PDA

View Full Version : No-save Necromancy?



Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-24, 12:41 PM
While I have played necro clerics before, I am not a big fan of high wis RP wise and thus have been looking into the Dynamic Priest(or educated priest, though dynamic would work better for a necro cleric.) to change my casting stat to cha. However, the flaw with this is that wisdom is still used for Save DCs with that feat and thus I am wondering if you can still be a good necro cleric without the use of save-reliant spells such as Destruction, Harm ect...

Tvtyrant
2010-12-24, 01:00 PM
Couldn't you go for the scholarly Cleric and make it Int based?

Fouredged Sword
2010-12-24, 01:01 PM
Pick up liber mortis. Look at fell drain, fell animate and the other fell metamagic.

Think for a second. Fell drain, persisted spell that allow you to make a touch attack that deals damage allow you to raise zombies for free, all day as much as you want, so long as you finish your target off with that attack.

I would go war and something undead related to grant more HD of undead. Take divine metamagic persist and divine metamagic fell animate. Flavor, charismatic general of the undead.

Urpriest
2010-12-24, 01:09 PM
Shivering Touch and its Lesser cousin fit the bill.

Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-24, 01:17 PM
I see. I will have to skim through the cleric list and see what spells(of any school) they possess that have no save. If there is enough on their list that dose not require a save then I may go the int rout, take cloistered cleric and be a skillmonkey/necromancer combo who focse on int and no-save spells...and the fell animate/fell drain is an awesome idea. Another idea was to go the Cha route as a normal cleric(no cloistered) and eventually go into bone knight. I get away with minimal wisdom becase I focus mostly on buffs + necromancy and use my own melee power and undead minions to kill stuff rather then offensive necromancy spells. Due to a high cha I will have loads of rebuke attempts and DMM presist will be an auto-include. DMM fell animate also sounds like loads of fun and with all my buffs I can just forget about stuff like destruction because I will be a combat monster who leads his undead hordes from the front. Undead leadership is also a no-brainer here as it gives me more undead and synergizes well with my high cha. As for domains, War and Undeath or Deathbound seem the best. War lets me grab better weapons(most likely a Scythe for image/flavor reasons) and deathbound lets me make more undead but gives me for the most part useless spells(most of them are save reliant.) Undeath gives me extra turning which is rather redundant with a high Cha but the spells are animation spells, which, while I already have them on my spell list are nice as domain spells since it frees up slots which would otherwise be devoted to them...However, with another domain(War) Domain spells don't matter as much since I can prepair buffs from that domain in place of save reliant spells from deathboud and deathboud has the better power.

However, while the melee/necro-gish idea is most likely better mechanicly the smart/cloistered cleric sounds fun RP wise but I am not sure there is enough no-save necromancy(or no save offensive spells in general) on the cleric list to make it work. Anybody know if this is true?

Jack_Simth
2010-12-24, 01:37 PM
However, while the melee/necro-gish idea is most likely better mechanicly the smart/cloistered cleric sounds fun RP wise but I am not sure there is enough no-save necromancy(or no save offensive spells in general) on the cleric list to make it work. Anybody know if this is true?
On the Cleric list...

Searing Light, Spiritual Weapon are both no-save spells that hurt people directly.

If you let Spell Compendium into the list, there's the storm spells (Anarchic Storm, Axiomatic Storm, Holy Storm, and Unholy Storm). Then there's Balor Nimbus, Blistering Radiance, Bolt of Glory, Chill of the Grave (with the right domain - Deathbound), Darkfire, Death Throes (although not one you want to use regularly...), Demon Dirge, Devil Blight, Ice Axe, Infernal Wound, Light of [Lunia, Mercuria, Venya], Lion's Roar, Lucent Lance, Negative Energy Aura, and so on.

Spell Compendium will be your friend, I think. Do note that no-save spells that hurt people directly will either be fairly weak (AKA, unless they have Evasion, you're better off just using Flame Strike and letting them make the save), or require a touch attack.

ericgrau
2010-12-24, 01:41 PM
d20 spell filter (http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20spellfilter/) => core no save cleric necromancy spells:
Animate Dead
Astral Projection
Create Greater Undead
Create Undead
Deathwatch
Mark of Justice

You can use the same tool to find no save cleric spells in general, outside of necromancy. Or, better yet, this tool searches all splatbooks in addition to core: http://www.imarvintpa.com/dndlive/FindSpell.php

Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-24, 04:22 PM
I see...so as far as Necromancay gose for this kind of thing the cha build looks better then then the int one? I mean, while I like the RP of the smart cloistered cleric necromancer with crappy saves I don't think it will work as a "necromancer" since I am not sure there is enough no save necromancy offensive spells on the cleric list to actually be a necro cleric....unless you can be a "necromancer" without actually using necromancy as a direct form of offense?(I mean can a guy with legions of undead who casts elemental/light based spells as appose to neagtive energy/death based sells actually be considered a "necromancer" or is he just a normal cloistered cleric who happens to animate lots of undead in his spair time?)

