yathrinshee necromancer

[tsarnowski2]

I am playing a lesser drow cleric, dread necromancer, yathrinshee. I am currently cleric lv 3 dread necromancer lv 1 and yathrinshee lv 1. The DM is giving us 1 feat every level. What I am looking for is advice on what feats to take and what some cool progressions would be. We are playing in sigil and will be doing lots of planar traveling.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Yathrinshee is one of those classes that makes you worse at what you were trying to do if you take it. It's listed as "Down Two or More Tiers (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5198.0). These PrCs completely fail to do what they were trying to do, or makes heavy sacrifices for little to no gain. Expect characters with these to be unplayable without heavy optimization effort, or some cunning trick." My first advice would be to stop taking levels of it immediately and switch to Mystic Theurge, otherwise try to retrain (PH2 Chapter 8) to be a single-classed Cleric. You can give your character that flavor without taking a single level in that prestige class, a single-classed Cleric can do everything that Yathrinshee tries to do and better.

For feats, you definitely want Fell Energy Spell from Dragon Compendium. That increases the bonuses of any spell you cast that benefit undead by two points, so for example your Desecrate spell will go from +1 HP/HD to +3 HP/HD for undead created in its area, and if there's an evil altar present this will be doubled to +6 HP/HD. Also get the Corpsecrafter line of feats from Libris Mortis, particularly Destruction Retribution, as well as Tomb-Tainted Soul also in LM.

[Dr.Gara]

Yathrinshee is one of those classes that makes you worse at what you were trying to do if you take it. It's listed as "Down Two or More Tiers (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5198.0). These PrCs completely fail to do what they were trying to do, or makes heavy sacrifices for little to no gain. Expect characters with these to be unplayable without heavy optimization effort, or some cunning trick." My first advice would be to stop taking levels of it immediately and switch to Mystic Theurge, otherwise try to retrain (PH2 Chapter 8) to be a single-classed Cleric. You can give your character that flavor without taking a single level in that prestige class, a single-classed Cleric can do everything that Yathrinshee tries to do and better.

I have to ask. I've never seen or heard of this class before, and what makes it so bad?

[Hamste]

I have to ask. I've never seen or heard of this class before, and what makes it so bad?

Loses 4 cl and you need 5 levels in a divine class + 3 in an arcane class so you lose even more cl (assuming normal classes). The only advantage is that it can cast necromancy spells at a very high cl but it just isn't worth losing so many spells.

[squiggit]

I have to ask. I've never seen or heard of this class before, and what makes it so bad?
6/10 casting and features that don't do anything to compensate for it. I mean. Necromancer is cool, but that's only one level in. Automatically animating anything that you kill and having a permanent Desecration around you are both neat, but aren't nearly powerful enough to make up for the 6/10.

[Karnith]

In addition to the reasons already stated, Yathrinshee requires that you be a race that normally has LA +2 (Drow Elf), which is exactly what you don't want on a caster build, and especially a caster build that is already going to be behind on spell progression. Yes, you can use variant rules for lessening the impact of Drow's LA, but that's just one more step that you need to take to mitigate how bad Yathrinshee is.

There are some neat things you can do with Yathrinshee: the Necromancer ability in particular allows for silly caster level stacking shenanigans for Animate Dead, and Curse of the Revenancer can get you free, uncapped zombies. But it's really not a very good class. With the intended entry (Drow Cleric 5/Wizard 3, though if you aren't a glutton for punishment you'd probably take two levels of Mystic Theurge rather than the last two Cleric levels) and no LA mitigation, you'd have trouble even using the excuse of "At high levels the strength of spells still makes a competitive character" without heavy optimization because you'd be so far on spellcaster levels; by Yathrinshee 10 you'd be casting as Cleric 11/Wizard 9 (from Cleric 3/Wizard 3/Mystic Theurge 2, Cleric11/Wizard 11) at ECL 20. Things get better with early entry and some form of negating the level adjustment, but even then the casting progression hurts, especially at mid levels. Like the other necromantic theurge PrC, it's best use on a build involves as few levels as possible.

I'd even recommend True Necromancer over Yathrinshee. Granted, you can't usually do a 1-to-1 substitution for the levels, but still, Yathrinshee is that bad.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

There are some neat things you can do with Yathrinshee (the Necromancer ability in particular allows for silly caster level stacking shenanigans for Animate Dead)...

You can get the feat Theurgic Specialist in Dragon 325 to do the same thing, but with whatever school of magic you specialize in with Wizard. It requires three Wizard levels to take, but you can easily go into Mystic Theurge with that and one Cleric level if using early entry. At least that way you don't invest in a 6/10 prestige class with terrible prerequisites.

Edit: At 3/1/10 a Yathrinshee's spellcaster levels are 9th and 7th, for a caster level of 16 at character level 14 (normally ECL 16 with Drow). Note it adds spellcaster levels, not caster levels, i.e. the level that determines your spells/day and highest level spells.

[tsarnowski2]

I read a yathrinshee true necromancer optimized post before but can't seem to find it now. That post is how I came across the cheese that I'm using like lesser drow which has no LA and versatile spellcaster to get the early entry. Hence the fact that I'm entering yathrinshee at 5th lv. My DM is giving us a feat every level so I'm kinda wondering what feats would be good. I have already decided to take tomb tainted soul and destruction retribution. Also fell animate. Oh and I'm using 1 lv in dread necromancer for the arcane requirement.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I read a yathrinshee true necromancer optimized post before but can't seem to find it now. That post is how I came across the cheese that I'm using like lesser drow which has no LA and versatile spellcaster to get the early entry. Hence the fact that I'm entering yathrinshee at 5th lv. My DM is giving us a feat every level so I'm kinda wondering what feats would be good. I have already decided to take tomb tainted soul and destruction retribution. Also fell animate. Oh and I'm using 1 lv in dread necromancer for the arcane requirement.

True Necromancer is also really bad, you would honestly be better off as a Cleric 2/ Dread Necromancer 1/ Mystic Theurge.

Even going Cleric 3/ Dread Necromancer 1/ Yathrinshee 1/ True Necromancer 15, you'll be 20th level with Cleric 16 and Dread Necromancer 14 spellcasting, for a caster level of 30 for just necromancy spells but no 9th level spells. At level 11 you'll have Cleric 7 and Dread Necromancer 6 spellcasting, 4th and 3rd level spells when characters are normally getting 6th level spells, and your necromancy spells will only be at a caster level two higher than your character level.

Chances are, you found some terrible TO build that only existed to say, "look-at-my-20th-level-caster-level," while completely disregarding playability at every level prior to 20th. TO builds are theoretical optimization, i.e. an exercise in numbers and mechanics with a target end result, not a playable build that can see a character through to 20th. An actual playable build will not recommend Yathrinshee or True Necromancer, it will tell you to focus on a single class's spellcasting or do the above early entry into Mystic Theurge, or even go something like Dread Necromancer 10/ Ur-Priest 2/ Mystic Theurge 8.