Blave's page

Bone Spear seems extremely awkward to use in practice unless you also get Reach of the Dead. And preferably wait to level 7 so you can use them together immediately.

Bone Spear's initial damage is also kind of bad. It's balanced as a potential area attack but the weird range/area combination makes it hard to hit two enemies and very unlikely to ever hit 3. When used against a single enemy, it's barely better than the damage of create thrall, but costs twice the actions, a focus point and a thrall. If you're hitting oy two foes anyway, you might as well just creat thrall twice (live with the MAP penalty on the second cast) and still have an action left - not to mention two thralls left for flanking.

Overall, I agree that the initial focus spells are just not good enough early on to carry the class through the earliest levels. You're mostly just limited to create thrall plus cantrip and a singular slot per day.

Hey, there's a classic red-colored dragon on the cover.

The very first post here seays the cover isn't final. Chances are there will be no red dragon on the final version.

I play alongside a Flames oracle. When PC2 was released, the oracle was rebuilt using the reamster rules. We were level 15 or 16 at the time, I think. The player chose to get basically no curseboud feat - other than foretell harm which he got for free, of course. His reasoning was that there's simply no need to get more abilities if you have 4 slots per rank and a very solid spell list.

I don't feel like his combat performance has changed much compared to pre-master. He barely interacts with his curse anymore since he rarely uses any coursebound abilities and his focus spells (of which he mostly uses whirling flames) don't affect the curse any longer.

So other than the spell list, he doesn't feel much different from what a fire elemental sorcerer would feel. He's a bit more sturdy as an oracle, of course, but my gut reaction tells me he would overall be more effective as a blaster sorcerer, even more so if he would add the oracle archetype for Foretell Harm.

Yes, a Strike by definition deals damage on a success unless an ability explicitely says otherwise.

I will probably watch that when I have the opportunity, but I'm not sure a video has much value as feedback for a playtest. You might want to condense your findings in text form and post them here if you're serious about giving feedback.

The problem of add it as a class feature instead of feat is that it will be accounted as class power not as class option.

You misread my post. I didn't suggest turning it into a class feature. Just to add a necromancer-exclusive class feature as a prerequisite for the feat. Simulat to how many of the heal/harm-related spellshapes of the cleric require you to have the divine font feature and as such are unavailable from the cleric archetype.

Castilliano wrote:

Bind Heroic Spirit: yeah, making a Thrall w/ a successful Strike seems modest enough to gain earlier, especially given the amount of investment to build for actually striking. The +3 could be scaled back say to +1/6 levels. Still iffy offensively, but the save boost helps patch a hole. Trick here is we likely don't want martials to gain access to it.

It could be a lvl 12 feat instead of start from lower levels allowing it to be accessible via MC archetype (starting with +2 and heightening to +3 at rank 9).

I don't thin level 12 is necessary. They could just add some class feature that's unavailable for the Archetype as a prerequisite. Something like Grim Wards or Inevitable Return. It would hardly be the first class feat with a prerequisite that the class itself will always fulfill.

I agree but partially. A melee martial necromancer still lacks the martial necromancer progression.

Oh, I didn't mean the Necromancer is good in melee. I just don't think MADness is the thing holding him back.

I don't see how a melee Necromancer is any more MAD than any of the martials with mental key attributes?

I'm playing a Goblin Inventor and started with +3 Str, +1 Dex, +1 Con, +4 Int, +0 Wis and -1 Cha. (She was created before the voluntary flaw rules were changed.) And I'm doing just fine with my 8 HP per level. I'm also playing alongside a Thaumaturge who started with +3 Str and +4 Cha and also works perfectly fine.

The necro is even on the high end of caster saving throw progression. Still lower than a martial of course, but that's the price you pay for magic.

The one thing I would like to see for the melee Necromancer is medium armor. Preferable as a baseline. If druids and animists can have it, so can the Necromancer. Alternatively, I could live with a subclass that gets Armor Proficiency as their free general feat.

