Shattered Kingdoms

Just a couple comments. I don't really have strong feelings either way about wimping necros. They have tons of strengths (or, "wraiths", if you will) and tons of weaknesses.



Yep, this is great. In theory. A BoG nimbus seems like a good way to keep a necro around, and it's quick casting. However, if you're battling even 7 wraiths as a front line pallie, what are the chances you're going to bolt those wraiths to dust before one of them paralyzes you? Or, a wight bashes you? Or, there are so many undead attacking you at the same time, you can't concentrate on BoG while holding up defensive spell(s). Or, the necro's Imperial swashie friend taunts you? Or, the necro casts fear, and your under-saved party, whose gear is being worn by the necro's pets, scatters. 7 rounds is a lot. And when I'm in the second row, my pallie is more likely to be calling holy words. (Or being pushed into the front row when his tank dies or falls victim to fear.)

BoGing the necro himself seems like a great idea, but the necro can usually resist enough of those that his army can get the job done, or he can etherealize. Unless, possibly, if he's a delf.

So, in practical necro PK, it seems like a BoG is more useful if you need to keep that necro around, or you think you can last a few rounds (and wade through that crazy necro army spam).



I didn't realize the casting time was cut down. Still, in my recent experience, 1 holy word isn't typically enough to really devastate a carefully crafted, high level necro army. (Lesser necro armies, sure.) And even with the shorter casting time, timing holy words is tricky. There's no reprieve from false casting due to a missing target, either, so if you miss, you've just massively drained your reserves for nothing. The skillful group has holy worders being dragger around by competent leaders, precisely timing the casting. Still, tough.

And, it seems to me, the casting time decrease actually hurts paladin tribunals, who, I imagine, find it tough to muster enough charisma to order a NPC to holy word, then walk into the neighboring room before the word fires, which was one of those tactics that seemed particularly tough for a necro to counter.



There are tons of counters, sure. Hopefully no one was suggesting that necros are invincible. However, a necro army can also be one of the most brutally potent PK machines around, and even with a pallie, designed to be effective against necros and less effective against other classes, riding into a battle one on one with a Gussow-type necromancer is a dicey proposition.

Which... is fine. I think we're just talking the fine points of balance and necro spell utilization here, somewhere in the murky middle ground, not at the extremes of "my class is useless" or "your class is invincible". From the white side of the fence, at least, I don't see this latest tweak as being unreasonable.

Peace,
Bux

In my expereince of playing a novice to expert necromancer is that when using animate dead, you need extra bodies because the zombies and skeletons have a tendency to fall down at inapropiate times.

Also, when playing a necromancer you don't want to die.... ever. There's times where the few religions willing to resurect a necromancer have no one around. So, a casual dying because of a miscalcuation of how many animates you had is a bigger problem than any other class.

Also there at least were some limits on the number of undead you could raise: Intellegence, mana pool, and time. If you find a way to raise these it ussaly involves replacing that limit with annother weakness, so if you play a deep elf then you have a greater intellegence, but get deep elf weaknesses. Charisma can be a factor too.

I was playing this killing zombie game on X box the other day. It was fun. I wonder if we could have something like that on SK. Raising an army of 100 zombies would be cool. Sort of like running through the paliden encampment.

I imagine Zombie assasins! Maybe the zombie moves slowly towards the charector targeted. Tracking NPCs work to fast, so maybe like how the NPCs find their home. They move a space every tick closer to the charector. Something simpler might be if the necromancer names the space the zombie is to go to. That way you could have zombie ambushes in the wilderness. They could have necromancer marks perhaps so that a person could identify who made them maybe named sixfingered halfling's Zombie or the zombies all end up looking like the creator - a pale Zombie reaches out with hunger. If nothing else you could follow the tracks back to where the creator was.

Something to consider is with the physical exaustion penelties for every thing a mortal fights should drain a bit out of them. Undead on the otherhand should be tireless. I can imagine a gun ho paliden being swarmed by zombies and skeletons because he's out of mana and he's fatigued. Being helpless the lesser undead swarm him.

Maybe it could be you have lots of lesser undead yet fewer high level ones? hmm... maybe not. I'm not sure what the difficulties of playing a higher status charector is.

Granted I've only played a few charectors who reached expert or higher.
For me it would be nice to face things that don't blend my charector and leave me wondering why won't the bash command work because he's a ghost before I realise a fight is happening.

The more I think about the change, the more enthusiastic I'm getting. Fewer animates means less one necro taking on a guardian alone, and more PvP necros. Aside from OVT, who couldn't do [REDACTED] even when he had a horde, I think that this will really make Necros into a better class. The biggest advantage of being a necromancer is the crazy killing power, and the biggest disadvantage is not knowing what the hell is going on because of all the mother****ing spam. This change takes both of those down a notch. Yay?

