Deathlord - Death-kings, V3

[username]

Another take on Death-king, with some buffs and some nerfs and changes to things that just didn't work well based on player tests of the Exaltation during a campaign as well as another player expressing interest in playing one in a different campaign. Just putting out the mechanics of them first before I put some fluff together for them, although I did work some out just from describing features. Still in flux of course but best to get it posted so things can start getting addressed.



Static Powers:

Soul Trap: A portion of the Deathlord’s soul is trapped (usually willingly) in something that is not their body, known as a Phylactery. This makes them immune to a normal true death, though this requires them to defend whatever object, place, or person houses their soul; in this state their soul within the Phylactery is easily destroyed by any serious attack on it unless it is being actively protected. If statistics are required, their soul has 10 HP and Resilience equal to the Deathlord's Necrosis, although they may burn a hero point to Trap another portion of their Soul should it be destroyed.
While the Deathlord’s Trapped Soul is still safe, death is merely a setback. When the Deathlord dies, they return to life at their Phylactery where their soul is housed, fully healed, in 2d10 - Necrosis days. However, if the Deathlord should die with no existing Trapped Soul or Phylactery then their death is permanent!

Vigor Mortis: Deathlords have the Undead and Dark Sight traits and do not need sleep, nor do they age. Additionally, they track Critical damage on each body part separately and only suffer the death effects of criticals to the Head or Body. However, they do not heal over time or respond to mundane medical efforts and may treat the Hardy feat as optional if it appears on their progression. Magical spells and resource points heal as normal.

Secrets Of Life And Death: Obsessed with immortality, the Deathlord is hopelessly necromantic. Deathlords start with one rank in Necromancy and can always advance Necromancy as though it appeared in their current class progression. When making a Focus Power Test to cast a Necromancy spell or Spell Combo made of only Necromancy spells, the Deathlord can spend Antilife equal to the spell's level (or sum of the spells' levels for a Spell Combo) minus half their Necrosis, to a minimum of zero Antilife spent required, to prevent any Psychic Phenomena the Focus Power test would cause.

Soulless: Having your soul sundered does have some drawbacks. While separated from your Phylactery you may not spend hero points, although they may still be burnt. In addition, spending antilife pulls back the mask of mortality you possess to reveal the soulless horror you are. The more your Tell increases, the more horrific you become, functioning as gaining a Fear Rating for the scene equal to the half number of antilife you have spent in the scene to a maximum rating of your Necrosis. Only the living are affected by this Fear rating.

Power Stat: Necrosis
Necrosis is death, and is a measure of how closely you walk the line between undeath and oblivion. As the Deathlord's Necrosis increases, they become increasingly distant, eerie and unsettling as they distance themselves further from their lost mortality. Low Necrosis Deathlords may have a hollowness to their tone and a dullness in their eyes, while as Necrosis increases they may lose the ability to laugh, have no reflection or even at times be unable to have their voice carry electronically. At high Necrosis, Deathlords tend to forget what it was ever like to be alive or that they were ever alive at all, their time as a mortal seeming like a vague dream lost upon waking.

Resource Stat: Antilife
A Deathlord has Antilife equal to their Necrosis*2 + Intelligence and Composure. Deathlord's regain one Antilife each time they kill a living thing that has a soul of about the size of a housecat or larger.

The Tell of a Deathlord is a stench of death and general wrong-ness around them that affects all living things. As they spend Antilife, their visage shifts to reveal the soul sundered monstrosity they truly are, their eyes burning with spectral flames and their bodies appear to whither into desiccated husks, while the minds of mortals are instilled with an unnatural understanding of the futility of life.

Necrosis 1: Wake The Dead: You may touch a dead mortal, spending a half action to do so in structure time, and expend Antilife equal to its level to Wake it as an undead slave with your Necrosis in current hitpoints. It gains the Undead and Mindless traits but otherwise keeps its statistics and will follow your commands to the spirit and letter. Your maximum Antilife is reduced by the combined level of these undead while they serve you and you may not use Wake the Dead if your Maximum Antilife is 0. You may de-animate them at any time, resulting in their instant death, and may Wake them again by touching their body and spending Antilife equal to their level.

Necrosis 2: Festering Ruin: Once per round as part of any damage roll, you may spend 1 Antilife to add your Necrosis as rolled dice to damage and grant the attack Festering property.

Necrosis 3: Corpsecrafter: When using Wake The Dead to reanimate an undead slave, you may add the following traits to the target while it is reanimated by spending an additional Antilife for each trait added: Amphibious, Crawler, Dark Sight, Fear (1), Quadruped. You may also spend 2 Antilife to add the traits Phasing, Flyer or remove the Mindless trait while it is reanimated. The Antilife spent during this also increases the level of the undead slave by an equal amount while they are reanimated.

Necrosis 4: Neverborn: The Deathlord becomes immune to fatigue, and their Resilience increases by 2.

Necrosis 5: Necropotence: As a free action, the Deathlord may sacrifice any number of hit points to regain that amount of Antilife at the end of their turn, or sacrifice 3 hit points to gain the effects of spending a Hero Point. This cannot cause critical damage or use Temporary Hit Points to function, and if it would, Necropotence automatically fails. The Antilife regained from this may bring you over your maximum Antilife but if these extra Antilife are not spent by the end of your following turn they are lost.



Dark Art Assets:

Art of War: Most don't fear Death, just want it takes to get there and you have endless eons to perfect both. The Maximum and starting Hitpoints of you and your Undead Slaves are increased by your Necrosis, and when you use the Festering Ruin power the effect lasts for a number of damage rolls up to your Necrosis rather than just one.

Art of Flesh: Fear of blood tends to create fear of the flesh. Surely there is cause to fear in your ability to craft flesh. You may use Antilife to bend, twist and shape the form of your Wake the Dead Undead Slaves into a item of your liking that functions as if made of Symbiont in all ways, expending a hero point along with a number of both Antilife and Undead Slaves equal to the artifact dots of the item you are creating. At least one of these slaves must be of a level equal to or greater to the Artifact dots of the desired item: weaker beings simply lack the soul strength necessary to fuel the dark rituals.

Art of Magic: The tides of the warp hold no secrets from you, as the you have nothing but time to learn them. You gain an additional Magic School of your choice along with Necromancy via your Secrets of Life and Death power, and may treat that school as Necromancy for interaction with abilities, feats and other effects.

Art of Decay: All that you touch withers to nothing. Creatures in contact with you take 3k2 Rending damage every round, with the special rule Tearing. While in a grapple, you gain a natural weapon with the following profile: 3k2 R, Brawling, Tearing. This weapon may always be used with special attacks that use the Grapple action. You regain hitpoints equal to half the wounds these attacks inflict, rounded up.

Art of Obsession: It's been said that you can't take it with you, but you solve that by refusing to let go. It only takes you one day to return to life. You may trap shards of your soul within additional phylacteries above the normal limit equal to your Necrosis without needing to burn a Hero Point, though it takes a number of days equal to your Necrosis each time. You return to your Phylactery housing your most recently Trapped Soul portion when you return to life.

Art of Life: Your knowledge of Life and Death allows you to transcend the normal antithesis that is the Deathlord's existence. You ignore the Deathlord's normal restriction on spending hero points while separated from their Phylactery and may heal normally instead of being restricted entirely to magical healing or resource points.

Art of Death: In the end, it call comes down to Death. Escaping from it and granting it instead unto others. All Deathlords know this, but you elevate it to a true art form. When you would gain Antilife from killing something, you gain additional Antilife equal to half your Necrosis, rounded up.

[Lestat]

I have always viewed Wake the Dead as being a thought experiment more than it being a real ability that makes sense in a real game. Giving any level of freedom with it leads to armies of monsters much more powerful than the rest of a typical 4-5 man Exalted party all under the control of a single player. Enemies in this game have wildly different power levels, and saying the SM will just shut down anything more powerful than a greenhorn soldier being reanimated to keep the game in check isn't a real possibility.

A Deathlord has Antilife equal to their Necrosis*2 + Intelligence and Composure. Deathlord's regain one Antilife each time they kill a living thing that has a soul of about the size of a housecat or larger.

