Necromancer best or fun minions.

[Rockbeard]

So gonna be running a necromancer themed character in 3.5. Probably cleric but most likely going true necromancer.
So I was wondering what are good undead to shoot for? Or creatures I should aim to kill and make undead?
Also about what level would one have to be to hold power over said suggestions?

[Segev]

Sadly, True Necromancer is a trap of a class, so my first piece of advice is not to run it. Go for Dread Necromancer if you want minionmancy, unless you really really want to be a cleric. It's in Heroes of Horror. If you really want cleric casting, go either pure cleric or go Mystic Theurge over True Necromancer: you'll wind up with more caster levels and spells known in both Wizard and Cleric than if you go True Necromancer (it's that big of a trap).

Now, to what you came here to ask about (sorry for the opening not relating directly to that): Slaymates! Cute little undead urchins who give you free metamagic levels to any spells of the necromancy school you choose to add them to! Collect 3 and you can add Fell Animate to any damaging necromancy spell you know for free! As a bonus, Corpsecrafter (Libris Mortis) and its descendent feats apply to any undead you create with a necromancy spell, which anything created by Fell Animate used to augment a necromancy spell definitely is!

If you can talk your DM into letting you research some sort of ritual to enhance them, giving your Slaymates the Swarmshifter form for maggots and flies can be very thematic, too. Both Slaymate and Swarmshifter are in Libris Mortis (same book as True Necromancer).

While you're there, check out the Mother Cyst feat, the Necrotic line of spells, and the Skulking Cyst. Note how the Skulking Cyst is created by several of them, and, if you can ally with or control it (Dread Necromancer and Cleric both get Rebuke/Command, and command undead does make it at least friendly), you can send it to spread Necrotic Cysts to unsuspecting populaces by having it sneak up on people in their sleep, or ambush peasants in dark alleys and deliberately leave them alive.

Note that necrotic scrying is only 2nd level, making it one of the lowest-level Scry spells in the game, and you can see small regions around whomever you target, so lots of Necrotic Cyst-bearers means lots of places to peer in on.

It also has ways to turn people into explosives that spread the infection around. Great for kidnapping people, having them run up to the heroes to beg for help, and then detonating them right in the middle of the now-horrified heroes.


For high-HD, unintelligent undead, command undead is the best way to control them. If you can get Extend and Chain Spell on it, you can command fairly large numbers for one casting. 4 Slaymates will let you cast an Extended Chain command undead out of a 2nd level spell slot. It is an Arcane spell, however, so you'll need that Wizard or Dread Necromancer level. (Note that Precocious Apprentice could let you have command undead as early as first level.)

Hydra skeletons and zombies are really effective unintelligent undead, with 5+ attacks per round on a standard action. The number of attacks is equal to their HD (or half their HD, if they're zombies; note that zombies have double the HD of the base creature upon creation).


Shadows are very scary minions. Against high-strength monsters, they're exquisite debuffers. Against low-strength monsters, they're highly lethal.

[Oberron]

Creatures with elemental subtypes like fire giants keep their subtype and gain cold subtype when they become undead being immune to fire and cold as well as being solid bruisers. Also check with your dm to see if you can use variant undead when using animate undead (if only 3.5) or look into the pathfinder rules if using them. Fast zombies remove a lot of downsides they have and bloody skeletons let you never worry about loosing them to damage.

And check out http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214212-Reanimated-Dread-Necromancer-Handbook

For more tips.

Also if going cleric you have a lot of good ways to buff your undead fel energy spell gives another +2 to the bonus of the spell. Magic weapon will be a cheap source of +3 to hit/damage with it and magic vestments will be really solid a bump as well. Don't forget to carry a portable evil altar and cast fel energy on desacrate for +6hp/HD to your minions as well.

[Segev]

What is "Fell Energy?"

[Oberron]

What is "Fell Energy?"



It's a metamagic feat "fel energy spell" it is from dragonnomicon

[Falontani]

Necromancers are one of the best supported types of characters to play. Death Master, Dread Necromancer, and straight Wizard are all amazing routes for playing a necromancer. For the divine side your much more limited with cleric being pretty much your only base class option. Shai'ir can work, but that's simply because of what it is, not due to any support.

I have made a large number of necromancers, and I have to admit that true necromancer (while not as bad as everyone claims) is most definitely not a good choice most of the time.

That said from lost empires of faerun (fr) is the Flameskull. It is an amazing undead minion.

[gorfnab]

Some light reading material that should provide more Necromancer information:
Revised Necromancer Handbook (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2733)
Reanimated Dread Necromancer Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?214212-Reanimated-Dread-Necromancer-Handbook)
Collection of Necromatic Oddities (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=8963)

[Rockbeard]

Thank you all this has been a great help.
Please continue if you do have any more to add.

[Falontani]

Thank you all this has been a great help.
Please continue if you do have any more to add.

is there a particular type of necromancer you have envisioned? Do you have your necromancer already created/built or do you have leeway?

[Rockbeard]

Mostly planning a minionmancer

[Oberron]

Mostly planning a minionmancer

Planning on having a mass army of undead or a squad of beefy undead? The mass undead tend to bog combat down a little so keep that in mind.

