You have mentioned the tip of the iceberg for what can be done with the undead.  This is a good topic and I'll just respond by listing undead unit types.   In random order and I may have missed a few, but here's my personal opinion of undead types:

1) Ghosts: Upgraded types of ghosts include Ghasts, Wraiths, Sceptres and even the dreaded Poltergeists.  No need for a master, but may be controlled by a master.

2) Skelletons:  No real upgrades for these units and they cannot gain experience.  Needs a master.

3) Zombies: There are different types, but most are mindless which follow a master.

4) Mummies: A ritual is performed which preserves and enhances the body.  A mummy is very strong in one or more statistics... usually strength.  Although the brain is gone, the soul controls the body.  No need for a master, but may be controlled by a master.

5) Vampires: A powerful vampire can create other vampires, but they will be weaker than its creator.  For example if the original Dracula creates a vampire then it would be a very very powerful vampire.  This process may take several days and is not always successful where the target victim dies.  Usually they follow another more powerful vampire.

6) Necromancers: Any being which has Necromancy skills and the necromancer usually starts as a living being with curiousities in death.

7) Liches:  A ritual is performed by necromancers to become a Lich because of fear of approaching death or old age.  As a lich the necromancer is now undead and also has enhanced necromancy skills.  This ritual is usually only 33% successful and costly with resources and time.  The Lich can later perform another ritual to become a demi-lich which provides a type of immortality as well as even stronger necromancy skills.  This second ritual is usually only 20% successful and is very costly with resources and time.  

8) Frankensteins: This is a type of monster zombie which takes the parts from multiple dead beings and/or creatures to create a very powerful undead which is sometimes mindless.  Creating this creature is a very difficult task.

9) Reapers:  One of the most feared of all the undead and usually does not have any master.  This powerful undead has pure chaotic actions, but sometimes focused on a specific mission.  Rumor has some demi-liches are able to summon them for specific missions.

10) Dracoliches:  They are created from a combination of very powerful necromancy magic and the corpse of a dead dragon.  Even if someone is lucky enough to find a dead dragon and then lucky enough to successfully perform the ritual in creating the Dracolich it's possible this monster will remain chaotic.  The Dracolich has some of the previous Dragon abilities and some Lich abilities.

I would like to see the ability to put souls inside inanimate objects. Golems, animated suits of armor, gaurdians actually inside what they are protecting, that sort of thing.

Yes those are better names...  I wrote this post around 2am  so I was feeling tired.  

 

 

Yes I agree...  some type of screen after the battle where the necromancer chooses how much magic to spend on which units to resurrect.  The necromancer should have three options skelleton, zombie, ghost...  overall the screen would be simple and fast.  Hopefully most of the living creatures will have a skelletal, zombie and ghost form.

On a side note... considering this is a post-catacylsm world, hopefully we'll see lots of undead types.

You're RIGHT!  They already have a 'being' resource used to create footsoldiers, which is why I don't think we need a second resource to do the same thing.

Thats true, but I mean this is life magic.   I really don't see why the state of decay makes that big of a difference.  I mean if it is just presence of organic meterials in a structured form, then dirt and rocks would work just as well.  What exactly about a 'skeleton' makes it any easier to animate than anything else?  I always figured it had something to do with... I don't know, something magical like pulling the being's old soul back to it to provide the semi-free will required to act indpendently on the battle field.  Then since the being is dead and now has no muscles anymore anyway, its only by the power of magic that the thing is held together and able to move, at which point it shouldn't matter much weather it is a few bones or a bunch of bone shards.  Provided the soul once was a part of parts.

oh, you had dead bodies...  you could do several things with them, namely resurect them as skeletons, which were temporary creations.   So you could create wagons that hauled around bodieds for instant access for skeleton raising or eating to recover health, or whatever you needed (there was a 3rd thing that affected corpses, but I have a hard time remember what it was)

Necromancing this thread (if you will pardon the expression) in order to consider the new info we have gotten:

• I am assuming necro spells will be under the "life" branch of magic.
• Also, it seems like undeads would also require a fair degree of essence because

1. They are "permanent".
2. They are actively controlled by you.
3. It seems like you would need a portion of your "spark of life" in order to make them anything more than corpese with heartbeats i.e. intelligent.

• If they require essence, they would probably have to be very powerful as a result (to offset the apparently permanent investment of the game's most vital resource).
• There was some talk about the weight of corpses: if heroes and other creatures' bodies stay behind after death, that would serve as a good "resource" for undeads i.e. you could raise a fallen hero, or resurrect a dragon.
• This brings up the problem of resurrecting enemy units... maybe an increased essence cost or potential for the creature to return to its former allegiance.

That's about all for now.

IMO, regular undead units should not cost essence, but an undead champion should, even if you just recruited the thing instead of raising or resurrecting a champion who'd died in your service.

In sloppy D&D terms, I'm talking about skeletons and zombies vs. vampires and liches. Other than being tagged with that 'undead' word, the former pair are no real comparison to the latter. Spending essence for zombies seems silly, unless perhaps that one-time investment spawns tens of thousands of zombies that you can keep going from that point forward with an ongoing mana flow. Spending essence for a lich-lord who can use some of your spare mana for its own spell-casting, on the other hand...

Actually its "Fronkinshteen"

My mistake on the terminology: no essence maintenance, unless it's something really, really huge. Like, dimension-busting huge. Even then it should not be a lot. I also agree that you should be able to gain essence.

Maybe they should "go rogue" and stop being controlled by you if you don't pay their upkeep, as opposed to just up and (re)dying.

ETHICS: I see the undeads summoned by "good" channelers as being gohstly or spectral in nature, and primerily defensive (hard to damage, but don't really DO much damage). Evil undeads would take physical form, and while they have more attack, they are esier to kill.

It would be neat to go with the Erfworld model of undead. Basically the more energy and or time a necromancer spends working on an undead, the closer it will be to what it was alive. So a moderatly strong caster could raise one powerful champion or a whole horde of weak mooks.

While Tolkein did not have zombies, it did have ghosts, elves, balrog, dwarves, giant spiders, trolls, mountable wyverns(nazgul), mountable giant eagles and more.  Tolkien was in fact a pioneer leader by merging so many different fantasy elements together into a single story. 

So you're saying not to include werewolves or vampires because these are fantasy variables where you don't like these type of creatures?  Or do you find something specific about these type of creatures which bothers you?  

Specifically what fantasy creatures do you want to see and what fantasy creatures do you not want to see in Elemental?

Most fantasy games include these popluar fantasy creatures because the customers already know their traits and abilities.  There's no need to spend time writing a description and history for the customer to learn the unit...  aka 'vampire'  will drain life blood, is undead and holy attacks hurt.   Why create a new unit called the Kabalkoz write a huge history and then add its description which does the same thing, when the gamer will just refer to them as vampires.