Necromancers and Evokers

[RadiantPhoenix]

Regarding Wizard divisions:
I'd go with:

• The Necromancer: Gets Necromancy, and Divination
• The Conjurer: Gets Conjuration and Evocation
• The [something]: Gets Transmutation and Abjuration
• The Beguiler: Gets Enchantment and Illusion
• Some effects in schools are made available for other Wizards, as are Universal spells.

[Username17]

I think K got it in one: you're conflating splitting up Wizards by flavor and splitting up Wizards by mechanics. There is nothing that a "Wizard" could do that in principle could not be done by a "Necromancer". The energies that swirl around a Necromancer are black or purple for the most part, but nothing is actually stopping them conceptually from making minions, killing enemies, controlling actions, buffing allies, or denying territory with those mystic energies.

Splitting Necromancers off from other Wizards weakens both, but only actually, not conceptually. That is, after having written any finite number of spells, if some of the spells are on the Wizard list and some of the spells are on the Necromancer list instead, then obviously there are less options available to both Necromancers and Wizards than if all the spells you had written were available to both. But if you wrote infinite spells, the two would be essentially the same, save that one of the lists would get all its teleporting and area denial done with clouds of blood or glowing darkness or something.

Necromancers are a plausible sounding segment to take out of the whole of magic users, but there is no mechanical relevance to the grouping. It's functionally equivalent to any other arbitrary grouping - such as name schooling ("Thassalonian Mages") or color wheels ("Red Wizards"). The answer to what your arbitrary group of five or eight or thirteen flavors of casters can do is simply "have access to a fraction of the available spell space, and by extension be less completely ridiculous in breadth (and by implication: power) than a D&D caster is."

-Username17

[ishy]

Consider this; a wizard and a cleric both cast Dispel Magic during combat. During that one round at least, the wizard is an idiot. The cleric gets access to dispel magic at the same time the wizard does (5th level), is just as effective at dispelling things but has a d8 hit die, is layered in armor, has a favored fort save, access to EVERY SINGLE CLERIC SPELL EVER (wizards can only cast what's in their spellbook; clerics can pick any divine spells on their list every morning) and can actually hit something with their weaponry when the want to. The wizard is more likely to get hurt and killed during that round (or at least have their spell disrupted) than the cleric but is doing the exact same thing. He is suddenly the go-bots to the cleric's transformers.

You're chasing a sunk cost here though. I have no clue what a go-bot is, but if dispel magic is the best spell in that round that the wizard can cast, it is still her best option.
Think about it like this, if you removed all spells from the wizard spell list that clerics gain at the same time or earlier, would you consider the wizard to be just as strong or weaker?

If people want wizards to raise necromatic armies (and they do), they should be better at that then the clerics (which they aren't). They have to, otherwise the player would be better off writing "cleric" on their character sheet and calling themselves a necromancer. And the same applies to layering the party in protective wards, summoning monsters and peering into the aether to discern the best route to follow. I'm not trying to have wizards replace clerics, just to have specializations where they excel beyond what a cleric or a druid could do because you are giving a heck of a lot up just writing "wizard" on your character sheet instead of "cleric".

Except that is not true at all, you have to compare the whole package. The wizard can't write cleric while raising the army and then write wizard when stuff crops up where the wizard is better.

[Shatner]

Consider this; a wizard and a cleric both cast Dispel Magic during combat. During that one round at least, the wizard is an idiot. The cleric gets access to dispel magic at the same time the wizard does (5th level), is just as effective at dispelling things but has a d8 hit die, is layered in armor, has a favored fort save, access to EVERY SINGLE CLERIC SPELL EVER (wizards can only cast what's in their spellbook; clerics can pick any divine spells on their list every morning) and can actually hit something with their weaponry when the want to. The wizard is more likely to get hurt and killed during that round (or at least have their spell disrupted) than the cleric but is doing the exact same thing. He is suddenly the go-bots to the cleric's transformers.

You're chasing a sunk cost here though. I have no clue what a go-bot is, but if dispel magic is the best spell in that round that the wizard can cast, it is still her best option.
Think about it like this, if you removed all spells from the wizard spell list that clerics gain at the same time or earlier, would you consider the wizard to be just as strong or weaker?

If people want wizards to raise necromatic armies (and they do), they should be better at that then the clerics (which they aren't). They have to, otherwise the player would be better off writing "cleric" on their character sheet and calling themselves a necromancer. And the same applies to layering the party in protective wards, summoning monsters and peering into the aether to discern the best route to follow. I'm not trying to have wizards replace clerics, just to have specializations where they excel beyond what a cleric or a druid could do because you are giving a heck of a lot up just writing "wizard" on your character sheet instead of "cleric".

