The one class feature for scaling undead lore is about the only reason.
The internal dirge speaks wisdom or charisma to me.
I'd love them to be charisma. But mainly because I'm desperate to get a Cha based prepared caster someday.
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Because they manipulate the boundary of life and death through theory, rather than vibes or intuition.
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Necromancer spending six months alone in his basement morgue dissecting corpses to research, document, and study how they are physically and metaphysically put together: "Man, I sure feel wise and personable in my approach to magic!"
Because they manipulate the boundary of life and death through theory, rather than vibes or intuition.
What what is this internal dirge supposed to be? If they are studying why have a dirge at all.
Necromancer spending six months alone in his basement morgue dissecting corpses to research, document, and study how they are physically and metaphysically put together: "Man, I sure feel wise and personable in my approach to magic!"
Am I misunderstanding what a dirge is?
Because they manipulate the boundary of life and death through theory, rather than vibes or intuition.What what is this internal dirge supposed to be? If they are studying why have a dirge at all.
That's a fair point.
IMO, I wouldn't be opposed to just giving the Necromancer a spell book like the Magus / Wizard since I still see the Necromancer as a variant of Wizard. However, you're right an `internal dirge` doesn't jive with intelligence.
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I don't think cha and prepared together will ever happen. Whole point of chat is casting with force of personality, with your will. Prepared casting is thematically and metaphysically (within the game world) counter to that
I don't think you're misunderstanding the dirge btw, I think it's vague and doesn't give me any sense of what the hell it's supposed to really be. I rather they just have a spellbook, personally. Call it field notes cuz it's full of anatomical diagrams :)
I don't think cha and prepared together will ever happen. Whole point of chat is casting with force of personality, with your will. Prepared casting is thematically and metaphysically (within the game world) counter to that
I don't think you're misunderstanding the dirge btw, I think it's vague and doesn't give me any sense of what the hell it's supposed to really be. I rather they just have a spellbook, personally. Call it field notes cuz it's full of anatomical diagrams :)
I think this is just a lack of trying
We have spontaneous for each mental stat
Give me Cha prepared
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Necromancer spending six months alone in his basement morgue dissecting corpses to research, document, and study how they are physically and metaphysically put together: "Man, I sure feel wise and personable in my approach to magic!"Am I misunderstanding what a dirge is?
It's an internal spiritual spellbook where you store your spell knowledge. Loser wizards write formulas in books, you make the formula and patterns echo in flesh and blood. You have to listen to/concentrate on it to prepare the energy daily, though, just like a wizard and his book.
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Yeah the dirge feels a lot like "we want you to have a spellbook but we don't want to call it a spellbook."
I think it'd be simpler for everyone to just call it a spellbook, since it basically works like one anyway.
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I thought a dirge was a song.
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I thought a dirge was a song.
It is, and it is also what was stated above. Which is why I think it's just like, idk, poorly conceived and vague in a bad way? It is certainly occult, but it feels very much like "death themed bard" and less "necromantic wizard"
I don't like Dirge, I don't like Familiars and I don't like Spellbooks. Not saying it is bad feature just feels bad when the Intelliegent classes have to learn common spells while the Wisdom classes Animist, Cleric & Druid get to cheat and known ALL common spells at level 1 even if they aren't level 20 they still have knowledge potentially of spells above their casting rank.
But in hindsight I like Witch's Familiar just not the Spellbook part of it, feels like they cut off Int prepared casters to make Wis prepared seem better and not like Wis in the better stat anyways, Will saves are hella important man.
Doesn't help that Familiars & Spellbooks are physical objects while the Dirge isn't, what's up with that by the way?
I have never been sad with having a ton of trained skills. The narrative power outside of combat has always been great in my experience.
I think the idea if a dirge, an internal song, is great and flavorful (I imagine the necromancer throat singing). But it doesn't read as intelligence to me.
It reads as more charisma.
And a charisma prepared caster who gets wisdom prepared style (know all common spells innately) would be imo great, even if it interferes with the optimal power of bone speaker
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I love the Dirge - it's spooky and weird and perfect for an occult prepared caster.
Wizard: "Where's your spellbook?"
Necromancer: "I don't have one."
Wizard: "Then, were do you keep all your notations on spells?"
Necromancer: "In my soul - in my bones! You can hear the whispering echoes sometimes, if you listen real close. When I sleep, they're like a lullaby."
I dunno, it fits real well to me, and you can do a lot of flavoring with it. Intelligence fits, too, since they are studying the minutiae of life and death, and everything with that.
Why not make the Necromancer like Psychic, Int or Cha with Sub-class choices or maybe it be a secondary sub-class like the sub-conscious mind and conscious mind of Psychic, maybe we make the Necromancer the first Caster to use Int, Wis or Cha based on their choice? With the ability to steal spells from other Traditions, now that be cool wouldn't it?
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Charisma doesn't really do anything for a necromancer, though. It's not useful at all on a big chunk of undead, it doesn't provide information about them, and it doesn't help with rituals. If it were more of a spell-slinger, I could see scaring people before cursing them. With two slots per level and tight action economy, though, I just don't see that fitting in. Psychic has a strong reason for an emotive vs. analytic approach.
Intelligence covers undead rituals already via Occultism, leaving it only missing recalling knowledge about them. The baked-in Undead Lore solves that.
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Yeah, I am just very of the opinion necromancer should be Int and nothing else fits. The idea of a charismatic necromancer is hilarious, but certainly off type
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I'm all about the Necromancer being INT and having to study the dead and the balance between life and death.
As for the dirge, it is a song often composed for funeral rites. A song doesn't have to be off-the-cuff or done through feeling alone. I think Necromancers more as a composer and some of the best music composers in history have used mathematics and learning to compose their songs (Mozart, Xenakis, Cage, Bach, etc.)
In other words, music doesn't have to mean charisma.
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Yeah the dirge feels a lot like "we want you to have a spellbook but we don't want to call it a spellbook."
I think it'd be simpler for everyone to just call it a spellbook, since it basically works like one anyway.
I am going to theme mine as my necromancer etching the spells on my own bones. Best way to hide it from people who would not accept a necromancer.
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Because they manipulate the boundary of life and death through theory, rather than vibes or intuition.What what is this internal dirge supposed to be? If they are studying why have a dirge at all.That's a fair point.
IMO, I wouldn't be opposed to just giving the Necromancer a spell book like the Magus / Wizard since I still see the Necromancer as a variant of Wizard. However, you're right an `internal dirge` doesn't jive with intelligence.
I disagree. I think it jibes very well with intelligence.
Necromancy isn't an intuitive field of study, it's long hours pouring over forbidden texts and understanding how bone and flesh and blood and spirit interact. *Now I wonder if there's a 'Gray's Anatomy' for Necromancers*| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Why not make the Necromancer like Psychic, Int or Cha with Sub-class choices or maybe it be a secondary sub-class like the sub-conscious mind and conscious mind of Psychic, maybe we make the Necromancer the first Caster to use Int, Wis or Cha based on their choice? With the ability to steal spells from other Traditions, now that be cool wouldn't it?
Don't really like this. If I want my Necromancer to be Int based I don't want to lose access to certain subclasses to make that choice.
I don't mind the Dirge thematically, it's conceptually neat, but I have to agree with some above comments that the spellbook penalty doesn't really feel deserved on any PF2 caster.
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but I have to agree with some above comments that the spellbook penalty doesn't really feel deserved on any PF2 caster.
It's a legacy issue which should have been done away with in the remaster. The idea that specifically Int based casters need additional limitations when Int does nothing special for them really, is just one of these things Paizo refuses to let go of.
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The dirge is just a kludge to insert a spellbook mechanic into the class, I think. It's not terribly elegant, but I can understand why it's there, because the occult spell list is incredibly bloated and being able to prepare from the occult list with no restrictions would probably lead to an overly versatile class (though I think we're starting to see this already with Clerics and the divine list, following the remaster and several new additions).
As for Intelligence, I personally think it is the iconic attribute for a Necromancer. The archetypal necromancer in my opinion is not unlike a Wizard in that their magic comes from study, except their focus is entirely around corpses, curses, and the forces of life and death. They're not the kind in my opinion to be terribly wise or charismatic by default, but they're likely incredibly knowledgeable, especially when the knowledge in question is forbidden or otherwise considered too terrible for most people to know. Necromancers I think are often drawn to power, and specifically power through knowledge, which is why necromancy in my opinion is so often the path towards lichdom. Int as a key attribute makes perfect sense for all of this.
