Building a Necromancer (Wizard)

[ThisIsZen]

Following a TPK at Vordekai in my Kingmaker campaign, I'm coming back as my old PC's daughter who I've been wanting to play for a while anyway. She's already been established as a Necromancy-Specialist Wizard and for thematic reasons I want to keep with that, but I intend to shift some spell selections, feat selections and such around before she actually enters play proper. I'll be starting at level 8, but I'm intending to stick with her for the rest of the campaign which is at least level 16.

I want to both run BFC and more traditional necromancy stuff, but I also intend to play as an NG character overall. I'd rather not get into questions of how this'll work and just accept it as a premise, I'm mostly focusing on mechanics here.

So, the things that ARE decided:

Current build is Expert 1/Wizard 7, which is shortchanging me as a full caster (she started as a level 1 NPC), but which I'm going to be keeping probably as a point of flavor. If I get TOO frustrated, I'll retrain the Expert level.

Stat line is 11/13/10/21/14/14.

Most everything else is something I'm willing to shift around one way or another.

I don't have the character sheet actually on me right now but I have an older form that is MOSTLY correct to present so questions about her current arrangement can be answered.

I'm mostly looking for help in making a middling-optimization Wizard who can contribute well in a majority of combats. Previously I played a Dark Tapestry caster Oracle who basically did nothing for 90% of fights for lack of the correct spells, but who managed to completely dominate fights when the stars aligned. I hate that sort of feast/famine cycle and would vastly prefer a more consistent contributor, but my confidence in my optimization abilities has decreased significantly recently.

[Geddy2112]

If your playing neutral good, you might want to take turn undead over command undead as your bonus feat from your school. Also consider the life subschool-healing grace synergizes well with party buffs and makes your blasts/aoe against undead rock.

Expert is not terrible if you have to take an NPC level. Its better hit dice for your otherwise fragile wizard, and hopefully your favored class skill selections were not wizard favored class skills giving more utility

Sad that your statline is like that, a 14 in dex and con would go a long way to ensuring your not smushed, but at level 8 magic should keep you alive fairly well.

Now that you are a wizard and can prepare spells, load your spellbook with everything you can find, even the usually useless and bad spells. This way, you can modify your spells to fit the area/types of enemies you expect, as well as utility. You probably don't need charm person in a dungeon with no living humanoids, but it is great when your in a town gathering information. Basically you don't need to worry about which spells to pick, just what to prepare, and you only have a day before you prepare again vs waiting for a level to swap out something you only used twice. A wizard should always have something to contribute to a combat.

Ghost sound and prestidigation should always be prepared cantrips, the rest are mostly up to you/what fits the situation.

1st.Grease, silent image and enlarge person are great so great they are worth a wand. Magic missile won't do tons of damage, but it is consistent chipping. Ray of enfeeblement is fantastic if your fighting any melee based baddies, as it will knock a minimum of 3 strength off the score(roll a 1, pass fort save) but up to 11, reducing damage and rate of being hit. It also encumbers loaded down enemies quick, and even if saved against will do something.

2nd. Blindness/deafness shuts down a lot of enemies, web is great control, protection from X on wands, maybe prepare the ability boosting spells for characters without enhancement bonuses from items.

3rd.Haste and slow win fights, always have them prepared when you think there is even a chance of combat. Stinking cloud is great, wand tongues, maybe wand fly or at least prepare it.

4th. Black tentacles and charm monster are great.

Once you hit 5th level spells pick up magic jar; wizards are the most powerful class in the game so I doubt you will be useless. If anything, the rest of the group should be struggling to keep up.

