From experience at this point of you want competent martial accuracy you tend to give up either slots, spell proficiency, or both.
From what I can gather. They can be built to be VERY tanky. Flesh magician gets free toughness. Muscle barrier is fantastic not just for yourself, but anyone in the party. Body. Body shield is both an AC increase as well as damage resistance. Drain strike and life tap and reclaim power can all heal you.
Despite the lack of martial AC progression I think a necromancer can survive quite well.
It's a question if whether the investment in martial weaponry is worthwhile. For that, I think it will depend largely on team composition.
A great sword using drain strike does almost as much damage as another necromancer sound thrall damage and blowing up said thrall with a focus point. Granted there are differences, one attack vs two, 3 thrall vs knew, healing vs no heal, melee vs ranged, single target vs AOE.
With the occult spell list you had access to decent buffs as well.
I am both impressed and disappointed with their gish abilities. Impressed because it's arguably more accessible and better than other full progression casters. Disappointed because it's a notable feat investment you engage in what amounts to, less interesting turns and higher thrall cost.
Though, at later levels this is easier.
Instead of focusing on accuracy, I'd rather focus on how well they can use a strike for a third action. How reliable and damaging is it. Some mobility tied to thrall sacrifice might be nice. Maybe even a feat tax to make osteo armaments scale a touch better (like one extra rune)
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I agree that lowering the level of Bind hero's spirit seems like a good idea, but I worry about it stepping on the Witness Animist's toes.
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I don't think higher proficiency is in the cards. That said I do think right now its melee options come online too late.
Level 18 for your heroism-like basically pushes it out of the range of the vast majority of play, which is weird considering it's a core buff. Heroism is on the occult list, but it feels awkward to rely on that given the necromancer's slots.
I think Osteoarmaments comes online too slowly too. Having a bone weapon again is very thematic, but level 8 is kind of late. Just for thematic reasons it'd be nice to have this much sooner.... It's also a bit of a weird feat because its value is basically entirely related to how the GM handles treasure, since it provides no direct power benefit (and eventually costs you power by being property rune limited).
Finally I think Reaper Weapons should be slightly stronger. Proficiency for a spellcaster is accessible via a general or ancestry feat, it's very cheap... a class feat tailored toward giving a caster melee options should be a bit better than that. Should provide some small benefit when using the appropriate weapons.
Little increases like this could make the melee necromancer feel like a more well defined niche with better capabilities, actually justifying the feat investment somewhat.
From the initial playtest it's apparent that the designers want to give Necromancer the ability to somewhat get into melee.
Between 8 HD base, Reaper's Weapon Familiarity at level 2, Osteo Armaments at level 8, and Bind Heroic Spirit at level 18.
I think most of this and the other feats just make it apparent that the designer was making "Gideon/Harrow the Ninth, the Pathfinder Class." Don't read more into than that, it's very much more style (on the melee side) than functional substance. The bone/flesh grave spells inspired by this look like they work quite well, though.
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I've been thinking that maybe as a way to offset the proficiency issue is to give them a +2 status bonus for the weapon made by OSTEO ARMAMENTS feat if it is also a weapon from REAPER’S WEAPON FAMILIARITY feat.
Also I love the Idea that they can gain another feat BONE ARMOR(1 Action) which give the necromancer armor like that of the kineticist feats.
Medium Armor; AC Bonus +3; Dex Cap +2; Check Penalty –2; Speed Penalty –5 feet; Strength 14; Bulk 1; Group Skeletal.
Armor advances with necromancer class DC at one tier lower, instead of normal armor proficiency.
Something like these could help the necromancer melee with feat investment. I believe everyone else on the forums here have a better idea on ability synergy than I could think of.
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Full (or mostly full) spellcasters don't get martial weapon proficiency. This doesn't happen anywhere in the game.
Necro looks like it can actually be better in melee than some other gish caster options in the game now as it gets a pretty good package for that. Adding full martial weapon proficiency onto that, or some kind of bonus that effectively gets it there is going to put it easily ahead of a lot of other options to do this, considering that even Untamed Form Druids don't really keep up with martial accuracy and they're fully locked out of their spells during that.
Look at what something like Battle Harbinger has to give up to get that, and its a lot.
Honestly I think it'll be fine. You can trivially get yourself a flanking buddy and you can just cast Heroism for that buff. Making a focus spell for that available early would be extremely strong.
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I don't think fine is the right word. You've got four major melee feats that are mostly on the weak side (the focus spell is good, but at level 18).
Proficiency in a martial weapon for a level 2 class feat is just not good. Ancestry Feats and Weapon Training give you broader access at a lower overall price, and potentially a lower level too.
Draining Strike has serious scaling issues, Osteo comes online kind of late and ends up denying you property rune slots if you rely on it... and Bind Heroic Spirit is good, but out of scope of the vast majority of played characters.
There's also the fundamental issue that any Strike you make is competing in both MAP and action cost with Create Thrall, doing one makes the other worse and that internal tension is somewhat problematic, especially considering the high character investment cost of being a melee combatant.
Like a level 9 Necromancer with their Familiarity and Osteo Armament is doing 6 more damage per hit than a vanilla one, which isn't insignificant, but is generating no thralls while doing so, and our traditional caster gets to be 30 feet away, hold stuff in their hands, have two or more extra feats, and better saves because they're not trying to wield a greataxe.
