July 20, 2010: Undead Summons Update

I'm just finishing up rescripting the various means of "summoning" undead minions. Hopefully nothing will be broken by this update that is intended to give the ability to create your "undead army".

Changes:

1. Raw Material - You're going to need at least one set of "non-sacrificed" remains nearby to animate any undead. This goes for any of the "undead summoning" abilities, such as with pale masters and blackguards, and for the spells.

2. Not Summoned Beings Anymore - Animated undead creatures should be added to your party as "henchmen" instead of "summons". This should enable you to have up to 20 in your party (the maximum number of henchmen now set for Aenea).

To get rid of one of your undead minions before the end of the spell/ability duration, Select it with the Select tool/feat, then enter the VC command ;;tool inter.

3. Expansion/Scaling - The two spells that animate undead (animate dead and create undead) will have some slight modification, slowing scaling a bit in exchange for spreading into epic progression and adding one or two critters to each spell:

animate dead:
caster level < 9 = skeleton
caster level 9 - 16 = zombie
caster level 17 - 24 = skeleton warrior
caster level 25 - 32 = skeleton chieftain
caster level > 32 = zombie reaper (formerly called zombie lord)

create undead:
caster level < 12 = ghoul
caster level 12 - 17 = ghast
caster level 18 - 23 = wight
caster level 24 - 32 = spectre
caster level > 32 = wrathful spirit of darkness (a CR 18 creature with a big sword, search Alatha if you've yet to see one in-game)

create greater undead:
caster level < 16 = vampire
caster level 16 - 17 = doom knight
caster level 18 - 19 = lich
caster level 20 - 26 = greater mummy
caster level 27 - 33 = wrathful spirit of darkness
caster level > 33 = lich lord

I believe you might have missed an undead creating spell.... the clerical Create Greater Undead

evilkittenofdoom wrote:I believe you might have missed an undead creating spell.... the clerical Create Greater Undead

Thanks. I'll see about digging into that one today.

Added info on create greater undead to initial post. This one will get changed next time I update the server.

How does one make this work with the Palemaster 'animate/summon undead' feats? You can't target remains with the feat (no joy with the radial menu either), and I tried using the select tool on some remains and then using the summon skill, but it just tells me I need remains close by for the spell to work. Does it matter that I looted the remains first (but I only took some items and didn't completely loot the corpses)?

if you are both wizard/sorcerer with Pale master, do the pale master levels add to wizard or sorcerer levels to account for your caster level?

Guthbrand wrote:if you are both wizard/sorcerer with Pale master, do the pale master levels add to wizard or sorcerer levels to account for your caster level?

Not at current.

FYI, these changes are very dramatic for Pale Masters.

All their special class "Summon undead companion" abilities can't be used unless there are 'remains' about.

I believe this to be an incredibility significant change for the Pale Master Class.

Svair wrote:FYI, these changes are very dramatic for Pale Masters.

All their special class "Summon undead companion" abilities can't be used unless there are 'remains' about.

I believe this to be an incredibility significant change for the Pale Master Class.

Shouldn't be too much of a change. Just put off on the summons until you've killed a couple of goblins (or anything else that leaves lootable remains) and you'll be good to go. I just figured that most undead don't come from "nothing", so having some remains as an easily-found raw material would make sense.

Although I should change the names of the "summon undead" feats/abilities to "animate undead" wording, and add in the remains requirement to the descriptions.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:Shouldn't be too much of a change. Just put off on the summons until you've killed a couple of goblins (or anything else that leaves lootable remains) and you'll be good to go. I just figured that most undead don't come from "nothing", so having some remains as an easily-found raw material would make sense.

Although I should change the names of the "summon undead" feats/abilities to "animate undead" wording, and add in the remains requirement to the descriptions.

No.

The Summons does not work even when around 'remains'. Using the 'summons' cannot even target 'remains'.

:-( It's broken for the time being for Pale Masters.

Ah, crap. It's supposed to be just checking for remains right around you without having to target them. I'll have to dig into this deeper tomorrow. Gotta get a few hours sleep before morning kid-feeding time.

The divine granted spells of Zolaras are also over-writing each other (ie unsummoning the previous creature).

In addition, could the Undead Guardian (Granted spell V) PLEASE get an upgrade or better yet scale in some way with the caster if it hasn't already?

Working on the debugging the animate dead, create undead, create greater undead spells and the pale master's summon undead abilities.

