As some might already guess : this post is sparked by the necromancy feat thread, but bear with me here.
First off, my interpretation of what a summon spell should do. If this clashes with the developer's view on things, then feel free to mention this!
1) Outside of combat, it should be used to enrich roleplay. The gangly necromancer with his skeletal bodyguard or a razy cat lady mage who summons dire tigers. It's all good fun! The current system of 24 hours when not in combat is great, and works perfectly well, in my opinion.
2) In combat, a summon should give some momentary assistance, whether this is some damage that it does in the brief time it's fighting, or taking a few hits instead of the melee tank in your group. True you could lay it with buff spells, but that would still be for a very short duration, in comparison to having an actual PC doing the fighting.
In other words, I liken a summon to a psuedo-hybrid of a fireball and stoneskin spell. It might harm your foes, it might reduce the damage you take. If you're lucky, it does both.
So yes, I also think the combat durations are perfectly fine.
With that out of the way, let us continue with my suggestions on the undead summoning spells, and my reasoning of why they might be valid suggestions. Feel free to comment below!
The Name
So, the three spells are:
Animate Dead
Create Undead
Create Greater Undead
As I recall, the spells don't actually 'create' an undead. They actually compel an existing undead to come to you and serve you. Wouldn't names like:
Call Dead
Call Undead
Call Greater Undead
be more appropriate for that spell series?
The Summons
We've established that you call forth the dead, not create them. If this isn't true, feel free to correct me!
Another thing about the Demiplane of Dread : Undead summons are supposed to be more powerful here, but harder to keep under control.
So….why do we use the traditional lineup of summons from the core game?
Heck, The Create Greater Undead lets you call up a Lich at some point. Aren't those far more powerful here than in the other planes? Even if it's a high-end spell, how the heck are we controlling such an entity to do our bidding?
Regardless, we have so many iconic undead critters on the server that we Always see and fight. If the spells actually call up local undead to fight for you, then why not some of those?
Shoot, the starter spells could for example call up Risen Bones, then Skeletal Warriors, Archers and Priests, then Skeletal Knights, Marksman, Heucuva's, and then the penultimate Skeletal Lord, Master Marksmen and High Priests.
Whether that's just animate dead or spread out over Animate and create (greater) (un)dead, I'll leave to others to decide.
What I'm trying to say is, there's so many undead things we encounter on our travels, from Morgs to skeletons to zombies to mummies, to curst, to shadows. It'd be neat and I think more thematic if those were the sort of undead called forth, instead of the bog standard undead from the core game.
The Disadvantages
The current undead summoning spells have three main disadvantages:
1) If anyone sees you use them and they're not okay with it, and you can't convince them to remain silent? You will be shunned and possibly hunted down.
2)Casting such spells attracts the attention of the Dark Powers.
3) Quite a lot of the current undead summons are kinda useless. The Skeletal Chieftain and the summons of the Create Greater Undead are good summons, but practially all the summons from Create Undead are completely useless against anything you'd fight at that level. Their AB is so crap that they can only hurt anything with a crit, and they might take one or two blows before dying. Kinda subpar, which kinda clashes with the 'Undead are more powerful in the Mists' bit, because regular summon spells of the same level ( 6 or 8 ) are a lot better.
However, I feel that two disadvantages should be added, due to the second part of that: ' Harder to control'.
I suggest that each level range has 3 to 4 options that could be summoned, and the chosen undead that shows up should be a random pick. Maybe you'll get an archer. Maybe you'll get a heucuva. Maybe you'll get a Morg. You never know! You send out the call, but you don't have the control over the spell to pick out the specific kind of undead.
In that same vein : I suggest that the Undead Summoning spells have chance of the called up Undead going crazy and turning hostile to everything around them. They might attack your foes, they might attack YOU.
If possibly, the chance should start up small, like 10%, but in intervals of your increasing caster level, it should rise and rise and rise until you get a full 100% failure to control the undead. Though, if such was implemented, I'd also ask that the necromancy corpsecrafter feats actually reduce the chance with each feat being taken.
Accessibility
According to what I've read, the art of calling forth undead is actually really easy to do on the demiplane of dread, to the point that even non-casters can call up undead and dread golems ( though those are usually powered by the dark powers and require specific, rare situations).
Therefore, my suggestion is to remove the class limitations on any scrolls that contain an undead summoning spell so that anyone -can- dabble in the most foulest of arts!
Anyway, that's all of it. Debate away!
