Tome of Necromancy (Full)

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Crissa
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Crissa »

Is it possible to replace the pumpkins with turnips?

Those things creeped me out.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1149328418[/unixtime]]Is it possible to replace the pumpkins with turnips?

Those things creeped me out.

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If you want them to use Mangelwurzels instead of pumpkins, that would be fine. For the modern American audience, it would normally be pumpkins.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Crissa »

Yeah, but what about the fire component to the turnips?

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by User3 »

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1149452341[/unixtime]]Yeah, but what about the fire component to the turnips?

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Image

P.S.
Mangel wurzels? MANGEL WURZELS??? Where do you learn all this stuff, Frank? :boggle:
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

Catharz wrote: Mangel wurzels? MANGEL WURZELS??? Where do you learn all this stuff, Frank? :boggle:


Don't you know who I am?

I'M THE JUGGERNAUT, BITCH!
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

Pumpkin King is the fixed.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by fbmf »

Except that it seems to have lost its title, introductory quotation, and flavor text.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1149814157[/unixtime]]Except that it seems to have lost its title, introductory quotation, and flavor text.

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Fine. Now it is fixed.

Razzle frazzle.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by The_Matthew »

Hey Frank, the Heartless Mage is missing the skills per level.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by User3 »

The "A Feast Unknown" feat says "no undead can have a CR greater than your character level." If it is a typo, it needs to be fixed. If it is an intentional exception to the "two less than the creator’s character level." limit specified in the general description of [Necromantic] feats it should specifically say so.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Draco_Argentum »

About the necromantic creation feats. With four of them and a cha of 18 you could have 16 undead dudes follow you around. Wouldn't that be a pain in the ass since your character would get 10x the screen time in a fight. I can see that pissing off the rest of the group fast.

Body assemblage seems to be the worst feat of the group. The others tend to have a side benefit in addition to making undead.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Draco_Argentum »

For the wight would body assemblage be an appropriate feat?

Would an arcane version of the Lord of the Damned with 1/2 BAB, d4 HD be reasonable? Its strictly worse so perhaps 4 skills/level or good fort save (or both).
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

About the necromantic creation feats. With four of them and a cha of 18 you could have 16 undead dudes follow you around. Wouldn't that be a pain in the ass since your character would get 10x the screen time in a fight. I can see that pissing off the rest of the group fast.


That's true. D&D, despite coming from a miniatures wargame, has never really had an adequate way to get armies on your side. The rules for leading troops are generally profoundly sub-adequate, while at the same time they are inherently abusable. Getting 25 hirelings with pitchforks = useless, but the same 25 guys going prone in a dispersed area with heavy crossbows and 2 +4 quarrels a piece (from one casting of GMW) is high quality. And the cost differences at high level aren't even meaningful.

I am extremely aware that one can go a whuppin and a whompin on people with an army of the dead if you plan things out properly and throw down everything into Necromantic creation and undead buffing. But I look at it similarly to people calling attention to the fact that technically Leadership is repeatable, or that there are ways to make Stone Golems without spending XP (or in fact, anything).

Like any army creation setup, it needs to be in a Battlefield scenario or commando raid or it's going to unbalance things. If your small army just gets to concentrate fire onone monstrous opponent in the woods, a leader-character isn't even close to balanced.


Body assemblage seems to be the worst feat of the group. The others tend to have a side benefit in addition to making undead.

Well, Body Assemblge is also the most dangerous feat, because it makes creatures that have their CRs calculated in a very weird and abusable way. Especially once awaken undead is in the mix, that feat is probably the one that needs the tightest DM control.

For the wight would body assemblage be an appropriate feat?


Wights are actually torn down from living creatures rather than built up from corpses, so it would probably go into A Feast Unknown or even Whispers of the Otherworld. But they are so easy to make that it doesn't even seem necessary to have a necromantic creation option.

Would an arcane version of the Lord of the Damned with 1/2 BAB, d4 HD be reasonable? Its strictly worse so perhaps 4 skills/level or good fort save (or both).


I actually think that the Arcane/Divine split is lame. But the concept of the split is that Divine Magic gets to do all the sorting stuff about who gets what when they die. So the whole thing where you torture people until they are going to rise as ghouls is really a Divine thing. Also, arcane spellcasters do't normally get Rebuking.

The one that does, though, is the Dread Necromancer. So the class should probably get a d6 hit points when used as an Arcane caster. Chances are... very good that a Lord of the Damned based on Arcane Magic would have come in as a Dread Necromancer.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Draco_Argentum »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1150221482[/unixtime]]
Like any army creation setup, it needs to be in a Battlefield scenario or commando raid or it's going to unbalance things. If your small army just gets to concentrate fire onone monstrous opponent in the woods, a leader-character isn't even close to balanced.


Thats what I was thinking. Comes down to leaving most of them in the bat cave as guards. Its not like getting a bat cave is hard, just steal someone else's.


