DPS?

[Verzen]

Does anyone have the average DPS per action spent on this class?

[QuidEst]

Pedantry spoiler.

Spoiler:

I'm pretty sure the average DPS per action approaches 0 for all classes as the number of actions increase and the change in accumulated DPS from action to action diminishes.

Do I know the average damage per action of the class? I'm afraid not. You'd have to make some pretty serious white room assumptions for the calculations, though, given it cares a lot about AC, multiple saves, and a number of different ranges. Getting flanking increases the chance to hit but means that a lot of the save-based follow-ups damage allies too (below 7th level). It's a lot more conditional than the Fighter, I think.

[Nikolaus Athas]

IF the class has been designed correctly then it should have very close to the DPS of every other class when played intelligently so that maximum bonuses are active within the party and maximum penalties are active on the enemy.
If what you are wanting to know is "Does the Necromancer do more damage than everyone else consistently" then the answer should be *no* otherwise the class is broken according to the PF 2e design space.
PF 2e is intentionally and *aggressively* designed such that no single class out performs any other consistently. Individual classes may be capable of doing some burst damage, but that usually comes at a cost of resources of some type which take longer than the 10 min down time available, resources that may be needed later in the day. Or that can only be done once a day or for one action only per battle etc.
That's the trade off.
So in the Necromancers case the "Big Bang" stuff still comes mainly from the Occultist list , enhanced with the one physical attack that a thrall can do when summoned. Necromancers are only a 2 spell per spell level class so you can see how its limited.
Constant damage comes from the Thrall summoning plus a Grave Cantrip.

[WWHsmackdown]

Necromancer looks more like a controller than a striker, which I think is appropriate considering the amount of board presence it can snap into existence. Peppering respectable (extremely subjective, I know) damage while flooding the board with thralls or expending them for cool affects is exactly the niche I would associate with the class. As stated above, though, I wouldn't expect big numbers unless you're using top slots or burning focus points. All seems par for the course for an interesting caster. Psychic trades some slots for higher damage potential and Necro will trade some slots for the biggest board presence in the game. Hate to detail, but I'm still so happy to see another 2 slot caster; seeing classes diverge from the typical martial and caster templates has been my favorite part of 2e class design

[PossibleCabbage]

Most of your turns are probably going to be "create a thrall" and "use a spell" (slotted, focus, cantrip) etc. So you're going to be comparable to other occult spellcasters in this way, except you have fewer slots and will be thus leaning more on your focus spells.

[Powers128]

Seems like a tough class to calculate DPS for. It depends on how often GMs decide to target thralls to shut down your damaging abilities. The value of the class is certainly not damage from what I can tell anyways.

The most straightforward thing would be to create + strike with thrall, then Necrotic bomb. Decent sustainable damage that way but you probably want to put out more thralls before going for that pattern so you're not left with 0 thralls at the end of your turn. This is before level 7 anyways.

[Rowenstin]

Verzen wrote:

Does anyone have the average DPS per action spent on this class?

The best comparative DPS I can see is at level 7, when you are finally expert, can create 2 thralls and use Reach of the dead to work around Bone Spear's attrocious range. In a good case scenario, catching 2 enemies shouldn't be that difficult for a potential 14d8 damage ignoring crits; this is slightly less than amped Imaginary weapon but easier and much safer to use. Bony barrage is much less damaging but can be easily used when the flanking conga line has formed, so in real scenarios might be more useful if facing many enemies, has the potential for slightly better range and adds the thrall's attack. Catching even 2 enemies with the barrage it's a potential 8d10 from the spell and another 2d6 from a thrall's attack

Other than that he has even less blasting potential than other occult casters, which is not good to begin with, on account of the limited spell slots.

[Dubious Scholar]

Post 7 I think the damage output should be pretty good. Once you have two thralls at a time you can place one to strike and one for whatever focus spell you want to go off (or Reach of the Dead, or...). Necrotic Bomb has respectable scaling for something you can throw out liberally at range or Bony Barrage to do AoE+party buff (sacrificing the thrall that made a strike).

Reach of the Dead arguably enables Bone Spear even before 7, but it's dependent on GM. Definitely works afterwards to set up damage against close together enemies, though I'm not sure it's worth it (it does 4.5+9/rank average compared to Necrotic Bomb's 6.5/rank, so it does outscale it... but it's a hit/miss instead of a basic save, so I'm not actually sure the expected damage wins out before very high levels. Bomb has a better damage type too. Bony Barrage is only 5.5/rank, but still has a better AoE and reduces ally damage with the second thrall, so...)

Before level 7 it's harder to use all your potential, but that could change in the final book if they adjust thralls. As is, the class should have solid damage output on par with any other caster thanks to good focus spells. There's also some good control/support focus spells, and while you have limited slots the Occult list is great at buffs/debuffs and you don't need many slots to get mileage out of those (just look at Summoner and Magus).

[Invictus Fatum]

Dubious Scholar wrote:

Post 7 I think the damage output should be pretty good.

Before level 7 it's harder to use all your potential, but that could change in the final book if they adjust thralls.

Thos is exactly what ive seen in my actual play playtests. Pre-Level 7, the class is clunky and a little painful at times. Level 7 and beyond, it feels smooth and interesting.

I REALLY hope they adjust this in the final. I've seen nothing in my level 3 (as a player) or 5 playtests (as a GM and posted here with play-by-play) that suggest 2 thralls at that level de-balances anything.

[Hamitup]

I made a white-room damage calculator in excel a while back for a summoner to see what action orders were better between the summoner and the eidolon. I have since used it for a lot of other characters, like a thaumaturge to see what's better between the tome and weapon intensify vulnerability(tome is bout 5% if you know the exact AC to aim for and are unsure if you will get to make a reactive strike).

It does a good job showing what you can expect on optimal turns, but requires a lot of work for each character. With the little bit of turn options I looked at with the necromancer(things like create thrall and then a cantrip or grave spell) the necromancer looks close to other casters. It was even close marshals like the thaumaturge and barbarian when using grave spells. I did not look at regular spells because they are the same for all occult casters.

This did not hold true during play testing for my table. It was rare to feel like you got an optimal turn. at levels 4 and 5 it was hard to have a thrall up at the start of your turn unless you spammed create thrall the turn before. This meant that you either had to not move and summon a thrall the turn you cast a grave spell or have spent the previous turn creating multiple thralls. It was comparable to a gunslinger, such that a gunslinger can get one turn that is attack>reload>attack, but then the next turn was reload>attack>reload. This drops the turn average by a good bit for the gun slinger, but the gunslinger pays the action cost later and can save the better turn when foes are in a bad spot.

At higher levels 14 and 15 the issue we were having was with the enemies themselves. Foes were either too big to get the thralls in position without standing in the monster's reach or the had abilities that gave movement or area damage. It felt like the battle fields would end up with lots of thralls, jut non in the right places.

In short white-room math looks close enough to everything else, but in actually playing it was hard to get an opportunity to do what you wanted.