By all appearances, its 3 spells:

Blood Burst
Limb Disruption
Pain

708's benefit is nice and cool, but not entirely reliable or powerful. Blood Burst is a great utility feature, but highly functional with only 1 rank, and additional training isn't really necessary. Pain is where it really gets nice, though being fully 1xed isn't entirely necessary. Anywhere from .3x-.8x would be quite sufficient.

I would expect that, in due time, Disease and hopefully Disintegrate will have Necromancy benefits as well.

>>to allow you to animate a dead PC for rescue purposes only,

You mean get rid of the need for crystals and gem for this part and make it lore only?

>>Yeah. I think thats fair.

Me too, I am just trying to clarify his point.

I would do a lot more rescues in a lot more places I wouldn't normally to take advantage of the fact you don't enter RT for dragging and the corpses can pass a few more natural barriers (places you can't drag over, the runes of the misty chamber, the rift, etc)

>Erm, you can already animate PCs with 730 and have them walk to town.... or did you just mean remove the salts for this?

Basically, that. Its not just salts, its the gem as well, though you can just fog back to town if you need to if short duration is necessary. Even so, thats a net requirement of a 4 components required for a simple rescue enhancer.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I like the salt component. Yes, it's a hassle. But one of the things I love about sorcery is it's...well, sorcery. It's not easy, and it's not meant to be. It's dark and complex. While a fair argument could be made that we shouldn't be the ONLY ones burdened, I'd rather see complexity added to other classes rather than taken away from ours. Using crimson salts to preserve and prepare the body is logical (in a twisted, dark fantasy sense).

Having said that, there's no reason complexity must equal tedium. Tedium is appropriate for guild work, but not for class features. For example, why is the process of collecting salt water so convoluted? We should be able to take a flask, dip it in the water and be good to go. It's flippin' salt water, not liquid mercury. I could see the extra step for collecting troll's blood, although I'm sure nobody would complain if that was simplified, as well.

What I'd like to see changed is not the process, but the result. Animate Dead has way too little bang for all the effort.

There are three main reasons I hardly ever animate creatures for hunting. One, with 21 ranks of necromancy I can't get creatures suitably powerful enough to hunt where I hunt. Two, even if I manage to animate something that can be of some use to me, the DURATION is too short to justify all the trouble. Finally, for some creatures to be vaguely useful in combat, I need to carry around a big extra weapon to hand them. That's fine, I can keep it phased...but because of the aforementioned issues, I risk LOSING that weapon when the critter is killed or the duration runs out. Overall, it's just one more hassle to contend with.

I realize my necromancy ranks are not up to snuff...but aren't lores supposed to be a BONUS to our spells, not a requirement? Okay...so I can still use Animate Dead to rescue bodies. That's great. I've used the spell many times for this, and will continue to do so. But was it intended for sorcerers to become "rescuers" via Animate Dead? It suits my character fine. But for many others, this is yet another aspect of 730 that may hardly ever be used.

The either/or choice of Demonology or Necromancy essentially divides sorcerers into two distinct classes. The problem is, there's so little advantage in choosing Necromancy. I keep my 21 ranks mainly for one spell: Pain. I also like to play with Animate Dead, once in a blue moon (although I can't remember the last time I tried). I prefer to make my own crystals, and use them on the odd rescue. But even this is much more rare now that other classes can just rub a crystal and POOF the body home (often leaving me scratching my head looking for a body that isn't there). Ppht. Why bother?

The trend in GSIV seems to be to make sure every class has the same abilities. If you give Sorcerers the ability to blow things up, you have to give it to empaths, too. If you give them the ability to rescue bodies from places nobody else can get them out of, you have to give clerics those little gems that do exactly that. If you give sorcerers the ability to travel anywhere at any time, you have to give it to everybody, only much safer and cheaper.

That was a rant, obviously. But it's not far from the truth. It used to be there was clear separation between the classes. Now almost everybody's got pets. Almost everybody's got travel spells. Almost everybody's got at least one good CS attack spell, one good bolt spell, one good area spell, etc. Bleh. The only ones who don't are squares, and they make up for it with CMANS and cheap physical skills. In the meantime, everything that's supposed to make Sorcerer's unique has been farmed out to empaths and clerics and bards and rangers.

We can charge scrolls. That's pretty neat. I use this skill a lot, for myself and all my characters. But is that it for us? Is that our single defining ability nobody else has? I think we can do better than that. Honestly, what else do you go to a sorcerer for? Death and destruction? Nope, not anymore. We've become the creepy, new age nerds of the world, crouched over a lab bench in some dank basement, practicing ridiculous arcane rituals that are completely unnecessary for normal people and will never really work right, anyway.

All of this basically boils down to this: How about making 730 actually, you know, work? I mean, in a practical, useful sense? Make it a little easier to animate creatures closer to our level. Increase the duration, or at least make it refreshable (not forever, but at least once or twice to get through a couple hunts). All you'd have to do is tweak the numbers a bit on making crystals, maybe cut the lore requirement in half. I don't know, something. Anything.

Don't take away our complexities. Just make them worth the effort. Make sorcery respectable again.

~ Heathyr and friends

>The problem is, there's so little advantage in choosing Necromancy.

Heh, I remember when the same thing was said about Demonology. Of course, that was before Phase-able containers, Balefire, and Planar Shifting, but . . . there was certainly a time when people took Demonology "for flavor", and Necromancy for combat benefits.

That said, I don't think its quite so either-or as people make it out to be, but I'm referring to high level characters. MAL evens out at 70 ranks, and you can 100% summon Abyran'sa from chamber at 125 ranks, leaving 5 free ranks to put where you will. Someone who wants a higher MAL and better Pain thresholds can EASILY drop that last 25 ranks to 100 (still allowing 100% success in chamber with every other runestone except Abyran'sa) and get 100% ranks for a MAL of about +6, if I am correct.

I think an issue I find stranger is that Demonology is usually tier-based, while Necromancy is usually ranks-per-level based.

With 50 ranks of Demonology, you get: Maximum success with Cloak Retribution, Maximum benefit for Torment, 2 passengers for 740, the auto-cast feature for 740, numerous tiers for Phase, and 100% out of chamber summoning for valence specific. Those 50 ranks are exactly the same at level 25 or level 100. 50 is 50 is 50.

Not so with Necromancy, where things are either based on a 1-202 scale, or are based on a ranks per level system. Blood Burst and Animate Dead never "stop" providing benefits, while Pain and Limb Disruption are based on ranks per level, meaning if you want full benefit, you MUST continue training at least 1x in Necromancy. A Demonologist can get away with getting the requisite number of ranks for whatever tier is their goal and call it a day, but Necromancy requires 1x devotion for life. I hope that any Disintegrate and Disease lore implementations will be either tier or 1-202 scale, not ranks per level.

<<<Though I've never had a problem shifting except 2 times when I did it with over 1m coins on me>>>

LOL -- Honestly, the only thing you should be successful at while carrying a million coins is lying flat on your back looking pitiful. ;)

~ Heathyr

<<<I would say that as it currently stands, 70 ranks of Necromancy and 75 ranks of Demonology are really good goals (0 MAL and archetype specific summoning in chamber), and any distribution of the remaining 60 points will be fine, either better demons or better MAL.>>>

That sounds reasonable, roughly what I was thinking. Thanks for the info, especially on Necromancy ranks. It would be nice simply to get to 0 MAL, eventually.

~ Heathyr