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The dirge is just a kludge to insert a spellbook mechanic into the class, I think. It's not terribly elegant, but I can understand why it's there, because the occult spell list is incredibly bloated and being able to prepare from the occult list with no restrictions would probably lead to an overly versatile class (though I think we're starting to see this already with Clerics and the divine list, following the remaster and several new additions).
As you say, other prepared casters already have full access to their tradition lists from the jump (Cleric, Druid, etc). If the idea was to balance access vs list size, then the expansion of lists needed to be handled very differently.
If all prepared casters handled access the same, then list variance could be tackled in earnest. Trying to strike a point between list size and access, while altering lists, is just clumsy - espcially when we already know that, from a balancing PoV, classes are already considerd to have full access to their list.
So all it really shakes out to is asymmetrics access for some classes, while all are balanced as if symmetrical.
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Yeah, the Primal Spell list is almost as long as the Occult one and I've often seen people say that primal is the most powerful tradition (whether I agree or not is another topic). If you filter AoN to only show Rule books and no spells from lost omens and adventures, Primal has actually overtaken Occult as the second largest spell school (most likely thanks to Rage of Elements.
If druids can get all the primal spells, I don't see a big reason why another class couldn't get all occult spells.
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It's a legacy carryover. I think it used to make sense insofar as critical functions of a divine class—very specific forms of condition removal, especially—used spells you didn't really want to have to slot if you weren't going to use them. (They usually went in the scroll bag.) But now that condition removal is largely consolidated, it could probably be given as a focus spell or an additional font spell and it wouldn't matter.
I do also think there's sense to saying, "here's a slightly weaker spell list, but you have more power to choose the right spell for the situation in exchange." But that also... just isn't needed as much in 2E, either, and it's significantly less true of 2E Divine and not terribly true of 2E primal.
FWIW, I personally place 2E occult as on par with or perhaps even slightly better than 2E arcane. The main loss over arcane is premier blasting spells, which isn't that awful of a thing to to lose. I don't think primal is the best, simply due to lacking a few key debuffs (no laughing fit or roaring applause is a tough sell for me).
I guess I've read different media. From my experience a necromancer was just someone who worked with or controlled that dead.
Them being prone to studying never came up.
Then the dirge here painted a different class fantasy to me. One who uses singing that's "inside" of the necromancer like a interval drive, possession, calling. More to a sorcerer than someone who studies.
Could charge the class feature a bit as well. Allowing you to do something akin to feint, intimidate, bon mot mindless undead with a +4 to their will saves similar to battle Harbinger can do with bane.
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I figured int makes just as much or more sense as anything else, but I'm increasingly gond of this mental image of a necromancer who, because necromancy is no super popular, uses their mastery over life and death to inscribe their knowledge in their own bodies and souls, like invisible tattoos that form a mnemonic, elegaic chant which recalls to them the methods of casting.
I guess I hear what people are saying, that songs are usually depicted as cha, but on the other hand, I like breaking weak stereotypes and I see no reason why all magical music needs to be virtuosic. Even if the dirge were exclusively musical in nature, using songs and chants to memorize long lists of things has just as much practical tradition behind it as more spontaneous, creative musical expression.
I see no reason why an Int-based caster couldn't touch on mnemonic music and I don't see any reason why a necromancer shouldn't be Int.
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"Consider yourself lucky. I write my own poems and my poetry is so bad, the dead rise from their graves to boo me. At least I can make use of that, but then I have to write more angsty poems about it..."
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I do not know why people keep on confusing creating art and performing art.
An actor will max CHA.
A writer does not really need it though.
The amount of confusion over this and what the dirge is/how it works I've seen suggests that the whole thing is not well explained and is just unclear to a lot of people.
That's not helped by the dictionary, which gives me definitions like these from a couple of examples: "a song or hymn of grief or lamentation", "a slow sad song or piece of music, sometimes played because someone has died"
With what the word itself means and how its commonly used, its not surprising that there's confusion and that CHA keeps coming up. I'm perfectly content with INT for this class, but its not like this is coming out of nowhere.
Maybe the text should be more detailed, but I assume they want to allow to invent what this means for each one player and character and not limit this flavourful thing.
Nah, Tridus is right, and "use your imagination" isn't really a valid excuse when the entire point of a TTRPG ruleset is to provide a framework and prompts for players to use. It would be fine if the dirge were a little open-ended and allowed for different interpretations, but the fact that it currently has essentially no flavor to it and no grounding in any of the rest of the Necromancer's theme makes it difficult to build upon and tie to one's character.