Please help a compleat and total newb play a D necromancer 3.5

[AbsoluteZero]

Ok i am a compleate and total newb, pretty soon i am going to make an atempt at playing 3.5 and im exited and a bit nervous, im a dread necromancer for sure, i might multiclass with a fighter but not sure if thats the best way to go, iv studied a bit but i realy just need some advice, ideas, good spells i should get, and how often i get them, thank you for your time.

[slaydemons]

Ok I am a complete and total newb, pretty soon I am going to make an attempt at playing 3.5 and I'm exited and a bit nervous, I'm a dread necromancer for sure, I might multiclass with a fighter but not sure if that's the best way to go, I've studied a bit but I really just need some advice, ideas, good spells I should get, and how often I get them, thank you for your time.
I am going to suggest not multiclassing, as for spells it really depends on what you want to do, I forget what they do, but I am thinking all about either hurting people with rays or summoning undead armies, try to go for one of those and keep to it. for the undead army thing I think as much as possible maybe have like 4-5 skeletons around you almost all the time.

[SmellyGoat]

Keep a satchel of little rat skeletons to throw at enemies, you can then use fun spells like Unliving Weapon (Book of Vile Darkness) to make kamikaze rats that bite themselves to explode at their enemies' feet.

Skeletons are immune to cold, so cold AoE spells are a must~

Know your enemy! If you see a giant man with a hammer, use zombies instead of skeletons, if you see a guy with a sword or axe, summon skeletons instead of zombies. Know what you can summon and discern why you would summon each thing for different situations. :smallsmile:

[Cloud]

While Dread Necromancers can be minionmancers like no other, I tend to keep it at a cap of the two most powerful I can animate. If you're newish to the game, that's my recommendation, go easy on the minions, it's hard enough to run one character at the table, let alone 3, or 30. Personally I'd go with straight 20 levels in the class, though there are several prestige classes that you could take. In that case you want at least 8 levels of Dread Necromancer, or more accurately 7 levels, take a prestige class that advances spell casting, and come back for the 8th level for a higher level advanced learning. Dread Witch can make an interesting choice for a Dread Necromancer.

Feat wise I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions, but the only one that you basically HAVE to take is the feat tomb tainted soul from Libris Mortis. It lets you be healed from your own Charnel Touch. Aside from that, any feat in general that's good for casters is good for you, improved initiative, empower spell, quicken spell, arcane thesis for example. Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy, duh) are also better than normal on a dread necromancer for obvious reasons. Sickening grasp is a reserve feat from complete mage and quite synergistic with the dread necromancer spell list. Most of the corpse crafter doesn't stack with your own class abilities, but it can be worth while, and if you have it you can pick up a few of the other feats in that chain. Imperious Command is also a splendid feat if you're interesting in causing fear at all.

Spell wise, your list is pretty limited, but after a few levels you'll have so many slots you can cast spells every fight, so you should use that to your advantage. Also in the vein of actually playing a Dread Necromancer, your martial weapon proficiency choice should be the Long Bow, and that can get you through levels 1 and 2 if you don't want to get up and touch things. Interestingly enough at low levels thanks to your DR you can actually sort of be a tank. (...Off topic, but in the game I'm playing where I'm the Dread Necromancer, we allow feat retraining so at level 1 [and only for level 1] I took toughness as my other level 1 feat. The entire party thought I was joking, but with 11 health and infinite healing at level 1, I was the only one conscious quite a few times.)

Advanced learning wise, basically the only time you get to pick spells, there are many lovely choices, but at level 4 I've always taken Kelgore's Gravemist, though Ghoul Glyph was also might tempting. At level 8 delay death is just all sorts of cool, at least it was in my party when someone had the feat die hard, but still, not dying from HP as an immediate action will never be bad. At level 12, aura of terror is awesome if you're into fear effects, though also loads of nice 5th level spells too. Level 16 you could pick a lot...but avascular mass is just plain awesome.

If you give as more specific questions, we can help more, your current ones a bit strange when the Dread Necromancer learns his entire list automatically for free, so aside from advanced learning you don't really pick spells, and if you have the class information, it'll tell you how often you can cast, and if you don't...we can't give it to you.

[Falcon X]

Dread Necro is one of my favorite classes. Even for a Newb. You don't jump straight into minion-mancy. You start the game as a decent fighter, then become an enervationist, and finally start doing minion-mancy. It's really a well designed and fun class.

