Wrong:
I never said ignore resist is not Ok, as a mastery feature it is acceptable. But not at novice level. As the evocer thatuses different kinds of elemental damage gets it at level 10.
Because he's a generalist and avoiding resistance is as simple as changing powers. A necromancer (probably not nethermancer) relies on necrotic damage types and will most likely be taking them. To the point where they get a cantrip to potentially deal with necrotic damage (an actually poor attempt at solving the same problem).
On thinking about things I now think the cantrip is even more awful than just an action sink. It could have totally justified itself for anyone by being
any resistance. Not just necrotic. That could have its uses, be pretty interesting and not feel like a hacked in mechanic.
The more I think about this book, the more I become disappointed in many of its design decisions.
Why does it make sense?
Because it is the capstone feature that only a dedicated necromancer can achieve, not a nethermancer or illusionist that dabbles in necromancy.
You need to pick the school for it to be useful and if there is a feat available at level 1, this just makes your argument rather bemusing. Because then your illusionist could take a feat at level 1 and be BETTER than the necromancer (A so called "specialist"). That just fails to make sense, unless there is no such feat and then other characters might as well ignore the powers in this book.
If you are a specialist, you can dedicate all your feats on one thing. Which means that you will become more powerful.
But if you don't have abilities to negate resistance, you play catch up the entire time and that is just silly. You already pay a terrific cost at the door using necrotic due to how widely it is resisted across the game. It means a "feat tax" becomes mandatory. I just think it's smarter design to build the classes feat tax into it and be done for the day.
And adding vulnerabe 5 on undead creatures sounds a) flavourful and b) extremely powerful.
It has its uses sure, but it's also an extremely narrow effect that bothers a specific type of enemy (albeit what I think is a classic trope for DnD). So it's actually not that great for one of your at-wills due to its use being niche. 1d8+int necrotic damage on one target is
exceptionally poor - unless it is
A) Undead
B) One of the rare monsters that regenerates/gains temp HP.
So it's actually not that brilliant compared to many other Wizard at-wills, which are stronger individually than that power and effect everything. So it should have a strong rider for its specific type of enemy, so when it is useful it's great (and in an undead themed campaign is a must choose!). I would recommend a wizard pick that power up in my Dark Sun game - for example - but I would make it clear in my Eberron game it is absolutely useless (as hardly any undead whatsoever are used in the entire game). One of them is filled with undead and the other one has barely any - except the odd cameo maybe once an adventure (if that).
So adding on reducing damage by resistance to whatever damage it does do - despite the rider - is really adding insult to injury. My power that is supposed to be super effective against undead, doesn't actually let ME effectively hurt them very much (without an AP?). Or at best bring my allies attacks up to parity with its potential resistance? If my allies are using necrotic, I better hope I have minor actions to use or the 5 vulnerable is basically just bringing them up to parity with everyone else.
While the radiant mafia party are tearing apart undead so hard that they are "Vulnerable 5 what?". Or did we forget that a simple base damage type in the game - radiant - does what your AT-WILL that has to hit does against undead
but better? But again, it seems "Let's make completely suboptimal options for no reason without considering anything else in 4E and how it interacts" is apparently "GOOD DESIGN". Somehow. We don't need to make necrotic into radiant damage, but we can bring it up to par with everything else and then make its benefits - well - BENEFITS and not just action sinks/stuff you have to do just to reach par. That's silly. That's just totally silly.
And I repeat myself and say: non undead creatures with necrotic resistance, like devas have a good reason to resist necrotic.
There are precious few of these though - most of the things that resist necrotic damage are undead. Again, you're not really justifying why necrotic - the second most commonly resisted damage type in 4E just in case we've forgot this somewhere - should be doubly punished.
Just as a side note: that blank pyromancy ignore resist at level 1 seems too early too, but scorching burst is bad enough as it is.
The pyromancer was simply built on solid common sense design. A lot of creatures resist fire, so we need to give them a way of negating it as they'll have to pay a feat tax anyway. Thus they inbuilt into the class. This to me was actually a really smart decision and given - again - monsters are attempting to under emphasize resistance since MM3, it fit in with the way the game was moving. To see the designers apparently flip-flopping on their decisions months after publishing essentials indicates some severe schizophrenia as to what they are trying to achieve.
