Necromancer V. Necromancer

[Illyria]

I am playing a lvl 9 Dread Necromancer with the following stats:

Str. 12
Dex. 19
Con. 16
Int. 19
Wis. 19
Cha. 23
(The DM uses a very generous stat roll setup so he can throw tougher things at us)

Feats:
Corpsecrafter
Nimble Bones
Tomb-tainted Soul
Tomb-born vitality (for the no sleeping Flavor/Fluff)
Surge of Malevolance (Goes with a Rapier w/ Vanish for escape from combat)
Improved Initative

The characters mother/father/twin sister were murdered by some form of undead and the sister gave her life to save character. She became fascinated by death and began exploring it, adding levels of Taint of Evil which have resulted in her having lich eyes as a form of coruption. Her goal is to explore death to find a way to track and destroy the undead, but she is slowly going crazy from the death stuff.

Anyway, the point of this is that the campaign she ended up in is pitting the party against a organization of evil clerics and Necromancers. To prepare for the inevitable Necromancer on Necromancer battle to come I have a few questions:

What can I do to better prepare I.E. feats, magic items that fit character, etc.?

What happens when my summoned undead army meets another Necromancer who attempts to Command them or some other similar effect?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Would I be correct in assuming that, given the fluff you described, you're playing a dread necro that's -not- a minion master?

[Tommy2255]

If you're already on the corpsecrafter chain and you're worried about having your undead sent back against you, why don't you get Bolster Resistance? +4 turn resist is nothing to sneeze at. Necromantic presence does something similar for all undead under your control within 60ft of you, and they're both untyped so they should stack. Also, ghouls and ghasts have innate turn resistance on top of that, as do awakened undead if you want to use those. If you can get access to the Hunger Domain, Ghoul Light provides turn resistance. Incorporeal Enhancement is a 3rd level sorcerer/wizard spell that gives undead some extra turn resistance plus some other benefits for 24 hours. If you have a bard, you could ask him to play the Bagpipes of the Damned (3000gp) for another +4 turn resistance. How worried are you about having your minions rebuked and how much are you willing to spend on it?

As for destroying your opponents' undead, disrupting weapons and the party cleric should be able to handle it. I suppose you could even give your undead minion a disrupting weapon to hit the other minions with.

[OldTrees1]

What happens when my summoned undead army meets another Necromancer who attempts to Command them or some other similar effect?

You and your victim(the other necromancer) fight for control over the nearby undead.

Forms of control:
Animate Dead(spell)
Rebuke Undead
Command Undead(spell)

However what you are really asking is:
What happens when a Skeleton is under the control of multiple forms of control?
I do not know if/where the rules on that are. However I have used 2 different rulings myself.
1) One way is to have the necromancers make opposed Charisma checks.
2) Another way is to have the most recent command be dominant.

[Tommy2255]

1) One way is to have the necromancers make opposed Charisma checks.
2) Another way is to have the most recent command be dominant.

I think the latter is how it would work by RAW, but I don't know of anywhere it's actually spelled out. But for the first option, when would you do the opposed check? As soon as someone rebukes an undead under your control, because they already had to make a check to do that. You would end up having to make 2 checks for pretty much every rebuke attempt. You could have an opposed check any time an undead creature changes masters multiple times in a round or on consecutive rounds, and that would save it from turning into a game of "who has more spell slots", but I don't see it being feasible every time someone usurps control of someone else's undead.

[OldTrees1]

I think the latter is how it would work by RAW, but I don't know of anywhere it's actually spelled out. But for the first option, when would you do the opposed check? As soon as someone rebukes an undead under your control, because they already had to make a check to do that. You would end up having to make 2 checks for pretty much every rebuke attempt. You could have an opposed check any time an undead creature changes masters multiple times in a round or on consecutive rounds, and that would save it from turning into a game of "who has more spell slots", but I don't see it being feasible every time someone usurps control of someone else's undead.

The opposed charisma check would be when the skeleton needs to choose which mutually exclusive command to follow. So once per round at most.