Except that is not true at all, you have to compare the whole package. The wizard can't write cleric while raising the army and then write wizard when stuff crops up where the wizard is better.

Gobots (apologies for the superfluous hyphen in my original post) were a Transformers rip-off created by Tonka. The former is considered the lesser version of the latter. Back to the matter at hand, what you're saying, Ishy, is correct; wizards are by-and-large better than clerics and the changes I've made above are an overall boost to wizards (though boosts aimed to support under-performing but desired specializations) without also reigning in what made wizards better to begin with. As you point out, my necromancer can be a necro-lord when it suits him and then go back to casting Fireball and teleport when it doesn't.


As many have stated elsewhere, actually creating new flavors of wizard is a time-intensive task since the wizard class is really defined as "has a favored will save and access to literally hundreds of pages of printed spells they can pick from a la carte"; to make a truly non-wizard necromancer, for example, you'd have to define rigid boundaries between what in the vast ocean of wizard-spells the necromancer actually has access to, possibly including none of them. Then you'd have to write enough spells and abilities to make the new necromancer worth taking. Again, that's a lot to do for an option your players may not even explore. Now, in my gaming group, my regular players aren't power gamers, nor do they care for the fiddlier classes; they'd prefer to play a sorcerer to a wizard because daily spell preparation is, for them, normally not worth the hassle. As such, I could release changes like those above and suddenly make interesting new concepts available (the necromancer, the seer, the abjurer, etc.) and not have to put in the extra legwork needed to not make these new options a boost to the wizard class. And I could do that because I knew in advance that my players weren't going to take full advantage of the wizard class to begin with; they'd by-and-large stick to the spells that were thematically appropriate for their class or organically appropriate for their character instead of what was actually the most effective. I guess I should have stated all that as a caveat when I first posted. Regardless, I'll do it now.


My proposed changes aren't balanced and they are, as-is, a boost to the wizard class; a class which certainly doesn't need boosting. I think they contain some cool ideas which might inspire other DMs to do neat stuff, allowing desired but underperforming wizard-like concepts to be more viable/less of a trap option. These changes only worked for my campaign because I knew my players weren't going to capitalize on this boost and would instead focus on the thematic elements even if it meant their character wasn't as mighty as they could otherwise be. If this is NOT true of your gaming group, you shouldn't use these suggestions as-is; if you use them at all I recommend you do the extra work I was too lazy to do and reign in the excessive power that comes from free access to the wizard spell list.

[Username17]

The Dread Necromancer is totally a class that exists. You could just use that.

The thing is that yes, D&D magic is way too fucking broad and a vital component of paring it down to something that isn't insane would be to split it into a lot more than Wizards/Clerics/Druids/Losers like it is in the PHB. The spell lists should be much more numerous and they should be more radically different. That won't fix D&D's issues with exponential wizard power, but it will be a start. It will be a start for a new edition, but it will be a start.

If a new edition of D&D doesn't split the "wizard" into at least four classes, it isn't serious about fixing caster/mundane issues. Similarly, you gotta cut the Cleric into at least 3 classes, and the Druid into at least 2. There can be some overlap, like how the Dread Necromancer is a hybrid of Cleric and Wizard.

Now for 3rd edition games, there is no fix to the Wizard. I don't think there can be one. But people are happy enough playing Beguilers and Dread Necromancers and Summoners and shit. Or even Fire Mages/Green Mages/ Snowscapers. And if you just have people do that instead of playing "Wizards", then everyone is happier and everything works better.

People actually want to have a magical "shtick" that is more than just "uses all the good magic of whatever level". When you show them to the archetype mage classes that are more limited thematically and have less magical dumpster diving abilities, they are fine with that.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

The reason I wrote the first paragraph of the original post, the one where I described how I was trying to reduce Wizard power levels and why, was to make it clear that I wasn't just asking for any ideas that would fit the Necromancer or Evoker concepts, but rather that I was asking for ways to limit those concepts to something that would be Rogue-level while still feeling like what people think of for Necromancers or Evokers. Yes, Necromancers can conceptually use basically all magic so long as they're wearing black while they do it, but my goal is very explicitly to prevent them from doing that.

[Voss]

Right. Which is why people are saying use classes with limited spell lists like the Dread Necromancer and the warmage as a base. You can always strip out some of the pile of extra class abilities the DN gets if you want to go further.

