Undead Army Help

[Zexion]

I am making a villain for an epic game, and he needs to have a massive undead army (because they're all the rage these days).

So, I'm looking for a way for an epic spellcaster with no levels in Cleric to indefinitely command a massive undead army. I've looked at Animus Blast and Animus Blizzard, but those only give human skeletons or wights, respectively. I want this villain to be capable of having indefinite control over zombie dragons (from the Draconomicon).
So, any thoughts? Is this impossible?

[NelKor]

Dread Necro with rods of Undead Mastery, also consider having Necromancer generals who can also have undead, or having spawn creating undead who control undead.

[Zexion]

Dread Necro with rods of Undead Mastery, also consider having Necromancer generals who can also have undead, or having spawn creating undead who control undead.

Hmm... but what about the permanent endless part?

[devinkowalczyk]

What about zombies/skeletons who reconstruct themselves? They can pull themselves back together. Or a regenerate ability of some kind

[Jack_Simth]

I am making a villain for an epic game, and he needs to have a massive undead army (because they're all the rage these days).

So, I'm looking for a way for an epic spellcaster with no levels in Cleric to indefinitely command a massive undead army. I've looked at Animus Blast and Animus Blizzard, but those only give human skeletons or wights, respectively. I want this villain to be capable of having indefinite control over zombie dragons (from the Draconomicon).
So, any thoughts? Is this impossible?

Well, with EPIC SPELLCASTING, basically anything is possible. The Epic Seed Animate Dead spells most of it out, and most the rest is under Epic Spell Development, but you'll want to poke around in that section.

But really, if you're okay with mindless minions, you don't really need to be Epic. Chain Spell (Complete Arcane) Command Undead, and Extend it if you like. Mindless undead don't get a saving throw, so the penalty to saving throws for secondary targets doesn't matter. Then just cast Animate Dead on anything you kill, and you're good to go. You can get (Caster Level; number gotten per casting) * (Caster Level; duration is days/level) * (Spell Slots used for this; how many times you cast it each day) mindless undead critters under your control that way.

[Fouredged Sword]

The rules don't allow for endless. Permenant is easy, just have any one of the many, many ways to raise undead made into a componentless spell like through archmange. For the endless consider DM fait. Give him an evil artifact from the negative energy plain that lets him ignore HD caps on undead or something. You can get really high numbers for undead control, but not infinate.

If you do want to go the really high numbers path, you take the master spellthief feat and one level of spellthief. Now you dip into every class that can create undead through arcane magic. Now your caster levels stack for all arcane classes.

So if you are a wizard primaraly, but dip spellthief and sorrcerer, then you end up with 60 total caster level to control undead with, but you will need to use wands to do it for the spellthief and sorrcerer spellcasting. Diping another class would net you an aditional 20 caster levels for undead control. Remember that you can control 4x caster level of undead, so that adds up to a lot. Be a dread necromancer, dip wizard, sorrcerer, and spellthief. Now you can control 320 HD of undead unasisted at level 20. Epic gets better. Use control undead for those zombie dragons so they don't count on your total.

Also nice for picking up both the necromancer alt feature for more HP for HD for undead and the dread necromancer one. Take the feat as well and add 6 HP per HD to all undead you make. Then max out a cross class UMD for a wand od desicrate.

[tyckspoon]

Or, you know, Plot Tool, because D&D's mechanics are actually written to prevent player characters from controlling honest-to-Vecna undead Armies (Dread Necros get close, but even then if they use all the HD they can on bog-standard 1 HD skellies they get about the size of a small human army, nowhere near the 'ZOMG undead covering the ground as far as the eye can see' trope.) Make an Epic Rod of Undead Mastery or something that increases his control cap by *10 or *50 or whatever scaling factor you need.

[Zexion]

The Epic Spellcasting sounds good, and so does the Plot Tool. Thanks.

[JeminiZero]

Because it hasn't been mentioned yet: Animate Dread Warrior has no HD control limit, BUT costs XP to cast. Commonly incorporated into spellstitched undead so they can eschew the XP cost.

Simulacrum (and maybe Ice Assassin) creates a loyal minion that is the copy of something else, without control limit. You can use it to copy undead (and the whole shadow/ice theme is appropriate as well) but again, costs XP to cast.

[Eurus]

Fell Animate is a nice way to get undead without spending millions on black onyx, too. Also, consider Undead Leadership.

[Saya]

If you want endless zombie dragons, you can always have the necromancer somehow discover a plane of existence where for example say... time moves at <Insert arbitrary number of years> per second, and where the necromancer farms dragons, where once they reach a certain age, are "invited" to come to the material plane, where they are promptly slaughtered, and turned into zombie dragons.

And AFAIK, zombie dragons only need the Animate Dead spell..

[Fouredged Sword]

Technicaly I think you can get zombie dragons at no cost with the fell animate spell. I would suggest that chill touch spell to drop the dex to zero and then kill it with a cu-degra with a fell animate touch spell of an element it is weak to. That raises it as a zombie at no cost.

