Troll necromancer

[Mud toe]

Anybody have any ideas on how to make a troll necromancer work

[JoeJ]

Anybody have any ideas on how to make a troll necromancer work

Tell him he has to either get a job or move out?

Seriously, if this is about building a character, you'd be better off asking in the correct forum for whichever game system you're asking about. The mods can move the thread for you if you ask them.

[Mud toe]

I like that move out or get a job! How do I put it under pathfinder?

[JoeJ]

I like that move out or get a job! How do I put it under pathfinder?

Hit the little triangle at the lower left corner of your post to report it, and ask the mods to move the thread to the correct forum.

[Particle_Man]

Basic dungeons and dragons had the thoul, a troll hobgoblin ghoul crossbreed. You could start there.

Or just give a troll levels in wizard specializing in necromancy, I suppose.

[Segev]

Wisdom is the race’s highest mental stay at “merely” -2, so Cleric is an obvious choice. Put Wisdom at least at 15 before the racial adjustment, for a net of 13, so it can animate its own dead.

Divine metamagic: Fell Animate will also let it spontaneously add Fell Animate to damage spells of it thinks it’s about to kill something, and having rebuke is always good for minionmancy.

If you can finagle the skill ranks (which is really hard for a troll), Ur-Priest is a very strong choice.

Alternatively, again pump wisdom, and apply the Gravetouched Ghoul template (Libris Mortis p. 104) and the Spellstitched template (Complete Arcane p. 162). The +4 Wis from the Gravetouched Ghoul template nets you a racial +2, which helps immensely.

Give it Animate Dead and any other flavorful spells you like according to its Wis score. It loses regeneration for being undead, but you can either house rule fast healing into its place, or give it some black sand that it keeps in its boots (Sandstorm; I forget the page and exact healing rate).

[Malphegor]

Well, that 6 int and 6 cha is going to hurt an arcane one, not to mention the +5 level adjustment (I don't fully understand LA yet, I think it's you have to get 5 levels worth of XP to get 1 level, right?), but the wisdom of 9 isn't too bad. Maybe a cleric necromancer.

I'd probably suggest Dread Necromancer since the Fear aura is very appropriate, plus the charnel touch plus Tomb tainted soul (a required thing for all DNs as inifnite out of combat healing) works nicely with regeneration... But arcane spellcaster working off charisma. Yeesh, you ain't gonna be animating much.

Maybe some sort of cleric that does necromancy would be better, 9 is better than a kick in the face I guess.

There's possibly something here in reanimating your own limbs you chop off, but that level adjustment's a bit crippling.

[Falontani]

Troll artificer:
Animate 1 hd skeletons/zombies at first level via animate dead scrolls (from death master list)
Take practiced spellcaster artificer to get +4 to your crafting level (very good with artificers)
Level 2 make potions of lessor vigor for yourself and troll allies
Level 3 you have craft wondrous item, which depending on your crafting rules range from uber to just very good.
Level 4 use your bonus feat to grab Craft Skull Talisman. It always takes only a day and they are effectively potions up to ninth level by lugging around a large skull. Which you have an arbitrary number of with regeneration.
By now you can are cl 8 and able to animate dead fairly decently.
At level 5 your cl 9 and can start making Create Undead scrolls, and control undead scrolls. I suggest making a wondrous item of command undead and a wondrous item of control undead. On another note your now wearing fearsome bone armor (fearsome from drow of the underdark) so you can make people afraid easily enough.
At 7th level you have create dread warrior
At 9th level you have polymorph any object allowing you to turn severed troll fingers into dead trolls and animate them.

[Mike Miller]

You would be better off using a "normal" race and use polymorph to use troll form. Or the spell, Troll Form.

