How do you Necrotech?


Homebrew and House Rules

Dark Archive

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Over the years of World Building I've fallen in love with using Necromancy to replace technology for a darker or Gothic meets steampunk/High tech setting.

However I've run into a bit of a problem as I have reached my creative limit for this fun little Psychotic corner of Magitech and would appreciate some fresh ideas.

Some stuff I have so far:

Menial Undead:
Very Simple. Animating flesh to serve as a labour force, for example, attaching 2 ends of an elephant's leg to a large gear and the floor of a wagon to create propulsion.
Zombie Plantation Workers, it's not slavery, they're mindless.
Some examples I had on my last thread are here:
Samasboy1 wrote:

Necrotech!

Land vehicles propelled by zombies enclosed in the wheels (hamster style).

Hollowed out armored zombie giants act as power armor.

Flying skeletal roc airships bombarding cities with ghouls.

Soul Shards:
This one is a little more versitile. Soul shards are crystals charged with negative energy at the heart of the Negative Energy Plane. They function as recepticles for souls and can be used for a variety of purposes. A Soul Shard can hold a maximum of one soul.

Weapons The Soul Pistol and Soul Rifle function as their brethren from the Technology Guide, however they do Negative Energy damage and upon a critical hit the creature struck must make a DC 17 fortitude save or gain a negative level. One HD of the creature captured by the Soul Shard is equal to one Charge

Undead mastery Soul Shards can be aligned to improve the casting power of spells such as Animate Dead. If aligned in this manner, for every 2 HD the soul in the Soul Shard had, the caster level for animating and controlling Undead with Animate Dead increases by 1.

Deathly defenses Auramakers are a defense technology that uses souls to create an unholy aura that defends those around it. The Auramaker has slots for up to 5 Soul Shards, this creates a pool of HD that the Auramaker uses to create the Aura. For every 10HD in the soul pool, the wearer of the Auramaker gains a +1 Profane bonus to AC. This aura lasts 1 hour for every HD in the pool.

Soul Engines Soul Shards can be used to make explosions to propel a vehicle with a specially made engine. The power and consumption of the engine depends on the kind and quality of the specific engine.


One thing I've had in a setting was enchanting a collection of chairs with Magic Jar and Phantasmal Killer, this creates a hallucination that exists only for the people sitting in the chairs and then their souls are moved into the illusion producing a virtual reality.

Another is simple stuff like fridges of gentle repose so the vegetables and meat never goes off, and necrografts like giving blind people those glowy red orbs undedad have to see.


If you are just mining for ideas (as it uses new mechanics not part of PFRPG):

Paizo link to Necropunk

Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both had a book that had sections (if not completely about) necromantic material too if I remember correctly.

Dark Archive

Bump


Skylancer4 wrote:

If you are just mining for ideas (as it uses new mechanics not part of PFRPG):

Paizo link to Necropunk

Shadowrun and Cyberpunk both had a book that had sections (if not completely about) necromantic material too if I remember correctly.

Yep I pretty much do necropunk to.

Sovereign Court

You might consider taking some inspiration from Necrocraft..


The Iron Kingdoms has an entire nation that runs on this stuff: The Nightmare Kingdom of Cryx.

Steam power dominates most of the world. Cryx uses undead enhanced by steam power... but uses fossilised agony instead of coal for fuel.


I have heavily modified Monte Cook's Chaositech stuff into a necro tech. I got a lot of great stuff from his Chaositech book.


Einhänder wrote:
I have heavily modified Monte Cook's Chaositech stuff into a necro tech. I got a lot of great stuff from his Chaositech book.

Agreed, Chaositech was very good stuff. I believe his base campaign was also more "low magic" after his changes so it would probably not ring too many alarms for those people who worry about balance issues.

Iron Kingdoms was probably one of my favorite precanned campaign settings and I'm really sad they didn't really pursue the d20 books more. Witchfire triology was an amazing set of adventures. I actually bought it twice (once for me and another general set for our group to use).

Dark Archive

Eltacolibre wrote:

You might consider taking some inspiration from Necrocraft..

I love using those things. Easy way to make power armour.

