Alright, having just played Gormandicant, I have a couple of thoughts on necromancers. Obviously I'm not anywhere close to THE most experienced player, especially of necros, so bear with me.
First of all, I want to talk about their skill set:
Offense
I think that necromancers, as they stand now, are a little to easy to play as glorified, pet-wielding invokers. Basically, the standard tactic is to attack someone, try to dispel magic, and then acid blast them to death while your zombies beat the crap out of them. Now granted, this tactic changes as your opponents grow in strength and skill - adding in a few maledictives, perhaps the occasional attempt at sleep, etc.
I would like to see necromancers revolve more around controlling their pets, and therefore not function so heavily as offensive spellcasters. So here is what I propose:
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Take away dispel magic from the necromancer arsenal. I think this spell is a dark temptress, encouraging people to try to dispel their opponent's sanctuary, and then simply blow them up as quickly as possible. It doesn't invite the use of other skills in my opinion - it just leads down the road to being an invoker sans hellstream.
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Lower the mana cost on necromancer maledictives. Now, granted, most necromancer players are illithids, and therefore have no concern about mana - but for other races, this can be a problem. So by lowering the cost of their other spells, you encourage their use.
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Give necromancers an option, similar to blademasters, to choose their level of offense/defense for every fight. In order to do this, have a command that allows them to change whether their zombies and golems are fighting offensively, or defending the necromancer. Essentially, you could give them a mind link-esque skill that would allow the golems/zombies to guard them, if they were in defensive mode, or they could fight normally if they were in offensive mode. This would allow the more conservative player to act defensively and go a more maledictive route, or the less conservative player to still go all out offensive.
Pets
I also think that necromancers could use some work in the field of pets. One way I had thought to do this is to create a combined Pet Level Limit. So here we go:
The formula for the PLL would be: (Level x 5) + 2
So, for example, if your level was 50, your PLL would be 252. The result of this number would that the combined levels of your pet cannot add up to more than this number. So between your two golems (level 50), you have 153 points left to work with. You can have two level 50 zombies, and one level 52 zombie. You can have one level 50 zombie, and two level 51 zombies. And so on and so forth. First of all, this will cause people to have to choose whether they want THE MOST offensive zombie, or several less offensive zombies.
Also, it will cause them to have to choose between the new golem that I am proposing:
Blood Golem
Basically, this would be the final golem in a necromancer's repertoire. It would require two things: First, necromancers still would have a pet limit of FIVE. Therefore, when a necro has their full army, it must take the place of one of the other golems. And second, it will be level 51 - so it takes up one of the necromancer's PLL points. However, in order to compensate for the space it takes up, it should be more valuable than the other golems. What I propose is two things: making it slightly stronger than the other golems, and giving it a life drain ability that funnels life to the necromancer when it strikes opponents.
Conclusion
All in all, I think necromancer is a fun class. However, it is entirely to difficult, particularly if you're in a cabal like Syndicate where it is difficult to make and keep friends, to resuit AND resummon your army every time you die. I think by adding a third pet (while you're getting your zombies) and by changing around some of the other necromancer abilities, that this class could be made both more interesting, fun, and unique.
Let me know what you think.