This is basically arbitrary amounts of resource points. Between properly brainwashed followers, AoE spells that hit kilometers of forests, and general combat you have as many resource points as you can muster. This can be fine as there are core Exaltations that can basically instantly regenerate their resource points, but it just depends on what powers these resource points can be used for.

Necrosis 1: Wake The Dead: You may touch a dead body and expend an Antilife to reanimate it as an undead slave with your Necrosis in current hitpoints. They gain the Undead and Mindless traits and lose any Exaltation powers in this state due to being a mere undead simulacrum of their former self but otherwise keep their existing statistics and will follow your commands to the spirit and letter of your wishes. Each session or day, whichever is longer, you must expend an additional Antilife for each such Undead Slave you possess, otherwise the slave falls dormant as if actually dead, although you may spend Antilife equal to the level of slave to wake them once more. Some extremely powerful beings such as Dragons may be immune to this power.

So you spend 1 resource point to reanimate one monster of any level, and at an unspecified point (the start of? the end of?) each session or day you must spend resource points equal to the monsters you have. This all happens at once meaning you can only maintain a number of monsters equal to your Power Stat as you can't spend multiple points at once beyond your Power Stat. However you can just reanimate a ton of creatures, as many as you can kill bags of house cats for to gain arbitrary amounts of resource points to continually revive more and more monsters of any level. At the end, or start, or whatever of this/the next session however you need to pay the upkeep, which is supposedly the reasoning why it costs resource points equal to the level of the monster to re-reanimate them, but with bags of house cats you can pay the increased cost for the most important undead.

Compare "As many Modrons/Ultralisks/Eldrazi as you want." to Overlord hard capped at 5 minion squads, and if they want a creature with real stats it cuts into their minion squad count.

Necrosis 3: Corpsecrafter: When using Wake The Dead to reanimate an undead slave, you may add one of the following traits to the target by spending an additional Antilife for each trait added: Amphibious, Crawler, Dark Sight, Fear (1), Quadruped. You may also spend 2 Antilife to add the traits Phasing, Flyer or remove the Mindless trait. Maintaining an undead slave with these traits costs additional Antilife each session or day, whichever is longer, equal to the cost of Antilife when the traits were added.

It's a little rough comparing a 1 point trait to an entire extra potentially level 5 monster you could be summoning, or a 2 point trait for two more monsters, but with arbitrary levels of resource point generation you might want to make one of your monsters immune to normal weapons, or let them cast something off their potentially yoked spell list with possibly max level spells.

Necrosis 5: Necropotence: As a free action, the Deathlord may sacrifice any number of hit points to regain that amount of Antilife at the end of their turn, or sacrifice 3 hit points to gain the effects of spending a Hero Point. This cannot cause critical damage or use Temporary Hit Points to function, and if it would, Necropotence automatically fails.

Once again, there are already core Exaltations out there that can generate arbitrary amounts of resource points, this is just redundancy if you find yourself stranded, away from followers, and on a planet of soulless robots/zombies. If you have reanimated then stripped the Mindless trait from a healer, or you have a healer of your own you can really go to town with just this. Even without those things a few points of life to guarantee a massive following of fully leveled monsters is a small price to pay. Not to mention that you're a Lich and you have a Phylactery as a safety net.

Wake the Dead was changed from giving you minions because minions were supposedly just too boring, but there's a reason why despite the spirit creation rules being just as abusable as every other point buy system (vehicles, weapon property costs, etc.) that most Exaltations either get one capped to level 3 if it's not their main focus, or capped at level 5 if it's either their main focus, if it has real limitations, or otherwise the creator has likely overtuned it. Exalted are not so much more powerful than individual monsters, and monster level can be extremely off base when it comes to determining power. A single level 5 monster might challenge a group of Exalted, or is only strong enough to challenge one at time, if that. This is the core and identifying power of this Exaltation, so I think it coming down to crossing your fingers, and hoping nobody does anything exciting with it isn't acceptable.

This game is built off the idea that "you can build the things that are normally too powerful to be allowed in other games", but the math when it comes to multiple monsters means that you'll soon run into the more pressing issue of balance, and eclipsing other players with your multiple pseudo characters and turns. This is the purpose of minions, which are not weak at all, and can do more DPR than most characters can do when it comes to hitting low Static Defense enemies. When that is too anti-climatic then there are spirits or summoned monster stat blocks, but you can't mix the feeling of legion you get with minions with the power and intricacies of spirits/monsters. You have to sacrifice something to keep the game fun for everyone else.

