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I agree with you as well. 8HD/level sounds quite nice. However, once you hit level 8 you'll run into one of several problems.
You decide to stick with the 8HD/level. Your player reaches Level 8 and get to animate a number of zombies/skeletons with a total HD that cannot exceed the characters level. This gimps the Specialist Power granted. At lvl 8, with the specialists power, you can command up to 64HD worth of undead. However, the lvl 8 ability says you cannot control any zombies/skeletons past 8HD (current lvl).
- What to do with the other 56HD worth of undead I can control?
- Are they saying you can only have a fixed number of zombie/skeletons (the weakest in the undead food chain)..but you can have any amount of stronger ones that doesnt exceed the leftover HD?
They need to either fix the granted ability, or fix the ability given at lvl 8. Theres too much room to abuse this, as for one example I gave in my original post.
Actually, the 8th level ability says nothing about controlling the undead except referring to Animate Dead. It just gives the ability to create a number of HD of undead per day for free. Animate Dead on the other hand says that you can never control more undead than 4HD per caster level. As the specialist power seems to supercede the normal limit, this would also apply to animate dead. So, in about 8 days you can fill your whole undead retinue without using a single piece of onyx.
While I love this ability I do think it counts toward your limit now ya can make em even if its over the limit just cant control em.
I started a thread on this before realizing this one was here.
Another problem is that the rule doesn't say how the necromancer gets to control them. Is there some kind of check? Is it automatic? Do you just get to grab the undead as you come across them?
IMO it's a game breaker particularly at low levels where a creative PC could acquirie undead things like a Vampire at first or second level or a Shadow with a Shadow army.
IMO it's a game breaker particularly at low levels where a creative PC could acquirie undead things like a Vampire at first or second level or a Shadow with a Shadow army.
Except that the rule doesn't say by what means the necromancer can control them. There must be some kind of check for taking over undead you didn't make, a check which would have make taking over a vampire difficult.
Necromancers have a "Control Pool" that is normally 4HD/level. They fill up this control pool by casting spells like animate dead and ghoul gauntlet. As things currently stand a Cleric of less than 5th level and a Wizard of less than 7th level cannot use their Control Pool for anything.
K and I have put [url=forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=599129]A Whole Lot of thought and playtesting[/i] into Necromancers, and the current Necromancer Specialist ability set is in no way enough to make a prospective corpse crafter want to be a Wizard instead of a Cleric.
Here are some basic problems with the concept:
- Any Corpse Crafter who doesn't have desecrate is a Hobo!
Desecrate is a great spell that can be used to desanctify altars to gods good or evil. But it can also be used to give real extra hit points to undead created after it has been cast. Those bonus hit points never go away and scale with level, so any character who animates the dead and doesn't have access to this 2nd level Cleric spell is a crappy necromancer when it comes to animating skeletons. - Clerics get Animate Dead as a 3rd level spell!
If you want to be the guy who animates the dead, do you want to animate them now or do you want to animate them two levels from now? That's what I thought. - Clerics get all the crazy crap like general of undeath for free
There are a number of spells that can be used to increase your prospective zombie legion above and beyond your Control Pool. These spells are Cleric spells, so any neutral or evil Cleric can just prepare them some day and raise an army of the dead as large or larger than any Wizard specialist could ever hope to achieve. You can seriously just be a worshiper of Boccob or something and just decide to raise a zombie legion tomorrow and just do it. - Clerics can heal zombie legions really easily.
And Wizards can't. Especially with the Pathfinder Turn Undead rules.
Seriously, if you wanted to make a corpse animating Wizard specialty that wasn't a joke that Clerics make prank calls to, you'd want to institute the following:
- Give them desecrate. Life as a necromancer without it is pathetic. They should be throwing this around as a spell like ability from level 2.
- Let them raise the dead at first level. At first level they could be limited to one zombie at a time. I don't really care, I just want to be stitching bodies together from first level.
- Let them Energy Substitute: Negative Energy. Lord of the Uttercold is unfortunately not open content, and Wizard Necromancers need competitive ways to heal skeletons or Clerics will take their lunch money.
-Frank