Minion

Overview
Minions are Undead servants animated by a Necromancer. A necromancer can exploit any nearby corpse to raise from it one or more undead minions. These minions are very handy as they follow their master closely and serve as tanks and cannon fodder. At high levels, they become formidable damage dealers in great numbers. Their biggest drawback is their constant health degeneration.

Minion Properties
There are three kinds of minions in the game:
 * Bone Horrors
 * Bone Fiends
 * Bone Minions

The following are some properties of minions:
 * Like all undead they take double damage from Holy damage.
 * A minion's level is dependant on caster's Death Magic attribute rank and minion type. Higher level minions have more health and stronger attacks.
 * Like pets, minions are Allies and do not count against your party's member limit. That also means they can be healed by the party monks.
 * Minions use pet AI; they protect their master when the master is not attacking an enemy, and attack a target when their master attacks that target.
 * There is no limit on the number of minions a necromancer can raise. A necromancer can have as many as he/she can keep alive.
 * Raising minions requires a supply of corpses. An area empty of corpses, or that has creatures that do not leave corpses (like Golems), will greatly trouble a minion master.
 * All minions do physical damage unless under the influence of a Nature Ritual that alters their damage type.

Minion Creation
Necromancers can exploit unused corpses to spawn Minions from them. Used corpses are darkened and can no longer be used to fuel any skills that require corpses.
 * Animate Bone Fiend
 * Animate Bone Horror
 * Animate Bone Minions

Minion As Skill Target

 * Blood of the Master (heal adjacent ally animated undead)
 * Dark Bond (self-enchantment that transfers 75% of incoming damage to nearest ally animated undead
 * Death Nova (turn ally animated undead or teammates into AoE bombs when they die)
 * Infuse Condition (self-enchantment that transfers incoming conditions to nearest ally animated undead
 * Taste of Death (steal Health from ally animated undead)
 * Verata's Aura (all hostile animated undead become bound to you for some time)
 * Verata's Gaze (unbind/steal hostile animated undead)
 * Verata's Sacrifice (Health Regeneration of 10 for ally animated undead)

Minion Health Degeneration
The effect of health degeneration is capped at 10, meaning that a minion will at most lose health at a rate of 10 health every 0.5 seconds. However, minion health degeneration will become increasingly difficult to counteract over time. This is because the total (raw, uncapped) degeneration rate can still increase beyond 10, and this is the value that regeneration effects (e.g. from Verata's Sacrifice and Healing Breeze) are calculated against.

For example, let's say that a minion's raw health degeneration has increased to -20 pips over time. Although the minion will only suffer from -10 pips (capped), if you cast Verata's Sacrifice to give the minion +10 pips, the minion will experience -20 + 10 = -10 pips, which is the same as if you had not cast Verata's Sacrifice!