Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Proper Necromancy

The current necromancy magic is fun, but I would call it more sanguimancy (Aka bloodmagic) than actual necromancy. Is it possible for necromancy to be split into a new skill tree and get some more actual death related spells? It would be really cool in particular to have access to spells that raised undead from corpses rather than just create them from air.

Some current ideas for necromancy spells:
Death bolt - Mandatory weak bolt spell that atrophies target

Debilitate - Debuffs target with atrophie/slow/disease.

Raise Zombie - Brings targeted corpse back as a weak, classic zombie (slow, hardy, poison blood + attack).

Necroplague - Targets corpse, all enemies around it get diseased during the duration (can be cast on undead)
(Also shamelessly stole the idea from the Skyrim Apocalypse mod Necroplague).

Corpse Explosion - Classic necro spell that explodes a corpse, making a poison surface and damaging all nearby.

Unholy Strength - Raises targets move speed and damage, but causes them to take damage when moving or attacking.

Finger of Death - 3 slots + 1 source. Another classic, fires a bolt that deals damage and atrophies. If the target is killed by this attack, they are instantly converted into a zombie.

Mass Raise Dead - 3 slots + 1 source, brings all corpse back as weaker version of their living selves (2-3 levels lower?), they automatically attack nearby enemies (No control).

Form Flesh Golem - 3 slots + 1 source, targets a large AOE. All corpses in aoe are consumed to make a powerful creature, whose strength is based on number of corpses.

Would anyone else be interested in this type of spell? Is there any chance these types of spells will be included?

You are not the first to mention that necromancy is currently not, well, necromantic.
They recently also changed all the spells target physical armor, basically turning it into a melee class.
While the tree works well and all, it should probably be reworked a bit, or renamed.

What i would like to have seen is necromancy utilizing all those body parts that are scattered about everywhere.
Currently they are just elf snacks, which is great and all, but one would think any necromancer worthy of the name could find a use for all those spare parts.
Would not take all that much to make necromancy more necromantic.
Letting the player animate dead enemies, or craft an undead monstrosity (perhaps a permanent toggle for -2 ap), would go a long way.

"They recently also changed all the spells target physical armor, basically turning it into a melee class."

That isn't why it is a melee class. It is that its spells benefit a close range fighter more then a distance one.

Long range spells that target physical armor could easily work and combo great off of other physical attackers in your party. Heck Earth has one attack that does this (Kind of).

The issue is that the attacks are
1) A Medium Range Health drain that does minor damage. Casters are not frontline, so it is less useful.
2) A Medium attack that shares damage between you and the attacker. You aren't a frontline
3) A attack that makes healing damage the opponent... at touch range.

In DOS1 this class was called Witchcraft and was able to curse and summon skeletons and bloodgolems. It was far more like Necromancy, like it is now somehow. Now it is, like they took all the Necromancy stuff out and called it afterwards Necromancy.

Not bad ideas, I like Corpse Explosion and Raise Zombie (although the zombie would have to be temporary for 3-5 turns and then die or drop their inventory immediately upon being raised). However, a lot of enemies in the game are not human shape, so how would you get human zombies from non-human corpses?

Necromancy - Sacrificial Gift
Necromancy: 1 // AP: 0-1 // Duration: Instant. // Cooldown: 1-2 turns.

The necromancer sacrifices 50% of their current health to heal a targeted ally for three-quarters of that amount.

(Optional) The necromancer loses half their CURRENT Physical and Magical armor as well.


This gives a different kind of healing than just water mage healing, with a notable drawback. I've also added the optional additional drawback of it also lowering magical and physical armor, so the lowered health actually matters.


It would also combo nicely with a new Talent I'm thinking of for Necromancers:

Blood Pact - Requires Necromancy 5
When standing in a blood surface and health is below 30%, Necromancy spells are 50% stronger.

You give 50% of your max health in HP and perhaps 50% of both armors just to heal 25% of your max health? Why the hell should anybody want to do that? You turn more into less with no real benefit except probably now being two characters halfdeath or even lower. If you would heal for double the amount or at least 75% it would perhaps be worth even thinking about. Or if the target would get healed for several rounds for half of the sacrificed HP.

