Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Ley Line walkers, Juicers, Coalition Troops, Samas, Tolkeen, & The Federation Of Magic. Come together here to discuss all things Rifts®.

Moderators: Immortals, Supreme Beings, Old Ones

User avatar
LostOne
Champion
Posts: 2015
Joined: Wed May 05, 2004 10:29 pm

Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Unread post by LostOne »

I was curious if anyone had done anything like this yet? Figured if they had I wouldn't reinvent the wheel.

Looking to design something like a Technowizard who focuses on the dark arts. Devices that trivialize and accelerate necromantic rituals. Throw a device down in a graveyard and get skeletons.

Or another flavor/option, he focuses on "resurrecting" dead tech. Disabled skelebots and power armors. Filling in missing components with pieces scrounged from radios, as well as enchanted bone, clockwork mechanisms. Putting a skelebot brain into a power armor body to give it intelligence.

I'm guessing somewhere between those two is the happy medium I'm looking for. So has anyone toyed with something like this? Or have ideas to add?
"But you can't make an omelet without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others." -Order of the Stick #760
User avatar
Orin J.
Adventurer
Posts: 693
Joined: Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:00 pm
Location: a west coast

Re: Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Unread post by Orin J. »

the former one was maybe covered in a rifter, which came up in a recent topic about necrotechnomancy here.

as for the second one....you're looking for the operator class, since that's just repairing technology.
User avatar
LostOne
Champion
Posts: 2015
Joined: Wed May 05, 2004 10:29 pm

Re: Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Unread post by LostOne »

That thread definitely fills my need, thanks.
"But you can't make an omelet without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others." -Order of the Stick #760
User avatar
DD The Shmey
Explorer
Posts: 122
Joined: Tue May 11, 2010 10:23 pm

Re: Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Unread post by DD The Shmey »

LostOne wrote:I was curious if anyone had done anything like this yet? Figured if they had I wouldn't reinvent the wheel.

Looking to design something like a Technowizard who focuses on the dark arts. Devices that trivialize and accelerate necromantic rituals. Throw a device down in a graveyard and get skeletons.

Or another flavor/option, he focuses on "resurrecting" dead tech. Disabled skelebots and power armors. Filling in missing components with pieces scrounged from radios, as well as enchanted bone, clockwork mechanisms. Putting a skelebot brain into a power armor body to give it intelligence.

I'm guessing somewhere between those two is the happy medium I'm looking for. So has anyone toyed with something like this? Or have ideas to add?


Yeah my thread touched on Necro-Tech devices and vehicles that mimic Technowizard devices and vehicles, that have a "Necro" flavor to them and use some necromancer spells. It has some necro-tech borgs implants and a bunch of weapons that integrating body parts of magical creatures to recreate the natural abilities they had in life.

Your suggestion is a really cool take on it though. Repairing damaged technological mechanisms by integrating dead bones and flesh and reanimating it with necromantic energies. Maybe you could adapt the robot-creation rules in sourcebook 1, and make up some necro-tech components, or create some rules for repairing damaged power armor with animated dead body parts. Heck, I might just need to add this to my list of things to look into for my own notes.

Your other idea "Throw a device down in a graveyard and get skeletons." is cool too. It's a lot like the Techno-Shifter's Rift portal machine described in the same Rifter book that the Necro-Tech was introduced.

When I think about it, the three main abilities of a Necromancer are 1) Union with the dead --- this can be reproduced in Necro-Tech as biononic components made of skeletal body parts. 2) Magical necrmancer spells --- which can be brought out with Necro-Tech devices in the same way that Techno-Wizardry uses regular spell magic. Finally 3) animating dead --- you've shown a good idea of throwing a NT device down that animates any dead bodies in the area.

Another thing on the same line of thought you could do is integrating some kind of technological-magical-Necrotech component into the chest of a dead body that will automatically animate the skelelton, or create some kind of zombie. After the zombie is blown away or deteriorates, you could remove the component and put it onto a different dead body to make a new zombie.

I have started some work in my notes outlining an idea about making some kind of techno-zombie - that integrates technological or mechanical components into a zombie to make it a little smarter/stronger, like adding a targeting system to them so they can shoot ranged weapons. I still need to flush the idea out.
User avatar
LostOne
Champion
Posts: 2015
Joined: Wed May 05, 2004 10:29 pm

Re: Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Unread post by LostOne »

Feel free to take what you want to use in yours. I don't have as much time to do this stuff as I used to. Just looking for things to throw at players that aren't found in the books. :)
"But you can't make an omelet without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others." -Order of the Stick #760
User avatar
green.nova343
Adventurer
Posts: 484
Joined: Tue Oct 28, 2008 10:16 am
Location: Ohio, USA
Contact:

Re: Necrotechnomancer/Necrotechnowizard

Unread post by green.nova343 »

Well, as long as your GM allows your techno-wizard a means of learning necromantic spells, & has plentiful access to jade and/or ivory, RUE lets your techno-wizard learn the spells & build them on their own. If you don't have access to the spells, the techno-wizard can still partner with a necromancer (or a practitioner that knows the particular spell) when building the devices. So you wouldn't even need to worry about the insanity issues with the Necro-Tech.

In fact, I can think of some nice uses for those necromancy spells that don't even need to be super-dark:
-- bio-scan-type reader that uses Object Read the Dead for a coroner to help identify corpses & determine cause of death
-- perimeter alarm systems that use Recognize the Undead to sound an alarm when zombie hordes show up
-- security systems that use Stench of the Dead on intruders
-- clear faceplate equipped with Death Mask to disguise yourself
-- equip your body armor or power armor with Death Strike to increase your HTH damage
-- family history consultants could have a "divining rod" equipped with Divining: Tombs & Graves to help them track down where people's ancestors are buried, or where an unmarked potter's field might be
Post Reply

Return to “Rifts®”