The Neganecromancer

[Afgncaap5]

As a bit of a thought experiment, how would you go about building a level 8-10-ish sorcerer or wizard who was a serious student of necromancy and death, but chooses to use these studies as a means to counteract the evils of other necromancers?

I'm trying to steer clear of the Book of Exalted Deeds, even if it does have my favorite Necromancy spell ever, but I'm open to hearing pretty much anything here. "Disrupt Undead" for an Arcane Thesis sounded like a fun first step, but I don't think it's actually useful in the long run even if it's probably a decent RP choice.

[Kayblis]

Ironically, the "evils of necromancers" are laughably ineffective on undead. Ability damage, Energy drain, fear and mind-affecting effects, fatigue, poisons, almost anything that targets Fort... Most of a necromancer's arsenal is completely useless on undead enemies. So, being undead goes a long way in defeating necromancers.

The Dread Necromancer class is an arcane spellcaster that has Rebuke Undead, so it's a good class to use as base.

Spells that affect undead directly like Command/Disrupt Undead are an option too. Against the "Horde" kind of necromancers that loves giant armies of low-HD mooks, large AoE damage spells aren't bad. Might even make some damage-focused Reserve Feats worth it. Most undead are mindless and only zombies keep any flight speed, so raining down hell from above with Fly/Overland Flight is a low-risk deal.

[Afgncaap5]

What are your thoughts on building to counterspell? On the one hand, spending an action doing nothing but prepping to counter can be lame, but on the other hand if you're pretty sure your enemy's gonna open with necromancy it might pay off.

[Fearan]

What are your thoughts on building to counterspell? On the one hand, spending an action doing nothing but prepping to counter can be lame,
Don't prep to counter. Use one(or more) of the following:
Reactive counterspell (feat) [Magic of Faerun]
Battlemagic perception (spell) [Heroes of battle]
Cleric dip and Practised Spellcaster(feat) and Divine Defiance(feat)[Fiendish Codex II]
Noctumancer(prestige class)[Tome of Magic] Best with early entry on the wizard side.

[Crake]

Don't prep to counter. Use one(or more) of the following:
Reactive counterspell (feat) [Magic of Faerun]
Battlemagic perception (spell) [Heroes of battle]
Cleric dip and Practised Spellcaster(feat) and Divine Defiance(feat)[Fiendish Codex II]
Noctumancer(prestige class)[Tome of Magic] Best with early entry on the wizard side.

Cleric dip for the inquisition domain and divine defiance I believe is arguably the best out of all of these. It's always available as long as you have some dispels prepared/on your spells known, the inquisition domain's +4 on dispel checks can be used to break dispel and greater dispel's normal cap. Combine it with the feat arcane mastery which lets you take 10 on CL checks (of which dispel is one) you can use that, plus the inquisition domaine to automatically counter any spell cast by a caster of up to 3 CL higher than yourself. If you get, at level 9, the elven spell lore feat, that gives you another +2 (which also goes beyond the cap, because these are not CL bonuses, simply bonuses on the CL check). That lets you go up to 5CL above your own, and finally a dispelling chord gets you up to 7CL above your own.

Personally I prefer building that on a straight cleric rather than simply using a cleric dip to achieve it on another class. The only issue is arcane mastery, which basically requires you to spend a feat on either magical training or one of those feats from Complete Arcane that gives you some low level SLAs 1/day. Either that or go a race that gets innate SLAs, but in that case you aren't a human :smalltongue: Totally worth it for the consistency you gain from arcane mastery though. Literally being able to completely shut down an enemy spellcaster while losing none of your combat efficacy at all is pretty damn amazing.

Edit: Also clerics have plenty of necromancy spells, and get turn undead, which can be pumped up out the ass to auto-dust undead that you come across.

[Sagetim]

As already mentioned, the Dread Necromancer is pretty well set up on this front. In addition to sitting pretty with Rebuke Undead, they Also have an increased limit on command undead and animate dead and so on. So if you wanted to follow the theme of redeeming the evils that others have wrought, then commanding and rebuking your way into controlling the undead that others have made is one way to go about that. As I've mentioned in other threads, you don't have to use undead as just combat junks. You can give them orders and have them do things. They might not be smart enough to build a house, but they sure can haul all that heavy stone and wood and what not to the work site and do the rough cut of digging the foundation hole.

