Author Topic: Necromantic Index & General Discussion  (Read 32350 times)

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #20 on: May 09, 2014, 01:33:38 PM »
The first 10 curses are up. They come from the most obvious source in the world, so you don't get any bonus points for guessing right.  :P

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #21 on: May 09, 2014, 02:31:45 PM »
Managed to work in a Lovecraft reference to the latest bunch of curses. That makes me happy. :D

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #22 on: May 12, 2014, 04:32:30 PM »
And Vein of Curses is done. Mostly. I haven't worked out what level I'm putting each of the curses at, but all 30 are created. That means 3 of the 5 veins are complete. I should be able to get the other two done this week without much trouble.

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2014, 05:47:51 PM »
By the way, if you're looking to create system-related races for Necromantic magic, as you did with Ritual Magic and the general Arhosan races, I've got... ideas.  :cool

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #24 on: May 14, 2014, 08:52:11 PM »
Go right ahead :)

Just copy the formatting from the Arhosa races.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2014, 09:34:53 AM by Stratovarius »

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #25 on: May 15, 2014, 10:39:33 AM »
First ten necros are up for the Vein of Bone. Definitely more focused on damage dealing with this one.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #26 on: May 16, 2014, 10:32:13 AM »
Feel like I'm running out of inspiration tackling Vein of Bone - most of the abilities are very basic, none of the supremely interesting abilities from other Veins. Grrr  :banghead

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #27 on: May 16, 2014, 10:42:21 AM »
I could possibly help,  but only once I'm out from work. What are you going for with this vein?

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #28 on: May 16, 2014, 10:54:13 AM »
I could possibly help,  but only once I'm out from work. What are you going for with this vein?

The way its divided is roughly this:

Bone - Skeletal undead, physical damage, bone structures
Curses - Debuffs
Flesh - Fleshy undead, toughness, defense, healing
Poison - Poison, Disease, Acid damage, fogs
Spirit - Incorporeal undead, spiritual attacks, cold damage, mental attacks

Flesh would obviously be the closest overlap for Bone, to give you an idea of what things occur. Both Flesh and Bone long duration buffs affect all corporeal undead, so they do affect one another's creatures.

I'm actually going to have 20 of the 30 Necros required for the Vein done shortly, and they might even be quite useful. They just aren't as exotic as I try and create.

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #29 on: May 16, 2014, 11:10:55 AM »
Do you have any that make enemies' skeletons grow or shrink awkwardly, dealing damage and debuffing them? Or possibly growing odd protrusions that damage them from the inside. Or possibly make bones malleable to either benefit or detriment, depending on the application? I'm sure what you have is fine. I could see bone as being a good "beginner" vein or universal one that most Necromant would learn, due to being simpler in nature. Might make up for being less exotic. :)

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #30 on: May 16, 2014, 11:15:24 AM »
I don't think I have much in the way of debuff, mostly because Spirit, Poison, and Curses all cover that fairly strongly. What I have so far is here. Should be either 19 or 20 of them. Didn't count to make sure. They aren't organized by level (or even have levels, yet), so it's mostly just getting the effects in place that I was looking for.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #31 on: May 16, 2014, 11:37:53 AM »
Okay, just completed Vein of Curses by organizing the necros into levels and updating the posts. So, currently Curses, Flesh, and Spirit are all playable (mostly. Grave Tokens needs some math work).

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #32 on: May 16, 2014, 03:08:28 PM »
Organized Vein of Bone, so it's much easier to see what's missing. Basically, it's all the high level material. I also dropped one necros for being crappy.

Vein of Bone

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #33 on: May 24, 2014, 11:04:36 AM »
So, I've figured out how I'm going to allocate Grave Token cost. It works out thus:

If a necros has a duration of Instant, per round, or per minute, it's 1 * necros level.
If a necros has a duration of per hour, it's 2 * necros level.
If a necros has a duration of permanent or 1 week, it's 3 * necros level.

The Necromant will get 6 grave tokens per level, plus bonus ones.
Overlord will get 3 grave tokens per level, plus bonus ones.
Vivisector will probably get 2 grave tokens per level, plus bonus ones.
« Last Edit: May 24, 2014, 11:35:16 AM by Stratovarius »

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #34 on: May 24, 2014, 11:35:46 AM »
So, at the base, that's 60 tokens per week at 20th level. Assuming a standard earth week of 7 days in a week, that's 8-9 tokens per day if you need to split it up and have some usable each day. Not every week will be the same, and the number of bonus points isn't detailed yet, but that seems awfully low given that tokens are weekly and some veins have more instant attacks while others are more long duration effects.

Did you mean that they get 3 tokens each level, or 3 × level each level?


Nevermind, the above post was edited while I typed.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #35 on: May 24, 2014, 11:40:33 AM »
Yeah, was playing around with the math while I was posting. And don't forget that even the Necromant is effectively two characters in one, so you've always got class features and your companion to use even if the grave tokens are running low.

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #36 on: May 24, 2014, 12:15:40 PM »
All Necromantic Companions are now categorized by Vein, 2 per companion. Overlord is also more or less playable, minus class abilities. Permanent housing for the categorization is in the Index thread.

(click to show/hide)

Offline VennDygrem

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #37 on: May 31, 2014, 02:06:03 AM »
Might there be some way to generate temporary grave tokens? It may alleviate some of the problem of running out of your weekly grave tokens if you invest more in the instantaneous necros rather than the week-long buffs, and since they'd expire quickly they'd avoid long term problems. The problem is the capacity for loading up more on long-duration buffs, so spending temporary tokens might result in a sharp reduction in Necros duration to compensate.

This might just be too needlessly complicated to be useful, but I can't help but be concerned even given the fact that most Necromantic characters will have a single minion they can order to fight for them even if they're run out of tokens for the week. Mostly it's just a late-night, rambling thought. Feel free to ignore it. :)

Offline Stratovarius

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #38 on: June 01, 2014, 02:09:36 AM »
Well, being in danger of running out is more or less the point of the week-long refresh structure. It's an idea to prevent the 15 minute wizard day and the like. Also, it's quite possible (probable, for an Overlord), that one of the companions is a mage, which further alleviates the "can't do anything" worries. If a Necromantic class finds itself completely tapped out for resources, it's focusing a little too much on short term casting.

Online Garryl

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Re: Necromantic General Discussion
« Reply #39 on: June 01, 2014, 03:23:55 AM »
Well, being in danger of running out is more or less the point of the week-long refresh structure. It's an idea to prevent the 15 minute wizard day and the like. Also, it's quite possible (probable, for an Overlord), that one of the companions is a mage, which further alleviates the "can't do anything" worries. If a Necromantic class finds itself completely tapped out for resources, it's focusing a little too much on short term casting.

Wouldn't the weekly structure make it a 15 minute work week instead of a work day? As I understand it, part of the issue behind the 15 minute work day problem is that with the limited daily resources, you only have the spells/PP/whatever to work at peak capacity for a relatively short amount of time compared to your refresh time, doubly so if you decide to use your resources at a faster rate in order to eke out more power ("going nova").

The emphasis on longer-duration effects is a partial solution to this. It deals with the issue of temporal concentration of power (your buffs last all day/week/eternity, so they are always spread across later encounters). It does not address the issue of having nothing to do once everything's been cast; a spellcaster pulls out the crossbow just the same whether the spells he cast were instantaneous fireballs or day-long buffs that are still in effect. You need some sort of always-available abilities (per-enounter, at-will, or just some sort of slow and limited replenishment of the primary resource for use with more immediately useful magic) in order to avoid that awkwardness. Having a minion who still has gas isn't enough if the minion acts independently, because that still leaves those same unused spell-less spellcaster actions. The character + the character's features (ie: minions) might be contributing each round, but the character alone would not be, which is, as I said above, awkward1. From what I remember of what you've discussed elsewhere about the various necromantic classes, and about Arhosa spellcasters in general, you were planning on giving them some more active basic abilities to use when not throwing necros around, which should deal with this just fine.

(click to show/hide)

Another issue that I don't know if you've discussed is the sheer length of time that 1 week is for an adventurer. In a full-fledged dungeon crawl, with the standard average of 4 encounters/day and 13.3 encounters/level, 1 week can be the span of 2 full character levels. In practice, it tends to work out as somewhat less, closer to 1.5 character levels from my experience, and non-dungeon crawl adventures (such as the Red Hand of Doom module) frequently have more downtime, meaning that a week can be from 0.5 to 1 character level (plus or minus in more extreme cases). The choices you make in spending your grave tokens can easily be in effect a full character level later. If you overspend your grave tokens early (a particularly difficult fight, perhaps, or just poor budgeting), you might be unable to correct your mistake until you've leveled up once or twice. When you're going up against intelligent enemies that can adapt, walking away for a week to recover tends not to work out so well (much like taking an unplanned, non-vacation week off of work in real life).

Might there be some way to generate temporary grave tokens? It may alleviate some of the problem of running out of your weekly grave tokens if you invest more in the instantaneous necros rather than the week-long buffs, and since they'd expire quickly they'd avoid long term problems. The problem is the capacity for loading up more on long-duration buffs, so spending temporary tokens might result in a sharp reduction in Necros duration to compensate.

This might just be too needlessly complicated to be useful, but I can't help but be concerned even given the fact that most Necromantic characters will have a single minion they can order to fight for them even if they're run out of tokens for the week. Mostly it's just a late-night, rambling thought. Feel free to ignore it. :)

If some sort of temporary grave token system does get implemented, preventing long-term buffs could be done by having ongoing necros paid for with temporary grave tokens end when the temporary tokens would go away, essentially capping a necro's duration at the duration of any temporary tokens used to pay for it. So you could put up a week-long buff using 5 minute tokens, but the buff would only last for 5 minutes instead of the full week.