Palemaster Woes

[Apothys]

Been playing a necromancer for a little bit now and finding that most of the necromancy spells are hard to pull off. Alot of them focus on applying a Level drain or some kind of abilty drain. However this is easily stopped by low level spells of 3rd or 4th level such as Negative energy protection and Deathward.

Ive looked for ways to combat this with lesser or greater breaches or those breaches applied by the Dispel magic range, yet they seem absent from those lists. Ive then looked into Dispelling magic on targets and found that as a Epic PM of any significant level you have a very low chance of doing this as most mundanes are classed as lvl 30 caster for purposes of dispelling against and most caster classes are likely to be effective caster level 28-30.

Effectively these low level spells make the majority of Necromatic spells for a epic Palemaster obsolete. For example we have a +4 to DC with enervation and Energy Drain which sounds great!, but these spells are rendered useless by the abundant use of Negative Energy Protection/Deathward potions/scroll or spells and no way for us to remove them without a barrage of Dispels and the hope that youll succeed with the palemasters low level Caster Level when trying to dispel.

Im not complaining, im merely pointing out how difficult this seems and am looking for solutions or perhaps word that this is working as intended?

Thanks for reading.

[Hunter548]

Energy Drain/Enervation are only blocked by Shadow Shield and Negative Energy Protection. Both of these are removable with breach spells.

[CptJonas]

Energy Drain/Enervation are only blocked by Shadow Shield and Negative Energy Protection. Both of these are removable with breach spells.

Removable...yeah...but point is how likely...will you rather drop 2 morde on target and then use level drain spell which still must pass DC, and then hope that that ward was breached.....

Or drop morde and PWK on them and hope for save fail?

Or just drop 4 maxed IGMS on their head?

Its like...you are doing lot of stuff to hope you will weaken your foe...instead of doing something easier which would kill them....pointless

[Apothys]

Ah, didnt see the spell breach list. Negative energy protection is on there! Okay feel slightly better about it all now. I thought only the spells listed on the breach spell description were removed. Now i see the bigger list. 24th in the que... not great but i guess that just how it is.

[xanrael]

On the other hand, you have crit/sneak immunity and probably a fairly beefy AC as a PM so each hit will not do a ton to you either. Add in solid saves/immunity from arcane spells/spellcraft and you can afford to have a drawn out fight with many opponents.

[Apokriphos]

Been playing a necromancer for a little bit now and finding that most of the necromancy spells are hard to pull off. Alot of them focus on applying a Level drain or some kind of abilty drain. However this is easily stopped by low level spells of 3rd or 4th level such as Negative energy protection and Deathward.

Ive looked for ways to combat this with lesser or greater breaches or those breaches applied by the Dispel magic range, yet they seem absent from those lists. Ive then looked into Dispelling magic on targets and found that as a Epic PM of any significant level you have a very low chance of doing this as most mundanes are classed as lvl 30 caster for purposes of dispelling against and most caster classes are likely to be effective caster level 28-30.

Effectively these low level spells make the majority of Necromatic spells for a epic Palemaster obsolete. For example we have a +4 to DC with enervation and Energy Drain which sounds great!, but these spells are rendered useless by the abundant use of Negative Energy Protection/Deathward potions/scroll or spells and no way for us to remove them without a barrage of Dispels and the hope that youll succeed with the palemasters low level Caster Level when trying to dispel.

Im not complaining, im merely pointing out how difficult this seems and am looking for solutions or perhaps word that this is working as intended?

Thanks for reading.

Necromancy spells are mostly save based and a character can be completely immune to them by the easily attainable Shadowshield. The 1/2 CL progression on PM does make for a hard time using other spell schools.

It's part of the PM tradeoff. Perhaps one day Necromancy will do something involving corpses and make the school more useful.


Edit: I did post recently that two Palemaster Features, the 1/2 CL bonus for spells, doesnt work for infinicast spells, and the horrid wilting feature for 1/2 DMG on allies doesnt work either.

Maybe fixing that will help a bit.