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So, during the play test I saw things that I didn't like, brought up my concerns and got mixed support. Changes were made but they felt like half-steps that didn't really address the core issues. So, after awhile I stopped following the play test and decided to just wait and see.
So, I've been going over the rules and I feel like my favorite type of character to play was taken into a back alley and beaten to within an inch of its life. I like playing necromancers and as a result I've also played many variations of cleric.
There are things I like. I like that create undead is a ritual and that there is a chance the undead you create has a chance to go berserk and attack you. I like that it's possible to have intelligent undead as minions. This means you can have something like a ghoul without worrying it will turn on you. It struck me as an interesting choice that you don't have to be a spellcaster to use the ritual.
Outside of this trying to specialize in undead seems very lackluster at best. You can't have more then 4 minions and you have to spend an action every turn getting the minion to do anything other than stand there. This would be fine if using feats:
*You could increase the minion limit
*You could command more than one minion at a time with an action (even if it makes them all perform the same action against the same target)
*They would continue to act on the last instruction you gave them if possible.
Necrotic Infusion seems to be the only way to buff your minions. Granted, I like the feat, it gives even more reason to heal them during combat. Otherwise I found... well nothing. There things like bind undead and command undead but these become pointless even as temporary abilities when you remember that you can only have 4 minions. At best they let you leash something that's more powerful than what you can create, with the downside that the party will eventually be forced to put them down. Since, even the improved command undead only lasts 24 hours before it gets another save. This was the exact reason taking intelligent undead via command undead wasn't something you did in 1st edition. The reward didn't outweigh the risk of being attacked in the middle of the night by your own undead. I suddenly have this mental image of a necromancer running around with a cage on wheels full of undead. They command one, which then gets to be let out and adventured with. If it survives the day it goes back into the cage afterward.
So, I started looking at what else a cleric gets and overall found it kind of bland and lackluster. I can choose between being a wizard or being a fighter. Even if I take the wizard option I get 1 focus spell and some buffs to my offensive magic at very high level. Nothing else particularly excites me about the class. I see that at 8th level you can get a second focus spell. I'm sure that my perception is being colored by how badly pet classes have been gimped (animal companions seem a little better off then others) and that much of what i didn't like during the play test is still present. Is there something I missing?
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How many undead minions did you have in 1st edition? How long did it take you to take your turn with all of them? How did your GM and other players look at you during that turn?
I feel a potential solution could be to command / bind/ summon troops. But it's probably going to take a while for the designers to come up with the new troop rules.
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Well, you've got a couple things you can do. It's possible to create friendly intelligent undead, and to create unintelligent undead that you imbue with a purpose. But yeah, just like using Possession to remotely pilot a body all day with immunity mental effects is no longer an option, you're also not going to be controlling multiple mindless undead with higher CR than your level using your free actions.
Cleric can get a second focus spell at second level, and a third at 4th level. You just do so by getting new domains.
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How many undead minions did you have in 1st edition?
It depends on what level we're talking and if you mean total or just what I adventured with. My character had literal armies of undead.
In terms of what I actually adventured with. My last necromancer I would have tomb legion up which gave me 3 to 6 mummies. I also had a glass golem, and usually a few bloody mundra fire giants. So, we'll say on average I had about 8 minions.
How long did it take you to take your turn with all of them? How did your GM and other players look at you during that turn?
Not that long really. I would pre-roll all of my attacks and damage and when I wasn't having to be the healer I could generally pre-plan my spells as well. The DM made a point of letting us know whose turn it as as well as who was "on deck". So that person could be ready on their turn. Combats were not noticeably longer or shorter when I played a different character with that same group.
I mean, the way the action economy currently works, it doesn't make sense to have more then 3 minions with you since that's as many as you can even have attack (assuming I'm understanding the rules correctly). The 4th one is just going to stand around doing nothing anyway. Once you're ready to upgrade to more powerful minons you have to either kill off your old undead or lock them in a cellar since you won't be able to control them any more. In first edition I could pass them off my underlings (I also had leadership) that could use them to fill the losses in my armies.
I feel a potential solution could be to command / bind/ summon troops. But it's probably going to take a while for the designers to come up with the new troop rules.
Yeah, I had an idea that maybe with a feat you can bind two minions together on creation. They only count as a single minion for control and when you spend an action to command them you still only get 2 actions to split between them. This at least would give you the ability to have more than 4 minions and have better tactical control over them.
I don't really have an issue with how they work at low level. The part that's disappointing to me is that there aren't really any options (in terms of abilities or feats) to make them any better. A high level rogue can make 4 undead minons with zero feat investment and those minions are just as effective as the ones made by a high level cleric of Urgathoa. If you're making me choose quality over quantity then let me actually improve the few undead I'm allowed to have.
Cleric can get a second focus spell at second level, and a third at 4th level. You just do so by getting new domains.
I had missed that the domain ability could be taken multiple times. That's something at least. The focus spells I've seen have been unimpressive but its hard to judge how good a spell is in a vacuum. It really depends on how it compares to everything else. They might be fine as they are.
As QuidEst bring up, you can make as many mindless, and intelligent friendly/helpful undead as you want, but you can only have 4 Minions that you have direct control over.
I could just pay the gp directly to random evil NPCs and pretty much get a similar result. Sure, they are "friendly". But there's little reason to expect them to actually help my character when it comes to their long term goals.
Does make me wonder, are hirelings still a thing? If they are this is perhaps slightly more compelling as the friendly undead can at least be hired to come lug around loot, watch the skeleton horses or carry a torch. Of course since they are evil, they aren't exactly trust worthy and so you're basically paying money to have the option to hire an untrustworthy hireling. lovely....
I suspect (and hope) more content will come in later books with themes better suited to necromancy. I'm particularly hopeful that there will be a combat spell for getting undead from a nearby corpse, because to me that is the big threat of a necromancer. Not only do they kill you, but they bring you back to kill your friends. But this I think is a problem the game will grow out of as they flesh out Urgathoa, Geb (the nation and the lich), and horror related themes in the new game. Not that it helps now though.
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Yeah, you like to break the action economy into shards.
I for one am grateful this is no longer possible.
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Do I?
I don't recall getting enjoyment from doing that. I do remember getting enjoyment from having a character that had hordes of undead at his beck and call for roleplaying reasons. I was fine with the fact that 90% of the undead I had were too weak to actually go adventuring with. I had underlings that used mindless undead as servants and bouncers for the businesses they ran for me.
I suspect (and hope) more content will come in later books with themes better suited to necromancy. I'm particularly hopeful that there will be a combat spell for getting undead from a nearby corpse, because to me that is the big threat of a necromancer. Not only do they kill you, but they bring you back to kill your friends. But this I think is a problem the game will grow out of as they flesh out Urgathoa, Geb (the nation and the lich), and horror related themes in the new game. Not that it helps now though.
Possibly, the undeath domain doesn't give me much hope. I've never played a melee based necromancer but this seems to be the direction they're going. Outside of the undead creation ritual you're regulated to temporarily stealing undead and slapping people. If I wanted to steal things I'd be playing a rogue and if I wanted to slap people I'd be playing a monk and if I want to do both I can just multiclass a monk with a rogue.
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I'm also in the camp of "it'll come later".
Raising the undead is evil in Golarion, and most of the crb is geared for good and neutral characters. Mostly good too, judging by the champion.
More options are coming, we just have to wait a bit.
In the grand scheme of things, undead master is a pretty niche concept, so It doesn't surprise me if there are not a lot of options right now. I do expect more options to come online later though.
Although I think also this is one area that for the sake of the game was probably good to nerf. While it hasn't caused problems at your table, it's pretty heavily abusable and annoying for those who don't know better or for those who aren't team players.
One other thing I hope changes is removing secondary caster for undead creation as requirement cause good luck getting another party member to help, aswell as you can't get ritual anyways unless your gm allows which from what I tend to see too many parties are heavily good and hate anything evil.
The Animate Object ritual is pretty much a cut and paste of the Create Undead ritual. So, there is a way to take the "evil" out of being a necromancer. This is a good thing IMO, I would love to play an artificer but its always been prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, artificers have even less support than necromancers do.
Maybe, its there and I'm just not finding it but I don't see any abilities that even repair constructs. Much less anything that will augment them. Alchemists can have a homuculas as a familiar which hopefully just gets healed like a normal creature.
A cleric of Torag's only crafting based domain lets them throw paint at enemies and temporarily beautify an item. Neither of which is useful for keeping your animated broom alive.
I'm hoping they go the direction of giving you a single, very good undead/construct companion. It sounds like you specifically went above and beyond in ensuring that your preferred playstyle didn't clog up combat time but you need to understand that that is not the experience of most players. Just a Summoner with an eidolon would take twice as much time on their turn IME. Of course even if you're being completely honest about how much time your turns were taking the fact remains that by taking many times as many actions as the other players you were breaking game balance in half in the way that only a 9th level caster can do.
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Is there anything keeping your intelligent undead minion from having intelligent undead minions of its own, and on down the chain? From what I can tell, the only real requirement is that they have the requisite skills (which you and your GM could easily work out as them being trained in the skill after being created), so if you created, say, four Graveknights, they could in turn use the ritual to create four Vampire Spawns each who could use the ritual to create four Ghasts each which could make four Ghouls each which could make four zombies or skeletons each. It'd be expensive, and the action economy would be abhorrent, but it would work.
I also think, though, that rules for more undead control are likely forthcoming.
Having PCs control armies is not a core rule book necessity for me. That style of play seems like something that falls outside of what the adventure designers are going to be wanting to plan for in their games.
D&D 3.0, and those that followed, operated on a rule set that required NPCs and monsters to gain their powers through a set of mechanical rules that necessitated making feats and spells that could accomplish all the things that the GM need their villains to do. PF2 is deliberately walking away from that model so making all of the elements to have necromancer villains isn't an immediate priority.
My guess is that a dedicated player-necromancer resource would be something that will come out as a much later supplement when they are ready to do an Evil AP or will come out first as a third party resource.
I'm hoping they go the direction of giving you a single, very good undead/construct companion. It sounds like you specifically went above and beyond in ensuring that your preferred playstyle didn't clog up combat time but you need to understand that that is not the experience of most players. Just a Summoner with an eidolon would take twice as much time on their turn IME. Of course even if you're being completely honest about how much time your turns were taking the fact remains that by taking many times as many actions as the other players you were breaking game balance in half in the way that only a 9th level caster can do.
it's really just a matter of courtesy when it comes to high level play. The arcane archer in my current group regularly pre-rolls all of his attacks and damage. Then when it's his turn he starts with the lowest roll and works his way up until he gets a hit. Then he's able to let the DM know how many times he hit and how much damage each hit and/or crit did. Any high level character can bog things down if they have no idea what they're going to do until its there turn. It's not a problem that is exclusive to pet classes. As for game balance, since I mostly filled a support role in the group the other players at the table liked it better when I was there then when I wasn't. So, if I was disrupting things it was in a way that enhanced the game for everyone.
I don't play pet classes because I'm trying to break the game. I play them because its a play style I enjoy. The first character I made in WoW was a warlock, the 2nd one was a hunter.
There's a difference between making something balanced vs making it viable as a character concept. Not only do necromancers and artificers lack support, but there doesn't even seem to be much to build on. What's presently there (for necromancers) doesn't even mesh well into something coherent. Unless your idea of a necromancer is someone that runs around blasting everyone with negative energy.
Is there anything keeping your intelligent undead minion from having intelligent undead minions of its own, and on down the chain? From what I can tell, the only real requirement is that they have the requisite skills (which you and your GM could easily work out as them being trained in the skill after being created), so if you created, say, four Graveknights, they could in turn use the ritual to create four Vampire Spawns each who could use the ritual to create four Ghasts each which could make four Ghouls each which could make four zombies or skeletons each. It'd be expensive, and the action economy would be abhorrent, but it would work.
I also think, though, that rules for more undead control are likely forthcoming.
from what I've seen by the RAW probably not. But if it's not in place already I'm sure a change will be made quickly that says that creatures with the minion tag can't have minions of their own. Also, that any creature that has minions can't subsequently gain the minion tag themselves.
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You don't have to tell me about pre-rolling; I know, and it's something I do too. The thing is that we're both veteran players who know how much of a pitfall it is to wait for your turn to come around to decide what you're doing.
I know plenty of veterans who... don't do that, and the situation is even worse with new players. You cannot pretend that it's just as difficult for these players to decide on actions for one character as it is to decide on actions for six. Without some degree of streamlining if a new player comes to the table wanting to play a class with a pet for the same reasons you do then they're going to make Pathfinder a miserable experience for everyone in that group.
Re: game balance, it doesn't really matter if your intent was to break the game or not. There's plenty of people who play God Wizards just because they like that role. Doesn't change the fact that you were breaking the game, and curtailing minionmancy is one of the ways that Paizo lessened the gap between those that have spells and those that do not.
Re: game balance, it doesn't really matter if your intent was to break the game or not. There's plenty of people who play God Wizards just because they like that role. Doesn't change the fact that you were breaking the game, and curtailing minionmancy is one of the ways that Paizo lessened the gap between those that have spells and those that do not.
????
not sure what minions have to do with the caster/non-caster gap. Non-casters could have minions same as casters in 1st edition, much less 2nd edition where you don't even need to hire a caster to make them.
Is this where all the minion hate is coming from?
You can't possibly be arguing in good faith that the Ranger's animal companion is equivalent to summoner monster or animate undead.
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Yeah, you like to break the action economy into shards.
I for one am grateful this is no longer possible.
????
Do I?
