Enhancing Animal Handling: Undead Flag for the Skeletal Sabretooth

[tulip bluff]

I'd like to propose a significant enhancement to the Animal Handling (AH) skill by adding the undead flag to the Skeletal Sabretooth pet, thereby enabling interaction with Necromancy skills. This change would create a synergy between AH and Necromancy, adding depth and strategic options to both skill sets.
The AH skill has (imo) aligned with aligns with the principle of "easy to start, hard to master." Adding the undead flag to the Skeletal Sabretooth transforms a novelty pet with a steep unlock requirement into something highly desirable and enriches the gameplay experience for both AH and Necromancy players.

[tulip bluff]

I wrote this huge thing then saw I was over the word limit by 800 words. Here is more info for folks: Cons: AH healing spells would not work at all on the Skelly Sabertooth. This nullified around 25% of AH mods/skills. Pros: Necro buffs would effect it.
It won't ever be too over powered because this pet should remain unbreedable.

[sly wedge]

As a non necro who's run a skele kitty for over two years now I'd rather not this route. For AH pets though it should just work for both due to the time investment involved inherently .

ie just make it work better with necro and create some synergy

[strong vector]

I agree let's not punish Skele Cat users who don't want to run necro

[tulip bluff]

hmm I do see potential issue for those with existing pets.
Maybe then a version created from a higher level of Animate Monster that requires 50 levels of Paleontology could have this flag.

[polar dust]

hmm interesting idea. IIRC undead pets can be healed by regular healing now right? So there's no down side for players if this pet becomes undead

[daring pebble]

to tag onto this

Having the undead cat and maybe whatever else undead that comes out in the future, could probably also not only benefit from undead heals and damage boosts, but perhaps use x necro dust to revive rather then first aid kits, just to give it some extra uniqueness to the whole play style
it could be as simple as, use 5 or 10 dust per revive but perhaps a 100% chance or go the usual route with just 1 with the normal 33% chance, it would definitely bring the whole feel of a necromancer with an undead cat
I'm not too sure how hard it would be to change this or how much work it would bring to it but i think some change might not only be fun to see but to definitely give the undead pet some uniqueness when other normal pets become capable of breeding with this one incapable of doing so

[strong vector]

Yeah necro pets can beh ealed by normal heals now so no real down side if the skeleton cat is marked as undead

Though I could see some hilarious numbers coming from the ability for them to be buffed by multiple modded provoke undeads from multiple necromancers as provoke undead also works on necro pets outside of just your own summons

[sly wedge]

If that's already how it works then zero issues with this. On that note, it would then be realllly interesting to have an undead flavor of each pet too. Skeleton bees, big ol bone bears, MAYBE EVEN UNDEAD HORSES

[fiery crater]

As someone who is using AH and Necromancy.. Yesss, loving all of the text I see above. Give me my undead army, including an undead rat!

Even better, give a necromancy tradeskill to sacrifice my living pet in the graveyard at midnight and turn it into undead. Possibly flagging me in a way that has consequences and benefits. Would have to use a panacea to undo type of thing.

Also all on board for making an undead AH pet not benefit from certain AH skills, while instead benefiting from certain Necro skills, like heals.

Probably gate all this with a quest that requires 50 in both skills.

[tulip bluff]

When I checked it a while back, it looked like necro pets could NOT be healed by regular heals, ie mentalism's health waves, bards song of resurg. or other targeted heals, I just assumed this was due to it being undead!

[fiery crater]

Yeah, there are Necro abilities to heal your undead pets specifically. If this did become a thing, I'd expect an AH undead pet to be healed by necro pet heals but not be able to benefit from other heals.

[tulip bluff]

The necro specific undead heals absolutely worked, but I went naked minus a necro staff to do some tests. A Ratkin Blaster vs some Rakkie in Rahu. Psi Health Wave and Reconstruct **did **heal the pet. It also seems that the tick of Health Wave doesn't land immediately. Once upon a time it did not work, this could just be that the mods on provoke undead were more negative than the regen heals were positive and just no one realized what happened, but that wouldnt explain why the single target heals would fall flat. Either way, a big cavoite in my suggestion was false, and if it ever was an issue-- it doesnt look like it is today (at least for the blasters).

