Best "necromancer" build to do this...

[Theodoxus]

Ok, I've been invited to join a 3.5 game, as a healer - but I don't want to be the typical dwarf in heavy armor swinging a mace and one-upping the fighter and healing after the fights... been there, done that. I also don't want to be the druid passing around goodberries after facerolling the BBEG in bear form with my bear companion and bear cubs and all... been there, done that.

I had an idea of being an elemental druid, riding around on an air elemental... but the DM was a little iffy on the idea. :(

So, I proffered this idea instead (which I'd like help with optimizing a smidge):

A halfling cleric (for the heals) who's obsessed with building a couple of really big undead guardians - something he could ride into battle on. I don't want to be the OMGWTFBBQ Huge undead army of DOOM!!!! type cleric, he's more obsessed with finding the perfect leg bone, cleaning it of all the smelly gunk, maybe even painting it bright blue and adding it to his collection of other, nicely cleaned and painted bones, to build a skeleton of a fire giant or T-Rex or something (or 2!)

So, are there feats/spells/PrC's that emphasize building a singular entity and making it really powerful instead of concentrating on making 349,802,389,034 skeletons?

I'm starting at 6th level, I'd prefer to be neutral (focused on inflict/rebuke), but can be evil if needed (the helpful evil thats ok with causing pain and suffering on people outside my monkey-sphere - not the 'backstab and
"love" the skulls of my party mates for nixing my plan to wash the town with its own blood' type of evil.

Help?

[Psyren]

Actually, as a necromancer you can choose whether you want a handful of powerful undead or the shambling army approach - there is no class that forces you into one or the other.

For your concept I recommend a Cloistered Cleric with the Deathbound and Undeath domains. His scholarly bent would tie in with your "perfect specimen collection" theme, plus he'd have a massive undead HD cap and access to Desecrate to make it even larger. For even more necromantic fun, take the Divine Magician ACF from Complete Mage to learn some necromancy spells from the wizard list. To top it off, you still get to heal if you want to/if your party needs you to. Be neutral like you want and you can spontaneously cure and rebuke undead. (Honestly spontaneous curing is better, the inflict line sucks; you'll get a lot more damage out of CSW the fighter in a pinch than ISW a lone mook.)

Finally, please assure your group that a "healer" is not a necessary party role in D&D. Wands of cure light wounds or vigor do the job just as well out of combat, and in-combat you save more HP killing the enemies faster.

[Telonius]

Not a Cleric exactly, but Fallen Paladin9/Blackguard1 would get you a Medium Undead Companion. Nothing says it can't be a medium dinosaur skeleton.

You might also look into constructing a Bone Golem. (Looking around a bit on Google ... was this creature not updated to 3.x?) Anyway, if you can find a source for it, Artificer would probably be best for constructing it.

Malconvoker from Complete Scoundrel might also interest you.

[Psyren]

Malconvoker from Complete Scoundrel might also interest you.

Why Malconvoker? They're more about fiends than undead.

[Telonius]

Gack, I always confuse that one with a couple in LM. (It's the artwork and the quote, I think - those dretches look like they ought to be undead, and LM's spooky clerics are kinda forgettable).

[Psyren]

Gack, I always confuse that one with a couple in LM. (It's the artwork and the quote, I think - those dretches look like they ought to be undead, and LM's spooky clerics are kinda forgettable).

LM does have one spooky gem in the Master of Shrouds. The two arcanists - Pale Master and Dirgesinger - are pretty famous in their own right, the former due to NWN and the latter due to being one of the few "Necrobard" PrCs we have.

And that's it. Yep. No other necromancers in LM. None, I say.

[Gullintanni]

A halfling cleric (for the heals) who's obsessed with building a couple of really big undead guardians - something he could ride into battle on. I don't want to be the OMGWTFBBQ Huge undead army of DOOM!!!! type cleric, he's more obsessed with finding the perfect leg bone, cleaning it of all the smelly gunk, maybe even painting it bright blue and adding it to his collection of other, nicely cleaned and painted bones, to build a skeleton of a fire giant or T-Rex or something (or 2!)

