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Shpadoinkle
2009-02-11, 03:55 PM
So is there a way for this to be done by one person in 3.X? I mean like having an army of thousands of skeletons and/or zombies. The closest way I know of doing it is for someone fairly high level to take the Leadership feat, then have his chohort do likewise, and so on, until the final guy is level 5 or lower and no longer meets the requirements for Leadership. Then atract followers who are all wizards, sorcerers, or clerics, and give them each a scroll of Animate Dead, and have them use that, then instruct thier undead to obey the head honcho.

While that's viable, and strictly by the RAW, legal (unless I'm forgetting something that makes it not), what I'm thinking of is a single person raising hordes of undead minions, instead of getting a bunch of peons to do it for you. Is this possible anymore?

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-02-11, 04:00 PM
Dread Necromancer gets a lot of nice bennies to undead-controlling. Stack that with a few other methods and you're looking at way too many HD per CL(my Dread Necro had 130 HD of undead available at level 10 with absolutely no effort on my part).

hamishspence
2009-02-11, 04:08 PM
Altars + Desecrate are a good combination. Though if you want one overpowered undead rather than an army, Draconomicon Dragon Zombies sound to me like best bang for buck- Altar, Desecrate, level 10- animate a 40HD great red wyrm dragon zombie with CR 14.

Now findimng the raw materials is a different problem.

PinkysBrain
2009-02-11, 04:11 PM
The closest way I know of doing it is for someone fairly high level to take the Leadership feat, then have his chohort do likewise, and so on, until the final guy is level 5 or lower and no longer meets the requirements for Leadership.
Leadership is granted by DM fiat, as such it's outside the rules ... getting something by Leadership is no different than getting it by DM rule 0. It should never even have been a feat ... it gives players the wrong idea.

That said, you can simply be evil or neutral and contral an undead though turning ... and then use one of the many undead with broken spawning abilities.

DM Raven
2009-02-11, 04:22 PM
I would suggest talking to your DM about it and explaining to him that you want to have this undead army. See if he can fit it into his story in some way and work with him to make it happen. Though you probably won't be able to take this army with you when playing with people in the main storyline(it would make it a bit hard to do combat with that many minions), you can have them do things in the background or prepare for some major story-driven event.

bobspldbckwrds
2009-02-11, 04:23 PM
evil cleric, desecrate, altars, rebuke undead, and a few other tactics. it makes for a nice little wall between your 7th level party and the cr11 dragon breathing down your throat.

edit: also, a good way to make rebuke even more useful is to go necromancer hunting.

hamishspence
2009-02-11, 04:25 PM
D&D novel Black Wizards handled undead army by making it a function of an artifact- the Heart of Kazgaroth.

that sort of way might avoid problem of something being too easy- if you need an artifact, thats unique and cannot be duplicated.

Fax Celestis
2009-02-11, 04:32 PM
Heroes of Battle has animate legion and desecrate battlefield. They sound exactly like what you're looking for.

kamikasei
2009-02-11, 05:03 PM
If you're not dead set on zombies or skeletons, the standard approach is to control a bunch of undead which each have their own spawn-creating abilities (vampires, wraiths etc), have them each create spawn who create spawn who create spawn... all under the control of parents under the control of parents... under your control.

mostlyharmful
2009-02-11, 05:08 PM
Chain spawn you're way to power with shadows or wights. Just create and command the first one and then have it shread it's way through a small city that no'ones going to miss, instant unending army of encircling darkness. sure a good cleric can turn sixty or seventy zombies but lets see the church that can take on fourty million shadows jumping out of the walls.

Edit: That or have Ninjas leap out on your ass and stab you to death.

Edit Edit: Also, beware of uncontrolled lines of spawn, if you lose a link in the chain you could potentially lose a significant percentage of your control of your force but then once you're just commanding "kill everything" what's the problem with errant spawn?

d13
2009-02-11, 05:14 PM
A friend came up with this... (All by RAW)

Wizard 3/Cleric 3/True Necromancer 5 = ECL 11

Caster Level Wizard 7/Cleric 7

2x Practiced Spellcaster (Complete Diviner) Feat. One for Wizard levels, one for Cleric levels

Caster Level Wizard 11/Cleric 11

With Animate Dead (Cleric 3/Wizard 4) you raise 44 HD worth of Zombies and/or Skeletons, for each of your classes. That means, 88 HD of Zombies/Skels.

