Necromancer Summons Rework

[Red]

Plants have bones?

Actually, what the two were combined?

Assemble is renamed "Bone Golem" and grants two skills-Assemble and Debone. (Debone could use a better name for forcibly removing bones from your enemies.) Assemble is used when your Bone Golem isn't built by consuming a couple minions, taking 40 turns and building your default Bone Golem. Inside combat, while your Bone Golem is alive, using it consumes a bone piece to heal and possibly empower your Bone Golem. Debone is the damaging skill that nets you bones and extra bones on death.

The Bone Golem itself has a few basic trees that it will always have and is granted trees by various bones, as well as other modifiers. That way, you have consistent choices by stockpiling bones (kill a Temporal Warden and you could easily get four or five paradox bones, so your next four or five golems will have the paradox tree. Without the Bone Golem getting categories, it'd have five semi-random paradox abilities you may or may not want) but don't need to scum to make your preferred golem.

In addition, that simplifies category management-if you've been using the Arcane tree and have 16 points in it, then get the Paradox tree and want that, un-equip your Mage's Skull, equip your Chronomancer's Pisiform(and possibly re-equip your Skull to get back the bonuses) and put points into Paradox. Removing a category by un-equipping gives you all your points back, so no loss. It does allow respeccing anywhere, but that's fine.

[Planetus]

Umm, good point on the plants. And they'd probably grant equilibrium anyway, which is a no-go. Likewise for slimes and oozes. But what about shadows? Ghosts? Ethereal bones, maybe? The blood lich? Maybe make that a unique artifact bone, the blood bone. Or Bloody Marrow?

And, I don't think we want so many bones that you'd have reason to use the pisiform bone. Maybe an entire skeletal hand. The skull is technically several bones anyway...

Seriously, though, I think I like the combo idea. In terms of 'using' bones, are you thinking of putting them in the Necro's ammo slot? Or would Assemble bring up an item selection menu, like Extract Gem? And, personally, I think I still prefer having one skill, and using it with a golem already there meaning the pieces are ripped straight into the golem. That's just my preference on flavor, though. I'd also prefer that bones not be too common or easy to get, so using a skill getting you a bone no matter what, and more bones on death, I'm not too hot on. I'd rather you only get one bone per kill. That's really more a matter of taste than game balance, though.

Oh, and rename for Debone... Extract Bone? Graft Bone if it goes straight to the BG? Os is the latin for bone and Osteopathy is the medicine of bones, if anyone wants to make a more arcane sounding name.

[Red]

The pisiform was a joke. Then again, it might be fun to simply have X slots and get completely random bones, so your bone golem could be built of five bones each no larger than your thumb.

Bring up a menu. Bones are like equip items, so they won't stack.

What I had up there was concpetual. I don't expect the numbers to be balanced, so if you feel you should get less bones, less bones should be gotten. I do think they work better as seperate abilities, though.

- on a name. Cannot find a good root to attach to os.

[Planetus]

Umm, yeah, sorry. I got that pisiform was a joke. I guess my response joke didn't come across well enough.

I like the ideas we're coming up with here, but I still think we need to nail down how disposable the bone golem itself should be. That's not just a part of equipment and leveling, it's also a matter of what skills it can get. If it can get more than, let's say, one self-heal, independent of the necromancer, then I'd say it becomes a much more permanent member of the party than the current bone golems are. More on par with the alchemist's golem.

Another issue to address is how retroactive the bonus improvements from leveling will be. If you give the current bone golem all the points it would have gotten, then it's perfectly possible to have one bone golem through the entire game. Personally, I don't think that's good. If the old bone golem get's those bonuses going forward, then it's still feasible to use for a while, but optimal would be to dismiss/kill it and make a new one. If the new one only get's the bonuses from the level you increased the skill at forward (don't know if that's even feasible), then there's no point in reforming it and you're, sort of, back to where you got full retroactive bonuses.

Ideas? Any other concerns you see?

[Red]

Text is terrible at emotions. S'okay.

How about this? When a Bone Golem is created, it has class and stat points based on your Assemble level when making it. Any further changes do not matter, positive or negative. (So if you get a +.4 mastery amulet on Advanced Necrotic Minions, keep hold of that.) That way, you're encouraged to make a new Bone Golem every time you level up Assemble. Which is still only five times.

