Best necromancy/skeletons in RPGs

[MerchantKing]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

 

[Adeptus]

In Arcanum You can use necromancy not only to create undead battle minions, but You can summon spirits of deceased NPCs. It is useful during "detective" quests. Also instead of perfoming quests for important NPCs sometimes You can just murder them and later summon their ghosts to torture them and force to reveal information You need. Nice element when roleplaying evil character.

 

[Cryomancer]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

What about "white necromancy" adom style all about creating golems? The white necromancy progression : https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/White_necromancy

Level required	Monster type	Mana cost	Notes
1	Homunculus	2	Has sleep-inducing melee attack—effective against weaker monsters
5	Clay statue	4	Regenerates
7	Stone statue	6	Immune to fire—not affected by fireball traps and background damage in the Tower of Eternal Flames
11	Clay golem	10	Has slowing melee attack—effective for damage control
15	Stone golem	16	Immune to cold—not affected by background damage in the Ice Queen Domain

 

[Alex]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

True, but it is much harder to find them well done in computer games.

 

[MerchantKing]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

What about "white necromancy" adom style all about creating golems? The white necromancy progression : https://ancardia.fandom.com/wiki/White_necromancy

Level required	Monster type	Mana cost	Notes
1	Homunculus	2	Has sleep-inducing melee attack—effective against weaker monsters
5	Clay statue	4	Regenerates
7	Stone statue	6	Immune to fire—not affected by fireball traps and background damage in the Tower of Eternal Flames
11	Clay golem	10	Has slowing melee attack—effective for damage control
15	Stone golem	16	Immune to cold—not affected by background damage in the Ice Queen Domain

No. The best golem are charmed goyim.

 

[Jason Liang]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

True, but it is much harder to find them well done in computer games.

Enchantment is sweet in ToEE.

Invisibility spells are almost always busted in crpgs so Illusion tends to be quite powerful (in BG2, NWN, Arcanum, Shadowrun).

 

[Alex]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

True, but it is much harder to find them well done in computer games.

Enchantment is sweet in ToEE.

Invisibility spells are almost always busted in crpgs so Illusion tends to be quite powerful (in BG2, NWN, Arcanum, Shadowrun).

I am not saying the schools themselves are bad in computer games, I am saying that what sets them apart - creative use in fooling your enemies - is almost never done; and for good reason too, it is actually really hard.

In enchantment's case, D&D has quite a few cool spells that don't work that well in computer games. Charm person is frequently implemented as changing the enemy to fight for you; but while this might be an approximation of what the spell is intended to do, it is not quite what the spell is and in fact something you should almost never do with it. Suggestion is something almost never done either, and command is usually simplified to a couple of standard commands. Friends is always only as good as your use of charisma in the game is. And spells like geas are of course right out.

On illusion's side, the school was made from the get go to be used in such creative ways; as the standard illusion spells only create things people think exist. Getting a monster to fall off a cliff by creating an illusory bridge there, getting a war mammoth to panic and maybe fall on top of the enemy troops by creating an illusory army of mice crawling towards it or, really, just getting the enemy patrol to look somewhere else with a good old ventriloquism are all things you could do in P&P but would be troublesome or impossible to do in a computer game.

 

[deama]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

True, but it is much harder to find them well done in computer games.

Enchantment is sweet in ToEE.

Invisibility spells are almost always busted in crpgs so Illusion tends to be quite powerful (in BG2, NWN, Arcanum, Shadowrun).

I am not saying the schools themselves are bad in computer games, I am saying that what sets them apart - creative use in fooling your enemies - is almost never done; and for good reason too, it is actually really hard.

In enchantment's case, D&D has quite a few cool spells that don't work that well in computer games. Charm person is frequently implemented as changing the enemy to fight for you; but while this might be an approximation of what the spell is intended to do, it is not quite what the spell is and in fact something you should almost never do with it. Suggestion is something almost never done either, and command is usually simplified to a couple of standard commands. Friends is always only as good as your use of charisma in the game is. And spells like geas are of course right out.

On illusion's side, the school was made from the get go to be used in such creative ways; as the standard illusion spells only create things people think exist. Getting a monster to fall off a cliff by creating an illusory bridge there, getting a war mammoth to panic and maybe fall on top of the enemy troops by creating an illusory army of mice crawling towards it or, really, just getting the enemy patrol to look somewhere else with a good old ventriloquism are all things you could do in P&P but would be troublesome or impossible to do in a computer game.

With the advent of AI, it's starting to become fairly possible with computers these days.
Just another 5 more years and we should be able to have dynamic AI adventures, maybe another 5-10 years after that and we can have graphics with those.

 

[Alex]

All this concern over necromancy when Illusion and Enchantment is where the real fun is.

True, but it is much harder to find them well done in computer games.

Enchantment is sweet in ToEE.

Invisibility spells are almost always busted in crpgs so Illusion tends to be quite powerful (in BG2, NWN, Arcanum, Shadowrun).

I am not saying the schools themselves are bad in computer games, I am saying that what sets them apart - creative use in fooling your enemies - is almost never done; and for good reason too, it is actually really hard.

In enchantment's case, D&D has quite a few cool spells that don't work that well in computer games. Charm person is frequently implemented as changing the enemy to fight for you; but while this might be an approximation of what the spell is intended to do, it is not quite what the spell is and in fact something you should almost never do with it. Suggestion is something almost never done either, and command is usually simplified to a couple of standard commands. Friends is always only as good as your use of charisma in the game is. And spells like geas are of course right out.

On illusion's side, the school was made from the get go to be used in such creative ways; as the standard illusion spells only create things people think exist. Getting a monster to fall off a cliff by creating an illusory bridge there, getting a war mammoth to panic and maybe fall on top of the enemy troops by creating an illusory army of mice crawling towards it or, really, just getting the enemy patrol to look somewhere else with a good old ventriloquism are all things you could do in P&P but would be troublesome or impossible to do in a computer game.

With the advent of AI, it's starting to become fairly possible with computers these days.
Just another 5 more years and we should be able to have dynamic AI adventures, maybe another 5-10 years after that and we can have graphics with those.

I don't think this is ever going to work. But especially, I don't think this is going to work with current aí tech. Aí is not really intelligent, they are just programs that try to compute a response based on a ton of training data.

This means that they can appear to give a good response initially. But the further away the response is from input, the harder it is for it to be relevant. If you set up a trap with a trapdoor and a treasure in a room and go do other things, it will not only be harder for the aí to "remember" about it the more time passes (or, to be clear, the more actions are taken in between), it is hard for the ai even to maintain a semblance of understanding the idea of rooms.

What I mean is that since ai is not real intelligence, it doesn't work with ideas or models of what things are. The only model that matters to an ai is the mathematical model of trying to draw data from the input, throwing it into its neural network or whatever and producing some kind of output. What this means is that the AI doesn't really have a map of the dungeon it is trying to DM. This makes it very hard to make a game work with an AI in first place. You could try making the AI work with a rules system as part of its training; so that rather than just training it to give you good text output, you also train it to use a static model of the rules system (game rules, character sheets, maps, etc). This, however, has two problems. First is that it makes training much harder, not only by increasing the complexity of what it needs to produce but also by needing you to give feedback to the AI both on the generated text and the state changes. Second, because the model is static, it limits what can be achieved. For instance, if the game has no rules for flying creatures, then the AI might even allow you to make a spell that allows you to fly, but it would be very error prone or impossible to make it meaningful in combat.

 

[Arthandas]

I think Tainted Grail has one of the most mechanically unique Necromancer implementations I've ever seen.

* You have 4 standard summons: abomination (aoe dmg), golem (tank), fae (support) and a wyrm (dmg + debuff)
* Each summon has a level, they start at lv2 when summoned and they lose one level each turn (they die after reaching lv0) and deal damage to you depending on their level (you can protect yourself with a barrier spell)
* Each one automatically acts once each turn, you can also manually activate and level them up with your cards during your turn
* When they die, you get a free card with 0 mana cost to summon a ghoul, ghouls attack random enemies and also deal dmg to themselves which means they last only 1-2 turns
* Each main summon also has an ethereal form which is activated by manually sacrificing them, ethereal forms have slightly different skills and don't degrade/attack you each turn
* Whenever something dies (either your minions or enemies) you get a counter, after collecting 6 of them you can temporarily turn into a lich, you get a free barrier and your entire deck is swapped with special lich cards

Those are the basics, it gets more intricate with passives, masteries and after unlocking more advanced cards.

Screens (not mine):

 

[deama]

I think Tainted Grail has one of the most mechanically unique Necromancer implementations I've ever seen.

* You have 4 standard summons: abomination (aoe dmg), golem (tank), fae (support) and a wyrm (dmg + debuff)
* Each summon has a level, they start at lv2 when summoned and they lose one level each turn (they die after reaching lv0) and deal damage to you depending on their level (you can protect yourself with a barrier spell)
* Each one automatically acts once each turn, you can also manually activate and level them up with your cards during your turn
* When they die, you get a free card with 0 mana cost to summon a ghoul, ghouls attack random enemies and also deal dmg to themselves which means they last only 1-2 turns
* Each main summon also has an ethereal form which is activated by manually sacrificing them, ethereal forms have slightly different skills and don't degrade/attack you each turn
* Whenever something dies (either your minions or enemies) you get a counter, after collecting 6 of them you can temporarily turn into a lich, you get a free barrier and your entire deck is swapped with special lich cards

Those are the basics, it gets more intricate with passives, masteries and after unlocking more advanced cards.

Screens (not mine):

reminds me of etherlords.

 

[Arthandas]

reminds me of etherlords.

Visually maybe, mechanically it's like Slay the Spire or Roguebook (except you can control your char directly in third person mode and you get to return to your village hub after each act).

 

[Dadd]

Diablo - The Hell 2 looks decent for necromancy?

If I remember correctly, the necromancer class has cooldowns for offensive spells.

 

[Dadd]

Are there games that let you assemble minions from body parts that impart their properties to the minions?

 

[Cyberarmy]

Are there games that let you assemble minions from body parts that impart their properties to the minions?

Last Epoch necromancer has an abomination that uses your all other summon and create a huge one with their characteristics, it changes visually too!
I think Divinty 2 Dragon Knight got something like that, a bone/flesh golem you make with parts but not that detailed if I remember right.

Edit:

On Path of Exile, one thing that i don't like about necromancy is that is too gear dependent, most good summons are temporary, female only and i really miss a basic iconic offensive spell like bone spear...

Man, did you even play the game? This is so wrong on many levels. Path of Exile is one of the best games that give you the powerful necromancy stuff
First of all it is one of the least gear dependent builds, only gear you need are skill gems. Any random gear that matching colours will carry till start of maps.

-Zombies, typical first summons. Permanent and needs corpse to be summoned, can get 10 easly, upgrade them till end game. Can upgrade them to giant ones.

-Skeletons, low life low timed summons. You can summon a lot of this AND then you can use Vaal version to get an Army of Darkness on top of them. Can be upgraded into skeletal magi and suicidal bombers. Or comboed with Dark Pact for a direct damage build.

-Spectres, low number, huge effect summons, permanent. You can nearly raise any monster in the game with this one and they act according to gems you link it to the skill! Tanky monsters, damaging monsters or just monsters that support your other summons via buffs or debuffs.

-Golems, low number, huge healt and buffs, Permanent. Elemental golems are mostly go with elementalist spec but Carrion Golem is really good with necro. Supports other summons and get stronger the more summons you got! With right build you can build an army of this nasty motherfuckers and clear the Atlas your eyes closed.

-Summon Raging Spirit, low life, low times summons. Used for swarming enemies. Good with suicidal tactics and can be your main summon damage. Always nice to see them go and bite enemies. Can be customized a lot.

-Animate Guardian, not undead but still a necros darling, permanent. A full metal jacket summoned from any gear you find. You can play dress up with it and feed it some nice unique equipment to damage or support your other summons. Pretty flexiable but you'll lose the gear on it if it dies.(which is hard but can happen)

-Reaper for the last, a permanent minion that feeds on your minions to get stronger but also make them weaker. It kinda tries to steal the show and does it with coolness factor but kinda weak comparing other minion builds. Mostly because can't clear groups very fast. Still, looks and kills cool as fuck.

Then there are support gem summons like phantasms and spiders. Like Raging Spirits they have low life but they can easly swarm enemies. Both can be main source of damage and powerful to build arround.
Then there are Offering skill gems that consumes corpses and buff your minions (and you with the right passive)
Also there are other corpse relates skills like, Detone Dead, Creamation, Unearth and Desectrate which support any play style.
Lots of curses, skills like Reap, Bone Armor, and such, PoE can offer a tremendous necromancy experience, on all fronts. Quit crying for one spell (Q_Q no bone spear Q_Q) and play this.

 

[belated]

Are there games that let you assemble minions from body parts that impart their properties to the minions?

Necrosmith lets you mix and match bodyparts.

 

[Dark Souls II]

I was an only child with no friends so I find being a necromancer very appealing. You can just make your own skeleton friends. I also always loved skinny girls so I like skeletons, you can kind of larp as having an entourage/harem of heroin chic models around you, as a necromancer. But so very few games do necromancy good:

1. Diablo II

Holy shit. Perfect necromancer experience. You can have these little dudes, they run around and kill stuff for you. You can just chill and relax and they run very fast and kill. It's so great. I never invest even a single point in "golems" (dats sum jewish shiet), I just have a lot of skeletons with me at all times. Based.

2. Heroes 3

You can just have thousands of skeletons. The more enemies you kill, the more skeletons you get, just like in real life. Good game for skeletonmaxxing hard. A little downside is that Necropolis has non-skeleton units too. Wraith or vampire = not as cool as a skeleton.

3. Morrowind

Necromancy experience is underwhelming but you can have UNLIMITED SKELETONS, and the skeleton model looks really good.

 

[Just Locus]

Holy shit. Perfect necromancer experience. You can have these little dudes, they run around and kill stuff for you. You can just chill and relax and they run very fast and kill. It's so great. I never invest even a single point in "golems" (dats sum jewish shiet), I just have a lot of skeletons with me at all times.

When I was a kid I used to name the skeletons and would get mortified whenever one of them died lol. Diablo II is a really good game for necromancers, one of the first RPGs where I tried it.

 

[Storyfag]

BG1 had decent necromancy. The summoned skellies would last something like 24 in-game hours, which was plenty of time. I would usually keep about 10 around, and summon more if need be. Up to 40 in my largest battles.

 

[Arryosha]

EverQuest has good necromancy. Skeletons can be buffed and kitted out with the games endless items.

A look at the depth of necromancy in the game: https://wiki.project1999.com/Sesserdrix's_All_in_One_Necromancer_Strategy_Guide

 

[Cryomancer]

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/best-necromancy-on-rpgs.130867/

I had a thread about it with 15 pages. A lot of good recommendations.

 

[Storyfag]

BG1 had decent necromancy. The summoned skellies would last something like 24 in-game hours, which was plenty of time. I would usually keep about 10 around, and summon more if need be. Up to 40 in my largest battles.

Something like this, except I would usually replace all the other summons with MORE skeletons:

 

[Dark Souls II]

BG1 had decent necromancy. The summoned skellies would last something like 24 in-game hours, which was plenty of time. I would usually keep about 10 around, and summon more if need be. Up to 40 in my largest battles.

Something like this, except I would usually replace all the other summons with MORE skeletons:

View attachment 54739

Based, I forgot you can make a pure skeleton army with Animate Dead. I don't like necromancy in D&D in general because Summon Undead / Greater Undead just summons some random things like wraiths or vampires. Also creating undead out of thin air instead of actually having to use a corpse is stupid.

 

[Storyfag]

BG1 had decent necromancy. The summoned skellies would last something like 24 in-game hours, which was plenty of time. I would usually keep about 10 around, and summon more if need be. Up to 40 in my largest battles.

Something like this, except I would usually replace all the other summons with MORE skeletons:

View attachment 54739

Based, I forgot you can make a pure skeleton army with Animate Dead. I don't like necromancy in D&D in general because Summon Undead / Greater Undead just summons some random things like wraiths or vampires. Also creating undead out of thin air instead of actually having to use a corpse is stupid.

Right you are, but eh, engine limitations.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Right you are, but eh, engine limitations.

This is why Roguelikes have the best necromancy and skeletons. I could name several that let you turn corpses into skeletons or other undead minions that properly inherit the form and attributes of the deceased. ToME 2.3, aside from having Necromancy as a skill that let you raise the dead and do other necromancery things like survive as a lich when killed; had a Summoning skill that involved making totems out of slain enemies to summon them afterwards which feels rather necromancer adjacent. It's the most hilariously broken skill in any game I've ever seen, including Morrowind's alchemy. The summoned minions have their full powers, which include the ability to summon things themselves. You can summon a Wyrm of Power that summons hordes of lesser dragons until it floods the entire level and kills everything for you before you even see it. It's the actual logical conclusion of being able to summon unlimited minions and send them to seek and destroy.