Dread Necromancer conundrum

[ihuk]

So atm I'm making a dread necromancer for a friend for an upcoming campaign, and I realized that since my gm has a tendancy to hand out free templates between lvl 5-10 this will be a lich early on in life. So the main question is where to go lvl wise, the main plan is to be a minionmancer

Dread necromancer 8 pale master 2

feats planned out so far are
1 skill focus (knowledge Rel) *required for pm, corpse crafter
3 Destruction Retribution
6 Fell Drain
9 Undead Leadership

Class wise I've considered going rainbow servant, sand shaper, mage of the arcane order or maybe dread witch but nothing truly pops out as having good synergy

[Dagroth]

So atm I'm making a dread necromancer for a friend for an upcoming campaign, and I realized that since my gm has a tendancy to hand out free templates between lvl 5-10 this will be a lich early on in life. So the main question is where to go lvl wise, the main plan is to be a minionmancer

Dread necromancer 8 pale master 2

feats planned out so far are
1 skill focus (knowledge Rel) *required for pm, corpse crafter
3 Destruction Retribution
6 Fell Drain
9 Undead Leadership

Class wise I've considered going rainbow servant, sand shaper, mage of the arcane order or maybe dread witch but nothing truly pops out as having good synergy

1 level of Sand Shaper loses you a caster level, but gives you a nice stack of buff spells & summons. Useful for a DN in those situations where undead are less useful.

If you go Rainbow Servant, you pretty-much have to go all 10 levels or its completely wasted. Don't forget you'll have to be LN or TN unless your DM allows you to be a NG or LG Necromancer.

[nolongerchaos]

If you're going Minionmancy, I feel obligated to point out that Dread Necro's Undead Mastery ability, in regards to the Animate Dead portion, only takes your class level in DN into account, and as such if you multiclass/prestige, your cap halts relative to your DN level.
... and the Animate Dead ability from Pale Master seems to actually put a hard cap of 32 HD on Animate Dead (so effectively stopping your HD progress to that of what is effectively an 8th level wizard or cleric), but others may have different interpretations as to how that reads.

Edit: For comparison, I'll assume CL 20 and a casting modifier of 30 (also, I'm not necessarily advocating any of these as good or viable, just throwing classes out there to show their affects on Animate Dead HD caps).

A wizard 20 would have an Animate Dead pool of (4x20)=80 HD.
A Dread Necro 18/Pale Master 2 would have an Animate Dead pool of 32 HD.
A Dread Necro 8/Sandshaper 2/Rainbow Servant 10 would have an Animate Dead pool of ([4+10]x8)= 112 HD.
A Dread Necro 20 would have an Animate Dead pool of ([4+10]x20)= 280 HD.

Now, using Dread Necro as a base gives you Command Undead and a Rebuke pool to work with as well as the Animate Dead, but PrCs will cut into the Rebuke pool as well. If you're looking to pump up that Animate Pool as high as it can go though, best bet is probably just staying Dread Necro all the way.

[ihuk]

If you're going Minionmancy, I feel obligated to point out that Dread Necro's Undead Mastery ability, in regards to the Animate Dead portion, only takes your class level in DN into account, and as such if you multiclass/prestige, your cap halts relative to your DN level.
... and the Animate Dead ability from Pale Master seems to actually put a hard cap of 32 HD on Animate Dead (so effectively stopping your HD progress to that of what is effectively an 8th level wizard or cleric), but others may have different interpretations as to how that reads.

Edit: For comparison, I'll assume CL 20 and a casting modifier of 30 (also, I'm not necessarily advocating any of these as good or viable, just throwing classes out there to show their affects on Animate Dead HD caps).

A wizard 20 would have an Animate Dead pool of (4x20)=80 HD.
A Dread Necro 18/Pale Master 2 would have an Animate Dead pool of 32 HD.
A Dread Necro 8/Sandshaper 2/Rainbow Servant 10 would have an Animate Dead pool of ([4+10]x8)= 112 HD.
A Dread Necro 20 would have an Animate Dead pool of ([4+10]x20)= 280 HD.

Now, using Dread Necro as a base gives you Command Undead and a Rebuke pool to work with as well as the Animate Dead, but PrCs will cut into the Rebuke pool as well. If you're looking to pump up that Animate Pool as high as it can go though, best bet is probably just staying Dread Necro all the way.
TY for that comparison, I will have to talk to my gm to see if I can convince him to allow prestige to add to the HD total, or at least if PM will will add 32 not cap at 32, if not I will just go straight 20 DN

[OldTrees1]

If you're going Minionmancy, I feel obligated to point out that Dread Necro's Undead Mastery ability, in regards to the Animate Dead portion, only takes your class level in DN into account, and as such if you multiclass/prestige, your cap halts relative to your DN level.
... and the Animate Dead ability from Pale Master seems to actually put a hard cap of 32 HD on Animate Dead (so effectively stopping your HD progress to that of what is effectively an 8th level wizard or cleric), but others may have different interpretations as to how that reads.


I don't see anything in the Pale Master ability to further reduce the HD cap of animate dead. The 32HD is mentioned as part of an example Sor 6/Pale Master 3.

Pale Master adds an Animate Dead spell like ability that functions at your highest arcane caster level. It imposes no limits on the effect other than importing the unspecified limits you already would have (Undead Mastery ability of Dread Necromancer for example).

[nolongerchaos]

I don't see anything in the Pale Master ability to further reduce the HD cap of animate dead. The 32HD is mentioned as part of an example Sor 6/Pale Master 3.

Pale Master adds an Animate Dead spell like ability that functions at your highest arcane caster level. It imposes no limits on the effect other than importing the unspecified limits you already would have (Undead Mastery ability of Dread Necromancer for example).

D'oh. You are correct. I apparently missed the middle portion of that ability several times.

Staying Dread Necro's to the end still more than doubles the HD cap though, since leaving at level 8 puts a soft cap of (4+Cha)*8 HD, but with any Cha modifier over +6 it's still better than straight Sorc or Wiz.