In order to really make sure you're cycling through golems, have some things be based on Spellpower or similar stats. Perhaps the Bone Golem gets bonuses based on your stats, but only on creation, so that golem you made five levels ago is now much worse than one you could make now.

However, combine that with bones being equip items, that makes Bone Golems basically free. So add a cost-you have to sacrifice X bones in order to make one. That way you can't just make a new Bone Golem all the time, and have to consider how many bones you can spare towards a better golem as opposed to simply carrying on with a subpar one.

As for healing, I think all minions should heal when you rest. It's just annoying to have to kill and resummon to not have a crippled meatshield starting a fight off. Considering how tanky the Bone Golem is, it might not even need a heal to be a constant, faithful companion (who is to be thrown away in a few levels once you get enough non-egoed bones to pay the toll).

[Planetus]

I think a better way to limit re-assembly would be to make Assemble a potential attack skill, and it has to succeed in killing at least 3 creatures to work. You can use your own summoned undead, but you won't get very good (or maybe any) bones on start if you do so. Or maybe separate it entirely from the other minions and require that it kill enemies to successfully produce a golem. There aren't THAT many situations where you could do that for making a bone golem to be an on-demand thing, and it would also require you to consider whether you can get those enemies to that point without your previous golem, which has to be gone one way or another before you do so. It wouldn't be so onerous as to be problematic, but not so common and easy as to be on-demand.

On the other hand, that does suggest that crafting at least the basic frame for a bone golem is something you can do in the heat of battle. That may not work so well thematically, considering we're talking about a more complex, flexible creature at this point.

[Red]

I don't like "Must kill X with Assemble". At all.

Either Assemble has to be a massively powerful AoE, or you'll have a lot of trouble scoring multiple kills with it. If you really want to go that way, and I still don't like this, have Assemble give a 10 or so turn other debuff "Assembled" that will cause any deaths while under the effect to count towards your golem.

Honestly, for something like this, look at how Alchemist Golems work. They cannot be made in combat, but the resource needed to make them is easily available, and the only place you might run out is the early game. It's okay to make a Bone Golem a little harder because you have plenty of other minions, but it should always be available, at the very least.

[PurpleXVI]

I like the idea in concept, but in functionality it seems like it would have the issue of investing a LOT of your power in something that could be killed in the middle of fights and be difficult to re-assemble in the late-game. The game generally does without one-use consumables, and this kind of feels like trying to introduce one of those.

Wouldn't it be simpler to instead treat the Necromancer summon skill kind of like Thought-Form, where one skill on the level-up menu, provides you with three options. Ranged, Melee or Meatshield? Perhaps the advanced skill could likewise yield an option for, say, Vampire, Non-Corporeal or Bone Golem. I don't think micromanaging bone golems is really the answer to making Necromancers more fun to play. Also, perhaps, making the summon a targeted AoE, rather than self-centered, would help a lot to yield utility, letting you actually throw your army ahead of yourself rather than summoning it in a big blob ON yourself and then having to backpedal through it.

On top of that, fixing minion pathfinding so they actually follow you through a dungeon rather than getting stuck on every goddamn corner and then melting due to being outside of your Necrotic Aura. Or maybe scrapping the whole function where they need the Necrotic Aura to stay alive, I really never got the point of that one, outside of being able to nuke Necromancers by disabling their sustains.

For that matter, why not just make all Necro skills not injure summons? It's frankly annoying to have a class centered around big, disorderly swarms of minions and then only having one tree of skills that don't see you nuking all your own allies when used, and even getting that advantage is a five-point investment.

[Red]

Minions are meant to be disposable. That's not my thought, that's DarkGod's own statements about Necromancers. That's why you can hurt your own minions so easily, though I'd agree that perhaps making it not quite so easy to kill them wouldn't go amiss.

I don't see this level of investment as much an issue.We're talking about a single skill and an assortment of random items. The Alchemist has two entire categories for their golem, and while that is their only summon, it's eight times the skills here.

Though actually, looking at it that way, the Bone Golem that has been discussed looks horridly overpowered. All this is from a single skill point. PurpleXVI, I think you have a good point there simply because the Bone Golem cannot be the end-all minion skill far outclassing everything else, and looking at the discussion here... Yeah...

