Why I think Wizards are better Practical Necromancers than Clerics

[monkey3]

Necromancers are my favorite arch-type. I have read just about every Necro guide there is. I have played many necromancers, including a Dread Necromancer (non-prc) all the way into 20. I say this only to stem the "noob" (you didn't plug the computer into outlet) posts, not to declare myself an expert (I am always learning, and sadly at my age, always forgetting things I once knew).

Mind you, this is a Necro thread, so I am not going to talk about Teleport/Shapechange/Anti-magic shell, or any other utility not indirectly helping our roll as a necromancer. I want to talk about utility that helps you become a better necro. Let's start:

Reasons why a cleric is better:

1) (From a handbook - and true) Anytime a Wizard does the same thing as a Cleric he is losing; this is because the cleric is getting better saves, armor and hitpoints the entire time.

2) Rebuking - also feeds into DMM. This is awesome. Without this, you cannot get anything you make with Create Undead.

3) Earlier Animate Dead. This advantage disappears in to nothing after level 7, but is amazing at 5-6.

4) Desecrate - There are soooo many ways of getting this, I am hesitant to put it in here.

5) Speak with dead has great information gathering uses. Figure out who is the strongest/leader, and animate that one.

6) Higher Animate Dead limit - achieved at the cost of a Domain, but is standard enough for a Necro-Cleric.

7) Consumptive Field - Very easily (grow a bunch of rats at home and kill them when you want) you can pump up your caster level to 1.5x your current level. This is cool if it increases your Animate Dead limit.

Reasons why a Wizard is better:

1) Command Undead - You already know this one. No limit (OK, extra limit).

2) Planar Binding family - These guys fill in so many holes in your necromancy life (including Desecrate). Here's another example: One demon/angel with at-will teleport and a Portable Hole can transport you/your-party/your-undead from anywhere to anywhere. Now, you can leave your heavy hitters at home, walk into a city, go into the sewers, and then bring out your undead friends. When ready to leave the sewers, teleport all your Skeletal Firegiants home for free, and walk out.

3) Item - This happens a lot: You come across a nice juicy corpse. You cannot animate it now for one of the following reasons: A) out of mat-component. B) at your necromancy limit. C) Don't want to cast your spell in front of the NPC or Paladin. Instead, you cast Item, and pocket the resulting (corpse) handkerchief. Animate later at your leisure.

4) Smokey Confinement (from Complete Mage) - This is my favorite utility spell, that necromancers get the most millage from. Put your 6 Giants in Poke Balls, carry them in your pocket indefinitely, and throw them where you want in a single action. Go from alone to your entire army instantly! How much use is a high animate undead limit when you cannot have them with you?

5) Awaken Undead - Give your Hydra back his regeneration. You Dragon his feats. You are clever enough to think of many other benefits.

6) Animate Dread Warrior - I almost hesitate to put this one it. The cost is so prohibitive, you'll only use it a couple of times max. But when you use it, it will be delicious. Animate that Mageslayer Monk assassin that came after you, and send him back after his master. Animate that annoying Paladin, and turn him into a Blackguard (Probably not RAW, but the fluff/rpg is through the roof).

7) Transportation spells - I will lump them all here. No one travels as fast as a wizard. Even at low levels, this is your get-out-of-grapple card: Strangling Vine has you grappled? After Benign Transportation, it is now holding your Orc Skeleton instead, while you giggle from safety.

8) Disguise Undead - This second level beauty lets you disguise an undead for the while day!

9) Undead Familiar - Using the feat Stitched Flesh Familiar , you get an undead familiar which with an amulet of Wisdom can become a vehicle for your Spell-Stitched spells. (Say hello to free animates).


A clever reader might point out a few places where Domain spells can access some of the above points (1,2,5). They cannot get all of them, and you only have ~2 domains. I am actually glad there is no perfect answer to Necromancy, and that there is an argument to be made for different classes. For me though, I like my wizards as the complete package, since we don't just walk into an arena with an army of minions, and say "go."

[Silva Stormrage]

Necromancers are my favorite arch-type. I have read just about every Necro guide there is. I have played many necromancers, including a Dread Necromancer (non-prc) all the way into 20. I say this only to stem the "noob" (you didn't plug the computer into outlet) posts, not to declare myself an expert (I am always learning, and sadly at my age, always forgetting things I once knew).

Mind you, this is a Necro thread, so I am not going to talk about Teleport/Shapechange/Anti-magic shell, or any other utility not indirectly helping our roll as a necromancer. I want to talk about utility that helps you become a better necro. Let's start:

Reasons why a cleric is better:

1) (From a handbook - and true) Anytime a Wizard does the same thing as a Cleric he is losing; this is because the cleric is getting better saves, armor and hitpoints the entire time.

2) Rebuking - also feeds into DMM. This is awesome. Without this, you cannot get anything you make with Create Undead.

3) Earlier Animate Dead. This advantage disappears in to nothing after level 7, but is amazing at 5-6.

4) Desecrate - There are soooo many ways of getting this, I am hesitant to put it in here.

5) Speak with dead has great information gathering uses. Figure out who is the strongest/leader, and animate that one.

6) Higher Animate Dead limit - achieved at the cost of a Domain, but is standard enough for a Necro-Cleric.


Reasons why a Wizard is better:

1) Command Undead - You already know this one. No limit (OK, extra limit).

2) Planar Binding family - These guys fill in so many holes in your necromancy life (including Desecrate). Here's another example: One demon/angel with at-will teleport and a Portable Hole can transport you/your-party/your-undead from anywhere to anywhere. Now, you can leave your heavy hitters at home, walk into a city, go into the sewers, and then bring out your undead friends. When ready to leave the sewers, teleport all your Skeletal Firegiants home for free, and walk out.

3) Item - This happens a lot: You come across a nice juicy corpse. You cannot animate it now for one of the following reasons: A) out of mat-component. B) at your necromancy limit. C) Don't want to cast your spell in front of the NPC or Paladin. Instead, you cast Item, and pocket the resulting (corpse) handkerchief. Animate later at your leisure.

4) Smokey Confinement (from Complete Mage) - This is my favorite utility spell, that necromancers get the most millage from. Put your 6 Giants in Poke Balls, carry them in your pocket indefinitely, and throw them where you want in a single action. Go from alone to your entire army instantly! How much use is a high animate undead limit when you cannot have them with you?

5) Awaken Undead - Give your Hydra back his regeneration. You Dragon his feats. You are clever enough to think of many other benefits.

6) Animate Dread Warrior - I almost hesitate to put this one it. The cost is so prohibitive, you'll only use it a couple of times max. But when you use it, it will be delicious. Animate that Mageslayer Monk assassin that came after you, and send him back after his master. Animate that annoying Paladin, and turn him into a Blackguard (Probably not RAW, but the fluff/rpg is through the roof).

7) Transportation spells - I will lump them all here. No one travels as fast as a wizard. Even at low levels, this is your get-out-of-grapple card: Strangling Vine has you grappled? After Benign Transportation, it is now holding your Orc Skeleton instead, while you giggle from safety.

8) Disguise Undead - This second level beauty lets you disguise an undead for the while day!


A clever reader might point out a few places where Domain spells can access some of the above points (1,2,5). They cannot get all of them, and you only have ~2 domains. I am actually glad there is no perfect answer to Necromancy, and that there is an argument to be made for different classes. For me though, I like my wizards as the complete package, since we don't just walk into an arena with an army of minions, and say "go."

Well first you have to clarify one thing, by practical necromancer do you mean undead horde and minions type of necromancy? Because wizard dominates the debuff, fear side a lot more than cleric IMO.

To go off your points

Command undead: While yes this is incredibly valuable its less valuable than rebuke undead. I have found DM's very rarely send out zombies and skeletons once you have this spell prepared constantly. Mostly due to not wanting to just give free minions. It is still useful though if you just release some of your undead and then use command undead. Still probably about as useful as the deathbound domain in extra undead maybe a bit better.

Planar Binding: Okay this is a legitimate victory for wizard necromancy. The main problem that they have is that wizard's can't animate the demons into anything that keeps spell like abilities. Clerics can with bone creature and corpse creature. (Okay wizards CAN animate them this way. But they can't control them reliably). Also some DM's outright ban this spell due to it's game breaking potential.

Item: I can't see this coming up enough to matter to be honest. You could throw it in a portable hole for the same effect and it saves you a spell slot.

Smokey Confinement: Okay that one is also cool, 100gp price tag per use but that is probably worth it.

Awaken Undead: Clerics get it with Deathbound domain.

Animate Dread Warrior: The problem with this and command undead is the spell stich template which can grant both of them.

Transportation Spells: Once again this is where the wizard has an advantage.

Now personally I think wizards can do necromancy just fine. They are just worse than a cleric at the minion horde department (Who is worse at it compared to a dread necromancer). Wizard necromancy is having meat shields protect you while you peel the flesh off your opponents or frighten them into fleeing. Cleric necromancy is building an army that destroys your enemies as you lie in a throne being carried by human zombies.

[Alienist]

I'm currently working on the idea of a necromancer who is actually an artificer.

Key combo: Death Knell (on a wand) + Fell Animate.

What makes necromancers 'interesting' is the sheer number of feats:

uttercold is 2
corpse crafting is ~4
necromantic is 2
tomb tainted is another 1

The artificer bonus feats help with some of that, but most of it isnt metamagic.

Fell Animate could also work with extended creeping cold, or chill metal on a wand.

There are some interesting low level spells that can kill creatres low on hit points, e.g Spirit Worms or Persistent Blade or Cloud of Knives or Flame Sphere

---

It does lack rebuking. Not really convinced that is a particularly great loss.

[monkey3]

...
Animate Dread Warrior: The problem with this and command undead is the spell stich template which can grant both of them.
...


Speaking of spell stitch, this is actually another Wizard bonus! Way before 10th level, a Wizard can have an undead familiar (cost of only 1 feat and an amulet of Wisdom), which can be spell-stitched to all your favorite spells.

In fact I will add it to my post in an edit :)

Speaking of edit, I thought of one more Cleric bonus - Consumptive Field <- into the original post

[Silva Stormrage]

It does lack rebuking. Not really convinced that is a particularly great loss.

Rebuking is AMAZING, people don't realize this but rebuke undead is better than animate dead. It just requires items.

Lets assume a level 11 cleric manages to finish off a 13th level evil wizard villain ending his evil threat at the end of a story arc.

This cleric is a necromancer and thus has a rod of defiance and a lyre of restful soul. A total of ~14k gp something he can easily get. Now he takes the corpse of this wizard and animates it as a bone creature (BoVD it keeps all of it's class features and has no turn resistance). Now with the rod of defiance it's HD is now counted as 8 HD too high to be commanded but it can be rebuked so the cleric rebukes it for 10 rounds. In one of those 10 rounds he uses the lyre of restful soul reducing it's turn resistance by 4 more to a total of -8. Reducing his HD for rebuking to 5HD. The cleric then uses rebuke again and automatically commands this bone creature. You now have a 13th level wizard under your permanent control. And it knows everything that it did in life so you can spoil any DM plot twists too XD.



Speaking of spell stitch, this is actually another Wizard bonus! Way before 10th level, a Wizard can have an undead familiar (cost of only 1 feat and an amulet of Wisdom), which can be spell-stitched to all your favorite spells.

In fact I will add it to my post in an edit :)

Speaking of edit, I thought of one more Cleric bonus - Consumptive Field <- into the original post

No... frankly thats much worse than turning yourself into a necropolitian and spell stiching yourself. If you turn your familiar into a spell stiched familiar he pays a feat, an amulet of wisdom and you can LOSE the spell stiched bonus if someone tries to target your super frail familiar.

[Madara]

I'd like to point out that Command Undead becomes obsolete in higher levels, because it offers a save to intelligent undead, something that the Cleric version, via rebuking, does not. In addition, this spell is so low level, that its DC becomes pathetic, especially considering undead get the best will save bonus.

While yes, Wizards can be necromancers, Clerics are more practical because they are able to do their shtick sooner and more often, and have access to rebuking, which allows them to act on a level seperate from spells.

[Gullintanni]

Came out just to offer my two cents on this topic, since I've seen it before and I've probably put a lot more thought into this than any other topic in D&D.


Rebuking is AMAZING, people don't realize this but rebuke undead is better than animate dead. It just requires items.

First and foremost, Silva has it right on the money. Commanding is hands down the most effective means to high powered necromancy. By level 20, a Cleric who optimizes Commanding has an effective Commanding level of 50+ IIRC. Just about every undead in the MM is insta-commanded at this point. Those that aren't will be reduced to whelps cowering before the might of your dark power.