Help?

I'm interested in doing something similar with a Gnome. The end goal is to march into battle riding a medium to large sized Skeletal Dragon (Or some such thing), while my Cleric fires spells from it's back, including but not limited to buffing the Dragon in order to make it a melee machine.

The key I've found, I think, is to increase Caster Level in order to create bigger, badder undead, before they'd usually be available to you using Animate Dead. Rebuke/Command undead can be used to essentially dominate another undead (preferably something intelligent) that you can treat as a cohort.

Input on optimizing these ideas?

[Diarmuid]

Boosting your CL on animate dead would be fine....but only so long as that CL boost is always in effect. If it's only for the duration/effect of the spell being cast wont you then not be able to control the extra HD of undead when that CL boost is no longer applied?

For both of those, especially the gnome/dragon one I think you're going to end up wasting feats/skill points to get the mechanics of being able to actually "ride" your creation into battle, and in the long run I dont think you're really going to see much benefit from it.

[Gullintanni]

Boosting your CL on animate dead would be fine....but only so long as that CL boost is always in effect. If it's only for the duration/effect of the spell being cast wont you then not be able to control the extra HD of undead when that CL boost is no longer applied?

For both of those, especially the gnome/dragon one I think you're going to end up wasting feats/skill points to get the mechanics of being able to actually "ride" your creation into battle, and in the long run I dont think you're really going to see much benefit from it.

The goal of riding the dragon (specifically in the case of a larger version) is to deny opponents without reach the ability to attack my cleric. That being said, I also think Clerics are powerful enough that they can afford to come out a little sub-optimal in order to be flavourful. Regardless, that aspect of my character has little to do with the OP question so to get back to it...

If I'm not mistaken, the only time Animate Dead checks Caster Level is at the time of casting, and after that, any undead controlled are controlled indefinitely. Given that the spell's effect is instantaneous, the only time it should check CL is at casting.

To address the OP's question...
Tips for creating Bigger undead:

Undead animated within the effect of a Desecrate spell not only come out tougher, but you can also animate 4HD/Caster Level with one spell instead of 2HD/Caster level, meaning your Create HD = Control limit HD. Ultimately it means you're creating undead twice as powerful as what you normally could for a Cleric of your level. Assuming of course you can find a big enough corpse.

The Deathbound Domain increases your create undead level from 2HD to 3HD meaning that in a Desecrated area you're able to create up to 6HD per caster level. Again, this is subject to corpse availability.

On permanent methods of increasing CL, all I can think of is the Evil domain which increases CL for all spells with the Evil Descriptor, including Animate Dead.

[JaronK]

An interesting thing to consider is the Haunt Shift spell. If you make a creature shape out of bones (even mixing the bones of many critters), you can animate it as long as it's no bigger than huge. Simply put together the "body" and attach the bones via wires or some other flexible thing, then take any undead creature (preferably a low HD, intelligent but controlled critter with a decent base speed) and cast Haunt Shift to inhabit and possess the bones. The result is not undead... it's a construct. It gets a hardness values (equivalent to the hardness of bone) and you can ride around in it, but it can be shaped however you like. Could be fun.

JaronK

[nedz]

An interesting take on this idea, if a little off the wall, is to get yourself a familier you can ride and then take this feat.

Betrayal of the Spirit Linked [General, Wizard] (DR336 p108)

Pre Req: Having a Familiar, Able to cast Animate Dead as a Prepared spell

You sacrifice your Familiar and turn it into a Skeleton or a Zombie. You lose the bonus it proved to you (such as +3 to Climb for a Lizard) and it will never learn to speak to you or other creatures of its type, but you gain Damage Reduction 5 / slashing if your Familiar is now a Skeleton, or DR 5 / bludgeoning if your Familiar is now a Zombie.

