How to deal with a necromancer in an undead adventure?

[Marquito]

First, i want to entreat my players, like Spartakus for example, to not read the following post. You may get spoiled below...


So, I'm leading this Pathfinder group for a while. I started being DM not long ago with the Mini-Campaign that takes place in Falcon's Hollow (D0, D1, D1.5). Today we've started "D4 - Hungry are the Dead".
But I have problem with my group. One of them plays a necromancer. So for him it's easy to take control over the undead. Many encounters are boring and to easy for them, because of him being a necromancer. No I'm not sure, what to do.
In my opinion, if I make the ecounters more powerfull, the other players will have some problems. On the other hand, if I just bring more encounters they mabe will have to rest to many times, I think. Thats also kind of boring and i wouldn't have the chance to let time management be an important fact. I either don't want to make the necromancer a forbidden class. I generally like the way it is played in my group. We all have a lot of fun.

Do you have any suggestions what to do? for example in what kind of way i could change the encounters?
Maybe you have some ideas for espacially this adventure? :)


Some more background information:
The group consists of 4 players. All of them are playing RPG for a long time. So I'm the newbie here ;) But I don't want to discuss with them what to do, because don't want to ruin the adventure for them. They play the following chars on level 6:

Johann, fighter (Boris strong an fair)
Mortimer, arcanist (Kind of "History Prof. Jones Senior")
Valirion, shaman ("The new kobold king")
Rando Menesze, necromanncer ("Herald" of the new kobold king) - "Rando Menesze" comes from "random NSC" and means as much as "random NPC" ^^

Soo, all jokes aside. I hope you can help me :)

[Frostthehero]

I'm assuming that your necro is using command undead, and in that case, throw intelligent undead at your group. Even if he does manage to control them, they will still defend themselves from other group members if attacked, and won't obey suicidal commands.

Depending on how you interpret the rules, this might even mean that any undead he commands will attack him if he or his companions attack the undead.

[OldTrees1]

How to deal with a Necromancer in an Undead Adventure:

1) Know your Necromancer:
How many control pools do they have?
Probably Animate Dead, Command Undead(spell), and Command Undead(feat)

How large are those pools?
Animate Dead is 4 HD per caster level. The Command Undead spell is 1 mindless undead for 1 day per caster level. The Command Undead feat is 1 HD per class level.

What are the limitations on those pools?
Animate Dead only affects corpses. The Command Undead spell only controls mindless undead (it only charms intelligent undead). Furthermore it ends if the Undead is threatened by you or your allies. The Command Undead feat has a Will save and Intelligent Undead get a new save each day.

What happens if an undead has multiple masters?
The Command Undead feat explicitly says that an opposed Cha check is used every time the orders are in conflict. Do not overlook this! I presume this is also a general rule for command/enchant effects.


2) Know the undead you are using.
I have not played that adventure so you might want to fill me in, but first a few questions:
a) Is there an antagonist necromancer involved (even if only off camera and behind the scenes)? If there is an antagonist then the total number of undead would be limited by verisimilitude but each undead would have a powerful opposed Cha Check. Or is this one of those horde of undead spontaneously generating scenarios? In those cases the horde should be rising faster than the necromancer can slow the flow. Use the necromancer as a way to give a plausible explanation why society is not overrun. They will have to spread out some of their controlled undead to fight against off screen undead and they cannot afford to allow any of their current undead to become uncontrolled merely to make room for new undead.

b) Is this mostly mindless undead or intelligent undead? Necromancers have easier time commanding the former and the latter is usually a better story anyways.


Feed us more detail if you want more detailed answers.

[Darth Ultron]

The somewhat easy and basic answer is just replace most of the undead with something else. As long as it is spooky. Vermin and constructs and plants and oozes work just fine. As do outsiders.

For example replace ghouls with mephits or slalmanders or wax golems.

You can also give undead a bonus to will saves and/or spell resistance. Like give the Allip the feat iron will and not lighting reflexes, for example.


Also when a Pc has more then a couple undead it's a lot to keep track of....but make the player do it. They will need to order the undead around all the time, and that can be a huge burden. Also a large group is noticeable.

[Zanos]

There's a spell you could port from 3.5 that gives undead an intelligence score. This will give them feats and skillpoints, and let them save vs. command undead. Even if they fail their save, they're only charmed, not effectively dominated. He will have to use more powerful effects to control them.

[daremetoidareyo]

Whats the alignment? You could fabricate a scenario where the undead are needed elsewhere. This puts the crew in a weird place where commanding the undead becomes a hugely helpful part of a story, make up a "command chain" where undead can be shuffled off to allies who need them more.

maybe there is this crew that has figured out how to resurrect the undead into perfect health and they have an underground railroad..where at the end, the undead are brought entirely back and released? Long term effects could be crazy: maybe some of the brought back are suicidal, or thankful or being pressed into 3-5 years of slavery as a type of payment for this group saving them, or all of these...

Maybe the major dam is going to break, in a zone where wild griffons are actively hunting humanoids after developing a taste for demihuman brains over the past few months, and only gobs of undead the undead can be safetly used to plug up the leaks and dig troughs and diverts.

If you use those ideas, you need to give the party a familiar or something that reminds them and ferries the undead to other allied hands. Further, you need to find a way to make the other PCs shine while the necromancer has a chance for morally conflicting heroism on the back burner.

