Risen are not meant to be direct combatants and are quite squishy relative to their creator. Their role in combat is combat-support, using special abilities to debuff or buff the room in various ways.

In a pinch, a Risen should be defending itself in combat, but it's not anything to rely on and not remotely a substitute for a zombie.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>Is there any way you could change your stance on allowing both out at the same time? A zombie is a considerable prep time and DO investment, but doesn't fill the same role. Or do you consider it too strong to have both the room buff/debuffs going and a zombie fighting for the Necromancer?

I admit I haven't tried recently, but I thought you could have both (and a construct) up at once?

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>Their role in combat is combat-support, using special abilities to debuff or buff the room in various ways.

To expand on this - a Risen that is enormously squishy isn't going to debuff or buff the room at all, it'll just explode. Fast. In PvE and PvP alike.

>To clarify my position: I'm happy to talk with the team about upping the defensive values of Risen and include sidegrade options (we've talked about introducing Rigby's old idea of Risen Shell). But you are not going to use a Risen to meaningfully bash someone's head in.

That sounds great, and perfectly reasonable. I hope that while we may not be using Risen like we use zombies or even constructs, we will at least be able to meaningfully use Risen to debuff/buff. It's a useless support pet though if it can't stay in play long enough to even fire up an ability.

As an additional question, and maybe getting ahead of things, where do we stand regarding players killing a 'suspicious person' in town? What's to stop players from simply going around and killing all 'suspicious person' NPCs?

>>I admit I haven't tried recently, but I thought you could have both (and a construct) up at once?

In the test instance you can currently have all three out at the same time.

I think people are getting a little confused because Persida said this in the Lets Talk Risen thread:

>>Risen can participate in combat, but will pretty much never be as combat worthy as your CFB zombie, and you cannot use both at once (or more than one Risen at once, either).

A link to that thread: http://forums.play.net/forums/DragonRealms/The%20Necromancers/General%20Discussions/view/7048

>At the base level of a Risen, I cannot meaningfully make a Risen NPC look like Not An NPC outside of a controlled environment. Not impossible per se, but well beyond the cost:benefit ratio I'd be willing to take on.

>That said, I have two ideas that may help. More info as it develops.

I was thinking something more along the lines of subjecting someone who murders a 'suspicious person' in a justice zone to a non-zero risk of being hit with a murder charge, as the law doesn't realize that the dead NPC was anything other than a mortal? Mechanically we're kind of in an odd place here, since anyone who see's one of these is going to know what they are.

Maybe populating towns with additional NPCs that look the same, to throw some false positives in the mix, so to speak?

<< I do hope there ends up being compelling reasons to use a risen over a zombie when fighting if they end up being limited to one or the other. My necro would spend tons of time developing a fearsome monstrous aboration, and about zero time on a personal assistant.

If a risen was just an offensive powerhouse, like a zombie or mudman, why would one choose their zombie or mudman ? Wouldn't they be repetitive? Doesn't having an assistant give more options?

Nikpack

>>(while raising arcane energy!)

It's not necessarily a raise so much as it's a scramble. Remember, Arcane mana is derived from other mana types, and when they get modified Arcane gets modified. There's another ability I'm working on (tentatively named Wages of Sin) that's no-foolin' Arcane booster.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I personally don't care if Risen can't deal out direct damage since we have constructs and zombies for that. I like the idea of Risen being utility pets that can buff/debuff.

I do think it's very important, however, that Risen be able to survive in combat. They're going to need defenses on par with the necromancer who creates them in order to live long enough to buff/debuff anything.

For the NPC issue, what if they looked like a town's regular batch of NPC character's that roam and you have a whatever chance to detect they're not actually that NPC. That way people don't just murderlize all the non normal NPCs they see.

I know Paladin Protect is buggy, but a similar Risen protect, which is more effective than guard, might help keep Risen alive perhaps? It might even be recycled for Paladin consumption. Not sure how useful it would be if it pulls the necromancer out of hiding with each protect, but just thinking out loud.

>>A new version of the Chorus Discordant is now in Test.

>>3) It now is modified by the number of heads the Risen has. It takes a penalty at 0 heads, plus messaging acknowledging that it doesn't have a dang head. One head produces the same result as previously, and more heads produces a bonus based on the number of said heads. So many heads.

Is there messaging to indicate the extra heads are engaging? I made a five headed kobold and the messaging for it starting a chorus is the same as my single headed creations.

Also, kind of related, they're only showing the first few things you stitch to them. The table will let you continue adding parts, but when you >describe them you only see the torso, head and first three things that were stitched on. Can you confirm if that's a display issue or if they're not registering the extra parts?

>>A new version of the Chorus Discordant is now in Test.

I think this update may have broken Chorus. I made three new Risen, and none of them produce any Chorus messaging beyond the first start up.

>command risen to chorus
You focus intently on your thanatological link, sending a subtle command to a superbly made risen abomination to: Disrupt natural mana streams.
The risen abomination begins to sing with a multitude of distinct voices. Soaring, intertwining sound slowly swells in a crescendo.

(That one didn't have a head, by the way. It was just a torso, two arms and two legs.)

The bug in Chorus should now be fixed.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I would think you would likely need someone in the room to tell you how much the mana was reduced to really see how Chorus affected either of the three were.

Elusive
mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur

A whole bunch of bugs are fixed now in regards to Risen assembly.

Re: Combat. Functionally, the CFB zombie is (and always has been) intended to be your go-to combat companion. Something that's literally hacked to pieces and then stitched together just isn't going to be as sturdy as something that was just killed and raised intact. That said, I'm open to changes at this point.

-GM Abasha

*****************

When the squirrels rule the world, my work will be complete.

> Re: Combat. Functionally, the CFB zombie is (and always has been) intended to be your go-to combat companion. Something that's literally hacked to pieces and then stitched together just isn't going to be as sturdy as something that was just killed and raised intact. That said, I'm open to changes at this point.

I'm currently not testing this, so please ignore if you a solution in place already.

- Have you considered a reskin of hodierna's link or transference using thanatology for the risen?
- What about a paladin-like protect cover option so that you can defend them instead?
- Does necrotic reconstruction work on them, to keep them healed up?

I feel like things may have gotten jumbled along the way -

I was under the impression that Risen would be a permanent pet that could fill a role. We could have multiple Risen, though only have one out at a time, and having a Risen out meant we couldn't have a zombie out. As Risen were permanent, they could be given gear or items to hold. Creating a Risen is supposed to represent a high investment on the part of the Necromancer, as it causes very high DO, and accordingly, caring for individual Risen was important.

The two flavors of Risen:
- A Risen made with an emphasis on it's humanity would be able to do things in town, like sell pouches/bundles, use banking services. I imagined this Risen would be the one to act as a small mobile vault for us. I have no problem with this Risen having the combat capacity of wet tissue.

- A Risen made with an emphasis on its abominable nature would be 'monstrous', and be unable to use town, but serve in some combat role. They were supposed to be weaker than zombies. We understand that. However, if serving in some combat role means giving them abilities that really only have any use in combat (-RoomMana, buffing/debuffing, stealth something, etc), then monstrous Risen defensive capabilities as currently designed are too restrictive to allow us to make use of this, as they'll be destroyed by the first thing that interacts with them. In an age of AoE abilities, and critter spawn resulting in multiple engagements per combatant, the notion of an overly squishy support role doesn't have a lot of grounds, unless some additional ability is put into play to allow the Necromancer to defend/protect the Risen.

Again, I understand that this is all still in test, and values and abilities may tweak, so I'm not trying to be overly dramatic here or really put much stock in the way anything stands. But from the way Armifer and Abasha are talking about Risen combat potential, it sounds like there is a lot of hesitancy around the notion of placing even at level defensive capabilities on the Risen, which makes the notion of using one in combat highly unlikely. I want to echo that the notion of having a monstrous Risen as a buff/debuff pet is really cool, and I completely understand the need to make it output less damage than zombies. However, looking at the appraisals on these things now, they need adjustments if they're going to be usable.

After the latest fixes I've attempted to make two risen. Both made using eloth parts sold by an npc. Both with torso, head, arm x 2, leg x 2.

Both tore my face off when awoken.

Waiting off the second death's sting now but wondering if I just double dipped on bad RNG or if I'm doing something wrong?

>>I made several with the eloth parts yesterday (configured as male/female/and gender neutral) without any issues.

I'm guessing it was bad RNG to get it twice in a row. The next two came out properly with and without gender reassignment.