[GuardianTempest]

Many of the abilities there are built off the previous version done by Nobody Important, the criticisms here would apply there more. In fact, the V2 version has an even stronger version of Necropotence on the rationale that "Power Stat 5 abilities should feel like it's worth the cost." Although when this version was put up back then, the V2 Death-King was a little clunkier with some of its abilities.

IIRC, the rationale for this version of Wake the Dead is that minion squads kinda suck and that this iteration properly allows resurrecting a fallen opponent without losing any of its previous capacities, at least as I could remember.


EDIT: Looking over V2 again, the criticisms don't apply as much as I initially thought since the overlapping abilities work differently, but it still raises a point.

[username]

Dec 19, 2018 19:10:59 GMT -6 GuardianTempest said:

the rationale for this version of Wake the Dead is that minion squads kinda suck

This is indeed the case. Minion squads absolutely suck and I've seen that numerous times from experience. For Minion squads to not suck it takes an incredible amount of wrangling or rule modification. The very best minion squad by the book 1 rules, with 6 members and TR 5, rolls 6k5 on its attack which averages a little less than 35. At the very highest book 1 legal DR (even though it breaks it an has one higher as an example) of 4 attacking someone with SD 17 would deal 35 damage on the attack, which is quite respectable. I'll be comparing this to a normal trooper from the book for reference, although this is a bit difficult since they were never fully updated. I'll be using updated versions of the SD (17), HP (10) and treat their Ballistics as being equal to their Dex (3) since that is how they were made and envisioned (5k3 on attacks rather than the 4k2 they would have). Of course, then that gets murky on whether they would still get to keep their sound constitutions but let's not delve too deeply.

35 damage would deal 8 wounds to them, unless it hit them in the head, arms or body in which case it would deal 7 due to their armor. Potent but by no means deadly. That's assuming that the enemy just stands there and takes it though. Rolling 4k3 on their dodge, they would get an average of a little less than 22, or +11 static defense. 28 static defense would drag the average damage to 25 due to only getting a single raise, so they would deal 5 or 6 wounds depending on the body location struck.

Meanwhile, the Trooper has a lasgun, so they can Full Auto to roll 7k4 on their attack, or 8k4 if within Short range (which is not unlikely). 8k4 averages to a little over 35, so on average the trooper would kill 3 out of a squad of even the very, very strongest minions. Due to how minions work, they can only muster 3k3 on their next attack, average about an 18 and then get dodged easily and finished off with the next blast of lasers. There are murky mentions of Reinforcement in the V2 Death-king to heal them, presumably to try and reduce this to an extent. The fact that a full strength squad that requires minimum PS 4 (provided you had a cyberbrain at best quality, otherwise you'd need PS5) struggles with a single level 2 enemy and how much of a chore these squads are to get back if killed says a lot.
Things might be a bit different if Minion Squads can dodge or parry as well, but minion rules in general are murky on that since they don't have actual skills. They may be able to parry since they roll SizeKtr on everything and parrying isn't advanced but dodging requires acrobatics dots so RAW they wouldn't be able to dodge those las blasts. Speaking of Blasts, that kills them even faster one frag would wipe out 4 without any worries of raises. Bigger bombs/spells (or more of them) would destroy even more. That's not even getting into murky things like Flamers or Magic Missiles which don't have attack rolls at all and need house rules to function on Minions.

If you're using multiple squads at a time, things don't look much better and in fact are probably worse. At PS 4 you can have a maximum of 4 of these TR 5 DR 4 size 6 squads, provided 5 Charisma and 6 Intelligence. The 4 troopers would likely go first since the minions don't have any kind of initiative bonus (unless you read the "sizeKtr for all combat rolls to mean initiative as well, but 6k5 for an initiative is stupid). The troopers, if they go first, would be able to focus on full autoing 2 of the squads, each trooper killing 2 of them and the minions maybe being able to kill one single one of the troopers if they get lucky on the initiative rolls. And then its back to the graveyard to find more corpses, unless you're able to continually reuse the same ones. Even then that would require you to stop and spend 10 rounds on it for each one. At Powerstat 4 (or more likely 5) your minions once maxed on their power are barely able to distract or soften up even level 2 enemies, even with you supporting them by spending blight and your turn. The first Death-King I saw played never even bothered much with the minions since they are so clunky and weak despite two of the Exaltation abilities revolving around them.

