Arcane prestige classes

[Silverhyren]

Hey there, so I'm about to introduce three main villains in my campaign, and i'm developing them right now.

All three are powerful wizards, one specialized in necromancy and raising several species of undead, one specialized in creating golems and other constructs, and one specialized in dealing with outsiders, mostly devils and demons.

I'm researching right now about good 3.5 prestige classes for them, and would be glad if anyone could suggest anything adequate for them.

[Aracor]

Malconvoker for the one dealing with demons and devils. Just re-fluff it as actually being evil instead of 'tricking' it.

[Piggy Knowles]

EDIT: Ninja'd on the Malconvoker. My posts are too long :P

I know this may sound like a silly question, but are they evil, or can they be neutral? If the latter is true, definitely go Malconvoker for the one specialized in outsiders. Lose a level of casting, but all your evil summonses are stronger, and you summon twice as many of them.

A Conjurer (Rapid Summoning variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#rapidSummoning))/Master Specialist/Malconvoker is about as good as you'll get for summoner builds.

Otherwise, Master Specialist is still a solid option, and Thaumaturgist works (you'll need Arcane Disciple or similar shenanigans to meet the requirements as a wizard) - the key features here are the free Extend Spell on all summonses, the contingent conjuration, and the cohort.

As an aside, I once ran a game where one of the antagonists was an evil summoner who focused on summoning and binding GOOD outsiders, and I created an evil version of the Malconvoker PrC to that effect. The game ended before the party had a full confrontation with her, but it was a fun concept.

[Flickerdart]

Nar Demonbinder is a pretty nice PrC for a wizard who binds and summons outsiders. Has a weird spell progression though, so you'll never get 9ths with it, making the class useless after level 16 when everyone's Gating. There's Fiendbinder, but...it's a half-casting progression class.

The easiest way to make Constructs is probably Effigy Master. Since these are NPCs, the cost prohibitive nature of Effigy Creatures isn't a concern, and it can put a nice spin on more traditional monsters (what do you mean, this zombie is a robot?).

There are sadly very few good arcane options for raising undead.

[DementedFellow]

If you are not married to the idea of wizards, an artificer would be great for the constructs themed one.

[Piggy Knowles]

Nar Demonbinder is a pretty nice PrC for a wizard anyone but a wizard who binds and summons outsiders.

Fixed that for you.

Nar Demonbinder is a nice way to add high level arcane spellcasting to a non-wizard, or an alternative to Sublime Chord for accelerated casting builds. But it will always lag behind compared to a straight Wizard (not just at high levels). It puts you a level ahead for fifth level spells, but you get so few castings of them that it barely counts, and there's no ability score synergy.

(That being said, Wizard/Nar Demonbinder/Ultimate Magus can work, and is pretty cool...)

[JoshuaZ]

Re: the necromancer. Unfortunately the official necromancy PrCs are somewhat lacking. The most obvious one for an arcane caster is the Pale Master from Libris Mortis.

[Psyren]

Pale Master is great for the Wizard and would give him a very distinct look.

Effigy Master for the robosmith is the obvious choice.

I advise against Malconvoker for the third guy unless you plan on having him betray his fellows and help the PCs as some point :smalltongue:

[Silverhyren]

Hey thanks for the tips!
The malconvoker looks like a good choice, though the wizards are already evil. But I could give it a twist indeed.

I'll take a good look at these you guys suggested, some of these I didn't know about, like the demonbinder.

About the comment about the zombie robot, I indeed had something like that in mind, since they are joining forces, we could see some kind of hybrid undead-golem project thing.

Ahh how could I forget the good old pale master, this one looks like a good option.
The true necromancer would be nice for the necromancer one but he's definetly not into clerical business.

[Piggy Knowles]

Nar Demonbinder is an old Faerun prestige class from Unapproachable East, which you can find here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030502a&page=2). The basic gist of it is that you give up your regular spellcasting, and instead get accelerated spellcasting from a very limited list (but you get 4th-8th level spells in 6 levels). You also get iron, brazen and silver signs, which you can use in calling diagrams for extra effects when binding.

Thinking about it...

Conjurer (Rapid Summoning Variant) 3/Master Specialist 4/Nar Demonbinder 1/Ultimate Magus 8/Archmage 4 would be a pretty awesome summoner...