[13ones]

*cracks knuckles*

Alright, now I see you want to do Necromancy. Now as someone who has played a LOT of Necromancy in pathfinder let me tell you that you will suffer the same sort of cycle of feast/famine that you did with your Oracle. Necromancy is a beautiful, delicious school full of spells that only sometimes work. Necromancy's biggest weakness is that the majority of it's solid spells target Fort, which is on average the best save for monsters and NPCs. Following that you suffer from it having Death Effects and Mind effecting as well as fear being tagged onto the spells. Entire swaths of monsters are just straight immune to those effects. Then you've got those immune to energy drain. "But Bones" you say "I can always just raise minions". True, but depending on your world and your GM minions are ALWAYS an Evil act and ALWAYS put you at odds with a party. Also they are generally an expensive resource. Then you've got the general problem with Save or Suck/lose builds. When you take your action you can either end the fight and make the rest of your team feel worthless with a single spell, or you waste an entire action trying to curse someone. Now despite all of this Necromancy is still one of my favourite things so I'll help where I can.

Now there are ways to work around these weaknesses. The easiest way to do that is to quite simply play a witch. Witches have such a varried spell list that include both Divine and Arcane spells, along with their base hexes and their patron spells. You'll have a glut of options, which as a caster is what you want. Hexes also have a great synergy with the idea of a Necromancer, they also make your heavy hitting spells actually stick. Arcanist also has a way around this by being able to boost their DCs with their exploits. The Witch, however, is the better 'Necromancer' class while still staying Arcane.

As for Spells what Geddy Suggested is a good start but I'll break down some of my favourite Necromancy spells on the Arcane list.

1st:
-Ray of Enfeeblement : A great entry level into Necromancy. I usually pick this up for casters regardless of style. Great way of shutting down your opposing casters who likely have very little strength.

2nd:
-Blindness/Deafness: This was one of my go to spells for my Arcanist Necromancer. With a way to lower their saves or boost your DCs you'll find this spell ENDS encounters. I've shut down entire fights by stealing their eyes. Blindness is usually what you want to inflict, ESPECIALLY if you have a rogue in the party.

-False Life: Good for a potion or a wand, maybe worth a single preperation in your spell book.Set it and forget it. Useful but not required.

-Ghoul Touch: Fantastic spell with a familiar. Getting your familiar reach with say the Evloved Familiar feat means it can deliver a touch for you at a great range. Decent spell, maybe not totally worth taking.

3rd:
-Halt Undead: A better wand or scroll. Worth having on hand, but not worth knowing unless its a very heavy undead world.

-Howling Agony: This is what I like to call a set up spell. You throw this on before someone hits them with something heavy, as this lowers AC and Reflex saves it's perfect to toss but before your party's nuke or rogue gets to go.

-Ray of Exhaustion: This is the kind of spells you, as a Necromancer will want to prepare. This is the kind of spell that has an effect even if they save! This is a great use of an action. Seek out anything that offers partial saves and you'll be a stronger Necromancer for it.

4th:
-Enervation: This is a spell my GMs came to HATE me for. With spell perfection you can get two of these bad boys off in a round. Throw on bouncing/persistent/empowered and it gets dumb. If you are taking the energy drain spells you need to have the Thanototic Spell metamagic. Trust me, it is worth it.

5th:
-Magic Jar: This is one a lot of people suggest but I'm never 100% sold on it. I can certainly see the appeal but I've never been able to pull it off sucessfully. If it works it ends encounters but the amount of set up required to do it makes it a less than flexable spell. Spell known, yes, but I'd rarely include it in my spell book. There are better 5th level spells to know...such as.

-Suffocation: This is another partial save spell, and another one with great results. Pick it up. I love this spell.

6th:
- Circle of Death: Possibly dangerous, but not terribly useful. It's the HD limit that makes this hurt. I usually try to avoid most Death Effects because of the HD limit. HD limits in general are what ruin some spells outright.

-Major Curse: It's the ability to choose your own curse that makes this a thing of beauty. But even still the -6 it gives to stats is a great opening to further dickery from you and further sobbing from your GM as you peel away the stats on his beautiful encounter.

7th:
-Finger of Death: This is the only Death Effect I honestly enjoy. With this on my Arcanist I could get its Fort save to be next to impossible to beat, and with the proper feat selection you are technically casting it as a caster of 2-4 levels higher than your current level, which is why I utterly love this spell. Shame it's a Death effect, which makes a lot of monsters by this level immune to it.

