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The necromancer class in this playtest has a lot of potential, and I really appreciate its unique flavor and mechanics. However, there are a few areas where the implementation feels slightly out of sync with the expectations of a necromancer. Here’s what stands out to me:
- Thematic Concerns: The focus on thralls being primarily sacrificial feels at odds with how necromancers are often depicted—commanding undead servants to carry out their will directly, rather than treating them as resources to fuel auxiliary abilities. When this does happen, it is typically a secondary rather than primary use case for their thralls.
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- Creation Mechanics: The ability to create thralls from anywhere, without requiring nearby remains, feels disconnected from the imagery and process associated with necromancy. Using existing bones or corpses to animate thralls reinforces the idea that these are undead beings, not conjured constructs.
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- Lack of Movement: Thralls being stationary unless specific feats are taken makes them feel more like totems or objects than mobile, undead minions. This can diminish their impact as integral tools for a necromancer.
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- Inability to grapple and trip: What is more iconic to undead than a horde of zombies grasping and pulling down their prey before consuming them? I may have missed it, but we seem to lack the capacity to recreate this with our thralls!
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To address these points and expand on the class’s strengths, I’d propose the following changes:
- Add a Second Grave Cantrip: Introduce a Command Thrall cantrip that focuses on moving and striking with thralls after they are animated. This would encapsulate the behaviour of commanding undead.
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- Adjust Create Thrall: Require bones or cadavers to be within range for thrall creation, keeping the thematic focus on raising the dead. For the Spirit Monger grim fascination, allow thralls to be summoned without corpses, reflecting their incorporeal nature and reinforcing their unique identity. The cantrip will also interact with Command Thrall.[/b]
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- Add Feats for Manoeuvres: Add a feat allowing thralls to Grapple or Trip instead of making melee Strikes, using the necromancer’s spell attack modifier.
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Create Thrall
Traits: Uncommon, Cantrip, Concentrate, Grave, Manipulate, Necromancer, Thrall
Range: varies
Actions: 1
You animate an expendable undead thrall from a corpse within 30 feet or from bones and cadavers you place adjacent to you as part of this spell's casting. If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can create up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have master necromancy and four if you have legendary necromancy. When you cast the spell, you can choose to invoke the effect of Command Thrall. Attacks originating from a Thrall animated from a corpse have +1 circumstance bonus.
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Command Thrall
Traits: Uncommon, Cantrip, Concentrate, Grave, Necromancer, Thrall
Actions: 1-3
Range: varies
You command action from your thrall
If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can move the thralls a combined distance of 20ft, increasing to 30ft if you have master necromancy and 40ft if you have legendary necromancy.
Heightened (+2) The damage increases by 1d6
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Spirit Monger
Thrall Enhancement: Your thralls, while still being tied to the physical world, have an incorporeal essence. Whenever one of your thralls would deal physical damage, you can choose for that damage to be spirit or void damage instead. Additionally, your thralls can not be created from corpses but you can always create thralls within 30 feet of you rather than adjacent.
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Feat: Deadly Grasp
When commanding your thralls, you may choose to attempt a Grapple or Trip instead of performing a melee Strike. Use your spell attack modifier for the Athletics check. The grapple is maintained by other thralls adjacent to the target if the grappling is thrall is killed before it ends.
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- Why would someone use the one action version of Command Thrall? It doesn't have the manipulate trait so commanding rather than animated the dead may be situationally beneficial.
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- Isn't this weaker due to the low movement and tight summoning radius? Yes and Spirit Monger is probably too strong relatively now, however, I don't have the time to tweak the balance.
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Hope everyone is having a lovely time testing the classes!
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You thrall adjustment would effectively kill the class mechanically in certain encounters in favor of narrative flow.
You thrall adjustment would effectively kill the class mechanically in certain encounters in favor of narrative flow.
Outside of the animation being restricted is there any other reason you believe this to be the case, and if so, in what style of encounters?
Without the adjacency restriction this would be a flat buff, no? With more versatility to boot?
You thrall adjustment would effectively kill the class mechanically in certain encounters in favor of narrative flow.Outside of the animation being restricted is there any other reason you believe this to be the case, and if so, in what style of encounters?
Without the adjacency restriction this would be a flat buff, no? With more versatility to boot?
Calculate the intended weight in material needed to raise endless thralls.
There isn't always going to be a dead body lying around.
Some creatures don't have bodies.
Etc
You thrall adjustment would effectively kill the class mechanically in certain encounters in favor of narrative flow.Outside of the animation being restricted is there any other reason you believe this to be the case, and if so, in what style of encounters?
Without the adjacency restriction this would be a flat buff, no? With more versatility to boot?
Calculate the intended weight in material needed to raise endless thralls.
There isn't always going to be a dead body lying around.
Some creatures don't have bodies.
Etc
There isn't a material component. I see the confusion, I meant that as flavour to explain the adjacent placement. In my mind it's easier to suspend a player's disbelief if the default is for Thrall's to spawn adjacent to the player as they can come up with a simpler narrative device to explain it. I didn't intend for player's to have to add skeleton bones or cadavers to their inventory though!
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Create Thrall
Traits: Uncommon, Cantrip, Concentrate, Grave, Manipulate, Necromancer, Thrall
Range: varies
Actions: 1
From bones and cadavers you animate an expendable undead thrall adjacent to you. If there is a corpse within a corpse within 30 feet, you may consume the corpse to animate the thrall there instead. If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can create up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have master necromancy and four if you have legendary necromancy. When you cast the spell, you can choose to invoke the effect of Command Thrall. Attacks originating from a Thrall animated from a corpse have +1 circumstance bonus.
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Do you think this wording makes it clearer that was flavour text?
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I like to think of thralls as coming from the long dead.
There have been so many people on the planet over the millennia that there isn't an inch of ground that hasn't seen something die and waste away upon it at some point in time. The temporary thralls are simply echoes of those once beings brought back for a brief moment.
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Another thematic solution to not depend from corpses is that necromancer could use "material components/locus" to create the thralls like bones for osteomancers, pieces of flesh for caromancers or piles of funeral ashes for vitamancers. And the rest of the undead body grows from magical energy. These components doesn't really exists mechanically being part of manipulate trait.
This means that thrall would keep their current mechanic of being created from nowhere but with a better explanation of how it's made.
Another thematic solution to not depend from corpses is that necromancer could use "material components/locus" to create the thralls like bones for osteomancers, pieces of flesh for caromancers or piles of funeral ashes for vitamancers. And the rest of the undead body grows from magical energy. These components doesn't really exists mechanically being part of manipulate trait.
This means that thrall would keep their current mechanic of being created from nowhere but with a better explanation of how it's made.
Does my rephrasing to Martialmasters match that expectation?
```
Create Thrall
Traits: Uncommon, Cantrip, Concentrate, Grave, Manipulate, Necromancer, Thrall
Range: varies
Actions: 1
From sealed souls, bones or cadavers you animate an expendable undead thrall adjacent to you. If there is a corpse within a corpse within 30 feet, you may consume the corpse to animate the thrall there instead. If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can create up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have master necromancy and four if you have legendary necromancy. When you cast the spell, you can choose to invoke the effect of Command Thrall. Attacks originating from a Thrall animated from a corpse have +1 circumstance bonus.
```
Then since Command Thralls provides movement and attacks you can reposition the thralls and strike with them to some degree. The thralls starting near you discourages you from spamming the thralls to the point the battlefield is unworkable, yet, it doesn't create an impediment to creating thralls to use as a resource.
I just assumed that Thralls and undead from Summon Undead (and other spells) came from The Void/Negative Energy Plane since they didn't specify needing target bodies.
I think that the idea is that you use negative energies to animate things that are *supposed* to run on positive energies, and it is because of that mismatch that the act is such a taboo, and why there are supposed metaphysical harms caused by doing so.
Forcing a positive-originating soul to occupy a negative-fueled container, etc.
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I posted this in a similar thread, but will put here too for relevance
This came up in my playtest game Actual Play Scenario - Necromancers - Lvl 5
The players found a trapped door, but didn't have the skill to disable it. Necromancer summoned a thrall, but since the trap triggered on the door opening, all the thrall could do was stand there with it's nose on the door and stare. The players thought it was absolutely stupid that they could make the thrall attack somebody, but couldn't teach it how to simply push on a door.
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If the thrall attack the door the trap didn't trigger?
If someone hits a hazard—especially if it’s a mechanical trap—they usually trigger it, though you might determine otherwise in some cases. An attack that breaks the hazard might prevent it from triggering, depending on the circumstances. If the hazard has multiple parts, breaking one part might still trigger the trap. For example, if a trap has a trip wire in one location and launches an attack from another location, severing the trip wire could still trigger the attack. Destroying a trap in one blow almost never triggers it. These rules also apply to most damaging spells or other effects in addition to attacks.
*The bold is mine.
