necromancerz

[leegi0n]

What's the most powerful (in your experience) necromancer build/PrC, as it pertains to raising/creating undead, in mass quantity, and marching 'em at a group of folks? Best feats to buff 'em? I mean, I've built and played my share of necromancers, pale masters, liches, vamps, etc but have never felt like I truly had them "optimized".

thoughts?

[Emperor Tippy]

Anyone with Shapechange.

Turn into any of the undead with the Create Spawn (Su) that has a spawn that remains enslaved to it's creator. It lets you get around that nasty HD cap on undead.

[sonofzeal]

The easy answer is "Dread Necromancer 20". The class is from Heroes of Horror and is exactly what you'd expect. It even becomes a Lich over time - and can heal undead (or itself if you take Tomb Tainted Soul) for free on spare turns.

Clerics are more powerful in general, but mostly because their spell list has more non-necromancy. Necromancer Wizards kick a lot of buttocks, but focus more on the negative energy drains or death effects than on leading an army.

For what you describe though... Dread Necro all the way.

[leegi0n]

The easy answer is "Dread Necromancer 20". The class is from Heroes of Horror and is exactly what you'd expect. It even becomes a Lich over time - and can heal undead (or itself if you take Tomb Tainted Soul) for free on spare turns.

Clerics are more powerful in general, but mostly because their spell list has more non-necromancy. Necromancer Wizards kick a lot of buttocks, but focus more on the negative energy drains or death effects than on leading an army.

For what you describe though... Dread Necro all the way.


I was kind of thinking that. Should I use Necropolitan as a base class? What about optimized feat progression?

I saw on another post, "Animate Dread Warrior+ Spellstiched". What's that about?

[Calanon]

Anyone with Shapechange.

Turn into any of the undead with the Create Spawn (Su) that has a spawn that remains enslaved to it's creator. It lets you get around that nasty HD cap on undead.

This. Cheapest possible way to have an army of the dead without paying a single copper piece :smallamused: ...Wonder what happens after you change back? I'd assume they would remain loyal to you since you are technically the creator :smallconfused:

[123456789blaaa]

I was kind of thinking that. Should I use Necropolitan as a base class? What about optimized feat progression?

I saw on another post, "Animate Dread Warrior+ Spellstiched". What's that about?

there are 2 dread necromancer handbooks on the web. one by jameswilliamamogle (just type dread necromancer handbook on google) and one by shneekythelost which is one this very forum. i personally prefer the first but shneekys is better for minmaxing ( i recomend reading both).

animate dread warrior + spellstiched is a combo where there is a spell called animate dread warrior from unapprochable east which lets you raise undead with their class levels for an xp cost. spellstiched is a template you can put on undead which will let you put spell of up to 6th level on them. it turns them into spell like abilities which gets rid of the xp cost.

also there is a classic guide called K's Revised Necromancer Handbook which also has good necromancy advice.

[Coidzor]

This. Cheapest possible way to have an army of the dead without paying a single copper piece :smallamused: ...Wonder what happens after you change back? I'd assume they would remain loyal to you since you are technically the creator :smallconfused:

That's the idea, yeah.

[sonofzeal]

I was kind of thinking that. Should I use Necropolitan as a base class? What about optimized feat progression?
Necropolitan is neither a class nor a base anything. It's an acquired template. You lose a sizeable chunk of XP when you undergo the process, but it doesn't give you LA. Still, you need an actual base race to apply it to. Human is always popular.

As for feats... Tomb Tainted Soul is a given. After that, appropriate feats to buff up your minions ("Corpsestitcher" and the like) are probably your best bet.

[claypigeons]

Dread Necromancer is 8 levels long. The other 12 are actually there as a joke. The designers never actually expected anyone to take them. :smallamused::smalltongue:


Also... does the 8th level DN ability stack or overlap with Corpsecrafter?

[Coidzor]

Overlap, since they're enhancement bonuses, and those never stack. They grant some different things, so you get the different things they offer no problem.

[silver spectre]

Any necro type with ten levels of Pale Master allows for unlimited and cash free mindless undead (albiet medium or smaller size) with the deathless master touch.

The last necro type I played was a dread necro 9/pale master 10/archivist 2.
Played him from level 2 up (w/o tomb tainted soul) and had a blast. Used all of the corpse crafter feats and a couple of portable holes. I used the deathless master touch to rack up medium and small sized undead, and used his normal control limits with larger undead.

[leegi0n]

Thanks for the input. Armed as such, I proceed forth....

muahahahaha!

[Sception]

The bit about 8th level being the ideal dropping point for Dread Necro isn't quite accurate. If you don't stay in dread necro, the 8th level ability is far less good, since it replaces the normal pool for Animate Dead control limites, usually based on caster level, with a new one, entirely based on dread necro class level. If 8th level is your last level of dread necromancer, then your total animate dead control pool will stay fixed at that point and never improve again, regardless of how much your caster level increases (you will be able to create more undead at one time, just not control more hit dice total).

Even a single classed dread necro 8+ loses out on some tricks to increase pool size - like temporary buffs to caster level - since, again, their pool no longer is based on caster level at all. Doesn't matter for them, though, since their class level based pool is already so much bigger then everyone elses.

It is, in fact, so much bigger that an 8th level dread necro / 12th level anything else still has around the same max control pool as a 20th level cleric or wizard, provided the dread necro maxed out their cha along the way. So the ability doesn't really hurt you in the long run, and you still get the +2 hit points per hit die for undead you create (the only benefit that stacks with corpse crafter, if you take that feat), and you get an advanced learning at that level, which is always great, so its not necessarily a level you want to avoid taking. But if you're planning on dropping out, it isn't necessarily a reason to stay around any longer then you otherwise would have.

Honestly, there aren't many of those in Dread Necro at all. You already got the free out of combat healing (if you're undead or tomb tainted) at level one. The damage reduction quickly stops mattering. The negative energy burst and fear aura are based on class levels, so they eventually stop mattering if you jump ship and don't come back. The disease causing touch imitates a spell that's already on your list. Rebuking is nice, but also fades in importance over time, especially if you plan on PrCing out. The Familiar is great, but doesn't justify seven levels on its own, and the eigth level benefit we already discussed.

On the other hand, if you stay in class, or only leave to dip some other spellcasting PrC before coming back, then the rebuking and fear aura matter for a much longer time, undead mastery gets more and more awesome with time, and there is that sprinkling of advanced learning options that you would have missed out on. It's probably not enough to call a single classed dread necro optimized, but the decisions of if and when to PrC out are nowhere near as straight forward as K made them out to be all those years ago.


Anyway, if you're trying to maximize your undead army, there are two primary choices. The first is Dread Necro 20, and the second is Dread Necro 10, pale master 10, not necessarily in that order.

