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[Xazo-Tak]

Their creations can easily become a large portion of the world's population.
In Adventurer mode, necromancer towers feel like one of the most common sights, and almost all quests concerning artifacts are necromancer-related.
Also in Adventurer mode, necromancers and their creations can simply be impossible for the player to fight due to them being invisible (which doesn't inconvenience your companions at all, but prevents you from attacking even if you're standing on their tile).
In Fortress mode, undead attacks are the most common type.
This all started with the release of 0.47 I think, before that necromancers weren't nearly as significant.

Basically the problem boils down to:
-There's too many necromancers
-Invisibility is broken (and for some reason never mentioned on the wiki?)

The solution would be to make necromancers like to fight each other for dominance, so that the more necromancers there are the harder it is to survive as a necromancer, preventing them from ever becoming overly-numerous. And of course to get rid of invisibility.
Fewer necromancers is better than weaker necromancers IMO, it makes it easier to get immersed in the lore of your world to have just a few BBEGs at most instead of a dozen.

[Urist mcbayblade]

Intelligent undead powers are just broken in general.
I have had adventurers that I have sunk considerable amounts of time and effort into be instantly destroyed when I look at some intelligent undead funny and BOOM. He gestures and now my entire spine is lightly rotten, I'm paralyzed and I'm bleeding all over the place. And now the intelligent undead has punched my head in while I was lying on the floor paralyzed. Game over.

[Xazo-Tak]

Intelligent undead powers are just broken in general.
I have had adventurers that I have sunk considerable amounts of time and effort into be instantly destroyed when I look at some intelligent undead funny and BOOM. He gestures and now my entire spine is lightly rotten, I'm paralyzed and I'm bleeding all over the place. And now the intelligent undead has punched my head in while I was lying on the floor paralyzed. Game over.

That's a good point about Toady's balancing.
He seems to have this idea that if something is ridiculously overpowered, it's fair and balanced if it exists as a possible result for a random creature generator, even if the chance of getting something overpowered is actually pretty high. Hence, the most overpowered things in the game (taking into account how common they are) are the random things.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Intelligent undead powers are just broken in general.
I have had adventurers that I have sunk considerable amounts of time and effort into be instantly destroyed when I look at some intelligent undead funny and BOOM. He gestures and now my entire spine is lightly rotten, I'm paralyzed and I'm bleeding all over the place. And now the intelligent undead has punched my head in while I was lying on the floor paralyzed. Game over.

That's a good point about Toady's balancing.
He seems to have this idea that if something is ridiculously overpowered, it's fair and balanced if it exists as a possible result for a random creature generator, even if the chance of getting something overpowered is actually pretty high. Hence, the most overpowered things in the game (taking into account how common they are) are the random things.

Except that's pretty much the opposite of what he's actually said when talking about the necromancer problem in a few recent interviews...

[Urist mcbayblade]

The problem isn't really with procedurally generated creatures as most titans, forgotten beasts, necromancer experiments and night trolls turn out reasonably balanced. (Unless you get really unlucky and get a deadly dust steel blob or something in which case you can just raise a drawbridge and wait for it to go away)
The problem to me really is that, as above, necromancers are just to common. If your world does by some chance contain a few absolute BS forgotten beasts its incredibly unlikely that you will run into them in adventure mode when there really a problem. (In fort mode you can just turtle.) If intelligent undead were restricted to a couple of end game sites in each world it would be fine but instead there wandering around at your local tavern.

[FantasticDorf]

Magically protective items would probably remedy things like this, other than the point a grotesquely strong experiment supporting the ability caster decides to just bypass your amulet and smash your face instead.

[Urist mcbayblade]

Either or some sort limit on how many necromancers per world. Unbalanced BS  is fine as long as the player can avoid it if they chose to.

[badiro]

I have no clue about adventuremode but in Fortressmode it is not a problem at all, you choose to live next to a tower or not if yes then every raid is an undead raid but otherwise none, if you are annoyed by it just raze the tower, problem solved

[Xazo-Tak]

That's a good point about Toady's balancing.
He seems to have this idea that if something is ridiculously overpowered, it's fair and balanced if it exists as a possible result for a random creature generator, even if the chance of getting something overpowered is actually pretty high. Hence, the most overpowered things in the game (taking into account how common they are) are the random things.

Except that's pretty much the opposite of what he's actually said when talking about the necromancer problem in a few recent interviews...

Actions speak louder than words.
He added common enemies that are completely unbeatable in Adventure Mode (and you might not realise before it's too late, at least with invisiblility you can just sprint off if you're faster than them when the message that they vanish appears), and didn't figure it was worthwhile releasing a patch that removed those game-breaking powers from the table of possibilities.

