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[wetzilla]

This looks to be a pretty cool class, but I've got a few concerns about some of the abilities.

1. Being able to use healing surges at will to heal minions. Maybe use them like second winds and once per encounter?

2. Having an at will power that slows also seems a little over powered.

3. Brittle bones should probably only last until the end of your next turn, and then fade away.

4. This is very minor, but from the fluff it seems that Shadow Leak should also damage the minions themselves.

5. Death Jaws seems like it does way too much damage for a level 7 encounter ability. Yes it is situational, but a minion attack plus 2d8 seems very high.

6. Unstoppable minion is way overpowered. I suggest changing it to a daily power and either getting rid of the sustain or change it to sustain standard.

I stopped at level 10 since I haven't studied abilities past this level very carefully, and skipped down to the paragon paths. They seem very cool, but once again some of the abilities seem overpowered.

Kin of Undead
- Luring shadows giving your death guard another standard action again seems overpowered. Not sure how to fix it.

Life Drinker
- This just seems completely overpowered, it just gains so much life it would be very hard to kill. Being able to gain 2d8 per round in every encounter would be very hard to kill, especially at level 11. Maybe change it so you gain your con modifier hp back. And I would suggest for Hex of the Life Eater only gaining half of the damage, so 5 hp.

Hexed one
- Before starting any criticism, I have to say I love permanent hex. Allowing the DM to force you to reroll one roll per day is a very cool idea, while not really hurting you that badly. I would however, change lingering hex to once per encounter. Hex of the exiled one seems a little hig damage, but not horrible. And you don't need the miss text, just change the type of attack to reliable. That means if you miss it's not used.

The Epic Destiny looks good, in line with what is already in the PHB. The feats also seem very balanced, might want to split some into heroic, paragon, and epic level feats.

The minions are pretty good, only I didn't find an explanation of how they advance in levels. Why do they only have one hitpoint at level 1? This would seem to make healing your minions pointless, because unless they gain massive increases in HP over the levels they will pretty much always die in one hit. I also didn't see any description of the dead guard, have you just not done him yet?

About the core mechanic, I really like having to spend healing surges to create minions. With how important healing surges seem to be, it really balances out the class, making it able to deal quite a bit of damage, but at a price.

Overall it seems very good for the "alpha 0.1" version of the class, and with a few tweaks seems like it could be very balanced and would play out very well.