Reaper's Weapon Familiarity (which desperately needs a buff mechanically, but its mere existance is amazing!) is all about grabbing the biggest, meanest blade you can find, so it seems quite obvious that melee Necro is supposed to be strength-based. And that's just impossible to pull off in light armor unless you want to dump your intelligence which doesn't seem smart (pun intended). So as it stands right now, any melee Necromancer will either have to be Human or face quite a struggle at the first levels before he can pick up Medium Armor Proficiency in some way.

I'm still not sure how Class DC interacts with muticlass archetypes, as discussed here.

If I'm a barbarian with the monk archetype, do I have two separate Class DCs? If yes, which one do I use for an ability that says it uses "Your class DC"?

No, you can only use one free action per trigger.

Misread the question. Ignore me. Kyrand below is correct.

Thank you again for doing some testing and sharing your thoughts and results! And good call on the rollback. I don't think the potential broken-ness of the Calm spell needs any playtesting at this point. :D Though it might have been interesting to see how a sustaining a spell affects your overall action economy. I deliberately left sustained spells out of my spell selection when building a few Necromancers to see how they feel.

He casts fear on the fighter who misses his save and is now frightened 2

That should have been frightened 1 thanks to Bravery, no?

I cast a thrall next to A2 then use bony barrage, getting all three remaining mobs in it. I sacrifice the thrall next to me to make it party-friendly.

Since you aimed it at a thrall next to you, where you in the area of effect yourself? Sacrificing a second thrall only protects your allies, not yourself.

Neither of those are likely to have mattered in the end, of course.

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It's an interesting read and doesn't sound too bad for low level. But it seemed to be quite an ideal situation for the necromancer.

- It was close quarters so you didn't have to move once.
- You were directly engaged in melee which allowed you to spend a reaction to create a thrall and immediatly consume it, which otherwise might cause you to move due to its quite limited range.
- It was multiple enemies, including two that were quite a bit lower level than the party, which fueled your Inevitable Return very well. A fight against three on level or two PL+1 creature would probably go quite differently.
- An enemy dropping each turn for your to turn into a thrall is great when it happens. But it's not guaranteed and not available before level 3.
- Your level and build allowed you to have multiple focus spells and thus multiple focus points. If you don't have that option because you're still level 1 or simply want non-focus spell feats early on, you're in for a very rough start into your adventuring career.

I might just be a bit too pessimistic, mind you. It just seems like there's multiple factors at work here that made your experience quite smooth and that it could easily have been more clunky if only one or two of those points were different.

May I ask what your build looked like exactly? I think you had only Bone Spear and Bone Spray for focus spells so I'm curious what your remaining class feat was.

So, about a year ago, I mused how Trick Magic Item could be really good with the new universal spellcasting proficiency. The original remaster version of the feat was identical to the pre-master version, but the errata changed that. After applying the errata, it now says

If you activate a magic item that requires a spell attack modifier or spell DC and you don’t have proficiency in the relevant statistic, use your level as your proficiency bonus and the highest of your Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifiers. If you’re a master in the appropriate skill for the item’s tradition, you instead use the trained proficiency bonus; if you’re legendary, you instead use the expert proficiency bonus.

No longer is using a better spell proficiency locked behind heavy investment into the correct skill. You can use your own! A Level 20 Wizard can cast Cleanse Affliction from a scroll using his full legendary proficiency!

But which attribut does he use to dertermine his spell attack/DC? Can he use Int for all items activated by TMI since that's the attribute linked to his class's spell proficiency?

@Blave: I totally get your points, and I alluded to them in my OP - there are definitely downsides, but that could definitely be creatively approached.

But I don’t disagree that this playtest Necromancer is a Necromancer it’s just that…well let me put it this way. I always thought the band KISS were…weird, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then, it hit me - if you close your eyes, the fact that they wear demonic/wild costumes has almost entirely nothing to do with their music. All that facepaint and leering and heels and spikes and armor only to sing “I was made for loving you”. Absent the theatrics, it’s entirely staid rock. And that’s how I fee about this Necromancer. It wants to dress in all the right get up, wield a scythe, shoot bony projectiles etc, but it’s not really singing an interesting tune.

