Equiping undead or construct minions

[lolcat]

Greetings Playground!

I'm building a runecaster-character who's going into necromancy and minion-making later in the game. As a runecaster, she can essentially make permanent (or one-use or uses/day) items of any spell she knows (potentially any divine spell). The items can, but don't need to, take up any item slot. So numbers or slots is not really a concern.

What is a concern however is to make the minions either have rather low or no intelligence at all. So complex tactics without close supervision will invite... DM-induced "accidents" i presume :D

So going from the wealth of a lvl 14 character upwards, how would you equip minions such as mummies, sand golems or skeletons and what tactics would you use?

Thanks a bunch!

[ShurikVch]

Check the The Legion of the Dead (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/mm/mm20010511a):
To make up for the golems’ inefficiencies, the Circle equipped their golems with magical weapons and armor of various sorts. And secretly, with the help of a powerful runemaster, they enhanced the golems even further: Each golem wore an amulet with a rune on it, and was able to trigger the rune simply by touching the amulet.
...
Surviving mages were able to determine that the spells cast by the runes were dispel magic or greater dispelling; fire storm, wall of stone, flame strike, and blade barrier. The golems used a tactic of activating the spells upon engaging in melee. This caused the majority of the casualties among the mages and students, but did little to stop the attacks of the iron and stone golems of the academy.Note: Verran’s Flesh Golems - despite being different from your typical Flesh Golems (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/golem.htm#fleshGolem) - were exactly as Mindless (Int --)

[RNightstalker]

There are spells and items that grant turn resistance, which I can't immediately recall.

[unseenmage]

Slapping custom Intelligent Magic Items into the hands of Int -- minions virtually gives the conciousness in the item a body to pilot.


Smoky Confinement spell a bunch of other minions and have your regular minions carry a bottle of their friends that they are instructed to smash if confronted with more than X opponents.


The Craft Contingent Spell feat let's you put Contingent nagic into your minions, the trigger commands for which are arguably more intelligent than the minion itself.


Having the minion bear smaller minions that touch its body, like an animated object badge or hairpin or whatever is the number of possible Contingent spells. Things like Teleport and plane shift can bring touched allies. Terrain altering magic and other non targeted spells could be incorporated as well. Basically anything a minion could take advantage of or that would also disadvantage an enemy.


In my sig is a link to a thread about the best feats any creature could take, it's intended to make it easier to find broadly applicable feats for any kind of minion,if you wind up with Int minions at all.

On that note, the spell Awaken Sand makes Intelligent, free willed, friendly Constructs. Use Shapesand to mitigate its ooze like form. Black Sand works best for an undead master though.


Greater Humanoid Essence can be used to strip away an Awaken Sand's immunities and make it vulnerable to mind control if desired. The mind control remains after their type reverts to Construct because if changing type undid spell effects the GHE spell would undo itself as soon as it took effect.

Potentially, GHE could even make a Construct susceptible to infection by things like Ghoul Fever or Vampirism or the Create Spawn abilities of all sorts of undead.

EDIT
Arms and Equipment Guide has a sidebar with a price for putting feats in magic items. 10,000gp plus 5,000gp per pre requisite.
Do you need to have the prerequisites yourself to benefit from a feat in an item? Maybe. Sometimes printed precedents say yes, sometimes no, and neither with consistency.
Definitely an interesting toy to ask your GM about.

[lolcat]

What would be some spells that would synergize especially well with undead? Let's say either low-HD undead like skeletons, or more "expensive" ones such as mummies?
Same for a golem, what outside i.e. an AMF would be good here?