Shattered Kingdoms

More ethereal amulets.

Etherealform is not the problem. Animate dead is the problem. If the necromancer could not count on his army to wipe out opponents with a high degree of success, then etherealform would not be effectively different than quaffing a word of recall in most cases (excepting things like taunt, BoG, and curse). Flooding the realms with etherealform potions is also not the answer. All that would do is make it so that everyone carries them around, thereby turning a powerful spell into a relatively useless one. I agree that there should be some etherealform potions, but they are better suited to being limited in number and hard to get. This is what areas like the Dreamscape are for. It even makes IC sense for there to Potions of Altered Essence or edible Haze Puffs out in the Dreamscape, right?

Necromancers are able to steamroll people with their NPC armies, to the point that they themselves don't actually have to do anything except sit there ethereally, "order all bash" and wait for their NPCs to win - they don't even have to make use of the rest of their considerable arsenal of spells in most cases. The solution to this is to take animate dead down a peg. In the canon of fantasy gaming, the creatures that necromancers can easily make are generally not very powerful. They are minor nuisances and meat shields. In SK they are armies of destruction, allowing necromancers to solo almost any NPC in the game and to have a decided advantage against any other PC. If two players of equivalent skill are playing, the necromancer has the advantage against every other class. In many cases on SK, the necromancer has the advantage over two or more opponents, with little risk to himself. This seems very unbalanced, and I don't think it should be this way. There are ways to counter and kill necromancers but it almost invariably involves a group of PCs. Sure, anyone can get a lucky petrification scroll or charm in, but those are the exception to the rule. Someone earlier in the thread proposed dispelling as a good way to deal with an ethereal necromancer. That's great if you are in a group where someone can do that, but not if you're trying to take on the necromancer one on one. Not to mention he can just zap his wand again immediately. If you're a barbarian or mercenary and he goes ethereal, you should at least have a reasonable chance to beat his army, even though you are not going to be able to kill the necromancer himself.

There are several ways animate dead can be addressed. My personal suggestion would be to have animated undead be a fraction of the level of the corpse that is used, not equal to the level. If the fraction were 7/10, that would make the top level undead that a necromancer could create 35 (maybe slightly higher with a bard around and the right corpse). That's enough to make them effective in a wide variety of uses, but not so high that they will drop melee PCs in just a few rounds and be able to solo virtually any NPC. They will serve as meat shields and, if the undead remain barbarians, the necromancer still has access to "order all bash." The other solution is to make the NPCs a weaker class, sort of like how a certain cabal's mounts are. They will lose the "order all bash" capability and be much less effective at putting out damage, but retain higher HP and be able to absorb more blows. Another solution still would be to just reduce the number of animated dead the necromancer can have. I like this idea the least. I don't mind necromancers running around with a bunch of undead, as long as the power level of the undead is reasonable. I think it is a flavorful difference that warlocks get one elemental, sorcerers get one or maybe two charms, but necromancers can have a boatload of NPCs. The NPCs just need to be weaker than they are now.

The truth is that even if you removed animate dead altogether, necromancers could still run around with multiple powerful controlled NPCs and a potent arsenal of spells, such as finger of death, energy drain, and fear, not to mention zapping, reciting, and brandishing. They would still be a challenging foe. Ratcheting animate down to a sensible level would not leave them in bad shape at all; it would just bring them in line with the rest of the classes on SK. There is simply no justification for animated dead to be as strong as they are now.


TL;DR: Put in a few hard-to-get etherealform potions and tone down animate dead. If that doesn't stop necromancers from steamrolling PvE and PvP then they can be reexamined in due time.

I disagree. Animate dead does not need to be nerfed. It has been sufficiently nerfed already.

Word of recall should not take your undead army with you. I don't think this is controversial. Forcing necros to recall should give you a little bit of time before they return with an army.

As for etherealform, I think etherealform pills would solve the problem without creating any new ones. There's no reason etherealform should be a major factor in pvp.

More access to limited items isn't going to solve anything. It would be just as good if in ethereal form the magic link is lost. They either need to word out or risk going ethereal without controlling the undead anymore.

The pill suggestion was actually suggesting unlimited no-save pills that are costly.

I'm just one of those people that think maybe only sorcs should be able to use etherealform. That would make it a pretty powerful spell, and then maybe we could get rid of final strike and not need to replace it with anything. Giving everyone access to etherealform isn't the answer.

ETA

Other than that, I don't think necros need to be nerfed any further. Animate dead is fine.

I disagree with jennbo. Having Etherealform as a strategic escape is great. If it were sorc only and not scribable it would never be used. I also don't have a problem with animate dead given how fast that army can get wrecked.

I don't think animate dead has ever been nerfed.

Only in that the number of animates you can have was limited.

If you can't cast a spell on something, then a spell you are holding should drop when you cross the ethereal divide. You had cast fly or invis on your buddy, and then cast etherealform: He looses both spells. You have a charm or controls and go ethereal: your hold on them is broken. If this isn't enough for an animate army (It's been a long time since I tried a necro so I don't remember if they're held or not), then When they're master leaves formation via etherealform they all flee in terror.