Oh noes, necromancers can't exist! Sure they can. You just can't play one as a PC. And thank god.
That's the kind of retarded bullshit that got us 4e: "If it takes more than a minute to balance, let's throw it out!"
+1
As I said previously about this same thing: Can't play necromancers: Fuck that.
Then you've failed at creating a better game. Current D&D can indeed let players play that character concept. Your fix removes a character concept some folks want to play. Therefor, it is not a fix. The idea, I believe, is to allow as many people as possible to play a character concept as close to what they wanted as possible. Either suggest a fix that works, or admit that you can't, but saying "it can't be done because I can't think of how, so you can't either" just doesn't work.
JaronK
*Amen* Preach brother JaronK PREACH!
One possiblity on SoDs is to put a hit point limit on it. Something along the lines of the Death domain's ability perhaps, where you roll X damage. If X is enough to kill the target, it dies, if not, it deals no damage.
Now, if we were to do something like this, a SoD actually becomes worse than direct damage, as the save negates instead of halves the damage, and any damage that doesn't kill the target is also negated. So, we'd need to increase the "damage" dealt per level to make it balance out. Perhaps something along the lines of 10 points per caster level with different caps at various spell levels.
My initial response to this was "Then people won't use save or dies, and again we start playing forth edition"
This is similar to my idea about S&B I believe that you have to fix evocation without weakening anything else not quite in a vacuum but you have to give them something to make it valuable and competative...
If you're going to do save or dies like this:
*BITCHIMAKILLYOU!* (reference Eminem song)
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: X
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One living creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Fortitude partial
Spell Resistance: Yes
You deal 10 damage per caster level damage. If the damage is enough to kill the target, it dies*, if not, it deals no damage. Damage dealt by this spell cannot exceeded X (where X is whatever we arbitrarily decide).
........................
* this is the most redundant statement ever. Reminds me of MtG's "final fortune" reprint from portal.
In any case yeah you may have found a way to make save or dies worthless or you've made many smaller versions of "Harm" which could be cool. . .
It all depends on what we set X at don't it. If it caps out at spell level like 5th level spell does 50 points flat damage its not really a save or die is it. If it percaster level "uncapped' it may well be the same thing as a save or die is now.
I have to say though I'd be more comfortable with that spell, if it was
10 damage percaster level and if you make your save, bad shit happens to you, just not death.
If the answer is to make all the other choices bad enough or to remove alternatives till evocation is the best school, then the thing is we can just go see how that works in the new edition forum, really, but there now point to trying to "balance 3.5" then ending up at forth edtion, if thats the case we can all pick up some new books and spare ourselves the bother.