ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

How about finally giving the Necromancer its own locked generic category? How about an unlocked one IF you go Lichform?

I suggest eliminating Conveyance entirely from the Necromancer and replacing it with (the first 3 talents are my older ideas):

Ethereal: Generic 1.2 Locked

1. Phase Soul

Use: Activated
Range: 6-12 (+1 per active talent level but reduced by half when below zero life so 3-6)
Cost: 2/4 souls
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 8/2

This is a perfect, intermediate teleport, albeit an expensive one. It works outside of line of sight with 0% fail.

Range increases per active talent level. This teleport cannot be "targeted" on enemies, escorts, etc. Range scales with active talent level.

In addition:

If you're at or below 0 life (either with equipment, Blurred Mortality, or Heroism infusion, etc.), then this teleport's cool-down is reduced to 2 although the cost doubles and the range is reduced by half.

2. Specter

Use: Activated
Range: N/A
Cost: 2 souls
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 30

Reduces heal mod by 100% and movement speed by 50% but grants "incorporeal" status.

In this state you can move through walls, gain 15-45% resist all and a flat damage reduction of 6-30 for 4 turns.

3. Whispered Warning

Use: Sustain
Range: N/A
Cost: 2 souls (stores 10-50% of current mana pool)
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 40

This sustain hides away 10-50% of your current mana pool such that if you're mana clashed (or just run out) then this sustain shuts down and instantly recovers the listed amount of mana PREVENTING all of your other sustains from being shut down.

Note: this sustain stores the mana but doesn't consume it like a normal sustain, i.e., when you activate the sustain, it costs "x" mana like an active spell, which you can recover if you rest. It works more like a battery.

4. Ethereal Tether

Use: Sustain
Range: Necrotic aura
Cost: 3 souls and 100 mana
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 40

This sustain triggers if you "die." It will prevent your death and turn you into a Specter for "3-7" turns. Enemies can see the specter and will pursue it but cannot injure it. Once the designated number of turns is over, you're instantly transported back into your body with minimal life. Your specter cannot leave your Necrotic Aura.

The specter will linger wherever you left for 1-5 turns. Enemies will continue to attack the specter until you do anything other than skip your turn, i.e., rest.

The purpose of the spell is that if you die, you can lure enemies away from your corpse and then when you return to it, you can either run, heal, or skip turns to wait for abilities to come off cool-down.

Now how about an unlocked tree for the Lich?

Sacrifice: Generic 1.2 Unlocked

1. Blood Oath

Use: Passive
Range: N/A
Cost: 30 permanent life per level
Use Speed: N/A
Cool-down: N/A

At the cost of 20 permanent life per level, you gain +5 to your cap for Magic, Willpower, and Constitution. Once 5 generics are invested in this talent, it grants an additional potential upgrade to any category by adding another category point, i.e., you can now upgrade a category twice but the second one adds 0.3 instead of 0.2.

2. Death's Bargain

Use: Passive
Range: N/A
Cost: trade
Use Speed: N/A
Cool-down: N/A

This ability removes 20 life per level and adds 30 to Blurred Mortality. At talent level 5, it adds a constitution bonus to Blurred Mortality.

3. Rapid Descent

Use: Passive
Range: N/A
Cost: 50 permanent life and 50 permanent mana per level
Use Speed: N/A
Cool-down: N/A

Grants 5% increase to Global Speed for each active talent level.

4. Reaping

Use: Passive
Range: N/A
Cost: trade
Use Speed: N/A
Cool-down: N/A

Every generic added to this ability grants one class talent, adjusted for active talent level. Thus, if it remains at 1.2, then at 5 generics invested, you'd gain 6 class talents.

Thoughts?

Whispered Warning and Ethereal Tether are likely horrible to code well enough that they work reliably, though they are interesting ideas.

Sacrifice has an interesting mechanic, but the talent effects are rather boring. No idea how you would judge the balance for the cost on those.

Phase Soul is an incredibly powerful talent with an absolutely trivial cost. What game are you playing that souls are hard to come by? Controlled teleports that go through walls are not being added any more and for good reason. It's only a matter of time before stuff like slime roots and phase door bites the dust too. The spell getting worse if you're below 0 life might make it a less amazing panic button if Spectral Tether didn't exist.

Specter is just a worse version of wraithform, but is at least more thematic on necromancer then on corruptor. I'm not convinced that wall-walking deserves to exist in general though, so proliferating it probably isn't a good idea.

Whispered Warning would be annoying to code and is also completely useless in most situations.

Some kind of death-defying thing for necromancers miiiiight be ok but Spectral Tether is pointlessly complicated and also super strong considering Necromancer has Phase Soul for whatever reason. Once you return to your body you just teleport away to complete safety.

Blood Oath is just an iredeemably awful idea. The benefit on talent level 5 is the cherry of badness on top.

Death's Bargain is just a blurred mortality + sacrifice shield buff that costs generic points, which isn't interesting. Oh and it has a level 5 talent benefit because of course it does.

Rapid Descent has a pretty inexplicable talent name and is probably the worst example of the bad gimmick of the sacrifice tree. It might be salvageable if it just had a sustained life/mana cost instead of permanently removing them. A sustained life cost would be pretty wacky but less bad then what this currently does. Also scales linearly because of course it does.

Reaping is just bad.

I'm skeptical about how the solution for an annoying class with wonky talents and a truly awful secondary resource is to add more annoying and wonky talents that exclusively use that same resource. I'm even more skeptical about the chances of any of these changes happening. You might at least have a chance if you coded an addon for them. The core badness of the talents wouldn't change, but that didn't change new chants and hymns from getting into the base game, so you never know.

EDIT: Also why the hell do these have 1.2 mastery. Yes I know that Necromancer has some 1.2 mastery categories and no that isn't something you should try to emulate.