This is why the Overlord was so heavily redone, since I saw first hand as an SM how easy it was to absolutely cut down the squads a player had, far faster than they could put them up or use them. It required a massive amount of focus on Minions to make them easy to replace and able to be stronger than normal to have the Exaltation function properly, and having that much focus on minions seems a bit clunky on a different exalt. And why should another exalt be able to do something similar, cheapening them both? After seeing players play around with minions, I try to avoid them when I can unless they are heavily modified. That's the reasoning on why no minions at least, although it isn't addressing the points yet. I'll do that next.

[username]

Alrighty, let's go over points then. It's good to get some actual feedback.

I'd argue the resource is far from arbitrary. It is entirely inherited from the V2. I considered adding that the things must be sentient as well, but that would make it extraordinarily difficult to recover.  AOE spells hitting kilometers weren't a thing at the time and are wholly homebrew tomfoolery that are problems on their own. Generally, it is one that is not difficult to get back during downtime (the Deathlord I saw firsthand did it with chickens) but during active time, narrative or structured, it is a great deal more of a chore and at times not even possible. Actually trying to have a bag of housecats around and on hand can be a tricky prospect, quite literally herding cats. The wording of "living thing that has a soul" is somewhat vague though and can probably be rephrased. Take note that even as it is now, the Deathlord personally has to do the killing if they want any resource from it. Things killed by allies, followers, friends, or even their undead slaves won't count. This also excludes them from glassing areas with Spelljammer shots since ship actions take crew. I suppose I can combine the options however, with Sentients giving 1 per death and you needing to kill, oh, 10 nonsentients, living, souled things of at least cat size for it to regain even one. Bit clunky though.

I considered using Monster creation rules when overhauling Wake the Dead, but it seemed like it would be more efficient and effective and even more flavorful to actually do real reanimating of things you run into. Wake the Dead was originally more restrictive, specifying that you could ONLY do it when you regained a resource from killing a mortal and spending a resource to reanimate that mortal instead of regaining the resource, "When you regain Antilife by killing a mortal, you may immediately expend an Antilife to instead reanimate the victim as an undead slave". This meant the Deathlord had to personally kill the thing they wanted to raise and needed to spend the resource RIGHT THEN if they wanted to do it. It also specified mortal, so no raising something like an enemy Exalt. However in practice and experimentation, this was a restriction that made it hard to the Deathking to ever actually raise anything, certainly anything worth raising. Even with the new wording, Modrons are of the table since they're not really alive and also don't die. I did at the time suggest it might be better though to make it cost an amount equal to the level of the target but I did not get much response, which I think I will implement I might limit it to things half your level rounded up as well, but for now I don't think it needs to go that far. I would really hate for this ability to get reduced back into just being minions for reasons outlined above but I may do so. Another option is that I could use the old Trap the Soul power from DeathKing V1 and mix the gestalt soul thing it makes for you with the Monster Creation rules where the levels of the things you capture are added together to determine the BP of the thing. Its a difficult balance along the inverse ninja rule line, since on one hand I like the idea of a lich with hordes of undead and on the other a smaller group of better undead might work better, but that will bog down combat if all are used at once and having one really stronk undead spirit would be pretty lame. I'll work on it some more though, along with the change outlined above.

You also misunderstood how the upkeep costs are paid. They weren't paid all at once, and thus you didn't even have a limit of just the 5 you were imagining, they were paid whenever but had to be paid at least at some point during the day. I had it as session/day, whichever is longer but I might just make it just as Session. Or perhaps a combination of sorts.

