Undead summons

[Jaeram]

I see what you are saying Mach, about RP'ing it out, but I think they do have a valid point. I mean if there is a necromancer there, and a pvp situation arises, maybe not even caused by the other player but by the necromancer himself, and he sends his oh so frightful skeleton at you and you turn your head, shriek in terror, and flail wildly in front of yourself in a slapping motion and the next thing you notice is a pile of skeleton bones lying in front of your character and his tear soaked cheeks, that character is probably gonna be pissed. At that point I don't really see how you can easily RP 'omg I'm so scared of your skeleton... omg! a spider! eek!'. I think that's what it would amount to...now, if the skeleton came after you and could actually beat you to a pulp... that I would be afraid of... but I know if Orrick was threatened by a necromancer with a skeleton he would just transform in to an umberhulk or something and tear that necromancer to pieces for trying to bully him.

Edit : I guess what I mean is that while I understand RPing over some of it, you will eventually reach a point where the character is going to know that the highest level vampire that you can create is crying in the corner because that bard keeps poking him with a rapier and wont stop his inscessent singing. On the other hand, if the undead summons where improved (which I believe sharrington mentioned that it would be easy for him to make them stronger, just not make hordes of them) and made stronger, then you could continue to fear a necromancers creation even after the RP runs headlong into the stats wall that had previously broken it.

[Gairun]

I get what your takling about Mach, really I do. I used to play a Role-play text game in which none of us who played had stats or numbers in any way. We also had no pictures it was all a forum thing, and we all easily suspended belief. In that old game everyone feared the necromancer.

However with that said I will admit I play NWN2 to play DnD and I will admit to enjoying the numbers and levels and spells and summons etc. etc. If you are playing a role-playing game based on numbers, well enjoying the numbers sometimes is not a bad thing. Dice Rolls make DnD go around, however Role-playing is what makes it perfect.

[Machiavelli]

Yes, I know it's D&D, and I know numbers and dice and stuff are part of the whole experience. However, implementing something like D&D in a videogame is always going to lead to issues; the strength of undead summons is just one of them. This is an RP server, as you all know, and part of what we all need to accomplish in order to make that work is looking past the minor faults in the actual game's system with a view to promoting RP (even if you know how the games mechanics function, you and everyone else may have a richer experience if that knowledge is ignored on occasion).

I'll give an example; I ran an event yesterday where a Fell Troll cropped up in the Viridale forest. Half a dozen PCs saw it killing a whole load of goblins, and then enter the Gnoll fort and cause total carnage. If they'd made their calculations as to how to act based on game mechanics (as, I'm sorry to say, some players do), they would have gone into the fort and killed it (they could have done so very easily, as I'm sure they were aware). But, this is not what they did. They were extremely cautious, rightly fearing the unpleasant happenings around them, and developed a subtle plan for dealing with the situation. To sum up; if they'd followed game mechanics the whole event would have been over in two minutes (and I would've just ended it there), but as it was the situation went on for a good hour and a half with lots of good RP among the players and with an interesting plot developing out of it.

This doesn't just count for DM interaction, it counts for interaction among players as well. If you rely on game mechanics to sort out conflicts and interactions, then the experience will always be limited by those very same flawed mechanics, and most importantly (as a consequence) won't make much sense.

People are saying that the undead summons don't make sense. Well, if you know it doesn't make sense then work around that and act like things are different to how the game engine dictates. Don't expect the game engine to provide the experience you're looking for; however much it's tweaked, that's just not going to happen.

[paularius]

i think people were more affraide by the fact it was a DM controling the troll... you lot can hav a twisted sence of humor... hell i try run a mile when ever mako pops up (i tend to die alot and get my char insulted when he's around(ugly indeed!))

but i have a sugestion for the necromancer undead summons. make them a bit stronger but decrease the casters hp by a little bit (using his own life force to bring the dead back) or give him a negatige effect for summoning it. after all to raise the dead and bind it to your will would require alot of power.