Dread Necro Help

[saxavarius]

I'im looking for SUGGESTIONS for a dread necro build that will mainly focus on making one use minions and save or die/suck/just suck spells. Never really played a caster (closest I've played is warlock) So the more convoluted tricks are out. No psionics, No Dragon mag/compendium, and setting specific is questionable, and starting level hasn't been given. Not asking for a full build just ideas and please dont link me to the handbooks I've read them
I have (assuming 1st level):
STR 14; CON 14; DEX 18; INT 16; WIS 14; CHA 20
Necropolitan (human?)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

For single use minions, definitely consider the feat Destruction Retribution from Libris Mortis. It makes your skeletons and zombies explode when destroyed, dealing negative energy damage to anyone nearby (and healing other undead). Definitely find a way to get around the cost of animating them though, such as via Necropolitan with the Spellstitched template from Complete Arcane, which has a gold/xp cost instead of a level adjustment. That can get you Animate Dead as a spell-like ability, which means it has no costly material components.

Note that Dread Necromancer 8+ counts your class level instead of caster level for how many HD of minions you can have, so gaining prestige classes that increase your spellcasting won't increase the number of minions you can have.

Definitely get the Ghostly Visage familiar, have it always possessing your character, and it can manifest in combat to use its paralyzing gaze, which your undead minions will be immune to. It can even spend a standard action every round to focus its gaze on a target, forcing them to save versus its paralysis even if they already saved that round from the passive effect and even if they're not looking, it's a function built into gaze attacks in general.

Get the feat Versatile Spellcaster from Races of the Dragon, it allows you to spend two spell slots of the same level to cast any spell you know of one level higher. This can arguably even give you early access to the next higher level of Dread Necro spells. It's no longer arguable if you can demonstrate that you can cast a spell of the next higher level, several ways include learning a spell of that level such as from a bloodline feat (Dragon Compendium), spending two of your highest level spell slots to cast a Heightened version of a spell, or take the feat Sanctum Spell.

There are other benefits to knowing Sanctum Spell, for example you can use it to intentionally reverse-Heighten a spell by one level, which allows you to use a Lesser Rod of Maximize with Enervation. You can get Split Ray, Ocular Spell, and Arcane Thesis: Enervation, and cast a Lesser Rod of Maximized, Sanctum, Split Ray, Ocular Enervation from a 4th level spell slot, twice, then up to eight hours later spend a full round action to fire four rays from your eyes, each of which deals four negative levels. You can direct all the rays at the same target or split them up between separate targets as desired.

[mangosta71]

At level 8, advanced learning lets you pick up Shivering Touch - 3d6 DEX damage, no save. Yes, that's damage, not drain, meaning you can bring a target down to 0 (auto-paralysis). Definitely qualifies as one of the better "just suck" spells, and it's only level 3.

You may want to consider the Tainted Scholar PrC. As undead, you're immune to the negative effects of both corruption and depravity, and you automatically have a fairly hefty taint score just for becoming undead. Your save DCs and bonus spells, based on your current taint level, will shoot through the roof - you can choose to fail the save against acquiring more taint, which means every time you cast a spell it increases.

What's your starting level, and are you allowed LA buyoff? Unless you absolutely want to be human, star elf (from Unapproachable East) might be worth looking into - -2 CON (which doesn't matter since you're becoming undead anyway), +2 CHA. Half-fey is a +2 LA template that gives +2 DEX, -2 CON, +2 WIS, +4 CHA, a fly speed that doubles your fastest movement., and SLAs. Feytouched is the poor man's version, granting +2 DEX, -2 CON, +2 CHA for a +1 LA.

Also, if that's a point buy instead of an array, and you're high enough level to start as Necropolitan, go ahead and tank that CON - it doesn't do you any good.

[panaikhan]

Doom Scarabs (BOVD I think) is a perfect necromancy "just sucks" spell.
No save, no SR (though it does heal the caster if you happen to beat their SR), just damage. Pity it's 4th level though.

[Divide by Zero]

You may want to consider the Tainted Scholar PrC. As undead, you're immune to the negative effects of both corruption and depravity, and you automatically have a fairly hefty taint score just for becoming undead. Your save DCs and bonus spells, based on your current taint level, will shoot through the roof - you can choose to fail the save against acquiring more taint, which means every time you cast a spell it increases.

Note that this will likely make the DM throw books at you, and also limits your minion numbers since Undead Mastery is explicitly based on your class level rather than caster level.

To clarify, since it replaces the normal animate dead limit with one based on your class level, that means you don't just not get the Cha bonus, your control pool doesn't increase at all when you take non-DN levels.

[mangosta71]

This is true. However, (4 + CHA mod)*8 still yields a huge amount of controllable undead minions. With the stats in the OP, by level 8 he'll have a +6 mod, plus any racial modifiers and items. At the 4HD/level limit, a level 20 caster gets a total of 80 HD of undead. The OP will match that at level 8, and he'll have even more if he decides to use a race that gets a CHA bonus instead of a human or has CHA-enhancing items.

Besides, Libris Mortis also contains the Undead Leadership feat. You can have a much more powerful minion than any you'll be able to create that doesn't count against your limit. The hordes of followers also don't count against your animate control limit.

PrCing out of DN may reduce the sheer numbers of undead at your command, but you can still raise enough that it will take an actual army to stop them.

[Karnith]

You may want to consider the Tainted Scholar PrC.
In addition to being one of the most overpowered classes in 3.5 and probably too broken for actual play, tainted scholar is not going to work unless the campaign uses the taint mechanic, which would be unusual to say the least.