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Another thematic solution to not depend from corpses is that necromancer could use "material components/locus" to create the thralls like bones for osteomancers, pieces of flesh for caromancers or piles of funeral ashes for vitamancers. And the rest of the undead body grows from magical energy. These components doesn't really exists mechanically being part of manipulate trait.
This means that thrall would keep their current mechanic of being created from nowhere but with a better explanation of how it's made.
I was thinking along these lines too, where the Necromancer carries tokens to transform, i.e. teeth (perhaps from a hydra for fans of Ray). Whether Necros recycle them, pluck their own hair or nails, or whatnot doesn't really matter; that little flavor smooths over the "from nothing/no once living body" or "tapping the (evil) Void itself" issues.
And yeah, I agree the Thralls need to have more options, some worth a feat, others that simply should be possible w/ an entity that can Strike. Heck, some worth a Focus Point, maybe destroying the strained Thrall rather than sacrificing it. Even if mechanically the same, having the flavor of rampaging undead feels better IMO than popping them like fuel. (Also, if they're the fuel and the Necro can supply that fuel indefinitely, a Thrall's existence is more a hiccup than a substantive participant.)
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I was thinking along these lines too, where the Necromancer carries tokens to transform, i.e. teeth (perhaps from a hydra for fans of Ray). Whether Necros recycle them, pluck their own hair or nails, or whatnot doesn't really matter; that little flavor smooths over the "from nothing/no once living body" or "tapping the (evil) Void itself" issues.Another thematic solution to not depend from corpses is that necromancer could use "material components/locus" to create the thralls like bones for osteomancers, pieces of flesh for caromancers or piles of funeral ashes for vitamancers. And the rest of the undead body grows from magical energy. These components doesn't really exists mechanically being part of manipulate trait.
This means that thrall would keep their current mechanic of being created from nowhere but with a better explanation of how it's made.
This is actually already alluded to in the descriptions for the Grim Fascinations -
Bone shapers, also known as osteomancers, craft what they desire from the skeletons of the dead or simply create new skeletons by expanding and shaping small bone pieces.
The other two imply similar things, so I think that might be what they are going for with the class.
I posted this in a similar thread, but will put here too for relevance
This came up in my playtest game Actual Play Scenario - Necromancers - Lvl 5
The players found a trapped door, but didn't have the skill to disable it. Necromancer summoned a thrall, but since the trap triggered on the door opening, all the thrall could do was stand there with it's nose on the door and stare. The players thought it was absolutely stupid that they could make the thrall attack somebody, but couldn't teach it how to simply push on a door.
I believe it was on reddit someone gave a good example:
- Your a necromancer
- You can summon thralls
- You're walking through a presumably trapped passage
- You cast create thrall every 5 feet to trigger any traps along the way
As opposed to
- Your a necromancer
- You can summon thralls
- You're walking through a presumably trapped passage
- You cast create thrall and command it to walk forward
To be honest, with this thread I packed in too much. I originally just wanted to focus on the separation of Create Thrall and Command Thrall. I included the rest because it was on my mind. If I take all of that out, this is what I’m left with.
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Create Thrall
Traits: Uncommon, Cantrip, Concentrate, Grave, Manipulate, Necromancy, Thrall
Actions: 1
Range: 30 feet
You animate an expendable undead thrall. If you have the Expert Necromancy class feature, you can animate up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have Master Necromancy, and four if you have Legendary Necromancy.
When you cast this spell, you may choose to invoke the effects of Command Thrall at the spell's rank.
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Command Thrall
Traits: Uncommon, Cantrip, Concentrate, Grave, Necromancy, Thrall
Actions: 1–3
Range: 30 feet (or varies, see below)
You command your thralls within 30 feet.
1 Action: You may move thralls under your control a total distance of 20 feet, divided among them as you choose. If you have the Expert Necromancy class feature, this distance increases to 30 feet, 40 feet with Master Necromancy, and 50 feet with Legendary Necromancy. Alternatively, you may use a thrall to make an unarmed melee Strike using your spell attack modifier. This attack deals 1d6 damage of your choice: bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing. This Strike applies to and counts toward your multiple attack penalty.
2 Actions: You may issue up to three commands. If your thralls make three Strikes as part of these commands, this spell gains the Flourish trait.
3 Actions: As the 2-action version, but you may command thralls at any distance.
Heightened (+2): The thralls' Strike damage increases by 1d6.
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Then we can just add feats to give the thralls additional actions like manipulate, shove, grapple, and etc. Really I just want a bit more control over the thralls!
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Why make it a cantrip? Just make it an exclusive action for the class.