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I ran a short scenario to playtest the Necromancer as a few of my players were really interested in how the class played. We played a moderate and a severe encounter.
*Necromancer - Bone Shaper
Bone Spear
Bone Speaker
Bony Barrage
*Necromancer - Flesh Magician
Dead Weight
Necrotic Bomb
Reach of the Dead
*Kineticist - Fire/Earth
Armor in Earth
Weapon Infusion
Flying Flame
Tremor
Thermal Nimbus
Lava Leap
*Gunslinger - Sniper
Hit the Dirt
Risky Reload
Running Reload
+1 Striking Arquebus
Out-of-Combat Healer with Medicine
Our nefarious band of fortune seekers have heard of a cave where a horde of precious gemstones could bring them a fortune, so of course they decide to find the danger and ignore the warnings of certain death to obtain it. Besides, two members of the party are intimate "friends" with death itself, so they fear not!
* Two Taldan Cave Squirrels
While the Sniper successfully avoids notice, the rest of the party aren't exactly quiet and so shortly after entering the cave one cave squirrel sees them and uses their Defensive Scream to alert his mate who was burrowing for more gemstones to add to their collection.
Round 1
Squirrel 1 (S1) spits at the Kineticist (who is closest) and hits dealing 14 damage (Kin makes his Fort Save). S1 uses 2 actions to burrow and look for more gems (it only had one)
Gunslinger (Gun) has no targets in site, but saw the squirrel burrow, so readies an action to attack if an enemy resurfaces
Squirrel 2 (S2) pops out of the ground and takes a devastating critical attack from the gunslinger for 34 damage. It then attacks the Flesh Necromancer (Fleshy) and hits. It uses its last action to successfully grab him.
Fleshy succeeds at his acrobatics check to escape, moves away, then uses Create Thrall. The attack misses by 3 (due to the MAP).
Kin uses Lava Leap to get to S2 who succeeds her Ref. save and takes 4 damage. He ended his leap so as not to hit the thrall and was 10 feet away from the S2. He then renews his aura and throws a blast that misses the S2.
Bone Necromancer (Bony) creates a thrall and hits for 8 damage. He then goes to use Bone Spear. However I remind the player it only has a 10ft range, so he decides to get closer and moves within range. Since he doesn't have the actions for bone spear now, he decides to intimidate the squirrel (he has intimidating glare) and succeeds.
Round 2
S1 resurfaces and spits at Fleshy dealing 12 damage (Fleshy succeeds his fortitude save). It spits again and hits (because Fleshy is off-guard) for another 11 damage (he again saves his fortitude).
Gun reloads and hides, shoots at S2 for 5 damage, then running reloads to get further away.
S2 claws Fleshy for a crit and 18 damage. It tries to maintain the grab and fails and then does a Screaming Force for damage in a 30 foot emanation (that doesn't hurt squirrel friends). This is basic save for 11 damage. Fleshy succeeds, Bony Fails, Kin Succeeds, and both thralls pop.
Fleshy wants to hurt the squirrel, but also has to be warry of friendly fire. So he creates a thrall 10 feet from the squirrel, which unfortunately can't reach to attack. He then blows it up with Necrotic Bomb. The S2 fails its save and takes 22 damage. Unfortunately this took all his actions (and a focus point) and so he can't move away from S2.
Kin moves into flanking with Fleshy and does a 2 action melee blast that hits (because S2 is off-guard) dealing 19 damage.
Bony is annoyed his thrall is gone, but really wants to get Bone Spear off so creates another one (but he can't flank due to positioning of Kin and Fleshy). The thrall hits for 10 damage which is enough to kill S2. So, Bony moves close to S1 and creates another thrall, which misses its attack.
Round 3
S1 is heartbroken that his mate was killed, so does a Screaming Force. Everybody makes their saves and take 6 damage, which also pops the thrall next to it. It then moves to Bony and misses with its bite attack.
Gun shoots for another big crit doing 45 damage! He then hides/reloads and shoots again (almost critting again, but was 1 off) for 11 damage.
Fleshy creates a thrall next to S1 and hits with the attack for 4 damage. He then blows it up for 18 damage (S1 failed its save).
Kin lava leaps for 13 damage (S1 makes his save so only takes 6). He then renews his aura and makes a melee blast that misses
Bony really wants to use Bone Spear, but realizes that if he creates the thrall in a flanking position he would hit his ally. So he creates the thrall in a non-flanking position. Its attack hits for 8 damage and he then uses Bone Spear which misses due to MAP (missed by 4)
Round 4
S1 is in a dire spot and burrows, then runs away, ending combat.
* party heals up by Gun using medicine
* both Necromancers refocus
* Kineticist makes a fire for them to chill around during this time.
* Party continues on their way and come across an old set of large double-doors and inspect it realizing it is trapped.
* Unfortunately nobody has any thieves tools (Gun kicks himself for not putting ranks in Thievery)
* Bony decides to use a thrall to set off the trap, but after creating it, we realize that it actually can't set off the trap because it can't open the door (no actions and no way to give it a manipulate action to open the door in front of it). After some argument about how dumb that is that it can attack, but can't push on a door, I rule that this is a playtest and we are playing it by RAW.
* So, after lengthy discussion they do rock-paper-scissors to decide who opens the door while the others stand back.
* Kin loses and opens the door which sets off a trap that sprays gas into his face.
* Kin succeeds his Fort save, but is still sickened 1
* Immediately upon opening the door Kin is hit by a large pink set of jaws for 20 damage due to the dragon inside waiting for the doors to open after hearing the bickering and commotion from the other side of the door.
* Young Omen Dragon
* Crawling Hand Swarm
Round 1
Gun shoots the dragon and hits for 9 damage, reloads, shoots again and misses
Dragon (Pinky) takes a step forward and breaths to catch Kin, Fleshy, and Bony in its breath for 28 damage. Kin crit fails, but uses a Hero Point to reroll that into a regular failure. Fleshy and Bony both fail and so all three are Slowed 1
Bony creates a thrall which misses the dragon, then uses his only other action to go into the large room. That's when he sees a swarm of undead hands writhing in the corner and alerts his party.
Fleshy goes into the room in the opposite direction of the creepy hands and uses Reach of the Dead to create a thrall next to the swarm. It attacks and hits, but most of the 9 damage is resisted (he made it slashing) which allowed 4 damage to go through.
Crawling Hand Swarm (Handy) moves to encompass the thrall and attacks it, killing it. Fleshy smiles as that is exactly what he was hoping to do (eat up 2 of the swarms actions) and then it moves to encompass Bony, but it doesn't have the actions left to attack.
Kin immediately wretches with his first action and then with his only other action moves into the room.
Round 2
Gun reloads, shoots at Pinky and hits for 11 damage and then hides/reloads in the rubble
Pinky Moves and uses Draconic Frenzy to hit Kin with a wing for 15 damage, hit Bony with a claw for 16 damage, and destroys the thrall with a claw
Bony does a recall knowledge on the dragon using Undead Lore (with Bone Speaker) and learns it's worst save is Reflex (which is relayed to the group). This helps as 3 of the players have the ability to target different saves. He then creates moves out of Handy's swarm and uses his last action to create a thrall on the other side of Handy. The attack misses.
Fleshy creates a thrall, but ops for positioning over attacking. He creates the thrall between Handy and Pinky in such a way that his Necrotic Bomb can hit them both without hitting Kin or Fleshy. Unfortunately this means it is not within reach to make its attack. He then blows it up for 25 damage. Both fail their reflex saves and since all Necromancers have Mastery of Life and Death, this deals vitality damage to Handy. It also triggers Handy's area damage weakness for a very satisfying turn.
Handy has three fairly close targets (Bony, Kin & Thrall), but none spaced to where he can get more than one. So I roll a die to determine where he goes and he goes for Kin. He moves, then does two Pummeling Grasps. The first hits for half damage doing 4 damage and the other hits for full damage doing 9 damage and knocking Kin prone.
Kin opts to stay on the ground (gutsy) to activate Thermal Nimbus and then uses Flying Flame which can hit both Handy and Pinky. Pinky succeeds his save taking 8 damage and Handy fails taking 16 damage plus triggering its area weakness.
Round 3
Gun no longer has any line of sight on bad guys in the room, so spends two actions to double move into the room and in a corner. He then shoots at the swarm as he sees a lot of the hands are not moving and the swarm is thinning out pretty badly. He hits dealing 11 bludgeoning damage which is enough to kill it despite it's resistance (it only had 2 HP left).
Pinky takes 2 damage from Thermal Nimbus and then can't resist the Kin on the ground prone. It attacks with a jaw and crits for 36 damage. It attacks with a Wing and hits for 14 damage. It attacks with a claw and misses and then rolls a Nat. 20 for its last claw attack to finish up Draconic Frenzy and does 38 more damage taking the Kin down to dying 2
Bony decides to creates a thrall next to the dragon whose attack misses and then activates Bony Barrage and Pinky fails the Reflex save taking 12 damage.
Fleshy uses Sooth to bring Kin back up on his feet and then creates a thrall next to the dragon. The attack misses
Round 4
Gun uses Running Reload to move to a corner with a lot of rubble, then attacks dealing 18 damage and then uses hide/reload.
Kin stubbornly stays on the ground and turns his aura back on and activates Thermal Nimbus again. Then uses Flying Flame on Pinky. Pinky succeeds their save and takes 7 damage.
Pinky moves and positions itself so it can get the thrall, Bony, and Kin in its breath attack. The thrall is immune so sticks around. Kin fails his save and Bony succeeds. Kin takes 22 damage and goes unconscious (not dying since it is mental damage) and Bony takes 11 damage. Pinky looks disappointed.
Bony creates a thrall which hits for 5 damage. Then uses it for Bony Barrage which Pinky succeeds against, but still takes 7 damage which is exactly enough to kill Pinky.
With combat over, they get Kin up off the ground and start looting Pinky's hoard!
* Overall feel, both players enjoyed the Necromancer class and felt their rounds gave them options to think about and interesting choices.
* Both players commented that they almost forgot they had spells though (except the one use of Sooth) which sparked a conversation about how this class could probably due even better as a Bounded Caster which would allow a bit more power in the thralls and Grave spells
* Only creating 1 thrall at a time until level 7 is rough on action economy and feels bad in a game that emphasizes tactical movement and spells with the attack trait THIS WAS THE BIGGEST COMPLAINT BY FAR .
The group thought of two potential solutions to make combat much more fun and dynamic.
1) Simply create 2 thralls at lvl 1 and up it by one at each proficiency increase. We didn't see anything game breaking in this
2) Give Necromancer a class ability to use a free action to create 1 thrall as a once per 10 minute ability so they can start the fight with one active thrall. This can come with the caveat that it can't attack when created this way
* Both Necromancer players were a little disappointed they couldn't get a small horde going because the thralls died either before they could make another and sometimes before they could use them. Going back to the point above, being able to create 2 at lvl 1 doesn't seem broken, but would REALLY help the class feel better.
* Bone Spear looks awesome, but that 10ft range is an HUGE downer. 30 Ft range (keeping the line the same size) would be fine. Additionally, as an attack that uses a thrall, if you don't have a thrall already in place from a previous round, the attack is hard to land because of MAP caused by creating the thrall that round.
* Necrotic Bomb was very fun to use both mechanically and thematically
* Bone Speaker was very cool and did help on the dragon fight to know what save to target. Though most of the table thought it would be nice if this was a built in feature rather than a feat, given it is limited to creatures and some other specifics.
* Positioning was always in the forefront of the Necromancer players' minds.
* Even for focus spells that required saves, it was often hard to get both the thrall attack and grave spell off effectively. Thralls seem like they want to be flanking buddies, however the abilities that use them often do area damage that would hit their flanking buddy. So more than once the thrall was summoned in a place where it couldn't reach to attack so that the spell wouldn't hit their friend. I don't know how I feel about this, whether it is strategic, or overly punishing. My table was split on the opinions.
* Damage output was on par with the Kineticist from what I could tell
* We were disappointed that Dead Weight didn't come up for a good time to use it, it seems fun.
* Frankly we forgot about the Flesh Magician enhancement that makes destroyed thralls difficult terrain, however in retrospect, I don't think it would have impacted any of the fights. We did remember the Bone Shaper's enhancement, but none of the damage to them required a Reflex save, so it never came up (squirrels called for Fort and Dragon called for Will)
* Not being able to use the thralls at all, even for basic RP or menial tasks like opening the door really detracted from the fantasy. This was especially prevalent when they tried to use the thrall to spring the trap and all it could do was stand there with its nose on the door, unable to push it open.
CONCLUSION - I really like the Necromancer as a whole, but feel there are some clunky gameplay that needs to be worked out for it to shine. Thralls are very cool and with some tweaks will be great. We all agreed that a lvl 7 Necromancer would play much smoother due to creating multiple thralls, but that waiting for it to come online at level 7 is not great.
We had a lot of fun creating and playing this class and I hope this real world example can help mold the class for its future release. I, for one, can't wait to get my hands on a, hopefully, smoother version when it comes out fully fleshed out (pun intended).
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Good to see an actual play log! Really cool of you to write all this out. It makes me want to run a playtest of necromancer or participate in one.
A few things that stick out to me about the feedback:
-The difference between a bounded caster and a normal 2-slot caster isn't that big at level 5; there wouldn't actually be much more power budget in the kit at this level. You're losing two rank 1 spells and gaining a single rank 3 spell, which is actually a pretty decent trade in some ways. However, the difference is much bigger later on, when there are more evergreen low rank spells like slow, haste, roaring applause, etc. Given that spells are how the class ignores taking time to set up, I think making it a bounded caster would probably hurt more at later levels than it does at earlier levels.
-You don't have to attack when you create a thrall. It doesn't feel great, but you can create thrall and get a no MAP Bone Spear in the same turn.
-Did they get any use out of inevitable return? I don't notice any mention of that reaction.
A related question:
-Did the players feel like the class had a lot of options to juggle, in a bad way? I'm curious if they felt like it was too difficult to pick up. Forgetting spells and reactions can indicate they're new to the class, sure, but it could also indicate the class felt cluttered in play or had more options than the players felt was appropriate. Is that some of what they were getting at with the bounded caster comment?
-You don't have to attack when you create a thrall. It doesn't feel great, but you can create thrall and get a no MAP Bone Spear in the same turn.
Yes it isn't the optimal way to deal with then. Instead just use a normal cantrip/spellslot spell and create a thrall in the first turn. This will allow then to keep the flanking and in the next round you can use the existing thrall to use Bone Spear and then create a new one to repeat the cicle.
If the enemy chooses to Strike your thrall for some reason this means that it's wasting one of its actions to deal with your thrall. Even if it's just a 3rd-action, for monsters and NPCs that frequently have good uses for its 3rd-action if it is destroying a thrall to try to prevent you to use it as a weapon it's already a win for you.
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Very nice write-up! Whish I had time for some actual playtesting. It's reassuring to see that your group came to the same conclusion as I did: A single thrall per action is too few to make the Necromancer feel and play smoothly.
And just a heads-up: Unless I'm completely missing something, mental damage doesn't knocks you unconscious. It's very much able to actually get you to dying or even kill you. Mental being nonlethal is a semi-frequent fallacy I've encountered that probably comes from some of the primary mental damage spells (Daze and Phantom Pain) have the nonlethal trait.
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immediate things that jumped out to me
They can summon more than one thrall at level 1 by spending more than one action. Create thrall doesn't have the flourish trait.