Dread Necro 20 has a much larger animate dead pool, and far better rebuking (making him more able to take advantage of unlimited chain spawning shenanigans, although the pale master can still make it work with some effort).

The Pale Master has earlier access to cheap minions, a bonus cohort (the value of which is highly DM dependent - a strict reading of undead leadship could limit you to a few specific, not particularly amazing options), and an unlimited zombie control pool through the Pale Master 10 punch.


There are a few tricks both can use that are worth mentioning:

Command Undead. This is a level 2 spell on the dread necro's spell list. It's also key to wizardly necromancers, and clerical necromancers who have access to either Eberron's Necromancy domain or the Divine Magician alternate class feature from Complete Mage should pick it up as well. Read the spell description. For intelligent undead it is a 'charm person' that lasts for days. That's cool enough, though somewhat DM dependent. For mindless undead? It's a days long dominate person with no save and no hit dice cap. What this means is that you don't use Animate Dead to control big, powerful skeletons and zombies like dragons and hydras. You create them, let them go uncontrolled, and cast command undead on them. Instant, complete control that lasts for days. Basically, you trade second or higher level spell slots for complete control of (caster level) mindless undead per slot given up, with no hit die limit.

Let's say you're a 10th level dread necro who dedicates two second level spell slots per day to command undead. That gives you complete control of 20 mindless undead. You are capable of creating 20 hit dice skeletons and zombies yourself at this point, so that's conceivably 400 additional hit dice of undead under your control, in the form of massive, seige breaking monstrosities. Of course, access to ideal corpses and onyx to animate them is an issue.

So basically, you don't use your Animate Dead pool for giant monsters at all. You use it for HD efficient utility creatures that you grant intelligence to with Awaken Undead - remember, awakened undead can't be completely controlled via Command Undead, only charmed, and even then they get a save.

Leadership and Undead Leadership. The latter is sort of useful, far more so if your DM lets you substitute some sort of undead with class levels in place of the given cohort list, but it's the former, regular old leadership that is the biggest boon. Why? First of all, your cohort is automatically a PC type dude, you don't have to beg favors of your DM, so you can have a cleric or wizard - either will add considerable versatility to your character. Their spell access frees up advanced learning slots (you don't need to know revive undead or awaken undead if your cohort does), they have tricks that don't come native to you (desecrate, assorted wizard tricks), they have their own animate dead pools. They can dedicate their own 2nd level spell slots to more command undead increasing your collection of skeletal seige engines. They can also make items for you, whether it's helping spell-stitch someone, or crafting a wand of undead leutennant (Spell Compendium).

But then there's the mortal followers, far more useful then their mindless, class-level-less undead counterparts. You're maxed cha. Your leadership score is hella-biznasty. Look at that chart of followers. Count up how many level 3+ followers you have. If the level three followers are sorcerers or (Necromancy domain / divine magician) clerics, how many second level spell slots to they have? If the level 4+ followers are wizards / necromantic clerics / sorcerers / dread necromancers, how many level 2+ spell slots do they have? The answer is a lot.

And these guys will use all of their 2+ level spell slots casting Command Undead on excess giant undead monstrosities you create. You will quickly find your total army balooning out into the thousands of hit dice, though most of that will of course be collected into 15+ hit die monstrosities (I recommend skeletal giants and hydras and zombie dragons, using the zombie dragon rules from Draconomicon, as ideal seige engine undead).

Now, those low level followers to present something of a weakness - if they get killed, their seige undead go uncontrolled (though, frankly, in the middle of a battle their default programming of 'slay living' should generally be in your favor), but if you want to avoid this risk, and your DM doesn't consider 'follow that guy's orders' to be a simple command (which they shouldn't) then before battle, have your cohort pass around that wand of Undead Leutennant you had them craft, and have all your little followers use them to hand control over to stronger and tougher intelligent undead squad commanders.

spawning undeadOh, hey, look, spawning undead. You control them with your rebuke pool, they create spawn, and they control those spawn. The spawn they make create and control more spawn in an endless chain of indirect control. Just remember that the control is indirect, so you want to keep them happy, or you might find the fourth or fifth or sixth generation undead finding ways to undermine you. This is an old trick, but a good one if you're going for an army of the dead to conquer the world. The usual suspects are wights (which you can create by killing things with negative levels) and shadows (which you can create by summoning a shadow and then rebuking the permanent spawn it creates when it kills someone). There are other good choices too, but they're harder to get access to, mostly relying on aforementioned Shapechange shenanigans if you don't happen to bump into them, but I wouldn't worry about it.

Shadows, being incorporeal, are especially nasty. a regiment of shadows can travel unseen through solid ground, then rise up under an enemy bettalion en masse. Most common soldiers don't even have any means of hurting them.

Obtaining BodiesGetting bodies can be hard. You'll want to find a civilization of Giants to destroy, or a dragon graveyard, and good luck with that. So how do you get the bodies for the perfect undead? Polymorph Any Object. It's a highish level spell, so we're talking pretty late game, here, but your wizard cohort will have it, or your divine magician cleric cohort. If neither of them have it, then Nerull, god of the undead, would be happy to give it to you directly in the form of Arcane Devotee (trickery domain).

Turning a corpse into another corpse is permanent (same or lower int, similar under assorted categories, etc. So that dead lizard there? Now it's a dead ancient gold dragon. Proceed to zombify. Just don't rely on this for your whole army, as it is vulnerable to dispels & disjunctions

Cheap Undead IWith control pools as ridiculous as you can get with Command Undead and Leadership, you're going to want ways to make undead cheaper. The easiest is a two level dip in Pale Master, even if you intend to mostly just stay in Dread Necromancer for your whole career. This comes with a lost caster level, though, so its not a perfect solution, just the easiest. If you dip pale master and you're not planning on going for the whole PrC, then take another spellcasting PrC level before going back to Dread Necro in order to bump your advanced learnings up a spell level (I recommend a level of Divine Oracle, which you should qualify for if you qualify for Pale Master).

Obviously the Dread Necro 10 / Pale Master 10 doesn't need to worry about cheap undead, since you'll already have the second level of pale master.

Cheap Undead IIWhat's that? You don't want to lose a spell level? And you don't like Pale Master because it's mostly kinda baddish, particularly if you're already undead and don't care much about ASF anyway?

Well... There's Lord/Lady of the Dead (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x) - four levels of that gets you spell-like Animate Dead without lost caster levels, and a bunch of turn resistance for you and your minions to boot. But i'm not even sure that it's 3.5 and not 3.0 material, so...

cheap undead IIIThen there's the feat Fell Animate from Libris Mortis. How it works is you torture some creature till its almost dead, then cast a fell animating Kelgore's Grave Mist or the like to net yourself a zombie for free, under the usual Animate Dead control pool. Down side? It only makes zombies, and it only animates things you kill with a spell, when you'll want to be able to animate corpses of things long dead, or that were never really alive to begin with.

cheap undead IVThen there's spell-stitching, from the Complete Arcane monster template. Animate dead as a spell like ability, meaning no cost at all! Sweet! Down side? The target needs to have a wis score of 15 or higher, and you probably don't want to invest in that much wisdom yourself. The caster needs to spend 500xp times the targets wisdom score (not modifier!), meaning the minimum xp cost is 7,500, which is just an awful lot, but is still somewhat affordable by around 12th level.

