Undead Enhancement tweak

[Garem]

In regards to this improvement of necromancy: http://www.escapefromunderdark.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35292

Shouldn't it apply both alchemy AND consecration (more appropriately, Desecration)? Ideally, it just uses the higher if the two.

I think it should.

[Dr Dragon]

I totally agree especially for our beloved priests.

[BoneScreech]

Would be interesting to see desecration implemented for evil clerics, I'm in favor.

[Gnome on the Strange]

Clerics can take Alchemy just fine, it's an EFUSS skill with no stat modifiers. And clerics get Animate as a L3 spell and plenty of useful negative spells anyway.

[Garem]

They can, at the cost of using consecration. It's simply a matter of style, and consecration (desecration, in this case) not only makes sense for evil priests to be a method of manipulating their undead minions, but it seems more reasonable than alchemy, which is about changing the property of mundane objects into something special and magical in an arcane sense. Consecration is the divine method of doing the exact same thing- mundane to magical.

And those negative spells don't have any effect on making the undead minions any more useful. Only transmutation spells can do that, where clerics are slightly more limited, lacking Cat's Grace.

Let me put it in context with a story. For anyone who wants to save brain cells, don't bother reading. Two guys are chillin, sippin on beers, talking about oh the usual things like undead shit. So one tells the other, dude, watch this and animates two zombies no prob. The other is like, no wai, I've been wanting to do that. So his buddy gives him a magic skull and whammy, he gets his own pet skeleton. The first guy who knows how to actually make these things come out of the ground the right way makes his a little tougher with a bone graft, but oops, he's not good enough to do much else. Then the other guy who got a neat magic skull but can't even summon his own minions is like, hey look, my crappy skeleton is faster, stronger, smarter, wrote a novel, met a fish, f***** his brains out like a boss, and is ethereal to boot. So what do these two cool dudes do? FIGHT THEM. I choose YOU undead zombie!

Pow Pow. Two barely boosted zombies attack one little skeleton. But the skeleton almost beats the shit out of the zombies. You can imagine why. So the loser uses his turning power and BAM, stuns the little skeleton and his zombies win because he had to friggen cheat.

This is a horrible, yet true story. And it's why consecration should work for making minions useful. Because without upgrading, minions usually suck super hard.

[Egon the Monkey]

Really? Efuss skills are 1+INT+1 for human per level, plus 3 to start. It's not that big a deal to have points in Alchemy and Consecration, or even to skip Consecration if you want to be a Super Undead Buffer. Also, weaker or not, Clerics can summon undead whenver they want and buff them up some. Arcane classes have to rely on items, but can more easily tweak the fewer undead they can use to be more powerful (A wizard's more educated and skilled).  IMO Animate Dead should be a L4 arcane spell not L5 so clerics have it more easily but mages can actually use it. Wizards will rarely get it, Sorcs will pretty much never get it.

[Garem]

Your arguments about this are all based upon the fact that wizards get the spell way, way too late on our server because of level range. The DM crew has tried to compensate by adding in a ton of Animate Dead and even some Create Undead scrolls. Why does that reasonably justify the constraint on clerics of having to use alchemy (an arcane-based knowledge/skill) on their divinely summoned, divinely controlled, desecrated, animated corpses?

Egon also has an argument that clerics should not have reasonably knowledge of how to effectively beef up undead minions via divine study. Why not? Why would a priest of Velsharoon, Orcus, or Jergal NOT be experts on divine undead manipulation, despite being experts on Undead in general? Why would any of them give a hoot about alchemy? I may misread it, but the arguments so far is that, because they can, they just should. I would say, just because they can does not mean they should. Hence, the suggestion was raised in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your points, and at the end of the day we're all trying to make magic on EfU make sense. Which is pointless beyond belief. Still. Consecration for undead upgrading imo.

Lastly, upgrading makes the undead pretty good. Without it, they're just alright when in great numbers. [size=-2]Except for corpse-summoned, those are pretty wicked cool.[/size]

As a point of pertinent information-- nobody but the animator can manipulate undead minions.

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Minor update: I have it on some authority that Consecration may be exclusively for Goodly-oriented items (such as holy water). Iff that's the case, then Consecration would make less sense than Alchemy.

[Thomas_Not_very_wise]

This might call for a new EFUSS skill, Desecration!

[Dr Dragon]

It is complete BS that conscreation is not included for clerics. The fact is clerics are supposed to be way better at animation then wizards. While a cleric might not be on par with special necromantic rituals (Like creating  a phylactery) What I think is that Wizards should use alchemy and clerics should use conscretion that way we dont get wizards with our uber Lore learning conscretion.


-The Doc rocking it out)

[Random_White_Guy]

Consecration has no "Alignment". A Priest of Umberlee could make Holy Water that harms undead just as a priest of Lathander does.

I'm firmly supportive of consecration effecting Undead, as an evil deity would take much pleasure in twisting and warping the corpse of a foe for more use.

[Ebok]

I, of the peanut gallery, agree!

[SkillFocuspwn]

I would like to bump this!