Right to Undead Bear Arms

[BananaNomNom]

Hey Playgrounders, It's time I tap into a great resource. I need an idea of how to arm a army of the dead with proper equipment to make them useful. I would like to keep the use of outside forces I.E. a bard at zero.

Rule system: 3.5

Books:
All core
All Completes
BoVD
ToM
ToB
Libris Mortis

[Crake]

when you say outside forces, do you mean outside of your character's control? or outside of your control as a player? In other words, is leadership okay?

[BananaNomNom]

when you say outside forces, do you mean outside of your character's control? or outside of your control as a player? In other words, is leadership okay?

I mainly mean outside the undead like without me buffing them or anything; like equipment type stuff.

[Darrin]

What kind of build are you working with? Just a single 20-level PC?

Do you have a GP budget or WBL you have to stick to?

What kind of time restraints do you have?

Are "infinite money" or "wish loop" tricks on the table?

[Menzath]

Gonna go on a limb and say you aren't interested/already know of the corpsecrafter line of feats, and that you are literally trying to arm humanoid type undead with gear.

In that case it's mostly about using your caster class to break the economy, or getting a what was it, a dedicated wright or multiple, to craft gear while you do other things. Points if you do both. Also if you are trying to make that gear magical, look into that web article on crafting and xp usage. Some fun stuff there.

[Boggartbae]

If this is a literally army of thousands of undead, then I would just buy them the best weapons and armor you can afford, probably long spears and hide armor. Make some of them cavalry, some of them archers, and the rest foot soldiers. This could get expensive really quickly though. You can also do things like cast Desecrate on a bunch of altars to Orcus and have some of the undead carry them around. You could probably have the altars be like war banners or something if you don't like the flavor of them carrying large stones slabs. This will give your undead +2 to attack and damage, which is good.

There is also the corpsecrafter feat line, which gives undead you create some sizable bonuses which would make up for the fact that outfitting an army is expensive. Destructive Retribution in particular would make them able to mow down opposing armies. It makes them explode with 1d6 negative energy/2 hit dice on everything within 10' when they die, and it heals undead. These are in Libris Mortis though, so I'm not sure you can use them.

If it's just a couple of undead that you take with you into the dungeon (and assuming you're a full caster) just spend all of your money on your undead as though you were building a fighter. Extra mobility especially.

Sorry I can't be more helpful. I'm not sure exactly what you want, but I will say that mindless undead are incapable of using tactics like phalanx or a coordinated charge, so you'll have to just rely on big numbers, and expect to take a lot of casualties (which is why destructive retribution is so good :smallsmile: )

[BananaNomNom]

What kind of build are you working with? Just a single 20-level PC?

Do you have a GP budget or WBL you have to stick to?

What kind of time restraints do you have?

Are "infinite money" or "wish loop" tricks on the table?
It's not really that its just what can you give undead to make them more effective in combat.

[Menzath]

It's not really that its just what can you give undead to make them more effective in combat.

That's highly situational according to your PC class, what type of undead they are, and how much prep time you have.
Can you give us more info so that we might have better directed advice to spew?

[Captn_Flounder]

Standard "Economy Breaking" is in order.

Wall of Iron + Fabricate + Crafting (Weaponsmith)

Combine that Iron with Carbon in the air, make steel swords and longspears.

Otherwise we need more info since it seems "Buy a thousand swords" is off the table.

[Blackhawk748]

Give them longspears and cheap armor. They can hang out in ranks and just stab stuff.

[Demidos]

Aboleth Mucus. Nuff said.

[Coretron03]

Pity you don't have access to Sandstorm, the spell black sand would be perfect for you. Basically, the spell summons Black sand for for a limited amount of time. Black sand deals 1d4 negitive damage to creatures in contact with it. If a creature is killed by black sand it is turned into black sand, which is last permanently, even if it came from the spell. Because the spell deals Negitive damage it heals undead, meaning if you got a cleric to cast black sand for you and tou sacrificed some people until you have a good amount of it, you could then put in in each of your undeads shoes to effectively give them 1d4 fast healing. Up to a DM how much black sand is needed for each undead to gain the benefit of it though. I recommend that you ask your dm If standstorm would be ok because of this.

[icefractal]

And if "sand in shoes" seems thematically dumb, put the sand inside them instead. It's not like they need internal organs anymore.

If you can mass-produce poison (giant scorpion farm?), then coat everything with it; the undead won't mind.

If you can create any low-HD undead that are able to read, they can run up to foes and trigger Explosive Runes (no cost to make).

[daremetoidareyo]

what kind of undead are you using?