First off, you can get a lot of great advice by following one of the handbooks out there:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214212-Reanimated-Dread-Necromancer-Handbook
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5584
http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-character-optimization/threads/1096381

As a whole, you have a few basic decisions:
1. Am I going to be undead or not? Necropolitan from Libris Mortis is a +2 Level adjustment and well worth it. If you are going to stay mortal, take the feat Tomb-Tainted soul. The idea is that you can self-heal by using charnal touch on yourself.
- If you do go undead, I recommend the feat "Anima Toughness" to boost your HP pretty high.
2. Figure out your focus. As a Dread Necromancer, you are going to be a natural in all these categories, but you can choose where to direct your feats. You can focus on:
- Minions. Take Corpse-crafting and it's subsequent feats.
- Spells. Start getting metamagic and finding ways to reduce the spell level adjustments.
- Fear. The only reason you'd take Dread Witch prestige. You can start locking enemies down with your mere presence.
All of these choices are best expressed in the Reanimated Dread Necromancer Handbook that I gave above.

At the end of the day, just do what you want. Dread Necro is a solid class before you start tweaking him with feats. You could make all the wrong choices and still have fun. Remember that you are always a support character, whether it's supporting allies or minions.
I personally chose Profane Lifeleech and Mother Cyst for flavor, even though they aren't my strongest options.

[AbsoluteZero]

While Dread Necromancers can be minionmancers like no other, I tend to keep it at a cap of the two most powerful I can animate. If you're newish to the game, that's my recommendation, go easy on the minions, it's hard enough to run one character at the table, let alone 3, or 30. Personally I'd go with straight 20 levels in the class, though there are several prestige classes that you could take. In that case you want at least 8 levels of Dread Necromancer, or more accurately 7 levels, take a prestige class that advances spell casting, and come back for the 8th level for a higher level advanced learning. Dread Witch can make an interesting choice for a Dread Necromancer.

Feat wise I'm sure you'll get lots of suggestions, but the only one that you basically HAVE to take is the feat tomb tainted soul from Libris Mortis. It lets you be healed from your own Charnel Touch. Aside from that, any feat in general that's good for casters is good for you, improved initiative, empower spell, quicken spell, arcane thesis for example. Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy, duh) are also better than normal on a dread necromancer for obvious reasons. Sickening grasp is a reserve feat from complete mage and quite synergistic with the dread necromancer spell list. Most of the corpse crafter doesn't stack with your own class abilities, but it can be worth while, and if you have it you can pick up a few of the other feats in that chain. Imperious Command is also a splendid feat if you're interesting in causing fear at all.

Spell wise, your list is pretty limited, but after a few levels you'll have so many slots you can cast spells every fight, so you should use that to your advantage. Also in the vein of actually playing a Dread Necromancer, your martial weapon proficiency choice should be the Long Bow, and that can get you through levels 1 and 2 if you don't want to get up and touch things. Interestingly enough at low levels thanks to your DR you can actually sort of be a tank. (...Off topic, but in the game I'm playing where I'm the Dread Necromancer, we allow feat retraining so at level 1 [and only for level 1] I took toughness as my other level 1 feat. The entire party thought I was joking, but with 11 health and infinite healing at level 1, I was the only one conscious quite a few times.)

Advanced learning wise, basically the only time you get to pick spells, there are many lovely choices, but at level 4 I've always taken Kelgore's Gravemist, though Ghoul Glyph was also might tempting. At level 8 delay death is just all sorts of cool, at least it was in my party when someone had the feat die hard, but still, not dying from HP as an immediate action will never be bad. At level 12, aura of terror is awesome if you're into fear effects, though also loads of nice 5th level spells too. Level 16 you could pick a lot...but avascular mass is just plain awesome.

If you give as more specific questions, we can help more, your current ones a bit strange when the Dread Necromancer learns his entire list automatically for free, so aside from advanced learning you don't really pick spells, and if you have the class information, it'll tell you how often you can cast, and if you don't...we can't give it to you.

Thanks if i had to pick a specific question right off the bat it would be how i should prioritize my ability scores if i didn't mind being up close and personal, like for instance if i where to chose a scythe any my martial weapon, and be melee based with high CON and be able to constantly heal myself with Charnel Touch?

[Falcon X]

My recommendations are:
1. You will be melee for a while, but don't boost this too much. After about level 5-7 you will probably be spell slinging and sending minions out more than fighting. You are the Warlord more than the Warrior.
2. That being said, if you are always going to get up close and personal, you will need a decent CON score (or be undead). I would stay away from STR and rather take Weapon Finesse so you can focus on DEX. DEX is better because of your ray spells.
3. Charisma is the Dread Necro's only necessary stat. If you can, turn yourself undead so you won't have to worry about boosting your CON. then funnel everything into Charisma.
- For more shenanigan's check out this article's Charisma section to see how you can abuse your high CHA stat: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=215.0
4. DEX is likely an important stat for you. It can help you dodge in earlier levels while in melee, and help targeting your ray spells as you begin to get them.

