Necromantic bardic abilities, relative ECL they're appropriate to?

[Coidzor]

So, yeah, about what ECL would you say a song that temporarily animates the dead as zombies and then later as skeletons around the bard to some cap(perhaps increasing at some higher level, perhaps not) and has them join as allies during a fight and then go inert after the encounter was over would be appropriate to?

Playing off the same general idea that gave us Ranger and Paladin spell lists that occasionally have some somewhat more powerful individual spells based upon the level they'd be getting the spells more than the spell level of the spell that a spell is appropriate to a general level of play rather than specific levels of X class.

edit: What about something that only animates 1 at first and then expands to a maximum of 4-6 over several levels, say one every 2-3?

What if the HD cap is the characters' class levels in a PrC until the capstone?

[HalfDragonCube]

High-ish, I would say.

A cookie if you call it Dance Macabre.

[Coidzor]

High-ish, I would say.

A cookie if you call it Dance Macabre.

High-ish like 12-14 or Highish like Pre-Epic?

[Telonius]

High-ish, I would say.

A cookie if you call it Dance Macabre.

Two cookies if you call it Thriller.

Bard gets Animate Objects as a spell at 16th. This effect is essentially the same thing, but in Bardic Music form. I'd give it at 16th-ish or so.

[Coidzor]

No one else has any thoughts on this? Is it really that boring or does everyone hate Thriller that much? :smallconfused:

Don't read unless you wanna see some of my thoughts and get contaminated by them. It's also weaker at first or around the same level as a spell that becomes available at 11th level though, Animate Legion.

A 5 level delay to the part of the game that hardly anyone ever plays seems fairly extreme, especially if one were to take a PrC with something like this as its focus instead of the horrid Dirgesinger.

What about something that only animates 1 at first and then expands to a maximum of 4-6 over several levels?

[FreakyCheeseMan]

16 seems way too high- if you're going to make a necromatic themed bard at all, I'd think it should be (roughly) competitive with the necromatic abilities of other classes. So, 5-10, not 16.

[faceroll]

I think between levels 6 and 11, depending on what else is in the party. Just make sure it uses a lot of bardic music. To be honest, zombies aren't that relevant of threats at any level. With flanking and bard inspire courage bonuses (if using requiem), they're crappy summoned monsters.

It's far worse than, say, a summon monster spec. Level 16 is hilariously too high. It'd be a useless, waste of action thing to do by that point. Compare what you get to, say, malconvoker, where the things you summon are invisible and conjure ice walls at will.

[Jude_H]

Dirgesinger gives up 5 levels of casting to do this by ECL 10. Using that as a reference would probably place this around ECL 14-16 without CL loss. But that's a really weak class and probably goes further with the idea than you want.

Provided that this only makes skeletons and zombies and it's constrained by a CL cap on undead HD, I don't think it would be unreasonable for the ability to be available at ECL 1. It shouldn't be too different from commanded skeletons or a necromancer's skeletal minion in terms of power, and it's not going to stack up well against level-appropriate summoning.

[HalfDragonCube]

Two cookies if you call it Thriller.

Why didn't I think of that?

[Coidzor]

Dirgesinger gives up 5 levels of casting to do this by ECL 10. Using that as a reference would probably place this around ECL 14-16 without CL loss. But that's a really weak class and probably goes further with the idea than you want.

Eh? All I saw was their ability to create singular semi-Dread Warriors at Dirgesinger 10. :smallconfused: *goes to recheck the book*