Deathlock: Never Worth It?

[moritheil]

LM has the famous Necropolitan, which gets to be undead (dropping hit points but gaining a ton of immunities and a healthy fear of cleric NPCs) for basically 1 level and no HD.

It also has the Deathlock (http://metima.wikidot.com/templates), which is ECL 6 right off the bat. It comes with the ability to slowly heal itself to full, but the undead HD are probably among the worst possible HD you could have, and you take 3 of them. If the Deathlock had casting as a sorcerer or wizard, it might not be so bad, as you could jump right into your casting progression (admittedly at a +3 LA, which would prevent optimizers from ever wanting it), but instead it has spell-like abilities which are mostly pretty useless.

Basically the fluff is all about being an undead mage, but with this setup it'll be impossible to progress as a competent mage.

Now, the SLAs aren't totally useless.
Inflict Minor - useful for out of fight healing
Read Magic, Detect Magic - useful for information
Summon Monster I - useful for setting off traps
Ghoul Glyph - useful for placing traps if you suspect you are going to be attacked fairly soon

But they aren't worth 6 levels on a primary caster. (They probably aren't worth 6 levels of full BAB and hit points, either.) Even if you rule that things like magic missile scale with your overall HD rather than your racial HD, it's still unimpressive at level 10+.

I get that it's giving +4 to 3 different stats, and +2 to the fifth. But if you're trying to be a caster, only one of those stats truly matters, and if you're some kind of MAD fighter/mage build, there are still cheaper ways of getting those stat boosts.

Is there any situation in which the Deathlock shines?

[Jarian]

Is there any situation in which the Deathlock shines?

Shines? Not that I can think of. You could probably make a decent Duskblade or similar with those stats though, and you get a free bite attack.

There's really no reason to take it over Necropolitan and a dip into Dread Necromancer though. Like so many things in 3.5, it's overcosted to the point of being almost worthless. Fractional BAB would make up for the odd number of undead HD... ish, but it's still not good.

[NeoSeraphi]

Is there any situation in which the Deathlock shines?

Sure. Past epic, there's no real scaling of spellcasting anymore, and those undead immunities are still really tasty. When you're ECL 26 and have 20 levels of wizard, you just stop caring. So what if everyone else is a level 26 wizard? You're still a 20th level wizard, and you're immune to a whole crapton of stuff, which can't be dispelled or disjoined.

Take the Leadership feat and get yourself a dread necro cohort. Now you have someone who can infinitely heal you as well as spawn you an undead army that will be unmatched. Meanwhile you are free to wizard it up in whatever way suits you.

I really don't think there's that much of a difference between a level 54 wizard and a level 48 deathlock wizard. So...yeah. That's one situation where deathlock would actually be just fine.

[moritheil]

I can see how it might be worth it in some campaigns to be undead even at that cost (particularly when that cost isn't considered so steep any more.) But given that Necropolitan is in the same book, with the same immunities and turn resistance at effectively +1 LA (not even real LA, just XP loss), it's just silly that the Deathlock has such a higher cost.

I agree that a lot of other creatures were also priced out of playability - the Vampire, Areana, and Azer come to mind, along with various archons and dragons. That just made it all the more egregious when they offered templates with spell-like abilities and flying for something like +1 or +2 LA. :smallannoyed:

[Wavelab]

I see the Deathlock being more of a fluff race. Something a DM or a player might use because it fits in with the story. It's a nice way to explain what happened to that epic necromancer who died in the unfortunate unicorn milking accident.

And I agree with Seraph that it's also pretty good for epic levels. You don't have to worry that much about your Caster Level anymore, since there are such a limited amount of spells that still go up in power. The only time you'll actually have to worry about something like that is if you're a psionic class, since manifester level never stops scaling, so getting that as high as possible is always a priority.

And also if LA buy off is allowed or if you have a really gracious DM you only have to worry about 3 levels, which is still enough to get you 9th level spells in most situations.