Help with spells to combat the undead.

[Tanngrisnir]

Hi there,

My group and I will be facing undead in our next adventure, specifically hunting down a Vitreous Drinker from MM IV. One of the members of the party is a 12th level cleric, but none of us have really played a cleric before and so don't really know what spells are available to them at higher levels.

We're playing 3.5

I was wondering if anyone could suggest some spells that are particularly good at taking out the undead?

Pretty much any book is available, but not Dragon magazines. The cleric is a dwarf who has taken the dispel variant instead of turning, and we're in a location that means supplies are a tad tough to come by. Can't remember what domains the cleric has I'm afraid.

If anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks.

[Tragak]

Heal and Mass Cure ___ Wounds (spell level 5-8, so a caster level 12 cleric could do 3 Mass Cure Light and 2 Heal and/or Mass Cure Moderate per meditation) would probably be some of the most useful in general, considering how many times you can use them per day and especially considering how many times you were probably going to be using them anyway.

[Flickerdart]

Hide from Undead is a great tool even if you have regular invisibility, as it blocks all senses and not just sight. It's a level 1 spell, so the DC will be a little low. Undeath to Death will dust it instantly, but is Will negates. Disrupting Weapon on the swords of your melee will force the foe to save or be destroyed on hit if its HD is lower than the cleric's CL, so some Consumptive Field shenanigans to jack that up would go a long way. Even if these won't work against the big boss, they should do wonders clearing out lower-level minions.

Heal is a pretty good damage dealer if the cleric is willing to get into melee. Also offers a save, but 120 damage on a touch attack is no laughing matter. If the melee is having trouble landing hits, this is probably the way to go.

[Tanngrisnir]

Awesome, thanks for the replies. Seems like healing this thing to death (re-death?) will be the best way to go about it. The cleric is pretty up for getting into melee combat when he can, so touch range will not be an issue for him.

Basically, mass cures to deal with minions, heals to try blast the thing in one go, and hide from undead to try get close to it in the first place.

And if all else fails, we do have a whirling frenzy pounce barbarian.

Thanks again.

[Flickerdart]

The damage from mass cure is so worthless that anything it actually kills could never have hurt you.

[Gotterdammerung]

Feeblemind and touch of idiocy are both strong if you can apply the metamagic feat Song of the Dead. The vitreous drinker relies heavily on charisma and thus dropping cha down low will severely lower its threat.

[Tragak]

The damage from mass cure is so worthless that anything it actually kills could never have hurt you. The key in this case is, when you heal the party anyway, to get close enough to the zombie to hurt it (at least a little bit) on top of what you were already doing.

[Flickerdart]

Feeblemind and touch of idiocy are both strong if you can apply the metamagic feat Song of the Dead. The vitreous drinker relies heavily on charisma and thus dropping cha down low will severely lower its threat.
Touch of Idiocy doesn't work, as the spell specifies a living creature, which Song of the Dead explicitly states it doesn't help with.


The key in this case is, when you heal the party anyway, to get close enough to the zombie to hurt it (at least a little bit) on top of what you were already doing.
a) You never heal in combat
b) When you are healing in combat, you never use Cure spells
c) When you are level 12 and want to heal in combat, you never use Mass Cure spells.

The 12th level cleric's best Mass Cure spell is Cure Moderate. At CL12, the average he will heal with it is 21 points of damage. You may recognize this as comparable to the damage from one single attack by a CR8 skeleton. And then it has 5 more attacks. And because of the low CR, a 12th level party would consider 4 of these an easy encounter, and 8 would start getting challenging. These skeletons also have 123 HP, so dealing 21 damage to them isn't remotely threatening.

I would advise OP to pretend that Mass Cure spells don't exist, and have the cleric use his actions on something constructive.

[Guizonde]

against undead i swear by searing light (sun domain). it's a flamethrower kind of spell that does for me (cleric5) 3d8 standard, 4d8 for undead or sensitive to light, and 5d8 for undead who are sensitive to light. not bad for a 3rd level spell, eh?

