Chaos Jackal
2020-05-17, 04:35 AM
Our Pathfinder home campaign has featured a number of undead encounters in the past, but so far they've been the occassional crypt dweliing or haunted village scenarios. Oh, and a ghost ship once. Starting from the next session though, we'll be heading into a country which currently faces a zombie apocalypse kind of situation, so chances are we'll be knee-deep in corpses soon enough. We're a lv9 2-man party of Knife Master rogue (low optimization, low UMD) and magus (decently optimized, but forced to act as frontline, striker, control caster and utility caster, so stretched thin at times). We're usually aided by a bard NPC one or two levels below us.
Now, from those previous encounters with undead we've had, I know the DM pulls no punches with negative levels. They're bound to come up, and probably often too. However, going through spells and items in the SRD, I come up nearly empty-handed regarding ways to protect the party, and especially my frontliner self, from negative energy. Since we don't have access to divine casters, those ways become even more limited. My character has the Craft Wondrous Item feat, but all I could find is the Black Soul Shard, which only absorbs one negative level. I could spring for a custom Death Ward item, but this gets pretty expensive even for a 1/day use and would take time we don't have to craft, assuming my DM even allows it in the first place. I guess there's also Death Ward scrolls, but my faerie dragon has a +9 on UMD, which isn't very promising given the activation DC of a 4th-level scroll. The bard NPC likely has more, so maybe I could entrust her with them.
So, do I have any other options? Any items more effective than a Black Soul Shard? Any lower-level spells I've missed for cheaper, easier to activate scrolls? Maybe a feat or some not-terrible multiclass (we just levelled)? Or is my Fort save all I can depend on?
Now, from those previous encounters with undead we've had, I know the DM pulls no punches with negative levels. They're bound to come up, and probably often too. However, going through spells and items in the SRD, I come up nearly empty-handed regarding ways to protect the party, and especially my frontliner self, from negative energy. Since we don't have access to divine casters, those ways become even more limited. My character has the Craft Wondrous Item feat, but all I could find is the Black Soul Shard, which only absorbs one negative level. I could spring for a custom Death Ward item, but this gets pretty expensive even for a 1/day use and would take time we don't have to craft, assuming my DM even allows it in the first place. I guess there's also Death Ward scrolls, but my faerie dragon has a +9 on UMD, which isn't very promising given the activation DC of a 4th-level scroll. The bard NPC likely has more, so maybe I could entrust her with them.
So, do I have any other options? Any items more effective than a Black Soul Shard? Any lower-level spells I've missed for cheaper, easier to activate scrolls? Maybe a feat or some not-terrible multiclass (we just levelled)? Or is my Fort save all I can depend on?