Talk:Necropolitan (3.5e Template)

Ratings
To expand on this: all the cool undead (zombies, vampires, ghosts, mummies, liches) have a suite of appetites, obsessions, powers, and weaknesses that make them interesting.

It seems likely to me that what someone would mean by "I want to play an undead" is either "I want to play something that uses the tropes that undead creatures share" or "I'm an optimizer who wants to get that neat suite of immunities". This successfully avoids pleasing the second group too much, but just like the WotC version, it does nothing for the first group either. --Foxwarrior (talk) 19:57, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I could see having a suite of optional traits that the player chooses, each with a specific minor weakness and benefit that one can add to the template. What are some examples of classic undead, and what weaknesses/strengths would they have? For example:
 * Vampire - Minor weakness to sunlight (-1 to skills, attacks, saves and DCs while not completely clothed and covered during the day), gains a bite attack and can heal from damage dealt with the bite if using it while grappling or attacking a helpless target.
 * Anthing else? --Ghostwheel (talk) 16:33, 26 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Mummy - Breathe bugs and/or spread diseases. Being covered in rags makes you kind of obvious in public.
 * Disassembleable Undead of some sort - Reattach dropped limbs. Pop an eye out and leave it somewhere in order to spy on people. Limbs fall off occasionally. --Foxwarrior (talk) 01:30, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll try to address the points one at a time. Hope I addressed most of your relevant points. --Ghostwheel (talk) 15:30, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) Many weaknesses, few strengths such as the Sun domain and other undead-specific abilities - this is a problem, sure. But it's not a problem with the template. It's a problem with how retarded the WotC designers were, inserting save-or-die hard counters to creatures. Turn resistance helps there too.
 * 2) You take the cost of not only being vulnerable to spells that affect undead, but also benefit from spells that affect undead positively. See, for example, Stone Bones from SpC which I called out specifically (and all its upgrades), as well as any other ability that boosts undead. This is a two-edged sword, and no fault of mine that WotC focused solely on making the undead into enemes, or that they provided so many tools to kill them (especially retarded ones like save or dies and hard counters).
 * 3) Still being human but with "I'm an undead" sign on your back - let me try to make you understand; a +0 LA template, or one where the experience cost doesn't matter since xp is a river, should NOT make you more powerful than your fellow players. Or else it becomes an automatic choice that every single person at the table wants to take and that every powergamer and munchkin latches onto the moment that its availability becomes known. The point of this template is to go against that specifically, and create something that someone who honestly wants to be undead for flavor reasons without the retardedness of MOAR POWER coming into play being available. Flavor options ("I want to play an elf!" "Well, I wanna play an orc!" "I'm going to be undead!") should not come with a benefit that shoehorns all players who care about their viability and making sure their character doesn't die from choosing said option. Which is WHY you see so many munchkinny builds that take the original necropolitan template. Now, if you want to serve that munchkinny mindset best, sure, stick with the original. I personally want to create an option for people who just want to play a concept without giving others MOAR POWER just because they have stronger system mastery.
 * 4) OF COURSE YOU'D TAKE A LACK OF CON. d12 HD and a lack of constitution are amazing. It's an obvious powergamey choice that makes every single munchkin out there salivate at the thought of how much more powerful they can be when their d4 HD is replaced with d12 and they don't have to worry about raising con with items, don't have to put points into con at point buy, and can take a base race that has a penalty to con (gray elf, anyone?) at no cost for the benefit. And there's no LA for the original necropolitan template, so your point is false there as well.


 * I'mma just touch briefly on this since I agree with Sulacu here, buuuuut....


 * "OF COURSE YOU'D TAKE A LACK OF CON. Etc. and stuff." The unneeded half-insult aside, d12 and no Con is actually a bad thing.  Numerically, it's always better to have a robust Con score since the d12 on its own doesn't keep up.  It is situationally useful for those with unusually low HD (wizards) and those suffering from MAD (monks), but even then it will always be inferior than if they just invested in some constitution.


 * Also, why go "you are your original type but have these powers" when it seems easier to go "you're undead, with these exceptions"? -- Eiji-kun (talk) 19:24, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Alright, I suppose I might as well indulge while my oven's heating up downstairs.


 * 1) If the system sucks and the program you're making doesn't cover up for said suckage, then it, too, is badly designed. In fact, it's just propagating bad design. That said, being able to be killed by Sun domain clerics by itself wouldn't have been that incredibly bad if the template actually gave you something nice, like, I dunno, some of an undead's many immunities. Instead, it just slides you that weakness to turning under the table and then adds turn resistance to haphazardly patch up the breezing cracks with duct tape and spit.
 * 2) I didn't leave them out. I just decided to not mention them, since it doesn't matter. The fact that you had to go look in supplemental material to find a spell that bolsters undead should have told you that the drawbacks of this ability far outweigh any of the benefits. There are also many options to get around all the hard counters and save-or-dies, such as redefining the Undead type (which several people on this wiki seem to have done reasonably well) or giving the template some interesting flavourful abilities. Hell, Warcraft undead can eat corpses to regain health; why not something like that? Now I can't exactly say that the original Necropolitans are a beacon of sound design, but instead of improving upon the areas where it was lacking you took out the few things that were worthwhile about it and only copied the bland and boring bits. So I don't see myself being wrong at all about pegging these things as humanoids with slightly more weaknesses.
 * 3) Discounting of course that you have to be at least level 3 to afford the transformation (and not die in the process), setting you back 3k gp and 1k XP - it's sort of like LA's retarded brother, isn't it? - meaning that to get the original Necropolitan template at any sort of low level takes out a reasonable percentage of your resources, you left out the fact that the only reason Necropolitans get d12 on all their Hit Dice is because the template itself says so. That and unless you start at a generally mid to high level you'll have to survive a few levels as a gimped member of a Con-deficient race with Con as its dump stat and hope to survive until you amass the funds and get the opportunity to get yourself converted.
 * 4) Getting d12s on all your Hit Dice is not an inherent problem with becoming undead (it isn't, in fact, a problem at all if you like it); hell, if you wanna become a lich, you better spend a lot of levels or an inordinate amount of cash doing so, crippling your inventory for levels to come which kinda entitles you to some of those munchkinny benefits. And you fix it here by doing... what, exactly? You could have said something like 'leave HD as is, and do Cha instead of Con to hit points per Hit Die'. That or you could have made it more interesting (a factor which, although not mentioned, probably aided greatly in turning my rating from a dislike into an oppose). If I wanna play an undead I don't want to feel like I'm being punished for it. At least if I get the actual type I can figure out other ways to keep the playing field level. D&D is dynamic like that. And if I play an undead I bloody well deserve more than what you plan to give me.


 * I'm not gonna post in here again, because I don't really feel like getting suckered into a debate about this. I don't like your article so I rated it down; that is all. --Sulacu (talk) 19:42, 7 December 2012 (UTC)


 * If you refuse to engage in civil debate, then I suppose there's no use arguing with you. --Ghostwheel (talk) 02:03, 26 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I just said everything I had to say about this template in my last post. Back in 2012. --Sulacu (talk) 01:17, 27 March 2013 (UTC)