Evil Cleric Help Please 3.5

[Warren Peace]

Hi War here again.

I need some help. My players are facing an evil cleric that is 20th level. He is also a half fiend.

One of my players is a genius with clerics and knows everything about them and when I offered for him to be an evil cleric in my campaign he was going to do it but at the last minute opted out for a good cleric.

But while we talked about the evil one he told me that an evil cleric can pretty much raise armies of undead and buff them up and send them in to do hi dirty work and if he wants to he can even make them explode like bombs.

The setting for this battle is in the center of a massive graveyard that a town has spent years revering and protecting it until now it's being used to control the entire city by this cleric.

I have no and I do mean NO experience as a cleric and have no idea how to make this a tough and good fight other than to wing it and read up on as much as I can.

Does anyone know of a good evil cleric in any of the 3.5 monster manuals or anywhere for that matter that I can read out of?

If not what would be the best way of going with an evil cleric who mainly casts spells and makes a necromancer look pathetic.

Any help would be awesome he can be of any evil alignment but he is a cleric of Nerull but that can change based off of what the best build would be. But if you know of a prebuilt one that I can just read for this decently short encounter please let me know.

Thanks again I love this forum!

[ArcturusV]

Well... Statted NPCs tend to be suboptimal in my experience. The major concerns I can see happening with this sort of scenario are as follows:

Mooks are Useless: If you have "Standard" undead like Wights, Skeletons, Zombies, etc, of roughly humanoids, as it sounds like from this graveyard, they are not even gonna be speed bumps to your party if they're ready to tangle with a 20th level Cleric.

Boom: The guy deciding to play a Good aligned Cleric is bad news. Turning is often maligned for it's actual use in Turning, but if you're going into the boneyard there, it does become insanely powerful. Particularly with the Sun Domain power, or similar effects. Bolstering Undead with your own cleric's Rebuke attempts is not something you want to get into, it's a fight you end up losing.

Undead are full of Hate: There's sadly a lot of stuff out there that really messes up Undead in particular. That's the big problem. If your party includes spellcasters who can just steal the Undead with a Command Undead, or pop off spells that seriously mess up Undead. Heck, a single Heal spell from your Good Cleric becomes a real pain in the ass for your Undead.

Now... how do you fix these problems?

Well... using things other than Humanoids is the standard answer for "Mooks are Useless". Dragon skeletons, abomination zombies, etc. Find stuff with a lot of Hit Dice and make them into your Life Challenged Accomplices. That may not be the feeling you necessarily want to go for with the Graveyard being taken over... but it is probably the way you have to go. You might also look into some of the more powerful "humanoid" undead out there if you are bound and determined to stick to humans. Vampires are kinda... eh. Morghs might be an option, as can Mummies.

The turning is another real problem. Clerics do have some buffs that can help with that issue. Your Graveyard should definitely be Unhallowed. If you can manage it, you can teach your undead the Dark Chorus (Book of Vile Darkness, function of Dark Speech), which allows them to resist Turning much more effectively. Particularly if incorporeal undead do it. You really need to comb through your books as much as possible for this stuff and set it up beforehand.

There's really not much you can do about the third thing. Undead are just... eh... undead. There's not much getting around all the stuff that's designed to screw with Undead, from Ravages and Afflictions, to spells designed to target them, or heck, even the heroes just arming a peasant mob with a metric ton of Holy Water that they can fling at the undead (Hilarious to see Necromancers with their master creations go down to a bunch of level 1 commoners). Basically your only real solution in practical terms to this is making sure your own Cleric sticks around to buff, Negative Energy Heal, etc, the Undead as they get messed with. Choosing undead which can siphon off life or heal themselves some way, preferably automatically, helps of course.

[Emperor Tippy]

Make your undead on a strongly positive dominated plane.
Cast an Occular Spell Chain Spell Extended Planar Bubble on your undead.

Laugh as your undead gain 5 temporary HP every round. Recast every 200 minutes or so. Nothing like undead with tens of thousands of HP (they gain 50 per minute or 10,000 per casting.

[Runestar]

Libris mortis has the boneyard (cr14), which is essentially a creature which simulates an animated graveyard of sorts (though you can advance it). Might beat flooding the PCs with tons of weak zombies (and animated dragons don't make sense in this context).

If you want an evil cleric, you could in theory take a planetar or solar and just change its alignment to evil...:smalltongue:

[angry_bear]

Unhallow the entire graveyard. It'll increase the difficulty in turning your minions, and strengthen your cleric as well.

Zombies, and other low CR undead are fine, but remember to throw in some mummies and other stronger stinkers in as well. Incorporeal undead will also be an effective weapon too... If you want to make some statted ghosts, then they can make some challenging opponents for the party as well.

For your cleric, use more than negative energy attacks. If the cleric in the party is as good as you say he is, the party will more than likely be protected from them with Death Ward. Which also limits the effectiveness of your undead's debuff attacks.

Do you want the cleric to be focused on casting, melee, or a combination of the two? Also, what level is the party?

[Urpriest]

The whole "exploding undead" thing uses rules in Libris Mortis. I'd make sure that whatever Undead you use for it can move surreptitiously so that your party's cleric doesn't turn them. If they can get close enough you can set up a fairly decent bomb.

[Xervous]

If you are not adverse to cheddar and dragon magazine, commoner 1 / cleric 19 is probably one of the scariest undead bombers out there.

The legendary flaw: Chicken infested is at work here.

Check it out (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=10146.0)

[Kelb_Panthera]

When using a mass of humanoid zombies/skeletons/etc, I like to use the mob template in DMG2.

Nuking 30 individual zombies with turning just takes a few turns. Nuking a 30hd mob of zombies is decidedly more difficult.

[Lord Vukodlak]

When using a mass of humanoid zombies/skeletons/etc, I like to use the mob template in DMG2.

Nuking 30 individual zombies with turning just takes a few turns. Nuking a 30hd mob of zombies is decidedly more difficult.

Sightly but a mob of zombies would probably fall under the swarm rules of undead. Swarms of undead count as having half there listed HD for resisting turning attempts.

[Darrin]

It's not a cleric, and I'm not sure this really explains how to play one, but if you want to scare the bejeebus out of the PCs...

Uttercold Assault Wizard Necromancer. (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=9860.0)

[Amidus Drexel]

Libris Mortis is definitely the book to look through if you want stuff to do with undead. In particular, I'd recommend looking at the corpsecrafter line of feats, the Master of Shrouds PrC, and the Boneyard (a monster). If the boneyard doesn't look impressive at a glance, it had a 60ft fly speed and a +22 to both hide and move silently. It probably won't be a serious threat to the party in a straight-up fight (especially if they're going up against things above CR 20), but it's fairly well-suited to ambush tactics and is ludicrously stealthy for a huge creature. The cleric might have optimized turning, but has he optimized spot, listen, and grapple? (outside of a high Wis bonus, of course).

In general, you want to have a bunch of incorporeal undead if you're going to swarm a high-level party. I personally prefer greater shadows - they don't allow a save for their Str-damage (neither do regular shadows, for that matter), and more importantly, they have turn resistance and spring attack. The turn resistance should keep them from being immediately curb-stomped by a regular turning (unless your player is optimizing that, which is possible). Spring Attack lets them move through a wall, attack the party, and move back through a wall in the same round. Just make sure to dispel the cleric's death ward before you let the shadows out.

If you want your evil cleric to rely on spells, look through all of the splats you have for spells that either don't allow saves or can simultaneously benefit you and your undead while hurting your enemies. In general, any advice on spellcasting (clerics or not) is going to boil down to: use things that are difficult or impossible to resist, or still have effects even on a failed save. HP damage isn't very effective, because it doesn't impair them at all if they don't die (and he will definitely be able to heal himself). I'd suggest trying to stun, daze, ability damage/drain (specifically Wis, as the cleric relies on his Wisdom score for a lot of things), or immobilize the good cleric. His reflex save will likely be his worst by a significant amount (although if he's good with clerics he'll have raised it a bit), so try targeting that save first. Summoning creatures is normally a good idea as well; each time the party attacks a summoned creature instead of your evil cleric, you've effectively negated their attack. Any damage those creatures do is just icing on the cake; at their worst, they're still useful meat shields.

[Krobar]

One of my favorite undead dirty tricks is for a cleric or other necromancer to take a bag of holding and force into it as many shadows and greater shadows as he can control. Then once he's reached the limit, close off the bag. Get another bag of holding and repeat the process. When they're in the bag and it's closed off you don't have to control them.

There's no limit to how many you can "store" like this. My lich used a customized belt of many pockets - the pouches were bigger on the inside and all of them could be opened at once. He had 64 pouches, filled with Greater Shadows, and he released them on the PCs all at once.

[TheDarkDM]

If you want to build this guy without relying too much on DM fiat, give him Undead Leadership and a level 14 Wizard lich as a cohort. Then, go forward with the assumption that the lich has cast Awaken Undead on all your big ticket skeletons and zombies. Awakening gives the undead their weapons and armor proficiencies back (assuming they had them in life), but more importantly it gives them back their Ex abilities and a +2 to will saves against Control Undead (it also gives turn resistance +2, but that explicitly doesn't stack with other sources, so meh). Then go hunting for monsters with fun Ex abilities your players won't see coming (regeneration, pounce, rage, etc.) and put them in your graveyard (Awakened War Troll Skeletons are fun, a mob of them more so). You might also consider necromentals (Libris Mortis) or Taint Elementals (Heroes of Horror), awakened by the cleric's corruption. And seeing as the cleric is a half-fiend, you have every reason to involve Nightshades as well, specifically a Nightcrawler that can spam Greater Dispel Magic at CL 25.

Also consider that this guy is a 20th level caster who's been fortifying this place for a while. With access to Miracle, it's quite possible he's managed to Desecrate the entire area as well as Unhallowing it, giving all turn attempts a -9 (I'm assuming he has an altar to Nerull in the graveyard). Or, if you're feeling particularly nasty, have a desecrated altar to your player's god in the graveyard and watch as they react to being cut off from their deity.

*edit*
A Dragonfire Inspiration (Dragon Magic) bard with Lingering Song (Complete Adventurer) and Requiem (Libris Mortis) is also a fun add-on to a minion necromancer chassis.

[graymachine]

Do you have this cleric built or partly built? It might be best, if you want, for the forum to work on him directly, tailoring it to the cheese level you are comfortable with; that way you can get what you are needing, along with notes on how to exploit abilities.

How big a set piece is this cleric fight, anyway? Are you looking for this cleric and a few pacts of mooks? Or, a full-blown 20th level clerical necromancer with his unending horde of the undead?