Lord of Undeath (PF)

[Valdras]

Hello all,

I need some help making a cleric, I want to play a necromancer but I don't know if I should take the undead lord archetype or play it straight and pick 2 domains.. Or even be a bit of a undead summoner/bad touch hybrid, as I want to be in the thick of things blasting negative channels out. I've never actually played a cleric before, so I have no idea.

So far I haven't even chosen a race. Its going to be either rolled stats or 20 point buy, we can choose, and the DM only allows official pathfinder stuff. though he hasn't revealed the campaign we are doing.

Oh and more that happy to be evil.

Advice on how to build? Probably going to be level 3 or 4 start :).

Thanks in advance.

[DonDuckie]

The corpse companion(free undead monionminion) is pretty cool at low levels, but it doesn't scale well, especially with variant versions being ½HD. So I don't think it's worth the price of the second domain. I would not take the archetype.

The last necromancer I made was a mystic theurge. This contains some house rules(clarification) about the Undead Master feat(UM); namely that it increases how many undead you can animate as well as control.

level 1-5: cleric(to get (and lesser) animate dead fast and start gathering undead early
5th level feat: undead master
level 6-8: necromancer wizard(for flavor, otherwise I'd chosen diviner or air elementalist)
level 9+: mystic theurge.

this build gives you two undead HD pools, both advanced by mystic theurge and Undead Master:
lvl: HD pools
1: 4 HD
2: 8 HD
3: 12
4: 16
5: 36(undead master gives you +16 HD)
6: 36 + 4 (+20 if not limited like I was, see level 12)
7: 36 + 8
8: 36 + 12
9: 40 + 16
10: 44 + 20
11: 48 + 24
12: 52 + 44 (undead master kicks in for wizard pool; special limitation - may not apply to you)
+1: +4 to each pool

I had a thing for bloody ogre skeletons, at level 6 I had 7 of those.:smallbiggrin:

[Valdras]

Thanks mate,

So what domains/god do I take with that? or is it just flavoring?

[DonDuckie]

It is mostly flavor, since you don't get the high cleric level, so it's about the first level power. But the Undead subdomain is good, you can give a minor negative energy affinity to yourself and allies, so you can heal them along with your undead minions when you channel energy.

For the other:
Trickery - being invisible is good when directing undead.
Travel - gives you increased base speed, but the usefulness of that may depend on the campaign style.
Demon subdomain - hit something a little harder... once
Darkness

I don't know about gods, Norgorber has both Death and Trickery