Wizards - necromancers

[Aefar]

Two ballance possibilites:

School necromancy => animate dead tool (1x or 2x per day)

OR

SF => animate dead tool 1x per day
GSF => animate dead tool 2x per day

All others can study it up to the 5th circle as usual.

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Seeing nothing but cleric and now sorcerer necromancers gets tiring.

[John Doe]

It is a good and balanced suggestion which opens up an interesting theme for Wizards that remains otherwise unavailable without the right levels or loot. It could be implemented as a perk which is only accessible to L5 Necromancers with the Necromancy School or GSF as was suggested. Or a dialogue option at Thomas Alqvin where the Wizard can receive  1/day  animate Token upon performing some kind of quest or ritual.

Necromancers are just cool and thematically fitting in such an apocalyptic world.

[Pandip]

I'm actually pretty strongly against this. Maybe (maybe) give GSF: Necromancy and spell school necromancy wizards an animate dead tool at level six at the absolute very earliest, but I'd be highly cautious of offering more than that. This should not be something a human wizard should be able to splash into with a feat or two. Wizards are by creation the most studious of the classes capable of animating dead. Clerics have deity restrictions while sorcerers have miserable spell selection and progression. Giving sorcerers the capability to animate before level 10 was a really nice step in the right direction for arcane animators, but I don't feel like that's something that should be afforded to wizards as well.

If you want the immediate benefit of being able to create undead, play a sorcerer and suffer spell selection issues. Otherwise, work for it on a wizard.

[LordOfBones]

There are many many items that have charges or even rarely (Typically DM loot) daily uses of animate dead, Wizards will have to suffer with those in my opinion.

[Valo56]

People really underestimate the difference between a player tool/actual casting of animate dead, and an item with animate dead.

Let's go over this.

Casting/Possibly Player Tool: One can summon multiple specialized undead. Specialized undead do not disappear on rest. One can freely summon from the Summon Monster spells.
Item: Summoning a specialized undead from a corpse will destroy all previous animates. Special undead will sometimes disappear upon resting. Regular Shambling Corpses work as normal. Summoning from the Summon Monster spells is not advised.

The massive power differences between wizards and clerics/sorcerers is only aggravated when one goes around saying to "just use items" when that, by itself, is the whole issue. The most focused and studious of necromancers can in fact be the weakest by this simple fact alone.

[Talir]

Adding player tool possibilities for wizards with any condition would be easy enough. But it is not something I am too keen on, in my own opinion.

Wizards on EFU have been living in luxury. With the spell focus changes, alchemy and new spells they've gone to cover nearly anything any other class' niche can do -- sometimes even better! They are nowhere in need of any additional perks.

[Dredi]

I concur, Further, Wizards have access to an additional feat and the Palemaster prestige class which (while potentially very difficult to acheive) would likely provide this tool anyway. - this is notably a PrC which a sorc can follow but they gain significantly reduced benefits for doing so, given they learn no new spells.

[Howlando]

An ability to give an animate dead player tool to PCs (instead of an item, which indeed has limitations) that either successfully apply for such a concept or receive it as a DM reward would be useful though!