Also working on changing the spell ones so that pale master levels stack with cleric or sor/wiz levels for determining which forms of undead are animated (they are the "undead specialists" after all).

The PaleMaster's Summon Undead abilities (Animate Dead, Summon Undead, and Summon Greater Undead) name the specific Undead summoned (from Ghoul to lesser Demilich), based on the number of levels the PaleMaster has. Will the Pale Master summons be comparable to what they already have?

Also, my Palemaster doesn't have clr/sor/wiz levels - will her Bard levels stack with the PaleMaster levels?

Edit: In case I caused some confusion with a previous post, I didn't mean to imply that Pale Masters normally needed remains, or to target remains, to summon their undead companions. And I had assumed that even before changes were being made to Animate Dead that remains were needed to for the spell to work (per PnP rules)... sorry about that.

Looks like I may have discovered the cause of the error with the remains...silly me accidentally substituting in the name of the remains in place of the tag of the remains.

The pale master's summoning feats haven't really changed (as far as the types of undead that should be summoned), but they should allow multiple undead at a time.

Can bards cast animate dead? If so, when they cast it the PM levels would get added in. Bard levels likely won't get added for the PM's animate dead feat, since it's the same as the spell and works primarily off caster level of the class used to cast the spell.

Ok, fixed the needing remains thing. Found out the multiple undead thing is busted (as in some of the undead going hostile when the 2nd is brought forth).



Working on a fix for this now and tomorrow.

this thread is exciting. *imagines himself with undead army...*

Me too likes the thought of this ... reason enough to play an undead summoner, eh?

Ok, so I finally got the multiple undead followers thing working!

Getting rid of them via pc tool inter is non-functional right now.

An upcoming update will fix that command and also make it so that commoners and NPCs won't take kindly to PCs with undead followers stinking up the place (running away or otherwise being less than helpful...yup, NPCs will soon react to your undead minions with the fear they should be generating!).

Mwuahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I'm not sure that should apply to just one undead 'minion' - the Skeletal Guardian that Zolaras Clerics get....

Hey, that's awesome!

Just wanted to check, I remember it was mentioned that all summonuing spells would be getting this treatment eventually... right? So we can eventually hope to have an army of something other than undead, yes?
I myself like the idea of 3 elementals of each type

Having just played around with this with Auger (PM 30), I can say it rocks!

And yes, PM levels do stack with the base class caster levels it seems for the spells. Auger currently has 8 wizard levels/30PM, and he gets the wrathful spirit with create undead casted from his wizard spellbook.

And it's great having a mob of 5 or 6 demiliches, and oodles of wrathful spirits, and mauling a orc destroyer spawn while sitting back and sipping on my coffee Only lost a couple spirits in that brawl too... and that's only because the demiliches are kinda trigger happy with the meteorswarms

Bumping this thread up because I have a question on this.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
animate dead:
caster level < 9 = skeleton

Being a Wizard 3/Pale Master 2, this is what I'm getting. However, it's... well, it says it's an Undead race, Undead class, and it's level 1. It appears to be the base skeleton, but I don't think it has the default battle axe. It doesn't have any skills, and has proficiency with all weapons. It it supposed to be that, well, lame? I ran into a werewolf and it got killed before I could see how well it works, but except for it's undead immunities it doesn't seem to have much going for it.

Regular animated skeletons are basically just weak distractions for many enemies. It really doesn't have a lot going for it. Skeletons in Aenea get randomly assigned weapons when they are spawned, and in some cases that means no weapon at all (just like in PnP D&D, where some skeletons can only claw at you with bony fingers).

Ugh. Alright then. I was hoping for something better for a once-a-day power, but if I can spawn a weapon, that's at least something. That outta be enough for ants or maybe goblins.

If you keep on the PM route, the undeads get much better in the later levels. It's also a pain at first, but to really rock the undead army of darkness, you gotta do a bit of tedious rest/raising work to build up the entire mob.

They last more than 24 hours, like familiars then? Because normal summons vanish.

Yes, they're not "summons" in the strict engine sense. They're added as henchmen, and will remain after resting.

They remain after dying, too. You can't sacrifice the remains, and you can't use Animate Dead on them again, either.

Yes, that's one annoying aspect about them currently. It's real easy to clutter up an area with busticated minions, and the cleaner script doesn't zap them.