Advice on making Servants

[Xoroth]

As mentioned in the title how would you go about acquiring some loyal servants. Preferably within spell level 8. If mental domination/manipulation is used make concealable. Preferably no xp cost.

[eggs]

Greater Planar Binding (or Greater Spirit Binding). It's not dispellable, not detectable, there are none of the limiting Enchantment immunities, it has a long "duration" and it can conjure up a huge number of ridiculously powerful creatures; no matter what you want the servants to do, you'll find an outsider (or spirit) that can do it.

The one problem is that it's powerful enough that it probably will be banned.

[Jeff the Green]

Dread Necromancer. Seriously, that's its entire shtick.

[Coidzor]

Rudimentary Intelligence is a dragon magazine feat that lets you imbue your golems with intelligence but still control them. Expensive, but that is one option.

Edit: Animate Dread Warrior from Unapproachable East effectively lobotomizes them but lets them keep their class levels as a form of loyal undead, and non-int based characters are mostly fine to use it on, though it is expensive in terms of XP cost.

[Pika...]

Artificer + the Dragon Magazine issue with the low-level golems/constructs. Paper golem army inside a portable hole anyone? :smallbiggrin:

[An Enemy Spy]

Put up an advertisement in the city. Duh.

[Coidzor]

The mechonomicon (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19870786/Mechonomicon)has some thoughts on construct minion mastery and source/price lists.

[Slipperychicken]

Mindrape is free to cast, rewriting people's brains, albeit level 9, in BoVD. Also lets you learn everything the target knew, which is nifty for a number of reasons. See if you can use their Knowledge skills instead if theirs were better than yours.

Hirelings are really cheap, so you can just hire your own private army for a while, for about the price of a lvl 1 wand. Remember to establish that you get the booty, and they get their 1 silver/day. Math-hammering is fun. Also, you're just hiring people with your own money, which is a pretty common tactic among people who don't like dying, so it's hard to call that cheesy or munchkiny.

Leadership gets you lots of loyal followers, especially if you have a high Charisma. Remember the leadership cap only applies to your cohort AFAIK, so you can pump your leadership score for lotsa followers. There a number of ways to boost this like Orc Warlord. Widely considered one of the most powerful feats in the game. Get your minions to take "teamwork" feats like Cooperative Metamagic so you can have ridiculously high save DCs.

Diplomancy/Performancy is a massively broken way to get lots of fanatical followers. Hit a DC 50 Diplomacy (or perform) check to make people actively tying to kill you into your best friends (you can attempt the check as a full-round action, although the DC is 10 higher). You can try for DC 150 to make them Fanatics (completely under your control. Example action is jump in the way of an onrushing dragon), but I found a combo that only needs DC 50; hit that DC to make people Helpful, then activate the Harmonica's Bardic Music ability to bump people one step up to Fanatic. See if you can UMD a +1 Harmonica so you don't have to be a Bard. No minion cap, no HD cap, not an (Enchantment) effect, can't be dispelled. Absolutely, totally broken.

[Fable Wright]

If you don't need the servants to fight, Collar of Perpetual Attendance gives you Invisible Servant at will, which is rather handy for almost any noncombat activity you could need a servant for.

[Coidzor]

Mindrape is free to cast, rewriting people's brains, albeit level 9, in BoVD. Also lets you learn everything the target knew, which is nifty for a number of reasons. See if you can use their Knowledge skills instead if theirs were better than yours. I believe Programmed Amnesia has some similarity to Mindrape as well in terms of getting minions.


Diplomancy/Performancy is a massively broken way to get lots of fanatical followers. Hit a DC 50 Diplomacy (or perform) check to make people actively tying to kill you into your best friends (you can attempt the check as a full-round action, although the DC is 10 higher). You can try for DC 150 to make them Fanatics (completely under your control. Example action is jump in the way of an onrushing dragon), but I found a combo that only needs DC 50; hit that DC to make people Helpful, then activate the Harmonica's Bardic Music ability to bump people one step up to Fanatic. See if you can UMD a +1 Harmonica so you don't have to be a Bard. No minion cap, no HD cap, not an (Enchantment) effect, can't be dispelled. Absolutely, totally broken.

Where is this Harmonica from?

[Randomguy]

Servant Horde, a level 3 spell in SpC, gets you a bunch of unseen servants. Only works if you don't need them to fight, though.

And of course, animate dead.

[Slipperychicken]

Where is this Harmonica from?

Song and Silence. It's the Bardic Music ability for when you use any harmonica, even a dinky non-masterwork one. It might be 3.0, but I'm pretty sure it's 3.5 legal.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Rudimentary Intelligence is a dragon magazine feat that lets you imbue your golems with intelligence but still control them. Expensive, but that is one option.

Edit: Animate Dread Warrior from Unapproachable East effectively lobotomizes them but lets them keep their class levels as a form of loyal undead, and non-int based characters are mostly fine to use it on, though it is expensive in terms of XP cost.

Be a necropolitan (other undead works too; but for PC's necropolitan is the best option) and spellstitch yourself, depending on Animate Derad Warrior level you might need a way to boost Wis (Maximum needed is 19, so you could ask your cleric/druid/monk friend to lend you his periat of wisdom +6 for the ritual) and it becomes a Sla, so in theory with enough corpse you could get an army of dread warriors in matter of days (spellstich them so you can animate even more dread warriors).