I think I might change it further as well. I was considering having the upkeep be equal to the level of the creature (meaning you couldn't have things of 3 or higher be unmindless unless you were a kobold or had some other way of breaking the 5 resource cap since that increases the upkeep, which would need to be spent all at once on a per slave basis even if individual slaves can be spent on separately). Ones that fall into torpor would still require 1 resource each period and level to awaken again, and once awake you gotta pay the upkeep for that period on it too, no freebies. To add further onus on this, it could be made so that you need to spend 1 to make it fall into a torpor and if you don't pay the upkeep required on them, whatever that is, the ones that don't get their resource go rogue, breaking the bonds of undead slavery and seek you out for revenge. Options.

Necropotence is, as pointed out, a major step back from what it was since before it really was an arbitrary amount of resource since it gave you back more then you spent in HP, but now holds it 1 for 1. Since unless you have a specific asset you still need resource to heal (or magic, which also requires resource) it works about a bit more fairly now.  There can be many circumstances where you don't have time or the ability to easily get access to things to kill for resource, especially if you have a large number of slaves requiring necessary upkeep.

Anyway, an outline of some changes I had considered and will implement:

Why does Vigor Mortis give Dark Sight? I don't remember why I changed that and I'll remove it unless reminded and given sufficient reason.

I MIGHT make Soulless also restrict the living/nonexalts from having a disposition above indifferent to you. I don't really think that is needed though and won't do it now.

Wake the Dead will cost the targets level in Antilife. Each session after the first they were raised, active undead slaves cost you their level in Antilife, paid at your leisure (but all at once for each one when you do pay for that one). This is also costed once per day. You may also put them in torpor by spending 1 resource, where they will only cost 1 resource per session and day, although if they were active that day/session you still gotta pay the full normal price instead. If for whatever reason you decide you don't want to, forget or cannot pay upkeep, the undead slave is freed and automatically and instinctively seeks revenge. This will be far more cumbersome than previously, especially in the wording, but sacrifices need to be made.

[Amanojyaku]

Wake the Dead is now huge. Suggestion: Swap with Vigor Mortis.

On the off chance that someone decides to make a pdf again, this should look much better.

[username]

Noted and considered, but Vigor Mortis is more of an intrinsic part of what you are, so I think it works better as a base power with Wake the Dead being a PS ability.

[ScrapyardDragon]

The recent changes to wake the dead only serve to further ruin the day of deathlords for minimal and almost non-applicable benefit. The problem isn't that it has a maintenance cost, the problem is that the power eats up far too much resource to ever be worth using given the deathlord's inability to easily or reliably recover resource points. The angry zombies mechanic feels like it was tacked on to balance something that is supposedly an improvement but really just burns up even more resource for no gain, ending in a net loss. You want to know how to fix wake the dead? Rip a page out of the spark's book.

Keep the "spend resource equal to target level" bit to "claim" the corpse. For each wake the dead slave that is awake, you reduce your MAXIMUM antilife by one until you put it back to sleep. you can put them to sleep from any range to increase your max, but the caveat is that you have to manually go back to where you left them to wake them back up, so even if you want a wide array of options on standby, you still have to arrange for their bodies to be present when you want to use them. Similarly, corpsecrafter would increase the penalty to maximum antilife for its active corpses. The problem with the current and previous versions of the power is that they drain your current stock far too fast for how difficult it is to regain said stock, which in my own experience of playing a deathlord made their actual zombies too expensive to use.

[username]

May 2, 2019 17:19:56 GMT -6 ScrapyardDragon said:

The recent changes to wake the dead only serve to further ruin the day of deathlords for minimal and almost non-applicable benefit. The problem isn't that it has a maintenance cost, the problem is that the power eats up far too much resource to ever be worth using given the deathlord's inability to easily or reliably recover resource points. The angry zombies mechanic feels like it was tacked on to balance something that is supposedly an improvement but really just burns up even more resource for no gain, ending in a net loss. You want to know how to fix wake the dead? Rip a page out of the spark's book.

Keep the "spend resource equal to target level" bit to "claim" the corpse. For each wake the dead slave that is awake, you reduce your MAXIMUM antilife by one until you put it back to sleep. you can put them to sleep from any range to increase your max, but the caveat is that you have to manually go back to where you left them to wake them back up, so even if you want a wide array of options on standby, you still have to arrange for their bodies to be present when you want to use them. Similarly, corpsecrafter would increase the penalty to maximum antilife for its active corpses. The problem with the current and previous versions of the power is that they drain your current stock far too fast for how difficult it is to regain said stock, which in my own experience of playing a deathlord made their actual zombies too expensive to use.