[Segev]

There's the obvious Undead Leadership feat in Libris Mortis to consider, for any minionmancer. You can even claim you made them, yourself, and just let them overflow your control cap, justifying any Corpsecrafter feats you have applying to them.

[Rockbeard]

Planning on having a mass army of undead or a squad of beefy undead? The mass undead tend to bog combat down a little so keep that in mind.

most likely the beef squad. with a few utility types

[Malphegor]

Theoretically a tarrasque could be reanimated by a Dread Necromancer at level 13... I think? Haven’t actually played one yet. Need someone to help one kill and find a tarrasque though.

Nothing like coming to a Vecna Convention riding Godzilla while singing praises to Wee Jas so confident that nobody is going to dare mess with you.

Generally for combat I recommend you mainly use big beefy boys for actual combat, ans your weaker ones mainly use their actions giving +2s to the Beefy boy flanking to hit via the aid another action. Nothing like a swarm of zombies holding someone down and hassling while Gojirra does a big punch. Also keeps combat moving for a party

[Efrate]

Animate Dread warrior spell from unapproachable east. Make a slavishly loyal minion out of any humanoid corpse, that keeps all class levels, features etc. They take an int hit of -6 and a cha hit of -4, but keep everything else while being a loyal undead minion which does not count against HD cap since upon creation they are under your control. Just cannot create ones with more hd than you. Wiz/sorc 6 so its a reason to go arcane.

Be undead and spellstitch yourself so it costs you no xp. Then spellstitch your minions.

Barring that dragon zombie and skeletons make great minions, zombies are better, they use different rules than normal undead, in draconomicon i think?

[Eldariel]

Let's see, the best undead you can Animate are:
- Dread Warriors with Animate Dread Warrior [Unapproachable East] - these just straight-up retain their class levels so you can get anything you kill.
- Juju Zombies [Unapproachable East] - kinda like Dread Warriors, these can be almost anything. A bit different to make but all good.
- Zombie Dragons - I made a thread about it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?499642-Best-Dragon-to-Zombie-Dragon) - the Zombie Dragon templates from Draconomicon is awesome and you should pick stuff with good breath weapons and perhaps some nice movement modes. Not as strong as the real deal but 100% more controllable and still plenty powerful.
- Skeletal/Zombie Hydras (Pyrohydras are optimal) - they retain their ability to attack with all their weapons.
- Anything with great stats and low HD. Giants, Magical Beasts, Outsiders are all great candidates for Zombification.

Aside from that, try and control anything intelligent you can get your hands on. Rebuke Undead is the best way to go about this as it's absolute control with no subsequent checks and no saves. You can also create stuff and then Rebuke it.

Other than that, use Command Undead to maintain a separate control pool. Cleric with Deathbound [Spell Compendium] domain and Divine Magician [Complete Mage]*ACF picking up Command Undead and Animate Dread Warrior among other stuff is probably the way to go (though you probably do want Spell-domain for a broader access to arcane necromancy). Clerics are awesome.


Though sadly to Spellstitch [Complete Arcane] undead (as a rule, always spellstitch everything as spells are awesome) as a Cleric you have to jump through hoops so in that sense Wizard is the better base class. Honestly, either works though. Spellstitching gets around the annoying problem of material components and such as the stitched spells are SLAs. Go Necropolitan and Spellstitch yourself.

[StevenC21]

You'll never be able to reanimate the Tarrasque, because the Tarrasque has more than ten hit dice, and Animate Dead only works on creatures with ten or less hit dice.

[Mnemius]

If you want an interesting one, ask your GM is casting flesh to stone on a statue creates something that counts as a corpse for animation purposes.

(If so... well, sculpting is for more than just golems now! I cannot claim credit, read this one years ago.)

[noob]

You'll never be able to reanimate the Tarrasque, because the Tarrasque has more than ten hit dice, and Animate Dead only works on creatures with ten or less hit dice.

except for dragons.(the oddities of special templates for zombie and skeleton dragon)
now is it possible to turn the tarrasque in a dragon?

[StevenC21]

Well, my first thought would be baleful polymorph into a pseudodragon. However, it turns out that pseudodragons have 2 HD. Perhaps...

If you mindrape'd the Tarrasque into being your friend, willingly polymorphed it into a pseudodragon, argued to permanency the polymorph, then got it to throw itself into the negative energy plane, you wish to kill it once it runs out of hp, time stop, get it's body back out without dying, and then reanimate the pseudodragon corpse, dispel the permanency (would it even keep the template?), get a book thrown at you.

Does that template work on all dragons or just True Dragons?

[Eldariel]

Well, my first thought would be baleful polymorph into a pseudodragon. However, it turns out that pseudodragons have 2 HD. Perhaps...

If you mindrape'd the Tarrasque into being your friend, willingly polymorphed it into a pseudodragon, argued to permanency the polymorph, then got it to throw itself into the negative energy plane, you wish to kill it once it runs out of hp, time stop, get it's body back out without dying, and then reanimate the pseudodragon corpse, dispel the permanency (would it even keep the template?), get a book thrown at you.

Does that template work on all dragons or just True Dragons?

Just Magic Jar/Dominate/whatever it, put a Skin of Proteus on it and be done with it.