But if you want to limit what they can cast and nerf wizards, then set spell lists is best way to do it.

But people are also suggesting you build it around a real theme, not the bullshit schools that D&D uses. Fire mage works. Even elementalist works. But 'evoker' pretty much dies in a ditch.

[Foxwarrior]

A necromancer that isn't Dread, for your perusal, which has been balanced against ToB stuff, mostly: http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Grimoire_Necro ... e_Class%29

The wiki also has easily dozens of very different High-balance takes on the Evoking concept.

[Chamomile]

I already said that the only thing about the Evoker that I felt needed to be in the game was that it was a mage that murdered things with fire and lightning, and that if it ended up better described as something other than an Evoker, that's fine. I am quickly growing tired of people restating the problem I opened the thread with and acting like this should come as a revelation to me.

I'm still looking over the Dread Necromancer. It looks like it might be what I'm looking for. The Grimoire Necromancer is decisively not, though. It states its dealbreaking failure point in its own mission statement: To make a D&D character class that plays like something from Diablo II, i.e. someone who kills monsters and gets loot and nothing else ever. Its combat mechanics are functional, but as-is all it makes me want to do is go play Diablo.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Another elemental blasty idea. You could cast a fireball that leaves a fire elemental behind when it detonates. Again, if there's gonna be a dedicated summoner those elementals should probably just be speed bumps, but that could still slow enemies down meaningfully.

[Prak]

I think Cham's already gotten this idea, but I would reiterate the idea of "no evoker, no summoner, just conjurer (evocation and conjuration." That way the guy who throws around fireballs can also call up fire elementals. That, or the summoner should summon non-elemental things. Possibly from a hat.

[Foxwarrior]

Okay, looks like I was exaggerating slightly about the number of Evokerish classes hanging about. So here's a few choice ones, with reasons why you're going to dismiss them:

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Wordmaster_%283.5e_Class%29 or http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Word_Wizard_%283.5e_Class%29 or http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Alchemist,_Var ... e_Class%29: An entire different casting mechanic for one of your Wizard splits? No thank you. Also, they're not evocation-focused enough.

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Fire_Mage_%283.5e_Class%29: You already thought of this one.

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Electric_Mage_%283.5e_Class%29: It's only got lightning.

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Bender_of_Fire ... e_Class%29: It's mostly just fire, and you don't want to steal one of the Avatar classes by itself.

[Chamomile]

I am actually considering just using the Fire Mage. It fulfills the role of "kills things dead with magic" that I want the Evoker to have, it's at the balance point I want, and out of all the elemental blasty things D&D uses, fire is easily the most iconic and satisfying.

The word classes look really cool to me, but unfortunately they do dramatically increase the difficulty of selling players on the house rules. "Here's five classes with the same spell mechanics but which are more balanced" is something most people will swallow. "Here's a class with a complicated and versatile new system you have to learn" is less so. Not to mention they step on the toes of other classes both conceptually and mechanically.

The firebender class is, granted, primarily fire. It's also immediately recognizable as firebending, so it'll have to be refluffed to avoid that. And if I do that, I cannot then introduce bending classes later on as eastern arcane warrior stuff. That said, it introduces the concept of "trap saves" which are awesome because they make HP damage relevant to saves, something which my house rules have needed anyway.

When I think of D&D mages, I don't typically think of Cole McGrath. It's a cool class, but it's not really iconic. Maybe if the fire and lightning mage had a baby, and that baby also had some ice stuff...

EDIT: Removed sentence fragment.

[Foxwarrior]

I think Kaelik did something with multiple elements: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51311

[ModelCitizen]

I'm still looking over the Dread Necromancer. It looks like it might be what I'm looking for. The Grimoire Necromancer is decisively not, though. It states its dealbreaking failure point in its own mission statement: To make a D&D character class that plays like something from Diablo II, i.e. someone who kills monsters and gets loot and nothing else ever. Its combat mechanics are functional, but as-is all it makes me want to do is go play Diablo.

What the fuck is "Grimoire?" I managed to read about a line and a half about the Grimoire of Balanced Whatever before I got angry and closed the tab.

[Foxwarrior]

It's Ghostwheel's version of the Tomes, but with the goal of having characters like Rogues who don't use UMD as the type of WotC stuff you keep, rather than the Wizard/Cleric/Druid bunch. He likes killing things with lots of damage, and giving things so much HP that they can take several rounds of focused fire.

Are you really a "true denner" if you close the tab when you get angry instead of posting an angry comment?

