Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Orion_II 12-01-04, 07:57 PM	I am in need of opinions here. As currently, I have a player who is playing a Necromancer, however he wants to utilize the full range of undead, such as animate dead and the like. I say this is far too overpowered, since it gives one player spellcasting and fighting with extra actions. Being able to fight and cast powerful offensive spells like Hold Person, Fireball and the like puts an unfair advantage in the hands of one player who could easily dish out 8D6+24 damage with +18 to strike (2 Cloud Giant Skeletons) per round in addition to spells. No fighter or other warrior could ever match that, at least damage wise. What's worse, it imposes a great deal upon party healers to have Inflict Spells to repair damage done to the Skeletons. Considering that no Animal Companion or Special Mount has that kind of power even at 20th level. Things to note: We've got 12th Level characters here. Our campaign setting is working for a Lawful Good Government as Soldiers in a war against Evil. The rest of the known world is evil. The Necromancer is a survivor from another nation that was destroyed. She's Neutral Good. What do you think? I really need to know. Does anyone have any ideas? I have access to Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Savage Species, the Core Rule Books, Eberron, Unearthed Arcana, Monster Manual II & III, Minis handbook, Books of Vile Darkness & Exalted Deeds, Books of Dragons & Undead, Epic Level Handbook, Arms & Equipment, Planar Handbook, Fiend Folio, and in a pinch, Deties & Demigos, and Manual of the Planes.
PhaedrusXY 12-01-04, 08:31 PM	The necromancer can repair them herself with spells like Enervation, etc. Or could research entirely new spells that use negative energy instead of some other element, like the Wall of Undeath spell one of my necromancer NPCs has. There are no restrictions, unwritten or otherwise, on arcane spellcasters wielding negative energy. Just using positive energy to heal the living (like it or not). So, that leaves your other concerns. Since the necro is good, and Animate Dead is [Evil], casting the spell is opposed to her alignment. Even if this isn't a big concern for the player, the character would eventually turn to evil after casting the spell alot, unless her other actions were "good" enough to counter this. At best, I think after a while she'd be Neutral. Also, her Good allies probably wouldn't like her running around with an entourage of undead, to say the least. So I'd let the player cast whatever spells he or she wants, and deal with it through roleplaying means. And don't feel like you need to take it easy on the undead minions and spare them the full wrath of the dice, like you might an animal companion or familiar. They are pretty much by their nature expendable, and they tend to have low hit points and ACs. As far as the spell being too powerful... I disagree. As I said, they tend to have low AC and hit points, and have a bad base attack progression. And you can get a hoard of minions in other ways, like Summoning and Charm/Dominate spells. Also, one run in with an evil cleric could turn them all against their creator faster than you can say "Rebuke Undead".
MikeTheAmazingMuskrat 12-01-04, 08:41 PM	ditto. -mike the amazing muskrat
angryman 12-01-04, 09:52 PM	Hehe, once we had a necro in our party with an army of skeletons and zombies for meat shields. Then they "got in the way" of one of my prismatic sprays and about 10-15 of them got nuked. The necro complained, but I told him if he's gonna have stinking corpses around making me look dodgy, then I'll nuke them.
fawr 12-02-04, 05:11 AM	There are a number of limits to stop someone creating zombies and becoming a whole party in his own right, Zombies cost money . Zombies are evil. This should stop the parties good clerics from "inflicting" healing on them. If they do then they should start having god problems. This should reduce the clerics problems with memorising inflict spells while also making the caster create more zombies ($$). Zombies are evil. The caster should become evil, which may hurt him at times (holy smite, etc). Zombies are evil. The party and the parties allies (That government) should have problems with this. If the government thinks that one of its heros may be going to the dark side who knows what they could do ... Zombies are a little crap. Compare their CR with that of a druids animal companion (which is free, and has some nice specials like share spell). Finding good zombie corpse could be quite hard, cloud giant corpses arent that common. A pile of low HD zombies is almost a waste of time. Big zombies (the tough ones) can have trouble fitting into some dungeons. The people you are stealing corpses from could get upset. This is likely to only be an issue if they were good though.
Nom 12-02-04, 06:29 AM	A 12th level party? Unless you're making big zombies, the first cleric you encounter is going to leave you short a lot of zombies. Come to think of it, fireball will have much the same effect. Think of the zombies as followers, not cohorts or summons.
Nom 12-02-04, 06:46 AM	To not answer your question, Animate Dead won't work on players, so avoid having any die while in your game.
Orion_II 12-02-04, 08:58 AM	Thank you for your help, but I don't think many of you got the point of my problem. The character isn't interested in mere humanoid skeletons that can be defeated easily. He wants big monster skeletons, particularly giants, hydras and other creatures that make nasty undead. Big strong ones, that can do a pounding. My greatest fear is if he discovers the power of Polymorph any Object. Huge Giant slain? *poof* instant Titan corpse. Yuan-Ti? *Poof* instant Colossal Multiheaded Half-Dragon Constrictor Snake. You get the idea. Since only Clerics 2x their HD could command them, and with 17-20 HD apiece, even mere Rebuking would be difficult since the lowest level would be a 17th level Cleric could even rebuke them. It also doesn't stop there; he also want to be able to use command undead to get access to powerful undead monsters, essentially with the words: "Join us or we'll clobber you". This is the biggest point of my problem.
Blaceros85 12-02-04, 09:30 AM	Aren't there limits on the HD of the creatures you can animate, or just make them standard ones for their size.
Ilium 12-02-04, 09:49 AM	Aren't there limits on the HD of the creatures you can animate, or just make them standard ones for their size. Yes there are limits. But they aren't enough to stop what Orion is worried about. Under normal circumstances, Animate Dead only lets you command up to your caster level * 4 in Hit Dice of undead. So if he's a single-class 12th-level character he can command up to 48 HD of undead that he has created. However he can only create up to 24 HD of undead with a single casting. In addition, creatures greater than 10 HD can't be made into zombies and creatures greater than 20 HD can't be made into skeletons. Regardless, he can still make some very tough undead. I believe someone on these boards once suggested zombie Girallons. Bad news. :) Anyway, I think the limit here is role-playing (as others have said). Even if you don't enforce the spell's Evil descriptor, everyone else will tend to assume the caster is evil (or at least deeply disrespectful of the dead). The group will start to have serious problems finding allies and even a place to stay for the night. On the other hand, if you didn't want zombies running around, he probably shouldn't have been allowed to play a necromancer in the first place. :)
Bloodtide_the_Red 12-02-04, 11:13 PM	........one player who could easily dish out 8D6+24 damage with +18 to strike (2 Cloud Giant Skeletons) per round in addition to spells. No fighter or other warrior could ever match that, at least damage wise.................. -----Not true by far. How much damage can one character do with 'pets'. Well, the fighter can have a mount, heavy war horse, awakened feindish heavy war horse, dragonne, wahtevery you'd allow. They can buy attack pets too, such as war dogs(or tigers). The fighter can easly drink a potion of charm animal(or such) to get an animal for a bit. For that matter, they can drink a potion of animate dead too. But the real gem is.....the leafdership feat. Your 12th level fighter could get a nice 10th-ish level cohort. That could be another fighter, a war-cleric, a war wizard or such that helps out the fighter. ..........Considering that no Animal Companion or Special Mount has that kind of power even at 20th level............. Somewhat. Depends what you'd allow for a Special Mount. At 20th level you can get a young gold dragon(as per the Draconomicon). You can get a dragon with the Leadership feat too... Theas can 'balance' things out for the other PC's Now, Cloud Giant undead are not all that common, you don't just go down to Corpse-Mart. So that's a limit. They are mindless, they only do what you tell them too. So if your getting pounded into the dirt by a monster, the skeleton will just stand there, unless you tell it to act. Cloud Giant skeletons have an AC of 13. Your average grandparent can hit that AC. And there saves are not so great. And lots of spells do double damage or greater effect to undead. Just think, three magic stones is 6d6+6 damage, searing light is a nice 1d6 a level. Not to mention turning. BT
Blakk_Magemaster 12-03-04, 12:23 AM	Ditto. It's basically a roleplaying aspect. No real worries here.