Another method if controling large numbers of undead is to kill two level one commoners with negative energy. They will rise as a whightes in 24 hours. During that time strap the bodies down in a way that they can't get away. Now, after they rise, tell them that you are going to cast control undead on them, and the one who deliberatly fails his save first will survive. Kill the other. This is to insure that the spell takes effect becuse the subject is "willing".

Now whights can create loyal spaw indefinatly so long as you have a supply of humanoids. Spawn are loyal to the first whight. Now you have an army of loyal undead for the cost of a single casting of control undead. You just have to keep the control undead effect constant on the "master" whight, and keep it safe and reasonably happy near you.

If your DM is nice he will let you reserch to create a dominate undead spell or something. Going by the charm person / dominate person spells, dominate undead should be around a 5th level spell or so, as control undead is basicly charm undead but better.

The best part is this will work on many different types of undead, like shades and vampires. You force the "master" creature into submision and use it's loyal spaw to fight, safe in the fact that you can churn out more cannon fodder from hords of random peasents. It's a great hook for players to. If they realise that the villian is controling undead that way, then they can free the master undead and maybe turn it to thier side, at least until it turns on them for it's own reasons.

[urbanpirate]

Because it hasn't been mentioned yet: Animate Dread Warrior has no HD control limit, BUT costs XP to cast. Commonly incorporated into spellstitched undead so they can eschew the XP cost.

Simulacrum (and maybe Ice Assassin) creates a loyal minion that is the copy of something else, without control limit. You can use it to copy undead (and the whole shadow/ice theme is appropriate as well) but again, costs XP to cast.

this but you make the simulacrum of yourself (after stacking cl shenanagins) and use level drain/restoration chees and or liqud pain as xp component cheese to offset/recover spent xp.

you now have unlimited generals controling massive amounts of undead each. pair that with self replicating minions ghouls, vampires... and you are now limited only by the amount of corpses you can find and or create.

[NM020110]

For another option on this: The Undead Horde feat causes all corporeal undead with fewer hit dice than your charisma modifier to not count against your limit. I'm not sure if this would work too well, but it could easily be switched to another stat. While the resulting horde won't really be infinite, it can be arbitrarily large. Give each skeleton a crossbow, point them in a direction, and order them to fire.

Good luck with all your undead needs.

[Ashiel]

Craft a wand of animate dead that has 1 charge per day. The magic item creation rules say such an item will cost one fifth the cost of a 50 charge version of the same; so counting in the costly material components for 50 charges, it would be 7,250gp market value charged for 20 HD worth of undead per casting (only 10 HD can be animated via a single casting unless in the area of a desecrate spell however).

Have the big bad take Leadership and Undead leadership. Have your followers be adepts (NPC classed characters as per followers), and have them each use the wand in the radius of a desecrate spell, until each of your followers has 20 HD of undead under their control. For bonus points, have them all trained with animals by taking the Animal Cohort to flesh out your army with some nice wolves, warhorses, or birds (just 'cause they look cool).

While you're in the process of building your army (20 HD worth of undead at a time), set each of your undead you've already created to work making craft and profession checks in your BBEGs base of operations. Now taking 10, your undead will produce 5gp worth of work or material. These GP could be in the form of trade goods; so if you've seen LotR: The Two Towers, it would be similar to the industrialization Saruman had his goblins working with. This in turn will fund your minions with the money to purchase tools like weapons, armor, alchemical goods (like acid vials to throw), and so forth; or begin building war-machines.

Assuming 20HD worth of individual undead, they would produce 100gp per week with craft/profession checks. Now multiply this amount by the number of adepts you have with 20HD worth of undead working, and you get a very solid income for funding your army; which ideally doesn't require you to pay your workers - and your workers can even be a standing army (since undead do not mind digging ditches and lumberjacking in 100+ degree heat while wearing plate armor, 24/7). You might even deem that since they can work tirelessly they can do double the work.

Alternatively, set up training academies within your BBEG's borders, and instead of animal cohort, give them all corpsecrafter and another corpsecrafter feat (nimble bones and destruction retribution are good options) if they're human.

Animals often make better brute undead than most. Oxen are 20 gp as a trade good and use the Bison stats in the SRD. They make exceptionally good brute monsters when you animate them + corpsecrafter + barding; and they can carry huge amounts of equipment. If you make skeletons out of bred livestock, then you can feed the meat to your living servants; thus wasting nothing.

With enough time, arm legions of skeletons with slings and vials of acid and you can challenge enemy armies with exceptionally deadly efficiency (a group of 20 undead lobbing vials of acid deal a lot of damage to single foes and a significant amount of splash damage as the 1 point of un-avoidable splash damage begins stacking up).

Undead armies are feared, because they are powerful. Plus, as your BBEG's undead army cuts through opposing armies, you can re-bolster your ranks quickly thanks to your assimilating their corpses into yours.