Non-undead animated skeletons.


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Lantern Lodge Goblin Squad Member

Sadurian wrote:


What about the bones of a sheep? A chicken? A turtle?

Don't forget that 99.9% (disclaimer - this is not a real statistic) of dead creatures are not human but still leave behind perfectly usable bones or exoskeletons.

Is magically animating a dog skeleton really any worse ethically than boiling a horse skeleton down for glue?

In most of the references that I used, they consider disrespect to the remains of a person to be insulting to and angering the spirit of the person to whom they belong. Hense the concept of dancing on (or peeing on) on someones grave. Some cultures maintain that damage to the bones is damage to the spirit and the spirit feels what is done to their remains.

Since most spirits can not defend their remains this is the equivelent of torturing someone who is helpless. We lay people to rest, we speak to them at their gravesite, we disturb their eternal slumber. All of these sayings are based upon the concept that the departed are aware of what goes on with their remains.

In fantasy, this can be mitigated by gaining permission. The dragon knows it is dieing and asks the smith to take its fingerbone and make the hilt of a sword. The ghost of a powerfull warrior is summoned and permission is asked to take up his sword for a cause.

If your characters ARE tomb robbing and desecrating graves then I hope the GM ends up haunting you with revanents. ;)

Goblin Squad Member

Vic Wertz wrote:

In most cultures in Golarion, making the deceased do your bidding is not considered good behavior, whether you're animating their bones with evil spells or just wiring their skeletons up like marionettes.

(I know I don't want that guy living on my street.)

Not in my backyard!

Goblin Squad Member

Combat wise, the problem of power balance in relation to pets maybe can be solved by the need of material components, in order to summon/raise them.

So, for example, you will need some kind of rare and expensive gem to raise a powerful undead and it will be consumed after use.

Also you may need a certain period of time (maybe in some cases just once a day) to cast the same animating/summoning spell.

Also it could cause drawbacks. You could be fatigated after raisng some kind of undead, for example.

Time + Component costs + drawbacks, that would be a good way to balance it IMO.

Raising dead and animate bones is evil because they're not cute. Skeletons are ugly,scary and sometimes stinky, so people are afraid of them! what you think about that reason (excuse)? LOL.

Goblin Squad Member

no golems or constructs?

i think i have to rethink my character a little then

Goblin Squad Member

In fairness, the phrase Stephen used was;

"But will you cast a spell and consume some onyx and now you have a pet that follows you around until it dies with no additional cost to your build? It seems unlikely to me. And the same thinking applies to non-necromantic minions like golems."

That doesn't rule them out completely, but it does suggest that they are going to be discouraged and made difficult. That makes sense in context - a PC able to build war golems is going to be incredible powerful (and heavy on server space) - but I would still like some sort of role for the construct or golem.

Perhaps they could be used more strategically, adding to the abilities of a settlement, but have some in-built limitation where they are rubbish in actual combat. I'd still like construct/golem watchdogs (in the form of trees and scarecrows in my case), which would be easy enough to build in by adding to the perception ability of an area.

Goblin Squad Member

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Perhaps Golems and other constructs would only be a resource that Settlements and possibly POIs could build and maintain. But make them cost similar to buildings and such.

Scarab Sages

I don't know if this has been suggested, but if you replace one of the rare slots (I forget the keyboard layout, but maybe something with only 2-3 slots available, maybe passives?) with a summon and make the individual summons somewhat weak, they might balance well with the choice to set another ability.
For example, a warrior-type might set cleave so can hit multiple enemies with each swing (# of enemies determined by level of ability), but a summoner-type would have a pet that could distract enemies from them or enhance their skills (again set by level of ability), but would have low HP like in the TT.

Of course, those pets still would eat up server resources, which might be the only really big problem with this setup.

Summoner focuses still seem good if you plan on participating in community warfare, based on how they've been suggested so far. I kind of imagine it like creating a mid-tier escalation that fights for only one side. War-wizards would have a lot of fun with that.

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