Shattered Kingdoms

Necros have a connection to their undead, make an HP pool that they all share. Necor takes damage HP pool takes damage, and the reverse. Gives necros a way to survive arrow onslaughts, strengthens the helpfile about the connection to their undead, makes them consider how many undead they want to take out, since the HP pool will get divided by all participants.

Spidermonkey, I don't have anything personal against you. However, this is one reason why I don't feel bad when you disagree with me on balance issues.

I see it as perfectly balancing, you use animate dead it activates the pool. You have one or two awesome meat shields and protection against ranged attacks, gives you a way to heal yourself with your harm spells and it forces you into a position where you take tanking over outright damage output. It also allows people to do something about you going ethereal mid combat, eliminate your undead and you die. If you go ethereal and drop your undead to protect your HP then you can't order your controls to do any more damage.

I kind of like the idea.

Well sure, I kind of like the idea too, but it's way too complex and would completely re-wire the entire class. People here are complaining that their sandwich needs a little more ketchup and you said "How about a bowl of soup instead?"

It would give a tactical change, the rest of the class would still be the same, you would have to be more thoughtful in the application of your undead is all.

Honestly, it's only half-silly. If necros turn out to be completely worthless if eth is removed (which I really doubt, but it could happen) - an idea somewhat like [ALUDRA SPELL] wouldn't be terrible. Pick ONE undead (not a whole shared health pool, that's silly) and cast a reverse-[ALUDRA SPELL] on it. That undead'll take partial damage.

I'm not saying I'm on board yet, but it's a potential solution to a problem that doesn't exist yet.

I feel as though we've gotten so far from the actual issue.

There is an abundance of ethereal wands and methods for becoming ethereal, it's asinine. Replace a few eth wands with some that are more rare and equally useful. Anyone sitting ethereal is doing so because they've lost a fight and need an escape route or aren't looking for a fight. We should be adding to the game, not trying to take away from it.

Start by scrapping the ethereal scrolls in Nerina.

I like the large HP pool. You cast animate and you get your hp pool*multiplier and you get HPx pool. So you and one undead each have HPx/2 a second undead would bring HPx/3 and so on up to limit. This gives you the option to have one massive undead and have a huge pool, you risk one shots from BoG but you both can sustain a great deal of damage. Now to offset the one shot thing when you cast animate you get another pool of resistance R1 R2 R1 is the necromancers resistances R2 is the pool animates draw from one animate is R2 two is R2/2 etc down. This will give a choice of being part of the group and having a huge pool to survive from or if you are after one or two people a huge army for damage. It will take away the one mindset necro of massive damage and protection from animates and force them into other decisions. To prevent them from making an undead and stashing it the pool breaks when that animate is not in the same room as you. If at any point and time your animates are released it's HP pool is removed from the group, divided by the multiplier and removed from those who are left.

This would force somewhat of a change in the fact you would be able to have that tank and be part of a group, or like now you are your own group, the problem being is you have to factor in bog HW and other spells that may drop all your undead and your health in one shot. It would force a different play style and give different tactical options for the necromancer to play with.