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I put "we" because some of this comes from others' posts and I invite more additions.
TYPES
-Horde Leader: Playtest covers this
-Reaper/Scythe Wielder: Playtest partially covers this. An archetype for martials might work best, but I'd also like an expansion/tradeoff much like a Warpriest.
-Corpse Raiser: Maybe untenable given the variety of enemies, but I'd like to see more done with raising actual corpses in the field. Might be a touch too evil.
-"Pet" subclass: even if only reprint of Undead Master (perhaps non-Evil/non-Unholy for PFS)
MAJOR SUGGESTION
Transmogrify: A Trait for abilities which alter the shapes & purposes of Thralls, likely at the cost of other Thralls. This might represent sacrificing some, losing the Thrall(s) after the action, or getting fewer when creating a batch. So the abilities could be targeting current Thralls or ones as they're created, whichever balances best.
Ex. One might making a charging Thrall that appears within normal range, but rushes at a distant enemy (perhaps destroying itself at the end as the cost, perhaps exploding w/ second feat or Focus Spell). Or an archer/flesh-lobber who can attack at range, but at the cost of making one less Thrall. Thralls w/ Reach & a bonus ability that utilizes that. There are ample combinations of forms and costs possible.
SPECIFIC ABILITIES
-The main request I've seen is for Thralls to be useful for more than fuel & detritus littering the battlefield after appearing. Like even simply to attack via a Thrall w/o making a new one, though with something extra of course for not gaining Thralls w/ the attack (or not even that if it's a basic ability in the class chassis).
-A wave of Thrall attacks, much like Whirlwind Attack, but via Thralls, maybe even a (temporary) Troop of them.
-Gathering info from reading corpses, eating parts? (Maybe part of Bone Speaker?)
-Harvesting enemies (perhaps too evil?); a limited collection to pass attributes to Thralls?
Yes, complicated, morbid, perhaps unholy, but thematically so rewarding.
-Thralls comboing on attacks, perhaps using existing ones or a pair of new Thralls that attack simultaneously (perhaps MAPless, stacking, and w/ carrier effects if both hit, etc.)
-More undead-themed abilities re: Frightened, sonic, Drain, cold, etc. Creep us out w/ more than just bodies & ectoplasm. Maybe more grave & burial ritual imagery?
Note: Recurring Nightmare is oh so close to fulfilling some of these concepts, but it arrives too late and with too little of an effect IMO. Ditto Perfected Thrall; more like that but no h.p. or durability necessary.
-Abilities tailored to enemy, even if only in imagery rather than mechanics, like image of own dead soul or laments of their ancestors.
-Seeing through a Thrall's eyes, maybe also speaking through its mouth. (Maybe I missed it on review, since I thought it existed.) Maybe even Demoralize via Thrall, perhaps instead of attack? or preceding/due to successful Strike/at cost of fewer Thralls made?.
-Final Spite effect (maybe only on creations w/ h.p.?)
-Thralls w/ weapons (This is someone else's so I'm unsure the mechanical aspect of the request. If any, as it might simply be for visuals.)
SPECIFIC GRAVE KNIGHT/REAPER ABILITIES
-Bone armor, mainly for flavor like the weaponry. Could be option w/ Muscle Barrier.
-Using own attack through Thrall(s)
-Attacking simultaneously w/ Thrall (MAPless, perhaps other effects if both hit)
Perhaps with existing Thrall to begin, or with created Thrall w/ second feat (plus more).
-Stance that cuts off other abilities or Battle Form(s). Enough for secondary role.
-Maybe only makes Thralls via Strikes? Perhaps via subclass-only version of Bind Heroic Spirit.
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-Corpse Raiser: Maybe untenable given the variety of enemies, but I'd like to see more done with raising actual corpses in the field. Might be a touch too evil.
Most of what I can imagine for this is pretty well covered already. Not only does Inevitable Return explicitly allow you to turn the corpses of your enemies into thralls, but I think create thrall and any other grave spell that creates a thrall should too. Certainly I’d allow a player to say, if they created a thrall in a square that had the corpse of a downed enemy, that they were using that corpse to create that thrall.
Some language to that effect might be nice, but that seems like a sidebar rather than rules content. Maybe tell GMs that necromancers can use any corpses lying about to create thralls if the other players are okay with that, but it isn’t required.
Edit: Oh, what if the inevitable return offered an action saving to grave spells that create thralls, as long as your new thrall is created in the same square as your downed enemy? I want to say this should probably be a feat, but on consideration it might be fine to just bake into the reaction.
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Stuff I'd like to see implemented as feats:
Effectively, lots of stuff oriented more towards flavor than function necessarily, so that a Necromancer can feel like they've got a lot of stuff of their own creation around them if they want.