[PurpleXVI]

The problem's not so much that they're disposeable, that'd be fine if most Necro attacks were just blasting a clear line through them or maybe decreasing the time they're around. But the problem is that most Necro spells are AoE, often relatively uncontrolled, or projectile attacks that minions actively block, meaning that hurling out your attacks in the middle of minions doesn't make them disposeable, but outright removes them from the field, or your minion prevents your projectiles from reaching their end point.

Either Necro spells should be AoE without a projectile, beams that can blow through minions, or perhaps they should rely more on effects like detonating minions. Hell, maybe make it so that effects are boosted by how many minions they hit on the way in, like a beam or projectile that picks up damage from minion HP, or an AoE blast that does more damage to enemies, the more minions it hits/kills. That'd really go well with the "totally disposable minion"-idea.

But as it is, combat Necro and minion Necro suffers a lot of incompatibilities, to me.

And considering that Souls aren't always an easily-acquirable resource, means that if you REALLY want minions to be disposable tissue paper, then you need to make Souls a lot more plentiful, maybe even regenerating/decaying to 25% or 50% of max, like a Hate-lite. It seems kind of like a clashing tone to have them be "disposable" and yet rely on a resource that's even rarer than Vim(Vim, at least, you can recover without actually killing anything, in the middle of a one-on-one boss fight, for instance).

Hell, how about only having "high-level" minions cost souls. Vampire, non-corporeals and bone golems, as aforementioned, but instead have the necro constantly raise a small swarm of skeletons and ghouls within his "Necrotic Aura," as bones and flesh in the surrounding area tumble together to form minions for him, maybe at a small mana cost each time one is generated. These would be easily sacrificed as corpse bombs or used as shields or distractions while a necro prepares, recovers or makes a getaway, maybe have some powers that instantly let you swap places with one or more minions so they work as a pseudo-teleport, while the "high-level" minions would be the ones you summon to gang up on bosses or distract an entire flank of enemies while you blast down the other.

[Delmuir]

I think Purple makes some decent points… especially about micromanaging the Bone Giant. That just doesn't seem fun to me, especially as the Necromancer is already a bit micromanaged as is.

I really agree that minions should be summoned in a targetable manner… within your necrotic aura.

I rather like that the minions are disposable as sometimes they're irritating to have although what I really wish is that you could re-order your movement such that it's not always you leading the auto-search. Perhaps a minion could be upfront and take that first hit...

[Red]

Huh. Funny, looking back at the OP, this was a universal summons idea, and yet it so quickly became all about Bone Golems.

Delmuir's Necro Concept had a few ideas on soul management, both when it comes to gathering and using them, but your idea does actually seem pretty cool. It'd also alleviate early-game stress with having to close to two squares of an enemy just to get its soul when it dies, and even though Necromancers have one of the least squishy mage early games, they're still a mage.

The full idea, of basically a sustain for basic minion summoning, is very cool. Something I'd enjoy playing, certainly. The issue is that it'd require a pretty big rework of Necromancers as they stand, not just modifying a single talent or category. So all that needs to be done is to figure out how something like that could be implemented, and what changes it would make.

[Delmuir]

It's worth noting that what Purple describes is a Doomed-Necromancer hybrid… essentially the weaker minions would be comparable to Shadows and then souls would be used to summon greater minions.

Perhaps it could required combining two of your lesser minions to create a greater minion, three for a Bone Giant, etc… of course, you'd have to nerf your lesser minions a bit.

[PurpleXVI]

Right, lesser minions would mostly be obstructions, distractions and meatshields, unless "transformed" or "combined" into greater minions, or perhaps temporarily boosted with buffs. All Necro attack skills would blast through minions and injure them, but be increased in force the more minions they damaged or destroyed, making the minions not only disposable, but making disposing of them an advantage.

Souls would be entirely for "big" minions and maybe some serious nuke spells, while Mana would power the lesser minions and most of the remainder of the Necromancer's arsenal.

It's the sort of thing I'd love to work on, because I love Necros as a class idea and I'd love to make them more fun, I'd even be willing to knuckle down and learn some of ToME's coding stuff if I got some people who were willing to help me and were on board with the idea.

[Red]

Eternal Darkness, Necromancy+, Delmuir's Newcromancers (coded by 0player), and now we have PurpleXVI knuckling down to make another redesign.

Oh, and vanilla Necromancers still exist. Why are people so obsessed over these guys?

That being said, I'd be glad to help refine your ideas like I did with Delmuir, Purple. I can't code for crap, but at least I can help the concepts get fleshed out and the kinks worked out.