Necromancers

[Sparkzlight]

Out of the Player's Handbook, which caster class makes the best evil necromancer? Clerics are good because they get rebuke undead, but Wizards can focus schools...

Thoughts?

[eggynack]

Assuming that you're talking about the undead creating type of necromancer, clerics are significantly better for multiple reasons. They get animate dead a level earlier, they get native access to desecrate, and they can use the deathbound domain to increase their undead pool. Wizards are better if you're working the debuffing part of necromancy.

[Sparkzlight]

Assuming that you're talking about the undead creating type of necromancer, clerics are significantly better for multiple reasons. They get animate dead a level earlier, they get native access to desecrate, and they can use the deathbound domain to increase their undead pool. Wizards are better if you're working the debuffing part of necromancy.

I see. Is there a way my character can eschew materials (think Pathfinder)?

Otherwise, animation of undead is incredibly expensive.

[asnys]

I see. Is there a way my character can eschew materials (think Pathfinder)?

Otherwise, animation of undead is incredibly expensive.

Find undead to rebuke/command undead instead of making them yourself?

If you have access to out-of-core material, there's also the Fell Animate and Fell Drain metamagic feats from Liber Mortis, and no doubt tons of ways I don't know about.

[Giegue]

Which class makes a better Necromancer depends largely on what materials you have access to. At base, a cleric is better at necromancy. However, with the right feats a wizard can be almost as good. Clerics start making minions at lower levels, yes, but wizards have many tricks for obtaining an infinite number of minions, but they require a large pool of sources/materials. The main way is spell stitching one of your minions(or yourself, if your undead) with animate dread warrior. Another way to get infinite minions is via fell animate abuse and also the pale master prestige class. The Pale Master PrC also gives you animate dead as an SLA(which means it costs nothing and thus gets around your cost/GP issue) as well as a capstone that lets you basically make an infinite number of zombies, though not in the most efficient way. The class also gives you an undead cohort, which you will make a necopolitian cleric.(Or any other kind of undead cleric that won't lose too many class levels.) Finally, you can get animate dead as a level 3 spell on a wizard, as well as desecrate and the granted power of the deathbound domain, meaning you now use animate dead just as good as a wizard. Likewise, you can get healing for your minions as a wizard by using the lord of the uttercold feat. However, all of this requires a laundry list of feats and ACFs from numerous sources, which is the whole point of this thread..

Both the wizard and cleric can be good at necromancy, including minion-based necromancy for both. However, for one to be good at it(wizard) you must specifically build towards it and MUST have access to many sources. The other(cleric) is good at necromancy out of the box, and can be made into a proper necromancer without really building towards it in a big way and just from core alone(though you will miss the deathbound domain.)

[Waker]

In addition to the Fell Animate and Animate Dead options, you could also use the Summon Undead spell to summon a monster that creates spawn, have it kill something and voila, new undead.

[Sparkzlight]

Assuming that you're talking about the undead creating type of necromancer, clerics are significantly better for multiple reasons. They get animate dead a level earlier, they get native access to desecrate, and they can use the deathbound domain to increase their undead pool. Wizards are better if you're working the debuffing part of necromancy.


Find undead to rebuke/command undead instead of making them yourself?

If you have access to out-of-core material, there's also the Fell Animate and Fell Drain metamagic feats from Liber Mortis, and no doubt tons of ways I don't know about.
I do, but I'm going to be playing a core rulebook only campaign.

[Darth Stabber]

Cleric is generally the better class for this job. Wizard can get better at it with a significant amount of effort (a purpose built wizard will out perform anyone at their main shtick). But given that the lack of those tools in core, the wizard is only better at debuffing, and not by that much. Cleric has all the tools, and outperforms even the necromancy focused base class (dread necromancer) at it's own shtick without much effort. In core your options kinda suck, like they do for most classes, but you have most of the essential tools to get the job done, just not the efficiency tools, nor the stylish toys. Just remember that you are a CLERIC necromancer and not a cleric NECROMANCER, you still have the cleric's full toolbox to utilize, you've just focused on icky parts.

If you can get your gm to branch out of core then dread necromancer is the fun/less thought intensive option. Worse than cleric, it forces you to use the necromantic toolset (given it's sparse non-necro options), but has some tools baked in that clerics envy, since they have to jump through some serious hoops to get something similar (not that they really need them given the power of their other options). It also spont casts it's whole list which is really nice for simplicity's sake.

Given what's in core, wizards are so much better off just batmanning it, and they don't really have any access to tools that reward you for focusing on necromancy (other than the bonus spell slot/level which is better spent on conj or trans). The really nice "undead army" spells are mostly downtime spells, and as long as you don't ban necro. My last wizard was a conjurer, and the only casted animate dead ~5 times, but you when you ride a zombie dragon, people throw out the term necromncer. In fact I only had about 6 necro spells in my spellbook. So I think the moral of the story is that to fulfill the trope, it's not how much necromancy you throw around, but how impactful it is. If you asked the other players what my character was they would probably say necromancer due to my few undead pets and my love affair with enervate, but looking at my spellbook, and typical spells prepped you would see that it's mostly conj, div, and ttran, I had at most 5 necro spells prepped at a time (and 4 of those were metamagic'd enervates and the other was control undead, because that spell is bonkers). It's probably the same with any evil cleric, you might have 1 animate dead prepped per day (and at higher levels maybe one or two ot the premium undead makers), and a few nice debuffs/SoDs, and the rest is typical cleric goodness. You may have your domains and a feat or two slotted for it (in core), but you really only need so much before it becomes inefficient. Out of core this dynamic changes a little as necromancy becomes a bigger toolbox, but most cleric spells don't need specialization to be good. This is part of the reason I like dread necromancer; it forces you to get creative with the school, since it is what you have.

And remember that animate dead is kind of a down time spell, you only need it very occasionally, and let's face it, some rotting while you finish the adventure isn't going to make a worse zombie.

[Erik Vale]

In addition to the Fell Animate and Animate Dead options, you could also use the Summon Undead spell to summon a monster that creates spawn, have it kill something and voila, new undead.

Who you don't control?
*Ahem*
[Narration Voice]Another necromancer bites the dust, bringing about the end of yet another dream of a Undead Appocolypse.[/Narration Voice]

[eggynack]

Who you don't control?
*Ahem*
[Narration Voice]Another necromancer bites the dust, bringing about the end of yet another dream of a Undead Appocolypse.[/Narration Voice]
But you're a necromancer. Controlling undead is what you do. There's spells and abilities that accomplish that goal pretty handily.

[Psyren]

Who you don't control?

The idea is to rebuke them once created. You could also just force your summon to order them to obey you but that one is iffy.

[Waker]

The idea is to rebuke them once created. You could also just force your summon to order them to obey you but that one is iffy.

It should work until the Summon wears off. Before which the goal is to Rebuke or cast Control Undead.

[Coidzor]

It depends on what you want to do. Wizards are best at debuffing and other negative energy manipulation necromancy effects. Sorcerers usually don't really have the spells known for necromancy.

Clerics and Dread Necromancers are better at controlling necromantic minions.

There's (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=8963.msg143456#msg143456) some (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214212)handbooks (http://www.ruleofcool.com/smf/index.php?topic=725.0;wap2)on (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2733.msg36617#msg36617)the subject (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872470/New_Dread_Necromancer_Handbook).