Community Based Monster Classes: Come in and help out!

[Benly]

And for the record, we're not balancing against tier 1 classes (which a necromancy specialized wizard/cleric would & could be).

For what it's worth, the dread necromancer is tier 3 and I think it is an excellent model for a minion-themed PC. It's not the horde that makes a necromancer wizard T1. A dread necro does get powerful minions with special abilities (if nothing else, Create Undead for bone/corpse creatures), but they're relatively limited by his rebuking compared to the vast hordes of skeleton and zombie chaff.

(This does become broken if dread necros try to do the ridiculous trap room/Planar Binding/Corpse Efreet business - which is why I tried to specifically counter that kind of nonsense in my proposal for greater YMZs.)

Edit:

Okay, some thoughts: I like the Greater Musk Zombies idea. Maybe it can have a maximum of 2 HD per HD of GYMZ promoted, and these must be the ones which are older than 2 months and able to roam freely.

Further, I'll make it so they get an additional save every dice of rounds, but the Yellow Musk Creeper may puff them again to deny them their next save.

An extra save every d8 rounds is a very long time being helpless for an at-will ability that becomes twice per round rather early on, and is very likely to be enough for the YMC to finish eating the brains before the target gets another save. By comparison, a mind flayer needs to pass a minimum of two grapple checks to eat a brain, almost certainly at least three, and quite possibly more, while the musk puff -> mind eater combination is essentially a guaranteed kill once the initial save is failed.