Well, Body Assemblge is also the most dangerous feat, because it makes creatures that have their CRs calculated in a very weird and abusable way. Especially once awaken undead is in the mix, that feat is probably the one that needs the tightest DM control.


Fair call. I'd blame awaken undead but thats a cool efffect that seems to have a solid base of player support.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by fbmf »

If the bone rider also gets the Blackguard's Fiendish Servant, can they be combined? If so, how?

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

fbmf at [unixtime wrote:1150252316[/unixtime]]If the bone rider also gets the Blackguard's Fiendish Servant, can they be combined? If so, how?


Nope. The Paladin's Mount also does not cumulate with an Undead Mount. The intention is that the character is going to jump into Bone Rider before they would get a Paladin's Mount or a Blackguard's Fiendish Consort.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by fbmf »

Okay, then what 20 level build do you forsee, assuming only core, BoVD, and LM? (No Heroes of Horror or wherever the Bone Knight is from.)

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Draco_Argentum »

For secrets of Undead Creation anything with fel animate slapped on top is technically an undead creation spell. There has to be better cheese than fel animate meteor swarm though.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

20 level builds? :shudder: A fighter character can't compete with a 20 level build. But anyway, let's put one together:

Early life: Ranger 1/Raladin 2/ Fighter 1 -> Bone Knight

Charisma to saves, a decent pile of skill points, and some mounted combat abilities.

Then we get ourselves to 9th level, and you cast 4th level spells. That's never going to get better, but at least your caster level keeps up with your class level. Your spells are almost level appropriate now, but they're going to fall behind sharply.

So where are we going with this? We'd like to take levels of Champion of the People, but Races of War hasn't even been written yet. So we're going to go back and look at viable stuff from WotC material.

Ur Priest is actually even more broken than normal in her hands, because the Ur Priest's caster level bullshit stacks with Bone Rider casting in silly ways. I'm assuming you don't care, because that's dumb.

More importantly, you can take enough levels of Cavalier to get a Burst of Speed and an extra charge damage multiplier. Remember that the text trumps the table, so there's actually no limit to the number of times you can use Deadly Charge. After level 3, the class doesn't provide anything good until level 10, and that's not worth it.

And then you get yourself killed and come back as a Death King I suppose, because your Charisma adds in on your Gaze attacks anyway.

And then you have two more levels to do... something... with. Planar Champion maybe? It would let your Lance attacks go extraplanar, which is key.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by fbmf »

The campaign is still some time away, so I can wait for Races of War. Thanks for your help.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by fbmf »

According to the table, the Bone Rider gets Animate Dead. Is that a SLA ?

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Neeek »

Sort of off-topic. The WotC version of this, the Tome of Fiends and the Revised Necro Handbook aren't loading (for me at least). Just FYI.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

Neeek at [unixtime wrote:1150268990[/unixtime]]Sort of off-topic. The WotC version of this, the Tome of Fiends and the Revised Necro Handbook aren't loading (for me at least). Just FYI.


We updated the books to match the current typo-corrected version yesterday on the new boards, and now the new boards aren't loading at all anymore. The edit function was pretty intermittent, I honestly don't know what the heck they are doing over there.

According to the table, the Bone Rider gets Animate Dead. Is that a SLA ?


Bah! That's the kind of thing that I should really have noticed like a month ago. Argh. OK, it's a 1/week spell-like ability. Like the Paladin's remove disease, except that you actually care because it's an ability that is any good at all when you can only use it once every so often (unlike remove disease, which is something that you need exactly four of once every other campaign or so and is therefore of no use at all once a week).

For secrets of Undead Creation anything with fel animate slapped on top is technically an undead creation spell. There has to be better cheese than fel animate meteor swarm though.


The only really important thing that does is reduce the casting time to 1 standard action and remove any bullshit spell costs. That means that what you really want is one of those long casting time or costly spells with a fell animate on it. You still have to prepare it though, so Fell Animate storm of vengeance is currently out unless you believe in divine metamagic - in which case there'd be better cheese anyway. The actual zombie creation performed by Fell Animate isn't even good, since it counts against your control limit. Still, the ability to potentially have an Eldritch Fire augmented Fell Animating control weather is a good way to start the zombie apocalypse. Hard to pull off, but totally worth it.

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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Draco_Argentum »

The actual text of the ability dosen't mention preparing the spells. I was assuming you got them sans slot requirement.
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Re: Tome of Necromancy (Full)

Post by Username17 »

Draco_Argentum at [unixtime wrote:1150345559[/unixtime]]The actual text of the ability dosen't mention preparing the spells. I was assuming you got them sans slot requirement.


Hmm... it actually just says that you choose three undead creation spells, but I think K thought it was pretty clear that he meant "choose from one of your undead creation spells" I agree that the interpretation could be made that you could choose spells that aren't even on your spell list (like Mummydust and whatever), but I also think it's pretty clear that's not what we mean.

I'll work on it a bit more to get that across better.

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