-Corpse Raiser: Maybe untenable given the variety of enemies, but I'd like to see more done with raising actual corpses in the field.
If this got made I think it would function a lot like the duplicate foe spell, but requires a dead or dying target and makes the minion undead.
-The main request I've seen is for Thralls to be useful for more than fuel & detritus littering the battlefield after appearing.
I think this could be done by not all grave spells using a focus point and/or consuming the thrall. Maybe like the inventor has a base version of abilities, but then can boost them by making them unstable; The Necromancer could have weaker versions of its' abilities, but could spend the focus point and destroy the thrall to get the full benefit. This could give the thralls more of a purpose after the focus points are gone.
-Corpse Raiser: Maybe untenable given the variety of enemies, but I'd like to see more done with raising actual corpses in the field. Might be a touch too evil.Most of what I can imagine for this is pretty well covered already. Not only does Inevitable Return explicitly allow you to turn the corpses of your enemies into thralls, but I think create thrall and any other grave spell that creates a thrall should too. Certainly I’d allow a player to say, if they created a thrall in a square that had the corpse of a downed enemy, that they were using that corpse to create that thrall.
Some language to that effect might be nice, but that seems like a sidebar rather than rules content. Maybe tell GMs that necromancers can use any corpses lying about to create thralls if the other players are okay with that, but it isn’t required.
Edit: Oh, what if the inevitable return offered an action saving to grave spells that create thralls, as long as your new thrall is created in the same square as your downed enemy? I want to say this should probably be a feat, but on consideration it might be fine to just bake into the reaction.
Those are still thralls tho, like ok you made it out of a dead enemy, it still doesn't really do anything, isn't animated etc.
No, I understand that. But some of your grave spells do result in thralls that are animate and have effects, and most of the rest are fueled by consuming a thrall for their effect.
So what's missing is something that connects the thrall you raise to the grave spell where you make something out of that thrall. With that, this reaction and any of the current grave spells will let you use an enemy's death as fuel for your abilities.
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So what's missing is something that connects the thrall you raise to the grave spell where you make something out of that thrall.
You are talking about things like Conglomerate of Limbs and Recurring nightmare right?
I know there are plenty of actions that affect what reactions are a available, but I don't know of any reactions that affect the actions you take. It would be something new.
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Reaper/Scythe Wielder: Playtest partially covers this. An archetype for martials might work best, but I'd also like an expansion/tradeoff much like a Warpriest.
Before we start talking about making tradeoffs they should start by just making the relevant feats good.
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I would to have a Blood and a Shadow Grim Fascination and feats fitting the themes as well.
Been reading Manwah/Webtoons like Solo Leveling and Lone Necromancer/Solo Necromancy.
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I would to have a Blood and a Shadow Grim Fascination and feats fitting the themes as well.
Been reading Manwah/Webtoons like Solo Leveling and Lone Necromancer/Solo Necromancy.
Yes, I'd overlooked blood & shadow themes, which others had requested early in the playtest. Blood & vampirism might lean too evil/Unholy though they could be optional reskinnings perhaps. And shadow & darkness are underrepresented.
Of course there are also the spell slots. Paizo might consider those enough to cover all the underrepresented necro-aspects, with the class budget focused on Thralls & necro-abilities Occult spells don't cover.
So what's missing is something that connects the thrall you raise to the grave spell where you make something out of that thrall.You are talking about things like Conglomerate of Limbs and Recurring nightmare right?
I know there are plenty of actions that affect what reactions are a available, but I don't know of any reactions that affect the actions you take. It would be something new.
Which suggests I'm probably not properly estimating how strong it is, but still. It makes narrative sense to me to spend that reaction to reduce the cast time by 1 action, even for Create Thrall. Perhaps especially for Create Thrall. It would be fun to open your turn, right after someone killed an enemy, to use Create Thrall and force their corpse to strike an another enemy that was standing next to them. And do it as a free action.
No reason (that I'm aware of, I'll had this back if I have to) you can't do it with Create Thrall already, but tying it into Inevitable Return seems pretty flavorful.
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That reminds me that I would like to see abilities make more/better use of larger enemy corpses. So if there were an ability utilizing an enemy corpse, perhaps a larger target corpse might be usable more times or to make a larger entity/Thrall/whatnot. I appreciate the imagery of shaping the ribs & viscera of a monster into multiple humanoids that step out of its corpse. (Frightened or Sickened effect tagged onto normal Thrall creation?)
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Now THERE you have me. Not much I’ve suggested would reasonably apply to a huge or bigger corpse, so that’s somewhere Duplicate Foe-like summoning spell would be needed.
Although you gave me another idea. I was thinking that you could turn multiple enemy corpses into a troop, possibly as a ritual, but wasn’t sure of how to word it. Using one big corpse instead of a bunch of medium or small corpses would work a lot better.
