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So I'd been intrigued by the Dark path for Warlocks featured in the Forgotten Realms' Player's Handbook, but felt it didn't quite go far enough in hurting players now for benefits later. While I understand its somewhat antithetical to 4e's design philosophy, it was a mechanic I'd always thought was rather interesting. I decided the necromancer would be the epitome of this type of design and searched the boards to see if someone had updated the class for fourth edition. While intrigued by the necromancer that Pyrogod had designed (http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-...-progress.html) I found that it felt a bit minion heavy for me.
I longed for the types of necromancers from 2nd edition AD&D, for whom an entire sourcebook was dedicated. And so, I did my best to create a necromancer who is terrifying on the battlefield, and whose abilities are alarming to allies, deeply disturbing to the party's paladin and a constant tactical choice for the player between hurting allies, hurting himself and when the right amount of each is required.
I'd love any feedback anyone would like to offer, and I should first warn that this class is currently unplaytested. It goes from levels 1 through 10, and features a few bonus feats and a new monster (usable by the class as a familiar).
This is an extremely interesting take on the necromancer. Arcane Leader? I did a double-take on that until I read the Manipulate Life power. Brilliant!
I've only done a cursory once-over of the document, but what I have seen, I really really like. I want to encourage you keep up the hard work you've put into this. I really like it and hope you'll see it all the way to 30th level with paragon paths.
It's definitely my plan to do so. Woefully real world needs have taken precedence but the class is still cooking and I'll be updating it for Paragon level at some point and then for Epic.
Forgive me my fanboyishness, but this is a good class. Of course real-world takes precedence, so you make sure you take of that first. Just knowing you haven't forgotten is more than I can ask for.
i am also working on a slightly more controller-flavored necromancer. to be honest most of the powers im using so far are re-flavored from existing material, but i like a lot of hte unique powers you came up with.
with your permission i'd like to modify a few of them to fit into the controller-flavored build im testing out. would you mind?
Sure thing, feel free to use and modify some of what I've created here. Eventually there'll be more levels worth of it, once I've got some more free time to write.
When you wrote in the flavor that someone would have to pay the price for another's healing, I was imagining abilities that would drain life from one target and give it to another. Some of the abilities do this, but not the basic one. Perhaps you can have the ability allow you to touch up to two creatures, and have the one spend a healing surge on behalf of the other, with the note that you may include yourself as one of the two targets.
This would also make the undead side effect meaningful, as you'd be able to weaken living targets if you maneuvered right. As it is, I see the weaken+damage thing as flavor only, as no one would do it voluntarily. (Unless they themselves were undead, and wanted to use it to damage others)
__________________ You can roleplay in any system, and hack-and-slash in any system.
The anti-undead clause is both flavour and a safe guard so that you cannot gain an infinite number of surges via your Shadow Summoning. Theoretically you could summon the shadow, lose a few HPs, steal surges from it and then regain the HPs, then wash-rinse-repeat. At least one of the paragon paths will allow faster summoning of the shadow familiar and more familiars, so this could become abusive.
Plus the life is coming from somewhere in the basic healing ability, it's just a much more direct transfer - either your life to another or their life to you. This was intentional, particularly to allow the party to retain mobility with a necromancer as the only leader. If the life transference required both targets to be adjacent to the necromancer, it would keep the party very tightly formed and also very vulnerable to enemy artillery attacks.
Perhaps it's just me, but the abilities really scream "Shadow power source" to me. Otherwise, it's a great class and quite close to what I was planning on doing with the necromancer (Shadow leader).
Perhaps it's just me, but the abilities really scream "Shadow power source" to me. Otherwise, it's a great class and quite close to what I was planning on doing with the necromancer (Shadow leader).
I would agree, EG, if WotC had already set pen to paper defining exactly what the Shadow source is and what it is capable of doing. Right now, even with the barbarian playtest out, I'm loathe to tempt fate even with our interpretations of the Primal power source, let alone Shadow, Psionic, or Elemental.
Point taken. I guess it is hard to say what will differentiate the different power sources in the end...
That having been said, though, I don't blame you at all for liking it for what it is. And if the Shadow source does indeed turn out to be what everyone and their Great Uncle Sally are assuming it will be, this will make a perfect Shadow leader.
For now, though, it makes a fantastic Arcane leader for those who do not want to play an artificer or one of the plethora of bards out there.
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