So, yes, it’s “valid”. But sadly, I wouldn’t want to play it. And I love necromancy as a narrative trope. And the thrall mechanic is interesting, as has been seen previously - it just doesn’t necessarily need to be necromantic…

But paizo need to decide on a class's flavor at some point.

I could easily reflavor most of the kineticist to use necrotic instead of elemental stuff. If the Runesmith used magically charged needles to embed in allies and foes instead of inscribed runes, the class would suddenly be a battle acupuncturist. An alchemist throwing shrunken heads instead of Vials would be a witch doctor. And so on and so forth.

Having to kill stiff before you can use your class abilities sounds terrible. It results in near-permanent minions, of which you should never have more than one under the game's design. Or if they are semi-permanent and only last for a few hours or until the next day, you're basically dead weight at the beginning of the day. Good luck on that dragon hunt where the dragon is your only foe all day. What are you going to do? Kill a few peasants along the way?

Someone on reddit even argued that since PF2 doesn't support a Necromancer with a dozen undead minions, the class shouldn't be made for PF2 at all, which seems like a ridiculous notion.

I really don't understand the whole flavor debate. The PF2 Necromancer is different from the most common depiction of necromancers in media. So what? The PF2 wizard is also vastly different from Gandalf or Harry Potter. Things can share a name and similar theme without being identical in execution. The current thrall system has a few rough edges but for me it's a perfectly valid version if what a Necromancer can be.

Blave wrote:

The wording of bone spear says the Thrall is destroyed before the attack happens. So when the attack happen, there is no thrall that could flank.

Indeed RAW seems to say no to flanking, but I think RAI was yes. I do not see why they would state that it's a melee spell attack otherwise.

Technically, a melee spell attack would not trigger reactive strikes as opposed to a ranged spell attack. But that point is moot since the casting of the spell will still trigger RS.

There are some reactions that only work against melee or ranged attacks, though. Like Reactive Shield. This being a melee spell attack would at least matter for those.

That won't help much since there's plenty of other abilities that make thralls take actions usually a Stride.

The wording change needs to happen in the Thrall trait to something like "can't take actions unless one of your abilities makes them take said actions".

While I don't really care about the name of a class, I don't think we'll ever get another one that's closer to being a "Necromancer".

The thing everyone seems to associate with that name are lots of undead minions you can order around to do your bidding. But we all know something like that will probably never happen. Limiting the amount of moving parts during each player's turn seems very much rooted in PF2's design philosophy, systems and balance.

So basically, I think it's now or never.

ugh idk, I agree with your thesis that they'd do better with medium armor. I just wish that weren't so true for thematic reasons.

As someone who also suggested to give them medium armor: What exactly about their theme doesn't fit medium armor? I don't see how it fits them any better or worse than light armor. Or even heavy, for that matter.

They aren't a nimble class and their theme is more or less standing their ground while throwing thralls at their enemies (because their action economy is too tight to move around more than absolutely necessary). I could absolutely see them prefer the heavier armor types. We would need a few more skeletal armors to have a perfect fit, but that seems easy enough to accomplish. Anyone who still prefers light armor could still use it, after all.

Since blanket medium armor proficiency seems unlikely to happen, a fourth subclass that get Armor Proficiency as its general feat would be a decent middle ground. At least I could play a necromancer at level 1 without feeling the overwhelming need to be a human for armor proficiency.

Blave wrote:

C_bastion wrote:

So on the number of Thralls created issue, do you think up to 6 thralls at level 1 would be too many?

I was wondering if something along the lines of "if you have no Thralls created by this spell, you make 1 additional Thrall when casting" would work?
That way you can't spam out too many bodies easily, but you can get the ball rolling.

I like the basic idea but tracking which thralls were created by the spell and which by abilities like Inevitable Return might cause too much headache.

