Help with Undead Leadership

[Corwin_of_Amber]

I'm planning on a character that is basically an Aztec priest of death using just Cloistered Cleric and Paragnostic Apostle. One of his main things will be the use of a main undead cohort as his bodyguard. One of the best ways to do this seems to be Undead Leadership since you can basically choose what you get, rather than relying on raising things.

My creature of choice would be an awakened humanoid skeleton. If that doesn't work for some reason, I will go with a ghoul, unless there is another low ECL intelligent undead someone knows about. For my followers I will have a murder of zombie crows, mostly for effect and for some help scouting via aid another.

I would like to make it something simple. I will probably use Fighter, Rogue, or one of the Paladin variants (no ToB since this is not a PC and I don't want to be too powerful).


What I would like to know is:
What would the ECL of an awakened skeleton be? Would it be its HD or does it get an LA?

Is there another intelligent undead with a low base ECL (less than ghoul)?

What are some feats/classes that would help him protect me (maybe like the fighter variant in dragon 310, but not so terrible)?


Thanks.

[Nettlekid]

I think you'd just use the Skeleton's HD, derived from race and class levels, to determine its ECL for Undead Leadership. But question, you said you were taking Undead Leadership to cherry-pick what you got, but then you're deciding to go with a human skeleton, which you can find inside any human.

I once had a miniboss with a squad of Skeleton Ninjas, and they were surprisingly effective. Dex boosts and that small amount of DR did a good job protecting them, they used poison with impunity, and their Sneak Attacks were pretty killer. My vote goes there.

Might I just add though, that it's probably more efficient to use Rebuke/Command and then a Commanded Undead's Spawn power to get your "followers" rather than Undead Leadership? Master of Shrouds from Libris Mortis is great because you can summon Shadows and Wraiths, get them to kill commoners, who rise as Shadows or Wraiths, which you then Command, and then have kill more commoners, who are under the control of the Commanded Undead, who are under your control. Same goes for any Wight you get by level draining a commoner, and any Ghoul/Ghast you get by force-feeding humanoid flesh to a creature before killing it.

But to your actual question, I'm would think Awakened Skeleton carries no LA, but there's no RAW answer so basically just eyeball it. Although, if you're high enough level, might I suggest a Vampire Lord Cohort? Sure, Vampire carries a pretty high LA, but Vampire Lord added on doesn't seem to increase it at all, so you've still got a +8 LA creature with substantial bulk. It would suck for a caster, but you want a melee bodyguard, right? So, a creature with class levels equal to your level-10, but stacked with useful SLAs and high ability scores, might be of interest.

[nolongerchaos]

While not lower ECL than a ghoul, I've always wanted to try turning a slaymate from Lirbris Mortis into a Marshall/Devoted Defender undead cohort, which while not exactly optimized, I feel would still be interesting to have/play.

[Nettlekid]

Oh, can't believe I forgot, a creature with the Necropolitan template is the same LA as the original creature, and can be applied to any humanoid or monstrous humanoid. So you can basically get any humanoid or monstrous humanoid you want, with no Con and Undead Traits.

[DeusMortuusEst]

Gravetouched ghoul is wayyy better than standard ghoul. Template, +2 LA, found in LM. Enjoy :smallwink: