Necropet Shepherding

[parcel]

Since a lot of the game's maps are randomly designed and gameplay is built somewhat around the convenience of auto-exploration, it would probably be good to set things up so that this function doesn't appreciably penalize necromancers in a very limited resource: souls. The change should be be simple enough: just have necromancers auto-explore at 50% movement speed or something to that effect, so that the whole crowd can follow you under most circumstances without taking damage, even as the flow of fetid flesh gets jammed up a bit in narrow areas.

If you really wanted to set things up to be really certain that autoexplore wouldn't damage necropets, you might also want to add in a few turns of grace period before the out-of-aura decay kicks in. With your souls thus secured from waste that only tedium could prevent, you could offset most of the gain in necromancer power by making the out-of-aura penalty much more severe when it is actually active.

[SageAcrin]

Alternate neat idea; Allow L5 Shadow Tunnel to automatically teleport your pets to somewhere in your aura range, if they leave your Aura radius, as a passive effect. (For bonus strategy, have it only do this if your Aura's on. This protects against potential bugs if it's off *and* allows you to leave your pets to die if you wish.)

Leveling Shadow Tunnel is somewhat questionable as it is right now, and this would be a neat way to help it.

This doesn't rule out the 50% movement speed idea, though that makes you vulnerable to doubleshots the way movement speed is coded right now IIRC...

[Sirrocco]

I like the alternate neat idea, but I might suggest that it be L5 shadow tunnel + L5 Aura. Otherwise, the folks who max shadow tunnel might actually have higher aura strength make things worse.

[HousePet]

Have people tried the Soulwinds talent in my necromancer addon?
That talent was specifically designed to address this situation, and I'm interested in whether it succeeds.
If not I'll add something to Shadow Tunnel as well.

[cttw]

Hi HousePet, speaking only for myself, I don't use your addon because, while I don't actually disagree with any of your changes and skills, there are too many changes and it feels almost like playing a new class.

I think this problem needs a dramatic but simple change, something like when a skeleton dies on it's own without taking damage, you get a soul back.

Personally, I've given up on keeping an army of skellies and instead max the skill that will make bunnies that give souls on death.

[darkgod]

The point of necro minions is not to keep them around forever, they are disposable commodity

[parcel]

The point of necro minions is not to keep them around forever, they are disposable commodity

So maybe adjust the class mechanics so that the player's effort to play in a reasonably optimal way will harmonize with that design choice. If they are truly disposable, then hard-code the mechanics so that they are destroyed eventually, and so that there is nothing the player can do to make them persist longer without paying for it through another limited resource, like talent points. For instance, you could have all necro-summons die in 60 turns or so no matter what, but make the bone giant a relatively unique 'advanced' construct that can persist forever provided that it doesn't lose its hp.

As it currently is, the game encourages the player to make minions persist as much as possible, due to the limited soul count. So if a player brings the minions out fairly frequently, as they may want to do if they go heavy in minions, they will want to play carefully in order to not lose the minions too quickly. In this situation losing minions due to out-of-aura effects just looks like carelessness, so this discourages the use of auto-explore. But we want the game to be built around Z as much as possible, I think. The most interesting part of the game is not in exploring carefully, but in handling tactical situations once you encounter them.

[saladfork]

I love the flavor of the necromancer and I love the disposability of the minions. But once I ran into the "autoexplore tax" you pay in strength to use the Z key, I stopped playing the class.

The game is just too long to play without autoexplore on normal, and the aura/decay mechanic encourages the player to micromanage the minions so they don't rot away between fights. Maybe it changes later on, I barely got my necro(s) off the ground before I ran into this problem and gave up, assuming I was just a "bad player" (which is true).

What if the minions decayed regardless of if they were in the aura or not?

Maybe they should decay more slowly but it would retain the disposable-ness without fighting autoexplore. Keeping the guys in the aura JUST so they don't disolve is just not that fun IMHO. I would love to play the game with minion-heavy necro but I need autoexplore to work.

[Sirrocco]

For what it's worth, Ghouls are great at keeping your minions around. Not only does the slowdown make it easier for the minons to keep up, they have spew to heal their little buddies.

I agree that necro minons should be disposable by default (and possibly adjusted a bit to make that more appealing as an option - maybe the aura should boost their combat stats rather than making them not decay?) I do think, though, that necros that keep their minions should be possible - perhaps through an unlocked tree? Make it an alternate playstyle you have to pay a bit for, rather than something you can pull off if you're willing to invest the frustration.

I've played one necro thus far, and I naturally fell into the "pull out minions as a panic-button, then let them die" plan, but I think it would be cool to have other options as well.

Perhaps instead of having one unlockable minion-based trees, we could have two. One would be all about sacrificing your minions in various ways and taking advantage of their demise and possibly ways of gaining souls. The other would be about getting higher quality minions and keeping the ones you have.

[HousePet]

Hi HousePet, speaking only for myself, I don't use your addon because, while I don't actually disagree with any of your changes and skills, there are too many changes and it feels almost like playing a new class.

Wha? Two new categories that you don't have to invest in, and some tweaks to one category is almost like a new class???

The point of necro minions is not to keep them around forever, they are disposable commodity

Doesn't work like that though.
You need to keep them around as long as possible, to gain enough souls to replace them before they can be disposed of.
Oddly one of the causes for this seems to be the way you can summon 10 minions at once, as this causes wastage when you only needed a few. It might be useful to limit the number summonable at once. There aren't many situations where you would want to summon 10 minions at once.

I'm also thinking that making your minions explode could refund the soul to you.

[The Revanchist]

I haven't had an enormous amount of experience playing necromancers, but I would think (with my incredibly limited knowledge) that destroying the minions yourself should refund a soul. If we really liked the idea, perhaps after unlocking the "detonate" talent (or whatever it is called) would also add a "necrotic harvest" ability, that painlessly recalls all souls?

Perhaps putting the Necrotic Minions talent on cooldown for the Harvest's duration, to avoid cheap tactics would be advisable as well.

[cttw]

HousePet I don't mean to classify your changes as a new class or not. I appreciate your work and I have played characters with your mod. I just hope the skellie issue is addressed in the main game, particularly as darkgod has expressed he sees the skellies as expendable, so it seems unlikely a solution will be found for keeping them around indefinitely. Hence my suggestion for a refund of the souls of the skellies that die due to their own degeneration outside the aura.

I really like Sirrocco's idea of two different paths for the usage of skellies. It could even be tied to your lich status. Or not. But I could even see the cats be mutually exclusive.

[HousePet]

The Animus category looks like it will make managing souls easier.

I can't remember if the Soulwinds give a chance of recycling a soul when a minion crumbles outside your aura or not. I'll look into the balance after we get the Animus category.

[Planetus]

To expand on Sirocco's idea, I've long desired the ability for necros to customize the undead they summon. My idea was to allow them to choose to summon a skeleton, ghoul, or wraith, and then choose a melee, ranged, or caster build, and use the mechanic for generating adventuring parties to generate the appropriate undead. This would almost certainly be a slower way to summon them, probably doing so one at a time, and you still wouldn't be able to specifically control the class (bulwark, berserker, sun paladin, etc.), but it would make necromancers much more strategic.

If the other path gave things like mass random summons, undead explosion, will'o'wisps, and maybe the talent that heals you off your minions' HP, I think it could be cool. Of course, you'd have to be careful about potential interactions between the two.

[parcel]

To expand on Sirocco's idea, I've long desired the ability for necros to customize the undead they summon. My idea was to allow them to choose to summon a skeleton, ghoul, or wraith, and then choose a melee, ranged, or caster build, and use the mechanic for generating adventuring parties to generate the appropriate undead. This would almost certainly be a slower way to summon them, probably doing so one at a time, and you still wouldn't be able to specifically control the class (bulwark, berserker, sun paladin, etc.), but it would make necromancers much more strategic.

If the other path gave things like mass random summons, undead explosion, will'o'wisps, and maybe the talent that heals you off your minions' HP, I think it could be cool. Of course, you'd have to be careful about potential interactions between the two.

It would be an awesome minigame for necros if you, say:

• 1. Obtain a special hideout, such as the starting dungeon of the PC ghouls and skeletons once flushed out. Or maybe even better, the elven ruins. Link it through a portal to the fortress, whatever you do, and maybe have the butler appear in both places (in black, for your lair)
  2. Do something or other to get the required infrastructure.
  3. Create friendly parties of undead to wander the West.
  4. Wait a few years as said undead gradually kill, replicate, and build strength.
  5. Become the dominant military power of the West.

You are forever barred from Angolwen and Iron Throne if a dwarf, but in exchange you are greeted as the new king at Last Hope when the campaign is over, and get some slight bonus in relation to your boosted coercive power over the land in general. Option not available to liches. They know they'd still be hated because of their form, so overt politics would be unwise. Natural undead have the cloak, though, so they are fine.