-Waves of Exhaustion: No save? Yes please. Just make sure to avoid friendly fire.

8th:
-Clone: Want to become a Lich without actually becoming a Lich? This is how. Never suffer player Death again, so long as you have time to prepare. And as a Wizard you should always have time to prepare.

-Horrid Wilting: Hello untyped damage spell. This does not suffer from being a death effect or an energy drain effect. This spell is just as effective on Undead as it is anything else. Use fortitude for half is not great, but its better than nothing. And this thing ENDS mooks.

-Orb of the Void: It's expensive for Battlefield control, but by god is it a beautiful bit of battlefield control.

9th:
Mass Suffocation: It's a high level spell slot but it will make your GM annoyed at you when he has to roll a dozen fort saves every round. It can be a thing of beauty but its only maybe worth it.

Energy Drain: This is the spell you are working towards. This is what you are trying to do. With this you can END Boss fights. Stripping away 2d4 levels and then following with a quicked Enervate for another d4 worth of levels is the best way to make your GM sob into his dice bag. If you want to be a Necromancer and don't grab this spell you are playing Arcane Necromancers wrong.

[atemu1234]

*cracks knuckles*

Alright, now I see you want to do Necromancy. Now as someone who has played a LOT of Necromancy in pathfinder let me tell you that you will suffer the same sort of cycle of feast/famine that you did with your Oracle. Necromancy is a beautiful, delicious school full of spells that only sometimes work. Necromancy's biggest weakness is that the majority of it's solid spells target Fort, which is on average the best save for monsters and NPCs. Following that you suffer from it having Death Effects and Mind effecting as well as fear being tagged onto the spells. Entire swaths of monsters are just straight immune to those effects. Then you've got those immune to energy drain. "But Bones" you say "I can always just raise minions". True, but depending on your world and your GM minions are ALWAYS an Evil act and ALWAYS put you at odds with a party. Also they are generally an expensive resource. Then you've got the general problem with Save or Suck/lose builds. When you take your action you can either end the fight and make the rest of your team feel worthless with a single spell, or you waste an entire action trying to curse someone. Now despite all of this Necromancy is still one of my favourite things so I'll help where I can.

Now there are ways to work around these weaknesses. The easiest way to do that is to quite simply play a witch. Witches have such a varried spell list that include both Divine and Arcane spells, along with their base hexes and their patron spells. You'll have a glut of options, which as a caster is what you want. Hexes also have a great synergy with the idea of a Necromancer, they also make your heavy hitting spells actually stick. Arcanist also has a way around this by being able to boost their DCs with their exploits. The Witch, however, is the better 'Necromancer' class while still staying Arcane.

As for Spells what Geddy Suggested is a good start but I'll break down some of my favourite Necromancy spells on the Arcane list.

1st:
-Ray of Enfeeblement : A great entry level into Necromancy. I usually pick this up for casters regardless of style. Great way of shutting down your opposing casters who likely have very little strength.

2nd:
-Blindness/Deafness: This was one of my go to spells for my Arcanist Necromancer. With a way to lower their saves or boost your DCs you'll find this spell ENDS encounters. I've shut down entire fights by stealing their eyes. Blindness is usually what you want to inflict, ESPECIALLY if you have a rogue in the party.

-False Life: Good for a potion or a wand, maybe worth a single preperation in your spell book.Set it and forget it. Useful but not required.

-Ghoul Touch: Fantastic spell with a familiar. Getting your familiar reach with say the Evloved Familiar feat means it can deliver a touch for you at a great range. Decent spell, maybe not totally worth taking.

3rd:
-Halt Undead: A better wand or scroll. Worth having on hand, but not worth knowing unless its a very heavy undead world.

