[Ibnala]

It took long enough for my account to get accepted... Well, here's what I wrote when this first went up:

What is a necromancer? Someone who studies the kind of things that nobody else studies. They ought to have unique abilities. To me, that says "utility class".

My first thought, when I hear 'necromancer', is 'anti-druid'. I think of them as a support role. While druids have utility spells that help their party, blasts based on life, vigor and energy, and eventually skills that make their own party more effective in unusual ways, it seems that necromancers should have utility spells, blasts based on death, negativity and cold, and eventually skills that make their enemies less effective in unusual ways.

Though I could go either way on their ultimate support-type stuffs. I could see necromancers hindering an enemy's healing and thus hastening their demise and I could see necromancers reducing the enemy's damage output, but I guess I could also see necromancers reducing their own party's damage intake or increasing their own party's damage output.

Unfortunately I don't know many utility-type powers that I'd want to give to necromancers offhand. When you use druid as an example you get flight, water breathing, minor crafting... When you look at necromancer, you get...darkvision I guess? Disguises? It might be kind of cool if necromancer got a spell that, I don't know, let everyone in the party see perfectly in any light condition (but thematically only in black-and-white). You know, a low powered out-of-combat utility type thing that newbies will think is awesome. I could see some kind of poison-resistant ability... I could see a way to scare living monsters out of aggroing for the first few rounds, letting the party get the first attack or run back out the first time they go somewhere bad. An expensive tert spell way off in the distance that gave 25-50% chance of escape death while active... That's the kind of thing I want from necromancer utility spells.

I do like the old idea of building up undead out of bones and parts, similar to how some few other guilds build up a signature weapon. It might be neat if that could be revived in a more balanced way, like if the undead was midrow and ranged or something.

I think it's important that necromancers can get into some heavy blasting, within the alignments they find appropriate... stone, disintegration, poison, cold, etc. I think that's going to be one of the main interesting necromancer paths: Your choice of damage type, built on a solid foundation of weird utility spells.

Honestly, while it would be cool to have necromancers debuff enemies, that seems REALLY hard to balance, and very hard for the players to see the effects of that balancing act in some cases. (Like, okay, you cast this spell every run, and the boss with ten million hit points won't heal while you're regenning. Who can tell if it's working?) It might be kind of neat if necromancers could reduce the enemy damage output by 5-10%, but that starts to overlap into other classes' territory. Still...if it stacks, and it's not too huge, then taking necromancer starts to be a great CHOICE. You can reduce damage a fair amount with two PCs, but do you really want to take up those spots in your party if those characters can't do anything else? Maybe it would be better to take a second healer? That's a choice that sounds fun to make. (Possible problem here, if people dprime necromancer and abjurer, but that sounds like a great 'restricted from joining'. Druids shouldn't be allowed into abjurer or druid IMO.) Of course, reducing enemy damage output should only happen a little unless you specialize in that.

There could be other options for a necromancer who wants to stand in the front row of the party, dishing out and taking in damage. I don't know, maybe some of their spells are touch-range? Maybe that idea is a flop but it could be entertaining to call "Prot up the necro so he can touch the scary thing".

Other things. Umm... Monks are traditionally better against humanoids. Necros should be better at fighting the living. If they reduce enemy damage, well, I could see that only working on living foes, and maybe not even on cthulhoid monsters from another dimension. It would be neat if a tert down the road could overcome that. It would be neat if necros DID have access to a path that lets them blow up undead though, because hey, some necros study it because they love undead and would never hurt them, some necros are different.

On that note I don't think necromancers should be restricted to evil. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I've just been reading too much of the webcomic Dominic Deegan for the last month or so, which has a remarkably well-adjusted necromancer... In any case, some necromancer paths would totally be hardcore evil, as would some of their base spells, but certainly not ALL of them!

Now, full disclosure. A lot of this I'm writing because MY character on Retro has just started thematically sliding towards necromancy, I just realised yesterday. So it's kind of "this is what would make me so happy for my character" and "this is what would fit my personal theme". I think that some necromancers are more like mages who happen to study this kind of art, and some necromancers are total deathhounds who revel in negative energy. I think the first is more interesting, while still giving credit to the second. I also think it is TOTALLY important that plain old mages should be able to take some necro stuff!


Getting to the end here, I'm finding that I don't even need the necromancer to raise very many undead. That's, like, the LEAST important part of the theme for me! Wow. I mean, sure, necromancers raise undead. But fighters also train armies and priests also have congregations. And players don't do THAT, so why worry about raising undead?