It feels like a good portion of criticism of the Necromancer class revolves around the static and largely inanimate nature of their thralls: the reasons behind that are mechanically understandable, as the class is built to just create more thralls instead of controlling them all on an individual basis, but thematically that's chafed with quite a few players, who see the class more as this more generic token-mancer than the master of an undead horde. I imagine it feels like something's missing in that respect, and I wonder if that's a gap that could be filled with an extra starting grave cantrip. For instance, something along the following lines:
Traits: Uncommon, cantrip, concentrate, grave, manipulate, necromancer, thrall
With a command, you spur a thrall to action. The thrall Strides up to your Speed, or Burrows, Climbs, Flies, or Swims instead of Striding if you have the corresponding movement type. If the thrall ends its movement adjacent to an enemy, it can make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty.
If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can command up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have master necromancy and four if you have legendary necromancy. A target can't be targeted by more than one thrall's Strike at a time, and you do not increase your multiple attack penalty until all of the Strikes have been made.
Heightened (+2) The damage increases by 1d6.
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Effectively, instead of creating an existing thrall, you could move one around and have it make another attack from potentially farther away. This'd probably still not be a great ability to have at low level, especially given how a lot of thrall-based abilities have such short ranges, but with multiple thralls, this could potentially get more interesting as you make more attacks. Thralls right now have the problem of being permanently ground-bound, which makes the Necromancer quite difficult to play at higher levels when flying enemies become more common, so having them potentially inherit a fly Speed you may have could help alleviate that issue. Most importantly, though, this cantrip could let you do more with your thralls besides just consume them, and this time it'd be your thralls actually doing something too. What do y'all reckon, would this help make thralls feel a little less like static tokens?
I like the idea as a way to get thralls outside the regular 30ft summoning range for the grave spells with longer ranges. If that add more grave spells that gain bonuses from consuming more thralls, this becomes worse of an option.
I also agree that it may be time consuming in combat. In Foundry or other VTTs its probably fine, but at a table it might be slow to have a player counting out the movement for 4 thralls.
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I think you're both right that having to measure out the specifics of a Stride for up to four different thralls would slow gameplay down to a crawl, and definitely isn't what I'd want out of this either.
As an amendment to the above, it may be in the interest of simplicity to have all of the thralls each move in a straight line, without being able to undertake any more complex movement such as walking around an obstacle. This would hopefully simplify the cantrip greatly (no more tracing zigzag lines and counting out feet of movement), and should hopefully be easy to justify thematically, given how thralls are mindless creatures and are probably not going to be super-subtle in their movement as they lurch around.
It feels like a good portion of criticism of the Necromancer class revolves around the static and largely inanimate nature of their thralls: the reasons behind that are mechanically understandable, as the class is built to just create more thralls instead of controlling them all on an individual basis, but thematically that's chafed with quite a few players, who see the class more as this more generic token-mancer than the master of an undead horde. I imagine it feels like something's missing in that respect, and I wonder if that's a gap that could be filled with an extra starting grave cantrip. For instance, something along the following lines:
Traits: Uncommon, cantrip, concentrate, grave, manipulate, necromancer, thrallWith a command, you spur a thrall to action. The thrall Strides up to your Speed, or Burrows, Climbs, Flies, or Swims instead of Striding if you have the corresponding movement type. If the thrall ends its movement adjacent to an enemy, it can make a melee unarmed Strike using your spell attack modifier for the attack roll. This attack deals your choice of 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage. This Strike uses and counts toward your multiple attack penalty.
If you have the expert necromancy class feature, you can command up to two thralls, increasing to three if you have master necromancy and four if you have legendary necromancy. A target can't be targeted by more than one thrall's Strike at a time, and you do not increase your multiple attack penalty until all of the Strikes have been made.
Heightened (+2) The damage increases by 1d6.
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Effectively, instead of creating an existing thrall, you could move one around and have it make another attack from potentially farther away. This'd probably still not be a great ability to have at low level, especially given how a lot of thrall-based abilities have such short ranges, but with multiple thralls, this could potentially get more interesting...
I just resummoned a new thrall when i heeded them to move, or attack. part of the initial summons was move and attack. Als they pop after any damage so i would cycle at least one new one a round.