[TuggyNE]

against undead i swear by searing light (sun domain). it's a flamethrower kind of spell that does for me (cleric5) 3d8 standard, 4d8 for undead or sensitive to light, and 5d8 for undead who are sensitive to light. not bad for a 3rd level spell, eh?

Uh, for Cleric 5 it does 2d6 to constructs, 2d8 to most things, 5d6 to undead, and 5d8 to light-sensitive undead. (Nothing special to living things that are light-sensitive.)

So it's a half-decent blasting spell against undead, a nice blasting spell against light-sensitive undead, and nearly useless otherwise.

[Shalist]

(Better late than never :P)

It only has a +7 fort save, so using the Cleric 3 spell, 'affliction' (BoED) to blast its charisma to dust could be interesting.

The 'pride in vain' affliction does 1d6 charisma damage + 1 (vs undead) + charisma bonus (+3 in this case, initially), meaning a minimum of 5 charisma for the initial damage, completely eliminating its unholy grace bonuses (and dropping its fort save to +4).

Technically you could just run away at this point and give the affliction a couple of days to finish off its charisma, or finish it off with 1-2 more shots of the same...*shrug*

[Guizonde]

Uh, for Cleric 5 it does 2d6 to constructs, 2d8 to most things, 5d6 to undead, and 5d8 to light-sensitive undead. (Nothing special to living things that are light-sensitive.)

So it's a half-decent blasting spell against undead, a nice blasting spell against light-sensitive undead, and nearly useless otherwise.

you know what? i goofed! when calculating the damage of that spell, it seems my dm and i misread the rules (i'll correct that oversight next session).

from the d20 srd (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/searingLight.htm)


Focusing divine power like a ray of the sun, you project a blast of light from your open palm. You must succeed on a ranged touch attack to strike your target. A creature struck by this ray of light takes 1d8 points of damage per two caster levels (maximum 5d8). An undead creature takes 1d6 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d6), and an undead creature particularly vulnerable to bright light takes 1d8 points of damage per caster level (maximum 10d8). A construct or inanimate object takes only 1d6 points of damage per two caster levels (maximum 5d6).

so for a cleric 5 (and correct me if i'm wrong), it does d8+3d6+d8 for light sensitivity, if i did my math right. meaning that my standard 3d8/4d8 it is not. whoops. still, there are worse spells against undead, methinks.

edit: the more i read it, the more it seems to be d8+3d6+3d8. now i'm just confused. help?

[Tanngrisnir]

. . . I would advise OP to pretend that Mass Cure spells don't exist, and have the cleric use his actions on something constructive.

Thanks for the heads up.


(Better late than never :P)

It only has a +7 fort save, so using the Cleric 3 spell, 'affliction' (BoED) to blast its charisma to dust could be interesting.

The 'pride in vain' affliction does 1d6 charisma damage + 1 (vs undead) + charisma bonus (+3 in this case, initially), meaning a minimum of 5 charisma for the initial damage, completely eliminating its unholy grace bonuses (and dropping its fort save to +4).

Technically you could just run away at this point and give the affliction a couple of days to finish off its charisma, or finish it off with 1-2 more shots of the same...*shrug*

That sounds like a nice way of dealing with it actually, thanks. We can't run away for a few days, we've taken over a town and installed the vanguard of our army there (followers gained through leadership) and the thing is blinding people on a daily basis and probably working up to killing a few now so we need to put it down quickly.

But I'm liking the charisma damage, will definitely suggest it to the cleric.

Thanks again for the suggestions everyone.

[TuggyNE]

so for a cleric 5 (and correct me if i'm wrong), it does d8+3d6+d8 for light sensitivity, if i did my math right. meaning that my standard 3d8/4d8 it is not. whoops. still, there are worse spells against undead, methinks.

edit: the more i read it, the more it seems to be d8+3d6+3d8. now i'm just confused. help?

No, it only ever uses a single progression for any given target.

Construct/object (including living objects like trees, but not things like elementals): 1d6/2 levels; 2d6 at CL 5
Light-sensitive undead: 1d8/level; 5d8 at CL 5
Regular undead: 1d6/level; 5d6 at CL 5
Everything else: 1d8/2 levels; 2d8 at CL 5


Pick the first one on the list that applies, and use only that to calculate total damage.