[sly wedge]

One interesting way to do that would be to have it have some kind of tradeoff. ie, say a necromancy treasure mod that makes your undead minions/pets do more damage but can ONLY be healed by necromancy heals now. You could then have fun shenanigans with necro/vamp and dominating undead things, as well as AH synergy with undead pets, mark weakness and a glass cannonish playstyle.

[tulip bluff]

I'd be worried it would make pet nercos less popular. I'd be really curious if a vampire could test dominate on a skeleton, making it friendly, and then have a necro use provoke to buff the skeleton. On paper it should work, because provoke/repair undeads friendly undead flag doesn't discriminate based on being owned by the player or not.

[strong vector]

I'd love to keep necro as far away from vamp as possible

[lusty aurora]

I honestly kind of expected this with the AH update. I made a suggestion for the same thing when it wasn’t in there.

[sour sluice]

If WW can have Necro cross benefits, no reason why AH can't

[lusty aurora]

looking at the mods n stuff, it would be really really strong if the summoned skeleton mods affected the skeleton cat.

no other skill is able to buff an ah pet to that degree, and with the recent ah buffs, that would be one gnarly cat.

the cats innate stats would have to suck to make it not just obviously broken strong when paired with necro and then its a one trick pony

but at least i guess that pony would have a trick.

[modest sun]

I was actually thinking about this the other day, the second that pet gets the undead flag for necromancy spells I’m leveling AH 👁️

The only other build that I know of, and I’m not even sure how good it is and at what, is sword/ah with skellie cat because of the slashing buffs

After the ah changes a hot minute ago, the cat does feel really nice ngl, hard to compare to bees, but anything not bred will be

[neat harbor]

Adding to this thread by suggesting an different alternative, raising our dead pets as zombies

Their health deteriorates like a zombie and you can’t quite command them using ah skills(they’re mindless zombies so they no longer understand their life tricks) but their basic attacks/burst attacks innate to them still apply and you can buff/heal them via necro skills

They even hobble like a zombie where they’re really slow and you might wonder why this is a suggestion in this thread but it falls in line with making necro synergize more with ah which is the intent of this thread

[sour sluice]

It still wouldn't be anywhere near as strong as the meta builds for PG, it still wont come anywhere near Psychology's damage output.

[brave stratus]

That would be 🔥🔥🔥 mate! I would trade my fire rat for a necro rat or zombie rat any day!

[gray lodge]

Hey, I know you all are super busy with upcoming stuff, but I wondered if you ended up giving this a second thought?

[strong vector]

I could see them doing it if they made provoke undead only effect the users minions and not all necro pets in the group

[chrome saddle]

disagree, i think its a quite a good mechanic tbh

[strong vector]

Its part of what makes necro strong yes, but having that apply to an AH pet would lead to silliness, which i guess is why people want it

[chrome saddle]

no sillyness, devs know how they made a great game! Stacking up abilities that synergize is a key concept in the game currently and it doesn't only affect provoke, its present in many skills and abilities. I don't get this fixation with necros to be honest, if you don't like them don't play that skill

[sage bluff]

I'd be really mad if my skellycat listened to some gross necrophile instead of me LOL So some necro selects a target and presses provoke and then my cat takes off because you triggered the Special Attack, right? Making it self-pets only would solve it for sure

[tulip bluff]

provoke isnt a fear. it buffs the pet while dealing some damage to it (assuming its moded).
it wont trigger any special attack but it will make the special attacks and basic attacks hit harder for that duration.

[tulip bluff]

having done a necro build recently, this combo would really be a unique build compared to the other necro builds. currently, every necro ive come across that uses pets goes with mages. if this change went through, because the cat debuffs slashing, players would likely try the skeleton swordsman. I don't think if it would be the strongest combination but I think it would be worth trying.
(I have a bias towards expanding build diversity)

[strong vector]

Giving the skeleton swordsman some more use time would be great ( or anything besides the ratkin mages really ). If the cat ends up being flagged for necro spells they should make feed pet not work on it, because undead, also special rez requirements.

[sour sluice]

With 1.0 release soon, I'm going to NECRO this thread 💀

Please save me from going WW/NECRO, I want to make AH/NECRO work

[gray lodge]

ha I love it, thanks for the bump!