animating corpses quickly?

[Braininthejar2]

I'm doing a battle sequence that involves an enemy necromancer.

I need him to try to turn the tide of battle by rapidly turning the already fallen soldiers into a mass of fodder undead.

Apart from the 9 level "plague of undead" spell, what spells or feats might best accommodate this goal?

[Psyren]

Animate Dead is already a standard action. How fast do you need this to be?

[FelineArchmage]

Animate Dead is already a standard action. How fast do you need this to be?

Animate Dead also requires 25gp per HD worth of onyx to be set into the skull of those being animated. That's more time consuming than the single standard action to cast the spell.

Be a dread necromancer to get the ability to animate dead without material components (a certain # of times per day) - then you don't have to worry about the onyx.

[Goaty14]

Warlocks get the "The Dead Walk" invocation that allows them to do animate dead without the material component, but the animations die after so long.

[Falontani]

if you want to be cheesy, you can take a DWK with the Zone of Animation feat

[ExLibrisMortis]

Two levels of Horned Harbinger gets you some amazing necromantic goodies, including an animate dead SLA with a caster level equal to [the CL at which you can already cast animate dead] + [your Horned Harbinger level] + [your Charisma modifier]. Better yet, the CL boosts applies to the spell as well as the SLA.

A very simple generic undead overlord is something like paladin of tyranny 2/dread necromancer 4/horned harbinger 2. Pick up Practiced Spellcaster, a bit of Corpsecrafter/Nimble Bones, use your first Advanced Learning to get animate dead as 2nd-level spell, and go to town with your CL 10 + CHA animate dead. The nice thing is that this overlord has high saves (thanks to paladin) and very high CL on animate dead (hard to counterspell), but simultaneously does not throw crazy high-level spells around (2nds at best) and at very reasonable CL (8). If your party is 6-7th level, they'll appreciate the lack of 4th-level spells, I think.

[Psyren]

Animate Dead also requires 25gp per HD worth of onyx to be set into the skull of those being animated. That's more time consuming than the single standard action to cast the spell

By RAW, manipulating a material component is part of the standard action required to cast the spell. Rationalize that however you need to, it still takes <6 seconds.

[Piggy Knowles]

Horned Harbinger from Faiths & Pantheons gets animate dead, create undead and create greater undead as SLAs and can eventually use both its SLA and any animate spells at range:



Ranged Animation (Su): At 7th level, any use of animate dead, whether as a normal spell or a spell-like ability, has a range of medium (100 ft. + 10 ft./level) instead of touch. In other words, the horned harbinger can use animate dead at a distance, without having to touch the corpses. If cast as a spell, the material components are still consumed but do not need to be placed on the corpses.

Kind of a neat ability, letting you animate the dead from afar instead of rushing over to each corpse to place onyx on their eyes. The spell doesn’t advance casting, but it does stack with any classes that grant animate dead as a spell for CL and amount of undead you control.

EDIT: too slow...

[Segev]

By RAW, manipulating a material component is part of the standard action required to cast the spell. Rationalize that however you need to, it still takes <6 seconds.

To borrow from Exalted, consider the manipulation part of the magical "stunt" that is the description of the spell's casting. He holds up a number of black onyx gems in his cupped hands, incants the spell, makes the gestures, and the stones fly of their own accord into the mouths or eye sockets of the corpses to be animated.

Edit: There's also (ugh) summon undead I-IX. You could have him cast one of them, and pretend he's animating corpses rather than summoning them.

[BlackOnyx]

Some other alternatives (if animate dead's touch range is proving to be an issue):


- Animate Legion (Cleric 4, Sor/Wiz 5) from Heroes of Battle:

Like animate dead, but temporary (1rnd/lvl) and ranged 25' + 5'/lvl. The undead are also uncontrolled, but will attack the closest living thing on sight. (A quick casting of Shroud of Undeath, Hide from Undead, a high rebuking check, or a chained command undead could quickly solve the issue, though.) 100gp black onyx per casting.

Extend spell is an option if the duration isn't to your liking.


- Fell Animate (feat) from Libris Mortis:

It would be trickier to use, but said necromancer could engage in some friendly fire evocation spells should his side's chances start to look too grim. (Or consumptive field if those around him are taking their final breaths.) All those killed by his spell would rise as skeletons/zombies in the next round.


