Necromancer Class: How well does it play?

[Deriven Firelion]

I'm looking at this necromancer class. It has some nice design work. Seems it built thralls using the 4E minion system, which I don't know that I love.

I'm thinking a necromancer would get absolutely wrecked and made useless by something like the Fire Kineticist Thermal Nimbus or any damage aura where the damage occurred at the start of the turn or upon entry into the aura completely wiping out the thralls as soon as they were cast upon the battlefield.

How is this class doing in play? How does it standup if a creature or enemy is using a damage aura that immediately wipes out the thralls?

[Zimblefugg]

AoE damage is a big problem for Thralls and Necromancer. I haven't played mine against anything with a continuous, full area covering damage aura (or damage aura in small room), but what I have generally done:

* Many grave spells have range effects, so you summon the thralls further away from the target to be able to use them for fodder. For example, Bony Barrage is a 30 foot cone, so for Thermal Nimbus you can summon new thralls out of the range of it until level 20.

* Summon Thralls a bit further apart if you know AoE exists. You typically create two at once, so one next to the target, and then keeping the other further back/away to avoid many common AoEs. This puts them on the other side of friendlies so you can Muscle Barrier or some such.

* Switching to Occult spells. You are still a spellcaster, so not using Grave spells sucks, but if it is just an encounter here or there, you are still probably fine.

* There is a feat designed for this, Collateral Reinforcement I am not sure how actually good it is since it uses an action, but it can cover cases where there is lots of AoE going on during enemy turns.

With all of that said, if I knew it was going to be AoE heavy, I likely wouldn't play a Necromancer. It is an annoyance to work around sometimes, and definitely weakens you compared to no AoE.

[StarlingSweeter]

So I have built a total of 4 necromancers since its come out in an attempt to get the most possible play data to update my guide. I have a bone, flesh, and spirit necromancer all ranging from levels 1-7 and have an upcoming necromancer for a Vaultlines campaign.

Repeat AoE options on monsters are rare at lower levels but not completely absent. I have recently fought a monster with a fire aura and while it did prove to be a bit difficult its not the end of the world for me but it helps that it was relatively small. Like Zimblefugg said summoning thralls outside the aura helps and then making effects inside the aura like large cones or your 30-foot single target abilities is always possible. Hopefully you should also have a couple of leveled spells to fallback on as well should worse come to worse but I'm not going to pretend it isn't a weakness of the class, it very much is.

If I had to hazard a guess this will get much more annoying when you have much larger auras to deal with at high levels, enemies with aoe spells, and hazards that do a little bit of damage to everything in the area.

In my experience though aoe damage hasn't been the bane of my existence as much as moving has been. Your typical rotation will want to be summon thrall + grave spell and forcing yourself to move disrupts that. Whether its to close the distance, get out of a flank, reposition out of an sustained AoE I have felt that out of all the casters I've played necromancer is most likely the least flexible. Which also means they are the easiest to disrupt. Slow, stunned, prone, anything that costs you actions feels pretty bad on most casters but extra bad on a necromancer.

The class despite all of this is still one of my favourites. I love the grave spells, in particular Muscle Barrier and Boney Barrage stand out as particularly powerful in my play experience. The fact that it can comfortably keep going through multiple encounters as long as the party is taking 10 minute rests to heal up is also nice.

*My partner came up with a good analogy for running into aoe as a necromancer in that its similar to a precision damage class running into an incorporeal enemy or an ooze. Its gonna suck but there are some ways to pivot around it to make it tolerable. Though I feel damaging auras are less common than precision immunity.

[Deriven Firelion]

Thanks for the information. I'm going to have to think about this as this impacts a reaper more than a puppeteer since the reaper will be in melee range. Aoe Damage and damage auras are the bane of necros.

[Deriven Firelion]

I'm reading checks automatically work against thralls. So attacks against thralls automatically destroy them. So if you used an ability like Impossible Volley, you wipe out a bunch of thralls with no roll.

I don't know if I want to play a class whose main power mechanism is easy to destroy and make useless. That's a serious, serious weakness on top of the usual saves and attack rolls and such.

[Zimblefugg]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I'm reading checks automatically work against thralls. So attacks against thralls automatically destroy them. So if you used an ability like Impossible Volley, you wipe out a bunch of thralls with no roll.

I don't know if I want to play a class whose main power mechanism is easy to destroy and make useless. That's a serious, serious weakness on top of the usual saves and attack rolls and such.

Occasional AoE isn’t that big of a deal imo.