Anyways, it's not like I ever actually PK, so what do I care?

I didn't read all nine pages of this, but oh well. Necromancers should not be changed. Holy word destroys undead. It takes a lot of work to raise a large army. Necromancers and undead get destroyed by inner guardian gas attack.

Give necros then enchants spells.

Will this overpower the necromancers? Before the change I would have said Yes, that would be totally unfair to all other players.

Now that they get a limited amount of undead and cannot have a party larger then a group of 9 to 15 without being able to concentrate on higher spells.

It would not overpower them as much as one would think. Whenever a necromancer dies (usually) all of his undead will be junked all their equipment taken and whatever the other team cannot carry they junk they rest while they tell their priest or shaman to exorcise the necromancer trying to rp. Other times the necromancer is butchered with his undead and fully junk looted because he is evil and exorcise without any rp. So all the time the necromancer spent with the sorc or priest is gone usually in in three rounds after a holy word, The priest or sorc is not likely going to do this every time the necromancer gets a new undead group. Unlike a sorc who although can only have one charm can enchant the crap out of what its wearing so spells like the necromancers bounce off of it (yes literally like a rubber ball).

Allowing the necromancer to enchant things will help boots his/her undead 's chance of surviving a Bolt of Glory, Holy Word, Heal and all the other spells that affect undead. Also to those who hunt necros think of this if you manage to kill and necromancer and his or her army or just manage to make them flee after a few animates are dead; you get the honor of getting beefy enchanted armor and weapons to play with. Sort of like those chocolate eggs with toys in them, after killing the undead you get something to play with because you all suffer from NDD (Necromancer Deficit Disorder.)


* The boost to the control undead is nice and people will likely see more controls wandering about.

Enchant weapon would be too powerful. Enchant armor...eh...not unless we get another little wimp, which I don't want.

The boost to control is negligible considering the mana drain was not cut at all, and the fact that controls are all but useless in PvP since they get nerfed so hard just by being controlled. They also are still supremely vulnerable to BoG and HW, and have all the other usual undead weaknesses. As was stated before, controls are good for exploring or summon training, nothing more.

Just as a statement:

If a necromancer is not superior to all other classes in its ability to playerkill-solo, then the purpose of necromancers as SK has defined them is offically null and void and the class needs to be removed.

I could comment further, but if you can't see why this is...well you obviously don't play the mud to see the odds are 100% stacked against the necromancer to begin with. Few allies, must be diabolic, and everyone in general hates them.

Dulrik, just as a curiosity -- have you ever played a necromancer actively on your very own mud? I mean not seen numbers, not snooped, not read logs -- actually played one from start to finish racking in 100 hours a month+ and gming them while actively participating in a cabal/tribunal and PvP action?

I know that sounds harsh, but if you did, you'd realize why being a necro just is -not worth it-.

I will not play a necromancer as they are. Not because they're overpowered, or underpowered, or whatever, but too much prep time, too little return, and everyone hates you. Oh and let's not mention that everyone and their mother has great fort equipment. I can name several dozen items that come with +3/+4 fort already on them and aren't too hard to obtain, and are not that limited. So not only do your undead die in 1 bolt/1-2 holy words, but your spells are absolutely useless even with 14 art against anyone who's not completely inept at wearing basic enchantments, and to boot you have almost no utility. Whee. Where do I sign up to play?

Yeah, not exactly how you sell a class.

Oh and keep in mind I say this with the intent that I will play a light-aura character if I choose to have another character after my current.

Thanks.

Changes needed made, no single class is supposed to be able to set siege to a city alone, that is why every caster class has taken hits over the past four years.

There is no need for any class to be commanding over nine NPCs at one time. This will just force people to make different builds and find different tactics.

Incorrect! Any class that is hardcoded to be universally hated and hunted after in groups must be able to erradicate said groups with an equal chance alone.

Necromancers were at their optimal balance roughly 5-6 years ago, when edrain had no timer, animates weren't too useful, and you had to control undead if you wanted to use them, and while they may have had huge hps, they died in 1 bolt...maybe 2 if you got super lucky, and cancellation/holy word/taunt/dispel magic still caused you to lose control of them.

The fact a necro can't take a good half-level off you for attacking him is just sad.

Edit: Also if a necro is not likely to die himself during a major fight against a pc group, due to his own undead, then yeah, this is a fault of the code changes and must be rectified before the class can be anywhere near what it 'should be'. The fact a necro can now keep a suit of equipment for months on end while being pk active is just absurd.

Oh, and bolt of glory needs to return to being hellion/evil priest/necro ONLY and it needs to ditch the nimbus crap and cause the opponent to flee once again.

As it stands now, BoG is only beneficial to a prepared darkie. Causing a necro/priest to insta-flee from behind their undead/pets/players into lawmobs and other players is actually more powerful than keeping them in place.