The Necro-Gish/Cha build just FEELS more like a Necromancer type to me since he's not shooting holy light and fire out of his hands while his undead munch on enemies but rather hacking enemies to bits with a scythe. Hacking people is to bits with a scyth seems more "necromancer" in feel then beams of sunlight and elemental spells. Also, Cha sinergy is good for rebuke while int helps with skills but rebuke, while not as generally useful as lots of skills IS useful for a Necromancer....So as far as being a Necromancer that feels like a Necromancer build the Cha version takes the cake unless there are more no-save necromancy spells on the cleric list then I think...

Fouredged Sword
2010-12-24, 04:30 PM
Just fell drain thier saves into submission with some spells that hit with ranged touch attacks. Once thier saves suck, then you pull out the stops and send in the undead. Cast spells that deal negative energy damage and use them to buff/heal undead and hurt foes. Remember a negative level grants temp hp to undead.

Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-24, 04:38 PM
Thats assuming I have lots of time and oppertunity to replenish my spells and thus don't have to worry about blowing tons of spells just to get people's saves low enough to conpincate for sucky DCs. In most instances, thats not the case. That means either I have to rely on non-necro offensive spells or buff and go into melee. As I said before buff and go into melee(with a scyth or sickle.) gives me a more "necromancer" image then using holy light and the elements to kill enemies dose and the the "Necro-Gish" has a PrC talor made for it in the form of the Bone Knight. Further, Cha sinergy works with Rebuke and acoiated feats, many of which are Necromancy-related and Undead Leadership + a high cha is great for a Necromancer-general type.

Likewise I could go the lazy route and refuse to use melee or offensive spells. Instead focus solely on using my undead legions to deal damage while using negative energy purely as army heals and not giving a **** if the enemies make their saves. Invest in corpsecrafter feats and focus solely on animating and using minions to kill stuff.....though this is rather sub-optimal.

So for the build, assuming human, I would be a Cleric/Bone Knight with dynamic priests and Persist as my first level feats and my domains being War and Deathbound. Focus solely on Cha with minimal wisdom(10 or slightly higher but not too much higher) 3rd level feat is DMM Persist. The rest of the feats can be whatever so long as I get Undead Leadership and DMM: Fell Drain in there somewhere. The idea is to screw saves, be a melee beast via buffs/DMM Persist and lead a horde of undead from the front lines dawning bone armor and hacking people to bits while my undead legion causes devistation in my wake. No nice goody-goody light based spells or elemental attacks here. Just Necromancy and bloody melee slaughter.

Urpriest
2010-12-24, 10:02 PM
Sounds good. Of course DN is already a cha-based legion leader...heh, just joshing you. Your build is better for your concept than a DN would be by a long shot.

Incanur
2010-12-24, 10:51 PM
Take the Divine Magician ACF from Complete Mage and then add ray of enfeeblement, ray of fatigue, ray of exhaustion, enervation, waves of fatigue, waves of exhaustion, and so on to your list.

Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-24, 11:43 PM
Divine Magician actually sounds fun and would work very well with the cloistered cleric build since it gets three domains instead of two. Those no-save necro spells, plus the few that exsist on the cleric list(such as shld shivering touch and it's lesser brother) could actually grant me enough no-save necromancy to makee the cloistered cleric build viable, though I want other's opinions on it.

As for the melee/cha build I am not sure I want to lose the deathboud domain power and the war domain is too good for that build to lose.(better weapons and mostly no-save spells as appose to more undead and lots of save reliant spells..if I take that ACF deathboud would sadly be on the choping block.).

So, for the cloistered/int necro cleric build would divine magician make it any more optimal or is it still sub-par? I want to know all of your opinions on this as I stated above.(I mean dose loads and loads of skills really ballance out against having horrid saves?)