Dark Magic in RPG’s and magic which manipulates live, death and undead are my favorite type of magic except in few cases where the developers makes water based magic amazing, like Gothic 3 for eg. That said, I soloed BG2:EE on Legacy of Bhaal as a Necromancer and here is what D4 necromancy needs. Necromancer on D2 is good but could be better and on D3, is only good if compared to other awful modern games like DA:I and ESO. Both games with awful necromancy.
That said, D2 has one of the best necromancies but could be better. The poison skills are very lackluster, there are no OHK spells like finger of death from M&M VI and Baldur’s Gate and be able to raise skeleton from swarms of insects makes no sense, but still much better than D3.
ABSOLUTE NOT TO DO LIST
- Carnavalesque armor
- Spells which only progress in damage
- Final Fantasy level of androgyny on the male necromancer model
- Cooldowns. If a skill is too powerful, situational limitations are far better(note 1)
- Your bone spear and golem power determined by the size and sharpness of your axe
- Stat stickie gear (note 2)
Note 1 : Situational skills are like Vaal summon skeleton from PoE which requires the essence of many dead creatures or like Moon ray from Might & Magic VI, which deals D4/dark magic level damage in everything on sight and heals the party but can only be used at night and outside due the lack of moonlight inside dungeons.
Note 2 : Magical gear should ENHANCE your character build and bring more variation on his skills. Stat stickie gear skills all character individuality.
THE WISHLIST
- More customization on minions (like Iron golem on D2)
- Death magic which can instant slay enemies, like Wail of The Banshee on BG2.
- High cost / high damage spell like Climax from Dark Souls 2.
- A progression in minion quality AND quantity.
- More dangerous magic (note 3)
- Having a necromancer trainer NPC
- Expanded blood magic
- Expanded poison magic
- Shapeshift forms(note 4)
Note 3 : Like how necromancy magic on AD&D works on the demiplanes of dread. The spells are more powerful and so, can draw attention of unwanted dark powers and put even the caster at risk. Wail of the Banshee for eg, has double range and any female humanoid who fails the save and die raises as a banshee, hostile towards the caster. The book domains of dread details more about how the spells works in that demiplane.
Note 4 : But like D2 shapeshift. Being able to become a vampire, a lich, a progression on shapeshift forms also would be amazing, where you first need to learn skeleton mage form, to then learn the lich form. This forms should also come with drawbacks like the vampire form with weakness vs fire for eg.
GAMES WHICH D4 COULD TAKE AS INSPIRATION
The best implementation of necromancy which I saw recently is Gothic 2 - RETURNING 2.0. On base game, you can only learn magic on monastery of Innos but on ret 2.0, a huge mod that changes so much things like CS changes from HL, in order to become a necromancer, you need to talk to Xardas, then he will say that you need a lot of intellect and spiritual power to be one and after leveling up your mana and intellect by doing intellectual stuff like reading books, doing alchemy, learning new languages, and etc, note that you can’t train INT like you can DEX/STR and books are expensive. After it, he will send you to do a final test, assassinate a servant of the opposite God(Innos), on Monastery of Innos, everyone is so strong and do it is pretty hard. After it, you need to learn the first circle of dark magic, then learn how to craft the magical runes, read the ingredients needed for the first rune and craft your first spell.
Necromancers also needs to spend a lot of LP, learning demonig language, demonology, blood sacrifice and so on to be effective. But a circle 3 necromancer, can 2HK an orc warrior with spear of darkness on hard difficulty. I know that is a very different game and that you start diablo as a trained guy, not as a nobody, but still…
BG2 is another game with amazing necromancy which Blizzard could look into and take some of the most iconic spells as inspiration. Not only high level ones like wail of the banshee, low level ones like skull trap can be pretty interesting. Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar a love letter to 90s bloobers also has cool necromancy with cool spells. Diablo 1 don’t have necromancy, but mods like Belzebub and hell ad it into the game and I belive that they also should be used as an example.