How about making one extra thralls that's (even more) temporary? You create the current number plus the temporary one, which will only last until the end of your current turn. Would give you "ammunition" for your focus spells and other abilities like Draining Strike without taking up space on the battlefield.

Honestly, no, I don't think 6 thralls if one uses all three actions is too much even at level 1 given that they still make the same number of attacks, map is applied, and movement isn't much different between level 1 & 7.

Oh, I wholeheartedly agree that two thralls per action don't seem problematic at level 1 (at least no more or less than at level 7). I would prefer Create Thrall to start at two thralls. Drop the improvement at Expert if 5 at Legendary is too much.

When I'm suggesting stuff like the temporary thrall or limiting the second thrall to be created close by (adjacent or maybe within 10 ft), I do this under the assumption that paizo thinks two full-value thralls per action at level 1 are too much. Because otherwise they would probably have given us exactly that, if only to meet the flavor expectations right from the get go. But they didn't, so I'm trying to come up with stuff that makes the second thrall less useable to balance things a bit.

Crossbow and Heavy Crossbow have 120 ft.

Same for swimming enemies.

I'm not sure my animist knowledge is enough to compare the two classes. It's not an interesting class to me personally, so I'm pretty sure I know much more about the Necromancer at this point. xD

Still, the animist suddenly having more spells is a power leap, but it doesn't suddenly completely change how you approach your turns.

And I agree that Bone Burst looks like it's very good in practice. But that still leaves the Necromancer with 5 whole levels without it, with few spell slots, and seemingly awkward action economy if you want to use your focus spells.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion. I really appreciate your insight. :)

Isn't the Reactive Strike like ability a level 6 feat?

I'm not saying the pre-7 necro is bad. It just feels ... I don't know. Disconnected, I guess? You suddenly "unlock" so many more possibities for your class at level 7 it's almost ridiculous. You can immediately change most of your game plan. I can't think of any other classes that has anything like that, especially not at such low levels.

You're right, I think necromancer is way weaker before level 7 - but then, I guess that's the case of most casters, since it's at level 7 that you get expert and your DC stops sucking so much ;)

Sure, but that's a pure number advantage all casters get. For me, the second thrall seems like it basically "unlocks" the class, if that makes any sense. Your action economy and impact just feels extremely limited at the lowest levels when you might have only one focus point, very few spell slots and are also starved for thralls.

The free flanking part would still be interesting, but there would certainly be much less shenanigans. But at these levels, there probably are less AOE as well, so less chance of thralls being all killed at once.

The thing is, you don't get free flanking if you use your only thrall for a focus spell immediately. Ok, the thrall would get flanking for its own attack but it wouldn't help your allies at all. Unless they are a rogue with Opportune Backstab, I guess.

Anyway, I'm one of those old-timers who waited ages in ADD2 with a useless low-level wizard in order to become insanely powerful later - so I'm ok with 6 levels being a bit rough if it gets much better later ^^

I'm less concerned about power and more about smoothness of play, which seems severely lacking before level 7. I have far less negative thoughts about the class at level 7+.

Yeah, I already edited it, i meant line of course ^^

Fair enough. :)

About the 10 feet range, we had a discussion about it because it could be understood both ways, but for us you need to be 10 feet away from the thrall, NOT the opponents. Am I wrong ?

As for the range, it weirdly doesn't say "one of your thralls" unlike similar spells. I do believe it's supposed to require the thrall to be within 10 ft of you, though.

It's good to know you ran it that way. I was just confused because you initially said it could be cast from "basically anywhere you have a thrall". There's a pretty big difference between "anywhere" and "up to 10 ft away". The range does seems rather short. You can't even attack someone at 30ft with it, despite that being the base range of most short range spells. And it being a line means you have to be careful to not hit your allies with it.

Nice read, thanks for the writeup!

I just did a few games and a few fights with a level 8 necromancer [...] So there was no shortage of thralls whatsoever.