Also I think it should work on current health and not max health.

They wouldn't have to be human zombies. In D:OS you would frequently run into zombie dogs for one thing. They would just be the enemy killed with stats modified into a zombies.

Also, the blood pact talent does sound pretty cool and would work with the current necromancy skills pretty well.

Trust me, I think we're going to see some more necromantic-themed skills

Certainly... although that depends on if Larian wants to make a ton of models of zombie for every possible enemy. And that still wouldn't cover them all, because there can be spiders and plants and beings made of pure elemental energy for which a zombie form would not make sense. (Probably also wouldn't make sense to raise a zombie from a skeletal enemy's corpse, nor to detonate it.)




I'm open to tweaking the numbers.

Okay we can lose the penalty to armor. That's fine with me. It was really mostly in there because people complain that "CON means nothing because only armor means something - no armor and you die".

The idea is that it allows the Necromancer to provide healing to an ally as part of the Necromancer skill set of Life Manipulation. This can be useful for a backline combatant like the necromancer who is less likely to be injured to support a front-line combatant who is injured.

The numbers can be tweaked sure. It could be changed to take half the current health of the caster instead of half the maximum health.

So let's posit that it costs half the current hitpoints and restores 3/4 of that amount. Lhose at level 2 has 45 HP. So half that would be 23 HP. 3/4 of 23 HP is 17 HP, which is more than the 13 HP which Lhose's Restoration restores.

It is not as efficient as Restoration, but if the target really needs that 17 HP right now, it'll be a godsend, and the gap between those numbers will only widen over time.

Rather than making a whole new model for everything, they could go the Skyrim route. Almost all biological creatures in Skyrim can become zombies just by adding some glowing blue particles. In D:OS2 it should be pretty similar, so they would just have to add some black/dark purple particles and add zombie to the name. Also, making it so that some things can't be targeted is very easy, as it just takes a bool (maybe even in a super class) that is true or false based on whether the corpse could be used for zombies.

I'm actually more concerned over people who turn into piles of ash, because having to make sure not to kill with fire (etc) damage would be a pretty big downside.

In regards to your ability, it could have some bonuses such as shorter cooldown, maybe even be able to target through walls. It would make it a pretty good lifesaving measure.
Perhaps they could also add a spell with a massive cooldown that adds the comeback kid effect for a few turns.

Corpse raising is something I REALLY want this game to avoid. It kind of limits how useful necromancy can be.

Not that Zombie or Skeleton summons are a bad idea, I just don't like the idea of requiring a corpse to do so (Maybe a bonus)

You could summon Skeletons in DOS1 out of nowhere, why should you now need a corpse? Does not make much sense in my eyes.



Sorry, my bad. I meant: Heals for 75% of current life if you sacrifice 50% of your current life. Or perhaps better: Heal 4 turns for 25% of current life, but sacrifices 50% of current life. (Of course can't be cast on yourself.)

Honestly I'm not sure if not even then just learning Restoration for one point into Water would be more attractive. Probably would need also some kind of buff for the target or the caster?

Lhose restoration might restore less at once, but the restoration restore life for 3 turns if I'm not mistaken.

Thought of another spell idea.

Necromancy - Dark Rites
Necromancy: 3 // AP: 0 // Duration: Instant. // Cooldown: 1 turn.
The Necromancer sacrifices 20-33% (TBD) of their maximum HP to give 1 AP to the targeted ally (including self). Optional: Also sets Bleeding on the Necromancer, bypassing physical armor.

The idea is to allow the Necromancer to use their life force to power the attacks of themselves or someone else by sacrificing some of their life force in exchange for 1 AP to the target. Possibly, it might also set Bleeding on the Necromancer, but I'm not sure if that's too much.

This is more damaging than the Elf's Flesh Sacrifice at low levels, but that can change at higher levels depending on how much the Elf invests into CON. This skill requires 3 points into Necromancer to learn.

