Hamitup's page

Drokalion's area of concern just saying "Being a lion" kills me.

I just tried and both the Dec 3,2024 and August 2021 are the same file.

Any sort of persistent utility mid-encounter is action-intensive and short-lived, and because Invoking is so much comparatively easier to do, the loop becomes Tracing as much as you can then Invoking before the duration expires.

This is definitely the root of the problem. The short duration makes it iffy as to whether you will see any benefit from the passive part of the rune. If you don't know for sure you will invoke the next turn you probably wasted an action to trace the rune

I generally would agree but the presented utility/buff/debuff runes was just already too meh by themselves

Yeah, I agree. I was trying to point out that it would obscure the play test as fewer people would bother with the utility runes and therefor give less feed back for balancing.

While I agree with what you wrote for each of the runes, they could work out differently in actual play. I thought Bone Spear would be a lot better than it was.

This time, the Necromancer bought 2 wands of containment with their money. They barely used their focus spells. When things got tough, which was fairly often, they cast containment, 5th-rank command or synesthesia. Their focus spells just couldn't compete on the action denial or debuff angle with those three spells, and the blast spells aren't going to turn the tide of battle when you need to reduce the damage the enemy is doing to you. Any other occult caster could have done what they did, but better.

This was my biggest issue across all the levels I played or GMed, level 2 through 15. I kept feeling like it was not worth it to use the grave spells and the class would be better off just using it's slotted spells/cantrips. Too much effort, too slow, and too little payoff. to me it was not any one problem that make the grave spells feel ineffective, but the multiple little things that held them back.

Just picking on the lower level grave spells.

Bone spears damage is not great at level 1, has very poor range, and is anti-synergistic with create thrall due to both increasing MAP.

Dead weight on a crit fail is at best a -5 to an enemy's attacks for one round or at worst nothing if the target is already next to someone.

Life tap heals so little it is only useful in getting allies up from dying later in combat, but the drained condition would be better used at the start. Neither side is really worth it on their own.

Muscle Barrier is very strong, but very passive for being the go to grave spell.

Necrotic bomb is less damage, range and area than fireball. Plus, the need of a thrall means that casting it turn one, when it would be most useful, is not happening if you have to move to be close enough.

Ranged runesmith is so significantly worse than the melee one, the 30-foot range on the 2 action Trace is just not a safe distance, at all, and is practically only good for making you not take Reactive Strike at a rather hefty cost, or tracing against low flying creatures that you otherwise can't reach. In most other situations, Stride+Trace+Trace (or Tracing Trance + Stride + Trace + Trace + Trace) is probably just going to be a better use of your time than trying to use Tracing Trance + 2 action Trace + 2 action Trace. As a result, its damage is backloaded into every second round where it gets to actually Invoke, making it very normal in terms of damage, while still keeping many of the Runesmith's issues due to the low range on trace. Remote Detonation probably had about a 50% hitrate, and as such the runesmith was frequently needing to spend another action on Invoke after using it.

I am not sure I fallow on this unless you are talking specifically about runesmiths using weapons. I know that you are giving up engraving strike, but you can take Rune-singer instead of Remote Detonation. This would make the 2 action trace a single action. Meaning you only lose out on the potential damage from a single strike. The runesmith tracks with the inventor and thaumaturge to hit, but does not get their damage boosting.

With Tracing trance and Rune-singer you can get out 4 traces in a single turn and then two more the next turn before invoking them all on the second turn while never moving. I think it is a boring loop, but it was very effective when my table used it. It even gave enough actions in those turns to use composite invocations, though they were not really worth it if you had to trace a single ineffective rune or wanted to invoke on multiple targets. As soon as you get Tracing trance it was easy enough to stack up 24d6 of damage across a couple of enemies every other round, even when having to spend an action each round to move. It scales at the same average as casting fireball from your highest rank slot on two foes every round, and can do more if you don't have to move.

The Runesmith had the opposite problem to me than the Necromancer. It felt like the payoff for the effort was too strong to ignore and seemed like sandbagging if you wanted to do something else with the turn.

Exocist wrote:

2-slot prepared casting feels pretty bad. If you prepare a spell wrong, that's half your spells of that level that are now useless. I'd much rather be spontaneous at 2 slots, at least then half your spells are signatures.

I fully agree. The main impression is that you don't have enough spellslots to nothing beyond Soothe. So in the end you just add Soothe in half of then what makes then useful.

I fully agree, especially for the lower levels. My issue with spamming soothe is that it is just a worse heal and you have you just end up using it to remove dying from allies. At that point it does really matter if you are using rank 1 or rank 3, the ally will probably still go down to one hit. Eventually other spells like synesthesia take over at a certain point. That said, it does feel like you are limited to only the greatest hits for each rank. You just don't have enough room to pick a spell that might be situational.