[Ted the Flayer]

I think I would get booted out of here if anyone knew how often I see and hear people say stupid things and don't get into weeks-long shouting matches with them. I've been told by people I've argued with that when they argue with me they are even stronger in their position which makes me not want to argue with anyone.

[Foxwarrior]

Have you tried agreeing emphatically instead, Ted?

[...You Lost Me]

I think I would get booted out of here if anyone knew how often I see and hear people say stupid things and don't get into weeks-long shouting matches with them. I've been told by people I've argued with that when they argue with me they are even stronger in their position which makes me not want to argue with anyone.

People tend to say that, and as far as I know it's a lie. They say it because (especially on the internet) any time their point is soundly countered with actual evidence or logic, it must be a personal attack on their faith in [whatever]. That gives them a rush of fight-or-flight stress hormones, and it triggers their fighting instincts instead of their reasoning instincts. People usually start saying they're stronger in their position around the same time that they start repeating their original points as if those points meant anything, accusing you of walking the party line, calling you blind/stupid/whatever, or blindly quoting sources that give them good feels.

What actually happens is that every time someone is logically cornered and feels like they need to fight, they become more and more uncomfortable with the concept of debating it. Because we're human beings and you can never truly remove bullheadedness from us, you're unlikely to change people's opinions, but every time you counter someone with a nicely reasoned argument, they're less likely to spew their crap somewhere else.

[Ted the Flayer]

Have you tried agreeing emphatically instead, Ted?

Have you heard some of the things that come out of some of my friend's mouths? I just can't do it.

[ModelCitizen]

It's Ghostwheel's version of the Tomes, but with the goal of having characters like Rogues who don't use UMD as the type of WotC stuff you keep, rather than the Wizard/Cleric/Druid bunch. He likes killing things with lots of damage, and giving things so much HP that they can take several rounds of focused fire.

Didn't WotC already make that game?

[fectin]

Outrage is not a 'nicely reasoned arguement,' not even when combined with snark. When you have a history of offering only outrage, you discredit any position you argue for, and people tend to oppose you reflexively. It's like how Mr_GC could have said "the sky is blue" and still would have gotten pushback.

On topic, the fundamental problem with necromancers is that you're trying to balance "create story element" with "bigger fireballs." I don't know that it's impossible to balance those; I've just never seen it done.

[RadiantPhoenix]

On topic, the fundamental problem with necromancers is that you're trying to balance "create story element" with "bigger fireballs." I don't know that it's impossible to balance those; I've just never seen it done.

It's possible, although there might be no other way than making bigger fireballs create story elements and story elements do something more closely equivalent to bigger fireballs.

[fectin]

Exalted sort-of balanced everything, but only because Exalted's balance point is a combination of completely orthogonal systems and "fuck it."

Figuratively, anyway.

Except for Lunars.

Otherwise, 3E is probably the closest to balanced of any creation system I'm aware of. And even 3E goes screaming off the rails when you get to undead. It's basically the Druid problem, writ larger: if you can trawl every book for the best zombie chassis, break the action economy, conduct all your conflicts by proxy, and use renewable resources (spells) for ongoing benefit, it's really, really hard to find a counterbalance point for that.

[Koumei]

Didn't WotC already make that game?

Oh snap!

---

If specifically making your own game where you've already said "Right, we're splitting the casters into simpler, smaller, more thematic things" (including just your own campaign), the evoker really has been covered. For the necromancer, the Dread Necromancer is a very real thing, or you could do an at-will thing that's a bit like a warlock with more focus on summoning... actually, you'd do the Diablo II necromancer, but with more skeletons. But you'd seriously do that - bone walls, bone spears, curses, poison clouds, exploding curses, ghost armour.

It'd be cool to see the Cleric less of one massive spell list and more a case of "Your deity/concept/self-worship has X domains available, you get 2 at level 1, and 1 every 5 levels thereafter. Each one has a real domain power, a proficiency, some class skills and several spells per level**" so that the Cleric is vastly different depending on whether you worship Vecna, Kord, New Pelor, Old Pelor, that shiny rock on top of Mount Cockstomp, or indeed yourself.

And that seems like the best way to divide the Cleric up.

I suppose Druid could be TREE MAN (the weather and plant and ground and water based spells, plantshape -> elementalshape) and ANIMAL MAN (wildshape -> magibeastshape, animal companion, animal and natural weapon based spells)? The point would actually be to split the spell-list up, after all.

**Or do away with spells and have multiple domain powers that happen to be spell-like abilities or whatever