It also can synergize nicely with Sacrificial Gift and Blood Pact. The Necromancer at full health casts Sacrificial Gift on an ally in danger, dropping their health to 50%. They can sacrifice another 20+% to give someone an extra AP, which puts the Necromancer in range to activate Blood Pact.

If Kalrakh's suggested changes to weapon damage based on type go through, that will allow for some damage types to do some amount of direct health damage bypassing physical armor, so the lowered health will be more dangerous than it is currently.




Because the skill tree is called Necromancy now, and this distinguishes it from Summoning. Flavour distinguishing classes is important. A ton of other things have changed between games in the series, not like one more makes a difference.




Why would you get more life out if you used your own life force as a healing source? That would violate the laws of the entropy of magic.

I have certain things in mind for the concept of the skill, and that it does not heal for more than what it costs the caster is one of them. Another one is that it is a one-shot instant heal which does not last over several turns.

I most definitely do not want Sacrificial Gift to heal for MORE than Restoration does or over more turns. In these games, Water is considered THE Healing school. Even the Ice incarnate by default can only heal and not attack. Water should be the best at healing, but that doesn't mean that it should be the only way to heal.

Now, however, if this Necromancer has Sacrificial Gift and the Blood Pact Talent, they could heal for 112.5% of the 50% health they sacrificed, but that won't be much good for healing since their current health would be under 30%.





Okay, let's say that you've also spent a point into Hydro and learned Restoration. You cast Restoration on someone, and then either they are still taking a bad enough beating that they still need healing, or someone else needs healing too.

But Restoration is still on cooldown. You've already used it, and can't use it again for a few turns. Bob needs healing now. Having an additional source of healing can only be a good thing.

Just because water is better at healing doesn't mean this won't be useful. Oh, and I've decided to lower the cooldown on Sacrificial Gift to 2 turns. It didn't make sense to have it at 4 if it had downsides unlike Restoration.

In my understanding 'Blood' is sacrifice to empower magic itself, not the main source of the magic. So if you have a spell, that not only needs magic (AP) but also blood (HP), it should be stronger than a normal healing spell. It would be different, it you would say: It costs no AP, but HP.

Just checked, you suggested either 0 or 1 AP as a cost. So if it cost 1 AP it should be stronger, if it cost no AP it can be weaker or equal as 'Restoration'. But if you want to compare 'stronger' and 'weaker', you need to calculate in the full heal of restoration and not only the first round.

If the skill is not really worth using it, players will just put one point Aqua on every of your four chars and let them learn 'Restoration'. Don't you think so aswell? I would have thought of it being kind of equivalent to Hydro, so you are not forced to always take Hydro, so that people can play with less multiclassing with out getting punished for it.



If a skill like 'Animate corpse' needs corpses to work, wouldn't that make the skill situational, so something you normally don't like that much, like 'Guerilla'?

There are far to many elemental effects that turn corpse into dust or something like that, even if the elemental damage did not kill them?

I think I already mentioned that I was worried about elemental damage, and I don't really have a good solution to it right now.

However, I do think there should be at least a few spells that need corpses for a couple of reasons:
1: Necromancy is meant to be about death and having any summons just pop up from the ground does somewhat ruin the effect. (Thematic elements can be important)

2: There are already other summoning spells (such as the summoner and possible spider spells) which just create the summon and having too many of them diminishes how unique each class is.

3: Having a handicap on a spell allows it to be more powerful than other spells. As such, spells that need corpses (possibly fresh ones) could have effects that are rather more powerful, again adding some impact.

4: This would establish corpses as a valuable resource that needs to be planned around, adding some elements of strategy unique to the necromancer.

5: Using corpses changes how the necromancers powercurve per battle in a rather neat way. Most classes are either okay at all points in a battle (fighters), good at the start but then becoming weaker (Sneaky classes and summoner), or have a peak in the battle(Pyro). (Note that is just from personal experience). Using corpses would make the necromancer start a battle much weaker, but grow increasingly more powerful, giving it a new powercurve that is strongest when finishing the battle.