I normally end combat with a bunch of extra thralls. It is often easier to make new thralls rather than move existing ones, so it isn’t abnormal to end with 4+ extra thralls across the map. The AoE tends to reduce the extra ones (and if you are blood you heal from them dying or cause bleed to enemies, etc…).

As mentioned by StarlingSweeter, the normal gameplay loop is to create thralls and use them immediately which normally profits you a remaining thrall. So you mostly don’t need the extra ones for core play, but you do occasionally want them (ie, you have to move).

The example StarlingSweeter gave with Precision Immunity is some what true, but I consider the AoE problem less impactful since there typically is counter play against it. I haven’t actually run into a situation to fully shutdown my Necromancer as you outlined, but have felt more shutdown on my Swashbuckler and Rogue when facing Precision Immunity since there isn’t much you can do to counter it.

[pauljathome]

Zimblefugg wrote:

The example StarlingSweeter gave with Precision Immunity is some what true, but I consider the AoE problem less impactful since there typically is counter play against it. I haven’t actually run into a situation to fully shutdown my Necromancer as you outlined, but have felt more shutdown on my Swashbuckler and Rogue when facing Precision Immunity since there isn’t much you can do to counter it.

A rogue loses something like half its damage against precision immune enemies but loses none of its other contributions (skills, flanking, etc) so it is, at worst, about half effective and often closer to fully effective.

Very roughly speaking, do you have any feel for how less effective a necromancer is with auras or AoEs present? And how much this changes if it is just once a day so they have spells as opposed to if they're hitting that situation a lot?

The necromancers I've theory crafted and played once or twice teded to rely on thralls/grave spells for damage and so did NOT pick damage spells very much.

[kaid]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

I'm reading checks automatically work against thralls. So attacks against thralls automatically destroy them. So if you used an ability like Impossible Volley, you wipe out a bunch of thralls with no roll.

I don't know if I want to play a class whose main power mechanism is easy to destroy and make useless. That's a serious, serious weakness on top of the usual saves and attack rolls and such.

Thralls are easy to kill but just as easy to keep generating. Also as you go up you likely are using things like blood tendrils or some of the other more burly thrall class things to have at least a few minions on the field that can take a few hits.

If you are dealing with a lot of aoes you are going to wind up doing a lot of summon thrall punch something with it and then popping the thrall with a focus power. If it lives good if it dies eh you make more your next turn. One of the thrall options when they die makes difficult terrain so if they die they are still useful.

[Zimblefugg]

pauljathome wrote:

Zimblefugg wrote:

The example StarlingSweeter gave with Precision Immunity is some what true, but I consider the AoE problem less impactful since there typically is counter play against it. I haven’t actually run into a situation to fully shutdown my Necromancer as you outlined, but have felt more shutdown on my Swashbuckler and Rogue when facing Precision Immunity since there isn’t much you can do to counter it.

A rogue loses something like half its damage against precision immune enemies but loses none of its other contributions (skills, flanking, etc) so it is, at worst, about half effective and often closer to fully effective.

Very roughly speaking, do you have any feel for how less effective a necromancer is with auras or AoEs present? And how much this changes if it is just once a day so they have spells as opposed to if they're hitting that situation a lot?

The necromancers I've theory crafted and played once or twice teded to rely on thralls/grave spells for damage and so did NOT pick damage spells very much.

Let's talk about what the actual game play impact is for Necromancers.

When your thralls all die from an AoE, you need to summon more. This is something you are going to be doing anyways, but it turns into an almost every turn action instead of only every few turns (depends on if your reaction triggers to make more too). When you summon, you get a free attack from either the thrall or yourself if Reaper. These aren't great attacks, but it is something of value. Once this is done, you can do your normal Grave spell using the fresh Thrall. You will normally have a Thrall left over, so next turn you are fine unless they die to an AoE again.

Practically, you can think of it worst case it is wasting an action, but most of the case only partially unless there is full coverage AoE every turn. You often will provide less flanking/difficult terrain as well since putting your thralls into the middle of things is more problematic. Your spells work normally otherwise.

It is worth noting that it isn't only AoE that suffers this problem. For example, if the enemies keep moving far away from the Thralls, this can also be a problem. Thrall management is a core part of gameplay for Necromancer and while normally good, can have drawbacks. Mobile Thralls ends up as a very important feat to help remove a lot of Thrall issues.

The bigger potential issue is something that has an aura that *immediately* damages any creature in it. This prevents Thralls entirely, and does force a revisit of spells. Several Grave spells have a 15-foot range from Thralls, so those would be out, but otherwise you are fine. I haven't actually run into a play experience where this has happened yet. Even with auras, they typically have a short-ish range and you can summon outside of it and still use most spells normally.