Its action economy is pretty bad as well. The necromancer had beastmaster to deal with the thrall problems, i.e. the fact that they can't move if they want to create thrall and cast a focus spell. Putting thralls in the "right place" is just not really possible with how much the battlefield moves around at higher levels, and how bad your focus spell ranges are. I often found myself with spare thralls on the battlefield that just did nothing except sit there, and having to summon new ones because the range on my spells was too short.

The need for thralls to be in the right location made what I initially liked about the class much harder to do. I like the idea of announcing your intentions in advance. Placing a thrall in the middle or beside a group of enemies tells them whether you are going to use necrotic bomb or boner barrage. Then they should get to act accordingly, either spending actions to avoid the area or destroy the thrall. My problem was that both options are so easy that you end up just being better off creating new ones every turn. Even if it does work out the payoff is not any better than just casting a slotted spell or focus spells from psychic or oracle.

There was a question in the survey about the number of thralls, the number of focus points, and are the thralls in the right spot. I had to pick the custom option because this problem shifts as you level up. Low level you don't have enough thralls, but at higher levels the enemies have so much more built into their kit that it is hard to keep thralls near them. in both cases you end up having to create thrall on the turn you plan to use a grave spell.

I feel like there are not enough options that can use up the thralls left behind. There are a few, but only one really lets you use the ones no longer near the fight and it has a frequency of once per 10 minutes.

I like the idea of some sort of tandem strike like the summoner has. Another way would be like the other martially focused casters who usually have a way to give themselves a bonus to hit. The necromancer's could be causing off-guard by flacking with a thrall. Something like 2 actions that lets you create a thrall and strike at the same time. You could get the flanking benefit while making an attack without MAP and still get an attack with the thrall. It wouldn't save any actions, but it would let you optimize the order.

I would like ways to give the thralls attacks more flavor as well. At the very least, you getting the decaying rune on your weapons with osteo armaments should apply to your thralls.

I don't know how useful diplomacy would be against haunts unless you could use a intelligence instead of charisma. I am assuming that most players would prioritize int>dex>con/wis>the other>cha/str. So most players would have a 1 at best. Haunts usually have pretty high DCs and being 3+ behind you key stat would be rough.

Correct me if I am wrong, but my main take away from your impressions is that the class struggles to interact directly with foes. Other than the thrall attack when summoned your damage came from a cantrip that the class does not have access to, you didn't seem to use any offence. The damaging focus spells seemed too costly in actions. I have had a similar experience at my table.

I think my table did try to focus more on the damage side than you did. That part to me did start to feel better around level 7. At this point the damages are closer to spells on the arcane and primal list. Necro bomb is 1.5 average damage less than fireball, and Bone spear is 3.5 avg dmg over blazing bolt. Bone barrage is worse at 11.5 avg dmg behind breathe fire, but has a larger area and a way to avoid and even buff allies. Even with all that, it never felt like we were able to make the most of the spells though. Usually due to some combination of short ranges, lack of precision in casting, and the extra action cost.

The Thralls did do fantastic in some complex hazards that targeted at random each round. They did poorly if the hazard used AoEs though.

Hamitup wrote:

Being able to use more spells as rituals looks like it could help the class feel less restricted by the limited spell slots. Only having 2 per rank makes it hard to not just pick the greatest hits at each rank. Giving more access to rituals, especially necro spells missing from the occult list, could really flesh out necromancers casting.

Funny reading this as authors of the mod converting BG3 to PF2 are approaching converting spells and one the the biggest differences with dnd comes into the light: there's no mechanics in PF2 to cast slotted spells without limit. Either they should become a cantrip or a focus spell and both should be written individually anew. And in BG3 a some very important spells became rituals which aren't this in the actual rules. Like Speak with Dead. And I'm not sure that general PF2 needs this even for just Necromancer. Maybe just give access to it for Necromancer (it's uncommon) and make a feat or feature to use this 1/day for example. But not unlimited times per day.

I do think the idea would need a lot of refinement to work. My biggest concern would be giving one player an activity that takes much more time then anything else the party wants to do. Even the shorter rituals have a 1 hour cast time.

There are few examples of gaining innate spells. They usually tied to ancestry and limited to once per day. Classes seem to just get a feat that is very similar to a spell, but never the exact same thing. I would not be surprised if the Necromancer had a feat like Kineticist's Voice of Elements to let them speak to mindless undead.

While all the lore stuff is missing from the playtest, it does feel like the kind of content that would get left out for the sake of focusing the more unique aspects of the class. Druids have two feats that are basically what is being asked for. I would be disappointed and shocked if the class released with out something similar.