[Coidzor]

An interesting thing to consider is the Haunt Shift spell. If you make a creature shape out of bones (even mixing the bones of many critters), you can animate it as long as it's no bigger than huge. Simply put together the "body" and attach the bones via wires or some other flexible thing, then take any undead creature (preferably a low HD, intelligent but controlled critter with a decent base speed) and cast Haunt Shift to inhabit and possess the bones. The result is not undead... it's a construct. It gets a hardness values (equivalent to the hardness of bone) and you can ride around in it, but it can be shaped however you like. Could be fun.

JaronK

Hmm... I'll have to keep this one in mind. Libris Mortis, right?

[JaronK]

Yeah, but it takes a lot of figuring out and cross referencing to understand what the spell actually does. So, take some time with it.

But it would let you create crazy bone golem thingies. Those are always fun.

JaronK

[Coidzor]

Seems like the maximum would be a Huge Animated Object with 8 HD and only from using a CR 5 undead. Which is a step down for the mummy (as it goes from 8d12 to 81d0) but a step up for the Wraith (5d12 to 8d10) out of the srd undead that would qualify to be used to make such a thing. Seems a bit fragile for very long after 9th level when Haunt Shift first opens up.

[JaronK]

Try getting clever with it. For example, instead of using real bones, make the bones out of some hard material (Obdurium would be strongest, Blue Ice would avoid rust monster attacks) and make them of dwarvencraft quality. Through in a high CL harden spell. Remember that animated objects still keep their hardness. So now make your creature, and it could still look like an undead critter (paint the bones appropriately?) but it would cause enemies to waste rebuke attempts and specific anti undead nukes. A dwarvencraft quality obdurium skeleton with CL 16 Hardness cast on it has a hardness of 40, and as an object it's immune to piercing damage, halves or quarters almost all other damage, and then ignores the 40 points. That's damn near indestructible in a lot of settings. It would be much cheaper to do this with Blue Ice, but then you've got a hardness around 18... less impressive, but still handy.

Another option is to cast Permanent Shrink Item on the thing before Haunt Shifting something into it, so it can now switch between Tiny and Huge at your command. Very convenient.

Plus, shape it nicely. Give it four legs for maximum movement speed (without wheels at least, but what undead monstrosity has wheels?). Give it extra arms and hands so it can hold more (nothing stops it from wielding weapons). Maybe give it long ropey appendages made of spinal columns to give it the grappling bonus that animated objects get from such things. How about leathery wings that it can use to blind in grapples (they wouldn't let it fly, but should count as a sheet like thing for grappling)? Protected internal pockets that hold enveloping pits, which you can live in? Fortified areas built in with arrow slits or similar?

And really, there's not much need to use anything with a large amount of HD for this. Just get something that has high movement and decent mental stats, and rebuke that (take advantage of rebuke undead reducers like the Lyre of the Restful Soul and the Rod of Defiance... with both, you could rebuke a 9HD undead and it would only count as 1HD for rebuking).

JaronK

[Coidzor]

Point. Though figuring out how much material one would need for a huge sized chassis seems daunting. Hmm. Something like X ft. by 16+ ft. by Z ft. for optimal reach as a Huge(Tall) creature.

Probably 16+ ft. by 16+ ft. to be both a quadruped and tall by whatever the width would need to be... 4 ft. 5 ft.? So that gives some idea of the dimensions at play though not really the poundage or volume due to being an irregularly shaped construction. I'm probably overthinking this though.

Need to figure out where the price for things like wall sections of Obdurium is printed, as I saw a figure of 4K gp for a section of solid wall that seemed like it would be ample material. Probably is in the stronghold builders' guide.

Though I've just found one source of inspiration for the design.

[Theodoxus]

I could get behind this... mini AT-ATs...

Reminds me a bit of a RIFTS game I was in, where the party retrofitted an old B-25 into an MDC monstrosity... it was the perfect party fortress; all the amenities of home, plus it could call home anywhere in the multiverse. That was a fun campaign.