With the Rod of Undead Mastery (Libris Mortis pg.78) you double that amount, making it 176 HD worth of Skeletons and/or Zombies... Add in some rebuke and you get like 200 HD of undeads with a level 11 pj...

10 Necro-guyz or so would make a nice army of first level fighter skeleton soldiers xD

kamikasei
2009-02-11, 05:22 PM
Of course, the true benefit of chain-spawning is that if any druids object, you can just point out that you're creating a tree.

mostlyharmful
2009-02-11, 05:27 PM
Of course, the true benefit of chain-spawning is that if any druids object, you can just point out that you're creating a tree.

A beautiful tree of joy and happiness and not at all an ELE... Mwah ha ha ha ha:smallbiggrin:

JMobius
2009-02-11, 05:27 PM
Of course, the true benefit of chain-spawning is that if any druids object, you can just point out that you're creating a tree.

Ow.

Ow.

...*golf clap*

tyckspoon
2009-02-11, 05:46 PM
A friend came up with this... (All by RAW)

Wizard 3/Cleric 3/True Necromancer 5 = ECL 11
...

Or you could just be a Dread Necromancer. At level 8 they add their Cha mod to the number of HD/level they can control. At level 11 they should be looking at a 22 or so (at least base 16 +2 levelup points +4 enhancement item) for a +6 mod. 10HD/level from Animate Dead, double for Undead Rod, plus 11 more controlled with Rebuking and however many are corralled with Command Undead (which is not HD-capped, so you can feel free to make zombie hydras or something, Animate them as uncontrolled, and just ding them with Command Undead to be your pets.) The only thing stopping Dread Necromancer from being the best possible undead-controller class it could be is that it doesn't provide a way around the 25gp/HD cost of Animate Dead.

Irreverent Fool
2009-02-11, 06:06 PM
The only thing stopping Dread Necromancer from being the best possible undead-controller class it could be is that it doesn't provide a way around the 25gp/HD cost of Animate Dead.

This problem can be rectified by clever use of the spellstitched template from MMII in order to grant yourself (or possibly a controlled minion) the use of Animate Dead as a SLA. Once a creature is spellstitched, it can be returned to a living form and still enjoy the benefits of being spellstitched.

...of course at that point 25g per HD probably isn't a big deal to you anyway.

obnoxious
sig

Belial_the_Leveler
2009-02-11, 07:31 PM
You get a warlock/sorceror/eldritch theurge.
You get chain spell, arcane thesis: command undead and easy chain spell.
You get the "The Dead Walk" invocation.
You get Supernatural Transformation for said invocation.
You get Practiced Spellcaster for sorceror.
You get lots a corpses and rods of least extend spell.

At 13th level total you should have access to 5th level spells. With a decent charisma you get 18 spell slots in levels 3-5.
Each of those spells can be used for Chained Command Undead which, after being extended, lasts for 30 days and can command 16 undead.

Each day you can make a ****load of zombies (over 9000, after you count resting for 8 hours). You can command 16x18 = 288 of them. If you do that for 20 days you'll have an army of 5760 zombies usable for 10 days.
So, a roman legion's worth of zombies you can command regardless of individual HD.


If you're 20th level instead you have 30 lvl 3-7 spell slots, your chains command 20 undead each and last 44 days minimum. This means 18.000 zombies usable for 14 days.


Of course, once you're 20th level you can create and command a specter or shadow and have it create an infinite number of other shadows you command indirectly.

TheCountAlucard
2009-02-12, 05:02 PM
I'm working on an undead army for my own campaign, though I'm still working on the numbers...

See, the BBEG is a Human Dread Necromancer 20 with a few templates. He's got a Charisma score of fifty and a Rod of Undead Mastery, so he can control a fairly large number of undead.