Give zombies cloth or rever mage armor as it was

[Garem]

Drakill, skeletons do not suck. Morthel did use more zombies, and diz-e and I argued both IG and OOC about the effectiveness of both types. I admit my bias, but it's also based on extensive testing from playing a necromancer for 6 of the past 8 months.

Paha Poika, your argument is out of the scope of this thread-- the OP and my own argument is about plain zombies, not the corpse items you can acquire.

To address the corpse issue, however, corpses come with the tremendous downside of being exceptionally heavy. And the really good ones are very hard to acquire. Even still, the best ones have another major disadvantage-- they're obnoxiously large.

Simply put, without the +4 of Mage's Armor on top of Stone Bones, I would bother carry around or use ogres, rarely great lizards. I won't go into any greater specifics than the reasons already highlighted to prevent mechanical spoilers.

Throw in that using big groups of animates is entirely impractical because of spawning issues, what you have to "spend" in order to get the benefits of undead upgrading (the effectiveness of which tapers off as you get higher level)... animation is unique, extremely fun, and flashy-- but it is burdensome, has massive RP/IG downsides, and isn't the huge mechanical boon it's often made out to be without considerable expense of lost inventory weight, gold, and health.

This whoooole post aside, the take home point is that zombies still suck and should get the benefit of being able to get Mage's Armor.

Which reminds me...

I haven't been using the animation system recently, but not much has changed as I understand it. Here's a full report of suggestions on how to alter and improve the system. Any current necromancy fans, please re-write it and repost if you're so inclined to do so!

Caveat:

-The "Give Weapon" system does work, but it's so challenging to use that it's not really worthwhile (Diz-e used it more extensively and may have different insights).

-You can (now?) summon more than one undead creature from items.

-The topic of wizards/sorcs getting Animate Dead at a lower level by various methods has been discussed ad nauseum. No more... please, no more.

-Last time I checked, you now lose ALL your animates either when you rest or when you rest and then cast your first animation spell, dispelling pre-rest animates.

[Paha]

Garem, I only answered to the opinion that zombies are too weak for the rank of a spell that animation is. The thing is, it's not summon, but if one likes to think it that way, the zombie is the lowest rank, which can easily conquer summon lvl 1 in many ways, naturally depending what summoning school it is.

There are downsides, definitely, but there are generally much better tools for studying how to conquer those with animation, when in summoning there are reagents for simply better summons.

My point simply was that zombies already can easily be good enough, not the best, but not the most lousy either, and it is definitely easier to heal undeads than to keep normal summons up. They are zombies. They usually are not that tough, unless you create some badass version of them, which also is not impossible. In my opinion mage armor is fine, but it also makes sense that it could be cast on them. I just don't think it needs to be done just because they would need any more options than there are.

[Garem]

I respect that opinion. I agree, there's a distinction that must be understood between summons and animates. Thus, I urge the general public careful when comparing summons and animates-- summons start out pretty useful, by and large. Reagents are not heavy, hence getting awesome summons isn't too hard either. Animates (zombies most of all), barring the top tier ones, also need a great deal of preparation, expense on healing, and weapons (if you can ever get the damned thing to work right). No animates get neat special abilities or spells, which so many summons do get, and use quite effectively. Of course animates last for, almost, forever. I think we can agree that it's really apples and oranges.

As for Mage's Armor's (and more) being necessary for zombies to be feasibly effective at stopping anything with a positive AB score from hitting it, thus useful in the slightest for being anything but a snail-speed pincushion... we'll agree to disagree.

Random thought-- too bad we can't pay gold via dialogue to armor and arm zombies, or they just come with it as you level up.

[The Crimson Magician]

maybe give something similar to the equip weapon script and make it equip clothing and armor and such. armored zombies whoo!!!

[Howlando]

Quite a lot of discussion... but it is added, anyway.