Skeletons might not be smart enough to know when to rotate crops and how to tell when the weather is going to be good for particular crops, but they sure can weed the crops and dig the rows and do the incidental things like watering and harvesting. Especially crops like cotton, where they aren't going to be suffering from picking it because they are DR/Bludgeoning.

Which brings us to the point I wanted to make: It really depends on what you want to do with this concept. If you want to play a person who calls themselves a necromancer and has studied the dark arts so that they can counter them and redeem magic in the eyes of the public...then you might be playing a charismatic, socially skilled Abjuration Master Specialist with a lot of countering and dispelling going on. It's not like the common person is going to know any better, and it's not like anyone in character can see your character sheet or class names or anything.

Additionally in the favor of Dread Necromancer, they get that sweet sweet bonus for animating undead of their own starting at level 8. Depending on your GM, that can stack with Corpse Crafter and that whole tree of feats. Now, you might have some explaining to do with the local town guard, but animating dead evil doers to make their corpses repent and pay for their crimes by fighting evil and helping with manual labor is another way you can spellcast the dark magics for goodness.

Ultimately a wizard is going to have the most versatility and ability to juggle all of these opportunities at once. Dispelling, countering, breaking curses, and also doing regular wizard shenanigans. They won't have nearly the same control limits, but if you're not going to have that be your main shtick, they probably don't need it. Sorcerer would be a step down in versatility and a step up in consistency, with the limited spells known and the more spells per day. And Dread Necromancer would probably be the most pidgeon holed class to pick, with it's fixed list and all that.

What hasn't been explored yet is: what prestige classes would you be interested in using to support this concept? Pale Master is but one option from Libris Mortis (and honestly, if you're doing this in 3.5, you should be looking through Libris Mortis and Heroes of Horror. They're the most relevant books for it). And while I say that, it also depends on what books are available to you for making this thing come to life. If you can tap all of 3.5, then look at tome of magic and incarnum, I know Tenebrous is a Binding that I think is low enough level that you can pick it up with feats alone, and there's something about necrocarnum something something in the book of magical subsystem that I still haven't read.

So yeah: What limits do you want to operate this concept within? Any specific books on or off limits*? Or are you good with advice that ranges all across 3.5 and may be completely ridiculous Theoretical Optimization? Does this concept need to stick to wizard/sorcerer, or was that more a starting point to get the ball rolling and see what comes out of the woodwork?

*edit: I meant other than what you already mentioned, with The Book of Exalted Deeds.

[Afgncaap5]

So yeah: What limits do you want to operate this concept within? Any specific books on or off limits*? Or are you good with advice that ranges all across 3.5 and may be completely ridiculous Theoretical Optimization? Does this concept need to stick to wizard/sorcerer, or was that more a starting point to get the ball rolling and see what comes out of the woodwork?

*edit: I meant other than what you already mentioned, with The Book of Exalted Deeds.

This is mostly a thought experiment, with a potential eye in mind for building an NPC who acts as a sort of "Student of Life" character in my campaign world. It's weird to say, but I like little experiments like this to have a sort of rolling limitation; see what can be done with just core book spells and meta-magic, maybe open it up to things like PHB2 and the Completes after that, etc. I don't want completely ridiculous Theoretical Optimization for myself, but I certainly wouldn't dissuade people from coming up with that sort of thing. I guess for right now a "what's the best core-only idea" and a "what's the best core/phb2/completes" thing, then maybe followed with specific settings if people aren't completely bored with the idea by then.

Regarding being an Abjurationist: abjuration would almost certainly be a strong interest for someone who wanted to be a neganecromancer, but I don't see that as being a primary pursuit. However, me thinking that is getting more into the fluff of the thing than the mechanics, which wouldn't be useful for anyone else.

[Gildedragon]

May I suggest something different:
Archivist and just call them a wizard
Use Healing spells and other divine magics to fight undead.
Use AnySpell to get wizard-only spells
Kn Devotion to fight undead
Find a way to get Turn Undead and use the turning damages undead route.