-Howling Agony: This is what I like to call a set up spell. You throw this on before someone hits them with something heavy, as this lowers AC and Reflex saves it's perfect to toss but before your party's nuke or rogue gets to go.

-Ray of Exhaustion: This is the kind of spells you, as a Necromancer will want to prepare. This is the kind of spell that has an effect even if they save! This is a great use of an action. Seek out anything that offers partial saves and you'll be a stronger Necromancer for it.

4th:
-Enervation: This is a spell my GMs came to HATE me for. With spell perfection you can get two of these bad boys off in a round. Throw on bouncing/persistent/empowered and it gets dumb. If you are taking the energy drain spells you need to have the Thanototic Spell metamagic. Trust me, it is worth it.

5th:
-Magic Jar: This is one a lot of people suggest but I'm never 100% sold on it. I can certainly see the appeal but I've never been able to pull it off sucessfully. If it works it ends encounters but the amount of set up required to do it makes it a less than flexable spell. Spell known, yes, but I'd rarely include it in my spell book. There are better 5th level spells to know...such as.

-Suffocation: This is another partial save spell, and another one with great results. Pick it up. I love this spell.

6th:
- Circle of Death: Possibly dangerous, but not terribly useful. It's the HD limit that makes this hurt. I usually try to avoid most Death Effects because of the HD limit. HD limits in general are what ruin some spells outright.

-Major Curse: It's the ability to choose your own curse that makes this a thing of beauty. But even still the -6 it gives to stats is a great opening to further dickery from you and further sobbing from your GM as you peel away the stats on his beautiful encounter.

7th:
-Finger of Death: This is the only Death Effect I honestly enjoy. With this on my Arcanist I could get its Fort save to be next to impossible to beat, and with the proper feat selection you are technically casting it as a caster of 2-4 levels higher than your current level, which is why I utterly love this spell. Shame it's a Death effect, which makes a lot of monsters by this level immune to it.

-Waves of Exhaustion: No save? Yes please. Just make sure to avoid friendly fire.

8th:
-Clone: Want to become a Lich without actually becoming a Lich? This is how. Never suffer player Death again, so long as you have time to prepare. And as a Wizard you should always have time to prepare.

-Horrid Wilting: Hello untyped damage spell. This does not suffer from being a death effect or an energy drain effect. This spell is just as effective on Undead as it is anything else. Use fortitude for half is not great, but its better than nothing. And this thing ENDS mooks.

-Orb of the Void: It's expensive for Battlefield control, but by god is it a beautiful bit of battlefield control.

9th:
Mass Suffocation: It's a high level spell slot but it will make your GM annoyed at you when he has to roll a dozen fort saves every round. It can be a thing of beauty but its only maybe worth it.

Energy Drain: This is the spell you are working towards. This is what you are trying to do. With this you can END Boss fights. Stripping away 2d4 levels and then following with a quicked Enervate for another d4 worth of levels is the best way to make your GM sob into his dice bag. If you want to be a Necromancer and don't grab this spell you are playing Arcane Necromancers wrong.

I was going to say most of this. Maybe we should team up and build a handbook.

Or conquer the world.

[ThisIsZen]

Other than possibly retraining out the Expert level, I'm pretty set on keeping Annisse a Wizard - she's been established as such in-game for several months, for one thing, so I'm not really working on a clean slate here. As well, I don't think I'll have much issue with alignment, as her father was a solid LE (despite not doing too much evil). I'll admit that I'll mostly be cherrypicking spells from Necromancy when they work, and her description as a Necromancer is largely going to be due to use of Animate Dead. I've got a bunch of justifications IC for it - she won't raise innocents or good people, for instance, only those she believes are evil, as this gives them a second chance to do good in the world. (This is tied up in a peculiar sense of religion brought on by her own experiences with death, having been killed by an assassin's poison at the age of 14 earlier in the campaign.)

