A metric crapton of undead minions

[ILM]

I am designing the BBEG for my campaign. He won't come into play before quite some time, but hey, better be prepared.

In a shocking burst of creativity, he's going to be a Necromancer. Capital N. The kind who swims in a sea of skeletons and zombies, most of which are laughably weak but visually impressive when all one hundred million of them advance toward the exhausted remaining defenders.

So this guy looks like an Unseelie Fey Something Something Dread Necromancer 16/ Dread Witch 4. ECL 20. To be honest I'd like to mix it up more in terms of classes, but the DN's Undead Mastery is keyed off class level instead of caster level, which while retarded is quite RAW and, as far as I can tell, un-errata'ed (do prove me wrong). And Dread Witch is a campaign flavour requirement, though not strong enough that it'd make me take the last level.

Unseelie Fey is me being facetious, to be used with a Ghostly Visage familiar because the party has a chargebarian who's likely to splatter my BBEG with excessive violence if I let him stay in melee too long - I should be able to work something out to avoid the brunt of the initial chargepouncepowerattack. Other than that, it's unlikely to be of serious use.

Now the dude needs to be old but not undead, so I'm aiming for Star Elf as the usual +2 Cha base race, though I wish I had a better option. I'm also looking at a lesser Aasimar, but I'll need to come up with some serious background to explain that, especially since extraplanar creatures are relatively rare in this world.

As a result, of course, my first feat is Tomb-Tainted Soul. However, I'm a bit stumped on the rest, and this is where you come in.

How do I create, animate, control or otherwise lead the most undead possible?

Point is, I'm the DM here. I could just give him a Scepter of Unstoppable Plot and declare that he commands a billion skeletons, but I'd like to stay within RAW - makes things less arbitrary. On his side though, he has the WBL of an ECL 20 creature, access to pretty much anything he needs, and time. Lots of time. And he knows where to find all the little hamlets full of pink-cheeked and doe-eyed commoners to toss Widened Fell Animate Fireballs like candy.

Alas, they nerfed General of Undeath in SC to hell. So, aside from the (2+Cha)*16 HD for Control Undead, (4+Cha)*16 HD for Animate Dead, and the unbelievably bargain-sized Rod of Undead Mastery, how can I get even more skellies to do my bidding?


Note: I know it is generally better to have a few powerful undead than armies of mooks. I'm just concentrating on total HD for the moment.

Edit: no Leadership-chaining for the moment, please.

[PirateLizard]

He's the General. Controlling undead -usually- requires the living, though I suppose he could craft some Death Knights or the like. If you want a MASSIVE army, you're likely going to have to break down and give him a lot of Evil Cleric underlings.
I'm pretty sure even at level 20 RAW isn't going to let you cheese a way to a hundred million undead without some sort of infinite wish/nesting exp bottle whatever have you brokenness. That's because RAW is intended for players, not DMs. As the DM your job is to challenge them, not necessarily follow the player's rules down to a T. You get to play +6 LA critters and let them die all day. That's generally the opposite of a PC's intent.

[Flickerdart]

Just daisy-chain Wights or other kinds of undead that can create spawn.

[silver spectre]

Having unlimited undead with published material is easy.

You need to change out ten of those class levels for ten levels of Pale Master (from Libris Mortis).

His deathless master's touch allows for creating simple undead under his control that do not count against his control limit.

Make his undead cohort a spawning undead and you'll have your troop commanders as well.


There is also the fact that he will then have many of the resistances of the undead without being undead himself.

[NeoSeraphi]

You can dip one level of cleric and take the Deathbound Domain (Spell Compendium). By RAW, it applies to all your separate caster levels, and lets you create undead up to 3 times your caster level instead of 2 times. It's up to you to decide how that stacks. (If nothing else, it would give you 12 extra HD from Dread Witch instead of 8, but if you make it stack, then good for you)

Also a better race is the Hellbred (Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells page 77). You get -2 Con, +2 Cha, as the star elf, but you also get Devil's Favor as a bonus feat, telepathy out to 100 ft, darkvision 120', see in deeper darkness as a devil, and +2 racial on Intimidate and Sense Motive checks. It's also much more flavorful and scary for your player's than an elf.

[Flickerdart]

Hellbred fluff is not that great for villains; they are, in theory, supposed to be repentant. Although I could definitely see a Hellbred trying to become Undead and stave off the fate that awaits him should he die again.

[NeoSeraphi]

Hellbred fluff is not that great for villains; they are, in theory, supposed to be repentant. Although I could definitely see a Hellbred trying to become Undead and stave off the fate that awaits him should he die again.

The fluff isn't good, but the monstrous appearance is certainly better for PCs than an elf.

[zanetheinsane]

If your Necromancer has multiclassed and gains the ability to pick up the level 1 spell "Locate City" (you all know where this is going...) from Races of Destiny (Divination, Brd 1, Rng 1, Wiz/Sor 1) he would use the ultra-forbidden Locate City Bomb: Wightocolopyse version. You can get this spell legally or handwave into his spell list through some kind of storyline trickery or magical item.

The basic break down is this:


Snowcasting (Frostburn): Spell gains [Cold] descriptor
Flash Frost Spell (PHBII): Cold spell does +2 points of damage per caster level to targets in the area
Fell Draining (Libris Mortis): Living foes damaged by your spell gain a negative level
Locate City (Races of Destiny)
RAW on Negative levels: "A character with negative levels at least equal to her current level, or drained below 1st level, is instantly slain. Depending on the creature that killed her, she may rise the next night as a monster of that kind. If not, she rises as a wight."
RAW on Wights: "Any humanoid slain by a wight becomes a wight in 1d4 rounds."


