Ezra_The_Mad
2012-04-14, 11:15 PM
A foreword- The Dread Necromancer is my favorite class, but seems a little underpowered. Granted, it is tier three and awesome, but i'd like to break it. Break it to make the DM weep tears of blood and DMG's fall from the sky in retributive rain. Post your ideas on how you'd break this awesome class. (The Dread Necro can be found in Heroes of Horror)
Concerning Spectral Hand
This is a terrible thing to do to your DM. It only works if custom magic items can be created for you at low-mid levels, presumably by an expert mage.You ask him to create an item, similar to the Hand of Mage. Call it Hand of the Lich or something else. make it a skeletal hand clutching your throat, if you have to.
It's effect? A permanent spectral hand.
According to the magic item creation rules as i understand them, this is roughly in the neighborhood of eight thousand gold pieces, because you don't want a huge caster level on it. The range on Spectral hand is 100+10/level. You should be at middle range anyway, so if you want, make it caster level one to cut down on the price. The price is immaterial, as you'll be taking out a loan. If you're playing neutral or chaotic evil, burn it down on your way out. Then, rob the smoking ruin.
Now, in the SRD version of spell, it requires a small sacrifice of health.If necessary to placate your DM, Just add a permanent reduction to your health while you're wearing it. It's four points, and sort of immaterial. also under the SRD version, it can only carry touch spells under and up to the fourth level. This is great. All your great touch spells (Vampiric Touch, Chill Touch, The Inflict Spells, Bestow Curse) Are up to and below fourth level. This is great. This essentially removes a lot of the risk from playing this class in melee. However, it shines when you realize it's explicitly stated all your "on touch" class abilities are transferable by Spectral Hand. And they stack. This means you can slap people with your Charnel Touch to your heart's content without burning a precious spell at low levels. Once you get Enervating Touch, it's almost a joke. You'll probably take Shivering Touch as your Advanced Learning spell, so you're laughing whenever you Dm throws a dragon at you, and anything that isn't undead is paralyzed on the ground in the first round. You're essentially hitting for constant longsword damage from a hundred feet away. Every round. As an attack action, because it's also implied that a Charnel Touch is an attack action. This gets hilarious when you combine it with your Scaborous Touch... (See Below)
The Scaborous Shuffle
Most people look at Scaborous Touch and scoff. You can't even apply fun diseases, like Ghoul Fever or Mummy Rot. It's essentially a flavor ability, to be used only for RP. It's reminiscent of Quivering Palm in that respect. However, ask your DM if you can use the Book of Vile Darkness. Beacuse then, this is a kill-anything. The key here is the line "no incubation period".This essentially boils down to instant ability damage, if there is literally no incubation period for the disease. The standouts from teh DMG are Slimy Doom, Filth Fever, and Blinding Sickness. These are great. The BoVD, however, is just...cruel. Standouts here include-
Deathsong
Instant amounts of ludicrous ability damage. In-universe, this will kill you literally in less than an hour. Maybe fifteen minutes. To you, this is just a huge amount of ability score damage you can hit someone with in a single round. Along with two negative levels. and 1d8+level damage.
Warp Touch
This is fairly unpredictable- it can do anything from an instant, no-save kill, or give the victim a petrifying gaze attack as a medusa. use with caution.
Faceless Hate
This is the evil, evil way to wipe out a village. It deals a healthy amount of Str and Con damage per day, but the twist is that when they actually die of it, they are instantly revived, with all their stats restored. As faceless monster versions of themselves that actively seek to kill or destroy everything they loved. Transmitted by injury.
Lightning Curse/Acid Fever/Iron Corruption
Basic stat drain. Spam Lightning Curse on pesky wizards, Soul Rot on sorcerers.
Dragon Abuse-In Both Senses of the words
Okay. Now that you're an impossible to strike, damage resistant, minion controlling monstrosity, it's time to flesh out that last bit. Killing dragons is a joke for you. If you can cast third level spells, there really isn't a reason you shouldn't be able to kill one in a round or five, given the above Scaborous Touch abuse and Shivering Touch. So, you're going to do awful, monstrous things to this dragons corpse.
What? That? No! God, no. Just because it's nude week....:smallmad:
No, you're going to reanimate it. As a zombie. Hopefully, your DM was foolish enough to throw a Silver Dragon at you. Ideally, a Young Adult. now you're scoffing again. "Undead dragon good, but not best! zombie template take away all good part!", you scream at your laptop screen. They aren't actually.They lose a bunch of great stuff in exchange for some bad stuff. Unless, of course, you're using the Draconomicon. Then, a Zombie dragon is an impossible badass that keeps a ton of natural armor, gets a bunch of bonus HP based on hit dice, and doesn't have a hit dice cap. It is, for example, entirely possible to reanimate a Great Wyrm Silver Dragon. Your DM will rage at the vile gods that allowed this, but this is actually okay, even RAW. but it gets better. It gets so much better.
Because you can cast a little thing called "Awaken Undead".
Now, if you're at least eigth level, and have Corpsecrafter, this turns a dragon into a tank. Literally, because you can climb inside that bastard, and command him from within. Awaken Undead gives him back all of his awesome dragon feats and skill points. This is where your DM quits.
Concerning Spectral Hand
This is a terrible thing to do to your DM. It only works if custom magic items can be created for you at low-mid levels, presumably by an expert mage.You ask him to create an item, similar to the Hand of Mage. Call it Hand of the Lich or something else. make it a skeletal hand clutching your throat, if you have to.
It's effect? A permanent spectral hand.
According to the magic item creation rules as i understand them, this is roughly in the neighborhood of eight thousand gold pieces, because you don't want a huge caster level on it. The range on Spectral hand is 100+10/level. You should be at middle range anyway, so if you want, make it caster level one to cut down on the price. The price is immaterial, as you'll be taking out a loan. If you're playing neutral or chaotic evil, burn it down on your way out. Then, rob the smoking ruin.
Now, in the SRD version of spell, it requires a small sacrifice of health.If necessary to placate your DM, Just add a permanent reduction to your health while you're wearing it. It's four points, and sort of immaterial. also under the SRD version, it can only carry touch spells under and up to the fourth level. This is great. All your great touch spells (Vampiric Touch, Chill Touch, The Inflict Spells, Bestow Curse) Are up to and below fourth level. This is great. This essentially removes a lot of the risk from playing this class in melee. However, it shines when you realize it's explicitly stated all your "on touch" class abilities are transferable by Spectral Hand. And they stack. This means you can slap people with your Charnel Touch to your heart's content without burning a precious spell at low levels. Once you get Enervating Touch, it's almost a joke. You'll probably take Shivering Touch as your Advanced Learning spell, so you're laughing whenever you Dm throws a dragon at you, and anything that isn't undead is paralyzed on the ground in the first round. You're essentially hitting for constant longsword damage from a hundred feet away. Every round. As an attack action, because it's also implied that a Charnel Touch is an attack action. This gets hilarious when you combine it with your Scaborous Touch... (See Below)
The Scaborous Shuffle
Most people look at Scaborous Touch and scoff. You can't even apply fun diseases, like Ghoul Fever or Mummy Rot. It's essentially a flavor ability, to be used only for RP. It's reminiscent of Quivering Palm in that respect. However, ask your DM if you can use the Book of Vile Darkness. Beacuse then, this is a kill-anything. The key here is the line "no incubation period".This essentially boils down to instant ability damage, if there is literally no incubation period for the disease. The standouts from teh DMG are Slimy Doom, Filth Fever, and Blinding Sickness. These are great. The BoVD, however, is just...cruel. Standouts here include-
Deathsong
Instant amounts of ludicrous ability damage. In-universe, this will kill you literally in less than an hour. Maybe fifteen minutes. To you, this is just a huge amount of ability score damage you can hit someone with in a single round. Along with two negative levels. and 1d8+level damage.
Warp Touch
This is fairly unpredictable- it can do anything from an instant, no-save kill, or give the victim a petrifying gaze attack as a medusa. use with caution.
Faceless Hate
This is the evil, evil way to wipe out a village. It deals a healthy amount of Str and Con damage per day, but the twist is that when they actually die of it, they are instantly revived, with all their stats restored. As faceless monster versions of themselves that actively seek to kill or destroy everything they loved. Transmitted by injury.
Lightning Curse/Acid Fever/Iron Corruption
Basic stat drain. Spam Lightning Curse on pesky wizards, Soul Rot on sorcerers.
Dragon Abuse-In Both Senses of the words
Okay. Now that you're an impossible to strike, damage resistant, minion controlling monstrosity, it's time to flesh out that last bit. Killing dragons is a joke for you. If you can cast third level spells, there really isn't a reason you shouldn't be able to kill one in a round or five, given the above Scaborous Touch abuse and Shivering Touch. So, you're going to do awful, monstrous things to this dragons corpse.
What? That? No! God, no. Just because it's nude week....:smallmad:
No, you're going to reanimate it. As a zombie. Hopefully, your DM was foolish enough to throw a Silver Dragon at you. Ideally, a Young Adult. now you're scoffing again. "Undead dragon good, but not best! zombie template take away all good part!", you scream at your laptop screen. They aren't actually.They lose a bunch of great stuff in exchange for some bad stuff. Unless, of course, you're using the Draconomicon. Then, a Zombie dragon is an impossible badass that keeps a ton of natural armor, gets a bunch of bonus HP based on hit dice, and doesn't have a hit dice cap. It is, for example, entirely possible to reanimate a Great Wyrm Silver Dragon. Your DM will rage at the vile gods that allowed this, but this is actually okay, even RAW. but it gets better. It gets so much better.
Because you can cast a little thing called "Awaken Undead".
Now, if you're at least eigth level, and have Corpsecrafter, this turns a dragon into a tank. Literally, because you can climb inside that bastard, and command him from within. Awaken Undead gives him back all of his awesome dragon feats and skill points. This is where your DM quits.