What to do when you accidentally give the necromancer really good fodder?

[SangoProduction]

Well. Just had the first session actually being able to raise the dead. Was some templated out nonsense of a minotaur. Which killed a Giant template of the same minotaur... which I then raised. And then fused the two for more HD on the giant (Spheres talent to do that).

So... This burning skeleton thing with a magic butchering axe made out of its forearms is... terrifying, and slaughters basically everything it touches. At least it's relatively quick to do the turn for this singular skeleton.

But have to admit, this does not seem particularly appropriate, and do fear just straight up outshining the actual martials in the group by waving around my 40 strength bone monster.

I've already made it clear that I am perfectly fine if the skeleton "just happens" to go missing.... With it being a permanently raised undead, I am sort of concerned about what it means for it to have gone missing and out of my control. But that's an issue for another time.

What do I do with it, to make it useful, but not make the martials feel bad?

[Efrate]

Focus it on killing fodder, let the martials deal with big enemies. It's highly suboptimal but if it already outmartials the martials, let them deal with real threats. Do not heal it and let it die as needed, maybe rush to save someone who is down or tank the bbeg full attack/boom spell.

[pabelfly]

I'm not sure what mechanics your corpse is operating under, but does your necromancer have any obligations that they could fulfil by gifting a living corpse for a guard or the like? Like, could it keep guard of a family the necromancer owes a favour to (or is related to), protect a city, stuff like that.?

[Calthropstu]

I'm not sure what mechanics your corpse is operating under, but does your necromancer have any obligations that they could fulfil by gifting a living corpse for a guard or the like? Like, could it keep guard of a family the necromancer owes a favour to (or is related to), protect a city, stuff like that.?

pabelfly is onto something. Ask if you can use it as loot. Sell it to another necromancer and split the funds with the party. Afterall, they did help provide the corpses involved right?

Build up a "corpse collection and delivery" service selling undead. Work with the party for collection, animate, sell, split profits.

[Godofallu]

3.5 has a lot of opportunities to grow too powerful. Especially when you start leaving actual Wizards content behind and entering into 3rd party and homebrew. The mark of a good player is not only creating a powerful character but also knowing when to scale it back.

If your undead is making others unhappy I would just offer to the DM to lower its attack and or AC by 5 or something like that to nerf it into a good place. Or gift control of it to a player who is feeling insufficient or unsummon it and make a new one with worse stats on a fresh corpse ect.

[SangoProduction]

pabelfly is onto something. Ask if you can use it as loot. Sell it to another necromancer and split the funds with the party. Afterall, they did help provide the corpses involved right?

Build up a "corpse collection and delivery" service selling undead. Work with the party for collection, animate, sell, split profits.

I actually really like that.

[Yogibear41]

So in our campaign world undead were the creation of the ancient ultimate evil deity of which even all other evil deities hate and work against. So its actually taboo for most evil religions to create or use undead. While some allow for their temporary use. I basically played a character who would create or command undead use them as minions for awhile then command the. To destroy themselves as my last command.

[Lorddenorstrus]

3.5 has a lot of opportunities to grow too powerful. Especially when you start leaving actual Wizards content behind and entering into 3rd party and homebrew. The mark of a good player is not only creating a powerful character but also knowing when to scale it back.

If your undead is making others unhappy I would just offer to the DM to lower its attack and or AC by 5 or something like that to nerf it into a good place. Or gift control of it to a player who is feeling insufficient or unsummon it and make a new one with worse stats on a fresh corpse ect.

He's playing Pathfinder not 3.5. (note the "Spheres talent") So there should at least be a little more leeway. Pathfinder has fixed some of the more glaring issues from what I've tried out so far.
Also just lowering the numbers arbitarily doesn't really.. resolve anything actually. He's created a 40 str monstrosity. Your average martial isn't going to compete with a 40 str monster. Lower it's attack slightly? It has a 40... that's what +15 to hit/dmg off raw stat before I even know about it's other stats it has. Gifting it would make the player feel worse. "Wow why bother with my cool monk, this Undead meat stick punchs better than me." Ideally you simply don't make 1 uber meat stick as a necro in a martial party in my experience. It never can go well.

@ OP Honestly and this sounds weird but I see necromancer can do 2 paths. The Raise Dead costs a lot of gold so we optimize and don't have martials in the party because I'm a caster who controls the martials as minions. Or Path B, get the DM to hand waive the gold cost on raise dead. So you can do the suboptimal path B. Super disposable garbage minions. IF you can get 3.5 content approved for Pathfinder, there is a line of feats to my memory that makes undead go boom when they die. So excellent little suicide bombers. I've played this before in a party w/ ToB classes and it actually went pretty well. I wasn't replacing their point to exist and still felt like a necromancer.

[GeoffWatson]

It's Pathfinder - Casters are supposed to outshine the martials, and the martial players are just fools for choosing such worthless classes. That's just how it is with 3rd ed and Pathfinder.

Back to the point: How recoverable is the undead if it gets destroyed? Most animate dead spells require the body to be intact, and it it gets smashed to bits will you be able to reanimate it?

[SangoProduction]

It's Pathfinder - Casters are supposed to outshine the martials, and the martial players are just fools for choosing such worthless classes. That's just how it is with 3rd ed and Pathfinder.

Back to the point: How recoverable is the undead if it gets destroyed? Most animate dead spells require the body to be intact, and it it gets smashed to bits will you be able to reanimate it?

It's relatively trivial to recover destroyed undead, unless it gets well and truly anihilated. But I don't plan on re-reanimating it if it does get taken down.

[Rynjin]

Considering this is kinda the whole point of playing a necromancer, I'm not sure I see the issue. It's sadly kinda easy to outshine pure martial characters, unless they're Path of War or decently well optimized Spheres of Might characters. You'd be having the same issue if you were a Summoner or Druid too.

[Kitsuneymg]

Unfortunately the advanced talents in Spheres really do kinda screw with power in the game. Well, some.

As a GM, the key to “fixing” this is to use the disintegrate advanced talent to kill your baddie. But that’s a lot like saying “use sunder to kill bad loot”.

I’ve changed all the instantaneous “permanent” talents to duration: permanent instead of instantaneous. Makes them dispel-able and anti-magic-able which adds in some form of counter-play.

I’ve also had to rewrite or remove half of those talents in my games. But that’s why they are set aside as advanced.