Could you run a few encounter at level 6 and see how that feels in comparison? I still think the class suffers a lot in playability and feel if you only have one thrall per action at your disposal. Like if you need your only thrall per turn to use your focus spells, Bone Burst suddenly becomes much less usable and it can be awkward to even use Consume Thrall.

Bone Spear is insanely powerful since you can cast it from basically anywhere you have a thrall - and if you don't have one, you can summon one THEN cast it in the same round.

At my level, that's 7d8 damage in an ideally-placed 15-foot cone, which usually meant at least 3 targets.

Bone Spear only has a 10 ft range. That didn't hinder its performance? It's also not a 15ft cone, but a 15 ft line, so it covers only 3 squares, not 6 or 7 like a 15 cone would.

And of course I forgot the whole "has a range" part of it, so that doesn't work sadly. Ah well.

What do you mean? Bone Spear does have a range of 10 ft. It's a valid spell to use with Reach of the Dead.

EDIT: Ah, you meant for spells like Vomit Swarm and Gale Blast. Yeah, it doesn't work with those, unfortunately.

I mean, all caster classes have such a feat at or around that level. Even the Wizard, despite having no option to get more than 2 focus points without using an archetype (Ironically, I think the wizard is the only class to get this feat later, at level 14).

Its use is questionable, but then again, so is the use of many feats.

In my feedback thread, I suggested changing it a bit. It could allow you to consume two thralls for two actions when using the Consume Thrall ability. Would still allow you to fully recharge your Pool in 10 minutes outside of combat, but would also have some potential use in combat, and the increased action cost still makes it something you won't be tempted to use too frequently I think.

Yeah, the Primal Spell list is almost as long as the Occult one and I've often seen people say that primal is the most powerful tradition (whether I agree or not is another topic). If you filter AoN to only show Rule books and no spells from lost omens and adventures, Primal has actually overtaken Occult as the second largest spell school (most likely thanks to Rage of Elements.

If druids can get all the primal spells, I don't see a big reason why another class couldn't get all occult spells.

Blave wrote:

Spending two actions in combat to regain a single focus point doesn't mesh well with the action economy of a caster.

Just as an FYI, Consume Thrall is 1 action.

It's 2 actions if you already need one whole action to create a single thrall at low levels. :) And yes, I know that "extra" action still comes with a "free" attack. But honestly, the damage is so low it's basically a band-aid on a severed arm and barely qualifies as "better than nothing".

Inevitable Return at level 3 can occasionally help a bit IF the thrall miraculously survives long enough. But even then, Consume Thrall's quite short range might mean you can't Consume the Thrall without moving first at which point you might as well summon another one to Consume.

My post and critique was mostly about the scarety of focus points - and even more so thralls - at low levels on a focus-spell heavy class. Higher levels alleviate this somewhat by giving you more thralls and access to multiple focus spells for a larger focus pool.

You can move through the spaces of creatures three sizes larger or smaller. Gargantuan is three sizes larger than Medium.

Sure, but you still can't share a square with them outside of movement. The graveyard is four by four squares and needs exactly that (uninterrupted) area to even exist and more if you want it to Stride. That's nothing you can count on having available in all or even most encounters, especially when fighting multiple enemies.

The Graveyard would be much more usable if it was redefined as a swarm-like thrall, consisting of corspes, limbs and gravestones that move along the ground and can share spaces with creatures of any size, even when not moving.

10: Perfected Thrall. Create a 200 HP thrall, and you can use it as a source to destroy, but each time you woulud destroy it it instead loses 20 hp. I wonder if you can repeatedly sac it to the same effects for something like Draining Strike or Reclaim power... anyway. On subsequent turns, can move and make a spell attack through it to smack for 7d6. This is... fine? Like by this level you're not hurting for destruction fodder when you can make 4 thralls for 1 action, and since the spell otherwise does nothing the turn it shows up, it's a 200 hp body that you can then try and hit things with for the next 9 turns to do mediocre damage. Average 24.5 damage assuming you hit... I dunno. Like this is cool on it's face but the more I think about it the less interesting or impactful it becomes.

