Making Animate Undead Create a "Henchman"

[So What If I Am A Goblin?]

The animation system is amazing, it really is! Being able to create 24 hour long summon that has amazing capacity to be buffed and evolve according to the desires of the animator.

However, I'd like to see the creature in question become a "Henchman", where you can 'gift' certain individuals with the undead henchman, for them to buff, enhance, and augment themselves,  or, already buffed to the teeth and given to them as a tool of destruction.

It seems fair to me that a 24 hour summon can be bestowed upon another person as a gift of good service. Would make Necromancer PCs and clerics truly shine as they give their creations to serve favored underlings as bodyguards or disposable shock troops.

Given the nature of undead in this setting, it truly would be a devastating deadly thing to have follow you around, so I think it wouldn't be unbalancing in the least.

[Seanzie]

I think that the fact that the caster needs to be able to control it, makes it a little far fetched for a person, without any training of undead, to be able to control it. Maybe have a save of will, lore, spellcraft, or something and if you fail. It turns hostile.

[Valo56]

Perhaps a wizard (not cleric, I'll explain later) with Specialization in Necromancy could bind an undead to a token which he could gift to anyone he wished, resulting in the undead minion obeying the mental commands of whoever holds the token. Giving these wizards the ability to store undead for later use would also be awesome. Like some super-ogre zombie that he experiments on over the course of his career, waiting until the right time to unleash it on his enemies. Or just collecting various corpses over time.

As for why 'not cleric,' clerics are already the best necromancers, with a vast amount of tools at their disposal for creating undead early on, buffing them, and augmenting them through experiments (where they are actually a bit worse off, compared to wizards). A wizard requires DM loot or some random loot from quests (the latter of which more often than not weighs a ton, a lot more than what most wizards can carry). As for the IC of why, perhaps undead, when animated up as a divine servant of the god and priest, are attracted to the negative aura around the priest, its creator, and seeks to serve him, even though it is mindless. A wizard is far more flexible in this, despite it being harder for them to accomplish.

[So What If I Am A Goblin?]

I don't even know if this is possible, and if Mort could weigh in since he scripted the undead system, it'd be intriguing to see if it is even feasible.

[Mort]

It is possible.

[Damien]

animate dead is not strong enough?

[Valo56]

For wizards, no, it is not strong enough. The summons often disappear when resting for them, and you can't summon more than one even with loot, from corpses. Meaning for them, only shambling corpses.

Clerics are fine. Wizards lucky enough to hit 9 are fine too, I guess.

[So What If I Am A Goblin?]

It is possible.

My next question is, is it desirable?

[So What If I Am A Goblin?]

animate dead is not strong enough?

This is not about strength, rather, flexibility and utility. In the setting we have, demons, devils, and undead are instant grounds for being killed by the gambit of good aligned PCs. This system will allow Wizards, Clerics, Palemasters who achieve notable notoriety to involve intensely necromantic non-magical PCs into their plots, perhaps allowing them to animate more than one type of undead at a time by gifting the individuals with them with the villainous and horridly evil undead companion...

I'd be pumped to see this in the game!

[Damien]

so basically you want one of the great perks for palemasters to be given to standard necromancers? no thnx, also they are still a lot stronger than standard spawns and can be augmented which makes the risk worth it, also it is an rp choice to use any of these dangerous summons, you shouldnt be rewarded for it unless you actually do something which already happens

[Mort]

Ideally, scripting or doing with a DM cool rituals with ingredients/significant cost to have permanent henchman would be my call rather than just a "level 3 spell" (Granted it is level 5 for wizards >___>)..

..it is a possibility along with some tweaks, ingredients to the spell. The whole 'enhancing undead' is rather sucky, and it might be cooler if it was tied into the alchemy system.

We'll see!

[VanillaPudding]

If the way to enchant the minions is adjusted I'd highly suggest you avoid alchemy, and somehow make it effect all minions in a close proximity. These creatures are hardly as strong as Griff is making them out to be (and were even nerfed by Johannes somewhat recently IIRC).

Also, I'd suggest some sort of method to "track" how far to can modify them, as in a point system to spend on them depending on focuses, levels, or other things earned in game. So you might start with 100 points, +50 per level, and then 50/100% more for the focuses. Then you can spend these points on them once / day (rest) and truly know what you're doing to them.

So dropping 1000 points on something's movement speed might make it insanely fast, but you'll be lacking in whatever else. Furthermore, these points would be distributed evenly to all creatures nearby, so if you have two of them out it only uses 500 points worth of the speed boost to each!

[So What If I Am A Goblin?]

Not asking for a perma henchman Mort. A 24 hour summon that can follow players that did not summon it around and aid in PvP and questing and whatnot.

Though, the idea you brought up -is- cool, but isn't that already present in the form of Palemaster PrC?

[Nihm]

Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to now have Animate Dead spells create an inventory object, only useable by evil.  For instance, Corpse of a Wild Orc would become Twitching Corpse of a Wild Orc, Very Strong (strength depends on whatever effort the spellcaster had put into upgrading it).  Perhaps a second item, an Activation Stone consumed upon use, could also be made with each animation.  The necromancer could then simply give both items to his ally.
 
This would also mean necromancers were always battle-ready as opposed to having to prepare well ahead of time.  Would this be too powerful? I don't think so, given that necromancer pcs are treated exactly the same as monster pcs.