Anything with 1 HD or less becomes a wight in 12 to 24 hours. Anything with enough HD to not become a wight gets eaten by the hundreds or thousands of wights.

Now here's the tricky part. Wights are intelligent creatures (INT 11), meaning they are not mindless zombies ripe for the picking of your Necromancer of Doom. Now you have to come up with some way to either forcefully control a whole lotta wights or your Dread Necromancer better be a pretty convincing salesman.

CAVEAT: Please don't turn this thread into a huge raging argument about whether the "locate city bomb" actually works RAW, etc. This was just a fun little reminder of past threads. If you want to argue that, just look up and read any of the hundred threads on the subject where pretty much every possible argument for and against has already been made.

[gooddragon1]

Wall of Stone+Fabricate+Stone to Flesh+Animate Dead=As many skeletons and/or zombies as you can pay for (or make a use activated item and never pay the cost). Won't have any control over them but there you go.

This has the added benefit of being entirely in core.

If you're the DM you could rule that the baddie had a permanent version of command undead through an evil artifact with drawbacks the PC's wouldn't dare attempt to experience (cause the PC to "lose their mind to evil" and thus they won't have control over their character or be able to effectively use the undead army). NOTE: It's pointless to have an undead army if you aren't in control of it.

[Aneurin]

Naturally, Rod of Undead Mastery from Libris Mortis is a must, as it doubles the control cap - awesome for a DN, or any other undead minion master.

The simple way to get your infinite undead army? Max out bluff and intimidate, have a big stack of treasure somewhere, find some sucker low-level wizards or clerics or something to con into becoming liches, then Control Undead them and force them to build your army.

Ways to convert them;
Lie to them! (Bluff forever!)
Scare them into it! (Fear Aura and Intimidate)
Bribe them! (Treasure and a little bluff "No, it won't hurt at all, honest."

There you have loyal generals, who in turn could be persuaded to make and dominate more liches, repeat ad infinitum, or until you get sick of copying and pasting undead stats.

I'm not sure this is exactly what you want, but it's one of the more efficient ways of doing it, especially if you make sure your first command to the new liches is "Love and obey me above all else", so they won't be looking for ways to back stab you. Get them to give the same message to their underlings (although, make sure you get them to tell their underlings to love your necromancer, specifically), rinse and repeat. Your lich lieutenants don't even have to be a high level, just high enough to have some way of making new undead, and controlling intelligent undead.

[Coidzor]

Command Undead (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commandUndead.htm) plus leadership plus circle magic and chain spell metamagic means you can make a lot of really, really powerful undead and then have them count the same as a 1/4 HD cat skeleton.

I can't find the link right now, but someone used it to get something like 500,000 undead, or maybe it was 5,000,000...

This is a good place to start, (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=154158) IIRC, anyway.

You can definitely get some utility out of buffing your rebuking level (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872726/Revised_Necromancer_Handbook&post_num=2#338468934)and then rebuking creatures with rebuking so that you've got them as sub-commanders.

Last I recall, it was something like -4 to turn resistance from a friend playing the lyre that gives negative turn resistance, +3 from the general rod, another -4 to turn resistance(effectively +8 to level) rod, +1 from the right kind of holy symbol, +1 from a ruby dagger of wee jas, +2 for sacred dastana, +2 for sacred light armor, +2 for a sacred shield(or +4 for two sacred bucklers), +2 for sacred chahar-aina, and +1 for the feat Improved Turning, and +4 for the amulet.

This is without double-checking and completely off the cuff, mind you. I can't recall the thread where Keld Denar posted the usual suspects and I contributed a few that he was missing, but it's come up a few times around these boards... But it seems safe to say, that, conservatively, at least +24 to effective turning level should be easily secured, which when combined with levels will allow rebuking of most things, though you'd need a +42 to effective rebuking level to get everything before Epic.

[gooddragon1]

After reading the original post... yep go with the method I described (they'll likely be 1hd skeletons) and go to a plane of existence with flowing time where 1000 years passes there in a single round on the material plane. You create your own corpses and with the evil artifact (DM prerogative) the necromancer can create as many as he wants (sculpting the stone into statues and then s to f them into corpses which you then animate). For simplicity I'd make the item a rod that casts animate dead on a 30 ft radius and automatically casts command undead (with a permanent duration) on the undead it creates. The rod should be possessed by an evil entity which turns the user into a lich and controls them if they attempt to use it. The powers of the rod come from the entity and thus no player can use it and retain their control of their character and things that cannot be controlled cannot use the rod. Nor could the characters remove the entity without rendering the rod useless (which is what they should be aiming for).

[Diefje]

A skeleton is seldom garbed in anything more than the rotting remnants of any clothing or armor it was wearing when slain. A skeleton does only what it is ordered to do. It can draw no conclusions of its own and takes no initiative. Because of this limitation, its instructions must always be simple. A skeleton attacks until destroyed.


I don't think it knows wether it is being actively controlled or not. You could just give them a command, drop control, command another group. It will be tedious and you can't give them all orders on the fly, but I'm picturing a massive horde of tons of skeletons that just attack whatever they can find.

Also, I've been trying to find where I read this, but I thought I saw somewhere that uncontrolled mindless undead don't attack other undead (unless commanded to). If it's true you could just create a ton and let them rampage, while either being or masquerading as undead yourself.