Another small correction: The damage is 7d10, not 7d6. So it's 38,5 points of damage on average, over 50% more than what you assumed. Quite solid for a repeatable effect that you can also use as fodder for your other abilities, I think. I just wish it could attack on the turn it's created.

So on the number of Thralls created issue, do you think up to 6 thralls at level 1 would be too many?

I was wondering if something along the lines of "if you have no Thralls created by this spell, you make 1 additional Thrall when casting" would work?
That way you can't spam out too many bodies easily, but you can get the ball rolling.

I like the basic idea but tracking which thralls were created by the spell and which by abilities like Inevitable Return might cause too much headache.

How about making one extra thralls that's (even more) temporary? You create the current number plus the temporary one, which will only last until the end of your current turn. Would give you "ammunition" for your focus spells and other abilities like Draining Strike without taking up space on the battlefield.

Since most thrall movement from focus spells is a Stride, they are subject to difficult terrain. It's a bit weird that Flesh Tsunami can potentially limit the effective range of some of your focus spells quite dramatically. And what about the thralls created by living graveyard? Are they automatically knocked prone by it and can't ever be used for any of the movement focus spells since they can't take a Stand action?

Nice writeup and an interesting read. Thank you!

Just some minor corrections/additions:

Draining Strike doesn't require a melee Strike. It works at range. So you can pull out an air repeater, stuff three zombies into it and fire them at your enemies. :D

Bone Spear isn't 2d8 with 1d8 heighten per level. It's 1d8 with 2d8 heighten per level. It scales exceptionally well for a focus spell, easily outscaling staples like fireball and even chain lightning (if you look only on rolled damage number and ignore the potential number of targets of course). But it starts really really weak, barely more damaging than create thrall and it's short range of 10 ft combined with a 15 ft line area makes it awkward to use. Becomes a lot better once you can create more thralls at once and get Reach of the Dead.

Create Thrall has max damage of 5d6, not 10d6.

Muscle Barrier scales up to 100 temp HP, not 90. There's no rules saying Focus spells don't heighten to rank 10.

Necrotic Bomb: Also scales to rank 10 for 10d12 damage.

Living Graveyard knocks all nearby creatures prone if they fail a fort save. It's called an emanation, but from the description it's not perfectly clear whether this happens only on cast or as permanent aura-like effect. It also seems unable to move through creatures or share their space. Being Gargantuan itself it can theoretical block a huge area, but it might as well just end up being a huge pain in the neck to even find the space to summon that thing, much less move it each turn.

So... does anything prevent you from using Reach of the Dead to pick a thrall within 60 feet and then use the same thrall for Bone Spear etc? It seems like it works as written, and Reach of the Dead just fails to destroy the thrall because it's already been consumed?

I mean, it's most assuredly not RAI. I'm also not convinced it's possible by RAW, even though I see where you're coming from.

Depends a lot on order of operation, which isn't really clear. Reach of the Dead destroys the thrall after you've calculated reach and cover. The way I read it, you would cast Bone Spear with the thrall as its point of origin but the thrall would be destroyed before bone spear's actual effect is resolved. So by the time bone spear tries to turn the thrall into a projectile, it's already gone and the spell fails to do anything.

Note that the target of Bone Spear is the thrall. At least that's how I read the spell. Its target line being ambiguous was part of my feedback. So you would check if the thrall is in range of Bone Spear - which it it - then destroy it, then cast Bone Spear, which fails due to a lack of a thrall to target.

The problem with using a last turn thrall on bone spear is that it's very unreliable. The Thrall might not survive that long or the the positioning on the battle fielding change so much that bone spear is no longer valiable (no enemies in range, allies in the way, etc.).

I think a necro will want to use up his thralls on the turns they are created whenever possible. Having one or more left standing on your next turn is a nice bonus when it happens but I would usually not plan my turns around it.

Picking up innate cantrips is not a bad idea but a bit unreliable on a non-charisma caster. Adopted Cantrip via human is the better choice by far.

EDIT: Ninja'd.