For crafting out of bone, I feel like goblin's junk tinker feat would be easy enough to rewrite to work with bone instead of junk.

When making a thrall from another corpse they could make it similar to the spelldrinker feat for the bloodrager. Have a list of creature types and an additional tag to add to the thrall. then just make the thrall the same size of the creature.

The faster create thrall could be a free action like quicken spell that only works if you summon a thrall on the location of a creature that died recently. I don't know what a good time limit would be.

Spamming thralls to search for traps seems like there could be unintended repercussions. You aren't finding the trap. You are triggering every trap, just hopefully from a safe distance.

Because they don't animate and control undead, they are a skin over a universal chassis. Which from a game balance perspective makes sense, but does not do what the necromancer fantasy I enjoy does

I think I mentioned this in another thread you were in, but it sounds like you want the spell duplicate foe at a lower level with some adjustments. Something that targets a dead body and lets you control some facsimile of what they once were.

I think OP missed the point on moving thralls, so to answer his question: I would give up every feat and focus spell in the playtest to have created and controlled undead as a necromancer, every feat after they can move would be something to make them better.

Would that not just be an undead summoner?

I am surprised you didn't run into issues with a necromancer and alchemist in the same party like my table did. The necromancer could not focus the same foe as the alchemist with they wanted the thrall to survive to the next round. we also had to shuffle turn order almost every fight to make sure the party could benefit from flanking with the thralls before the splash damage removed them.

This spell needs to be greatly improved, it needs to become a reflex roll, honestly, I also think it needs to lose the line effect and become a target and gain a range of 30 feet.

I like that the spell is a line that can hit multiple foes, but boy does the spell chafe against a lot. The short range made it hard to use existing thralls and the short line made it hard to hit multiple foes. The MAP made it hard to use if you wanted to create thrall on the same turn, either before or after bone spear.

I really hoped the first level grave spells would be you bread and butter for the class, but they start so weak. I will say they scale well damage wise. Life tap felt better at higher levels when a crit means more than 3 damage and the more of the party could take advantage of a weakened fort save. Bone spear felt better with summoning more thralls, because you could keep one near you for when enemies got close, but it was still hard to hit multiple targets. the Damage scales closely to other spells that target AC.

Dead weight never felt worth it though.

So what's missing is something that connects the thrall you raise to the grave spell where you make something out of that thrall.

You are talking about things like Conglomerate of Limbs and Recurring nightmare right?

I know there are plenty of actions that affect what reactions are a available, but I don't know of any reactions that affect the actions you take. It would be something new.

They definitely struggle for actions. I would think an archetype with a lot of defensive passives would help out a good bit. Some thing like a champion(stats may be an issue) or a sentinel that could give access to better armor might be the best option. Being tougher might make it easier to get up close and just stay there, reducing the actions needed to move to safety.

Though skill mastery might also be a good option. You are an int based class, but like every int based class you lack the skill feats and improvements you need to make use of all your trained feats.

I made a white-room damage calculator in excel a while back for a summoner to see what action orders were better between the summoner and the eidolon. I have since used it for a lot of other characters, like a thaumaturge to see what's better between the tome and weapon intensify vulnerability(tome is bout 5% if you know the exact AC to aim for and are unsure if you will get to make a reactive strike).

It does a good job showing what you can expect on optimal turns, but requires a lot of work for each character. With the little bit of turn options I looked at with the necromancer(things like create thrall and then a cantrip or grave spell) the necromancer looks close to other casters. It was even close marshals like the thaumaturge and barbarian when using grave spells. I did not look at regular spells because they are the same for all occult casters.

This did not hold true during play testing for my table. It was rare to feel like you got an optimal turn. at levels 4 and 5 it was hard to have a thrall up at the start of your turn unless you spammed create thrall the turn before. This meant that you either had to not move and summon a thrall the turn you cast a grave spell or have spent the previous turn creating multiple thralls. It was comparable to a gunslinger, such that a gunslinger can get one turn that is attack>reload>attack, but then the next turn was reload>attack>reload. This drops the turn average by a good bit for the gun slinger, but the gunslinger pays the action cost later and can save the better turn when foes are in a bad spot.

At higher levels 14 and 15 the issue we were having was with the enemies themselves. Foes were either too big to get the thralls in position without standing in the monster's reach or the had abilities that gave movement or area damage. It felt like the battle fields would end up with lots of thralls, jut non in the right places.

In short white-room math looks close enough to everything else, but in actually playing it was hard to get an opportunity to do what you wanted.

Aren't all the spells cast by the class necromancer spells, as long as it is from the class and not an archetype or ancestry? So, you any cantrip works.