Also, for some reason I'm a total sucker for that kind of necromancy, so I am rather biased. XD

It is questionable if there will any kind of different summons. Summon Spider was a earth spell, but summoning seems like it is now only done by summoner and if summon does not get the skill, probably noone will have it anymore.

Numbers can be tweaked. The suggestion to have it cost 0 AP and only HP is reasonable enough. The cooldown could go down to 1 turn. I suppose I could tweak the numbers as high as a 100% conversion of Necromancer Health to Target Healed.

So Lhose's 13 HP/2 turn Restoration (26 HP) would heal more than the 22 HP one-off of Sacrificial Gift from her 45 HP, but it would heal that 22 at once, better for an urgent need to heal.

But it depends, I think, on how much HP scales per level and how that compares to how much healing Restoration does per level. If HP scales up faster than Restoration heals, than Sacrificial Gift will get better and better over time.

I do not agree with having Sacrificial Gift heal over several turns. This is not supposed to be mechanically identical to Restoration.





I know it might be rare, but there may actually be some people who will play this game as a role-playing game and not a min-max game with 1 point in every school.

However ignoring that, that does not solve the problem of "oh no, my Restoration is on a 4-turn cooldown and someone still needs healing"? I suppose if the cooldown on Sacrificial Gift was lowered to 1 turn, if the Necromancer takes care to find healing, he could act as somewhat of a health battery for his party at a risk to his own life and action economy.




That is a valid thought, but I don't just want to make a clone of Restoration and give it to Necromancy. There should be a notable difference.




There's a difference in situation frequency. Generating enemy corpses in combat should generally be around a 100% chance of happening per combat.

There are attacks and skills which do NOT disintegrate bodies. That's where customizing your loadout comes into play. If you're playing a disintegration-heavy party, picking a corpse-requiring skill probably isn't the great fit, just as in Diablo 2, a Necromancer partying with a Druid had some problems.

Turnwise would depend on the amount it would heal in the end. If its heals a huge amount, turnwise if often better, otherwise you could tend to overheal. It will tough always be different from Restoration, because it will always depends on your current HP and therefore also your vitality. Anyhow I think it should be stronger than Restoration in the long run. Restoration gets replaced by better heals probably, but this skill has no better version.


Why do you think, I said: It should be viable on its own and not be punishing if you don't want to multiclass the min-max?

It costs no AP and does not scale with Hydro or Int, but it costs HP therefore scales with CON and Vit and Necro. If its one turn or lasts several just matters in regard of the amount healed. A heal is always a heal if you don't go the First Aid row where the heal is secondary effect., but the basics are different from Restoration.

In DOS1 were 3 heals I think. The weakest was 3 turns, the second 2 turns and the third 1 turn if I remember correctly.


I'm not sure how the exact rules work, but sometimes I had the feeling, it does not matter what did the killing blow, if some was just affected by elemental he most likely turned into dust. So if you don't go full physical you could have a hard time. Also with the current AI, summons just get ignored as long there is player in reach, so the usefullness of summons as meat shields is questionable. We will have to watch how they will tweak the AI.

The early videos did show that the other summons will still exist AND Fire had a summon early on that didn't work (and was removed, likely due to the not working part)... and frankly other skills still getting their own summons would allow synergy between the summoner and those skills (In fact one super buff the summoner gets is for a summon... not specifically its incarna)

It would SUUUUCK if summoners were the only ones to get summons.

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Also if we are getting into Diablo 2... I should state that here are vital differences and why the Necromancer THERE had corpse manipulation...

1) You mass killed enemies often in groups of 20 or more
2) Skeleton summons were permanent
3) Golem did not require corpses and was part of the necromancer's moveset.
4) The first turn isn't important at all
5) It was real time

Summoning in DOS is also a great opener. Not for the Necromancer!

If you must have Corpse summoning... How about a buff? A Skeleton summoned on a corpse gets a "Fresh" buff.

The videos were from the time before Summoner got implemented, perhaps even before they knew, that Summoner would the chosen class from the Kickstarter campaign? Not sure, but at the current moment there is not even one non-summoner summon left. Why did they remove the classic summons so they can't be tested?