That's a lot to trade for the ability to do slightly more damage sometimes if you don't need to generate thralls.
It feels like Reaper Weapon Familiarity is a flavorful way to increase your damage on the whole "uhhh, I guess striking once is a decent third action" thing. The class doesn't really need it because of the attack it gets on Create Thrall, I admit. But being Big Scary Weapon Person is integral enough to some necromancer aesthetics that it's hard to blame them for trying to support it. I might be missing something, but realistically, this feat is probably going to be more useful for some janky Free Archetype build using it to get scythe proficiency at level 4 than a necromancer.
I wouldn't mind seeing that L18 spell get a scaling version, though. Just +1 Status to attack whenever you first get it, +2 status to attack with maybe one thrall spawned with the first hit and no more for a mid-rank heighten, and the full version at L18.
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I think Osteoarmaments comes online too slowly too. Having a bone weapon again is very thematic, but level 8 is kind of late. Just for thematic reasons it'd be nice to have this much sooner.... It's also a bit of a weird feat because its value is basically entirely related to how the GM handles treasure, since it provides no direct power benefit (and eventually costs you power by being property rune limited).
Finally I think Reaper Weapons should be slightly stronger. Proficiency for a spellcaster is accessible via a general or ancestry feat, it's very cheap... a class feat tailored toward giving a caster melee options should be a bit better than that. Should provide some small benefit when using the appropriate weapons.
Little increases like this could make the melee necromancer feel like a more well defined niche with better capabilities, actually justifying the feat investment somewhat.
I think it would be a good call to roll Reaper Weapon Familiarity and Osteo Armaments into one feat. You get cool reaper weapons, plus you get to summon a (maybe) +1 weapon you're proficient with (and have Access to, it actually doesn't specify that currently which is funny) that then scales as normal. I think the innate versatility of getting to choose in the moment what weapon it is is enough to offest the relative power drop from no runes. If that's too much value for one feat then at least give it the ancestry weapon familiarities' Crit Spec clause.
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I would love to get the class closer to have real gish options. I made some suggestions in that direction in my feedback thread.
Since the class doesn't get access to any marital finesse weapon (other than the hand adze which barely qualifies as martial), it should get medium armor proficiency. That's the only way to get the strength you need to swing your weapon without killing your AC. I guess a subclass that gets armor proficiency as its general feat would work as an alternative.
Reaper's Weapon Familiarity at the very least needs weapon specialization, preferably one unique to the feat. It could also give you "Double Necro Slice" on top of the proficiencies. Basically a 2 action activity that allows you to make a Melee Strike and Create Thrall and have both use the same MAP. Since the damage of Create Thrall is so low, I don't think it would step on anyone's toes.
Osteo Armaments should absolutely be a 4th level feat with the decaying rune option being delayed to level 8. And frankly, even then it's not amazing. I suggested adding more property runes that are necro-flavored (like wounding, unholy) on higher levels.
Bind Heroic Spirit is too little, too late. You can easily have multiple wands of 6th rank heroism at that level for a similar effect and better pre-buff-ability due to longer duration. Lowering the level and bonus to match heroism seems like an easy fix. Maybe it could also just become a single action (not focus spell) that sacrifices 1-3 nearby thralls (level-gated) to grant you a +1-3 status bonus to attacks for one round. This could also be rolled into Draining Strike.
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Let's try to apply what we've learned from Witch's Armaments.
No, giving the Necro built-in buffs to approach martial parity is not a good idea, for same reason it would be for the Witch.
IMO, those caster weapon feats are mostly there for the Necro/Witch Archetype builds that dip to get a cool thematic weapon. Caster Strikes really are that bad; yes at low Ls it looks fine, but imo that widening gap makes the weapon feats all the more of trap options.
(Most) suggested fixes to make the weapon attacking viable for Necro would make the feats absurdly good for other classes to poach.
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The Archetype system safe angle that I'm interested in would be for any of the "special Strike" feats like Draining Strike to be tweaked.
Instead of making a raw Strike, their magical nature could allow for a spell attack roll (for the weapons you're proficient with), but is otherwise the same:
You get an optional small rider effect per thrall burned, and this would make melee ~Strikes viable in a way that helps the casters, but not the martial dippers.
If the "0 cost 1A spell attack rolls" thing is expressly forbidden in Paizo's secret design bible, then the spell attack optional could be 2A while also allowing the ~Strike to make the weapon hit at range.
That would certainly be much worse for players to use, but it would still have appeal due to it's unique "spell mod for weapon hit" nature, and because Necro has it's class power gated behind doing 1A filler actions.
(Hand of the Apprentice Wiz crying in the corner. Great ideas screwed by absurd cost. Would be a horrible shame for that magical Strike to be forever trapped in that focus spell.)
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Quoting myself from the Thrall Mechanic thread
I could see just adding another single action Grave Cantrip as a class feature that gives a thrall within 30 ft an optional attack (same as the Create Thrall one) and then destroys it with no other benefits.
To address concerns of a lackluster melee necro build, you could also modify the feats that enable that build so they let the Necromancer take the melee attack from this Destroy Thrall cantrip themselves, using the the melee weapon's dice and abilities instead of the listed spell attack dice but still counting as a spell attack to use the better progression.
Once you can summon multiple thralls per actions, this gives a gameplay loop of summon (with free melee), cast a non-attack spell or focus spell, then on the next turn sacrifice a thrall for a boosted melee before resummoning.