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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.
That and necrotic bomb are the two most obvious sources for void damage that doesn't discriminate against living or dead targets.
I cross-referenced occult spells that deal vitality and void damage, and found the following:
In addition to the Spirit Monger thrall enhancement and Necrotic Bomb mentioned above, there's also the decaying runes you get from the Osteo Armaments feat at 8th level, and that's pretty much it. Interestingly, the Desperate Revival feat at 16th level deals AoE void damage, but only to living creatures, and so can't be used to damage undead (presumably to avoid you healing yourself off of and destroying your own thralls). It's not much, but it's something.
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and at level 1 you could use void warp and grim tendrils to damage undead.
Both of those only damage living creatures immune to vitality damage.
Pretty sure that’s what Luke meant about target massaging, you have to ignore the target or effect limits of the spells to use them for this.
Scouring pulse is good though, good find there. Also, its faction specific, not AP specific.
and at level 1 you could use void warp and grim tendrils to damage undead.Both of those only damage living creatures immune to vitality damage.
Pretty sure that’s what Luke meant about target massaging, you have to ignore the target or effect limits of the spells to use them for this.
Scouring pulse is good though, good find there. Also, its faction specific, not AP specific.
You're right, both effects specify living creatures, much like Desperate Revival. Looking more thoroughly, this is also the case for most other occult void damage spells, leaving vampiric maiden and whispers of the void, both 4th-rank spells, as the only void spells capable of damaging the undead. This means that unless you're a vitamancer, you'd have to wait until 2nd level to pick a feat that makes use of this effect, and then until 7th level to make use of spells in your spell list that would use the feature, short of taking an archetype.
It looks like this is a case of a double lock working against the class's mechanics: normally, the vitality/void split would make sure that those damaging effects would affect only the living or the undead, but because many of these effects also specify on top that they only damage the living, flipping the damage type or anything to that effect doesn't change anything in most cases. The fix to this would probably be fairly easy, though: just add text to mastery of life and death that states you can target the living or undead with a damaging spell or effect, even if the text says otherwise. On top of that, though, you'd likely have to add counter-text to Desperate Revival to prevent damaging your thralls and healing yourself to full (and clearing the map of your thralls in the process).
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Both of those only damage living creatures immune to vitality damage.
Pretty sure that’s what Luke meant about target massaging, you have to ignore the target or effect limits of the spells to use them for this.
Exactly this. I’m honestly not sure that, as a GM with a Necromancer PC in my group, I wouldn’t just ignore the targeting restrictions for this purpose, but (1) I’m actually playing right now, and (2) ignoring targeting restrictions seems counter to the spirit of play testing the class.
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I cross-referenced occult spells that deal vitality and void damage, and found the following:
There is only one vitality damage spell on the occult list, scouring pulse, an AP-specific spell.
Good find!
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Exactly this. I’m honestly not sure that, as a GM with a Necromancer PC in my group, I wouldn’t just ignore the targeting restrictions for this purpose, but (1) I’m actually playing right now, and (2) ignoring targeting restrictions seems counter to the spirit of play testing the class.Both of those only damage living creatures immune to vitality damage.
Pretty sure that’s what Luke meant about target massaging, you have to ignore the target or effect limits of the spells to use them for this.
I feel like "ignoring it" is a pretty viable way to run it outside of the playtest if its still in this state by 2026. Having an ability that just doesn't do what it says most of the time because of seperate targeting limits doesn't feel right, even if it's RAW.
Its not the only place in the system with this issue either: Oracle runs into similar problems with some bizarre outcomes if you don't apply some house rules.
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I feel like "ignoring it" is a pretty viable way to run it outside of the playtest if its still in this state by 2026.
I really don’t disagree. I don’t know why I feel constrained by the play test rubric, because I don't even know that I’ll have useful play test feedback, but I sort of feel like sticking as close to RAW as possible is part of the “game,” so . . .
Having an ability that just doesn't do what it says most of the time because of seperate targeting limits doesn't feel right, even if it's RAW.
For sure.
Its not the only place in the system with this issue either: Oracle runs into similar problems with some bizarre outcomes if you don't apply some house rules.
I honestly don’t understand why X number of years and a “Remaster” into this system we still have this problem.
Wait, what does Oracle and this feature run into problems. I know technically necromantic bomb is a net negative on your undead because your thralls all go bye-bye if hit by Necromantic Bomb which is dumb, very dumb. HOW does this get past the initial write up phrase? Does no one actually read this??? Proof reading is a thing man which I hope they improve.
I'd like to amend another previous statement (again): I mentioned that Desperate Revival would run into issues if made to interact with thralls and would require preventative text in a world where mastery of life and death let you ignore target restrictions, but this isn't as I thought: Desperate Revival deals damage based on the target's level, and thralls count as level -1 for the purpose of any effect that refers to their level. Thus, Desperate Revival would deal negative damage (the other kind) to thralls if allowed to target them. This to me means two things:
I feel like "ignoring it" is a pretty viable way to run it outside of the playtest if its still in this state by 2026.I really don’t disagree. I don’t know why I feel constrained by the play test rubric, because I don't even know that I’ll have useful play test feedback, but I sort of feel like sticking as close to RAW as possible is part of the “game,” so . . .
I feel the same with a playtest. :) The goal is to test it, so you want to use it as written to find the problems. Anywhere that you need to house rule is something that should be feedback as something to fix, like this.
I honestly don’t understand why X number of years and a “Remaster” into this system we still have this problem.
Hell, the remaster made it worse on Oracle, lol. Premaster this was such an uncommon edge case that most likely it just wasn't worth the effort, but now they're making class features that want to interact with this stuff and it just doesn't work at all as written.
I am frankly baffled that the playtest has the same basic problem since it came out what, 5 months after PC2 when this really came to light as a bigger issue? I don't know if they just expect people to ignore the targeting restrictions or these features are actually meant to work in so few cases.
Wait, what does Oracle and this feature run into problems. I know technically necromantic bomb is a net negative on your undead because your thralls all go bye-bye if hit by Necromantic Bomb which is dumb, very dumb. HOW does this get past the initial write up phrase? Does no one actually read this??? Proof reading is a thing man which I hope they improve.
Oracle doesn't have this specific feature, but it has the same problem with its own features, specifically the Bones Curse and Nudge the Scales. Anything that tries to change how void and vitality damage impact things without also changing the targeting doesn't really work properly, because you get into situations where "I can be harmed by vitality damage but nothing that does vitality damage considers me a legal target so this doesn't actually do anything". Or "I'm now healed by Harm but Harm doesn't heal me because I'm not Undead".
Or in Master of Life and Death: "I should be able to cast Void Warp on this creature and harm it despite it's void damage immunity since it takes vitality damage, but it's undead so I can't target it at all."
The root cause of those problems is the same: effects that specifically target living/undead place such tight restrictions on usage that an ability like this that wants to bypass the damage type limitations doesn't work because the targeting restrictions block it.
Oracle doesn't have this specific feature, but it has the same problem with its own features, specifically the Bones Curse and Nudge the Scales. Anything that tries to change how void and vitality damage impact things without also changing the targeting doesn't really work properly, because you get into situations where "I can be harmed by vitality damage but nothing that does vitality damage considers me a legal target so this doesn't actually do anything". Or "I'm now healed by Harm but Harm doesn't heal me because I'm not Undead".
Or in Master of Life and Death: "I should be able to cast Void Warp on this creature and harm it despite it's void damage immunity since it takes vitality damage, but it's undead so I can't target it at all."
The root cause of those problems is the same: effects that specifically target living/undead place such tight restrictions on usage that an ability like this that wants to bypass the damage type limitations doesn't work because the targeting restrictions block it.
Wouldn't the easy fix just be to errata stuff that targets a "living creature" and "undead creature" to instead be "creature with vitality healing" and "creature with void healing"?
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Wouldn't the easy fix just be to errata stuff that targets a "living creature" and "undead creature" to instead be "creature with vitality healing" and "creature with void healing"?
That’s largely the same issue written with more words. I still couldn’t target an undead with Void Warp because it wouldn’t meet the target conditions.
The easiest fix would probably be to add a line in the class ability that states that the Necrimancer can ignore the targeting restrictions on effects that deal void or vitality damage.
A better fix, in my opinion, would be to just get rid of that kind of target restriction entirely. The immunities involved seem sufficient. Fire spells work just fine without a targeting restriction that prevents their being cast on creatures with immunity to fire damage, after all.