Dark Archive

Is that all we have? I don't feel so bad about running out of ideas XD


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just the stuff in the zombie livestock thread.

Ghosts can possess objects a la the animate object spell, so you could make a kind of spirit slave that does that for specific constructs and golems.

Life-drain cannons which enslave intelligent undead and "channel" their powers, allowing a living necromancer to benefit from the effects of a vampire's negative energy attack.

Necrobombs which turn very small objects (polymorph magic) into very large uncontrolled undead.

Spirits infused with elements, like lightning, that power things or act as weapons.

A necromantic ritual that renders a person unable to die and then uses their living body to contain and use malevolent magics/entities that would kill normal folk.

Dark Archive

boring7 wrote:

Just the stuff in the zombie livestock thread.

Ghosts can possess objects a la the animate object spell, so you could make a kind of spirit slave that does that for specific constructs and golems.

Life-drain cannons which enslave intelligent undead and "channel" their powers, allowing a living necromancer to benefit from the effects of a vampire's negative energy attack.

Necrobombs which turn very small objects (polymorph magic) into very large uncontrolled undead.

Spirits infused with elements, like lightning, that power things or act as weapons.

A necromantic ritual that renders a person unable to die and then uses their living body to contain and use malevolent magics/entities that would kill normal folk.

Ooh! Fun! Thanks!


I forgot one other item: A necromancer who keeps powerful undead Soul Trapped in little gemstones that let him use their undead powers despite not being their undead type, or even dead in the first place.

Mummy rot plus con drain.

Dark Archive

boring7 wrote:

I forgot one other item: A necromancer who keeps powerful undead Soul Trapped in little gemstones that let him use their undead powers despite not being their undead type, or even dead in the first place.

Mummy rot plus con drain.

I believe you said that under Life Drain Cannons


Here's a taste from my topic "New ritual system. Suggestions welcome".

Ritual 21: Power Circle. At least 5 freshly severed heads are arranged on a carved in stone magic circle to turn negative energy into negative electric current.
Success: The heads rise and face inward. A powerful electric current hits copper rods thrust into the circle. A city, spaceship, or other power grid can be run off this. Increased load can cause brown outs. The remedy is adding a head or another circle. DC 30.
Failure: The heads turn into undead with 20 foot 6th level shocking grasp power. They attack everyone.
Modifiers: Knowledge nature and arcana. A priest of a death god adds +10.
Cost: 1000gp
New modifier: A black star sapphire, worth 1000gp, powdered and drawn between the heads in a star pattern, adds +5.

For added flavor you can have them moan or scream constantly.

Dark Archive

Goth Guru wrote:

Here's a taste from my topic "New ritual system. Suggestions welcome".

Ritual 21: Power Circle. At least 5 freshly severed heads are arranged on a carved in stone magic circle to turn negative energy into negative electric current.
Success: The heads rise and face inward. A powerful electric current hits copper rods thrust into the circle. A city, spaceship, or other power grid can be run off this. Increased load can cause brown outs. The remedy is adding a head or another circle. DC 30.
Failure: The heads turn into undead with 20 foot 6th level shocking grasp power. They attack everyone.
Modifiers: Knowledge nature and arcana. A priest of a death god adds +10.
Cost: 1000gp
New modifier: A black star sapphire, worth 1000gp, powdered and drawn between the heads in a star pattern, adds +5.

For added flavor you can have them moan or scream constantly.

Link?


http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2osmr?New-ritual-system-Suggestions-welcome

Go to Link.


.

Dark Archive

Bounce


Not sure how easy it is to find now, but if you can track down d20 cyberscape it had a whole section on necrotic implants. Obviously it would need some fiddling to fit the pathfinder system for cybernetics, but it had some cool stuff, like implanting a vampire's frontal lobe to gain it's gaseous form!

Dark Archive

Goth Guru wrote:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2osmr?New-ritual-system-Suggestions-welcome

Go to Link.

Reverse Gemini circles that fuse two creatures together is too good to pass up.

Dark Archive

Penultimate bump

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Homebrew and House Rules / How do you Necrotech? All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Homebrew and House Rules