Best Necromancy in RPG's

[gerey]

[Acrux]

I haven't played this since the initial demo a few years ago, but at the time the combat was not good.

[gerey]

I haven't played this since the initial demo a few years ago, but at the time the combat was not good.

Dunno if the current demo is new, I was planning to try it out during the Next Fest.

[Trickster]

We wuz nacromantz n shet

[UltraFan123]

We wuz nacromantz n shet

Here's hoping the game allows you to build your own zombie-****** army while sparing all the White NPCs.

[logincrash]

We wuz nacromantz n shet

[WaterMage]

[anvi]

Nothing beats Magic the Gathering if you like summoning large armies. I really like the spell Grave Pact which forces the enemy to sacrifice a creature if one of your creatures die. Only you have 1000000 zombies/vampires/bats. Or the spell that makes you sacrifice a creature but you get to wreck the enemy. But you use it on a creature that does something powerful when it dies and get a double whammy. Then you bring the creature back to life and repeat. It blows my mind that nobody has ripped that game off and made it into an RPG. So many great angles it could take.

I wanted to mention Everquest's Necro because it was maybe the best class in the game. Mana is important because it regens slowly. So you had to be frugal with spells and save for emergencies too. So balancing that blue bar was important. But the Necro could drain their health to increase mana. And then you can lifetap the health back. So now you have health and mana in a constant balancing act, when you are in that lich form. But it pays off.

They also had a lot of fun with the Fear spell. You snare an enemy first, then cast Fear and it runs away, only really slowly because your snare is great. And then you walk after it casting poisons and diseases and your pet hacks it to death. A later pet is a skeleton rogue which can backstab so this works great.

But in a dungeon you couldn't do any of this because there is 'social aggro', meaning enemies help each other. So if you feared something even slowly it would likely wander into more enemies and you get swarmed. So in dungeons you switch to doing 'root rot' instead. Root spell holds enemies completely still, but then you can't do direct damage or it will break it. And you can't send your pet or the pet will get owned toe to toe. So you just Root and hold it still and then use damage over time spells, poisons, fire dots, diseases, chip away at it. And lifetap too. And the Root spell could randomly break so you had to be ready to get beat up and recast it quickly.

In some cases you could use Charm on Undead creatures instead. Charm an undead creature to be your pet and have it fight another thing. Help it just enough to kill the other creature but be almost dead itself. Then you break the charm and kill your former pet which is almost dead from the fight. Then repeat and you are basically killing twice as fast as many enemies as other players could. Or if you had a priest buddy you could use Dire Charm to permanently charm something, preferably a big Bone Dragon or something. Then buff it up and keep, give it haste and damage shield and Cleric buffs, and then keep it healed. As an Enchanter I did this to a giant pirhana which I could take on land. Fun times.

[Lich]

JotC are minimalists in developing their games. Shandalar was released in 1997. No other MTG-related computer game comes close in quality. They're much more interested in making Pokemon-like cards with extreme power creep and zillions of rules text shenanigans for EDH players and shiny pieces of curling cardboard for collectors than anything mechanically interesting. The main reason they can still parastiize the game is because the basic system that Garfield made in 1993 is intuitive and robust.

[anvi]

It's basically a gambling company too. Having people buy "booster packs" to hopefully contain a card they want. They were doing that long before everyone else cought on to loot boxes and stuff. I love Shandalar and Manalink. If I ever got to make an RPG I would just rip them off mercilessly.

[Lich]

MTG is abstract enough such that it leaves room for the player's imagination while maintaining player agency: when a game is going well, it's easy to imagine that you're a powerful mage controlling armies of creatures with complex properties. Games that rely more on particulars tend to limit the necromancer's power to a small number of minions or forgo detailed control of minions. MTG has so many satisfying ways to interact with the graveyard that you can build a wide range of strong decks around the graveyard alone. It's also risky to be a necromancer since there are powerful anti-graveyard cards like Leyline of the Void and Rest in Peace. I haven't seen any other game where you can use dead things in such intricate ways.

Legacy Lands and Vintage Dredge up to several years ago (I don't keep up with the formats anymore) come to mind for unique graveyard decks: Lands using Life from the Loam, Thespian's Stage, Dark Depths, Glacial Chasm, etc.; Dredge using Bazaar of Baghdad, Bridge from Below, Ichorid, Cabal Therapy and free counterspells. An RPG, not a "deckbuilder roguelite", with cards that enable decks like these could be fun.

► Lands

► Dredge