Partially Used: Animate Dead, et al.

I've always found this series of spells and abilities (Animate Dead, Create Undead, Blackguard and PM powers, etc.) relatively useless in NWN, especially since you can only have one zombie at a time. Would it be possible to rework these a little closer to PnP so that instead of being summons, they were "area effect" spells that turned remains into various appropriate undead? I don't know how viable it would be, but I'm pretty sure there are even models in the toolset for small/ large sized skeletons and so forth, so it may even be possible to link a creature's remains to the size undead created from it?

*Pictures a mage stopping off at the goblin caves and coming back out a minute later trailing half a dozen midget skeletons*


(Edit: Maybe not the higher level "Class Feats", since those seem like they might work differently)

Agreed on the PM demilich.... you give up and *awful* lot of caster levels to get that thing.... in all honesty.... for a 33rd level PC... its not that great.... at least compared to having those 30 caster levels.

Agreed one the "more than one stinking summon" aspect as well...

PnP casters can summon as much as they have spellslots for (and can even go for higher quantity if they accept lower HD per creature).Getting a single elder elemental is powerful.... but if I have 5 9th level slots, and I wannna burn 'em all for ONE encounter.... I should be able to... in the OC with being able to rest right away, and repeat the process for every encounter, I can see the balance issue. In aenea, with the resting restrictions, thats less of an issue. One, MAYBE two encoutners you could pull those shenanigans... then you are waiting 8 hours.

Can that be doed? That sort of scripting magic? Would be pretty cool to see a necroguy with his own bony posse, eh?

I think it might be.... add the summons to the PC's party as something other than in the "Summoned" slot. Animator's have their golems added essentially as henchmen rather than summons.

This might be kinda nice too if MotMs could summon more than 1 of their captured beasts at a time as well

Animators get what, 6 golems? Is there any way to increase that number, or are we looking at engine constrictions (server load aside)?

Five. Flesh, Clay, Rock, Iron, Crystral.

Overall, it'd be nice to have a wider range of summons out at one time. The standard NWN contingent is restricted to 1 familiar/1animal companion/1 dominated/1 summon (and however many "henchmen" types the module allows for).... If a player DOES want to expend the spell slots/class summon abilites, and deal with the general hassle of having a small army, I think that should be something one could do. Particularly for PMs, three seperate undead summon abilities, but only allowed 1 out at a time.... The two lower level ones are completely suck for an epic PM, but perhaps teamed up together and with the PM's showcase summon, they'd be remotely passable if still subpar summons.

Well, if anyone can make this issue fall more in line with PnP, good ol' is our man...er, dragon...for the job!

Well, one can alter 2das and put them in their override so they can havemultiple summons at once (I like doing that in regards to specific ones).
It is entirely possible for it to be done on a server end, and thus the server allows all people to have multiple summons at once.
I forget what 2da you need to alter and what you do, I'll look it up sometime...

MannyJabrielle wrote:I think it might be.... add the summons to the PC's party as something other than in the "Summoned" slot. Animator's have their golems added essentially as henchmen rather than summons.

This might be kinda nice too if MotMs could summon more than 1 of their captured beasts at a time as well

Yeah, I was thinking of the whole... MotM posse along side multiple summon creatures.... the SteamRoller Army of Doom.