. Further, you pretty much have to break the system and steam roll them anyway to make a death stick.

The fact that you have to break the system and steam roll them to make a death stick IMO means that the system is broken - unless the system had the design idea behind it to make PC's immortal I also agree that to want more PC deaths in a game is counter productive to running a game. Wanting to make things more risky so they can feel the fear of losing their character's lives and find another option besides the 'Murder Hobo'? Sure. Wanting there to be a stronger 'punishment' than 15 minutes downtime during resurrection? Sure. But that's a topic for another thread.


My point with making necromancy more dangerous/potent is that it may not result in more PC deaths but instead result in allowing more PC's to perform necromancy without killing them IG over customer service relations fears, avoiding trouble and keeping players OOG. Basically turning it from something that is instantly punishable by death that no one really bothers with since it really doesn't have a lot of bite into something that is severely frowned upon - especially if people begin to use necromancy to deal with more powerful creatures to save more people in a shorter time. And I believe that if such calls were made for whatever reason, the flexibility in those decisions would be more in favor with the highbies than the lowbies as they'd be frequent returning paying players, friends of the staff as well as the casters of the more powerful spells that had the biggest bang for the coin.
 
I have a lot of swirling ideas on necromancy and RP repercussions for actions beyond those of combat. I think I need to give them time to gel, but in the interim here are some thought snippets I have about it. Please note these are my thoughts, and don't necessarily represent the chapters I'm a part of.

- Necromancy is already brutal in low level games where armor makes up a large part of survivability, but not as much in high level games except for Drain, because status effects are more critical than body numbers, usually.
- PC deaths from RP deserves a whole other topic, but basically if you're not already playing favorites, then having a PC to be killed for illegal actions shouldn't be a customer service issue.
- High level play is broken, if at all, by magic item proliferation. (System may be working as intended).
- The folks who immediately do the forbidden thing are asking for the role-play of possibly being caught and the repercussions thereof.
- If all the instant take-out effects were illegal in one form or another... that would be a very interesting game. Very very interesting.
 
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