[ericgrau]

Anybody have any ideas on how to make a troll necromancer work


Cast magic mouth on unintelligent intend. With a properly worded trigger they can make fun of your opponents.
Get ideas for good triggers and good things to say from Reddit.
Teach your undead army to line dance outside of the church of Pelor. Thriller is a classic, or the can-can. Or a conga line. Wall of force(s) is/are invisible and blocks line of effect, so set it up before your army arrives between them and the church. Watch the fun as the enraged priests run out. Flee before they figure out what's going on and how to get around it.
A little more pricey is to make magic mouth permanent. Perhaps your DM will allow a permanent magic item. Dress up your undead in disguise, and send him into a riled up and opinionated group to perpetually give the same response to the same trigger.
Awaken undead can make unintelligent undead intelligent, for more elaborate trolls.
I can't go into much more detail because trolling real life people isn't allowed on these forums. Plus a lot of trolling involves politics, which is also banned.

[Segev]

I'll chime in once more for adding Gravetouched Ghoul and Spellstitched as templates to the existing Troll, with a modified stat line (just use a point-buy that gets Wis where you need it to be). Applying templates to an NPC/monster only increases its CR by 2, and gives you the flavor of a troll necromancer pretty straight-forwardly, without having to worry about optimizing a PC-able build.

[Selion]

Hey guys, OP asked specifically for pathfinder rules, which are pretty straightforward in this case.

For monsters with racial Hit Dice, the best way to allow monster PCs is to pick a CR and allow all of the players to make characters using monsters of that CR. Treat the monster's CR as its total class levels and allow the characters to multiclass into the core classes. Do not advance such monsters by adding Hit Dice. Monster PCs should only advance through classes.

Once you have determined the creature’s role, it’s time to add class levels. The first step of this process is to modify the creature’s ability scores. Creatures with class levels receive +4, +4, +2, +2, +0, and –2 adjustments to their ability scores, assigned in a manner that enhances their class abilities. Creatures with NPC class levels do not receive adjustments to their ability scores.

So you just need to find some low CR trolls. After a really short searching i found these two:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/giants/troll/troll-sewer/
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/humanoids/giants/troll/troll-moss/
Both fits thematically with the necromancer theme:
First one is CR2, lives in sewers and seems filthy enough to practice necromancy, he is medium sized, though, so he doesn't look like your typical troll.
Second one is CR3 and lives in woods, i imagine him luring his victims and catching them with his tree shape ability.
Both have their highest mental ability score in wisdom, so a cleric would be the obvious choice. I'll take the moss troll as example
He starts with these stats:
Str 16, Dex 19, Con 16, Int 9, Wis 12, Cha 7
I'd modify them this way:
Str 18, Dex 17, Con 16, int 11, Wis 16, Cha 11
This will do a totally viable cleric, you have delayed spell casting and would begin to cast animate dead when your party is LEP 8 (CR 3 + cleric 5), but you hit like a truck, just like a troll should.

[Falontani]

Hey guys, OP asked specifically for pathfinder rules, which are pretty straightforward in this case.

My suggestion still works. Throw one of the 4s into cha, max out umd with those racial class levels, and level up from level 3 as artificer. Playing a monster in pathfinder is easier to accomplish as a pc, but the process is nearly identical in both systems.

[Segev]

It occurs to me that I've been assuming this was for an NPC/monster. Is this meant to be a PC? That will change how I approach the answer.

If it's a PC, what ECL are we building to?

[vasilidor]

you need to pick a mental attribute and crank it as far as it will go. trolls have good bonuses to physical attributes so you are safe skimping there. from there it is a simple matter of picking a class that has access to the type of necromantic spells you want, picking one first will determine the mental attribute you need to crank up. Does the idea of hexes you can use at will tickle your fancy? go for a witch. do you like the thought of him being chosen by some evil god go oracle, was he born with the magic? sorcerer. from there you go to spell selection. necromancers get some pretty good debuff spells (if you look at the necromantic spell list) but if you are more into undead manipulation the spell command undead and the spell create undead and the variants thereof are going to be what you want.

the guy that is telling you to be an artificer does not realize that that class does not really function all that well in pathfinder. with magic items no longer costing xp, one of their big deals kind of goes out the window. not that the class could not be adapted to circumstances, and it does not get access to some of the better undead creation and manipulation spells that you may eventually want.