Shattered Kingdoms

'Ord all bash' comes up a lot. Is there something to be said for animated dead not having bash? They could still find controls that have it.

Necros seem fine to me. Just add more holy worders grouped up behind tanks in cities to make it harder for them to dart inside the inn and murder all the RPers there.

I haven't seen many twinks rolling necromancers. In the past year at least, only Zerel and Surrit made an impact, and maybe Irition if he played more hours I suppose. Including the current one, those are 4 characters out of probably hundreds. That's not accidental.

You should really stop saying this, as it is deliberately misleading. The 50+ attacks thing is also way off (nevermind horrible math, thanks Dulrik). Looking at logs, wraiths seem to chip in somewhere around 18-20~ attacks.

While yes, wraiths might be level 50, they are nowhere near what anything else is as a "gm barbarian". Less accurate, less hp, less attacks. Any PC barbarian could probably dismantle 8 wraiths pretty easily. Nevermind 2 Holy Words killing them and turning controls on the necro, or BoG insta-wiping controls and animates both and murdering the necromancer.

Given how severely necromancers have been changed over the years, I think it's safe to say that people are always going to find something to complain about. Also, "order all" has been removed from undead in the past. And it was changed back.

A sorceror is still far scarier than a necromancer, with none of the weaknesses (which yes, believe it or not, is a factor in balance, imagine that), far more utility, and far more ability in PvE. Taunt + Lathron, backstab, Lathron + Losquaty, etc.

As for your claims about skilled players, it looks like a few have chimed in saying they had no trouble with necromancers.

Sorcerors/Necromancers are set up to demolish groups of non-PKers, yes (so is any class in the hands of a player who is into that). But are fairly easy for 1 person who knows what they're doing to handle.





Looks like you've tried that route before, D. Doesn't seem to have worked out.

He's not saying he'll remove order all. He's saying remove bash from animates. There's a difference. Animates would still respond to order all commands, such as get all when looting.

I wouldn't mind this as long as enough, if not all, controls had access to it.

Removing bash from animated dead would be cool. Players of necromancers might have to apply themselves rather than the same old brain dead PK of o all bash (volumes of bashing helps out).

An alternate route would probably be to not have the skills of animated dead set so close to mastered, which is what it seems to be.

Although I seem to recall in the past that holy word and dispel magic used to drop the magic on animated dead a lot more than it does now.

Let's talk about reality though, there's only really three things that threaten a necromancer, a paladin, a warlock from range and a white aura priest. Both of them are fodder for the necromancer solo though. The only way for them to even begin to threaten the necromancer is from behind a pet, which can only last 1 round against the volume of melee attacks that the undead can put out. After the pet goes down it is all too easy for the necromancer to secure the paladin/priest into prone where their spellcasting is now useless. The warlock has to attack from a range with fireball because the moment he enters the room, his pet the elemental while beefy is very susceptible to dispel magic. Necromancers *could* stand to lose that. I find it laughable that others assert that they can solo a necromancer. There are too many ways for a necromancer to dismantle an opposing character.

Now let's talk about necromancers that fight gray auras and dark auras. The situation becomes even more bleak. They lose the power of holy word, which is probably the only thing that allows other PCs to fight necromancers.

If I wanted to be serious about the issue, then I would say that Wraiths are bugged if you look what they get as an entity;

-They are undead
-They can fly
-They have paralyze
-They are barbarian class

Strip the barbarian class and we got the solution I would say.
Why wraiths need to be of barbarian class ?

Make them hellions perhaps. With 0 intelligence.
Although a new class just for them might be even better.

Better idea. Let's make them claymore spec'd mercs.

That is one possible solution. I originally proposed either making them unclassed and keeping them at the same level they are now, or making animate dead create NPCs that are 70% the level of the corpse used. Both solutions have their merits.


If you want to go look at a recent log for an example of an undead army getting 23 HITS in an opening round, go ahead. That's 23 hits, not 23 attacks. See the difference?


Sorcerers cannot steamroll big groups and PvE nearly as effectively as necromancers can. I also don't know why you keep bringing up the example of two charms. It is possible for some sorcerers to use two charms, but it is impractical for many reasons. A necromancer, on the other hand, can get two Lathron-level controls AND a hoard of GM barbarian wraiths on top of that.


Setting their level down to 70% of what it is now would either accomplish this or approximate it. I don't know for sure how NPC skills work, but I have to imagine a level 35 barbarian is worse at, say, 3rd attack than a level 50 barbarian. My experience from playing tells me that lower level NPCs just don't hit as hard or as frequently. Maybe this means they would miss bashes more too. I don't know.


Maybe this is because of the save bonus from fury.


Real talk. I think removing dispel from their spell list would be too harsh, and it doesn't address the problem: melee damage overload. You have identified that the problem is the outrageous melee output, and the best solution to that is to reduce their melee output. Reducing the level of animates, or making them unclassed would accomplish that. The latter seems like too big of a nerf.



Order all cleave seems pretty rough in that case. Also, getting past a ton of intimidates might also be problematic. I don't know if this would be addressed by setting their intelligence to 0. If so, it's not a bad idea.

Animated undead should really have their own class. They should get self defense, brawling, all weapon skills, second attack, third attack, endurance, and toughness, all at about the same level progression of a mercenary or barbarian. Certain subtypes of animated dead could even get special attacks like interdiction or the vampiric touch bite that many undead NPCs have. Maybe skeletons could be resistant to slashing and piercing damage, and so on. There's a lot of room for customizability off of the base animated undead template. They do not need things like wild fighting, berserk/fury, parry, fourth attack, dodge, counterstrike, head butt, bash, enhanced damage, rescue (lol, what kind of undead rescues anything), or any of the rest of the barbarian skills. it makes no sense for the animated legions of a necromancer to have those things. Canonical fantasy gaming undead don't work that way. This solution would, of course, take a lot more work than simply capping their level at 70% and leaving them otherwise unchanged. I like this solution better, but SK has one coder and he doesn't have an infinite amount of time.

I'm in favor of something being done to address the issue of over-the-top undead army melee output. Any of the solutions would be better than the current situation.

If you're talking about the one where Kirlin lingers, that's actually the combination of 2 rounds. It is apparent in the "Ok." between the two rounds. They get 14 attacks, 13 of which land, in the first round, and 13 attacks, 11 of which land, in the second round. Also, looking at the log where it displays necros who have an ethereal wand are greater than all, you'll see a round where 8 wraiths get 12 attacks, 9 of which land, and in the second round, they get 12 attacks, 10 of which land.

Much less than your counts. Being discredited doesn't bode well for getting things changed.