[Spartakus]

Greetings. A few infos from me, as I am the player of said necromancer (No I did not read anything in spoiler tags). And sorry for destroying the last encounter. I honestly thought it was meant to be a piece of cake.

Current lvl is 6. Alignment is true neutral.

OldTrees1 mentioned the right stats, although my spell list currently lacks Comand Undead (but not for long). I do have the feat though and would assume that those pools don't stack as they have the same name. The spell is a bit better though as the saving throw is harder due to using INT instead of CHA.

This means zombies and skelettons are easy and cheap to control, though their usage is limited as they don't exactly threaten anything on our level. They do make good flankers, meat shields and trapfinders though. Or plain silly stuff like carrying another PC's "throne".

That being said, I controled quite an army of shadows in the last dungeon (which was still challenging due to some non-undead or ones with pretty good will-saves) due to a chain of one shadow controlled another, that one controlled another two and so on. I quickly realized thereafter that taking out the weakest link in the chain (myself) would have resulted in a quick and ugly TPK. So I made a rule for myself: "Never summon what you can't control. Never control what you can't defeat!"

So while waves of low-HD undead are indeed a piece of cake, those with more HD or good will saves are a lot less likely to fall under my control. I do have Halt Undead to deal with those on the other hand.

[OldTrees1]

Greetings. A few infos from me, as I am the player of said necromancer (No I did not read anything in spoiler tags). And sorry for destroying the last encounter. I honestly thought it was meant to be a piece of cake.

Current lvl is 6. Alignment is true neutral.

OldTrees1 mentioned the right stats, although my spell list currently lacks Comand Undead (but not for long). I do have the feat though and would assume that those pools don't stack as they have the same name. The spell is a bit better though as the saving throw is harder due to using INT instead of CHA.

This means zombies and skelettons are easy and cheap to control, though their usage is limited as they don't exactly threaten anything on our level. They do make good flankers, meat shields and trapfinders though. Or plain silly stuff like carrying another PC's "throne".

That being said, I controled quite an army of shadows in the last dungeon (which was still challenging due to some non-undead or ones with pretty good will-saves) due to a chain of one shadow controlled another, that one controlled another two and so on. I quickly realized thereafter that taking out the weakest link in the chain (myself) would have resulted in a quick and ugly TPK. So I made a rule for myself: "Never summon what you can't control. Never control what you can't defeat!"

So while waves of low-HD undead are indeed a piece of cake, those with more HD or good will saves are a lot less likely to fall under my control. I do have Halt Undead to deal with those on the other hand.
1) The Rebuke/Command Undead(class feature in 3rd, feat in pathfinder) pool and the Command Undead(spell) pool are explicitly different pools. Sharing the same name is due to poor editing on pazio's part when they renamed Rebuke Undead.

2) Also make sure you read the Command Undead spell. The Int based save only grants a charmed like effect and only applies to intelligent undead. Mindless undead are controlled and do not get a save. So while it is harder for an intelligent undead to save vs the spell, they will be less controlled than if they failed vs the feat.

3) I would suggest against taking the Command Undead spell at this time. It is a gigantic pool of weak minions. Your DM is already asking for advice with how to handle Necromancers so it is ill advised to make it harder at this time.

Trading out the Command Undead feat and taking the Command Undead spell might be worth considering. Both are strong in their own way(although the feat is stronger overall). Making the switch would leave your Necromancer with an intentionally placed blindspot(intelligent undead) that the DM can use to tweak encounters.

Although another word of warning, each of the control pools mechanically lends itself to a different scale of operation.

Animate Dead works on the small guard of undead scale.
Rebuke Undead(Command Undead feat) works on the couple of undead cohorts scale.
Command Undead(spell) works on the army of mindless skeletons scale.

Not all pools necessarily fit the campaign you are in.

4) Thank you for self limiting with "Never summon what you can't control. Never control what you can't defeat!". Chain control is one of the reasons that Rebuke Undead(Command Undead feat) is the strongest of the pools. It becomes overpowered(easily going into Theoretical Optimization levels) if its HD limit is subverted somehow.

[Pleh]

ANY time that combat becomes trivial (for any reason), you can always keep things interesting by shifting the focus outside of combat.

The Intelligent Undead and Antagonist Necromancer are good suggestions, but might I also suggest adding more environmental challenges? If they're going to have squads of mindless undead helping them through this module, set up the map so they will NEED the extra help.

Say, for example, the ruins and catacombs are unstable. The party will sometimes need to leave someone behind to hold that door/ceiling up while everyone else moves on. Normally, this would be a heroic sacrifice of a party member, but when the Necromancer is slowly collecting zombies and skeletons to do his bidding, the heroes feel clever having the undead make the sacrifice for them, while still expending the resources that those undead are no longer available to them and the Necromancer has used up some of his daily controlling magic. He can grab more mindless undead, but he can't keep doing it indefinitely.

Here's another: say there's a cliff ledge and the climb DC is too difficult for anyone in the party (assuming they don't have access to flying yet, but my point is more conceptual than literal), but they can make it easily enough if the undead form a scaffold for the party to climb. Unfortunately, with no one for the undead to climb, they are forced to abandon their thralls and continue on.