The Master Problem Illustrated

[Scraap]

PM1, augment summoning, level appropriate for the range till the next summon tier is available, on Lam.





Would have taken one vs cr 10 and 11, but they didn't last long enough to even hit printscreen.

Folks are free to argue that Necromantic AMs are out-perfomed by PMs in form, and they would be correct. That's a failure in Necromantic AM design.

Folks are free to argue that fleshie vs fleshie, AM is below the survivability of PM, and there, they would also be correct. They would not be correct on warforged, since it just changes the order you cast your self-healing spells from before a fight to during (Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt).

Neither addresses that one of the core features that makes a Pale Master a Pale Master, and not a necromancer with heavier-hitting-but-blocked-by-deathward evocations, is substandard at best, useless at worst, and locks you into a set of elements.

[kcru]

ummm... adamantine defender has DR. A lot of it. Until I got an adamantine weapon I wasn't able to put a dent in them either. My summons doesn't have an adamantine weapon. etc.

All your post shows is that DR is hard on your skeleton. it doesn't say anything about anything else.



http://ddowiki.com/page/Adamantine_Defender

[FlyingTurtle]

The Master is way OP and needs to be nerfed.

[steelblueskies]

The Master is way OP and needs to be nerfed.

somebody call the doctor..


back on topic, this weak summon issue is everywhere really. ever take a melee hireling into threnal. aren't melee's fun when they aren't smart enough to pack an alternate weapon for oozes, or even a backup weapon, much less swap to fists and break out the greaatsword when its safe to use it again?

even sadder when you realize ooze guard on a self healing type is likely to be about 20 times more effective in keeping you from getting hit, and likely be more effective dealing damage as well. not to mention less expensive build wise.

always liked summoners. hope they buff up those pets. dreams of skeletal armies doing my bidding...

[Angelus_dead]

Neither addresses that one of the core features that makes a Pale Master a Pale Master, and not a necromancer with heavier-hitting-but-blocked-by-deathward evocations, is substandard at best, useless at worst, and locks you into a set of elements.

They should start improving the summoned undead by making them cheaper, instead of costing a bunch of extra APs beyond PM.

Here's one possible layout:

PM 1, 2, 3 gets a tier-appropriate unarmed skeleton summon for free.
Spending 1 AP on Knight gives you a tier-appropriate armored knight skeleton.
Spending 1 AP on Archer gives you a tier-appropriate archer skeleton.
Spending 1 AP on Mage gives you a tier-appropriate skeleton mage.
If you have Fire Criticals 1, 2, 3, you can choose for your skeleton/archer/knight/mage to be a Blackbone.
If you have Cold Criticals 1, 2, 3, you can choose for your skeleton/archer/knight/mage to be a Frostmarrow.

Here's another way to provide PMs with a famous feature:

Undead Hirelings
Create a set of hireling contracts for undead adeventurers, sold at the restricted PM vendor. They'd function equivalently to regular hirelings, except with Fortification and immunities, and being flipped positive/negative healing polarity. Obviously they might use some very different artwork from regular ones.

[budalic]

Well, guildies already complain that my prestige is overpowered. If the summons were actually decent... I don't think i'd take them anyway. Too much ap expenditure.

[donfilibuster]

Here's another vote for the summon undead spell.

[steelblueskies]

any of you fellows ever play diablo2, as a summoner necromancer? large numbers of weaksauce can actually be useful, even powerful. of course we aren't exactly talking necromancer, and there's no way they'd let one player wander with a half dozen or more minions, when you could have 6-12 people doing it in a party at once.

given that, one thing they did in d2 with skeletal summons would work here quite well: random weapon/shield properties.

if that skeletal knight might have vorpal, or holy, or adamantine- heck even metalline on that sword, or might have a mace instead from time to time, mileage will vary, but the odds of a workable setup within a few pets comes into play.

then again given they hated people "fishing" for crit spells, i imagine they'd be against that on the expectation people would farm pets for certain mods.

could also add a material component to the summon that determines come of its properties i suppose- say mark of the keeper, necromantic gem, etc from the extremely common collectible list, and determine minion weapon setup from that.

lots of options.

[strldr3]

Question to original poster: did ur summoned skeleton hit consistently the defender OR did it dance around trying to choose between shield bash or regular hit?
The melee skellies are ok in terms of stats: mediocre/weak damage, pretty good HP, everythinng just as expected, since they are made to draw the aggro, not to be the main killers.
I think the only thing missing from making them mildly useful is AI.
They really need those grease-spewing-defenders' AI in terms of agressiveness. And ofcourse the "undecisiveness" has to be fixed.

Well, guildies already complain that my prestige is overpowered. If the summons were actually decent... I don't think i'd take them anyway. Too much ap expenditure.

agreed. They need to be useful in the first place in order to justify the AP costs

[Scraap]

Question to original poster: did ur summoned skeleton hit consistently the defender OR did it dance around trying to choose between shield bash or regular hit?
The melee skellies are ok in terms of stats: mediocre/weak damage, pretty good HP, everythinng just as expected, since they are made to draw the aggro, not to be the main killers.
I think the only thing missing from making them mildly useful is AI.
They really need those grease-spewing-defenders' AI in terms of agressiveness. And ofcourse the "undecisiveness" has to be fixed.


agreed. They need to be useful in the first place in order to justify the AP costs

Seemed fairly decisive once I'd created the unrealistic example of 1vs1. The packs of mobs leading to that point wiped the 'tank' version consistently, which was one of the reasons I just went and threw the defender shot on up since I was getting tired of spending that much time to make something that shouldn't have to be spelled out clear (note that if we really want to get nit-picky about it, that duregar in shot 2 uses a pick vs a crit immune critter, so that's just as far thrown off in terms of incoming damage).

That being said, it is decent damage intake for level 6, as noted. At 8, that starts breaking down. At next tier-1, it's wasted. Same goes for the skellies at 11-17, and 18-20.

I will note as a tandem observation, the other toon I've been testing with has a full GS earthgrab item. The dense earth elemental both has enough hitpoints to stand around that first von renamed minotaur, and fairly consistently spams successful intimidate on him (bonus for a rogue, at least.) If the intent is for that to be a meat(bone?)-shield, might be something to look at to a lower degree (would not want the inherent ability to meet or exceed ground out item functionality, so that would provide a ceiling for the cr18 version.)

edit: Of course, throw in that up to near-cap, you've got progressive tiers of actual summons that you can scroll off of with a caster level check before you even get the capacity to inherently cast the things from your blue-bar, and they're even less worth it, since augment applies to scrolled summons as well.

As for your guildies observations, they're pretty much right. As it stands, the things are so heavily weighted towards the inherent power side that they've basically been turned into a necrotic energy savant. (Hence, the Master problem, since they keep throwing things at the Pale side)