Necromancy leader help?

[TheNoodleGod]

So basically in this campaign (im the DM) the players are two evil necromancers on a quest to take over the world.
they both started at level 8 (a high enough level to cast raise dead) and i want to know how many skeletons should be in their starting army?
they are going to be fighting/recruiting goblins (which they may or may not convert to little skeletons)
help?

[Silva Stormrage]

Well, frankly you could treat it as simply equipment. 25gp/HD of the undead and they have to pay that out of their WBL. A reasonable cap for this at the start of the game would probably be about 1/2 or1/3 of their maximum cap of undead.

[Feralventas]

Well, 1st off look into how many HD of undead they can control. I'm not sure for arcane casters, but IIRC Clerics can control 4hd of undead per cleric level. This can be augmented by a number of spells, items and prestige classes.

If they go True Necromancer from Libris Mortis, I think they'd qualify for two separate pools of HD, one for either casting side, but you'll need to look up the arcane limitation.

Then there's Undead Leadership, which is pretty much Leadership except you get undead followers and cohort instead of living ones. Those stack with the ones you control naturally, however, you cannot take both Leadership and Undead Leadership.

As for the goblins, look up the cost of hirelings, or have one of them take one version of Leadership each for both living and undead armies.

[TheNoodleGod]

btw they are both level 8 wizards who specialize in the necromancy school,
but yeah thanks for the help!

[gorfnab]

btw they are both level 8 wizards who specialize in the necromancy school,
but yeah thanks for the help!
Any chance of them rerolling their characters as Dread Necromancers from Heroes of Horror?

[8wGremlin]

pity they are Wizards, you could have gone for this...

Sha'ir True Necromancer of Myrkul (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=272556)

pick up undead leadership at 9th and go to town!
literally... summon a horde of undead and let them rampage through a small town...

ah the fun to be hand....
I particularly like the screams from the orphanage, when the shadows come-a-calling....

[karkus]

I know that 99% of DMs hate it, but Leadership (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Leadership) is probably the best way to raise literal armies of the living dead. Lead a whole squadron of Clerics who each control small groups of skeletons themselves (What I did when I was in almost the same situation was rule that the lower-level Clerics could just Command them and have them count as the 4 HD/level in addition to the 1 HD/Cleric level), and you've got yourself an army.

No wait, there may be an even better way, but this one branches out more than the other one, and is very dangerous. Animate and Awaken (Awaken Undead is from the Libris Mortis) a skeleton that you are commanding and give him either 10 or more levels of Cleric (send him to an Erratically-Timed (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:About_Planes#Erratic_Time) Plane for a few days until he has meditated enough to be a mid-level Cleric) or a way to do a Greater Rebuking (the opposite of Greater Turning, which is granted by the Sun Domain; (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Sun_domain) you could homebrew a Moon Domain) in order to Command a Vampire, who can be any class, but should probably be a 5th level Cleric. This Vampire will then convert other 5th-level Clerics into Vampires, who do the same thing over and over again, and every Vampire will control 20 or more skeletons, depending on their individual levels.

Can you envision in your mind how that looks? The most dangerous part of this plan, however, is that if even one Vampire is destroyed, the two minions are released. If your skeleton is destroyed, then the Head Vampire is free to do whatever he wants, which will probably not be very Good...

There are many ways to raise armies of undead, but the only limiting factor is whether or not the DM will allow you to cross the extremely thin line between playing by the rules and breaking the game.

[TheNoodleGod]

i would let them be one of those obscure homebrew classes, but as a DM im just way too lazy to deal with those kinds of things D:

but yeah them getting a little necromancy university to help control undead would be a cool idea, thanks!

[8wGremlin]

What about WotC prestige gems like this

Lord/Lady of the Dead (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x)