Other quote:
what I actually adventured with. My last necromancer I would have tomb legion up which gave me 3 to 6 mummies. I also had a glass golem, and usually a few bloody mundra fire giants. So, we'll say on average I had about 8 minions.
I mean, you seem to.
Director of Game Design
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Folks,
I have some really exciting ideas for how to make this character (and others like it) work in a way that is satisfying and balanced in the new game. We just didn't have room in the Core.
Give us some time... we will get this out there!
You can't possibly be arguing in good faith that the Ranger's animal companion is equivalent to summoner monster or animate undead.
I don't recall summon monster being complained about until the summoner class was introduced. So, I tend to view those complaints more about that specific class then the spell series. Yes, summoners were absolutely OP. I never played one because they did seem to be able to literally do everything. I remember my necromancer sitting back with nothing to do while the summoner and his eidolon solo'd the encounter. He died a lot less than my necromancer too.
As for animate dead, to start with you don't need animate dead in order to have permanent mindless undead under your control. My aforementioned necromancer didn't personally control every single undead in his army. They were splint into groups of 10 with each group lead by a non-caster (a fighter specifically), who was in charge of that squad. My skeletal archers had a similar organizational scheme. Even ignoring that this can be accomplished with magic items, animate dead can be gotten as a spell like ablity for anyone who wants it regardless of class. Not even a lot investment either, 1 feat and the right deity and you're good to go.
All of which is pretty irrelevant in 2nd edition where you don't even need to invest a feat. You and your non-caster buddy can each have 4 undead minions after just a little over 1 week of down time. All you have to do is get your hands on the ritual.
As for animal companions, in general 1 animal companion is better then 1 undead. So, no they aren't the same in general they were already better and also available to anyone that wanted one with just the investment of 2 feats.
It's probably a fair assessment though that since casters tend to be squishy, they are more inclined to seek out the ability to have a personal bodyguard then a character that's built to be on the front line. In this way the caster's survival isn't entirely dependent on said frontliner. It also frees up the frontliner to dig in deeper since they don't have to worry as much about their caster friend.
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Folks,
I have some really exciting ideas for how to make this character (and others like it) work in a way that is satisfying and balanced in the new game. We just didn't have room in the Core.
Give us some time... we will get this out there!
Awesome!
I'm looking forward to it :)
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I don't recall summon monster being complained about until the summoner class was introduced.
My casters in 3.5 had summoning spells, trust me, it was indeed a thing.
Summoners with their summoning SLA pool in addition to their other spells just made it that more glaring.
To be fair, currently most Arcane spells that are not blasting are pretty niche (unless they are straight up buffs to be given to the martials).
First spell that looks even remotely interesting to me for a Transmuter is Aerial Form at level 4, and real fun is only with Dragon Form at level 6! Everything else is either number shuffling or just meh.
Folks,
I have some really exciting ideas for how to make this character (and others like it) work in a way that is satisfying and balanced in the new game. We just didn't have room in the Core.
Give us some time... we will get this out there!
I'll be honest Jason all I want is for my Clerics to get an ability similar to the Level 1 Focus Power for Necromancer Sorcerors, since that was basically the same Domain ability Clerics got with the Undead Subdomain, and being able to have that in 2e at the moment requires multiclassing into Sorceror twice at 2 and 4. By no means is this a dealbreaker but it does seem a bit silly that the Cleric Undeath Focus Power in 2e is just another "pew pew damage" spell, which sounds to me more Sorceror than "bam you're now like an undead for the purpose of Negative Energy healing".
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I don't recall summon monster being complained about until the summoner class was introduced.My casters in 3.5 had summoning spells, trust me, it was indeed a thing.
Summoners with their summoning SLA pool in addition to their other spells just made it that more glaring.
Seriously, in a 3.5 game I'm playing in, we have a dread necromancer, a druid, a cleric, and a fighter/stuff because 3.5 encouraged multiclassing.
None of the three casters summons regularly, because we wouldn't finish an encounter in a single play session. On top of the fact, that if we summoned more than a few creatures the fighter/___ would become entirely useless as opposed to a mobile wall of ____ spell.
The minion controller abilities from PF1/3.5 were fun the first time you played them. They needed removal/changes/nerfs.
Folks,
I have some really exciting ideas for how to make this character (and others like it) work in a way that is satisfying and balanced in the new game. We just didn't have room in the Core.
Give us some time... we will get this out there!
Oh, I hope there's Summoner support on the table, too. It does sound like it, so far.
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Seems like if you want hordes of Undead for role playing reasons work with you gm to have all that stuff happen, there is no stopping you. It could be your downtime activity. Sort of like in Kaer Maga, were they have an undead work force.. sure go ahead...but having bunch for combat purpose I think not.