Creating A Shadow Army

[Death_Lord12]

So the BBEG in my campaign is big on shadows, and I want him to have a realistic shadow army involving nightshades, shadows, and wraiths, and any other shadowy creature out there. I'd think a good army would have a good variety of creatures utility-wise, like there'd be spell casters, foot-soldiers, stealthy people, and tanks right? So I want to know the best way of making a shadow army, it doesn't have to be crazy optimized or anything, I'm going for realism, not slaughter everything in the first round (the BBEG can do that himself without the army, I just want this 'cause I though it'd be cool). I also don't want to just summon X number of shadow squirrels to overwhelm the PCs.

The BBEG is a Drow Necropolitan Dread Necromancer 20 in case that helps. He also has this (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Codex_of_Infinite_Planes) and I was thinking of him using Gate to bring in nightshade to bring in some other shadow undead, but that's more a temporary thing, and in a battle the 1d10 rounds to summon the shadows will probably be after the battle at that point.

Anything is allowed, core/3rd party/homebrew/whatever, the methods don't matter much either, it can be spells or items or even artifacts.

[Tiri]

Well, you could Summon Undead with a shadow or wraith, have it kill some weak commoner, then command the resulting undead. The controlled undead can then create lots of spawn under its control. Those creatures are more stealth-oriented, though.

[NevinPL]

City of The Spider Queen has Orb Wraith, which is quite shadow-ish,
Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave has Shadar-Kai, a shadow fey,
Dragon #322 has nice bits about Plane of Shadow,
Dragon #350 has a tainted well, that turns people to zombies, so you can reflavor it,
Libris Mortis has Umbral creature template,
Lords of Madness have Shadow Creature template (it's also available in other books),
Tome of Magic has shadow magic, which is different than the vanilla one, and nice shadow stuff like Dark Creature template (simplified Shadow creature), and Shadow Elemental,
Unapproachable East has the Shadow-walker template.


I also have some vague recollection of a shadow curse, than slowly turns you into a shadow\shade, but I can't remember the details.

[ExLibrisMortis]

An army based on incorporeal undead won't really have artillery/foot soldiers/tanks in the traditional sense. Incorporeal undead are impossible to hit with regular weapons, so against anything mundane, wraiths auto-win, and can probably just swarm whatever comes across them (think Battle of Pelennor fields, movie version). You just have to attack at night or under cover of deeper darkness, which is fine, because that's when most mundane armies are vulnerable anyway.

Armies armed with magic weapons still have a 50% miss chance against wraiths, but an army capable of distributing large amounts of enchanted gear may be able to equip some ghostbuster regiments. In that case, your undead have to get clever: hide in the ground and use Flyby Attack to drain energy without being hit so much, harass enemy supplies with long-distance raids, take out their commanders by possessing their tents, and so on. Undead do not require supplies or rest, so you can strike anywhere, at any time.

All this auto-win has a downside: armies of clerics. You're not going to be able to fight specialized anti-undead armies, unless you can call on large amounts of countermeasures, or non-undead (construct) allies. In particular you need the simple dispel magic, which is great for counterspelling, suppressing magic weapons, and stripping death wards off your opponents. Remember to supply your corporeal allies with large amounts of black sand, and spread it all over the lands of your enemies.

Any undead/warlock 1 with Intensify Darkness gets deeper darkness at-will. Instinctive Darkness makes it an immediate action to cast, At Home in the Deep allows you to see through it, if you couldn't already. The same wraith with five more warlock levels gets dispel magic at-will, and some extra utility/flavour with such tricks as fog cloud, summon swarm or Miasmic Cloud. When these wraiths attack, the world goes dark, swarms of spiders cover the ground, and banks of fog chill you to the bone. Overhead, unseen wraiths swoop down to feast on your life-force, and when you duck, ghostly grasping hands emerge from the black soil to claw at your face. Before you die, all you know is that you will become black, infertile soil, poisoning your homeland, as you are now being poisoned, or you will become a wraith, savouring your comrades' will and strength, just as you are being savoured. The end has come. Goodbye.
Too much?

Anyway, good idea, these shadow armies.

[Inevitability]

Remember to supply your corporeal allies with large amounts of black sand, and spread it all over the lands of your enemies.

A select few incorporeal undead can pick up the sand with Ghostly Grasp, then spread it while traveling just belowground.