You may know exactly what it says, but that doesn't mean you can do it perfectly. If you read a cookbook once, then tried to make a souffle, how well would it go?
Now apply that to necromancy
It is power granted dirrectly through forbidden knowledge. It is either perfectly known or not accessed.
This is because it isn't a skill. You now command the dead, there is no skill because this ability is already perfected because it can only be perfect. In otherwords it isn't a cookbook but rather like a membership card to an exclusive club that you either own or you do not own.
No, Necromancy shouldn't be like that. Magic isn't an on/off switch. Maybe some people have the potential to do magic and some never will, but learning how to bend the forces of nature to your will isn't something you pick up overnight. Name a single example of a fantasy world in which magic
isn't something you need to take a while to learn how to do right.
Read the tablet last week, never tried it? Maybe you can raise that neat squirrel corpse or whatever, but the ancient necromancer who's memorized every scratch and contour of that valuable slab and raised more bodies than you've had breakfasts is going to do it better.
Not that I object to a Necromancy skill but with the way it is currently hinted as to working I'd think it would be for using necromancy in new ways not expressly given to you by the tablet. For example giving the mindless undead more complex commands. It wouldn't be a check to do necromancy but rather to stretch necromancy.
Um, don't use that craptastic "DF as it is now" excuse. I hate when people do that. DF is in
alpha. Its features are in tatters or missing entirely. Necromancy isn't finished. DF2012 wasn't Toady's final word on the subject.
You want to raise a zombie or a lot of zombies all at once? Skill is useless.
Why?
Though that is just one way it could be done. As long as there is a idea that a necromancer isn't entirely a novice. The skill should be about quality and stretching over just performing it.
Why not? You can't start out as a master.
Or rather... A Necromancer will never fail at making a Souflee. If that Necromancer wants to make a blackberry chocolate Souflee, it may require something else.
Um, you aren't going to make a perfect souffle on Day 1, Try 1. It'll take trial-and-error, time, effort, etc. Once you actually learn what the heck you're doing? Sure, you don't even need to look at the slab/cookbook. Until then, good luck...