Palemasters?

[Master Thrower]

I would Like to look into the palemaster PrC. My build looks something like this
Wizard 5 Palemaster 4.
What feats should I take?
Right now its- Corpse Crafter, Nimble bones, quicken (uselss for now but we are starting half way between 9th and tenth level), skill focus religion, bolster resitance, stiched familiar. Suggestions?

[NelKor]

wizard is a pretty poor necromancer, if thats what your planning to do. I'd look at Dread Necromancer or a CLeric

[Urpriest]

In terms of necromancy, one thing wizards are good at is spamming negative energy spells. There's an iconic build called the Uttercold Assault Necromancer that could probably be adapted to a Pale Master. Unfortunately there's a homebrew class by the same name, so it may be tricky to find.

[Gabe the Bard]

You can find a section on the Uttercold Assault Necromancer in K's Necromancer Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?action=printpage;topic=5584.0).

I would change Quicken Spell with something you can use more easily at 9th level (you should try to get metamagic rods of quicken instead).

Fell Animate (http://dnd.savannahsoft.eu/feat-1101-fell-animate.html)(from Libris Mortis) lets you animate a target that was destroyed by the spell. It takes up a spell slot three levels higher, so it's a bit expensive. But at 9th level you could put it on a Scorching Ray and burnimate zombies.

[Fizban]

Just about the only really good thing about Pale Masters was the free Animate Dead. Since you don't have a material cost, just animate everything you kill, using Control Undead to keep stuff above your normal limit. You don't have to worry too much about your dudes dying, since your SLA means you always prepared Animate Dead for more dudes.

[Malbordeus]

suggestion - destruction retribution.

a favourite giggle tactic is to use some very fast undead (like skeletal wolves) as homing missiles. charge them in, then fireball the area. take time to make sure you have spares however.

or the larger zombie types (ogres and trolls) tend to take out everything around them when they drop. if your fighting lots of undead, then not so usefull though.

[lord_khaine]

regarding Destructive retribution, i had a plan involving zombie ravens and rats, as well as a fireball or something like that, but i newer got to try it.

[Coidzor]

An alternative form of necromantic boom involves necromantic cysts and a spell that causes said cysts to explode violently. I can't recall the details, but it involved cysting up a lot of low HD animals and somehow directing them (possibly via cyst-based control) towards one's enemies and then casting the spell on the area to cause all of the encysted creatures to explode quite spectacularly.

[Maho-Tsukai]

Wizards are not bad necromancers. It's just their bad necromancers when it comes to the whole animation of undead aspect. A wizard necromancer won't do the shambeling army of the undead thing all that well but what he IS good at is being an "enervator" type necromancer whoes magic is more centered around draining, debuffing, save or dies, negative energy and manipulation of the soul as appose to animating and commanding undead. However, if you don't want to use a cleric or DN but still want an undead army then you should REALLY look into some third party supliments since, without 3rd party a wizard just flat out won't be doing the whole undead animating thing.

I have quite a few necromancy related supliments I have collected and I have a few good ones to recomend. The best one I own is actually for 3.0(but can be used in 3.5e or 3.5p with ease despite). It's from a seires of supliments known as "encyclopedia arcana" and is called "Beyond the Grave: Necromancy." It has some nice spells, most of which are exclusive to the wizard/sorc list....(clerics actually get less new spells then even druids from this supliment. Yeah...a necromancy book with new spells and druids get more new stuff from it then clerics do, go figure..) However, the main reason to take it is the feats. Simply put, it's feats can allow you to easily match a cleric PROVIDED you can houserule the Knowldage: Necrology skill which this book introduces to be replaced by the Knowldage: Religion(Or arcane, but I find religion to be more approprate for this.) and also get them houseruled to be bonus feats for a necromancy specalist. If you can get those two house rules you can get animate dead the same level a cleric gets it. These feats can also give you other nice things like rebuking(though you will be two levels behind a cleric as far as rebuke gose.) and at higher levels the ability to animate undead just by touching bodies.

The downside to these feats? Every time you invoke their powers you have to make a "negative energy" check, depending on your rolls, if you fail you gain a penalty from a laundry list of posible choices(which one you recieve is dependant on your roll) many of which are bad but some of which actually have benifits.(One turns you into a strange kind of undead. Not one thats all that powerful, but hey...getting a template/becomming undeaf for free is nice...though that penalty is of course extremely hard to roll.) Another 3rd party supliment to look into is the Dread Codex seires, which has some VERY nice spells, including all kinds of buffs for undead minions ranging from standard fair(more turn resistance, ability score boosts ect...) to some more "unique" buffs(Such as vairous elemental buffs which give your undead elemental attacks, in addition to other things.). Simply put, with just the Dread Codex seires(two pdfs) and Beyond the Grave, provided you can get certain house rules your Wizard/Pale Master can match a cleric in the undead legion department.

However, if you can't use those books then I would recomend a re-build of your character that dose not use the wizard class. If you want undead legions without cleric or DN levels then what you want is the Death Master from the Dragon Magizene Compendium. They get desecrate, animate dead as a level 2 spell(before even clerics get it.), a nice undead minion, light armor(and the ability to cast in it with some minor strings attached.) rebuke undead and by RAW(though most likely not RAI) they can learn spells from the wiz/sorc list as well as their own list provided they have said wiz/sorc spells in written form. So yeah. Death Master is really the way to go if you want a necro wizard and like a wizard they use inteligence as their casting stat. However, if you go Death Master Pale Master may not be all that nessicary and it would hurt your rebuking. However, if you don't care about rebuking then Death Master/Pale Master could be fun.