Rod of Undead Mastery????

[SangoProduction]

Is this thing broken? Libris Mortis, p 78. 10k gp. Double your HD cap on undead. Even without Dread Necromancer adding their Charisma in there somewhere, that seems exceedingly strong.

[OldTrees1]

Meh. If animate dead is the majority of your undead, then yes this would double that pool.

However Dread Necromancers(and lesser necromancers) can already control huge numbers of undead. Doubling your command pool is no issue if you already reached a gentleman's agreement with your DM with regards to how many/how much undead will be used at a time.

Lesser Metamagic Rod of Chain Spell costs 27200gp.

[SangoProduction]

Meh. If animate dead is the majority of your undead, then yes this would double that pool.

However Dread Necromancers(and lesser necromancers) can already control huge numbers of undead. Doubling your command pool is no issue if you already reached a gentleman's agreement with your DM with regards to how many/how much undead will be used at a time.

Lesser Metamagic Rod of Chain Spell costs 27200gp.

So, "you've already got so much that you could trivialize the party," thus, any more isn't doing anything further, is what you're saying? Also, Chain Spell? So what?

[Fouredged Sword]

Chain command undead grants you control of arbetrary HD of mindless undead outside of your control pool. It grants control of 1 creature per CL and lasts CL days with no cap on HD it can control or HD per creature.

A level 10 necromancer can control 100 creatures of any HD this way for the cost of a metamagic rod and one spell slot per day. Add on two pearls of power (level 2)'s and he can triple that number without expending any more spell slots.

Many DM's consider these sorts of tricks to be "NPC only" and used to explain how one or two necromancers can raise an undead army.

[OldTrees1]

So, "you've already got so much that you could trivialize the party," thus, any more isn't doing anything further, is what you're saying? Also, Chain Spell? So what?

Almost. More like:
1)"You inherently have so many that you should talk to your DM about it. Once you and your DM have a solution for the initial size, then you can increase your pool size without worry of trivializing the party."
For example: My DM and I (or the Player and I) could agree to limit it to 2-3 undead per encounter or 10 undead per on screen battlefield. Then it doesn't matter if their control pool contains 1000 undead, they will be able to enjoy having a large army of undead and enjoy not trivializing the party.

2)"Rod of Undead Mastery multiplies the Animate Dead pool by x2. Necromancers have better options for increasing their undead count. Like Chain spell for instance."

[Coidzor]

It's not feasible to use that many in combat, so it mostly means that one has reserves to replace destroyed ones without stopping to make new ones and also allows for more utility undead, like ones that can burrow or fly.

[Bucky]

Having hundreds of extra minions is good for Aid Another abuse.

[Fouredged Sword]

Or the dm lets you use them as strategic rather than tactical assets.

[Zanos]

It's not feasible to use that many in combat, so it mostly means that one has reserves to replace destroyed ones without stopping to make new ones and also allows for more utility undead, like ones that can burrow or fly.
It's good for having, say, four bodyguards with 40 HD each...

Chain command undead is good but has issues. The best usage of undead is to smash face in antimagic fields. Animate deads control can't be suppressed or dispelled.

[Segev]

In my experience, the problems of undead minions are the same as summoned ones: too many actions for one player. Find a solution for that, and you probably aren't trivializing the party.