I remember that the first levels, 1-5, felt like I was in melee a bit.
I had the highest HP of our players. I was a necropolitan, so I had d12 Hit Dice. Plus I took Anima Toughness to boost myself even higher.
I also took Profane Lifeleech to heal myself in battle. I was the tank.

So, except for boss battles, I could dive right in, take only a little damage due to DR, absorb a lot with my high HP, and heal myself with Profane lifeleech and Charnal touch.

For boss battles, my spells were designed for weakening the enemy. Send out some zombies for blocking, blast it with rays of enfeeblement and chill touch to completely disable it, then dive in to help finish it off or absorb damage for others.

[AbsoluteZero]

as far as feats go, obviously tomb touched soul, empower spell, or highten spell, with chain spell, and since a chain spell arc only gos 30ft, i thaut i might as well be a tank and focus on defence and power rather than speed and range.

[AbsoluteZero]

Thanks for all your help and I'll consider it carefully while I'm making my necromancer well see how he turns out.

[Urpriest]

As a Dread Necromancer, you deal with monster stats on a regular basis...summoning them at lower levels, and applying templates past level 8. Monsters are one of the trickier parts of the game, so if you're really as much of a newb as you're saying this is a challenging archetype to play. I'd advise you read my Monster Handbook (link in sig) to get familiar with how monster stats work, so you can understand the undead you can summon and create.

[Cloud]

Stat wise, how are you working out your stats?

Anyway, the most important stat is Charisma, hands down, so that's your highest (like, 16 or 18 high). The rest depends on your build. If you don't want to use the feat Arcane Disciple, then Wisdom is your dump stat. If you do want the feat, you want a 13 here. If you plan on being undead, you can dump Constitution, if you plan on staying alive you want Constitution 14. Really your Dexterity, Strength, and Intelligence gets what is left over. Dexterity is probably more important of the 3, though the choice between Strength and Intelligence depends on how much much you like skill points. Still these 3 probably want to be at least 10.

[Sception]

First, you don't have to worry too much about spell selection. The dread necromancer mostly casts off of a single themed list of spells that they have full access to. As in, it's a limited spell list, but you can choose anything of a given level from it when you cast spells of that level. On the one hand, it's not as powerful or versatile as a well chosen sorcerer or wizard spell selection, but on the other hand you don't have to worry about screwing it up.

You do get to pick advanced learning spells every four levels or so, but that's not all that often, and a nice DM will let you retrain one if you don't find it useful. I recommend Kelgore's Grave Mist from PHBII as your first adv learning, and by the time you reach your second you should have a better idea of what you're doing.

pick a ranged weapon for your martial proficiency, and hide like a coward for your first level plinking things with bow shots, and healing yourself after combat with unlimited charnel touch and the tomb tainted soul feat.

Starting at level 2, you pick up effective damage resistance, and can likely afford some decent armor, so you can start throwing out touch spells. Once you get to level four, you're hitting the peak of your melee abilities, with false life making you very chewy, and sometime around then your fear aura and negative energy burst kick in? I'm away from book, so I forget the exact levels for those, but iirc it's around then.

You don't want to invest too many build resources into melee though (unless your DM allows retraining of feats), because beyond that your personal fighting potential tapers off (your touch spells get progressively less battle changing, your fear aura gets comparatively less fearsome, and your damage reduction and armor proficiency begins to pale next to the defensive buffs of other combat casters), while your spellcasting and minion control (via command undead the spell, rebuke/command undead the class feature, summon undead spells, and eventually animate dead) get progressively more significant. By the time you can cast fifth, or arguably even 4th level spells, you're a primary caster through and through.


When it comes to minion control, don't go overboard. Dread necromancers, once they finally gain access to animate dead (a level after wizards, three levels after clerics), can quickly accumulate dozens of minions with hundreds of hit dice between them (eventually hundreds of minions with thousands of cumulative hit dice). Unless you're playing a mass combat game, don't do this.

Instead, animate maybe one or two pets for yourself, plus one for each party member who wants one, ordering your pet to follow their orders, so that the minion total is manageable, and the minion control spread out. A bodyguard for the wizard, a flanking buddy for the rogue, a steed for the fighter, etc. If you start monopolizing table time by directing a dozen figures in every combat your character is going to lose friends. Pick up some extradimensional storage as soon as you can, and pop interesting or useful looking corpses of monsters your party slays into it, and replace fallen minions with interesting new ones between adventures or in other downtime. Eventually you'll be able to afford space large enough to keep fully functional minions in it for utility purposes.


And utility minions, arguably even over combat minions (which, while useful, will generally pale before your living party members in that regard), is a big deal for you. You may be expected to serve as the party's arcane guy, but that usually involves a lot of utility spells you don't have. So instead of 'find traps', you summon undead up some skeletons or dump some zombie dire rats out of a bag and send them down a hallway to see what happens. Instead of 'find secret doors', you conjure up an incorporeal shadow, or pull a rebuked shadow out of the bag, to peek through the walls of the room looking for open corridors. You can't turn invisible and scout out the hobgoblin fortress, but at level 8 (or was it seven?) your imp or quasit familiar can. At later levels you don't have teleportation circle, but you can have a herd of awakened (if you grab awaken undead via advanced learning) flying skeletal nightmares, or the hollowed out zombie carcass of a roc, tucked away in your portable hole to get the party from place to place.


In combat, your small handful of combat minions help, of course, but you can also contribute via useful spells like fear and evards black tentacles and magic jar.


Anyway, as a starting dread necromancer, my advice to you is:

Get yourself a copy of Libris Mortis (handful of spells, potentially useful PrCs and minions, tomb tainted soul, flavor text and game lore), Spell Compendium (large selection of potential adv learning spells, updated spell descriptions for a number of the spells in Libris Mortis and Heroes of Horror), and the Rules Compendium (updated and more clearly presented core game mechanics, every table should have access). PHBII is also a good get (a couple nice adv learning spells, especially kelgore's grave mist, plus some cool new classes and feats that, while not great for you, will be fun for future characters), as is draconomicon (it's a good book in general, but you'll want access to the 'skeleton dragon' and 'zombie dragon' templates).

Pick up tomb tainted soul. Yeah, if your DM doesn't allow retraining, then it eventually becomes a dead feat (either when you become a necropolitan, or when you finish out Dread Necro and become a Lich), but it's plenty worth it until then.

Grab a composite longbow as your martial weapon.

Re-read the PHB chapter on how spells work, then look up and familiarize yourself with every one of the spells you currently have access to. Maybe even get a little 'spellbook', and physically copy out each of the spell descriptions into it, so you don't have to flip through multiple books or long spell lists looking them up - plus writing them out will help you remember them. For the summon undead spells, write out the stat blocks of the creatures you can summon - either next to the spells themselves, or in a separate space in the book or a separate book entirely for minion information. Yeah, it's a lot of copying stuff out, but it's also kind of fun and in character as you record your dark knowledge and new discoveries.

Re-read the d20SRD entry on the undead creature type, and the skeleton and zombie templates. Memorize these. Ideally, you should be able to look at a monster's stat block and apply the skeleton and zombie templates by heart on the fly without crunching numbers by the time you can cast animate dead. Familiarize yourself with what abilities and subtypes and movement modes each keeps and loses, and look over the subtype rules so you know what abilities those convey (ie, skeleton of fire subtype monster is immune to cold and fire, iirc, don't quote me, it's been a while).

Read and re-read the rules for fear (skaken, frightened, etc), tiredness (fatigue, exhaustion), illness (sickened, nauseated), ability drain and damage (and the difference between them!), and energy drain & negative levels (though these don't show up till later) in the PHB and Rules Compendium. Know how these mechanics work, and how to exploit them, as they're frequent players in your debuff arsenal. Know what they do, know which of your spells and abilities cause them, and which ones stack or don't stack and in what order (ie, fear aura + cause fear stacks, cause fear + fear aura doesn't, again, iirc, don't quote me). Again, this involves careful reading of both the rules of the effects and the rules of the abilities and spells you have that confer them.

Save up for, or try to find, some decent light armor and a mythril buckler early on (you gain the AC bonus even without proficiency, and it doesn't impose any penalties).

Stat-wise, cha is best of course. Beyond that, dex, int, and con (if you don't plan on going necropolitan early on) are important. Wis less so, and Str not much at all (touch AC is low enough that you shouldn't have problems landing touch spells until after they aren't relevant anymore anyway) If you can, invest some points or a decent secondary stat roll in int and try to have a decent skill set. Concentration and Spellcraft are pretty much musts, after that knowledge skills if your party needs them, religion and arcana especially for flavor, or face skills otherwise. Bluff and disguise are useful for hiding your pets in plain sight, and a hat of disguise is a useful get when you can afford one.


Melee multiclass I do not recommend, but while it's far from optimal, you could do worse than a single level dip in rogue, factotum, human paragon, beguiler, expert, bard, or any other class with a strong skill list, a bunch of skill points, and class skill UMD at first level. Again, this is not optimal, it's never optimal to delay caster progression, I just personally find a lack of skill points frustrating, especially early on in a campaign, and later on the class skill UMD access can really help you cover some of the utility spells arcane casters are expected to have access to that you don't.

[Captnq]

My Advice For Noobs (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=9479.msg153181#msg153181)