D&D 4E Balancing a Necromancer's 'Create Undead' for 4e

[Dire Human]

I'm currently working on a Dread Necromancer-type class, and I've hit a snag. To make a long story short, the class uses a Psionic-like power point system to upgrade at-wills, but has a class feature that costs all of its available points that works like an encounter power:

Create Undead, Necromancer Feature
Calling forth the sum of your necromantic powers, you briefly reanimate the corpse of a fallen foe.
Encounter * Arcane, Implement, Mote, Necromancy
Standard Action, Close burst 10
Target: The body of one creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points during the current encounter
Mote Cost: 2 (1st level), 4 (3rd level), 6 (7th level), 7 (13th level), 9 (17th level), 11 (21st level), 13 (23rd level), 15 (27th level)
Effect: The target rises with 1 hit point and is dominated until the end of your next turn. As part of using this power, you can command the target to stand up as a free action. The target gains the undead type, resist necrotic and vulnerable radiant equal to one-half your level, immunity to fear and poison, and cannot regain hit points. At the end of your next turn, the target dies.

Is this an acceptable trade-off for an encounter dominate (especially on a creature that would otherwise be out of the fight anyway), or should it be toned down?

 

[Obryn]

Without context, it looks very good!

-O

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I think there's not enough information. Couldn't you just raise 4 zombie minions of your level instead? (There's a template, Master of the Undead or something like that, that does the exact same thing.) I think raising a single minion won't do a whole lot, even with high damage, and there's no information about whether it's attacks or abilities change. (If you raise a dead cleric, can they then heal themselves?)

I thought you'd be talking about the long-term ritual version (it doesn't exist though), which would bring with it a huge can of worms.

 

[the Jester]

My first thought is, "Shouldn't this have the Shadow power source and keyword too?"

 

[Ferghis]

I think raising a single minion won't do a whole lot, even with high damage, and there's no information about whether it's attacks or abilities change.

Although it's raised with only one hit point, the creature is not a minion, and unless it is healed, is much worse than a minion. As far as healing it, I'm not sure if the good guys can do it, since I'm not sure a dominated enemy counts as an ally (which is usually the required target of healing spells), and I really don't see the enemies healing their comrade if all it says is "braaaaaaaains."

I would change it to a conjuration that can take a move action when the character takes one, but that otherwise shares an action pool with its creator. Make the hit points, defenses and attacks scale by level, using the fey beast tamer theme creatures as inspiration for the numbers, and give the necromancer the ability to give its pet powers from the monster manual as minor actions.

 

[Dire Human]

First off, there's a little blurb at the end of the power that says that the target can't regain hit points, so it's stuck with 1HP until it dies on the next turn. Note that it says "dies", not "is reduced to 0 hit points", to discourage it from being used on allies to get them back in the fight.

Secondly, yes, the creature keeps all of its usual traits and attacks, which is what I'm worried about. Ideally, I'd like the risen enemy to keep everything it had in life.

I would change it to a conjuration that can take a move action when the character takes one, but that otherwise shares an action pool with its creator. Make the hit points, defenses and attacks scale by level, using the fey beast tamer theme creatures as inspiration for the numbers, and give the necromancer the ability to give its pet powers from the monster manual as minor actions.

This was my back-up plan, of giving it a little Sentinel-like combat pet from Level 1, but I thought the whole "raising dead enemies" theme was too good to pass up.

 

[Ferghis]

Secondly, yes, the creature keeps all of its usual traits and attacks, which is what I'm worried about. Ideally, I'd like the risen enemy to keep everything it had in life.

This is a good design goal. But the fact that its dominated means that it only gets to use "everyone" actions or its at-will powers, and no encounter or recharge powers. No immediate or opportunity actions either. Auras would remain in effect, and other qualities.

It occurs to me that this power would revive an entire swarm, which would be strange conceptually, but not so problematic in terms of game balance. No more so than regular swarms, at least.

However, I still think that one hit point is too few to be actually useful. If you're giving it just one hit point, at least make it a minion, so it survives misses. Still, I would probably give it about a surge value of HP so that it can participate more than one round in a fight.

Also, the dominated condition has an interesting impact on the economy of actions, in that it uses none of the PC's actions, but the monster only has one standard action to use. For a very weak undead, this is probably desireable, since it doesn't force the player to "waste" actions on the undead. However, if you beef it up at all, this may warrant reconsidering.

 

[Dire Human]

How about this, for a bit more longevity?

Create Undead, Necromancer Feature
Calling forth the sum of your necromantic powers, you briefly reanimate the corpse of a fallen foe.
Encounter * Implement, Mote, Necromancy, Shadow
Standard Action, Close burst 10
Target: The body of one creature reduced to 0 or fewer hit points during the current encounter
Mote Cost: 2 (1st level), 4 (3rd level), 6 (7th level), 7 (13th level), 9 (17th level), 11 (21st level), 13 (23rd level), 15 (27th level)
Effect: The target rises with hit points equal to your healing surge value and is dominated (save ends). As part of using this power, you can command the target to stand up as a free action. The target gains the undead type, resist necrotic and vulnerable radiant equal to one-half your level, immunity to fear and poison, and cannot regain hit points. When the target saves against the dominated condition, it dies.

 

[Ryujin]

First off, there's a little blurb at the end of the power that says that the target can't regain hit points, so it's stuck with 1HP until it dies on the next turn. Note that it says "dies", not "is reduced to 0 hit points", to discourage it from being used on allies to get them back in the fight.

Secondly, yes, the creature keeps all of its usual traits and attacks, which is what I'm worried about. Ideally, I'd like the risen enemy to keep everything it had in life.


This was my back-up plan, of giving it a little Sentinel-like combat pet from Level 1, but I thought the whole "raising dead enemies" theme was too good to pass up.

Dominated means dazed and essentially at-will attacks only. If you want the creature to retain the powers that it had in life then perhaps change the wording to "rises as an allied creature and is dazed"?

 

[Ferghis]

The target rises with hit points equal to your healing surge value and is dominated (save ends).

As Ryujin notes (and as I noted above), you're trying to keep the powers of the monster, but the dominated condition only lets you use standard-action at-wills and "always on" powers. You'll never get any use out the monster's of immediate or opportunity action powers.

This isn't necessarily always a problem. It'll give the player more use out of lower level monsters, and less use out of bosses that have a lot of strange powers, which sorta fits my impression of undead as less potent versions of their original monsters. However, an undead dragon will never get to use its breath weapon, which makes it somewhat less of a dragon...