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I'd like more stuff for the Spirit Monger Necro that actually involves spirits, haunts, etc. So far everything seems to be themed for the bone or meat Necromancer. I'm sure Paizo will include stuff like that in the final release as they usually limit playtest options for testing purposes.
Stuff I'd like to see implemented as feats:
A reskinned phantasmal minion where you can summon one or more thralls to perform menial tasks for you out of combat.
An undead familiar line.
An undead animal companion line, so that you can mount an undead steed.
Some kind of bone crafting feat that lets you Craft basic, but valueless objects out of bones, so that you can make yourself an undead throne to sit on (a bone throne!).
An uncommon feat that lets you access the create undead ritual, lets you cast the ritual by yourself, and buffs it in some other respect (for instance, by improving its degrees of success). Effectively, lots of stuff oriented more towards flavor than function necessarily, so that a Necromancer can feel like they've got a lot of stuff of their own creation around them if they want.
The familiars and companions we have now. I’d guess we’ll get more if this book does go to Geb. And as for the crafting feat, can’t you do that now? Maybe you might need a formula, but I don’t see why you couldn’t make bones into a throne using the existing feats. Especially if a player had the Bone Speaker feat.
Your phantasmal minion sound like gold though. To add to that, I now want a feat that lets you search for traps (using your thralls of course) as an exploration activity. Maybe you count as searching, but only for hazards, while also doing any other exploration activity?
Not sure how it would mechanically work out. I just want an image of any time you think there might be a hazard you just refexively create a thrall to test if anything gets set off.
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When making a thrall from another corpse they could make it similar to the spelldrinker feat for the bloodrager. Have a list of creature types and an additional tag to add to the thrall. then just make the thrall the same size of the creature.
The faster create thrall could be a free action like quicken spell that only works if you summon a thrall on the location of a creature that died recently. I don't know what a good time limit would be.
Spamming thralls to search for traps seems like there could be unintended repercussions. You aren't finding the trap. You are triggering every trap, just hopefully from a safe distance.
Thralls that aren't skeletons, zombies or ghosts
Can we get mohrgs, draugrs, mummies, wights, wraiths and spectres please?
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I think I would like to see an inherent “speak with dead” like ability to the class.
In addition, something that lets you use social skills with mindless undead.
Rounds out the scope of the general vibe. That way they can also be about working with the dead, not just making the undead work for them.
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I thought that'd be best as a skill feat if it couldn't just be added as part of Undead Lore, but I looked and found 5 or 6 archetype and ancestry feats, so my guess is that it will be a class feat.
I think some combination of Grave's Voice and Undead Empathy should do the trick.
Like, say:
You can use your choice of Undead Lore or Diplomacy to Make an Impression or Request things of undead creatures, even mindless undead. Even with this feat, you can only make simple requests of mindless undead. As long as there aren't any other living creatures besides you nearby, they usually let you speak. If the undead creature currently is in the thrall of a creature whose level is higher than yours, you typically need a critical success on your Diplomacy skill check.
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Slightly more powerful than either of the feats I based it on, but as this is a proper class feat that should work. Also ties in Undead lore, giving your class an edge on these checks and giving even a creature like a skeleton or vampire a reason to pick this up over their ancestry feat.All that said, I agree this should just be something you can do, probably as part of the Undead Lore ability.
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While all the lore stuff is missing from the playtest, it does feel like the kind of content that would get left out for the sake of focusing the more unique aspects of the class. Druids have two feats that are basically what is being asked for. I would be disappointed and shocked if the class released with out something similar.
For crafting out of bone, I feel like goblin's junk tinker feat would be easy enough to rewrite to work with bone instead of junk.
While all the lore stuff is missing from the playtest, it does feel like the kind of content that would get left out for the sake of focusing the more unique aspects of the class. Druids have two feats that are basically what is being asked for. I would be disappointed and shocked if the class released with out something similar.
Sure, but it’s fun to speculate on what variations the class will hold. Like the two I posted; one allows you to use a lore skill for certain social skill checks (which the int based Necromaner with a free Lore skill might find VERY useful), the other allows you to use diplomacy on mindless undead. If they somehow combined those two, part of the charismatic “I assert dominance over the undead” playstyle comes into being, since you’re suddenly able to compel mindless undead to do your bidding.
Keeping with my interest in exploration activities, that speak with dead suggestion might be interesting. Perhaps as a high level feat, you can perform a 10 minute minor ritual that allows you one question from a corpse as if you’d cast Talking Corpse. Skill check required, and only 1 per day per corpse, but no spell slot needed.
I suppose this would allow you to do Gather Information if you had sufficient corpses around.