Honestly, if you're spell stitching, then you're going to want that Dread Warrior spell from unapproachable east while you're at it, which will require a 19 wisdom target (way more then you'll want on yourself), and 9,500 xp, ouch! And if you're not having yourself spellstitched, then all your awesome animation bonuses (undead mastery, corpsecrafter feats, etc) won't apply! Still, spell stitching is pretty awesome, and you're going to want to have one or two minions/cohorts/yourself/whatever spellstitched for revive undead, might as well get some Animate Dead in there while you're at it.

Cheap Undead V, or 'in the end, it doesn't even matter'Phew! That's a lot of effort! It's a good thing it matters. OR DOES IT?!? Well, yes, it does, if you want to animate a bunch of undead when you're 8th or 12th or 16th level. But once you can cast 9th level spells? It doesn't even matter anymore. So if you're aren't bothering with world dominating armies before near-epic levels, then you don't even need to care. Why?

Say hello to Plague of Undead, in particular the updated version in Spell Compendium that explicitly uses the Animate Dead control pool, so casting it doesn't kill your expanded control bonuses. This is a 9th level spell that's already on the Dread Necro's spell list. It's just like Animate Dead, only it casts faster, animates more creatures in a single go, gives them max HP per HD, which is massive for undead, and costs 100 GP PER CASTING. That's right, per cast, not per HD created. By the time you can cast 9th level spells, that's so cheap it might as well be free, and the undead you get are way better. So whatever army you have? Slag 'em. Just, throw them out and start over with your new bigger, better, discount army.

Corpse CraftingThe corpsecrafter feat chain has some nice elements. The entry feat mostly doesn't stack with Undead Mastery, but at least you get the 2 extra HP per HD, which isn't terrible. The cold damage is ok, nimble bones is ok. The real winner is Destruction retribution - when your undead die, they explode with negative energy, damaging nearby living targets while healing other undead!

My favorite use? Find swarm of fine/tiny/diminutive creatures. Cast fell animating Kelgore's Grave Mist. let individual zombies go uncontrolled, and pack them into cages/crates/boxes. Stuff these packages of undead rats into the rib cages of your seige undead. You should be able to fit 20 to 120 such creatures in each of your seige undead this way. This severs as a buffer against turning - the swarms of zombies in each massive undead will absorb a turn attempt or two each, and as they do they'll pop, healing their host and harming nearby living creatures. Of course, when the big guys pop, its a much more impressive detonation. Having independent undead swarms specifically go after divine casters to drown them in negative energy damage when they rebuke them is also a good tactic.

BardsWith the requiem feat can bust out soulful tunes that buff your other undead. The hard part is coming accross bards with requiem to begin with. It isn't typically worth a cohort slot. A few low level bardic followers with requiem can be worthwhile, I suppose. You can animate bards as dread warriors (thought he cha penalty hurts them), but if they don't already have the Requiem feat, they'll never gain it, since Dread Warriors stop advancing. This might be something you'd have to rely on other PCs or perhaps hired help for.



That's the easy stuff off the top of my head. The big things, of course, are leadership and Command Undead, along with some trick for making undead on the cheap.

[leegi0n]

The bit about 8th level being the ideal dropping point for Dread Necro isn't quite accurate. If you don't stay in dread necro, the 8th level ability is far less good, since it replaces the normal pool for Animate Dead control limites, usually based on caster level, with a new one, entirely based on dread necro class level. If 8th level is your last level of dread necromancer, then your total animate dead control pool will stay fixed at that point and never improve again, regardless of how much your caster level increases (you will be able to create more undead at one time, just not control more hit dice total).

Even a single classed dread necro 8+ loses out on some tricks to increase pool size - like temporary buffs to caster level - since, again, their pool no longer is based on caster level at all. Doesn't matter for them, though, since their class level based pool is already so much bigger then everyone elses.

It is, in fact, so much bigger that an 8th level dread necro / 12th level anything else still has around the same max control pool as a 20th level cleric or wizard, provided the dread necro maxed out their cha along the way. So the ability doesn't really hurt you in the long run, and you still get the +2 hit points per hit die for undead you create (the only benefit that stacks with corpse crafter, if you take that feat), and you get an advanced learning at that level, which is always great, so its not necessarily a level you want to avoid taking. But if you're planning on dropping out, it isn't necessarily a reason to stay around any longer then you otherwise would have.

Honestly, there aren't many of those in Dread Necro at all. You already got the free out of combat healing (if you're undead or tomb tainted) at level one. The damage reduction quickly stops mattering. The negative energy burst and fear aura are based on class levels, so they eventually stop mattering if you jump ship and don't come back. The disease causing touch imitates a spell that's already on your list. Rebuking is nice, but also fades in importance over time, especially if you plan on PrCing out. The Familiar is great, but doesn't justify seven levels on its own, and the eigth level benefit we already discussed.

On the other hand, if you stay in class, or only leave to dip some other spellcasting PrC before coming back, then the rebuking and fear aura matter for a much longer time, undead mastery gets more and more awesome with time, and there is that sprinkling of advanced learning options that you would have missed out on. It's probably not enough to call a single classed dread necro optimized, but the decisions of if and when to PrC out are nowhere near as straight forward as K made them out to be all those years ago.


Anyway, if you're trying to maximize your undead army, there are two primary choices. The first is Dread Necro 20, and the second is Dread Necro 10, pale master 10, not necessarily in that order.

Dread Necro 20 has a much larger animate dead pool, and far better rebuking (making him more able to take advantage of unlimited chain spawning shenanigans, although the pale master can still make it work with some effort).

The Pale Master has earlier access to cheap minions, a bonus cohort (the value of which is highly DM dependent - a strict reading of undead leadship could limit you to a few specific, not particularly amazing options), and an unlimited zombie control pool through the Pale Master 10 punch.


There are a few tricks both can use that are worth mentioning:

Command Undead. This is a level 2 spell on the dread necro's spell list. It's also key to wizardly necromancers, and clerical necromancers who have access to either Eberron's Necromancy domain or the Divine Magician alternate class feature from Complete Mage should pick it up as well. Read the spell description. For intelligent undead it is a 'charm person' that lasts for days. That's cool enough, though somewhat DM dependent. For mindless undead? It's a days long dominate person with no save and no hit dice cap. What this means is that you don't use Animate Dead to control big, powerful skeletons and zombies like dragons and hydras. You create them, let them go uncontrolled, and cast command undead on them. Instant, complete control that lasts for days. Basically, you trade second or higher level spell slots for complete control of (caster level) mindless undead per slot given up, with no hit die limit.

