NP Friday April 26, 2019

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

http://egscomics.com/egsnp/fantasywasteland-09

 

 

Grace Sciuridae insulted dem dry bones...

[mlooney 3,417]

I feel that way about some types of belt rats in Eve.

[hkmaly 490]

Yes, skeletons are very ineffective. Which suggest that the real reason for using them is the scary factor. I mean, the original wizard using them did it deliberately for the scary factor. Then lot of others copied it because they though it's cool ... and the scary factor disappeared because there was too many of them.

The same can be said about zombies. In fact, some zombies looks like someone just used the skeleton spell to animate them without cleaning off the rest of body.

Golems made from rock or metal would be much more effective. And if you need some bones because of sympathetic magic or something, well, just put the bones inside.

[Aura Guardian 57]

Regarding Dan's comments: given how necromancy is associate with both undead and calling up spirits, I figured what was important was just that there was a body. At all. And the spell just grabbed some animating force that mimics a living entity and latches it onto the body as an anchor. Which can cost some amount of power or another, but feels significantly less power-hungry than animating everything - just grab something already there and move it elsewhere.

[hkmaly 490]

48 minutes ago, Aura Guardian said:

Regarding Dan's comments: given how necromancy is associate with both undead and calling up spirits, I figured what was important was just that there was a body. At all. And the spell just grabbed some animating force that mimics a living entity and latches it onto the body as an anchor. Which can cost some amount of power or another, but feels significantly less power-hungry than animating everything - just grab something already there and move it elsewhere.

It actually feels like you are trading intelligence for power. I mean, that you are using some spirit for animating the body, which requires more power than animating something more sturdy, BUT it may be worth it because the spirit would either don't know how to move something more sturdy or refuse to do that, and without the spirit the golem would be not just stupid, but unable to walk or do any more complicated movement.

Still doesn't explain why you can't put the skeleton into armor and fill the holes with concrete. Or, if the concrete would be too heavy, rubber.

... although I guess that might take longer than just animating the skeleton.

They were on good track in Egypt. Sure, it took some time to put all the bandages around the body, but I would bet it was then easier to animate. And it would be even better if they would add another layer from kevlar ...

[ijuin 572]

I always felt that the whole "undead minions" thing was based around the notion that they were hard to put down for good--e.g. you hack off the skeleton's parts and they just rejoin together and resume fighting. Damage that would be lethal to living flesh would be simply inadequate to stop them. They may not be able to dish out a lot of punishment (other than the varieties of undead who can infect their victims with undeadness), but they can absorb a lot of it and thus act as meatless shields for the necromancer.

[hkmaly 490]

18 hours ago, ijuin said:

I always felt that the whole "undead minions" thing was based around the notion that they were hard to put down for good--e.g. you hack off the skeleton's parts and they just rejoin together and resume fighting. Damage that would be lethal to living flesh would be simply inadequate to stop them. They may not be able to dish out a lot of punishment (other than the varieties of undead who can infect their victims with undeadness), but they can absorb a lot of it and thus act as meatless shields for the necromancer.

But the same would be true for any golem. It's the magic puting them together. It's like Taurcanis dragon being kept from being unsummoned: the skeleton's parts are easy to hack off, but are rejoined by magic. That doesn't make it more effective: just more scary.

BTW, that infectiousness ... again, scary, but unless it can turn persons souls into power source or something like that, it just mean the necromancer needs to use even more power.

Of course, both lycanthropy and vampire magic are often known to turn person to monster and then work self-powered. It usually also involves the original mind having at least SOME influence on the monster. But, both only work on living person and ARE using that person. It is presumed that you can't do that with random pile of bones because the person originally using those should already be outside your influence on the other side.