if you don't have any plans or don't want to balance it that's fine. 4th conjure can be potentially game breaking and we understand that. However as long as that is in the skill guide there's an expectation.
alternatively: it may be time to consider leaning into skilling utility with necromancy. if they want to use the fourth conjure to assist with skilling, like say magics seren spells. I think it would be a great way to put the 4th conjure to rest without upsetting combat.
External link →Better solution. 4 slots for "conjures" but each conjure has a "space" value. So say you have Dharok introduced as another conjure. He would hold like 2 spaces instead of 1 so when you conjure army they would be able to do 3 total but balanced around space total.
This has actually always been an intention of ours!
In the original design we discussed having regular spirits as the base conjures (i.e. Skeleton, Zombie, Ghost and Phantom) and then gaining access to 'Heroes' or 'Legendary' spirits (e.g. Barrows brothers, Ancient warriors, maybe even Vorkath) from other content which would use up 1-4 slots.
We haven't spoken too much about ideas that are on paper for Necromancy in the future, but this is just one of them. You'll find that most/all projects have a ton of ideas that don't come to fruition for the original release, but are written down to tackle and explore in the future.
I'm not too sure what was said on the stream and can't find a specific clip, but as one of the Necromancy designers I'm happy to add some additional context/detail.
The ideal, is that we release a 4th regular spirit as a conjure (e.g. Phantom). For the release, we prioritised getting 3 released and the 4th was a stretch goal. In hindsight we probably shouldn't have added the skill guide entry until we added the 4th spirit.
Balance is definitely something to consider, as adding another regular spirit while keeping the idea of a 4th slot is completely additive, however there are numerous ways we can resolve this so it isn't inherently the blocker.
What we would like to do, is to find an opportunity to add that 4th regular spirit and then explore the concept of 'Hero' and 'Legendary' spirits. I responded to another comment on this thread detailing them a bit more, but the general idea would be that you could use one of these spirits but they would take up more than one of your available conjure slots.
Long term, this might mean that you're running Necromancy builds like:
These are just examples, but wanting to be more transparent about Necromancy thoughts and designs for the future.
Hope that's insightful!
They can make the 4th conjure be a weak offense but high defence tanking conjure that helps reduce damage for us.
This is actually fairly in line with a concept we had early on for a 'Phantom' conjure. That it wouldn't attack but simply mitigate damage for you, with the 'Command' ability being more in-line with a defensive (e.g. you get it to increase the damage it mitigates for X seconds).
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u/JagexRamen I've been mistaken for yourself, but as they have referred to you as a God, I am here calling for your almighty presence.
Sponge, myself (Ryan!) and Pigeon have discussed why certain abilities that look like channels aren't channels (even if they're 1-3 cycles long), but we have no answer to your question right now.
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