Let's say you're a 10th level dread necro who dedicates two second level spell slots per day to command undead. That gives you complete control of 20 mindless undead. You are capable of creating 20 hit dice skeletons and zombies yourself at this point, so that's conceivably 400 additional hit dice of undead under your control, in the form of massive, seige breaking monstrosities. Of course, access to ideal corpses and onyx to animate them is an issue.

So basically, you don't use your Animate Dead pool for giant monsters at all. You use it for HD efficient utility creatures that you grant intelligence to with Awaken Undead - remember, awakened undead can't be completely controlled via Command Undead, only charmed, and even then they get a save.

Leadership and Undead Leadership. The latter is sort of useful, far more so if your DM lets you substitute some sort of undead with class levels in place of the given cohort list, but it's the former, regular old leadership that is the biggest boon. Why? First of all, your cohort is automatically a PC type dude, you don't have to beg favors of your DM, so you can have a cleric or wizard - either will add considerable versatility to your character. Their spell access frees up advanced learning slots (you don't need to know revive undead or awaken undead if your cohort does), they have tricks that don't come native to you (desecrate, assorted wizard tricks), they have their own animate dead pools. They can dedicate their own 2nd level spell slots to more command undead increasing your collection of skeletal seige engines. They can also make items for you, whether it's helping spell-stitch someone, or crafting a wand of undead leutennant (Spell Compendium).

But then there's the mortal followers, far more useful then their mindless, class-level-less undead counterparts. You're maxed cha. Your leadership score is hella-biznasty. Look at that chart of followers. Count up how many level 3+ followers you have. If the level three followers are sorcerers or (Necromancy domain / divine magician) clerics, how many second level spell slots to they have? If the level 4+ followers are wizards / necromantic clerics / sorcerers / dread necromancers, how many level 2+ spell slots do they have? The answer is a lot.

And these guys will use all of their 2+ level spell slots casting Command Undead on excess giant undead monstrosities you create. You will quickly find your total army balooning out into the thousands of hit dice, though most of that will of course be collected into 15+ hit die monstrosities (I recommend skeletal giants and hydras and zombie dragons, using the zombie dragon rules from Draconomicon, as ideal seige engine undead).

Now, those low level followers to present something of a weakness - if they get killed, their seige undead go uncontrolled (though, frankly, in the middle of a battle their default programming of 'slay living' should generally be in your favor), but if you want to avoid this risk, and your DM doesn't consider 'follow that guy's orders' to be a simple command (which they shouldn't) then before battle, have your cohort pass around that wand of Undead Leutennant you had them craft, and have all your little followers use them to hand control over to stronger and tougher intelligent undead squad commanders.

spawning undeadOh, hey, look, spawning undead. You control them with your rebuke pool, they create spawn, and they control those spawn. The spawn they make create and control more spawn in an endless chain of indirect control. Just remember that the control is indirect, so you want to keep them happy, or you might find the fourth or fifth or sixth generation undead finding ways to undermine you. This is an old trick, but a good one if you're going for an army of the dead to conquer the world. The usual suspects are wights (which you can create by killing things with negative levels) and shadows (which you can create by summoning a shadow and then rebuking the permanent spawn it creates when it kills someone). There are other good choices too, but they're harder to get access to, mostly relying on aforementioned Shapechange shenanigans if you don't happen to bump into them, but I wouldn't worry about it.

Shadows, being incorporeal, are especially nasty. a regiment of shadows can travel unseen through solid ground, then rise up under an enemy bettalion en masse. Most common soldiers don't even have any means of hurting them.

Obtaining BodiesGetting bodies can be hard. You'll want to find a civilization of Giants to destroy, or a dragon graveyard, and good luck with that. So how do you get the bodies for the perfect undead? Polymorph Any Object. It's a highish level spell, so we're talking pretty late game, here, but your wizard cohort will have it, or your divine magician cleric cohort. If neither of them have it, then Nerull, god of the undead, would be happy to give it to you directly in the form of Arcane Devotee (trickery domain).

Turning a corpse into another corpse is permanent (same or lower int, similar under assorted categories, etc. So that dead lizard there? Now it's a dead ancient gold dragon. Proceed to zombify. Just don't rely on this for your whole army, as it is vulnerable to dispels & disjunctions

Cheap Undead IWith control pools as ridiculous as you can get with Command Undead and Leadership, you're going to want ways to make undead cheaper. The easiest is a two level dip in Pale Master, even if you intend to mostly just stay in Dread Necromancer for your whole career. This comes with a lost caster level, though, so its not a perfect solution, just the easiest. If you dip pale master and you're not planning on going for the whole PrC, then take another spellcasting PrC level before going back to Dread Necro in order to bump your advanced learnings up a spell level (I recommend a level of Divine Oracle, which you should qualify for if you qualify for Pale Master).

Obviously the Dread Necro 10 / Pale Master 10 doesn't need to worry about cheap undead, since you'll already have the second level of pale master.

Cheap Undead IIWhat's that? You don't want to lose a spell level? And you don't like Pale Master because it's mostly kinda baddish, particularly if you're already undead and don't care much about ASF anyway?

Well... There's Lord/Lady of the Dead (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x) - four levels of that gets you spell-like Animate Dead without lost caster levels, and a bunch of turn resistance for you and your minions to boot. But i'm not even sure that it's 3.5 and not 3.0 material, so...

cheap undead IIIThen there's the feat Fell Animate from Libris Mortis. How it works is you torture some creature till its almost dead, then cast a fell animating Kelgore's Grave Mist or the like to net yourself a zombie for free, under the usual Animate Dead control pool. Down side? It only makes zombies, and it only animates things you kill with a spell, when you'll want to be able to animate corpses of things long dead, or that were never really alive to begin with.

cheap undead IVThen there's spell-stitching, from the Complete Arcane monster template. Animate dead as a spell like ability, meaning no cost at all! Sweet! Down side? The target needs to have a wis score of 15 or higher, and you probably don't want to invest in that much wisdom yourself. The caster needs to spend 500xp times the targets wisdom score (not modifier!), meaning the minimum xp cost is 7,500, which is just an awful lot, but is still somewhat affordable by around 12th level.

Honestly, if you're spell stitching, then you're going to want that Dread Warrior spell from unapproachable east while you're at it, which will require a 19 wisdom target (way more then you'll want on yourself), and 9,500 xp, ouch! And if you're not having yourself spellstitched, then all your awesome animation bonuses (undead mastery, corpsecrafter feats, etc) won't apply! Still, spell stitching is pretty awesome, and you're going to want to have one or two minions/cohorts/yourself/whatever spellstitched for revive undead, might as well get some Animate Dead in there while you're at it.

