I get that necros can be really quite powerful but does it really makes sense to allow them to lose 60+ minutes of work getting zombies in the span of a few minutes to someone that they can't even PK for it?

With the variety of anti-zombie edges and the general pain in the ass raising an army can be I just don't see how this serves as anything more than a way for people to grief people out of their range.

Hahahaha

Hello. I played for a long time and then stepped away for a long time. When I returned to play my favorite class, necros, I found strange limits on the ability to raise zombie. Back in the day, there was no wait timer on zombies, and I don't think the fail rate, if one even existed, was nearly this high. If I were to change necros and zombies, then I would change them back to the old way, removing all timers and high fail rates on zombies. Here is why:

It is extremely frustrating trying to raise an army of undead, even when no one is summoning them. The fail rate is very high. Even using items which enhance and taking the Zombie Lord edge, you are in for some long nights. There have been nights where I have only been successful one of my first six animates. This is really disgusting in terms of making you want to play

your army lasts two minutes...maybe...when they are summoned out or you have to flee. Let's say you're raiding the village and you have to flee because wraithform drops. Half your army flees inside and the village heroes inside finish each of your zombies in less than one minute, even though they are out of your range. When Paladins are summoning your zombies they run through them just as fast.

I would say on the average I do not have a full army for at least 45 minutes every time I play. So what if I have 45 minutes to play? Is any other class geared up so that you have to play 45 minutes to maximize their primary ability?

No other class limits their primary ability. Necromancers are undead master mages. They raise zombies. What if invokers could only cast shield every 24 game hours, or unholy weapons only took charges after you've been logged on 45 minutes? What if as a warrior (sword spec) you could only jab the first 10 minutes you were on, add lunge after 10 minutes, add riposte after 10 minutes, then finally add flurry after 40 minutes? What if a healer could only heal 500 hp per in game day? These limits sound stupid, but telling the undead master mage he will most likely have but one zombie after 10 minutes of play and wont get to 3 until 40 minutes because of fail rates is also ridiculous.

With the old system, you could be fully up and running in 5-10 minutes. You would be inconvenienced if a paladin or two just summoned your zombies from somewhere in thera and killed them in 2 minutes rather than having a 2 hour playing session wrecked. As a necro I now spend more time raising zombies than doing anything else (hunting or looking for gear), and all too often I don't feel like I can go hunting too aggressively or seek elite gear without some undead with me.

I don't know why the imms changed it and I am sure they had a good reason. It just seems to me that it puts necros in the mindset of log in, build army for half an hour 45 minutes, then maybe do something else..

Thanks for letting me get on my soapbox and for reading this far!!

My worst necro memory is being level 40 and getting a nice army and setting out to get the Codex back from Outlander only to hit an invoker's vortex and have 3 outlanders slaughter my army before I could reacquire them.

I agree with everything you said. Any of the above changes or just allowing zombies to stay through log outs (like constructs/mercs do) would fix a lot of the problems.

Since a Necro with a full zombie army can do almost anything.

To be honest if you allowed that I'd say you need to scale down how many zombies a Necro can have.

I was assuming the level cap when proposing this. In which case I dont' think it would be that bad.

Another mud I played had a spell called soulbind where you could bind a zombie to you so when you logged back in it would as well. Something like that would even work.

Also one could give a Necro a power where he can counter spell attempts to summon his zombies.

~

With the way CF has become I think it should be made so only people in the necromancer's PK range should be able to summon the zombies away.

If we were to do that, then I think we would also consider doing something like capping the level of zombies a necro can make to being more similar to their own, instead of letting lvl 35 necros run around with level 50+ mobs like they currently can with some of the fancy making zombies tricks that exist now.

>If we were to do that, then I think we would also consider
>doing something like capping the level of zombies a necro can
>make to being more similar to their own, instead of letting
>lvl 35 necros run around with level 50+ mobs like they
>currently can with some of the fancy making zombies tricks
>that exist now.

But that seems like a fair trade-off (I think someone also suggested limiting their looting ability, so probably that too).

It's probably how it should be anyway.

I agree that does sound like the way it should be. People can deal with only same level zombies. There is nothing you can do against summoning away except for staying in nosum areas, and often the necro has things to do all over the MUD. That makes staying in nosum areas a waste of time, just like spending hours to raise an army only to have it summoned away by someone you cannot even harm. I think the idea you suggest is the right move. What do the other Imms think?

Zombies in general seem like a huge pain in the ass given how long they take to raise. Not sure how much I like the game mechanic where a character gets stronger the longer his session lasts. Creates an incentive to log on and lie low for an hour while you raise a full army and only then start to engage people once your advantage has been maximized.

If it were going to be modified, here's what I'd do:

1. Allow zombies to only be summoned by those in the necromancer's range.

2. Each zombie gets its own personal timer (shown in affects).

3. When a zombie is summoned its timer is removed, meaning the necro can summon another one. It is now unbound and the necromancer can't re-bind it.

4. Zombies get a general tone-down in strength.

5. When a necro quits any timer for a zombie that is still with him is removed. Timers for zombies that are located elsewhere (or that have been killed) are not removed.

6. Nothing happens to a bonded zombie when its timer expires, except that the necro is now able to raise another one immediately should that zombie be killed.


#5 means that if you quit with a full set of zombies you can raise a new set immediately the next time you log in. Each zombie gets its own timer.

If you were to fundamentally change the spell, you could use something like herbal forage as a basis.

Give the spell a 100+ hour timer, and the number of zombies you can raise is based on your level. (it might already be, I have never played to those levels). So a Level 30 necro can have 3 zombies, 40 has 4 etc. Make them crumble after a set amount of time, but also give them the protection people are bemoaning for like no summon.

Plenty of other classes have to deal with crazy timers, and it is pretty balanced. Don't see why that could not be applied here.

Also, I think the timer should stick after log out or zombie death. Again look at druids. Log out with a crappy set of herbs? Well too bad, you have to log in and wait it out next time.

The Necro can summon 20 or 30 low level zombies to him. Raise his undead Army, and then use an AOE wand to kill all the zombies from the Graveyard, etc.

As a previous Paladin, its a royal pain in the ass to try and summon through 30+ zombies to try and find the necros, and I generally quit doing it after ten minutes IRL time and not finding them.

I have seen, and still see some, summoners who devote a lot of time to summoning away and killing necro army when they get a chance. Just because you do not does not mean others will not.

If you make those changes I will roll up a necro right now.

As someone below suggested, I would also love to see a way to keep a zombie over logouts. If I get a zombie of the captain of the brigade, or some imm invasion monster, I want to keep it for the RP angle.

Although equally I'd be happy if necros could still raise zombies of high level provided that all zombies they have were killed by them alone.

I played Lormas a couple years ago. From that experience, I do believe having less powerful zombies at lower levels is better than having no zombies because some out of range fort paladin can't find anything better to do than kill them for the entire lifetime of your character.

nt

You could improve upon the whole undead shabang IMO - the custom undead depending upon graveyard is an -awesome- mechanic. Perhaps do away with the whole summon NPC/animate dead NPC/PC corpse...and just make all undead have to come from graveyards - perhaps different graveyards provide a slight variety on the type of undead (obviously not as good as the special ones)...and just set some level cap (maybe let them pump mana like a conjurer servitor for +1 lvl to their own etc).

I agree, that a lvl 30 something necro with lvl 50+ zombies is do-able but OP..so perhaps remove summoning, and redo zombies entirely so that they more resemble other available 'servitors'