You seem to have a rather different view on it, quite the opposite of Lestat's. Lestat was looking at all the homebrew super powerful level 5 things and you were having something else in mind. You do bring up an interesting idea though, one which I like and have put into preliminary practice.

Now Wake the Dead doesn't require upkeep, but reduces your Maximum Antilife by the combined level of the undead slaves you have reanimated with it. You had suggested reducing the maximum by 1 per slave, but tying it into level seems like a better balancing idea. I also undid the change I made before (which saved quite a bit of wording) and now Wake the Dead once again only works on mortals. Exalts can't be turned into undead slaves with it, and this also can cleanly cut out the chances of turning some of the stronger monsters such as Dragons into undead slaves. Yes, it is a shame since you might not be fighting things that are mortal but hopefully it will still work out and be easier all around. This also encourages you to use Corpsecrafter more.

I made a change to Corpsecrafter as well to implement the maximum Antilife reduction: Now it raises the level of the Undead slave by an amount equal to the antilife you spend from Corpsecrafter on it. This makes it cleanly account for the "combined level of undead slaves" calculation and gives the added bonus of slightly improving the attack rolls and resilience of the slave.

With all the changes reducing maximum Antilife, I changed Necropotence as well. Now Necropotence can bring you over your maximum Antilife, but any extra Antilife over your maximum is lost at the end of your next turn. This way if you have enough undead slaves to have a 0 maximum Antilife you can still use Necropotence for resource in a limited manner, although since your maximum doesn't change you can't use it for additional slaves at a time (but could use it if your undead slave suddenly bites it mid-battle and you want them back).

[ScrapyardDragon]

Will art of flesh's cost be adjusted to mesh with the new wake the dead mechanics? I hadn't considered it until now but the asset is comparatively worse. Not sure if only having to drop one slave of appropriate level would be appropriate but its just something that I hadn't considered until this morning. Don't get me wrong, one asset being left worse off in exchange for the base exalt functioning better is a fair trade, but I do think the asset needs adjustment given the new mechanics.

[username]

May 3, 2019 7:19:23 GMT -6 ScrapyardDragon said:

Will art of flesh's cost be adjusted to mesh with the new wake the dead mechanics? I hadn't considered it until now but the asset is comparatively worse. Not sure if only having to drop one slave of appropriate level would be appropriate but its just something that I hadn't considered until this morning. Don't get me wrong, one asset being left worse off in exchange for the base exalt functioning better is a fair trade, but I do think the asset needs adjustment given the new mechanics.

A good point to raise and something I somewhat forgot to consider. Overall, it is actually stronger now than it was before though. It can be a little trickier to use due to needing a large supply of zombs, a 5 dot artifact for instance requiring you to have 5 zombs, one of at least level 5, and be at your Phylactery to spend the hero point and 5 more resource. So you'd be down 9 from maximum and need to spend at least 5 more, but overall it is actually much stronger because Corpsecrafter lets you raise the level of Undead Slaves when you add traits or otherwise change them with it, so you don't need to worry about finding a level 5 guy since you can make your own.

Symbiont is overall not a great artifact material in my mind (although the heart and legs are pretty great) but it seemed fitting for the Vicissitude flavor. I had originally envisioned it as just being able to make things out of zombies that would function as normal items you'd purchase, adding in the symbiont factor to give it a bit more flavor. But having an uncapped supplier of Symbiont items (provided you can get things for it) may be unbalancing, although I imagine a Daelkyr may have some fun doing so and then implanting them into people. I'll probably need to change it away from symbiont-esque or make them easier to make but count the artifact dots toward the total level of your undead slaves while you have the items supported, with them dying if you aren't but freeing up your resource again. Less fun that way though and less likely to see much use.

[ScrapyardDragon]

hey if I make a spell combo using only necromancy spells (and/or spells from a school chosen via art of magic) can I still use secrets of life and death to negate phenomena?

[username]

Mar 20, 2021 20:15:57 GMT -6 ScrapyardDragon said:

hey if I make a spell combo using only necromancy spells (and/or spells from a school chosen via art of magic) can I still use secrets of life and death to negate phenomena?

Hmm. That is an interesting question. Examining the exact wording, "When casting a Necromancy spell, the Deathlord can spend Antilife equal to the spell's level minus half their Necrosis (to a minimum of zero antilife spent required) to prevent any Psychic Phenomena the spell would cause." You may not be able to, technically, by the rules.

I think the established reading of things in the Book 1 are the Spell Combos are not themselves spells, but rather their own thing made up of individual spells. This helps prevent some oddities of spells effects impacting others when combo'd together. I recall someone arguing a spell combo with Energy Meteors made all parts of it copy for each evocations level due to reading the combo as being one spell for instance.

A counterpoint though is that if the spell combo is made up of nothing but Necromancy spells, you are still casting the spells you are just using one focus power test. Thus you may not know which spell is causing the phenomenon but you know it is still a Necromancy spell so it could still be prevented. A spell combo has a modifier that increases the roll of the psychic phenomena table but whether there is psychic phenomena at all is still based on the focus power test. But then how much Necrosis needs to be spent is based on the spell level, meaning it would be extremely murky and unclear for a Spell Combo unless explained.

Major rules lawyer stuff here. I would say with the current wording it would be safer to read it that it excludes from being used on a Spell Combo, for safety and compliance with other functions.

However, should it? I like spell combos and would like to see them used more and played with.  It would probably need to be rephrased and have extra lines specifically dealing with spell combos in that case to determine what spell level you go by (the highest one? All of them put together?) and how it would interact if it is multiple different schools put together. Can't just say Necromancy Focus Power test for example because by keeping your Necromancy lower than other effects in the combo it could let you avoid Phenomena on a wide range of spells, pushing to make up the difference in rolled dice.  The possibilities for wonky combos open up much more when Art of Magic gets involved as well, since then you could combined it with all kinds of unintended schools, including some nice homebrew ones that specialize in combos. 

If I were to reword it to allow spell combos, It would probably be something like,

"When making a Focus Power Test to cast a Necromancy spell or Spell Combo made of only Necromancy spells, the Deathlord can spend Antilife equal to the spell's level (or sum of the spells' levels for a Spell Combo) minus half their Necrosis, to a minimum of zero Antilife spent required, to prevent any Psychic Phenomena the Focus Power test would cause."

So now spell combos can be done but require some additional Antilife spent for it since the order of operations is laid out as add the levels together then subtract Necrosis to determine final Antilife cost. Makes it a bit more expensive but may still be useful to counter the inherently higher TNs and Psychic Phenomena rolls a Combo causes.

What are your thoughts?

[ScrapyardDragon]

Seems a good way to clarify that it can be used on them, if thats the route you want to take, while also making the demand of a hefty amount of antilife which could go over spending limits for the really elaborate combos (and even if it doesn't, antilife is hard to replenish quickly so its a heavy cost if resource needs to be rationed), so its hard to find fault in it. At the same time, combos are, allegedly, balanced around the notion that they're hard to pull off without luck/pushing (and thus causing phenomena as part of the balance) so don't take just my input on it.

I'll say this much since the subject of is up in general and want to get the hypothetical edge in on this subject ahead of time, I DON'T think the phenomena blocker should be nuked outright, since unlike most tutor effects, its locked to one specific school, so much like the werewolf and vampire spell school assets I think it having an extra effect is fine specifically because its locked to one school. GRANTED the presence of art of magic makes this the only exalt I know of that can tutor two spell schools, so if either half of that equation is to be nerfed, perhaps make art of magic give that first rank and let secrets block phenomena for that school, but gut the other overlaps (for things like spell focus) and don't have it have the "always part of class track" effect, basically turn it into a minor magic instance with the phenomena blocker effect. This is all partly off topic ramblings of course, but they're ramblings I don't have a better time to ramble on.

[ScrapyardDragon]

Hey, if I put my phylactery in a silvery box, will I reappear next to the box or would I just respawn inside it and die from being crushed? how exact is "location"?