Bone spear doesn't need to suffer map penalties because you don't have to attack with the thrall upon summon.
Bone speaker comment tells me people who either don't use recall knowledge or only with thaum and investigator, bone speaker is incredibly powerful
I do wonder sometimes if player expected class fantasy is often a massive assumption based on popular media.
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-You don't have to attack when you create a thrall. It doesn't feel great, but you can create thrall and get a no MAP Bone Spear in the same turn.
Yes, we realized that towards the end of the fight, but my players then felt like the Grave Spell was basically a three action spell and its power level was pretty weak for a three action spell.
-Did they get any use out of inevitable return? I don't notice any mention of that reaction.
They did when the first squirrel died in the moderate encounter. However it was significant distance away from the second one and so didn't play a factor. It did raise a discussion I forgot to include though. We had two Necromancers who procced that and we assume the thrall raises in the square of the dead enemy. So I just ruled one rose in that square, and the other rose adjacent to it.
No thrall was created when the Crawling Hand Swarm was taken down because it was undead and technically they don't die, but are destroyed. Wording in Raw says one won't raise for destroyed undead.
-Did the players feel like the class had a lot of options to juggle, in a bad way? I'm curious if they felt like it was too difficult to pick up. Forgetting spells and reactions can indicate they're new to the class, sure, but it could also indicate the class felt cluttered in play or had more options than the players felt was appropriate. Is that some of what they were getting at with the bounded caster comment?
Actually they loved the complexity. That was one of their favorite parts. My group is pretty well experienced and get bored with straight forward classes as a rule. The Gunslinger, for example, was getting bored to tears (he figured he'd try it since this was a one shot).
Forgetting about the spells was less about inexperience I think, and more about the focus of the class is very much thrall creation, usage, and battlefield placement. They were having fun with that side of it and never felt the need to dip into the handful of spells they prepared.
What we were getting at with the Bounded Caster discussion was that the power really didn't seem to be much in the spells or even want to be in the spells. We can't see a Necromancer getting rid of spellcasting as that would feel off, but we thought that it would allow more power budget to be allocated to class features that perhaps did more with thralls and didn't require a focus point (like Consume) and/or ramp up the grave spells power level so that the extra resource cost felt more powerful. It probably also goes to show that one player's favorite class is Magus and my favorite class is Summoner (such a misunderstood class), so bounded casting doesn't feel like a disadvantage, but an interesting play style.
They can summon more than one thrall at level 1 by spending more than one action.
Yes, they realized this, but felt that it was not very well rewarding at this level in part because the MAP on the second SA roll almost guaranteed a miss and they simply weren't needed for flanking. There was only one Melee character besides the Thralls and so they often had the flanking. Not to mention that the Kineticist had other options besides an attack roll if the thrall wasn't there to flank for whatever reason.
Instead just use a normal cantrip/spellslot spell and create a thrall in the first turn. This will allow then to keep the flanking and in the next round you can use the existing thrall to use Bone Spear and then create a new one to repeat the cicle.
Good advice and I agree they should have used their cantrips a bit more on this, though each fight was relatively short, so they wanted to use their big guns. Additionally, their cantrips were SA as well and so would be penalized by MAP (or their thrall would get MAP) as they had Needle Darts and Telekinetic Projectile as their damage ones given the Occult list. Void Warp should have been used though in retrospect.
Beyond that though, the rounds where they did keep their thralls "alive" they were destroyed before they could be used. The squirrels had AoEs that popped them and the dragon used its -10 MAP frenzy to pop them. It did do a great job of wasting two actions for the Crawling Hand Swarm though. With the second fight specifically, this is again where they felt having more than one thrall without having to spend two full actions (thus no spell or cantrip) would have felt better. That said, they could have used the Aid action or something like shield or guidance, but again, that just didn't fit with what they wanted to do out of the class.
Good advice and I agree they should have used their cantrips a bit more on this, though each fight was relatively short, so they wanted to use their big guns. Additionally, their cantrips were SA as well and so would be penalized by MAP (or their thrall would get MAP) as they had Needle Darts and Telekinetic Projectile as their damage ones given the Occult list. Void Warp should have been used though in retrospect.
