Arnheim Necromancy: Ideas

[Legacy_henesua]

               This is an idea thread about necromancy, changes I wish to make to necromantic spells, etc... Anyone interested is welcome to comment. Thats why I am posting this here.

• Necromancy Domain is the only cleric domain with Animate Dead, Create Undead, Create Greater Undead. Wizards/Sorcerers will have access to each of these spells in the necromancy school at the same level as a cleric with the death domain.
• Animate Dead, Create Undead, and Create Greater Undead will require remains of the dead to cast the spell on.
• Dead remains (large miscellaneous item) can be acquired from graveyards, battlefields, burial mounds etc... Slain opponents should also work for this purpose.
• Wizards/Sorcerers will have a material component requirement since they do not have divine backing.
• Undead created by this spell willbe permanent (but perhaps not persistent across resets). They will be created as henchmen which the spellcaster can call into their party or give commands to guard a location. To facilitate the AI, the undead will have a pointer to their creator.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_HipMaestro]

               

henesua wrote...

• Animate Dead, Create Undead, and Create Greater Undead will require remains of the dead to cast the spell on.

I've seen something similar to this in an SP module where one needed to extract the blood from a corpse... so killing undead would never yield the appropriate component.  It created a vial of blood which could be stacked in inventory for later use.  They didn't use an expiration time on the blood itself, but the corpse decay was speeded up quite a bit to prevent harvesting en masse, I suppose.  Whether blood is more suitable that remains of the dead is argumentative... vampire seem to use it.   '> Just as a side thought about this system, the blood "type" (like human blood vs. orc blood vs. drow blood vs. duergar blood, for example) could determine either specific spell usage or its potency.  Just an idea to throw out fer ya...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Thats an interesting idea.
I was thinking a full corpse or skeleton for automaton type of dead.
Yet vital remains like blood, skulls etc... could be used for the more powerful spells.

FYI: I think the top priority for me will be to identify what kinds of undead I want each spell to create/animate. Put that information in the spell description, and finish this part of the HAKs. I should be able to continue to tweak the actual spell scripts from there.

I could use some help on what people think of the existing undead summons, and what could be better, more interesting, better balanced etc...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               This is harder than I thought since I am using lootable corpses instead of the "remains" lootbag. My preference is to have corpses which look like the creature that died. But I would also like those corpses to be useful for a necromancer who wants to make zombies. The problem I see is that the lootable corpses are not appear selectable if they have nothing to loot.

Any ideas?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 03 octobre 2012 - 05:45 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Shadooow]

               

henesua wrote...

This is harder than I thought since I am using lootable corpses instead of the "remains" lootbag. My preference is to have corpses which look like the creature that died. But I would also like those corpses to be useful for a necromancer who wants to make zombies. The problem I see is that the lootable corpses are not appear selectable if they have nothing to loot.

Any ideas?

try SetIsDestroyable function
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               That was so simple I thought I was doing it anyway, but it turns out that the NESS corpse system is a little different than the built in corpse system. I guess I'll have to make the corpse system do what I want prior to moving forward with my necromancy stuff.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Failed.Bard]

               The way I had done it for my mod, with the undead creation spells, was that you had to cast it directly onto the corpse.  I had the scripts in place to make the appropriate undead type based on spell caster level of whatever type of creature it was.  If they were a dynamic race I altered skin colour to a shade of grey, and NPCs had their names changed to reflect the undead type.

  Here's my tlk entries for my modified create undead and create greater undead, to show the ranges and creatures I'd gone with:

Create Undead
Caster Level(s): Wizard / Sorcerer 6, Death 6, Evil 6
Innate Level:
School: Necromancy
Descriptor(s): Evil
Component(s): Verbal, Somatic
Range: Short
Area of Effect / Target: One Creature
Duration: Instant
Additional Counter Spells: Sunbeam
Save: None
Spell Resistance: None

The caster turns a corpse into an undead being.  The creature created is ~Hostile~ to the caster, though can be controlled in the normal ways.  This spell can only be cast at night.
The type of undead is based upon the caster's level:
Level 14 and under: Ghoul
Level 15-17: Morhg
Level 18 and over: Mummy (Ancient Dead Rank 2)



Create Greater Undead
Caster Level(s): Death 8, Wizard/Sorcerer 8
Innate Level: 8
School: Necromancy
Descriptor(s): Evil
Component(s): Verbal, Somatic
Range: Short
Area of Effect / Target: One Creature
Duration: Instant
Additional Counter Spells: Sunbeam
Save: None
Spell Resistance: None

The caster turns a corpse into an undead being.  The creature created is ~Hostile~ to the caster, though can be controlled in the normal ways.  This spell can only be cast at night.
The type of undead is based upon the caster's level:
Level 14 and under: Ghost
Level 15-17: Wight
Level 18 and over: Vampire Spawn




  The created undead could then be dominated by either control undead, or an evil clerics turn undead power.

 
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Interesting, so you simply took the same model of whatever died and changed all its statistics and AI and Faction once it was raised as Undead?

I just realized that this would be a great way to permakill a PC....
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Failed.Bard]

               I made sure every creature in my mod had a creature skin already by default.  That made it easy to apply the undead modifiers to any applicable creature type, PC or NPC.  Undead, constructs, and elementals couldn't be animated.
 PCs could also be set to the applicable faction, but the reputation settings unfortunately get over-written as soon as they join a party again.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               Great ideas. I'll see where I can take this.

I think at the present though I've gone "over budget" in terms of time on systems. I'll need to tie this one off for the time being and come back to it after I finish building the Adermoer and a few special locations in it.