Necromancy

[Cooper Holt]

That's actually quite fair and stops players (or just discourages them) from just resurrecting something and immediately equipping them with super-powered weapons. Of course, it should be eventually possible to equip them with strong weapons by letting undead get stronger with experience.

Really, what I want to see in necromancy is the ability to essentially just create a new party member from a dead body. Except, to differentiate it from any normal mercenary or adventurer you find in the tavern and go travelling with, these undead minions would be both very controllable, and completely loyal and fearless (not really the right words to describe what's just a brainless skeleton you order around, but you know what I mean), so as to provide an actual benefit over said tavern-goers. You can give them equipment (so long as they can use it) and give them very specific orders or even control them directly, if you wanted to.

As for balancing's sake, I think the best way to do it would be to limit how many undead you can have following you by making undead companions be a continuous drain on your focus, and more focus is needed for stronger creatures.
Make equipment given to undead deteriorate faster, and get heavily damaged when your minion perishes. Also, of course, the undead's skills and such are all gone, so the next creature you resurrect would be rather weak compared to it. This, combined with the fact that newly created undead don't have the skills to use very strong or complex equipment, would stop a necromancer from just taking an infinity+1 sword and an infinity+1 armor set they found in a dungeon somewhere and giving it to their resurrected companion and get a ridiculously strong party member that mows everything down, only to just pick it up when it inevitably dies and hand it to the next one.

Yes! I think that all makes sense. We have it figured out.
I just hope that the devs agree...

 

[Cooper Holt]

Finally, we can all tolerate each other's existence.
Naaaaawwwwww I's just messin' with you's.

I'm pretty sure we're all on the same page, so I think these ideas should be implemented.
It all depends on whether or not the devs agree.

 

[Infidel]

As far as the equipment, I agree with the final resulting discussion: they wear down at a faster rate and have a chance of breaking or failing after the corpse's "death".

...

I also would prefer that the corpse only be made undead once. To be able to reanimate the corpse again and again, seems like too much power. However, the argument stated earlier about the degradation of the body after each reanimation is acceptable too and could bring more play-ability to our decisions.

My major concern with not being able to reanimate a corpse more than once is that a player who invests in Necromancy has no other or very limited alternative abilities. That leaves the build walking a very fine line between being too powerful (minions don't die) and nearly useless (minions die leaving you with nothing).

If they can be reanimated repeatedly but you're vulnerable while doing so then it will be easier to achieve balance since you can allow for them to be less competent in combat and work with the idea that they should be cut down in a fight rather than attempt to walk the line between keeping them alive without overpowering the build.

There's already going to be locational wounds that inhibit the performance of a character. That's a great opportunity to balance Necromancy in a realistic and immersive way by accumulating these locational wounds with each reanimation so the minion becomes noticeably and visibly more worthless with reuse. At the same time it helps get round the problem of balancing between minions being too strong to die or dying too easily leaving the Necromancer with nothing.

What if a minion could be reanimated repeatedly in a progressively damaged state but after accumulating too much damage would burn up? In this scenario equipment degrades normally (or possibly slightly faster) but takes a severe hit to its condition, possibly breaking, only when the minion actually burns up. The trigger to cause a minion to burn up may be sustaining multiple locational wounds to the same area, making it unpredictable but increasingly likely with repeated reanimation.

 

[Infidel]

I would include that the act of necromancy might have negative reactions from passersby or people in the area... Raising the dead could provoke violent/negative reactions from the populace.

That would be cool. It's a dark art and the average Joe in a low fantasy setting isn't going to like it. Having a walking corpse follow you into town could be trouble if NPC's were to react by attacking. I hope they would attack the minion rather than the player, unless they witnessed the player performing the reanimation or the player intervened, effectively showing loyalty to the undead.

I also hope that reanimating the dead takes time, but is performable in a fight if the player can buy time by outmanoeuvring, knocking over or otherwise delaying their opponent. It should take skill to pull off but not be impossible since it is a Necromancer's primary ability.

 

[Marius Voinescu]

OH OH I love what I'm hearing here, since im a big fan of the dark arts, when will Bare Mettle make a update on the subject I wonder

 

[BigT2themax]

My major concern with not being able to reanimate a corpse more than once is that a player who invests in Necromancy has no other or very limited alternative abilities. That leaves the build walking a very fine line between being too powerful (minions don't die) and nearly useless (minions die leaving you with nothing).

If they can be reanimated repeatedly but you're vulnerable while doing so then it will be easier to achieve balance since you can allow for them to be less competent in combat and work with the idea that they should be cut down in a fight rather than attempt to walk the line between keeping them alive without overpowering the build.

There's already going to be locational wounds that inhibit the performance of a character. That's a great opportunity to balance Necromancy in a realistic and immersive way by accumulating these locational wounds with each reanimation so the minion becomes noticeably and visibly more worthless with reuse. At the same time it helps get round the problem of balancing between minions being too strong to die or dying too easily leaving the Necromancer with nothing.

What if a minion could be reanimated repeatedly in a progressively damaged state but after accumulating too much damage would burn up? In this scenario equipment degrades normally (or possibly slightly faster) but takes a severe hit to its condition, possibly breaking, only when the minion actually burns up. The trigger to cause a minion to burn up may be sustaining multiple locational wounds to the same area, making it unpredictable but increasingly likely with repeated reanimation.

You actually have a very good point, necromancers would mostly just be relying on their undead minions. Although, wouldn't the type of thaumaturgy used to reanimate a corpse also have some other spells the player can use to do damage with bones or whatever, a la diablo II necromancer?

Thinking on it, maybe having undead minions level up skills and such would be a silly idea. I guess I just thought it'd be neat to just randomly have a skeleton hanging out as a normal party member.

Perhaps a better way to go about it would be to have newly resurrected corpses be weak, sluggish, and pretty dumb, but, over time (the amount of time is debatable, but I'd maybe say like, half an in-game day to a few days, or something?) they'd slowly get stronger, swifter and more able to make their own decisions. So, at first they just stumble after you blindly since you're providing their life energy, and you have to give them direct orders to attack things or control them directly like a puppet, and they'd be fairly weak, but able to swing a small sword sluggishly at enemies and will be taking a lot of hits, and eventually they will guard you intelligently, and be able to equip better weapons (but only as strong as whatever they were like alive, maybe?), and use footwork and more precise strikes to bring enemies down.

I also rescind my statement about just instant perma-death for minions, what's the point in resurrecting undead if they can't take a few hits? I like the thought of having them be affected by wounds and such until they're useless.

I'm not sure about having a big long ritual in a prepared area to revive something. Maybe only have it necessary for very large creatures? It's pretty cool, but it'd be impossible in the middle of a fight as you don't have stuff ready.

I literally just had an idea whilst typing that. Have the ritual resurrection an optional thing, but make the continuous focus drain reduced or halved when it's used, but still have it possible to revive undead in a fight . That way, there'd be a reason to do a ritual and the player could still be able to revive undead in a fight if needed.

Also, yes please on terrified villagers attacking minions, though maybe make it possible to reason with NPCs and explain that your little pet skeleton is harmless, or something? Maybe if you deck your undead out in clothes or armor so it's undead-ness isn't really visible, the villagers don't react more than just being creeped out by the strange person?

Have we all agreed on having undead minions present simply taking a chunk out of your max focus pool, depending on how many undead and how strong the original living being was you're wanting revived? If so, good.

I can't really think of anything else on the topic to cover, really. We've pretty much covered all the bases.

 

[Infidel]

...wouldn't the type of thaumaturgy used to reanimate a corpse also have some other spells the player can use...

...not sure about having a big long ritual in a prepared area to revive something. Maybe only have it necessary for very large creatures?...

...a reason to do a ritual and the player could still be able to revive undead in a fight if needed.

I'm not sure what other abilities will be available to a Necromancer so wouldn't want to count my undead chickens before they reanimate. Hopefully there will be other abilities related to Necromancy but whatever the case I'd hope reanimation were useful in combat rather than just preparation for combat.

The ritual idea you put forward certainly has potential though. What if the 'power' of a minion affected not only the amount of focus reserved but also time (cast speed) to reanimate and chance of success? This could all be tied in to the 'power' of the Necromancer.

So a Necromancer might be capable of reanimating corpses less powerful (than him or her self) with ease in combat since it takes barely the flick of a wrist and only a little focus for them to raise an angry chicken as a distraction. But a more powerful corpse requires much more effort, reserving more focus and requiring the Necromancer concentrate for longer to successfully execute the power. Perhaps if interrupted during the process the spell could fail resulting in a minion that is hostile to all, or only partially reanimated and severely impaired. Worse yet, it could explode in a mess of gore and razor sharp bone fragments that damage anyone nearby.

That way a powerful corpse may be very difficult for a strong Necromancer to raise in a fight, and an average Necromancer may find it impossible to complete the ritual without a little peace and quiet regardless of whether or not they have the focus available. A weaker Necromancer may have difficulty reanimating even a dead peasant while attempting to avoid being struct by an opponent.

Perhaps reanimating anything more powerful than the Necromancer could have an inherent chance of catastrophic failure that increases with the disparity between the Necromancer's power and that of the corpse. Ritualistic preparation could reduce or remove this, providing incentive to prepare for and conduct the reanimation in a secluded area.

 

[Infidel]

Have we all agreed on having undead minions present simply taking a chunk out of your max focus pool, depending on how many undead and how strong the original living being was you're wanting revived? If so, good. .

Seems to be the generally liked way of doing things. I'm glad to read Madoc's post saying that minions are a continuous power which reserves some of your focus, and that for more minions the player needs a larger focus pool. Now we just need to find out if more powerful minions will reserve more focus than weaker ones. I certainly hope so.

(If anyone hasn't noticed I'm updating the first post with Necromancy related developer information as it becomes available, as well as various questions that turn up where I find them.)

 

[Infidel]

Focus Reservation Minigame for Reanimation


Summary

This idea is intended to make reanimating the dead a sort of risk reward mini-game, a balancing act of sorts that could make Necromancy more interesting to perform, particularly under duress.

The basic mechanic is that when reanimating the dead focus is reserved over time until a threshold is reached to complete the ritual. The full amount of focus required to be reserved for successfully reanimating a corpse is not known when the player begins and exhausting all focus before completion results in catastrophic failure. Cancelling the ritual or being interrupted before completing it results in lesser failure with consequences becoming more severe the more focus was transferred to the corpse.


Details

In this scenario:

• More powerful corpses have a higher base reanimation threshold (reserved focus required to reanimate).
• The reanimation threshold of a corpse is variable within a range of its base value. It is never exactly the same for similar corpses or even when reanimating the same corpse multiple times.
• Focus is reserved at a constant rate until the reanimation threshold is reached. As a Necromancer improves their ability to reanimate the rate at which focus is reserved during reanimation may increase.
• The consequence of cancelling or interruption before completing the ritual is determined by how much focus was reserved as a % of the corpse's reanimation threshold.

Examples of fail results in order of severity:

1. Nothing happens, you wasted a little focus and the corpse collapses.
2. The corpse reanimates in an impaired state but is not under the Necromancer's control.
3. The corpse reanimates fully but is not under the Necromancer's control
4. The corpse bursts becoming unusable and resulting in a sticky mess.
5. The corpse explodes damaging anything nearby, leaving nothing but splatters and giblets.

Catastrophic failure!
If the player exhausts all their focus while attempting to reanimate a corpse the corpse being reanimated incurs whatever consequence is due based on how much focus has been transferred, all other minions under the player's control collapse to the floor lifeless. The Necromancer is alone and exhausted but may reanimate their dead minions once enough focus has been regenerated. Alternatively this could be much worse if all minions had a chance of randomly succumbing to any of the reanimation failure consequences.


What might this achieve?

• Practice to learn without skill grinding
  The player can attempt to reanimate anything regardless of their available focus but must learn through trial and error whether they have enough focus to successfully reanimate a particular type of creature. Failure could result in no harm, a powerful new enemy to fight or a very messy surprise.

• Balance between reanimation in combat and ritual preparation
  Due to the constant rate of focus reservation and variable reanimation threshold the reanimation of weaker corpses is faster and easier to perform in combat than for more powerful corpses. Reanimating a formidable minion might be nearly impossible during combat due to the risk of interruption.

• Risk / Reward
  The player may add another minion to the horde but risks repercussions for failing to reanimate it. Attempting to reanimate during combat could waste the corpse, create a new enemy or result in the collapse of all minions if the player is careless.

• Dynamic interactive Necromancy
  Rather than simply casting, the player now must assess their resources and likelihood of interruption to estimate their chance of successfully reanimating a corpse. Due to uncertainty in exactly how much focus will be required to reanimate, the cast time and therefore chance of interruption is only roughly predictable.

 

[BigT2themax]

Wow, very nice. I thought you were going to talk about some QuickTime events or something for reanimating things, but its more of a resurrection system. I really like it, having to hold the spell while your focus is drained to the point of resurrecting the enemy or emptied. However, this might be a very dangerous game, if the devs decide to not let the player see their health or focus in the form of a bar or something, which is what they seemed to be hinting at, I think?

