Necromancer Build - any help?

[Olive]

Now I need to create an NPC necromancer, not really as a villain so much as a foil to the party, some one they'll interact with. But I want the NPC to be reasonably effective.

Havign never even considered a necromancer before, I'm not asure of the best wat to go about it. I've been told that you need to use clertic and wizard classes (the character needs to eb primarilly a wizard), so I was thinking necro/clr/MT/true necro. Or something similar? For flavour reasons they need to be able to cast limited wish.

So, any ideas?

 

[MerakSpielman]

True Necro is pretty good, but you can't start taking levels until after level 10, assuming you took 5 cleric levels (to cast Animate Dead) and 5 wizard levels (to cast Spectral Hand). After that, you can take 8 True Necro levels, adding a spellcasting level of wizard each level, so you end up with 13 spellcasting levels of wizard. That's just good enough to get 7th level spells, so you can have your limited wish, but you have yourself a 18th level NPC.

Wizard Specialization: Necromancer (forbidden Evocation (for flavor))
Feats: Spell Focus (Necromancy), Extra Turning, some Craft Items, Spell Mastery (Animate Dead, some other necro spells).

Make sure he has his animated undead around. A zombified butler is always good for effect, and a skeletal lap dog. There's an Undeath domain in a recent Dragon magazine.

 

[Nightfall]

Animator Pr-class can be use well for Necromancer build. It's also a non-evil class. In fact there are number of non-evil pr-classes in Hollowfaust as well.

 

[Olive]

Evil I have no problem with. He's likely to be a cleric of Orcus after all. 18th level I also have no problem with. He's one of the 15 greatest wizards in my campaign world so it's a-ok. He's also a nice foil for the greatest wizard in the campaign who is very religious.

I'll have to think about it, but if I take Mystic Thurge I might be able to get to true necro earlier.

 

[Nightfall]

Crypt Lord then might be a possibility. That or Son of Mirth. They are pretty decent Necromantic Pr-classes.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

AFAIK, the main reason for the cleric levels, in 3.0 ed, was that you couldn't get hold of the 'create undead' spells as a wizard. Been added to wizard list in 3.5, so possible to be a perfectly good necromancer as a single class wizard, although you would lack the turn/rebuke of a cleric.

The other option could be to go all the way as a cleric. If you make them 17th+ level then 'miracle' could take the place of 'ltd.wish'. Or simply give them a non spell trigger item with ltd.wish on it? Or even create a ltd.miracle spell?

 

[Darklone]

Hmm. My good old main quirk about D&D: Why are clerics the best necromancers?

 

[MerakSpielman]

Because they channel the powers of life and death!

 

[sithramir]

If you want a truly powerful necromancer you will make a

cleric 3/wizard (necromancy) 3/Mystic Theurge 10/True necromancer 1/Blood Magus 1

He will then use blood for raising the dead which has a lot of cool role playing stuff. He'll cast spells as a 17th lvl necromancer/13th level cleric.

You can easily remove Blood magus (i use it for cool effect) and just go another true necromancer for the desecrate ability to have him able to bring twice as many HD wherever he goes in undead.

He can then use all the cleric undead buffing spells to make his undead have like +5 ac, more hps, harder to turn etc and still blast people with 7th lvl wizard spells. Note that having the such a higher caster level for necromancy spells is huge here. He'll make use of spectral hand for Harm/vampiric touch/ghoul touch as well as make use of waves of negative energy to heal his undead in battle.

Save a spare heal for himself as well as lots of buffs (mage armor/shield/righteous might/divine power/divine might/tensor's transformation for some ideas)

These spells make him actually able to fight in combat if need be pretty effectively. He'll have lower hps so work on boosting con and use false life.

Hope that helps

 

[Olive]

If you want a truly powerful necromancer you will make a

cleric 3/wizard (necromancy) 3/Mystic Theurge 10/True necromancer 1/Blood Magus 1

Nice... now I just have to deal witht he fact he's a half orc, and I'll be fine!