Another interesting alternative if they are playing with humans, elves or gnomes (and any other class that can take primal/arcane cantrips via ancestry feat/heritage) is to take Electric Arc (or similar like Scatter Scree, but let be honest it's hard to overcome the efficiency of EA in this game). It's something that I do basically with every non-arcane/primal casters that I made.
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Good advice and I agree they should have used their cantrips a bit more on this, though each fight was relatively short, so they wanted to use their big guns. Additionally, their cantrips were SA as well and so would be penalized by MAP (or their thrall would get MAP) as they had Needle Darts and Telekinetic Projectile as their damage ones given the Occult list. Void Warp should have been used though in retrospect.Another interesting alternative if they are playing with humans, elves or gnomes (and any other class that can take primal/arcane cantrips via ancestry feat/heritage) is to take Electric Arc (or similar like Scatter Scree, but let be honest it's hard to overcome the efficiency of EA in this game). It's something that I do basically with every non-arcane/primal casters that I made.
Good thought, though we didn't for two reasons.
1) For the playtest we decided to rely as little as possible on specific ancestry or equipment, just trying to stay basic to see the class on its own merits only.
2) Since Necromancer is an INT based class and those things give innate casting, it makes the DCs lower (given all innate casting uses CHA). For one Necromancer this would have only been one lower than their normal DC, but for the other, who dumped CHA, it would have been near useless at being 4 lower of a DC.
That said, using a Spellheart would work fine and something we often do, but it was decided against for this game.
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Picking up innate cantrips is not a bad idea but a bit unreliable on a non-charisma caster. Adopted Cantrip via human is the better choice by far.
EDIT: Ninja'd.
The prevalence of Necrotic Bomb use is a bit…narratively underwhelming. I guess, when mapped to an RPG being a Necromancer, turning your undead minions into exploding void-stuff makes sense, but it definitely feels very video-gamey. And much more akin to an Alchemist lobbing a different kind of bomb. Creat your thrall, have them attack and then…at the end of your turn…when well positioned between a bunch of enemies…blammo. And…repeat.
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The prevalence of Necrotic Bomb use is a bit…narratively underwhelming. I guess, when mapped to an RPG being a Necromancer, turning your undead minions into exploding void-stuff makes sense, but it definitely feels very video-gamey. And much more akin to an Alchemist lobbing a different kind of bomb. Creat your thrall, have them attack and then…at the end of your turn…when well positioned between a bunch of enemies…blammo. And…repeat.
I agree with most of that, though I think I am fine with the fantasy of blowing up my minions. That said, you are spot-on with the prevalence of Necrotic Bomb and my players definitely felt this.
In this playthrough Fleshy's player definitely felt more powerful than Bony's player did. Bony Barrage had its moment, but still felt like he was missing out on the big trigger of Necrotic Bomb.
And to be clear, I think other, more interesting options needs to be brought up to Necrotic Bomb level rather than Necrotic Bomb taken down. Even with that option, the damage output was at around un-optimized Kineticist level and without it the damage was below even that.
One piece we talked about was how the Living Graveyard was really cool, but not level 20 cool. More options like that toned to be throughout the leveling career would be neat to have. I mean heck, most of our games spends most of it's time at levels 4-8 and we want fun variety there too.
snip
These are all great, helpful responses. Thank you so much!
So on the number of Thralls created issue, do you think up to 6 thralls at level 1 would be too many?
I was wondering if something along the lines of "if you have no Thralls created by this spell, you make 1 additional Thrall when casting" would work?
That way you can't spam out too many bodies easily, but you can get the ball rolling.
I like the basic idea but tracking which thralls were created by the spell and which by abilities like Inevitable Return might cause too much headache.
How about making one extra thralls that's (even more) temporary? You create the current number plus the temporary one, which will only last until the end of your current turn. Would give you "ammunition" for your focus spells and other abilities like Draining Strike without taking up space on the battlefield.
