I read this on the internet so it must be true....
This is all I read, and of course it's vague. Is this even possible, or cost effective, to do?
1. Be a 14th lvl Necromancer
2. Create a zombie
3. Cast Plane Shift to send zombie to the Negative Energy Plane
4. Cause a Nightwalker to appear
5. Used Command Undead on it. Since this is an undead with poor mental stats this is likely to succeed.
6. On a failure cast Banishment and try again.
Thank you. I know little about playing a Necromancer, but this just sounded off.
I read this on the internet so it must be true....
This is all I read, and of course it's vague. Is this even possible, or cost effective, to do?
1. Be a 14th lvl Necromancer
2. Create a zombie
3. Cast Plane Shift to send zombie to the Negative Energy Plane
4. Cause a Nightwalker to appear
5. Used Command Undead on it. Since this is an undead with poor mental stats this is likely to succeed.
6. On a failure cast Banishment and try again.
I'm not sure about step 3. Casting plane shift in pathfinder isn't as risky as it was in previous editions. The only way that this might work is by using a cubic gate to repeatly access the shadow plane. Even then it's random what steps through. You could use a gate spell to summon one, but since gate is a 9th level spell this means using some sort of consumable magic item.
As for number 5, this won't work out well for the caster. Night Walkers not only aren't mindless but have an intelligence of 20 and a will save of +19. Command undead is a 2nd level spell meaning the DC for it is 12+ability score mod. Meaning if the 14th level caster has a casting stat of 30, now the Night Walker has to roll a 3 or better on it's will save instead of just avoiding rolling a 1.
As for number 6, well banishment is also a will save. But since it's a 7th level spell the DC is a bit better. If you have a casting stat of 30 it means that the night walker has to roll an 8 or better to keep from getting banished.
On the whole, the odds are much greater that the thing will kill you before you are able to gain control of it. Even then if you succeed you still have to make an opposed cha check to make it do anything it doesn't feel like doing (which is probably most things). They have a charisma of 21 so, your charisma will need to be substantially better since you aren't allowed retries on this opposed check. Nightwalkers themselves have plane shift and so if it wanted to be on the material plane causing havoc it would be doing so.
TLDR: No, it doesn't really work. At best it botches its saves and you can make it do the things it already wants to do.
Edit: Its probably worth noting that in 4e and 5e nightwalkers have an int of 6 instead of 20. So it seems likely they were talking about the later versions of the creature.
I'd think that at step 3, you die, and are turned to ash.
The effect on living beings is more dramatic. Unless magically protected or attuned to the plane, mortal creatures have the life leached out of them in mere minutes—or even seconds (Planar Adventures 61). The process is so agonizing that most travelers become mindless wraiths on the spot, while their bodies crumble to ash.
So presumably you cast planar adaptation on yourself before going there. Items will decay, you light up like a beacon for all the undead. Not a nice place.
Then there's the DC issues. Nope not a plan.
I'd think that at step 3, you die, and are turned to ash.
The effect on living beings is more dramatic. Unless magically protected or attuned to the plane, mortal creatures have the life leached out of them in mere minutes—or even seconds (Planar Adventures 61). The process is so agonizing that most travelers become mindless wraiths on the spot, while their bodies crumble to ash.
So presumably you cast planar adaptation on yourself before going there. Items will decay, you light up like a beacon for all the undead. Not a nice place.
Then there's the DC issues. Nope not a plan.
to be fair, step 3 is to send the zombie to the plane via plane shift. The zombie going to the negative energy plane is probably fine. But I think thought is that by doing this it causes a Nightwalker to appear for some reason. Unlike teleport plane shift doesn't require you to go with the creature(s) you're sending.
They're talking about a 5e thing. The Nightwalker is a CR20 creature and the idea is to have a 14th level Necromancer control it because it has a hard time resisting.
Don't ask yourself if it's possible. Ask yourself if it will improve the game for everyone at the table.
On one hand, it's funny to see if you can actually pull it off.
On the other hand, it trivializes CR appropriate encounters... yay, you won. I hope it was as fun for the party as it was the Nightwalker.
The game presenting a challenge is what makes it fun. Remove the challenge, and all you have is a waste of your evening each week.
Every single one of these stupid tricks will make the game less fun for everyone involved, except the one @$$ messing with shenanigans. They always seem to have a blast ruining the game for everyone else.
Summoner's First Rule: Don't call up what you can't put down. Even if it has a "hard time" resisting control it will eventually, and then you have a CR+6 encounter.
It doesn't really work in Pathfinder like it does in 5e since the Nightwalker has significantly different stats and much better saves in Pathfinder. Plus your margin for success is only around 25%~ if using your best spell for controlling undead via Control Undead.
As for number 5, this won't work out well for the caster. Night Walkers not only aren't mindless but have an intelligence of 20 and a will save of +19. Command undead is a 2nd level spell meaning the DC for it is 12+ability score mod. Meaning if the 14th level caster has a casting stat of 30, now the Night Walker has to roll a 3 or better on it's will save instead of just avoiding rolling a 1.
The feat, not the spell. Necromancers get the feat as a freebie. DC is roughly 17-20 depending on whether the Necromancer has a good Charisma. If they use the spell Control Undead(Which is 7th) the DC is about 25-28 which is still very iffy since you need to be kind of close and punch through it's SR. It also only lasts a minute per level.
So if you fail your initial play, it's probably going to respond with Finger of Death so that's a potential 160 damage coming your way before it moves closer and tries to break one of your magic items with a swift action sunder.
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The original post I read didn't specify what edition, as Pathfinder is my regular go to I tried it here.
I want to thank everyone for actually putting so much though and theory into this. This is exactly why I respect this forum so very much!