Making the "Undead Batteries" feat work in early levels

[danskjavel]

I am currently building a Dread Necromancer for an upcoming campaign and read the feat Undead Batteries from Age Of Mortals (Dragonlance Campaign Setting) on page 209 in the side bar with the same name.

The summary of the feat is that you gain a melee touch attack that can drain your charisma modifier hit dice from any undead. The hit dice can be used to reduce the metamagic modifier on a spell but unused hit dice are lost at a rate of 1 hit dice lost per 10 min. These points can explicitly be used to cast spells of a higher effective level (that is after metamagic modification) than you otherwise could using your highest level spell slot.

My current plan for qualifying early is using an undead template and the Evolved Undead template, electing to take the Circle of Death SLA to qualify for casting 6th level necromancy spells using the SLA instead of spell for qualification rule. (I remember reading the rule somewhere, do any of you know where I might have read it?)

Using flaws, the human feat, and the level feats as well as any other methods I have not thought about, how would you optimize the early level use of this metamagic cost reducer? Got any tips for good metamagics for higher levels?

My current leading idea is:
Flaw: Spell Focus (Necromancy)
Flaw: Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy)
Human: Undead Batteries
Lvl 1: Fell Animate
Lvl 3: Chain Spell
Lvl 6: Undead Leadership

The flaws I see in this plan are: that it is missing the versatile spellcaster feat which for Dread Necromancers is more or less a must have, that it is missing the Human Heritage feat which would provide the character with a great set of immunities with it retaining Undead Traits while having counting as Humanoid(human) for effects, and that the metamagic feats do not provide the character with more power against nonundead opponents.

Can any of you knowledgable playgrounders help me optimize the early game of this build a bit? Also, please correct me on any ruling mistakes I have made, I have only played 3.5 for a couple of months so my knowledge and familiarity with the rules is fairly limited.

[Chronos]

My current plan for qualifying early is using an undead template and the Evolved Undead template, electing to take the Circle of Death SLA to qualify for casting 6th level necromancy spells using the SLA instead of spell for qualification rule. (I remember reading the rule somewhere, do any of you know where I might have read it?)
This doesn't work. A spell-like ability DOES count as being able to cast the specific spell it mimics, but it does NOT count as being able to cast a certain level of spell. So if you had something that required "Must be able to cast Circle of Death", then the SLA would work, but for "6th level necromancy spell", it doesn't.

Also, unless your game is set in Dragonlance, it's probably not safe to assume that a feat from that book is on the table, and templates aren't necessarily safe to assume, either (especially not a template that takes centuries to acquire). And with the LA on your templates, it might not even get you anything any earlier than you could otherwise, anyway.

[Feantar]

This doesn't work. A spell-like ability DOES count as being able to cast the specific spell it mimics, but it does NOT count as being able to cast a certain level of spell.

I seem to remember this being so too, but do you have any idea where it's spelled out? (I remember an instance where it counts as qualifying for a specific spell in the Mindbender description IIRC.)


... and templates aren't necessarily safe to assume, either (especially not a template that takes centuries to acquire).

I grant you that templates aren't safe to assume, yes, but as long as you can start a venerable elf, you can justify being centuries old as an undead too (now, whether that would confer the template is indeed up to the DM quite explicitly).

[danskjavel]

Sorry for the late response! I apparently set the thread to not notify my email!


Also, unless your game is set in Dragonlance, it's probably not safe to assume that a feat from that book is on the table, and templates aren't necessarily safe to assume, either (especially not a template that takes centuries to acquire). And with the LA on your templates, it might not even get you anything any earlier than you could otherwise, anyway.


I grant you that templates aren't safe to assume, yes, but as long as you can start a venerable elf, you can justify being centuries old as an undead too (now, whether that would confer the template is indeed up to the DM quite explicitly).

We play in a mostly setting agnostic world my DM made so anything official goes as far as material allowed. My DM and I both enjoy optimization but as to not over-optimize compared to the other players we have a agreement that if I want to do stuff like this with templates and obscure feats, I have to keep the other stuff less optimized. So as long as I don't do this on a wizard, don't take some overpowered PrC like Incantatrix and can come up with some reasonable fluff, I can go wild with that stuff.


This doesn't work. A spell-like ability DOES count as being able to cast the specific spell it mimics, but it does NOT count as being able to cast a certain level of spell. So if you had something that required "Must be able to cast Circle of Death", then the SLA would work, but for "6th level necromancy spell", it doesn't.

I see, I must've misunderstood the rule. That makes things a lot harder if I want to qualify for Undead Batteries reasonably early. If I can get feats from the natural taint of being undead, I will probably get Eldritch Corruption, that and Versatile Spellcaster will let me heighten my spells by 3 levels over my current top slot. Then I could qualify by level 6. Perhaps that could be fine, qualification will be later than I hoped for but in return I could do something like this:

Flaw: Spell Focus (Necromancy)
Flaw: Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy)
Human: Human Heritage
Lvl 1: Versatile Spellcaster
Lvl 3: Fell Animate
Lvl 6: Undead Batteries

This fixes all the problems I had with my previous build but Undead Batteries comes online much later. Then there is the question, what metamagic feats would be good on a Dread Necromancer? The obvious ones are the Fell line and Chain Spell but are there any other stand outs? And is there any good way to pick them up? Perhaps something like Arcane Preparation going into Mage of the Arcane Order?

[Bonzai]

what metamagic feats would be good on a Dread Necromancer? The obvious ones are the Fell line and Chain Spell but are there any other stand outs? And is there any good way to pick them up? Perhaps something like Arcane Preparation going into Mage of the Arcane Order?

I wouldn't sleep on heighten and persistent spells. Also, a maximized, empowered, and twin spelled necrotic skull bomb is a thing of beauty. I had an undead battery build once. One trick that I used was Eternal rods of summon undead to fuel the mana battery.