Monarch of the Damned: A "Tier 1" Undead Reanimatior Prestige Class

[Giegue]

As the title says. I was/am fed up with how bad Wizards suck at necromancy compared to clerics, so I made this wonderful little creation a while back and have decided to re-post it for feedback. It's an extremely potent PrC, but those that aspire to it have to make a lot of sacrifices to get into the class and it forces even a "batman" class like the wizard to specalize somewhat. Anyway, I have no idea how good/bad it is, but in the past when I posted it nobody complained about it's balance, so that means something I guess. Anyway, here is the class for your viewing pleasure...

Monarch of the Damned (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t9sehxAz7QnBdt62MSm9txEh6K84rQ1ZsXKHTFylNto/edit?usp=sharing)

EDIT: the class gains the ability to rebuke/dominate undead undead 3+ Cha mod Per-day. I typed the doc so quick I forgot to add the "per-day" clause and just noticed that now while I have no computer access. I'll edit the doc accordingly when I get home from work.

[Tanuki Tales]

Going to have to read through everything, but just off the bat...this is only 7/10 casting progression. The "too good" Wizard PrCs tend to be higher and the Charisma requirement is odd.

[Giegue]

The charisma requirement is just to make entry more difficult for wizards. The class gets a lot of features based off cha and from a fluff standpoint is not a path somebody with weak convictions or little confidence would ever take up, hence the cha requirement so wizards with dumped cha can't use magic items and other cheese like that to abuse the cha-based features of the class with a dumped charisma.

As for the 7/10 casting progression, thats actually quite decieving. The class is 7/10, but gets a feature that makes it 10/10 but only for necromancy. So you will have the spell slots of a wizard who took a 10/10 casting class, as well as access to the same spell levels as that wizard, but you can only use those slots to prepare necromancy spells, can learn/cast only necromancy spells of those slot's level and have 10/10 CL progression only for necromancy spells. Once your unmodified caster level reaches the level it would need to be for a wizard to access the spells per-day/spell levels you gain from this feature you can prepare, learn and cast any spells of those levels a standard wizard normally could, however. So you are essentially behind 3 CLs for all your magic except necromancy, for which you have full CL progression. It basically forces you to "hyper-specialize" as a wizard and gives you massive buffs to that specialty in return.

[tsj]

I really like it.

But how does it compare to ie.
Wizard/cleric/mystic theurge

[Giegue]

I think it ends up about even with the mystic theurge due to getting more and better class features as well as not being -as- behind in spells per-day/spells known then the MT. The mystic theurge likely will have higher numbers with Animate Dead, but gets 0 class features other than dual profession and even further has to suck for about six levels unless you use some kind of cheese like sanctum spell to enter, and not every DM will be ok with that level of cheesieness.

This class meanwhile gets to be a straight wizard or dread necro up until taking the class, meaning the leveling process is nowhere near as painful. Even further, unlike the MT it gets some absurdly powerful class features such as being able to command minions from afar, turing animate dead from a touch range spell to an AOE reanimate (The touch range of animate dead is something a lot of DMs have used to put a kibash on undead legion shenanigans as they -argue- that you have to be touching every single corpse you wish to animate when you cast animate dead and thus you can only ever animate 2 undead at a time with Animate Dead, even if you carefully stack corpses and touch the corpse piles.), getting to flat out ignore the black onyx requirement 1/day (which IMO saves you a TON of gold) and thats just a few features.

Lets also remember you rebuke at full character level, while the MT will only be rebuking as a 3rd level cleric -at best-. Rebuking undead has long been the "best" way to build an undead legion as it theoretically has no cap on the amount of minions it gives you if you successfully control a spawn-creator with it, and with only 3rd level rebuking the MT isn't getting a spawn creator under it's command with Rebuke. To add insult to injury, you can also directly control some spawn creators via enchantments with one of your class features. This makes you far better than the MT at utilizing undead minions not created with animate dead, which are almost always better than the skeletons/zombies animate dead gives you. In fact, when it comes to the Create Undead line of spells the MT basicly can't use them...at all. Even with Song of the Dead, they can't treat undead made from humanoids as humanoids for their enchantment spells, meaning they'd need to use Dominate Monster, not Dominate person to control undead they create with Create Undead and friends. Guess what? Song of the dead bumps your spells up 1 level, so they can't actually use a Song of the Dead Dominate Monster or Mindrape, meaning the MT has no way of actually controlling undead they make with the Create Undead line beyond Command Undead and Control Undead, and both those spells are pretty terrible at actually controlling undead unless your a very high cha character, and a wizard/cleric MT will probally have cha as their main dump stat.

So I think they end up about even. The MT can probably get higher numbers with Animate Dead if fully optimized for it, but this class gets a lot of other features that allow it to excel at Necromancy in ways the MT cannot and also sacrifices less overall casting power if early MT entry cheese is not allowed at your table.