(3.5) Undead Rat Army with Destructive Retribution

[theoneorange]

So if you are playing a necromancer, and your only minions are undead rats and you have destructive retribution, is it as powerful as it seems. Any time one of your rats die it explodes dealing negative energy damage. If you have Tomb-tainted soul you would be healing from the negative energy damage. Is this a viable strategy? What is could be improved? And are their and ways to make many of your rats to explode at once? Any advice and opinions would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. This is planned to be used with the Dread Necromancer class.

[OldTrees1]

I once killed a dragon with a swarm of exploding undead.
I suggest using Chain Command Undead(spell) and a free animation method(for the quick turnaround).
Then nuke a bag of the undead next to your foes via an AoE spell that would harm your undead.

[Twilightwyrm]

While it is certainly possible, and funny, there are a few drawbacks. First: the exploding undead rat swarm is kind of a one-shot tactic. Great you've exploded all your rats to kill an enemy, heal yourself, etc...now what? True, you can ration these exploding rats, but they are still a very finite resource, which leads to the Second: Cost. While you do overcome the maximum undead cap, you are still likely having to pay to animate all those rats. Every time you want to do this. It's not the same as other finite resources like arrows which are cheap enough to buy, and easy enough to make, that running out is less of a problem. Every time you want to replenish your rats, you have to pay in both time and money for every since one. Now granted there are several ways around both the time, and money, problem, and those should definitely be employed to keep costs down. Third: Reliability/Utility. Ignoring for the moment that certain monsters are going to be healed by negative energy, or resistant to it, you are essentially trading one gigantic undead hulk that can be used to deal devastating damage over and over again for a swarm of diminutive rats that can only really perform that one trick. They cannot help you climb, fly you to locations, serve as flankers, defenders, or meat shields. Basically, they have one tactic, and that tactic must be effective. And Forth: They are not actually as difficult to overcome as they may appear. Any flying foe won't have much to worry about (consider substituting undead exploding bats or pigeons). Similarly, a foe with a reliably effective breath weapon or other AoE effect is going to be able to decimate or destroy them all before they can get within range for their kamikaze strikes. Since they detonate with a fairly low reflex DC of 15, any monster with evasion or improved evasion is going to take drastically reduced damage from a kamikaze swarm, and if they have some way of not failing on a 1, potentially no damage. And finally, there is the problem of friendly fire. Even if you have tomb tainted soul, your allies may not. What do you do if (as is often the case) your ally is engaging the enemy? Now, effective coordination (as with any AoE effect) is key to maximizing its effectiveness, but this is still going to limit the tactic's tactical viability even more than it already does.

[OldTrees1]

@Twilightwyrm
Very good post.

A free Animate Dead 1/day is not hard to gain.

There is no reason a necromancer can't have both a few 20HD brutes and a bunch of rats(Chain Command Undead is for the too many Brutes).

[Twilightwyrm]

@Twilightwyrm
Very good post.

A free Animate Dead 1/day is not hard to gain.

There is no reason a necromancer can't have both a few 20HD brutes and a bunch of rats(Chain Command Undead is for the too many Brutes).

I'm sure it isn't. But, that comes out to one rat per day. This means it cannot be a regular tactic, given the downtime to refresh your "ammunition" is so long. The Fell Animate feat, in turn, works if you are fine with the rats being zombies, since you can reanimate a large number at once.

And while I suppose this is the case, the point is that your efforts may be better directed elsewhere.

[Extra Anchovies]

Target: One or more corpses touched
So (8*CL) rats per casting, actually.

[Inevitability]

Also, you can catch some live rats (or pay low-level adventurers for it), kill them with a Fell Animate Acid Splash, and enjoy your free rat zombies.

[DruidAlanon]

You must have a pool for rats. Hard to maintain it if you don't stick to a place for a long time. Also, consider Pale Master for the Cohort to buff your rats.Or w8 fot Animate Dread Warrior, kill a bard and reanimate him. Don't expect to win only by destroying your rats, buff them to actually deal some dmg before they explode. IT can definitely work in general, can't imagine why not only with rats. Probably because they won't deal any serious dmg unless they explode.

Btw, I wouldn't spend a feat for Tomb tainted soul, I would prefer to become Necropolitan+ spellstitched.

You could work it out with something like this:
Corpsecrafter (LM)( +4 to Str, +2hp/hd),
Undead Mastery
Deadly Chill (LM)- +1d6 cold dmg with natural weapons)
Hardened Flesh (LM)- Natural Armor of +2)
and maybe Nimble Bones (LM)( +4 Initiative, +10ft to base land speed) + Boost Resistance (LM, if you face paladins and clerics often).

+ Find a Desecrated area + alter area (for some + hp) to raise your rats.

You may want to find a Deadwalker's Ring + Rod of Authority as well.

[drack]

While it is certainly possible, and funny, there are a few drawbacks. First: the exploding undead rat swarm is kind of a one-shot tactic. Great you've exploded all your rats to kill an enemy, heal yourself, etc...now what? True, you can ration these exploding rats, but they are still a very finite resource, which leads to the Second: Cost. While you do overcome the maximum undead cap, you are still likely having to pay to animate all those rats. Every time you want to do this. It's not the same as other finite resources like arrows which are cheap enough to buy, and easy enough to make, that running out is less of a problem. Every time you want to replenish your rats, you have to pay in both time and money for every since one. Now granted there are several ways around both the time, and money, problem, and those should definitely be employed to keep costs down. Third: Reliability/Utility. Ignoring for the moment that certain monsters are going to be healed by negative energy, or resistant to it, you are essentially trading one gigantic undead hulk that can be used to deal devastating damage over and over again for a swarm of diminutive rats that can only really perform that one trick. They cannot help you climb, fly you to locations, serve as flankers, defenders, or meat shields. Basically, they have one tactic, and that tactic must be effective. And Forth: They are not actually as difficult to overcome as they may appear. Any flying foe won't have much to worry about (consider substituting undead exploding bats or pigeons). Similarly, a foe with a reliably effective breath weapon or other AoE effect is going to be able to decimate or destroy them all before they can get within range for their kamikaze strikes. Since they detonate with a fairly low reflex DC of 15, any monster with evasion or improved evasion is going to take drastically reduced damage from a kamikaze swarm, and if they have some way of not failing on a 1, potentially no damage. And finally, there is the problem of friendly fire. Even if you have tomb tainted soul, your allies may not. What do you do if (as is often the case) your ally is engaging the enemy? Now, effective coordination (as with any AoE effect) is key to maximizing its effectiveness, but this is still going to limit the tactic's tactical viability even more than it already does.

Heh, I once played a pathfinder/3.5 game where I did this... then again I used PF exploding skeletons. Negative energy is constraining in a number of ways. Primarily in the sense that it cannot ignore the next rat to explode. My character largely used them for demolition, which would also be ruled out with negative energy. You see, lets say you have 50 rats, 40 die, that deals however much negative energy damage to... probably most of them and your foe, but your rats, your legion do not heal much from this because their HD is so low. To really benefit from destructive retribution, you want HD no smaller then 1/10 of the max HD you can animate, and you'd probably be better off with closer to 1/5. Chain command, as mentioned, can still give you the numbers, but you want your undeads to fall less so that when they do you actually benefit from it as much as your foe suffers. The other problem, as addressed above, is that if you're relying on destructive retribution for the brunt of your damage, you really do need free animation. Alternately, if it's just your trump card for if ever, the dark lords forbid, you begin to loose a fight, then you're fine even if it's out of pocket. :smallsmile: