Arcane Necromancy?

[StevenC21]

So... I know that in 3.5, if you want to control undead, you GOTTA go Cleric. Frankly, I don't understand why they made this choice. In your "standard" fantasy setting, I can't think of the last time that the necromancer character wasn't an arcane caster. I mean, come on. But this is off topic.

Basically, in D&D 3.5, how can I play a necromancer using arcane magic? I've looked at the Dread Necromancer, which is a good enough choice, but I am curious if any other options exist.

[SLOTHRPG95]

Any Wizard who hasn't banned Necromancy. You can have an army of undead and still keep your day job. There's little opportunity cost involved for most wizard builds in being a necromancer in addition to all the other things you can do. Unless, that is, you want necromancy to really be the one thing that you do. In which case, yeah Dread Necro is where it's at.

[Karl Aegis]

Lord of the Uttercold Evocations on groups of cold-immune undead you control.

[smasher0404]

Dragon Compendium also has the Death Master, an arcane spellcasting class devoted to the worship of Orcus. They get lichdom at lvl 20 like Dread Necromancers, an undead minion that progresses as you level up, and the earliest access to Animate Dead (they get it as a 2nd level spell). However, their spell list is a lot narrower than most other classes and they are prepared casters from that list.

EDIT/Addition: Animate Dread Warrior from Unapproachable East is a necromancy spell that only Sorcerers/Wizards get by default.(Dread Necromancer's can also grab it via Advanced Learning). Creating powerful classed undead is a lot better with that spell, giving arcane casters a niche in the undead creation department as well.

[Particle_Man]

If you want "arcane necromancer on a budget" warlock has an invocation that lets you raise some zombies or skeletons without paying the material component cost (you still need the bodies) - but they only last for a little while. They can also pay the material component cost for longer term buddies.

[Arcanist]

Lord of the Uttercold Evocations on groups of cold-immune undead you control.

This and Pale Master's capstone ability generates free undead. And they have an ability that inflicts negative levels which can be used to make Wights (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#energyDrainAndNegativeLevels) .

One of the real kickers is that Clerics just have too many ways to get free undead or control way more than their arcane alternative.

[Bphill561]

I guess it depends on what you mean by "control undead". Animate and Create undead are both a cleric/sorc/wizard spell, so you don't have to be divine to make them. The control undead spell is arcane, not divine. Desecrate and some status spells are cleric spells, but there are other arcane spells as well. You can even go melee and play a souleater to pump out wights (book of vile darkness) or take the Create spectral spawn feat from the wyrm shadow supplement. But if you mean turn/rebuke undead, you can strap that on to most arcane builds.

Dragon Compendium has bloodline feats, including the Necromantic bloodline. A second feat called kin mastery gives you the ability to turn or rebuke creatures that match your blood line. Major downsides include 2 feat tax, bloodlines need spontaneously arcane spell casting ability to qualify, turn level is half your arcane spell casting class levels (no PrC progression), and it only gives you one use. You could still take nightsticks.

[Eldariel]

The big thing a Wizard Necromancer needs is Desecrate. It can be acquired through some creatures down the line (Shapechange into any Nightshade works for example), but ideally you'll just take Arcane Disciple [Complete Divine] to get the spell as an arcane spell. It's unsurprisingly in both, Evil and Undeath domains.

After that, a Wizard has a great set of abilities for necromancy. Wizards know Animate Dead and Animate Dread Warrior [Unapproachable East], the two premium undead creation spells. Wizards can Spellstitch [Complete Arcane] their undead including themselves, giving them extremely potent extra SLAs (up and including Animate Dead/Animate Dread Warrior to have your undead control additional undead). And then there's Command Undead, that absolutely amazing level 2 spell that allows you to Command a big undead you've previously Animated, then Animate something new and thus maintain day/level control of the first one (or 2 day/level with Extend Spell) and indefinite control pool command of the others. Obviously this only works perfectly on Mindless undead but it does give you friendly intelligent undead too (albeit at a Will-save). Command Undead single-handedly makes Wizards some of the best necromancers in the game; it means you can control a nigh' unlimited number of extremely powerful mindless Undead with just your 2nd level and 3rd level slots.

Other effects that allow generating more undead and controlling them such as Fell Animate metamagic are also accessible to both, arcane and divine types. This classic handbook (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2733.0) goes in some detail on a few ways to efficiently produce and maintain undead minions, both arcane and divine.

[Khedrac]

And the Dread Necromancer is an arcane class with Rebuke Undead for controlling them via that method...

[Feantar]

To be sincere, there isn't a huge difference. You get some spells later and have a much smaller long term control pool(No rebuking). On the other hand, if you get enough reductions for Command Undead, extend and chain spell, (Spell Thesis + Incantatrix?) you can have a much larger short term control pool than most clerics in the end. If you want to make that pool effectively permanent, magic traps can be your friend (which recast the spell for you), but since anyone can do this it is debatable whether this is a wizard only thing.

But yes, dread necromancer is the obviously superior choice than both cleric and wizard.

[Eldariel]

To be sincere, there isn't a huge difference. You get some spells later and have a much smaller long term control pool(No rebuking). On the other hand, if you get enough reductions for Command Undead, extend and chain spell, (Spell Thesis + Incantatrix?) you can have a much larger short term control pool than most clerics in the end. If you want to make that pool effectively permanent, magic traps can be your friend (which recast the spell for you), but since anyone can do this it is debatable whether this is a wizard only thing.

But yes, dread necromancer is the obviously superior choice than both cleric and wizard.

I dunno, Clerics are more than competitive with Dread Necromancers; they're still Clerics after all and have a lot of tricks up their sleeve. Also, Command Undead lasts day/level so you don't need a lot of effort to have a permanent army. Even just a level 7 specialist Wizard with Extend Spell and 18 Int has 5, 4, 3 slots available for up to 5 normal Command Undeads, 4 Extended and optionally 3 more Extended ones for a total of 5 7-day Command Undeads and 7 14-days. You only rarely need to refresh those and three of the level 2 slots are easily Extended via. Lesser Rod of Extend (dirt cheap at 3000gp). Cast those every day and that's a lot of castings and it just increases with level (both, duration and the number of slots).

[Arcanist]

But yes, dread necromancer is the obviously superior choice than both cleric and wizard.

A DMM:Fell Animate Cleric with the Deathbound Domain would be a better choice. Ignoring the fact that it's a Cleric chassis, they also exponentially scale with how many undead they can control over a Dread Necromancer quite easily. Clerics have native desecrate, they do not have to spend an additional feat to gain access to the Deathbound Domain, nor do they have to take a dip into another class to do so. Strictly speaking? Clerics are just better at early level minionmancy and, if they choose to do so, take that minionmancy beyond the early levels.

Beyond that though, the Wizard isn't fairing any better to be perfectly frank. Sure they have niche prestige classes that let them do pretty extraordinary stuff with the undead, but those require either massive level investments, or dedicated builds focused to them. The Pale Master PrC even says it in the very first sentence:


Necromancy is usually a poor choice for arcane spellcasters– those who really want to master the deathless arts almost always pursue divine means.

[Deophaun]

A DMM:Fell Animate Cleric with the Deathbound Domain would be a better choice. Ignoring the fact that it's a Cleric chassis, they also exponentially scale with how many undead they can control over a Dread Necromancer quite easily. Clerics have native desecrate, they do not have to spend an additional feat to gain access to the Deathbound Domain, nor do they have to take a dip into another class to do so.
Nor do Dread Necromancers, as rune staves, knowstones, and drake helms exist. Being Charisma based, the fact that UMD is not a class skill is neither here nor there for them. Not that desecrate is that important anyway, as a deadwalker's ring is dirt cheap.

But yeah, DMM is a nice trick Dread Necros have difficulty taking advantage of.

[ericgrau]

So... I know that in 3.5, if you want to control undead, you GOTTA go Cleric. Frankly, I don't understand why they made this choice. In your "standard" fantasy setting, I can't think of the last time that the necromancer character wasn't an arcane caster. I mean, come on. But this is off topic.

Basically, in D&D 3.5, how can I play a necromancer using arcane magic? I've looked at the Dread Necromancer, which is a good enough choice, but I am curious if any other options exist.


Any Wizard who hasn't banned Necromancy. You can have an army of undead and still keep your day job. There's little opportunity cost involved for most wizard builds in being a necromancer in addition to all the other things you can do. Unless, that is, you want necromancy to really be the one thing that you do. In which case, yeah Dread Necro is where it's at.

What Sloth said, plus wizards have better buffs and BFC for their undead army. In general their spell list is just better. So unless your necromancer concept walks into melee, you'll want that more. Plus command undead is sor/wiz only, no cleric. Seriously, the spell that lets you control an unlimited number of mindless undead with no save isn't on the cleric list? AND you can befriend an unlimited number of intelligent undead that fail their save too. Personally I don't think a cleric's advantage for animate dead & rebuke undead come close to what a wizard gets. If you optimize a bit more, wizards and clerics both get the broken to nigh broken summon undead list at the same spell levels. It includes abuse like sending allips and shadows ahead through walls to wipe any room of monsters that doesn't have an incorporeal response. If you start using undead related feats, then wizards get more feats too. Maybe you can't use the wizard's bonus feats directly on undead stuff, but you can use them on undead related metamagic, or unrelated metamagic or item creation you wanted anyway.

But yeah, basically not quitting your day job and still doing undead really nice with or without a lot of investment is what makes the wizard necromancer so nice.

[Eldariel]

Well, Clerics can get Command Undead through Divine Magician [CMage], Spell-domain or a few other avenues, and they have the Divine feats to do some cool stuff. If you go source diving, their spell list improves substantially (Ice Slick, Dark Way, Laogzed's Breath, etc. up their low level BFC potential immensely and they get a good deal outta their summons as well) and is fairly close to that of Wizard in many respects. Ultimately, they're fairly similar in terms of power; which is to be expected of two Tier 1 classes, to be fair.

[ericgrau]

I dunno, Clerics are more than competitive with Dread Necromancers; they're still Clerics after all and have a lot of tricks up their sleeve. Also, Command Undead lasts day/level so you don't need a lot of effort to have a permanent army. Even just a level 7 specialist Wizard with Extend Spell and 18 Int has 5, 4, 3 slots available for up to 5 normal Command Undeads, 4 Extended and optionally 3 more Extended ones for a total of 5 7-day Command Undeads and 7 14-days. You only rarely need to refresh those and three of the level 2 slots are easily Extended via. Lesser Rod of Extend (dirt cheap at 3000gp). Cast those every day and that's a lot of castings and it just increases with level (both, duration and the number of slots).

Worst case scenario a 3 pearl of powers + lesser rod of extend spell adds 3 extended command undeads for 15,000 gp. That's 6 * caster level undead controlled, of any HD. 2,500 gp / CL each isn't a bad deal. So 250 gp a body at level 10. And yeah, 75% of that is the pearls. So if you have higher level spell slots to spare you can blow those instead, until you run out.


Well, Clerics can get Command Undead through Divine Magician [CMage], Spell-domain or a few other avenues, and they have the Divine feats to do some cool stuff. If you go source diving, their spell list improves substantially (Ice Slick, Dark Way, Laogzed's Breath, etc. up their low level BFC potential immensely and they get a good deal outta their summons as well) and is fairly close to that of Wizard in many respects. Ultimately, they're fairly similar in terms of power; which is to be expected of two Tier 1 classes, to be fair.
I think that's what it will come down to. Asking which is better at specializing in it, while at the same time both will do quite well. And the wizard can invest little into it and still do quite well, while still doing whatever else he wanted to do at the same time. Plus he can do more things indirectly related to undead, like hasting them. And mass mage armor each morning. Etc. So it's not just about creating the biggest army, but how great that army is. For that matter you might be better off buffing the most powerful undead you capture rather than creating a large army. Or do both, but I mean simply having the larger army doesn't mean you win. I suspect the real bottleneck will be how many strong undead you run into, not how many you can theoretically control, and then how well you can work with those through buffs and so forth. Sure the minions help too, they look cool, and you should get them, but they may not be the bulk of your power. OTOH, there's DMM persisted aura buffs if a lot of optimization is allowed and you can stay in range of your strongest undead.

[StevenC21]

What can you use that Prismatic Great Wyrm skeleton for? It's way over the 20 HD Animate Dead limit...

[StevenC21]

Wow.

That's... Impressive.

[Arcanist]

Nor do Dread Necromancers, as rune staves, knowstones, and drake helms exist. Being Charisma based, the fact that UMD is not a class skill is neither here nor there for them. Not that desecrate is that important anyway, as a deadwalker's ring is dirt cheap.

But yeah, DMM is a nice trick Dread Necros have difficulty taking advantage of.

Interesting. So how exactly do you get around the fact that the Cleric still has 50% more HD worth of undead more than the Dread Necromancer?

[Deophaun]

Interesting. So how exactly do you get around the fact that the Cleric still has 50% more HD worth of undead more than the Dread Necromancer?
Not sure where you're getting that from. A cleric has 2 x Class Level HD. A Dread Necromancer has (2+Cha Modifier) X Class Level HD with animate dead and control undead, which can easily be 13 x Class Level. 13 > 2.

As for the Deathbound domain, that only applies to the number of HD you can create. It does nothing to help you control the extra HD.

[Eldariel]

Draconomicon has a Skeletal Dragon Template that replaces Animate Dead for Dragons and it has no hd cap.

Zombie Dragon is generally way better 'cause it retains its breath weapon and fly speed though. They provide some awesome effects (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?499642-Best-Dragon-to-Zombie-Dragon). No reason PAO couldn't create corpses too.

[Segev]

Command undead (the 2nd level spell, not the Rebuke/Command power of a cleric) has been mentioned, but I want to bring it up again for a bit more focused discussion. I, too, am often disappointed by how difficult it is for a wizard necromancer to get minions. However, this spell is perfect for fixing that. It just takes...a different kind of work.

But first of all, thanks to this spell, a minionmancer can start out from level 1 with building his forces. (Add in the Unearthed Arcana familiar-replacement, and it starts even faster.)

A build that is half-fluff, half-mechanics which I favor highlights this:

Precocious Apprentice: command undead
Chain Spell
Extend Spell
Knowledge(religion) + Knowledge(arcana) + Gather Information (cross-class, but you'll want a high Cha anyway)
Use the above to hunt down likely places to find spontaneously-rising Slaymates (Libris Mortis).
If particularly evil, pay unscrupulous parents or guardians to abandon their unwanted children in a graveyard, battlefield, or other locale identified by your Knowledges as fraught with undead or potential to spawn them.
Between command undead and your Charisma, convince the little undead tykes that you're their new friend and a more trustworthy guardian.
Get three Slaymates in this fashion, and then use their combined Pale Auras to prepare Chain command undead in your Precocious Apprentice-granted 2nd level spell slot.
At third level or higher, prepare as many second level slots this way as you like
Using the same intelligence-gathering you did to find the slaymates, hunt down desirable mindless undead minions to command. You'll be using the Chain version when maintaining control.
At higher level, get Cold Substitution and Lord of the Uttercold.
If you're willing and able to pin down helpless critters, Fell Animate on a 0th level spell is only 3rd level.
Fell Animate chill touch, with your Slaymates, can be prepared in a level 1 slot. Use it to finish off foes you'd like as skeletons or zombies.

You can't do everything in this at level 1, but with even 1 Slaymate, you can Extend command undead to a 2-day duration. If you aren't sure you can keep the tyke happy with just diplomacy and attention and positive reinforcement, you can cast command undead on him every other day, and on another, more physically impressive mindless undead on off-days. The slaymate will then view everything you do in the most positive light possible, and the mindless undead will obey without question.

By level 2, your Extended command undead will last four days, which is more than long enough to bring two more Slaymates under your thrall. A single Chain command undead at level 2 keeps all three pseudo-Charmed for two days, leaving you a second day to thrall 3 more mindless undead. A fourth Slaymate lets you prepare Extended Chain command undead in your one second level spell slot, for four days' duration. At this point, I suggest one Slaymate be part of your single casting of Extended Chain command undead each day as the primary target, and three mindless undead along with him, so the save degradation doesn't kick in. Though again, you should be able to persuade them to willingly fail their saves, what with how much they respect and adore you and your own Charismatic and Diplomatic abilities.

Done right, this is 3 undead per day x 4 days = 12 undead at your command by level 2. Eight of these are skeletons or zombies you're actually using as minions for combat et al; 4 of these are Slaymates you keep as your "family" and spell preparation assistants.

The biggest weakness of this build at this point, in terms of being a proper minionmancer, is ready access to mindless undead to take control over. You're unlikely to have the third feat for Fell Animate just yet, so Fell Animated chill touch, despite being something your Slaymates could help you prepare in a level 1 spell slot, isn't going to be an option without Flaws or something. (Though you certainly can have it by level 3!)

That's what choosing your adventures carefully and taking day trips to investigate claims of undead infestations for potential minions are for, though.

[magic9mushroom]

Wizards know Animate Dead and Animate Dread Warrior [Unapproachable East], the two premium undead creation spells.
If you have them as SLAs or have some other way to ignore the material components (e.g. be Epic and have Ignore Material Components), yes. Otherwise, the cost is a massive pain.

A DMM:Fell Animate Cleric with the Deathbound Domain would be a better choice.
DMM is insanely good for a lot of things, but DMM: Fell Animate is not worth the feat. Not only is it not something you're doing every day, it's fairly cheap to just work around it with cherry-tap spells (preferably Necromancy, because Corpsecrafter and Slaymate).

If you really want to DMM Fell Animate, don't take DMM: Fell Animate. Be a NaenHoon Illumian, because they get DMM: Everything. Incidentally, if you go that route, it can apply to arcane spells and therefore a Dread Necro is home free.

(Obviously, a Cleric is a more powerful character than a Dread Necromancer, because Cleric is a Tier 1 class. But it's not really better at necromancy, except for Desecrate - which is low-level and can be gotten via other means.)

[Crake]

The dragonlance necromancy domain's granted power is the ability to rebuke undead as an evil cleric does. Pick up the granted power with the wizard ACF that lets you get a domain granted power, or planar touchstone (catalogues of enlightenment), whichever you prefer, assuming your DM allows you to use dragonlance material.

[Segev]

It's trivial to retrain DMM:Fell Animate out once you hit level 5.

It's weird, but in terms of practical optimization, retraining rules are often the least reliable when it comes to convincing a DM to let you use them, at least in my experience. DMM:Persist? While he might give you a wary stare, you still could convince him. Collect a bunch of Slaymates? A little iffier since it depends on DM cooperation, but if you're playing out the game by saying your character is actively searching for them, you actually have a higher chance the BETTER the DM is, simply because he'll recognize a plot hook when he sees one. Retraining, though? Whether you go the "side quest" route or not, it just feels too meta-gamey for most DMs I've met. Whether they'll express it that way or not, the notion that you can ditch things from your build not because you regret having taken them because they've never been useful, but as part of your planned build progression after having gotten use out of them up 'til now, just seems to sit poorly with most DMs.

On the other hand, most DMs I've known will have littel problem rebuilding a character without so much as acknowledging it in character if it's about dropping things that haven't been used or useful and picking up "new" talents and skills that let you do your same schtick, but better.

This is, obviously, anecdotal, and retraining rules ARE in the RAW, but I felt the need to explain why I take those suggestions less seriously even in TO than I do others. They very quickly make it ONLY TO, in my experience.

[Deophaun]

I've found far more DMs that allow it than those who don't.

Of course, that may be due to my philosophy that if it's clear RAW and the DM hasn't listed it as a problem ahead of time, I don't have to bother to ask. Forgiveness being better than permission and all. :smallbiggrin:

[Segev]

I've found far more DMs that allow it than those who don't.

Of course, that may be due to my philosophy that if it's clear RAW and the DM hasn't listed it as a problem ahead of time, I don't have to bother to ask. Forgiveness being better than permission and all. :smallbiggrin:

I think it's actually cheating if you don't talk to your DM about it, because the RAW for it require a quest to achieve it, don't they? So you NEED the DM to run the quest and tell you that, yes, it qualifies you for retraining.

[Deophaun]

I think it's actually cheating if you don't talk to your DM about it, because the RAW for it require a quest to achieve it, don't they? So you NEED the DM to run the quest and tell you that, yes, it qualifies you for retraining.
Nope, no quest is required.