Cheap Undead V, or 'in the end, it doesn't even matter'Phew! That's a lot of effort! It's a good thing it matters. OR DOES IT?!? Well, yes, it does, if you want to animate a bunch of undead when you're 8th or 12th or 16th level. But once you can cast 9th level spells? It doesn't even matter anymore. So if you're aren't bothering with world dominating armies before near-epic levels, then you don't even need to care. Why?

Say hello to Plague of Undead, in particular the updated version in Spell Compendium that explicitly uses the Animate Dead control pool, so casting it doesn't kill your expanded control bonuses. This is a 9th level spell that's already on the Dread Necro's spell list. It's just like Animate Dead, only it casts faster, animates more creatures in a single go, gives them max HP per HD, which is massive for undead, and costs 100 GP PER CASTING. That's right, per cast, not per HD created. By the time you can cast 9th level spells, that's so cheap it might as well be free, and the undead you get are way better. So whatever army you have? Slag 'em. Just, throw them out and start over with your new bigger, better, discount army.

Corpse CraftingThe corpsecrafter feat chain has some nice elements. The entry feat mostly doesn't stack with Undead Mastery, but at least you get the 2 extra HP per HD, which isn't terrible. The cold damage is ok, nimble bones is ok. The real winner is Destruction retribution - when your undead die, they explode with negative energy, damaging nearby living targets while healing other undead!

My favorite use? Find swarm of fine/tiny/diminutive creatures. Cast fell animating Kelgore's Grave Mist. let individual zombies go uncontrolled, and pack them into cages/crates/boxes. Stuff these packages of undead rats into the rib cages of your seige undead. You should be able to fit 20 to 120 such creatures in each of your seige undead this way. This severs as a buffer against turning - the swarms of zombies in each massive undead will absorb a turn attempt or two each, and as they do they'll pop, healing their host and harming nearby living creatures. Of course, when the big guys pop, its a much more impressive detonation. Having independent undead swarms specifically go after divine casters to drown them in negative energy damage when they rebuke them is also a good tactic.

BardsWith the requiem feat can bust out soulful tunes that buff your other undead. The hard part is coming accross bards with requiem to begin with. It isn't typically worth a cohort slot. A few low level bardic followers with requiem can be worthwhile, I suppose. You can animate bards as dread warriors (thought he cha penalty hurts them), but if they don't already have the Requiem feat, they'll never gain it, since Dread Warriors stop advancing. This might be something you'd have to rely on other PCs or perhaps hired help for.



That's the easy stuff off the top of my head. The big things, of course, are leadership and Command Undead, along with some trick for making undead on the cheap.



WOW. Thanks for spending all this time on this. I'm gonna go DN10/PM10, I believe. I really appreciate your advice.

[JaronK]

What's the most powerful (in your experience) necromancer build/PrC, as it pertains to raising/creating undead, in mass quantity, and marching 'em at a group of folks? Best feats to buff 'em? I mean, I've built and played my share of necromancers, pale masters, liches, vamps, etc but have never felt like I truly had them "optimized".

thoughts?

Dwarf Necromancer (UA Variant) 3/Binder 1/Anima Mage 10/Runesmith 5/Tainted Sorcerer 1.

Get Animate Dread Warrior and Awaken Undead spell like abilities, so you don't worry about exp costs. Animate Dead and other gp draining undead raising spells now just do some hitpoint damage to you... which you heal in a few rounds. Also you can summon up all kinds of crazy stuff, and your save DCs are unbeatable. And you can use Planar Binding (DO NOT BAN CONJURATION) to get nice potential undead forms. Persist area buffs that help your undead too. You're unstoppable.

JaronK

[Coidzor]

Dwarf Necromancer (UA Variant) 3/Binder 1/Anima Mage 10/Runesmith 5/Tainted Sorcerer 1.

Get Animate Dread Warrior and Awaken Undead spell like abilities, so you don't worry about exp costs. Animate Dead and other gp draining undead raising spells now just do some hitpoint damage to you... which you heal in a few rounds. Also you can summon up all kinds of crazy stuff, and your save DCs are unbeatable. And you can use Planar Binding (DO NOT BAN CONJURATION) to get nice potential undead forms. Persist area buffs that help your undead too. You're unstoppable.

JaronK

Oh? Which part turns gp into hp damage?

[kulosle]

i was under the impression that pale master was generally avoided due to the completely dead first level. Is it eventually worth it? or is it only worth it if you are only concerned with controlling massive numbers of undead?

[JaronK]

Tainted Sorcerer. You take a small amount of HP damage instead of material component costs, because you use your blood. With Zceryll or Buer bound, you then heal that damage right back up.

JaronK

[Coidzor]

i was under the impression that pale master was generally avoided due to the completely dead first level. Is it eventually worth it? or is it only worth it if you are only concerned with controlling massive numbers of undead?

That's really its only draw. Arbitrarily large numbers of zombies, but only if you punch them to death.

Which isn't too bad, if you've got a lot of dragons or hydras your minions can help incapacitate or you can get your grubby mitts on a template to make other zombies be less bad.

[silver spectre]

i was under the impression that pale master was generally avoided due to the completely dead first level. Is it eventually worth it? or is it only worth it if you are only concerned with controlling massive numbers of undead?

I think it depends largely on the campaign.

The pale master eventually grants a large number of immunities that don't require carrying a ton of equipment, expending spells, or spending cash on items (freeing it up for other fun stuff).

If those things aren't part of the campaign world then it would just be a style thing. I've played several PMs (even one that didn't have a boat load of undead) and had a lot of fun with them.

[Little Brother]

Any necro type with ten levels of Pale Master allows for unlimited and cash free mindless undead (albiet medium or smaller size) with the deathless master touch.

The last necro type I played was a dread necro 9/pale master 10/archivist 2.
Played him from level 2 up (w/o tomb tainted soul) and had a blast. Used all of the corpse crafter feats and a couple of portable holes. I used the deathless master touch to rack up medium and small sized undead, and used his normal control limits with larger undead.Pale Master is SO bad. It's a trap, like an Admiral Ackbar-sized one. Avoid like the plague.

But the answer to what gives you the most depends on the way you want to get the most. If you like the image of the cloaked hunchbacked figure in the cemetery, raising the ravening hordes out of the ground, you want the most DN levels you can afford. If you want to just have bajillions, you don't care how, Wizard gets you both Planar Binding and Shapechange, for all those tasty Outsider zombies and such, and still get all those spawn-undead tricks, though you can go Cloistered Cleric with the Rune and Shapechange Domains, and get the same things, but on a friendlier chassis.

You can combine this with Southern Magician for JaronK's trick, which gets you Zceryll for tastiness, and better effect, IMO, as you can get more mileage with DMM Persist through Anima Mage. Dynamic Priest gives you effectively Charisma SAD(You probably won't care about the DC in this build.)

[Sception]

Pale master is free animate dead earlier and easier then pretty much anybody else does it (apart from fell animate, which can't make skeletons, and can't animate things you didn't kill), an undead cohort even in campaigns where leadership isn't allowed (and if your DM lets you substitute some other class leveled undead in place of the usual cohort lineup from undead leadership then it's overwhelmingly worth it, provided you're going to get to PM9), and an unlimited zombie control pool, which isn't that easy to come by. The rest of its features don't matter.

But what you get is a guy who can cast a whole lot of animate dead for cheap well before other tricks, like spell stitching, are viable. Eventually, yes, spell stitching becomes available, and shortly after that plague of undead means the whole thing doesn't matter, but at that point the Pale Master is bringing in a completely other character to supplement its abilities, and then is bringing an arbitrarily large zombie pool.

Ideal? No, of course not, lost caster levels are never ideal. But if the counter proposal is Tainted Scholar then, you know what? I'll play the build that a sane human being would actually allow in their game. Suggesting Tainted Scholar is like suggesting Planar Shepherd. It's pointless, imo.

I wouldn't go pale master if the leadership feats are allowed to begin with, and I wouldn't go pale master for more then a couple levels if the DM was going to restrict the undead cohort to the monsters listed in the book. At least, not for more then maybe a couple levels, and even then, only in a mass combat game (to make the cheap animation worthwhile) that mostly existed in the levels 10 to 14 range.


But the OP's already talking about mass combat, so...


I mean, OP, what level are you talking about, here?

[Little Brother]

Pale master is free animate dead earlier and easier then pretty much anybody else does it (apart from fell animate, which can't make skeletons, and can't animate things you didn't kill), an undead cohort even in campaigns where leadership isn't allowed (and if your DM lets you substitute some other class leveled undead in place of the usual cohort lineup from undead leadership then it's overwhelmingly worth it, provided you're going to get to PM9), and an unlimited zombie control pool, which isn't that easy to come by. The rest of its features don't matter.

But what you get is a guy who can cast a whole lot of animate dead for cheap well before other tricks, like spell stitching, are viable. Eventually, yes, spell stitching becomes available, and shortly after that plague of undead means the whole thing doesn't matter, but at that point the Pale Master is bringing in a completely other character to supplement its abilities, and then is bringing an arbitrarily large zombie pool.

Ideal? No, of course not, lost caster levels are never ideal. But if the counter proposal is Tainted Scholar then, you know what? I'll play the build that a sane human being would actually allow in their game. Suggesting Tainted Scholar is like suggesting Planar Shepherd. It's pointless, imo.

I wouldn't go pale master if the leadership feats are allowed to begin with, and I wouldn't go pale master for more then a couple levels if the DM was going to restrict the undead cohort to the monsters listed in the book. At least, not for more then maybe a couple levels, and even then, only in a mass combat game (to make the cheap animation worthwhile) that mostly existed in the levels 10 to 14 range.


But the OP's already talking about mass combat, so...


I mean, OP, what level are you talking about, here?The issue is that your zombies can't match a group of Ethereal Undead, a couple of Outsider zombies will ruin your day, destroy your horde, your unlimited number of zombies is strictly inferior to having an unlimited horde of a good undead. Mass combat is done easier by the Cleric I mentioned.

And, as I said, I can guarantee that the CC 9/Binder 1/Anima Mage 10(Not in that order, obviously) will outperform a Dread Necro X/Pale Master Y. I can animate dead, yes it costs me, but Outsiders are worth it. Plus, I can do massive buffs all day long. You might have a hypothetically larger cap, but practically, both of the caps are arbitrarily high, and the cleric gets more stupid tricks, stronger undead, and is just better. Plus, Zceryll will ruin your day, too. And the Cohort is "Meh" when you can just take Undead Leadership and get something with, say, a coupla bard levels.

[Sception]

As I said, I wouldn't bother with Pale Master (or at least, wouldn't bother taking it all the way), if you can just take a feat for its best feature, but frequently the leadership feats aren't allowed.

As for outsiders, dread necros have planar binding. use it to summon outsiders into death traps, then animate, you're good to go. The dread necro already has outsider undead. The pale master has an unlimited pool of outsider zombies. I prefer to just use Polymorph Any Object to make desired corpses, outsider or otherwise.



All that said, a cleric is going to be a stronger character overall, sure, as will a wizard. They're T1, the dread necro's T3. That's just how that works, I didn't think that was a question in the first place. I admit to being less familiar with what the binder / anima mage brings to the equation, though, nor do I know what "Zceryll" is.

But army wise? As a general rule, I prefer the Dread Necro 20 for army animation purposes. Over Pale master mixes, too, honestly, But I do think the latter's a legitimate option, if that's what you're trying to do. I would hardly call it a 'trap'. If undead army animation's your biz, then trading a level of casting progression for spell-like animate dead, an undead cohort (particularly if you don't otherwise have cohort access), and an unlimited zombie control pool isn't a trap choice. At worst its a wash.

EDIT Ah, google, thank you. Yeah, Zceryll is crazy awesome for making your character good, and certainly seems like a nice way to supplement your army in combat. But then again, the monsters summoned aren't undead, and aren't permanent, so to me that's falling into 'making the character better in general, rather then making the character better at the goal of undead army making'.

[JaronK]

Zceryll and binding in general is to pay for the free metamagics and material component blood cost of Tainted Sorcerer. It all sorta goes together. But yes, lord knows you're not JUST a necromancer.

JaronK

[ShneekeyTheLost]

If you go Necropolitian, then you have several advantages:

1) No need for Tomb Tainted feat
2) You can get YOURSELF spell-stitched with things like Animate Dread Warrior and Animate Dead. This means, because you're doing it, they all get your bonuses. Plus bypassing costs involved, and not having a fragile chain of command wherein loss of your Lieutenant equates loss of a good quarter or more of your army.
3) No level adjustment, ride the xp curl just like item crafters do to get your xp back.

If you are a Necropolitian with Animate Dead Spellstitched into you, then you have zero reason to go Pale Master, what with Command Undead and your insanely huge control cap.

[Sception]

Unfortunately, if you're a necropolitan spellstiched with animate dead, you've also got at least 15 wisdom, which is an aweful expensive investment if your casting is int or cha based.

Not that it isn't a good way to go.


OP: I do want to make it clear that Lil' Bro knows way more then me about charop. I'm trying to present some decent options for mass undead animation, particularly within a 'practical optimization' context (which would negate the use of tainted scholar every bit as much as it would something like Planar Shepherd; though anima mage in general looks like a pretty cool option, so long as Zceryll is available to you); but in terms of making an effective character in general, his advice is certainly worth more then mine.

Honestly, same applies to JK, but, again dude? Tainted Sorcerer? That's a nuklear option. No game should allow it, and no one should play it in a game where the DM didn't know any better.

[kulosle]

yeah starting out as a necropolitan spell stitched whatever with animate warrior as a spell like ability lets you start off right out of the gate being overwhelming. not everyone allows this though. especially because spell stitched doesn't have a listed LA.

[Infernalbargain]

Unfortunately, if you're a necropolitan spellstiched with animate dead, you've also got at least 15 wisdom, which is an aweful expensive investment if your casting is int or cha based.


Just start with a base 11/12 wis and then use a +4 item. That's 16k which is equivalent to 640 HD which assuming mild optimization of CHA getting it to 30 by level 20 gives you a cap of 240 HD. I suspect that over the lifetime of the character it'll definitely pay for itself. This also has all the other benefits of having a decent wis.

[Sception]

16k gold at least for the wis item, plus at least 7,500 experience? And that's just for animate dead, if you wanted revive undead while you were at it that would be 32k gold for a bigger wis item and at least 8,500 experience. And if you wanted Animate Dread Warrior? 32k gold, min 13 wisdom (otherwise a dump stat you can comfortably leave at 8, so thats five stat points), and min 9,500 gp.

Even for just animate dead, you're talking about a bretty hefty investment. If you want the full kit it's downright pricy, and by the time you can afford it you're already pretty close to Plague of Undead (you can cast it at level 18, arguably 16 with versatile spellcaster, although that's again bumping into the issue of whether a real DM would allow it, at which point animate dead is obsolete, anyway.

It's not a bad choice, especially if you're planning on taking arcane devotee and thus want the wis 13 and +6 wis item anyway. But without that it's a lot harder to justify, and I wouldn't say it obsoletes other, cheaper, easier, earlier means of access to component-free animate dead.

And, as mentioned by kulosle, PC spellstitched is iffy rules-wise due to the lack of any given level adjustment, which generally means PCs can't have a given template at all.

[JaronK]

Unfortunately, if you're a necropolitan spellstiched with animate dead, you've also got at least 15 wisdom, which is an aweful expensive investment if your casting is int or cha based.

Not that it isn't a good way to go.

On the other hand, you get to dump Con. So you can afford to throw more into Wis. That does help.


Honestly, same applies to JK, but, again dude? Tainted Sorcerer? That's a nuklear option. No game should allow it, and no one should play it in a game where the DM didn't know any better.

The OP asked for the "most powerful" character of this type. So, I gave him that. If he just asked for a solid or decent or fun necromancer, I'd have said Dread Necromancer 20.

If someone asks for the most powerful weapon, you'd suggest a nuke too! Sometimes that means Spell Stitching Extract Gift and using it along with Planar Binding to buff your undead minions as well as yourself... god does that get powerful fast.

JaronK

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also, if you are allowed Undead Leadership... for Pun-Pun's sake, pick a BARD with Requiem and DFI optimization, hopefully with War Chanter. It makes cute little 1hd skeletons turn into Turbo Ginsu!

[Sception]

The OP asked for the "most powerful" character of this type. So, I gave him that. If he just asked for a solid or decent or fun necromancer, I'd have said Dread Necromancer 20.

I suppose this is fair. I have a default setting of 'practical' which simply doesn't allow Tainted Sorcerer to begin with - that's something I incorrectly brought to this thread all on my own, not something the OP asked for.


If someone asks for the most powerful weapon, you'd suggest a nuke too! Sometimes that means Spell Stitching Extract Gift and using it along with Planar Binding to buff your undead minions as well as yourself... god does that get powerful fast.

Huh. Extract Gift is a new one to me. I'll have to check that out.

[JaronK]

Eh, someone had already brought up DN anyway, so it's fine... I'm sure the OP got plenty of options.

Extract Gift is a funny spell. As a spell, it's worthless... you pay the same GP that you would normally to buy items that give you those permanent buffs, but you also pay Xp as though you crafted them, and they can be easily dispelled. But as a spell like ability it's free, and rapidly gets overpowered. You really can't use the spell without it being worthless or broken.

You get extra points for becoming a demon somehow, then using the spell to give other people bonuses... and gain the ability to see through their senses.

JaronK

[leegi0n]

If it's any consolation, before I posed the question, I had never heard of a tainted sorcerer. I honestly thought, out the gate, about going with a Dread Necromancer/something rather....

either Pale Master or True necromancer on the other side of that foreward slash was my initial idea. Though in hindsight, True Necro seems like a waste.

[JaronK]

Dread Necromancer is definitely a fun way to go about it. Their major annoyance is that you can't raise undead until level 8, which is REALLY late... but they're still fun to play until that time, so it's still worth it. If you're going DN, I'd just go straight DN.

JaronK

[Coidzor]

Unfortunately, if you're a necropolitan spellstiched with animate dead, you've also got at least 15 wisdom, which is an aweful expensive investment if your casting is int or cha based.

Not that it isn't a good way to go.

There's generally a fair chance that the 3-5 other people in the group and any cohorts they might have would benefit from boosting Wisdom, so there's always a chance it can be deferred. Or, hell, you'll fight a BBEG cleric and get one as party loot that you can hold on for a little while rather than sell as vendor trash immediately.

So it's not all doom and gloom.

[Sception]

either Pale Master or True necromancer on the other side of that forward slash was my initial idea. Though in hindsight, True Necro seems like a waste.

It is, indeed. I'll defend Pale Master as a functional, if not powerful option. It's certainly disingenuous to call it a trap. A trap option pretends to do something, but either fails to deliver or actively makes you worse. Pale Master is does what you want it to do - cheap undead, undead cohort, limitless zombie pool - and the undead arm graft with fancy touch attacks, though honestly not at all good, is all kinds of stylish. The lost caster level does stop it from being a good choice. Like JK, I prefer Dread Necro 20 over the DN10/PM10, if you're going Dread Necro at all. But I still think the Pale Master's not bad, and it can be a lot of fun.


True Necromancer, though, it's just not very good at all. Maybe with some sort of early entry shenanigans combined with one of the rapid development spellcasting PrCs... but no. Really. Not worth the bother.

As for the dread necro's slow access toAnimate Dead, that is a pain. If your DM allows early spell access via Versatile Spellcaster, then that more or less fixes things (you get it one level later then clerics, instead of three levels later), but then again that's also a pretty broken rules interpretation, especially on someone with a better spell list, like a warsnake, so good luck finding a DM that will allow it. If I'm playing a dread necro in low level games, I'll generally go for Illumian Fell Animate tricks to bring in undead at lower levels, but that's not ideal either, given the feat cost and various restrictions on it.

[JaronK]

There's always the UA variant Necromancer. That gives you at least one undead critter starting at level 1. Might be worth considering.

JaronK

[Sception]

If you have to start at level one, there is that. If variant rules are running, I'd try and get Dragon Compendium's Death Master in first.

[leegi0n]

Dread Necromancer is definitely a fun way to go about it. Their major annoyance is that you can't raise undead until level 8, which is REALLY late... but they're still fun to play until that time, so it's still worth it. If you're going DN, I'd just go straight DN.

JaronK


Well, he's to be an NPC that won't be introduced until the party is at least at a ECL of 14 or 15, so starting with a minimum of Dread Nec8 is no problem.

[Sception]

Ooh, building a BBEG and his evil organization using PC rules? That's a fun passtime. Can we help?

What's the party look like? What's their optimization level? At what party level were you hoping to have them confront him directly? Do you want everything to fit under the umbrella of a single PC's control, or can they have some allies that aren't specifically within their control pool?

[kulosle]

True Necromancer, though, it's just not very good at all. Maybe with some sort of early entry shenanigans combined with one of the rapid development spellcasting PrCs... but no. Really. Not worth the bother.

When I first read this I thought "Nonsense, with enough cheese it would probably be amazing." So i flung my self at the task. Kobold cheese could easily make up for your lost spell levels on the arcane side and if you took a quick progression PrC then you would max that out rather quickly. So ur priest is the obvious choice to loo at, but it requires a base fortitude save of +3. how do you get that? i do not currently now of any cheese to up base saves. two levels in a class with good fort will get you it but then you loose even more levels. The other option is divine crusader, Well there spell list sucks, and require +7 BAB. Not something a caster could get to quickly.

So now i agree with you. No amount of cheese can save the True Necromancer (out side of dread necromancer rainbow servant to double up on caster levels, but no DM should allow that).

The only semi reasonable way to pull this off looks like
sorcerer 2/good fort class 2/urpriest 2/true necro 14 you end up with full divine but only 17 sorcerer, so close on shy of 9th level spells. I might be mistaken but wasn't there a way to turn the bonus sorcerer from kobold into wizard levels. If so then that would get you 9th level spells. Even if there is this is still not the best build to have. I'm not even sure if its better the DN 20.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

When I first read this I thought "Nonsense, with enough cheese it would probably be amazing." So i flung my self at the task. Kobold cheese could easily make up for your lost spell levels on the arcane side and if you took a quick progression PrC then you would max that out rather quickly. So ur priest is the obvious choice to loo at, but it requires a base fortitude save of +3. how do you get that? i do not currently now of any cheese to up base saves. two levels in a class with good fort will get you it but then you loose even more levels. The other option is divine crusader, Well there spell list sucks, and require +7 BAB. Not something a caster could get to quickly.

So now i agree with you. No amount of cheese can save the True Necromancer (out side of dread necromancer rainbow servant to double up on caster levels, but no DM should allow that).

The only semi reasonable way to pull this off looks like
sorcerer 2/good fort class 2/urpriest 2/true necro 14 you end up with full divine but only 17 sorcerer, so close on shy of 9th level spells. I might be mistaken but wasn't there a way to turn the bonus sorcerer from kobold into wizard levels. If so then that would get you 9th level spells. Even if there is this is still not the best build to have. I'm not even sure if its better the DN 20.

Dread Necro/Cloistered Cleric1 (death domain)/True Necromancer can pull it off, with Southern Magician feat. You only lose two caster levels, so you still get 9th level spells.

Of course, for a Dread Necro, True Necro is only a splash to get Aura of Desecrate to save on cash for the ring. Which is a pretty poor way of going about doing things, if you ask me.

UrPriest doesn't get domains, so you don't qualify for True Necro with it, due to problems involving requiring the Death Domain.

Mind you, Dread Necro/Cloistered Cleric2/UrPriest1/True Necro could pull it off. Cleric is a high Fort save class, you get the Death domain, then you advance UrPriest casting progression.

[Wavelab]

Well if you go undead then Pale Master only has marginal benefits anyway.

An idea I like is taking a vampire monster class, IF and IF ONLY your DM allows you to add caster level progressions on to it. Maybe drop the 1st and last level progression.

I don't know how big a vampire(not vampire spawn which sucks) monster class would be, but I believe it'll be somewhere between 8-12. This means you can take Dread Necro too.

Vampire's undead immunities replace Pale Master's immunities, control spawn replaces unlimited zombie pool, etc.

Following is one of my favorite options for playing undead:
Take dread necromancer up to 5+, then get bitten by a vampire. Arrange before hand with your party to kill the vampire(get a low level vampire to kill you). Then take this (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20021018a)(<--- Click) template once you meet the requirements.

With that template having just 12 level of Dread Necromancer doesn't matter because you can have 24 vampires under your control with no HD limit. And you don't have to worry about your minions turning on you.

You can dominate all your enemies, control weather, create fog, telekinesis and so forth. Plus you have 6th level spells too keep you busy.

[Sception]

Well if you go undead then Pale Master only has marginal benefits anyway.

Again, free animate dead at levels where you might actually care, and at higher levels a free cohort and unlimited zombie control pool. No, for a 10 level prestige class with a lost caster level that isn't an impressive return, but it's not a marginal, even to necropolitan dread necros. It actually makes you better at creating and controlling undead armies.

There are almost no prestige classes in the game I can think of that could say the same. Sure, there are PrCs that will make you better as a character without hampering your existing undead army animation abilities, and those will result in a stronger character overall. Honestly, for a dread necro not taking any PrC will result in a stronger character overall, particularly if you have other options for leadership.

But even without counting the pointless undead armor business, or the stylish but counterproductive prosthetic arm and its related touch attacks, this PrC still does what it says on the tin. The benefits that are useless for an undead necromancer are marginal for living casters as well. The remaining benefits are still nice enough that a minion-based necromancer shouldn't feel bad for taking it.


An idea I like is taking a vampire monster class, IF and IF ONLY your DM allows you to add caster level progressions on to it. Maybe drop the 1st and last level progression.

Homebrew tailored to a particular character concept will almost always be superior to standard material. If homebrew material is allowed, I would recommend a 5 level version of the pale master that retains only the spell-like animate dead, the cohort, and the unlimited zombie touch.


I don't know how big a vampire(not vampire spawn which sucks) monster class would be, but I believe it'll be somewhere between 8-12. This means you can take Dread Necro too.

Vampire's undead immunities replace Pale Master's immunities, control spawn replaces unlimited zombie pool, etc.

Vampire's a +8 level adjustment template. Trying to put that together on top of 8/10 caster progression, or even 8/12 caster progression, is going to be hard to justify.


Following is one of my favorite options for playing undead:
Take dread necromancer up to 5+, then get bitten by a vampire. Arrange before hand with your party to kill the vampire(get a low level vampire to kill you). Then take this (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20021018a)(<--- Click) template once you meet the requirements.

No level adjustment, so generally not allowed on PCs. Also, it's 3.0 material, so you may have trouble getting it through in most games. Nice template, though, thanks for pointing it out.