[.11] With necromancy I corrupt... me?

[Ken]

Should a character ever intentionally or unintentionally Corrupt themself, what happens? I don't think this situation could normally happen in 1.3 since Create Undead only works on corpses. The question may or may not be best generalized to "What does a Corrupted character do if its controller dies during the duration and it has no orders to follow?"

I have a few potential interpretations based on the description in the packet but none of them have any solid backing in the rules that I know of.

• Self Defense. The undead's creator can give no orders, therefore it takes no actions except to defend itself. It's still an intelligent undead so it can behave preemptively to preserve itself or even try to talk down or trick opponents, but it has no intentions other to avoid being destroyed.
• Life Defense. Like the above, except that the undead specifically recognizes its living self as its creator and seeks to preserve its living self. This suggests that, in addition to the above obvious self-defense stuff, the undead may seek to locate itself somewhere that will be safe for its living self and, prior to expiry of the effect, Life itself if possible.
• Programmed Orders. The caster can impose its will on its undead self in some pre-determined way, like writing itself a note (sort of Jekyll-and-Hyde style) or just saying them out loud right before casting. If no orders are evident, behaves in one of the other ways.
• "Active" Orders. The living caster's intentions actively drive the undead's behavior. While the undead can't remember specific facts and the caster's living self isn't actually conscious, it behaves as though the living self were issuing orders with regards to goals, targets to destroy or defend, etc in real time, but no actual sharing of information ("I don't know who you are, but I'm eating you first"). As usual, the caster doesn't remember any of this when they return to life.
• Berserking. Chaos itself directs a controllerless undead, with the goal of corrupting or killing as many living creatures as possible in the available time. This is basically just adding a Berserk effect.
• Nothing. The spell ends immediately because the caster died. I can't find anything in the ARB or .11 packet to suggest this would happen, as both Create Undead and Corrupt have 10 minute durations and aren't concentration/focus/line-of-sight types. Also, this would be boring.

 

[MaxIrons]

My interpretations based on the rules:

Corrupt: This spell will slay a living target and cause them to immediately become a Greater Undead under absolute control of the caster. They retain the same intelligence and knowledge as the original creature, but operate without any memory of their living state. They have an innate understanding of their own abilities and items and may utilize any weapons or armor available to the creature as well as claws.

You are slain and immediately become a Greater Undead under the absolute control of yourself because you are still the caster. You have no memories of your non undead life, but are intelligent and know your abilities and items.

In short, you're intelligent, can do what you want, but have to make snap judgements without knowledge of the context of what's going on around you. RP appropriately.

 

[Draven]

I kinda read “absolute control” as “requiring input.” It’s different in wording than Enslavement, where you follow commands while retaining your sense of self, but feels more like Dominate, only than you can understand all commands and follow them intelligently.

So, by Corrupting yourself, I feel like you’d basically be able to defend yourself from attack, but you’d also have no impetus.

 

[Ken]

because you are still the caster

Is the undead the same creature as the caster? Current RAW... mostly? The packet does call out that wards and circles won't recognize them. Does that mean it's a different creature, or do wards and circles just have built-in virus scanners? If the intention was that it's effectively a different creature then that should probably be called out.

 

[PirateFox]

I asked this same thing a while back in the coordinator forums. I was told that it's effectively a new creature with no memories, period. Yes, it's intelligent, but won't know what it was up to or why. ie, "I'll just corrupt myself to get past this pool of poison...corrupt...Argh, I think I'll go kill some orphans...*wanders off*" It's not super-clear in the description, and I fully expect some serious cheese until it gets clarified just how much you do/don't know or can do.

Edit: I think that was before they clarified the ward/circle rules with Corrupt, so it may or may not be relevant.

 

[Ken]

Part of the reason I'm asking is for RP guidance if either accidental self corruption happens ("Arcane Dominate, Corrupt yourself") or the "corrupted but caster dies immediately" case. To my knowledge PCs don't usually find themselves as Greater Undead in 1.3 without a marshall telling them what happens, so some guidelines would be useful if the answer is just "RP being a greater undead".

The other part is to work out if Corrupt can be used as a self-buff for a necromancer. It includes a full heal, but with most of the interpretations it's only useful in the "then I'll take you all down with me" sense. Which could be useful for an NPC necro, which is most of them, but it might be interesting if they had a compelling reason to self-corrupt rather than throw it.

 

[Draven]

Dominate wouldn’t be able to be used to force someone to Corrupt (though V Gaze and Enslavement are still things that could do this).

It’s an important distinction, because Dominate (though called charm) will still be a PC ability.

 

[Alavatar]

With Dominate, if you Dominated yourself prior rulings would be that you stood still like doofus because no one could give you orders. But, with Dominate you were considered to be effectively in a vegetative state.

I imagine Corrupt would be similar, and therefore follow Ken's "Self Defense" listed above.

 

[Polare]

My interpretations based on the rules:

You are slain and immediately become a Greater Undead under the absolute control of yourself because you are still the caster. You have no memories of your non undead life, but are intelligent and know your abilities and items.

In short, you're intelligent, can do what you want, but have to make snap judgements without knowledge of the context of what's going on around you. RP appropriately.

This is exactly right. This does not preclude someone from writing themselves a note to give some context and info if you have time and presence of mind to do so Your character may or may not trust the note, of course!

-Bryan Gregory
ARC

 

[Ken]

I'm not really sure how that might play out, but alright. I'd like to see sidebar in the finished book along the lines of "So you've become an intelligent undead with no memories. Here's some RP guidelines."

This interpretation sounds a bit easy to cheese, but given that only dirty necromancers destined for execution can really abuse it on purpose that might be a happy accident.

 

[Sage of Legaia]

It may be useful if you need to enter a Domain of the Defiled, but otherwise I can't see much use for Corrupting yourself even if you write yourself a note with instructions.