Yeah I get that. I do think that the Int based classes do need something to boost up there skills. They get a lot of trained skills but rarely have the stats to back up anything other than recall knowledge. Plus Int does not help skills improve as you level up so stuff just falls behind.
I like that a lot of the newer classes can use their best stat for other skills that are tied to the class. Something like you said using Int for social checks with undead or letting you use undead lore as a substitution for those skills.
Being able to use more spells as rituals looks like it could help the class feel less restricted by the limited spell slots. Only having 2 per rank makes it hard to not just pick the greatest hits at each rank. Giving more access to rituals, especially necro spells missing from the occult list, could really flesh out necromancers casting.
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Being able to use more spells as rituals looks like it could help the class feel less restricted by the limited spell slots. Only having 2 per rank makes it hard to not just pick the greatest hits at each rank. Giving more access to rituals, especially necro spells missing from the occult list, could really flesh out necromancers casting.Funny reading this as authors of the mod converting BG3 to PF2 are approaching converting spells and one the the biggest differences with dnd comes into the light: there's no mechanics in PF2 to cast slotted spells without limit. Either they should become a cantrip or a focus spell and both should be written individually anew. And in BG3 a some very important spells became rituals which aren't this in the actual rules. Like Speak with Dead. And I'm not sure that general PF2 needs this even for just Necromancer. Maybe just give access to it for Necromancer (it's uncommon) and make a feat or feature to use this 1/day for example. But not unlimited times per day.
I do think the idea would need a lot of refinement to work. My biggest concern would be giving one player an activity that takes much more time then anything else the party wants to do. Even the shorter rituals have a 1 hour cast time.
There are few examples of gaining innate spells. They usually tied to ancestry and limited to once per day. Classes seem to just get a feat that is very similar to a spell, but never the exact same thing. I would not be surprised if the Necromancer had a feat like Kineticist's Voice of Elements to let them speak to mindless undead.
Well, the spell (Talking Corpse) is already 10 min cast normally. Also, speaking/diplomacy with actual creatures is the easy one, yes. There are examples and the impact is rather limited. But speaking to corpses is really different, it has much bigger narrative impact and harder on GMs (which is why it's a slotted spell and uncommon).
Yeah, maybe I was clear in what I was trying to say. I was trying to point out that if it were a ritual the time would probably be longer based on the existing rituals.
For the diplomacy part, I was thinking more of skeletons and zombies from the bestiary. I think that it would be a little better than the kineticist's if it was just copy pasted with undead instead of elemental. I think the undead are more common and the kineticist is restricted to the elements they use. I was thinking that the Necromancer could be limited based on their grave fascination. Skeletons for Bone Shaper, zombies for Flesh Magician, but I don't know of any mindless ghosts or spirits to go with the Spirit Monger. If are any, I'm sure they are at least less common than the other two.
What about leaning into the melee necromancer vibe? I think it might help with making it feel like a diablo necromancer if this one had some Strike feats that interacted with their thralls. Like, say, a 1 action Flurry of Blows ability that let you roll 2 spell attacks at your normal MAP progression if you have a thrall adjacent to you. And have it not expend the Thrall.
Not sure how exactly I'd want to see it, but basically give the necromancer fighter or monk feats that are your Thrall making strikes alongside you. That way they're moving and doing things without giving your character any additional actions (outside of what's normal for a feat anyways). They already have a couple of the defensive fighter feats, might as well add a couple offensive ones if they can make the flavor work.
Also, I want a focus spell that lets one of your thralls make a strike that deals persistent poison damage and the disease trait.
I was thinking that the Necromancer could be limited based on their grave fascination. Skeletons for Bone Shaper, zombies for Flesh Magician, but I don't know of any mindless ghosts or spirits to go with the Spirit Monger. If are any, I'm sure they are at least less common than the other two.
Haunts maybe? I could see this letting you always be able to use diplomacy when trying to disable a haunt.
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I like the idea of some sort of tandem strike like the summoner has. Another way would be like the other martially focused casters who usually have a way to give themselves a bonus to hit. The necromancer's could be causing off-guard by flacking with a thrall. Something like 2 actions that lets you create a thrall and strike at the same time. You could get the flanking benefit while making an attack without MAP and still get an attack with the thrall. It wouldn't save any actions, but it would let you optimize the order.
I would like ways to give the thralls attacks more flavor as well. At the very least, you getting the decaying rune on your weapons with osteo armaments should apply to your thralls.
I don't know how useful diplomacy would be against haunts unless you could use a intelligence instead of charisma. I am assuming that most players would prioritize int>dex>con/wis>the other>cha/str. So most players would have a 1 at best. Haunts usually have pretty high DCs and being 3+ behind you key stat would be rough.
Fair point. Especially with Undead lore part of the class chassis.