That being said, I appreciate the help a lot. Knowing what to aim for and what to avoid in the Necromancy school in particular is nice, and just general advice with Wizards is good as well. Any suggestions as to how best to make use of Animate Dead, though? Things to aim for and etc.; I won't be raising just anyone, but I don't expect there to be any such compunctions on animals and unintelligent magical beasts, so making the most of my menagerie would be ideal.

[13ones]

Okay as far as general minion matience goes keep it to mindless undead and low entry level undead. Treat it a little like blasting in that your resources are better spent maintaining lower level creatures than trying to control one or two very powerful beings. Anything that create spawn is a HORRIBLE idea. Vampires, Shadows, and the like are something you should leave to NPC big bad Necromancers. It's better to have a dozen skeletons than it is to have one really powerful vampire that just has to pass a save to shrug off your control and murder the party in their sleep. Seriously, don't get undead with a personality, and if you HAVE to I highly recomend things that don't create spawn and don't retain their spells.

As for animate dead in particular...Skeletons are better than zombies, so always use skeletons. They've better stats and are generally more useful than zombies. If your gm allows you to use templates I highly suggest bloodied, as it just means less investment since they 'repair themselves' in a sense. You should probably check out Skeleton Summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/skeleton-summoner). It gives you a NON-Evil way to summon in Skeletons, as well it lets you add the skeleton template to anything you summon in once a day. Pretty decent for a minion-mancer since these undead are summons and not minions and are thus not bound by the HD per day cap you are given. It's a great way to very quickly boost your minion numbers when you really need to flood the board.

Once again go mindless skeletons over willful vampires.

Also grabbing some UMD so you can use some Cleric scrolls such as desicrate and the like will certainly be helpful. AS an INT based caster you should have the skills to spare.

[Geddy2112]

Anything that create spawn is a HORRIBLE idea. Vampires, Shadows, and the like are something you should leave to NPC big bad Necromancers. It's better to have a dozen skeletons than it is to have one really powerful vampire that just has to pass a save to shrug off your control and murder the party in their sleep. Seriously, don't get undead with a personality, and if you HAVE to I highly recomend things that don't create spawn and don't retain their spells.

As for animate dead in particular...Skeletons are better than zombies, so always use skeletons. They've better stats and are generally more useful than zombies. If your gm allows you to use templates I highly suggest bloodied, as it just means less investment since they 'repair themselves' in a sense. You should probably check out Skeleton Summoner (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/skeleton-summoner). It gives you a NON-Evil way to summon in Skeletons, as well it lets you add the skeleton template to anything you summon in once a day. Pretty decent for a minion-mancer since these undead are summons and not minions and are thus not bound by the HD per day cap you are given. It's a great way to very quickly boost your minion numbers when you really need to flood the board.

Once again go mindless skeletons over willful vampires.

13ones is dead right here(no pun intended).
I am currently playing a gravewalker witch(which I recommend if you ever want to try necromancy as a witch, they make it an art form) Last week,through some interesting roleplay and the antipaladin refusing to back down from a duel, I found my witch about to be down a party member and 100 platinum pieces in debt to a powerful vampire(we are playing an evil campaign and were in a den of much ill refute). The antipaladin is dying hard, and the vampire begins to approach me. Knowing it is a matter of time, I act first and throw my bonethrall hex(control undead but on hex, so I can spam it ad nauseum). The vampire, being a much higher level than the party proceeds to start beating the tar out of me. On my last legs, I throw my hex and the vampire rolls a 1 to resist. I quickly order the vampire to save my comrade, and he did.

This took about half an hour of table time. We spent the next three and a half hours pulling out the stops, calling in favors, praying to dark gods, researching and buying every silver weapon we can find in game. We got lucky as our plan to expose the vampire to sunlight worked, but the cost of planning the inevitable fight against the vamp once they broke from my control was highly detrimental.

It is almost never worth it to take over sentient undead. Even if you steal them from the evil necromancer, turning them on their creator you will be stuck with monsters who will kill you the moment they break free. The rare exception is if you found a yuki-onna or other LE spirit that could have similar goals, but you would probably have to be evil...