Samsaran
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I am considering playing a Necromancer of some sort to play in said game. I want to have some animated zombies and skeletons running around, and create an eerie feel to make other ships automatically weary in tangling with us. I also want to know if there are many sea animals available to turn into zombies that I will have follow the ship around and attack any ship or monster that approaches us.
If there are some sea animals, what types do you recall. Whales, Crocadiles, hammerhead sharks, dolphins, octopus, krakens, kewl things like that.
Your help is much appreciated.
| Turin the Mad |
Dunno about zombified sea critters being all that useful for the most part. They'll get munched into skellies PDQ by crabs et al.
A necromancer is an excellent way to keep up your crew count however! Skeletons are better than zombies for this purpose. You will want create undead to get a crew of ghouls and, later, mummies or whatever. Ghasts are borderline due to the godawful stench.
| mogwen |
As a GM in the S&S campaign I would jut tell you that a necromancer is a very good idea,be it wizard(the spellbook in the water can be quite dangerous,though),sorcerer,priest,oracle or witch!
On my table,we have a fabulous mwangi juju oracle who spends his time cursing all those that seem to wrong him,he's pretty funny and doing wonders at the table!
Look at the "pirates of the inner sea" supplement, you may find there some useful and flavourful spells like unseen crew and the like.
And sure sails await you,ol'salt!
Dazz
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Like mogwen, I'm currently GM'ing Skull and Shackles and can vouch that a necromancer would work very well.
In addition to having handy spells and (assuming you're not in a party of goodie-two-shoes...pirates...?) a continuous supply of usable corpses for animating, you won't have that usual stigma of "oh god he's animating corpses!" that fills many other campaigns. Pirates in the Shackles are well used to using any means to reach their ends, and you'll run into more friendly Evil NPCs than Good ones (though most are a solid neutral). The goddess of piracy herself even seems to think it's a good idea, so who can argue?
Nothing is more satisfying than killing a hated enemy and having their corpse serve you in your later battles. May Besmara smile on your sails!
EDIT: And yes, you can turn anything with a body into a zombie, even sea creatures. The problem with having them tail the ship is that with some exceptions, your ship will be moving a lot faster than the zombie. My party has a massive fish tank in their ship's hold for carrying around any sea creatures they need to, and I ruled that it took up 5 tons of their ship's cargo capacity. It's not RAW, but you should be able to work something out with your GM.
| Fitzwalrus |
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When I started Skull & Shackles I explained to my players that this was not going to be the usual "Good vs. Evil" campaign setting, and that Evil characters were allowable within the limits of the acceptance of the campaign world of the Shackles. What I meant by this is that there certainly are various Evil NPCs out there, and that alignment does not trigger the automatic "kill on sight" reaction that it might in other settings.
That said, there are limits. An "Evil-tolerant" campaign setting does not equal "anything goes". A homicidal maniac who kills whoever he pleases is going to be shunned no matter what alignment the shunner may be, and if you read through all the AP modules it's clear that your average Shackles pirate has a healthy superstitious fear (if not outright dread) of the undead. That being the case, if you have a necromancer PC in your party they may certainly technically fit within the campaign framework but they are going to generate a whole different series of NPC reactions than would come from a more mundane crew member. Add to this the probable reluctance of the average pirate to sign on to serve aboard a ship even partially manned by undead crew and you have a whole new series of potential difficulties to deal with.
I have no great ideas to offer as to how to manage all this as yet, but as punishment for my sins one of my players is running a Cleric of Urgathoa (Gawds help me) and has definite necromantic ideas. At this point he can't do much more than animate the random dead rat or cockroach, but we're definitely going to have to deal with the "no one really likes the undead" aspect at some point in the future.
| Ar'ruum |
this is funny, our group is playing through Skull and Shackles and we have just encountered another ship, a perfect time to slide in alt characters says the gm ... so we all have rolled up new characters and just yesterday one of the guys asked ... how about a necromancer ... I think it got shot down though due to some Clerics and Rangers in the group... on the other hand we also have a Kitsune, a Strix, and a Tengu ... so I'm pretty sure anything is fair game!