- Reach Spell + Chain Spell + Animate Dead:

Expensive (+5 to spell level), but possible (if you're willing to accept corpses as a valid target). The use of metamagic rods and the presence of a slaymate (or other metamagic reducers) could be used to offset some of the cost.

[Braininthejar2]

a bit of Corpsecrafter/Nimble Bones Oh, this one is cool. I was looking for some way to make those minions actually effective.


Fell Animate (feat) from Libris Mortis:

Definitely.

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20170329#.WqrRL2rOXIU

Is there any way mitigate 3 levels of metamagic from 12 to 9?

Fell animate cry of the banshee would be horribly unoptimized, but absurdly cool.

[ericgrau]

By RAW, manipulating a material component is part of the standard action required to cast the spell. Rationalize that however you need to, it still takes <6 seconds.

"You must place a black onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead into the mouth or eye socket of each corpse you intend to animate." "Intend" implying before you actually do it. And specific trumps general.

[Thurbane]

"You must place a black onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead into the mouth or eye socket of each corpse you intend to animate." "Intend" implying before casting. And specific trumps general.

It's still essentially fluff text. I'd say it's a DMs call.

[Psyren]

"You must place a black onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead into the mouth or eye socket of each corpse you intend to animate." "Intend" implying before you actually do it. And specific trumps general.

You're forgetting that the (re)animation is the result of the spell, so you can place the gem at any point before then and still be "intending." Just like dipping your hand into your pouch for bat guano happens before a fireball actually streaks away from you.

[Segev]

Some other alternatives (if animate dead's touch range is proving to be an issue):


- Animate Legion (Cleric 4, Sor/Wiz 5) from Heroes of Battle:

Like animate dead, but temporary (1rnd/lvl) and ranged 25' + 5'/lvl. The undead are also uncontrolled, but will attack the closest living thing on sight. (A quick casting of Shroud of Undeath, Hide from Undead, a high rebuking check, or a chained command undead could quickly solve the issue, though.) 100gp black onyx per casting.

Extend spell is an option if the duration isn't to your liking.Ooh, I was unaware of this one. I'll have to consider it for my own potential future use.



- Fell Animate (feat) from Libris Mortis:

It would be trickier to use, but said necromancer could engage in some friendly fire evocation spells should his side's chances start to look too grim. (Or consumptive field if those around him are taking their final breaths.) All those killed by his spell would rise as skeletons/zombies in the next round.Hard to use well, yeah. But glorious when it does work. Fell Animate acid splash is hilarious for a third level spell. But not very good. You basically have to down but not kill the target, then coup de grace with the spell.



- Reach Spell + Chain Spell + Animate Dead:

Expensive (+5 to spell level), but possible (if you're willing to accept corpses as a valid target). The use of metamagic rods and the presence of a slaymate (or other metamagic reducers) could be used to offset some of the cost.Chain Spell on animate dead is weird, since its number of targets is not limited anyway, only the number of HD it can affect. You could probably get away with just Reach Spell on it, and ray as many corpses as you need to meet your HD cap. Maybe the ray even carries the gem into the mouth.

Incidentally, this HD-only consideration means that you can animate bone rat swarms and corpse rat swarms with animate dead, since they ARE just skeletons or zombies (of rodents).

[nolongerchaos]

"You must place a black onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead into the mouth or eye socket of each corpse you intend to animate." "Intend" implying before you actually do it. And specific trumps general.

Now, now, let's not be overly pendantic about material components, or else we start getting serious problems, like Arcane casters being unable to cast the Magic Circle spells on creatures bigger than, say, a large dog, because the circle needs to be both 3 ft in diameter and around the creature to be warded. Can't put that buff on a centaur...
The time to manipulate the component should probably be assumed to be part of the casting time unless otherwise stated, and it doesn't state that it takes extra time beyond what it takes to cast the spell.

[Braininthejar2]

Can A Dread Necromancer's class ability to learn extra necromancy spells be used to learn a "universal" spell?

[Venger]

Can A Dread Necromancer's class ability to learn extra necromancy spells be used to learn a "universal" spell?

no, it cannot.

[unseenmage]

Could always work yourself up a War Spell version of Animate Dead.
There's a thread in my sig or extended sig about War Spells.

They're bassically mass combat custom versions of existing spells accessed by a feat found in Dragon magazine.
IIRC they take like 10 mins to cast but summon like 25 per CL creatures (when the base spell is a summon spell).