In any case, that'd be an excellent system for revival, you get my vote!

 

[Infidel]

Thank you, I really appreciate your taking the time to read it.

For a few days I was thinking about the ideas you guys put forward both here and in the thaumaturgy thread. Everyone's been raising really good points relating to how Necromancy works in other games, where it falls over and how it might work here. Watching the force power charge before use and seeing how that affects its use in combat seemed to have potential for tying it all together into a simple and unique skill based reanimation system.

 

[Cooper Holt]

My major concern with not being able to reanimate a corpse more than once is that a player who invests in Necromancy has no other or very limited alternative abilities. That leaves the build walking a very fine line between being too powerful (minions don't die) and nearly useless (minions die leaving you with nothing).

If they can be reanimated repeatedly but you're vulnerable while doing so then it will be easier to achieve balance since you can allow for them to be less competent in combat and work with the idea that they should be cut down in a fight rather than attempt to walk the line between keeping them alive without overpowering the build.

There's already going to be locational wounds that inhibit the performance of a character. That's a great opportunity to balance Necromancy in a realistic and immersive way by accumulating these locational wounds with each reanimation so the minion becomes noticeably and visibly more worthless with reuse. At the same time it helps get round the problem of balancing between minions being too strong to die or dying too easily leaving the Necromancer with nothing.

What if a minion could be reanimated repeatedly in a progressively damaged state but after accumulating too much damage would burn up? In this scenario equipment degrades normally (or possibly slightly faster) but takes a severe hit to its condition, possibly breaking, only when the minion actually burns up. The trigger to cause a minion to burn up may be sustaining multiple locational wounds to the same area, making it unpredictable but increasingly likely with repeated reanimation.

In Sui Generis, Necromancy falls under the field of thaumaturgy called "mind". In this field, you can raise the dead, perform mind control, alter minds, etc. It's a lot more than justing resurrecting a few corpses.
Which is awesome.

 

[Infidel]

this might be a very dangerous game, if the devs decide to not let the player see their health or focus in the form of a bar or something, which is what they seemed to be hinting at, I think?

What if there were some other visual indication of how much focus a character currently has available, such as altered animations that look increasingly tired as available focus diminishes, or strained as more focus is reserved?

Something like that might play into the whole learn by trial and error aspect of the system and help make it more skill based, since the player then has to gauge the catastrophic failure point from the physical appearance of their character.

 

[Infidel]

In Sui Generis, Necromancy falls under the field of thaumaturgy called "mind". In this field, you can raise the dead, perform mind control, alter minds, etc. It's a lot more than justing resurrecting a few corpses.
Which is awesome.

Very awesome. Good to know, thanks.

 

[Cooper Holt]

Very awesome. Good to know, thanks.

No problem.

 

[BigT2themax]

So, no other topics relating to necromancy to discuss, then?
Well, in that case, that about wraps it up, I guess. Thread's over folks, you can go home now.

 

[The Hedge Knight]

HEY GUYS I THIN-

oh. Fuck.

 

[Infidel]

Added some new questions to the first post. If anyone knows anything and would like to provide some answers that would be fantastic.

 

[BigT2themax]

Added some new questions to the first post. If anyone knows anything and would like to provide some answers that would be fantastic.

To be honest, most of those could just be answered by saying "hopefully it will be implemented, as that feature would indeed be awesome". It's pretty much a recap of what we've been discussing.

Really, it's probably best to just let the devs decide if a certain way of doing necromancy is fun or not, or maybe someone will look at this thread and inject their thoughts on the subject.

Happy new year and all that. Good thing 2012 didn't end with us having to deal with real-life zombies caused by the apocalypse or something.

 

[Infidel]

It's pretty much a recap of what we've been discussing.

That's the point really, I just wanted to summarise interesting necromancy questions with their answers in the first post. Makes it easier if it's all in one place. As new questions or answers turn up anywhere in the forum I'll try to keep that first post updated.

Ultimately I hope the devs build the game they always wanted to make exactly as they want to make it. But if necromancy isn't something they ever really got into in other games, I hope they will consider the thoughts and experiences of players for whom it is a key area of interest. It typically requires more careful consideration than many other skills to make it interesting, useful and balanced but judging from most other games that attempted to include it I'd say it rarely if ever gets the consideration it requires.

Shame about the world not ending in a zombie apocalypse, I always felt that would be one of the more interesting ways to go. Guess I'll be paying bills and taxes for another year.