What is the best Minion using class?

[Citadel97501]

Hello all, I was just wondering what is the preferred class for having minions? I mean summons, crafted creatures, necromancy, or any other character who carries squads or individual characters with him or herself. Please also note the book it's from or a Handbook :) thank you all.

[noob]

Cleric is one of the best minion using classes together with wizard(wizard gets simulacrum and ice assassins that are copies of anything they want and planar binding and undead and gate).
(clerics on the other hand gets undead,deathless,planar allies and can gate in wizards if they want to have ice assassins or simulacrum)
Druid is the classes that get minionmancy the earliest: at level 1 they have an awesome pet then they keep having good minionmancy and druids keeps up with cleric and wizard.
If you want to be unable to use other things than undead then dread necromancer and death masters are good classes.
If you can get pathfinder master summoner is quite great due to how they get tons of monster summoning without any effort and one eilodon too and is going to be way less game breaking than any of the previous options(due to how their summons are not going to help you permanently unlike udead or simulacrums which helps you forever).
Cleric ,wizard and druid are from the manual of players.
Death master is from dragon magazine and dread necromancer is from heroes of horror.
summoner is from pathfinder extra base classes.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

As a player, I really don't like having too many minions or having another PC with a lot of minions because their turns take absolutely forever. Just one or two strong minions is plenty.

With that in mind, Druid is a fantastic choice because the animal companion can be just as strong as a PC and they get some of the best summons. They're also one of the best classes for taking the Summon Elemental reserve feat, which doesn't do a lot in combat but adds tons of utility considering each elemental's special abilities.


There are a few minion tricks that I'm personally fond of due to not only their viability but also their role playing implications, especially if it doesn't require a lot of investment, such as Summon Elemental.

A Psion (Shaper) with Personal Construct (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070411a) has a fantastic minion that can be summoned with a swift action. You'd normally get Astral Construct anyway but this makes it significantly better and more personal since it's the same creature every time, not just a random one. If it gets destroyed in combat it may have scars the next time it's summoned, for example, and modifying it on level ups could be teaching it new tricks or forms.

Another one is usually best for a Sorcerer-based gish and it only requires an item that's 10k gp. Anyone with a decent Cha, BAB, and ability to cast arcane spells can use an Eternal Wand (MIC) of Hound of Doom (CW) and have a scaling companion that role plays similar to Drizzt's pet Guenhwyvar. An eternal wand is a wondrous item, it doesn't necessarily need to look like a wand, so it could actually be a hound figurine that summons this.

Just about anyone can take Wild Cohort (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a) and have a scaling companion. Leadership is similar but it's not available at 1st level and it takes a lot more effort to role play.


For characters that get a ton of summons, it really depends on the type of minions.

Undead minions are best left to a Dread Necromancer in Heroes of Horror IMO. They're naturally good at controlling a large quantity of animated dead, they can bolster their minions or rebuke/command undead they find, and they have the Summon Undead line of spells for making meat shields during combat. The Corpsecrafter line of feats in Libris Mortis is pretty decent if you're going that route.

Summoned minions are a bit of a toss-up between Druid and Wizard IMO. Druid gets spontaneous summons, Ashbound (ECS), Greenbound Summoning (LEoF), Ring of the Beast (CC), Rashemi Elemental Summoning (UE), and can benefit from Augment Summoning as well. Wizard gets UA variants (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#conjurerVariants), Malconvoker (CS), Planar Binding, and access to nearly all of the good additional summoning options (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?255219-The-Summoner-s-Desk-Reference-D-amp-D-3-5).

Permanent minions can be an all-of-the-best build, such as Druid (animal companion) with Wild Cohort (second, weaker animal companion), a prestige class to get the Summoner domain to take Thaumaturgist (planar cohort), plus Leadership (cohort). It can be a best-of-all build, such as most Ubermount builds that combine animal companion, Paladin special mount, and any number of other companion-buffing class features on a single creature that gets 30+ HD at 20th level (I think the record is almost 100 HD).

Silly builds are worth mentioning, like The Big Guy Is With Me which is basically a Psychic Warrior who invests everything into making his Psicrystal amazing, to the point that it's role played as though it's the PC. (That post was on the old WotC forums and is probably lost forever.)

[noob]

If you can get simulacrum or ice assassin all the other minions are either inferior or less loyal.(I mean you can make a simulacrum of a creature that have twice your hit dice and thus have a simulacrum that is as powerful as yourself)
But the main problem is that both are late game spells which is why you should probably just play a druid if you want minionmancy all your life.

[thethird]

Thrallherd? (It's leadership the class)

[noob]

Thrallherd? (It's leadership the class)

Thrallherd happens at late level where the wizard is very close to getting a simulacrum.
On the other hand if you are in a low power game psion is not game breaking when using his astral constructs which are quite good minions until he gets to trallherd which is broken in a low op game(unless the other players gets leadership).

[Zaq]

Do you want a giant horde of mooks or a smaller number of nearly-PC-grade minions? The latter is likely easier to put up with at the table, but sometimes we want things that are different.

Going in a slightly different direction, have you looked up any of the old Supermount builds? The premise is that by stacking multiple forms of advancement into one pet (typically Special Mount advancement and Animal Companion advancement, though I have a hazy half-memory of variant builds using different forms of advancement), you can get them to advance until they’re arguably stronger than their master.

It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at any of them other than Thralherd in any real detail, but I know there’s a handful of PrCs that make Leadership even better. I usually ignore them because the circles I run in ban Leadership, but if it’s on the table, there might be something. I recall one from Stormwrack that lets you do unusual things with Diplomacy and Intimidate, at least, but the details escape me at the moment.

[Vaern]

If you want quantity, use Craft Continent Spell to cast Create [Greater] Undead on yourself when you die. You will become an intelligent undead creature under your own control.
Among your options are a handful of creatures which will turn anything they kill into spawn which will remain permanently under their creator's control, and none of these creatures have a limit to their create spawn ability.

[Jormengand]

I'm going to assume that the opening poster isn't after the ridiculously cheesy tactics so far discussed. I know this is giant in the playground, but really? Simulacra of ice assassins of cohorts? I'll stick to minor metamagic abuse.

As mentioned, druid is decent. If you're more into necromancy, there are a few useful feats from Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead (ignore the fact that the pseudoLatin title doesn't quite mean the same thing as the English one), such as Corpsecrafter and the feats which require it (Nimble Bones is worth it, and you might take Deadly Chill or Hardened Flesh if you have spare feats, Destruction Retribution is nice if you plan around it but not great otherwise, and you should skip Bolster Resistance). There's also the fell animate metamagic from the same book which is very useful for making undead with no material component cost (make sure you apply it to a necromancy spell or corpsecrafter won't work).

Once you have these feats, it doesn't matter so much which actual class you use, although I like playing a class with Chill Touch because it allows you to raise up to one creature per level as a zombie with a single spell (so long as you're careful how many negative hit points you're battering the unconscious creature to first; deathwatch may help); check with your DM how they think Chill Touch works (technically it lets you make all the attacks at once like Scorching Ray; it's clearly not meant to).

Alternatively, cleric is a decent deal: for a start Inflict Minor Wounds is a necromancy cantrip that deals damage (but you need to be even more careful with the enemy's hit point total!) so you can start this at level 5, second it's easier to land kills with the rest of the inflict wounds spells than chill touch (depending on how your DM thinks chill touch works, again), and third you have the ability to command undead, meaning that you can take control of any other undead you come across on your travels, as well as any you create with create undead. You might want to consider taking the Divine Metamagic feat from Complete Divine which allows you to spend four turn or rebuke undead attempts for a free fell animate. Assuming you have that many (and Extra Turning will give you another four if you're desperate!) this might be worth doing; if you can take Fell Animate and Divine Metamagic at first level then you can get started on the zombification right away. Reassure your DM that you're not taking Persistent Spell if they ask too many questions about Divine Metamagic.

If you take wizard, on the other hand, necromancy specialisation gives you two useful options from Unearthed Arcana (or the SRD here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/specialistWizardVariants.htm#necromancerVariants)) : you can swap your familiar out for a skeleton warrior, and rather than getting extra spells for being a specialist, you can get corpsecrafter, only better. Notably, this doesn't require you to use necromancy spells, so fell animate fireball still gets you the +4 to strength, dexterity, and... let's face it, near enough constitution on your undead. Unfortunately, the two don't stack. You can also swap your bonus feats for some kinda nice bonuses, and the only feat you need is fell animate. This means that you get a decent skeleton warrior for your first four levels, and the same plus a zombie horde starting from the moment you can flick a fell animate acid splash at someone.

Standard metamagic reduction advice applies; divine metamagic's just an obvious easy one. Taking sorcerer instead of wizard barely bears mentioning for access to the practical metamagic (Races of the Dragon) feat. The other metamagic reducer which really stands out that you might be able to get which is useful is Residual Magic (Complete Mage), which lets you cast a spell modified by a metamagic feat normally, then cast the same spell in the next round with its normal level, but get the metamagic still applied.

If you're not happy messing around with metamagic like this, I'd still strongly advocate using the fell animate itself even without the reducers, just to save on expensive material components. In this case, you're probably looking to use wizard just so you actually have a companion of some kind in the first 4 levels, or else try to take something nice with the cleric's rebuke undead.