Yeah, I covered that in my feedback thread as well. It's unclear whether or not thralls are part of the turn order and how they interact with start/end of turn effects.

Also what happens if you create a thrall in an area effect that deals damage at the start of a creature's turn? Does the thrall take that damage immediately? At the start of the Necromancer's next turn? Not at all?

Very nice write-up! Whish I had time for some actual playtesting. It's reassuring to see that your group came to the same conclusion as I did: A single thrall per action is too few to make the Necromancer feel and play smoothly.

And just a heads-up: Unless I'm completely missing something, mental damage doesn't knocks you unconscious. It's very much able to actually get you to dying or even kill you. Mental being nonlethal is a semi-frequent fallacy I've encountered that probably comes from some of the primary mental damage spells (Daze and Phantom Pain) have the nonlethal trait.

Frankly, a "Graveknight" class archetype that changes the Necromancer to bounded spellcasting and martial proficiencies seems almost trivial to implement. Other than proficiencies, the class already supports this quite well. Add in a few more archetype feats and abilities that support melee a bit more and you're done.

5.1) speaking of ostea armaments, starting level 10 the lvl 8 feat scales perfectly to level, but before that it gives you an 'underleveled' weapon? only a minor nitpick but I think the feat should probably come online on level 4 or 6

I know the weapon is not technically underleveled, but for a feat that seems so flexible and potentially important to some builds, lvl 8 seems to be late

The reason this is a level 8 feat is most likely the ability to add a Decaying rune to the weapon, which is in fact a level 8 rune.

I absolutely think it should be a level 4 feat and simply don't unlock the Decaying option before level 8.

I feel like Bone Spear might really benefit from being a reflex save because of the MAP interactions.

I'm not sure that's a good idea. By level 5, it deals more damage than a fireball. At higher level it outscales even Chain Lightning (in damage per target, not toal potential, obviously). That's a lot of fire power for a focus spell and being save based makes it more reliable than a spell attack. It might be a bit too much.

I still agree that the MAP issue needs to be solved. Maybe it could get a special line saying something like "If your last action was Create Thrall, Bone Spear uses the same MAP as the attack from Create Thrall".

I would also like to see its range increased to at least 15 ft so it can reach someone who's 30 ft away since that's the usual range of short range spells.

Being able to make old thralls attack but only if they originated from create thrall seems weird. It would add a lot of additional bookkeeping once you start getting thralls from other sources like skeletal lancers, living graveyard or inevitable return.

It should either be ANY thrall or only those created by the current casting. Anything else seems like too much trouble.

The wording of bone spear says the Thrall is destroyed before the attack happens. So when the attack happen, there is no thrall that could flank.

Yeah, Bone Spear has great scaling but it's terrible at rank 1. It's most likely balanced around hitting at least two enemies, but even for that it falls short even compared to weak cantrips like timber, not to mention strong ones like Electric Arc. In theory it's a bit easier to target than timber since it can originate in any square within 10 ft of you, I guess?

Unless you somehow manage to line up three targets for it, there's almost no reason use it over haunting hymn at rank 1.

It becomes significantly better with Reach of the Dead, allowing you to start the line anywhere within 40 ft. That does cost an additional thrall, though, making it extremely awkward before level 7. And getting Reach of the Dead can potentially delay getting your second or third focus point.

Being an Osteomancer feels like a long-termin investment. Once Bone Spear's scaling catches up, you can create multiple thralls and squeeze Reach of the Dead into your build, it suddenly becomes a very potent source of damage. That doesn't happen befor level 7 of course, once again making the necromancer's early game rather painful.

It's worth about 2 damaging property runes. The healing is a nice little bonus.

The bigger question is: Is it worth three thralls?

Since the remaster you always have as many focus points as you have focus spells. It's no longer spelled out in each individual class or feat.

You can absolutely go up to 3 focus spells as a necromancer. The problem is that you only start with one as a focus-based class and that you never get a bigger pool unless you pick up more focus spells. This will most likely happen eventually for pretty much all necromancers but dependong on your feat priority, your lower level will have you pretty focus starved.

Consume Thrall is barely a bandaid on a severed arm. Spending two actions in combat to regain a single focus point doesn't mesh well with the action economy of a caster.

Blave wrote:

It's a focus-based caster similar to the psychic. Except it only has a single focus point and doesn't ever get a bigger pool. The psychic outright starts with 2 focus points while the Necromancer needs to spend two actions to get his "second" focus point during combat.

You're pretty much forced to pick up one or two additional focus spells ASAP. And while there are some decent ones in there, I have yet to spot any that are so outstanding that they are worth 3 actions.

The focus spells aren't worth three actions because Create Thrall is itself giving the value of a full action. It's not like spellstrike recharge, which is actually an empty action without using conflux spells or magus's analysis.

Create Thrall+Necrotic bomb is a 1A spell attack that puts a body in a square (and more bodies elsewhere at later levels). Then that's followed by a 2A that does the same damage scaling as a slotted arcane blast spell in the AoE size of a slotted occult blast spell.

Yes, that third action has a (minor) effect on its own. But it's still an absolute requirement to use the focus spell. A druid using an air repeater for their third action can still choose to either fire it or do something else with that action - while still being perfectly able to use Tempest Surge either way.

Imagine Tempest Surge had the requirement "Your last Action was a Strike". Not impossible to pull off by any means but a severe limitation nonetheless.

Necrotic bomb has a 10 ft emanation. That will often mean you have to create the Thrall 10 ft away from your target to not blow up your melee allies. That negates the extra effect of the additional action completely.

That need for this extra action also makes conditions like Slowed and Stunned extra punishing for the Necromancer. You can never guarantee that your thralls will survive until your next turn so the only reliable thing you have left in those situations are your (very few) spell slots and cantrips.

These issues are easier to handle once you create multiple thralls per action. But they are very much present for the first 6 levels which also happen to be the levels you are very spell slot starved.

The lack of focus points is another big issue. Unless you're human, you won't ever have more than one at level 1. You can regain one per encounter but that adds yet another hefty two additional actions required to your second focus spell. And you could in theory play a Necro all the way to level 20 without ever getting more focus points. By comparison, the psychic starts with 2 and gets a third one automatically early on (at level 5 I believe).

I think all necros should get one universal focus spell at level 1, in addition to the one of their subclass. Since many players seem disappointed with the passive nature of their thralls, giving everyone a focus spell that does something like let a thrall Stride and attack an enemy in some manner seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

It's a focus-based caster similar to the psychic. Except it only has a single focus point and doesn't ever get a bigger pool. The psychic outright starts with 2 focus points while the Necromancer needs to spend two actions to get his "second" focus point during combat.

You're pretty much forced to pick up one or two additional focus spells ASAP. And while there are some decent ones in there, I have yet to spot any that are so outstanding that they are worth 3 actions.

The 2 slots feel a lot weaker than what the psychic gets, since the latter has much more flexibility with them, being a spontaneous caster. And I say that as someone who usually prefers prepared casters for their flexibility. But there's not much flexibility to gain from such a limited number of slots.

Create thrall is a decent control tool. Its damage is negligible, but flanking and blocking squares is good. I'm not convinced that it's anywhere near enough to balance out the shortcomings in casting - both focus and slot based.

All that being said, I still think the necro looks like an extremely fun (but complicated) class to play. I just don't think it's a.paericularly powerful in its current iteration, especially compared to some of the more recent remaster casters.

JiCi wrote:

- The Bone Shaper Fascination has the most damage-dealing spells.

This is not true. Every single focus spell is useable by all three fascinations. Bone Shaper simply gets Bone Spear as their free option at level 1, but a human flesh or spirit necromancer can take Bone Spear with their bonus feat, and all the bone or flesh (I don't think there are any spirit) -themed focus spells at higher levels are freely available to all subclasses.

Reoccurring Nightmare is the only spirit-themed focus spell after level 1.