Sephiroth no Miko
First Post
Isida, I was looking at your Negatai and thinking they are really not worth the +1 ECL, especially when compared your standard fire, water, air, and earth genasi.
Getting a +1 bonus/5 levels to necromantic effects, unintelligent undead ignoring them, the ability to rebuke as a cleric 4 levels lower, chill touch 1/day does not make up for the loss of -2 to all saves, and reduced healing.
I say this because both saves and healing both heavily impact on player characters all the time. They're always rolling saves, and always getting hurt. -2 to every save is just... brutal and the average -1 hp loss per dice cure spells is not insignificant either (the slow natural healing is less of an issue since adventurers rarely heal naturally).
However, a bunch of the negatai's bonuses are quite limited. +1/5 level vs. necromantic effects isn't that powerful, especially if a character needs 10 levels just to achieve a net +0 (plus, there's that -2 to Con to overcome). Both the unintelligent undead ignoring and the ability to rebuke is nice, but they're dependent on having undead around (which in turn, is DM dependent). Even then, neither are especially powerful. Skeletons and zombies aren't much of a threat, especially as a character gets higher in levels, and besides, if you do something threatening, they'll attack you. I would classify that as a minor ability at best.
Incidentally, for the rebuke undead, how many times can a negatai (or a positai for that matter) rebuke per day? Once or 3 + Cha like a cleric (I was assuming once)? A 1st level negatai (= to a 2nd level character if using ECL +1) would have to make a Cha check (which is what a turning check is) of 22 higher to even affect 1 HD undead! (Plus his turning damage would be 2d6 - 3 + Cha.) Most powerful undead like vampires, liches, ghosts (even ghouls) all have turning resistance anyways, so even high-level negatais would only be able to affect skeletons and zombies most of the time (both of which would just ignore him in the first place). Yes, I realize a 19th level negatai could rebuke as a 15th level cleric. But as an equivalent of a 20th level character (or even 19th), he would be facing much tougher opponents than what a 15th cleric would be facing.
So anyways, that's my argument for why I would consider a negatai around a net +0 ECL. I think the reduced healing penalty equals out the necromantic saves bonuses and invisibility to unintelligent undead and the -2 to saves equals out the rebuke and chill touch.
Of course, this is just my 0.02.
Getting a +1 bonus/5 levels to necromantic effects, unintelligent undead ignoring them, the ability to rebuke as a cleric 4 levels lower, chill touch 1/day does not make up for the loss of -2 to all saves, and reduced healing.
I say this because both saves and healing both heavily impact on player characters all the time. They're always rolling saves, and always getting hurt. -2 to every save is just... brutal and the average -1 hp loss per dice cure spells is not insignificant either (the slow natural healing is less of an issue since adventurers rarely heal naturally).
However, a bunch of the negatai's bonuses are quite limited. +1/5 level vs. necromantic effects isn't that powerful, especially if a character needs 10 levels just to achieve a net +0 (plus, there's that -2 to Con to overcome). Both the unintelligent undead ignoring and the ability to rebuke is nice, but they're dependent on having undead around (which in turn, is DM dependent). Even then, neither are especially powerful. Skeletons and zombies aren't much of a threat, especially as a character gets higher in levels, and besides, if you do something threatening, they'll attack you. I would classify that as a minor ability at best.
Incidentally, for the rebuke undead, how many times can a negatai (or a positai for that matter) rebuke per day? Once or 3 + Cha like a cleric (I was assuming once)? A 1st level negatai (= to a 2nd level character if using ECL +1) would have to make a Cha check (which is what a turning check is) of 22 higher to even affect 1 HD undead! (Plus his turning damage would be 2d6 - 3 + Cha.) Most powerful undead like vampires, liches, ghosts (even ghouls) all have turning resistance anyways, so even high-level negatais would only be able to affect skeletons and zombies most of the time (both of which would just ignore him in the first place). Yes, I realize a 19th level negatai could rebuke as a 15th level cleric. But as an equivalent of a 20th level character (or even 19th), he would be facing much tougher opponents than what a 15th cleric would be facing.
So anyways, that's my argument for why I would consider a negatai around a net +0 ECL. I think the reduced healing penalty equals out the necromantic saves bonuses and invisibility to unintelligent undead and the -2 to saves equals out the rebuke and chill touch.
Of course, this is just my 0.02.
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