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So on the number of Thralls created issue, do you think up to 6 thralls at level 1 would be too many?
I was wondering if something along the lines of "if you have no Thralls created by this spell, you make 1 additional Thrall when casting" would work?
That way you can't spam out too many bodies easily, but you can get the ball rolling.I like the basic idea but tracking which thralls were created by the spell and which by abilities like Inevitable Return might cause too much headache.
How about making one extra thralls that's (even more) temporary? You create the current number plus the temporary one, which will only last until the end of your current turn. Would give you "ammunition" for your focus spells and other abilities like Draining Strike without taking up space on the battlefield.
Honestly, no, I don't think 6 thralls if one uses all three actions is too much even at level 1 given that they still make the same number of attacks, map is applied, and movement isn't much different between level 1 & 7.
That said, if Paizo believes they are too much (perhaps they plan to buff them) then my suggestion would be a once per 10 minute ability something like:
Free Action
Trigger: Your turn begins
Frequency: Once per 10 minutes
Description: Create a thrall within 30 feat.
This would be simple to implement and thus could be used to get started with 1 extra thrall once per combat. Personally I would just prefer 2 thralls per casting of create thrall, but this would help a lot if Paizo doesn't like that idea.
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Alternatively just:
Free Action
Trigger: You roll initiative.There's precedent for it with Gunslinger initial deeds.
I thought about that, but then that allowed for a chance the thrall dies before you get your turn.
There is precedent for feats exactly like the one I propose though. Such as:
Even the Odds
Free Action
Frequency: Once per 10 minutes
Trigger: Your turn begins
OR
Bend Time
Free Action
Frequency: Once per day
Trigger: Your turn begins
Honestly, no, I don't think 6 thralls if one uses all three actions is too much even at level 1 given that they still make the same number of attacks, map is applied, and movement isn't much different between level 1 & 7.So on the number of Thralls created issue, do you think up to 6 thralls at level 1 would be too many?
I was wondering if something along the lines of "if you have no Thralls created by this spell, you make 1 additional Thrall when casting" would work?
That way you can't spam out too many bodies easily, but you can get the ball rolling.I like the basic idea but tracking which thralls were created by the spell and which by abilities like Inevitable Return might cause too much headache.
How about making one extra thralls that's (even more) temporary? You create the current number plus the temporary one, which will only last until the end of your current turn. Would give you "ammunition" for your focus spells and other abilities like Draining Strike without taking up space on the battlefield.
Oh, I wholeheartedly agree that two thralls per action don't seem problematic at level 1 (at least no more or less than at level 7). I would prefer Create Thrall to start at two thralls. Drop the improvement at Expert if 5 at Legendary is too much.
When I'm suggesting stuff like the temporary thrall or limiting the second thrall to be created close by (adjacent or maybe within 10 ft), I do this under the assumption that paizo thinks two full-value thralls per action at level 1 are too much. Because otherwise they would probably have given us exactly that, if only to meet the flavor expectations right from the get go. But they didn't, so I'm trying to come up with stuff that makes the second thrall less useable to balance things a bit.
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I feel like my gut answer is that two thralls at once isn't too much at level 1, but 6 thralls in a turn is. So I'd be receptive to gaining one free thrall when you roll initiative maybe- but I'm also someone who would be fully happy spending turn 1 just triple casting Create Thrall for kicks
If 2 per casting is too much, I'd rather the ability I proposed so as not to have cases where you get a thrall at initiative roll and then it be dead by the time your turn comes around.
As for potentially 6 per turn, I honestly don't see much difference between lvl 1-6 doing that and level 7 doing that. In this test, as you can see from the lvl 5 encounter, adding an extra thrall per casting wouldn't have tilted the necromancer into OP at all. As it was, "Bony" was woefully less effective than any of the other three characters (and none of them were optimized by any means). Adding in an extra thrall would have at least given the character a few opportunities to feel better.