I realize I must rephrase what I said above: Necromancy is well implemented from the role playing and flavor points of view -- apotheosis of Lichform ceremony was, and still is, the most fulfilling and memorable point of any of my characters' careers in ToME, but it is presently lacking in polish and balance.
My chief grievance against current implementation of servant-enabled Necromancy is that it does not scale very well. Mages relying on their own ability to inflict damage soon find themselves increasing, however temporarily, their global or spellcasting speed, or power, or critical chances... frequently, all of the above and dramatically improves their efficacy and satisfaction of playing them. On the other hand, your minions cannot be granted any of this: Dark Empathy does not confer critical chance or spell power based on the master's, Surge of Undeath does not increase minions' speed and generally does not quite compare... and on top of that, you have to wait for some of your minions to close in melee rage, and your archers, even masters, become mostly harmless, as your spaces become more and more crowded and they, walled-in.
I imagine the former problem can be remedied by giving the better melee-oriented minions ability akin to the Chronomacers' Dimensional Step or Rushing, and archers, ability to fire arrows that pass through some the friendly targets, like the bolts from Channel Staff do, although I am not certain how much of a hit to the damage, if any, they will need to take to balance this. (Additionally, servants that can raise Barriers and Re-assemble themselves do so as soon as they are able when enemies are is sight, not after taking a reasonable amount of damage and being in danger of destruction, this leaves them vulnerable and brittle at times, due to their abilities being on the cooldown when they are needed.)
P.S. Dear HousePet, assuming you either have commit access or this patch can be accepted by the DarkGod, what you did there is amazing. Bitterness of my initial posting was in part explained by the belief that the status quo is not going to change soon and is based on a policy of some kind. I am glad I was wrong. Please take a look at what I wrote
here on the topic, perhaps I said something that can be of use.