-Edited for relevance-

Reasons why a Wizard is better:

1) Command Undead - You already know this one. No limit (OK, extra limit).

3) Item - This happens a lot: You come across a nice juicy corpse. You cannot animate it now for one of the following reasons: A) out of mat-component. B) at your necromancy limit. C) Don't want to cast your spell in front of the NPC or Paladin. Instead, you cast Item, and pocket the resulting (corpse) handkerchief. Animate later at your leisure.

5) Awaken Undead - Give your Hydra back his regeneration. You Dragon his feats. You are clever enough to think of many other benefits.

6) Animate Dread Warrior - I almost hesitate to put this one it. The cost is so prohibitive, you'll only use it a couple of times max. But when you use it, it will be delicious. Animate that Mageslayer Monk assassin that came after you, and send him back after his master. Animate that annoying Paladin, and turn him into a Blackguard (Probably not RAW, but the fluff/rpg is through the roof).



A clever Necro-Cleric obtains access to 1, 5 and 6 by going Cloistered Cleric, Picking Undeath and the Deathbound domains, and trading away the Knowledge Domain for the Arcane Disciple Divine Magician ACF, which allows a Cleric to create his own custom domain using Abjuration, Divination and Necromancy spells from the Wizard's list. Alternately, the Magic domain permits Clerics to use Scrolls and Wands as a Wizard of equal to half their level, effectively allowing Clerics to break into the Wizard's cache of Necromancy spells at will. It's not perfect, but combine that with all the other perks a Necro Cleric offers and it's hard to deny the Cleric's superiority in the realm of Horde necromancy.

Even the Wizard Necro's debuffs can be replicated with the Arcane Disciple Divine Magician ACF, such that it's hard for the Wizard to claim the necromancy debuff crown at all.

The only Necromancer a Cleric can't replicate effectively without sacrificing power AFAIK is the Uttercold Assault build. Lots of fun, but less versatile. You're still a Wizard though, so what's the difference?

Oh and concerning number 3? Corpses and Portable Holes make great allies.

[Silva Stormrage]

I'd like to point out that Command Undead becomes obsolete in higher levels, because it offers a save to intelligent undead, something that the Cleric version, via rebuking, does not. In addition, this spell is so low level, that its DC becomes pathetic, especially considering undead get the best will save bonus.

While yes, Wizards can be necromancers, Clerics are more practical because they are able to do their shtick sooner and more often, and have access to rebuking, which allows them to act on a level seperate from spells.

The plus for command undead at high levels is that it doesn't check HD. While yes its worse than rebuke its still REALLY good as you can chain it pretty cheaply with a rod. Now every day you can keep 1 20hd zombie/caster level under your command. They may not be THAT effective but they can be pretty decent.

Also noted something, Undead can't be affected by smoky confinement as it targets fort and can't affect objects. That trick doesn't work unfortunately.


Edit: @ Gullintanni I agree with all of your points. Except one note, the ACF is Divine Magician not Arcane Disciple :smalltongue:

[The Viscount]

A Dread Necromancer has or can have most of the things from both lists, with a little effort. Just saying. While there are cases to be made ford both wizards and clerics as necromancers, I will agree that cleric is the better of the two. Rebuking can get quite a lot of HD under your control if you put enough effort into it.

[Silva Stormrage]

A Dread Necromancer has or can have most of the things from both lists, with a little effort. Just saying. While there are cases to be made ford both wizards and clerics as necromancers, I will agree that cleric is the better of the two. Rebuking can get quite a lot of HD under your control if you put enough effort into it.

Yes dread necromancers win in pure minionmancy. They have problems of not being all around as godly as clerics and wizards and thats their "Weakness" (Still think that they should be tier 2 but thats just IMO). Dread necromancers get almost all of the benefits of both for minionmancy. The only downside is that they lose out on some decent spells on the cleric and wizard list and advanced learning only gives you so many spells.

[Gullintanni]

Edit: @ Gullintanni I agree with all of your points. Except one note, the ACF is Divine Magician not Arcane Disciple :smalltongue:

Had a feeling I had it wrong. Didn't have my books to check. Thanks for the tip :smalltongue: