Undead summons

[Jaeram]

I was thinking the same thing, the most notable exception being a summon along with a familiar or animal companion. Even if you can only have 1 you could at least make it comparable to the other summons you know, like the levels and stuff. On a similar topic I also feel that the shadows, the undead companions that classes like shadow dancer, certain clerics with the proper domain, and black guards get seem to have the same problem, after your character hits like level 3 or 4 (which is pretty much the very beginning for us) the shadow becomes pretty much useless. I wonder if there is a way to easily alter these spells and abilities?

[Gairun]

Changing what you summon from spells, or the characteristics of the summoned creatures is very easy to do. At least it was when I did it a few years ago, and after my poking around in the new toolset it seems not too much has changed. It would just take alot of time writing it all out. However I still think that the 1 summons per PC is enforced by a hard-code and am not sure if it can be worked around? Somebody with more up to date experience with the toolset would have to chime in on this.

[sharringtonm]

Multiple summons are possible but its not so simple as writing a workaround. It requires replacing 4 of the default scripts for summoned monsters, removing the dreadmaster PRC (which interferes with this system with its cohort summons),and rewriting and rebalancing every summon, call, animate, create, and binding spell.

This is before thinking about how much a army of skeletons would hurt server stability, lag, and the other player's fun. My recommendation for all you wanna be necromancers and insta army summoners is this: Patience. Eventually when quests hit, so will factions changes. MAYBE you'll be able to get on friendly terms with the Dark Advent critters. Then you can tell everyone that they are part of your 'army'.

As for replacing them.... talk to the boss. Thats all I'm willing to say on that.

[Landaren]

I'm not really one to bump my own topic, but it seems like this thread was rather well taken and most agreed with the point.

I'd like to hear the Bosses opinion on the things we have discussed in the thread

[BattlePixie]

I am not sure if this is in place at the moment or not (and since we are talking about tweaking the summon spells) is there an alignment shift for summoning spells (thinking particularily of undead summons)?

[Machiavelli]

I agree with what's been said in this thread with respect to the fact that common sense would suggest that undead summons really should be something other than totally crap (and they do suck). But, and it's a big 'but', any character who can make use of these sorts of summons is a fairly powerful spelcaster to start with. Medium to high level clerics and wizards are dangerous as it is, and giving them more powerful undead summons would only make them more so. Using the undead is cool and all, but look on it as an RP opportunity rather than something which increases your character's combat power. If you're known to be a powerful mage or cleric, then people ought to take the presence of undead you've created as a serious threat, that's just good RP. The complaint here is about game mechanics, and any PC who can make use of these spells has no issue about being too weak in terms of those. Use your summons for RP and most likely people will play along.

[Jaeram]

All I was looking for was for the undead summoning spells to atleast be closer in strength to the summon creature spells. I mean look at level 3 spells, you can either animate dead for a really shitty skeleton, or you can summon a wolf that could take on like 7 of those same skeletons at the same time, which one are you going to choose? If you are already going to be able to summon a creature of that strength, at the level, then who cares if it's an undead or a wolf. Would I use the undead myself, probably not, would it be nice to see another aspect of the game less gimped? Yes.

[Vejuz]

Just for the sake of emphasis, said skeleton is level 1 and has 6 HP. A lone goblin could kill it.

-V

[Gairun]

A powerful cleric or wizard? Your joking right Mach? Animate dead is a level 3 spell, I'm sorry I mispoke, Animate dead is a wasted level 3 spell slot. While I understand where your trying to go with your post no one is going to fear a necromancer if he summons tinkerbells skeleton, which promptly dies from a rock thrown at it by the local neighborhood bully.

Also the need to fix Animate dead and it's associated spells is to possibly fix other classes like Pale Masters who are totally shafted by allready having their spell progression halved, Contrary to the regular PnP rules (no one knows why Obsidian did this). Fixing animate dead to actually be a usefull ability would go a long way to helping this.


EDIT: One of my characters who CAN cast this spell is by no means a 'powerhouse' and would get creamed by alot of people his same level. If they saw him summon a skeleton they would probaly just laugh, and hopefully take pity on me while gang beating me within an inch of my life, leaving me to suffer the humiliation in some dirty sewage ditch in Sundren City. . . yeah. . . not a powerful guy.

[Landaren]

LOL I can imaging the bully from the simpsons Nelson throwing the rock and doing his signature laugh *Ha ha*

[rustediron]

GRRRR! Palemaster is NOT THAT BAD! *stamps foot in rage*

Someone told me that palemaster is an arcane spellcaster that has sacrificed some of their arcane ability to mess around with their own body - hence the spell progression.

[Machiavelli]

A powerful cleric or wizard? Your joking right Mach? Animate dead is a level 3 spell, I'm sorry I mispoke, Animate dead is a wasted level 3 spell slot. While I understand where your trying to go with your post no one is going to fear a necromancer if he summons tinkerbells skeleton, which promptly dies from a rock thrown at it by the local neighborhood bully.

Anyone who can cast level 3 cleric or level 4 mage spells doesn't need the undead to beef up their combat potential. Once again, this is a complaint about game mechanics. If people show no fear of the undead you summon, and that decision is based on their OOC knowledge of those summon's stats then it's not cool (in fact it's meta-gaming). Are there not hideously powerful undead in the Necropolis? How would a PC be certain that you haven't created a minion of similar power? People should ask themselves these questions rather than simply making assumptions. If it's for IC reasons, then it probably wouldn't (or shouldn't) matter how powerful your skeleton/zombie/whatever is. I played a Necromancer on the server in both its incarnations, and in the first one he ended up evil: He used to go around with summoned undead for RP purposes, and most people showed appropriate levels of unease and fear about the situation (rather than just declaring the summons to be nerfed and proceeding to pwnzlorz them after laughing in his face about necromancy being crap when PCs do t).

I'll remake my original point; Undead are still good for RP, even if they are unrealistically weak. In the end, whether a PC shows fear toward the undead you create (and they are in fact created and not 'summoned') will depend on whether they fear your character, or on how they're RPing the situation. If everyone is simply dismissing the importance of undead in RP situations on the basis that they know the spell to be weak, that isn't cool and in fact is killing RP opportunities.

[sharringtonm]

I think what a lot of people are worried about is this: If there going to play an evil wizard, they will most likely get attacked by the good guys for it. PVP. Even if there is RP.

Now if they expect PVP as a result of the RP, which would they rather have at their side? The lvl 1 Skeleton with 6 hps or the Level 5 Dire Wolf with 56 HP, AB of +6, Knockdown, AC 15, etc? Both are the same level spell.

If there is no PVP imminent, I would have to agree there is no reason to strengthen the creations. Running around with Undead does tend to get you killed by other players, Unless your Landren, and he's get braver by the day and is gonna walk into the wrong area filled with lvl 15 good guys one of these days....

Not trying to say anyones wrong, jsut showing another Point of view.

[Dark presence]

I tend to disagree with Machiavelli. Its fine and good to pretend fear of the undead and their owner the first time you meet them. But once you ICly beat that 6 HP skeleton with a stick and it instantly falls apart, there is suddenly zero reason to fear it anymore. Its a paper tiger.

There is RP to gloss over OOC game mechanics and then there is RP of IC physics and realities that are totally observable by characters.

This guy makes skeletons. They die from one hit from a club. He is not very scary.

[Machiavelli]

This guy makes skeletons. They die from one hit from a club. He is not very scary.

This statement amounts to saying "No PC Necromancer is worthy of any sort of fear on the basis of their experimentations with the undead". If this is the attitude people have, I think that's unfortunate. I'm not going to say that it's wrong, or that people shouldn't do it, but the comments in this thread do make me a bit sad. Suspension of disbelief people! If you can act like there are elves and gnomes, why can't you act like a PC's undead summons have stats other than the ones you know them to have, if the situation warrants it?