Shattered Kingdoms

I like the idea of scouts w/o tame/skirmish.

Let's not forget about ghouls!

Just make wraiths unable to use weapons, I really only see a huge problem from wraiths all with weapons.

I was going to ask for what Dulrik proposed in my earlier post. I then thought that that would be of little value since the other varieties are unable to fly. I like the idea of tweaking animate dead to make different varieties balanced, available, and viable. Wraiths have all the coolest abilities while the other varieties have almost nothing in comparison. Yes, extra HP, chill touch, poison bite, plague bite are great but not when you have the flying, bashing, zerking, paralyzing bite wraiths as an alternative.

I guess my vote would be warlock with no spells or device usage. They at least keep second attack that way, but they don't get enhanced damage or a huge array of weapon choices like a hellion gets. If you greatly prefer hellion, just make sure they also don't get cleave in addition to no spells/intimidate. Eight GM cleaving hellions would be a bit much.


I agree with this 100%. A lot of interesting things can be done here.

Warlocks.

Why would a necromancer ever even use animate dead in that case?

I'm not sure why you are against hellions since that seems to handle your complaint perfectly as you originally wanted it, as it would limit them to 3rd attack and remove bash and the berserk/fury bonus to damage and weapon speed. Or has your goal moved from balancing the class to just making them unplayable?

Obviously leaving them with cleave/intimidate would be silly.

The only PvE argument is this: Necros can do a pretty bang-up job of soloing most areas as long as no null-magic areas come into play. They cannot, however, solo every area, and they can't waltz through places with auto-attacking law NPCs without having to stop and heal very often, and leave themselves vulnerable. On the other hand, any healer+tank (Or solo sorcerer) can go to all those same places, and even necros can't solo tough grouped boss NPCs like Karnak without a great deal of risk involved. However, the only truly challenging and rewarding areas in SK that require the kind of firepower that necros typically offer involve null-magic rooms, which means that a necro is no longer something that can be relied upon for his animates/controls.

As has also been mentioned in a variety of other places, there are so many drawbacks and weaknesses to playing a necro that if there weren't some sort of reward for it, then no one would play them at all. I can't recall the last necro who lasted any decent length of time, and I attribute it to this reason. If you smack animate undead with the nerf bat any harder than it's already been bludgeoned, then necros will lose the only benefit they have which is on the same level as all of their weaknesses. They will finally be "balanced" to the people who are crying rivers of tears now, and you will also never see anyone good play a necro again. The only undead that are any good at all are equipped wraiths because against well-prepped characters, every other type of undead (including unarmed wraiths) just bounce off of their armor. They also already have horrific HP: Hammer warriors with an HoL kill a wraith a round.

I don't know. Maybe to have an army of interdicting NPCs? Why do people have pets? A GM warlock is still better than most pets.


The sample undead class I gave did not have enhanced damage, parry, dodge, sneak, hide, or fast healing. That's a lot of good stuff that necromancers simply do not need at their disposal. I like second attack, third attack, endurance, toughness, self-defense, and brawling (I am aware there is no class that approximates this perfectly). I was in favor of allowing them all weapons, but now that someone else brought it up, I don't mind limiting their weapon choices as well. If hellion is too good and warlock is not good enough, maybe shamans without spells would be a reasonable compromise. It even makes some semblance of IC sense, what with the connection shamans have to death and spirits.

Surely you have figured out ways to deal with about 90% of the null-magic rooms in SK by now. It's really not that hard.


So... a necro can't solo one of the toughest NPC groups in the game "without a great deal of risk" and that's some kind of argument? No other class would even have a shot, barring certain non-class abilities. Come on, man. Get real. Also this business about having to stop and heal a lot taking down scores of law NPCs is obviously a lot of jive. If that were true, necromancers wouldn't be able to empty coffers in 10 minutes.


The rewards have been enumerated over and over. The diabolic alignment is about all they need to balance things out on this front. But, in case that's not enough, how about control undead, finger of death, energy drain, scribe, wands, staves, scrolls, fear, and a bunch of other useful spells. How about access to the only real safe rooms on SK in a place where nobody else can really get without monumental effort (during which the necromancer can just gank them anyway). How about the mobility provided by rifts, teleport, fly, and death shroud?


I don't. I attribute it to what the player of Zerel said on his way out. That it's no fun to faceroll people in a game that requires little skill. Only a twink would want to do this ad nauseum.


I admire you for trying to predict the future, but that's above my pay grade. I am just going to stick to the present. At present, necromancers are broken.

Let's just look at this from a purely mathematical standpoint. Let's say that a battle-ready GM barbarian NPC has about a 60% chance to land a prone-inducing bash against a battle-ready foe. You can dispute this if you want. I'm just putting that out there as an estimate. The chance of one NPC landing a bash (say, a shadowy wight) is thus 60%. The chance of at least one of 10 NPCs landing the bash is 99.99%. In one case, bash lock is not a foregone conclusion. In the other, it is. In a fight that lasts 3 bash cycles (good luck), that means the one basher is only 21.6% likely to land the kill. The 10 bashers are 99.97% likely.

This is obviously just a rough model for how this works. The true success rate of bash varies some, and there are tactics open to necromancers to improve their chances (a lot of which don't even get used, so there is no need to discuss them). Some players are also bad at timing and will allow their opponents to escape more frequency than one who times the orders perfectly.

Also note that none of this even takes interdiction into account, which actually improves a necromancer's chances of locking in a kill. That allows the necromancer some room for error in his timing for those times when his opponent is interdicted when he is not prone.