Shattered Kingdoms

No matter how high the cost, this would just make way too many PVP battles boring or one-sided. The more people have access to etherealform, the less effective it is. If it was sorc only, then sorcs could have a pretty powerful out where no one (except a certain weapon) could touch them. To me, and I don't play a sorc, that seems like it makes the spell even more powerful, not less. Especially with charm - but getting back on topic, having one charm and being ethereal is not at all equivalent to having an undead army and being ethereal.

I think etherealform is getting used too much by other people in instances where if you have the ability to wipe faces with an undead army, you should be a tiny bit more vulnerable in order to even it out a bit. I would hate to see the PVP landscape with unlimited etherealform pills available.

A delf necro used to be able to hold up to 43 wraiths (Ixcenia at the time with a miran priest pushed that to the limit and 3 rounded the outer hammer guardian) at the time. Now they can only hold up to a maximum of 8 or so. That's a pretty sufficient nerf in it's own right.

Why not make it so that everyone, who isn't a mage, who enters the ethereal plane and comes back takes spirit disorientation for the duration of the spell? If they die, they get that, plus the disorientation from being resurrected.

That won't do much. They just become ethereal once, wipe 3-4 players, then come out and become ethereal once more (2 sd), wipe 2-3 more players. Coupled with full junk loots, this means the opposing side will need hours to make any sort of retaliation, so the SD's will have gone away.

Right now, ways to counter necro's include:
1. A lucky break
2. A certain weapon that allows a warrior class to get ethereal and own the necro's face
3. Another Ethereal sorc that lands a petrification before getting FoD'd, edrained, or otherwise killed himself.
4. A full group (with an ethereal person to go after the Necro after the army of undeath is defeated)

And, no, like ladyjennbo said, having a charm and being ethereal is not the same as having an army of undead and being ethereal. If you'd like an example, have someone charm Lathron, buff him and have him go after Nivienne's NPC of undeath. See what ensues.

It's easy to nuke necromancers if you have enough HW bombs. The issue is having enough tanks to withstand 8+ undead with halberds for enough HWs to go off.

Why do people forget about rogues / bards? They can go ethereal and actually kill necros too.. Mostly I agree with Baldric's idea. Make WoR not bring pets with you across the board. It's a bit of a nerf to sorcs, warlocks and necros but at least it gives people time to recuperate from attack without the necro coming back instantly.

Ouch to scouts.

This is so funny. I have a feeling that if a certain player made a centaur bard, "omg free mastered kick is so OP" threads would pop up. Good paladins haven't had any trouble with necros. Maybe you guys need to look to yourselves rather than saying wimp the game.

So, knowing that a single paladin would get rocked by a necro, hell anyone would get rocked by a single necro means something is wrong. O all bas beats anything that a pallie by himself can do, even behind a pet, the necro army will quickly dispatch the pet and then kill the paladin. No one class should require an army to combat it. No one class should be able to do what necro's do with little harm to them. If etherealness was nerfed to anyone not a sorc, it would solve this problem... a little bit.

So, it's easy to take down one necromancer with a big enough group full of tanks and holy worders? Yes, that's true, but that's kind of my entire point. It shouldn't take a monumental effort from multiple PCs to be able to face off with a necromancer.

I don't understand people who think that animated dead should not be looked at. Do you think necromancers should be able to solo virtually any NPC in the game, and cruise through almost any area solo with little risk? Should a necromancer be able to out-melee all other classes? Do they really need to be able to muster over 50 attacks/round plus interdiction with their army of NPCs? How is this even remotely balanced? All of this is before you even consider that they have access to other very powerful spells, staves, wands, and scrolls. Animate dead is an initiate level spell. Should it really be so devastating? Just because animate dead was previously wimped from ludicrous down to ridiculous doesn't mean it can't use some more attention. This thread wouldn't even exist if undead armies from one necromancer could not take down groups of GM PCs while the necromancer sits around ethereally to watch. If that didn't happen with such regularity, then the etherealform escape hatch wouldn't even be worth mentioning.

Nerfing word of recall or etherealform to wimp necromancers seems to be missing the mark. Necromancers can make use of these things to more devastating effect than other classes because necromancers are overpowered, not because these spells are themselves are problematic. Why meddle with the ancillary stuff when the actual problem is so glaringly obvious? Necromancers put out an unbalanced amount of damage. There is no need for them to have 10 GM barbarian NPCs at their disposal. No other class comes anywhere close to that. If the animates topped out at 35th level, as per my previous suggestion, that would temper their damage output, perhaps to the point that they're actually a balanced class (50/50 shot that would be sufficient).

In theory, necromancers are supposed to be an advanced class that is difficult to play. In practice, necromancers are simple to play. Being diabolic gives them tremendous leeway in using the most dastardly (effective) tactics, they're incredibly easy to level, they have access to every resource they will need by way of recite, zap, and brandish, they are highly mobile with teleport, rifts, and flight, and they can overcome 99% of the PvP and PvE challenges SK has to offer with "order all kill" and "order all bash." And that's before you even consider the rest of their spell list, which has a lot of utility and some potent PK winners.


TL;DR: Let's address the real problem, not get head-faked by etherealform and word of recall. And, yes, a few etherealform potions in the game in tough areas would be fine.