Shattered Kingdoms

Should Necromancers be over powered? Given the price of playing a necromancer AKA instant PK magnet hard to get assistance due to alignment restrictions. Is it reasonable that they be stronger than every other class? If so how much stronger?

My gut feeling is Yes they should be stronger than other classes in the game. They have clear weaknesses to priests and paladins.
Here is where things get a little trickier. I feel the current weakness to priests is fine for where priests sit in regards to other classes. Paladins have similar issues to necromancers as PK magnets themselves so I feel the balance there in favor of the paladin is probably suitable although may be a little BoG favored would be nice if necromancers could switch from mass army to army designed to fight paladins. Something along the lines of extra protection for their undead vs holy word and BoG with significant mana and concentration drain (so less undead).

Now other classes with out going on a class by class breakdown of the other fights, I feel necromancers should have enough power to take on with even chance two to three other players that are not priests or paladins as mentioned above. This is a fine line to reach and the prep time is a significant factor. It would be nice to significantly reduce necromancers prep time. Logging onto a necromancer means you have to prep for fighting. Which means logging onto a necromancer for a quick hour of play means you spend a significant amount of that time preping.

Necromancers should be a class no one who answers Yes to being new should be able to play. I really feel their should be an extra portal or question that lets true newbies choice to move to a restricted class list at their choice but that is a whole other topic.

This is a board over view of the subject.

PS: I dont play a necromancer and really dont have much of an interested in doing so in the future. Im more on the fighting them off side of the fence so want to see a few of them around for entertainment reasons.

This is already the case.

Who starts a question off with should xxx be overpowered?

IMO, if you play a necromancer who has the inability to RP with others, play a different game.

I feel like a lot of your ideas are actually already this way. Necromancers have, in general, had their prep and maintenance time heavily decreased along with the nerfs in overall strength that have occurred over the years. It used to be you could make as many undead as you wanted with no concentration cost, but the timer on wraiths (The best animates up until the most recent change) was 45 minutes, meaning that if you wanted to walk around with 30 wraiths you spent at least half your time casting the animate dead spell, and that's if you were far above average in managing your time.

Then, animate undead had a soft cap put into place with animate dead requiring a minimal amount of concentration, and in more recent history animate dead and control undead, along with all charm spells, were changed so that you keep all your animates/controls upon logging out sans gear.

While necros certainly haven't gained anything in the realm of defense (aside from being able to enchant for MR within an achievable timeframe, which certainly isn't worth ignoring), recent changes that have decreased the strength of necros have also cut down on the required prep and maintenence time to be at a reasonable PK strength.