ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Friendly fire from one's own necrotic minions is at best annoying, and at worst (as my level 20 necromancer just learned) deadly. The fact that your minions follow you, and that much of the game is spent wandering down corridors basically guarantee that you (and the rest of your minions) will be hit by a manathrust as soon as an enemy comes into visible range. This is just silly, and annoying to the point that I was actually considering taking the Advanced Necrotic Minions tree just so I could get rid of my mages by exploding them.

In short: please remove friendly fire from necrotic minions. If this won't work, then please remove skeleton mages from the possible summons - I'd much rather have no summon than a mage that shoots me in the back.

This is the same problems that summners had early, especially the damage cone of hydras when the aim didnt care for player presence

CaptainTrips wrote: In short: please remove friendly fire from necrotic minions. If this won't work, then please remove skeleton mages from the possible summons - I'd much rather have no summon than a mage that shoots me in the back.

Not only mages, it goes for the bone giant talent that makes you bleed as well. Very possibly some of the "higher" summons have attacks that can harm you as well. I would not like to see removal of either mages or bone giants, or any other summon, but I agree totally that as it is now, it's not good. Please make it so that minion spells cannot harm the player anymore, or tweak a talent so that you can raise resistance to your own minions damage/effects by increasing talent level and stats. I'd prefer the latter, as somehow it seems fitting thematically for those dumb brainridden undead to hit their master accidentally.

On necromancer-related note:
Also, the fact that minions open doors is pretty darn annoying, to outright deadly in some types of vaults.
They will not open locked doors, but all other doors they will open.

martinuzz wrote: Also, the fact that minions open doors is pretty darn annoying, to outright deadly in some types of vaults.
They will not open locked doors, but all other doors they will open.

They used to open locked doors, too, as would golems. This may be intentional -- the skeleton minions are supposed to be somewhat more stupid that other summons, so some dangerous behavior is kinda' fitting.

Minor suggestion: Have 5/5 minions or 5/5 aura make you either intangible (i.e. archer arrows and mage beams will pass through you, harmlessly) or immune to minion based damage.

What about adding a necromancer/summoner talent similar to the archmage's spell shaping talent where every talent point invested gives you a passive 20% chance to ignore your minions' attacks?

Perhaps have it protect your minions from you and each other, too.

Yes, the number 1 killer of my horde are my own skelly mages, minions walking into the very slow shots from skelly archer minions, bone giant bleeding abilities, and the occasional skelly with a rune (acid wave rune... oh why acid wave rune!?).

Also, the advanced minions seem so weak... they are usually the first to die every time and cause little damage... and they hardly get summoned even when AM is maxed.

A minion-less Necro seems more powerful than one with minions. That doesn't sound right.

Just reviving this old thread...

Today my minions repeatedly killed the guys I was escorting. Ever defiant, they later killed me, which I found quite annoying.

I agree with the other posters that this needs to be changed. You could simply have them use Invoke Darkness (which is functionally similar and doesn't hurt friendlies), or something similar, instead of Manathrust et al.

Yes, pleaaaaaaase. The punchline is that it could probably been done with what, one line of code?

I still like the idea from another thread of giving necromancers a sustain that reflects the damage from minions back onto them.

Or, level 5 Invoke Darkness could be appended with "...and your minions will no longer cause damage to friendly units" or whatever.

On a side note, my skeleton mage just killed the shopkeeper I was trying to rescue... argh!

Well I haven't unlocked Necromancers yet but I would like to and it will be likely that I won't play it often if the most common cause of death is your own minions.