[Fikilili]

I think its also because of the way the AI handles anything. Dwarves writing one paged books, human cities being absolute messes, elves congratulating you for not cutting any trees in a desert, dwarves still holding objects despite the fact that the Burrow is on and a monster is coming right at them at ludicrous speed, etc.
One necromancer writes a book, granted, a one paged book with golden bindings, and one day his tower gets pillaged by dwarves. They take the loot, bring it back to their fortress, put it literally only Armok knows where, one curious dwarf who can read takes it, learns the secret of life and death, then another dwarf takes it, learns the secrets of life and death, then another dwarf takes it, learns the secrets of life and death, etc etc. And maybe those dwarves weren't thinking of becoming Necromancers!
I think the AI in general just doesnt know how to handle anything. Some forts in DF are still active because it's almost hardcoded for them to stay active unless a raid happens. The way dwarves take care of books for example is beyond stupid. I've went to some Necromancer towers, and just saw the bastards, surrounded by their creations, reading books over a whole pile of them. Or have an entire room filled with nothing but books (on the floor, of course). If a player did it, he would have at least made some bookshelves and all, not the Necromancer. The books are just... Lying there.
I think there's also something with the way a dwarf learns things. Now, labor-wise, when he practices something he isn't particularly good at, the more he does, the faster he's learning and improving. However, if he reads a book about the secrets of life and death, boom, he's a necromancer. No practice or anything, he just is now.
I mean, basically, there's a whole lot of things to rehaul in DF, whether its the structures, the way the AI handles them and organization, or the way dwarves make decisions. Tarn talked about it, when he told people about that one dwarf who he tasked to engrave some stone as a way to sum up its experience in his dying fortress, making something beautiful, even though there was a 40% chance he was just going to engrave cheese.

[IndigoFenix]

Mostly it's okay - the learning system could be more detailed, but I expect that would tie in to magic systems in general - except for the invisibility bug.  That's a pretty severe bug to leave in the game before heading off to work on the Steam release.

It's one thing to have an overpowered Forgotten Beast that is overpowered because it's the size of a building and made of solid steel.  Players EXPECT a creature like that to be overpowered, it's working as intended.  It's quite another thing to have common minor minions that are both invisible and completely invincible because of a bug that makes the player unable to spot or attack a target once it enters stealth.  (You can actually deal with them by bringing strong companions along - the bug doesn't apply to CPU controlled units, only the player.  But that just underscores the illogical and immersion-breaking nature of the problem.)

Weirdly whatever caused that bug didn't even exist before they started showing up in Vanilla mode.  I used to have modded creatures that entered stealth and you could spot them if your Observer skill was high enough.  Now CPU-controlled units with stealth are simply unbeatable.

I also think it's about time that ATTACK interactions started triggering combat.  This doesn't generally break the game from the player's perspective but it is kind of immersion breaking that you can learn an offensive spell and just go around shooting people to death with magical ice chunks without anyone recognizing that you're the one doing it.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think it's worth keeping in mind that necromancers are kind of a placeholder for what will be a more broadly randomized bunch of wizards (the way that megabeasts used to just be a half dozen static creatures, then we got randomized titans).  Hence, presumably, when magic/wizards are made more diverse, there will be less "necromancers" everywhere, and more variety.  (If you look in the development roadmap page, Toady mentions wanting to generalize necromancers out into various wizards, already.)

I think a large part of necromancer ubiquity is that you need to be within a certain range of towers to trigger zombie invasions, and players like those in fortress mode.  (Also, isn't rate of necromancer spawning a world setting you can change?  Not quite directly, but you can limit secret types and limit which races have [mundane_recordings_possible] tag to heavily reduce how many base necromancers there are to limit the rate of spread.)

[Bumber]

I think a large part of necromancer ubiquity is that you need to be within a certain range of towers to trigger zombie invasions, and players like those in fortress mode.

It's reasonable to assume they can invade from conquered sites. Conquering sites is something they're quite good at now.

[IndigoFenix]

Yes, but the problem with necromancers isn't actually related to necromancers, it's related to stealth not working right. Stealthed units aren't SUPPOSED to be invincible. It's just that necromancers happen to break the game because of this bug.

[FantasticDorf]

Yes, but the problem with necromancers isn't actually related to necromancers, it's related to stealth not working right. Stealthed units aren't SUPPOSED to be invincible. It's just that necromancers happen to break the game because of this bug.

One of many tiny flaws with the powered undead, alas not necromancers so isn't wholly relevant to the OP outside of the implicit link that necromancers are the only ~vanilla~ game conduit to see them by association and bring them into conflict into your fortress. It could easily be post big-wait and the magic arc the same issue replicated onto another magic using unit trying to force-stealth itself, so the core problem there needs to be resolved individually to the ability.

I think it's worth keeping in mind that necromancers are kind of a placeholder for what will be a more broadly randomized bunch of wizards (the way that megabeasts used to just be a half dozen static creatures, then we got randomized titans).  Hence, presumably, when magic/wizards are made more diverse, there will be less "necromancers" everywhere, and more variety.  (If you look in the development roadmap page, Toady mentions wanting to generalize necromancers out into various wizards, already.)

Exactly, couldn't be more succinct a observation in itself. Id expect a bit of intra-tower politics if this is all split up and diversified as to certain wizards taking certain sides in the jumble of overall politics with civs whose goals align with their own; necromancers hate the living for instance with grandiose ambitions and its not a good fit to any template of civilization in the game at this current time.

Viewing it another way, a big wooden tower in the forest of a life/natural wizard, probably on good terms & allied up to the elves i imagine for instance spending all day infusing treant experiments with life capable of instrumenting attacks alone or tags along with elves in their conflicts against other civs & wizards with polarised ideals.

• Necromancers are only hostile in the first place because the player races are mortal and it'd be much easier to (eventually) have them back someone's corner up with a greater capacity to conduct diplomacy if the mythgen created a race of non-mortal beings.