E6 Necromancer

[Madara]

My dearest playground,

While I do pride myself on a great amount of specialty in necromancy knowledge, I am about to start an E6 game, which I am unfamiliar with.

Things you need to know:
1. I am GMing
2. I refuse to flat out fiat things. Tweaking and refluffing is fine, however.
3. I want to use this NPC as a recurring villain, so the level doesn't matter.

The Question

How do you make a good necromancer(Minionmancy preferred) in E6? Do I just go with Cleric 5 and call it a day? I've been looking into Fell Animate, and that seems fairly promising. So what are my options?

[Lonely Tylenol]

My dearest playground,

While I do pride myself on a great amount of specialty in necromancy knowledge, I am about to start an E6 game, which I am unfamiliar with.

Things you need to know:
1. I am GMing
2. I refuse to flat out fiat things. Tweaking and refluffing is fine, however.
3. I want to use this NPC as a recurring villain, so the level doesn't matter.

The Question

How do you make a good necromancer(Minionmancy preferred) in E6? Do I just go with Cleric 5 and call it a day? I've been looking into Fell Animate, and that seems fairly promising. So what are my options?

Cleric is pretty much required to be a functional minionmancer in E6. The Corpsecrafter feats are, of course, necessary for strengthening undead (if you want stronger than the norm). If you rule that Consumptive Field (a 4th-level spell) works with Fell Animate (it kills, with no indication of damage), then making the Necromancer epic and giving them limited access to 4th-level spells is a possibility. Otherwise, what you want is Fell Animate, DMM: Persist (Fell Animate), and some spell with a wide area of effect, that you can apply Fell Animate to. The third-level spell Energy Vortex (Spell Compendium) produces a 20-ft. radius burst (which you can also enlarge if you so choose) that deals 1d8+CL damage, and is useful for producing large numbers of minions from dying foes (the trick, then, would be to beat your creatures-to-be into the negatives, stabilize them--a Heal check or Cure Minor Wounds will do--and then gather them all together for a mass Energy Vortex revivification). If you're on the go, Ring of Blades (also from the Spell Compendium) does slashing damage (no save, no attack roll) to everything within 5 feet of you for 1 min/level, and moves with you. Fell Animate this spell and run around an active battlefield or combat damaging dying enemies; this doesn't require any additional action beyond the pre-buff round (you don't even need to rebuke them), and you can just approach dying foes whenever you so please.

The other alternative is to just apply Fell Animate to Inflict Minor Wounds (a damage-dealing orison) and coup de grace dying foes, but you're asking them to make a Fort save DC12 unless they're already at -8, it's single-target, and not entirely effective. However, it is probably the best use of an orison you will get (unless you're using Cure Minor Wounds for the above trick).

[Madara]

Cleric is pretty much required to be a functional minionmancer in E6. The Corpsecrafter feats are, of course, necessary for strengthening undead (if you want stronger than the norm). If you rule that Consumptive Field (a 4th-level spell) works with Fell Animate (it kills, with no indication of damage), then making the Necromancer epic and giving them limited access to 4th-level spells is a possibility. Otherwise, what you want is Fell Animate, DMM: Persist (Fell Animate), and some spell with a wide area of effect, that you can apply Fell Animate to. The third-level spell Energy Vortex (Spell Compendium) produces a 20-ft. radius burst (which you can also enlarge if you so choose) that deals 1d8+CL damage, and is useful for producing large numbers of minions from dying foes (the trick, then, would be to beat your creatures-to-be into the negatives, stabilize them--a Heal check or Cure Minor Wounds will do--and then gather them all together for a mass Energy Vortex revivification). If you're on the go, Ring of Blades (also from the Spell Compendium) does slashing damage (no save, no attack roll) to everything within 5 feet of you for 1 min/level, and moves with you. Fell Animate this spell and run around an active battlefield or combat damaging dying enemies; this doesn't require any additional action beyond the pre-buff round (you don't even need to rebuke them), and you can just approach dying foes whenever you so please.

The other alternative is to just apply Fell Animate to Inflict Minor Wounds (a damage-dealing orison) and coup de grace dying foes, but you're asking them to make a Fort save DC12 unless they're already at -8, it's single-target, and not entirely effective. However, it is probably the best use of an orison you will get (unless you're using Cure Minor Wounds for the above trick).

Absolutely perfect. I guess I had ignored DMM because of how cheesy it normally is, but this is exactly what I needed to know! Thank you. :smallsmile:

[Lonely Tylenol]

Er, it's fine. I'm so affixed to the level of cheese DMM usually means that even when referring to DMM: Fell Animate, "DMM: Persist" STILL snuck in. Whoops. :smalltongue: