From:	shadowrn@*********.com (Downtym)
Subject:	Necromancy and the fun of Animate
Date:	Wed Sep 19 23:10:01 2001

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Jonathan wrote:

> In a past run a group I was with was looking for access into a magical
> orders compound from below. Being in the bowels of a religious
> monument in Paris we found naturally catacombs with corpses
> (skeletons mostly)

> Naturally the necromancer in me got the urge to ask "Would it be possible
> to animate a bunch of skeletons to help lay seige/provide
> destraction..."

> Of course with no karma to spend hard to quicken a spell ;)

> So why relate this?

> Just wondering:

> How "fragile" would an animated skeleton be?

> The animate spell says you can't operate individual parts does this
> mean you could not place a gun in an animated "body" so it could
> fire it? Or would it be limited to swinging things (ie a sword)

> On another note this bunch liked to rob banks, so as helpful as I
> wanted to be I suggested rigging up an animated statue with an
> intercom speaker to do the job.

> How resistant to dmg would such a golem be? And how fast would
> either an animated skeleton or statue be? (not much use if the rent
> a cops could waltz a complete waltz around an animated object in the
> time it would take for it to complete its first attack)

> Lastly: Say a limb is blown off a construct would reataching the
> limb make it part of the spell again or would a recasting be
> necessary to have the limb working "As it should". In such case it
> strikes that the limb and original construct would act as seperate
> animated constructs...

> Just some random thoughts about Animate and its limitations/boundaries...

Okay, so, I've been playing around with true necromantic spells in
SRun and came to a few conclusions:

1. You can't do skeleton animation with just magic. As literally
stated, "Magic is not sentient". What this one sentence means is that
for a necromancer to have a skeleton friend, he cannot use a simple
spell. (Ie: He can 'animate' the skeleton with just magic, but its
like a puppeteer show. The mage can't look at the skeleton and say,
"Guard here and beat anyone up that goes through that door." because
the skeleton is under the control of the mage. The mage has to be the
intelligence behind the skeleton.)

2. Animating a skeleton shouldn't be as hard as summoning a
spirit. The reason for this is that the skeleton serves as the
'material' componet. The problem is the fact that you have to "breath
life" into the bones on the ground in order to get it to move around,
not summon something from another plane to come and obey your every
command.

So, I came up with two solutions. The first I call
"meta-raising". The second I call "Spirit raising". Note that I
haven't actually designed mechanics for this because I need to have
someone play test with me. But I have designed the basic system
underwhich to work and the actual mechanics can come a bit later.

Meta-raising is the process by which a necromancer "donates" essence
to raise the skeleton. Sounds weird, right? Well, here's how I
conceptualized it. The necro in question says, "I want to raise a
skeleton." The necro then 'donates' part of his essence to maintain
the skeleton. The necro casts the spell like any other. If the
necro succeeds, the bag of bones hops up and begins moving around
and takes drain. If he fails, he takes drain.

While the skeleton is animated, the necro has an effective essence of
(Necro_Essence - Donated_Essence). This means that a necro with 6
essence can have 5 skeletons (Each skeleton has 1 essence and the
necro has 1 essence). Note that this works off of essence, so the most
a necro can *ever* have is 5 skeletons.

If the necro is knocked unconcious, the skeleton(s) remain for an
essence based time, then fall back into bones. The essence from the
skeletons "returns" to the necro.

The base attributes and statistics of the skeletons is based off of
the amount of essence 'donated' to it. So, a 5 essence skeleton is
going to be stronger, meaner, and tougher. Note that skeletons have
almost *no* intelligence. In my design, I've placed an ultimate
restriction on skeletons that they have 1 intelligence and are like
watcher spirits in the respect of intelligence. Another thing I stated
is that skeletons are invincible to mana based spells.

"Why?" the invulnerability you ask? Well, because the skeletons aren't
actually alive. They're just animated with part of the necro's
personality. Also, skeletons don't have a stun bar. They only have a
physical damage bar. Once it's filled, they crumble into bones on the
ground and the essence returns to the necro.

So, this is the basic outline for my idea that I cooked up over Summer
that I haven't had a chance to implement.

The second idea is based off of the voodoo magic section in the magic
supplements (The name of the book I base this off of eludes me right
now. I can't remember exactly which book it is. I'm thinking it was
"Magic in the Shadows", but I'll have to get back on that). The second
idea is that a necromancer can summon a spirit to inhabit the
skeleton.

While sort of like the first, this second option has some
variations. The first is that skeletons attributes and abilities are
based on the force of the spirit summoned. Second is that the
skeletons are vulnerable to mana spirits. This is because the
skeletons are now inhabited by something "living" that can be damaged
by will based spells. Third, if the necromancer is knocked out or
killed, the spirit has a chance of going free and remaining on
our plane instead of going home. Fourth, the necromancer can
theoretically control an infinite number of skeletons. Unlike normal
spirits, once bound back into their physical form, these spirits do
not return to their home plane at the end of the day or when their
services are used up. They have to stay and are under the control of
the necromancer.

The process for this involves bringing back a part of the dead person
and binding them to the skeleton in question. Icky, scary, and
downright dangerous if the skeleton should get free (Most dead people
don't like being ripped out of whatever plane they were in). The
actual mechanics of this should take place like they do for summoning
any other spirit. I would also add a mechanic that would make it so
that after time, the spirit inhabiting the skeleton gets a chance to
return to his home plane. For example, maybe make a roll every
(Number of successes on summoning roll) days against an increasing
target number (Starting at 4) to see if the spirit is ripped free of
our plane and returned home by the forces of nature.

Anyway, these are the basic necromancy rules that I've begun
developing myself. If you try them out or actually come up with any
indepth mechanics, please send me a yell to tell me how it came out
and with what numbers/rolls you actually used.

Downtym |
Email: gte138j@*****.gatech.edu | Post no bills