Animate Dead, is it really worth it?

[Magesmiley]

My first thought upon reading the title of the post was, "are you serious?"

The 3.0 vs 3.5 issue makes it more understandable. Having recently played a cleric (Wee Jas)/wizard/true necromancer I can say that its an incredibly great spell.

I managed to get an athach skeleton at one point, and it was hideously effective in combat (and when my character died to a series of fireballs, the rest of the party found out just how effective). Even at lower levels, I was constantly wandering around with lower-power skeletons. Even weak ones are very effective at dealing with a number of difficulties. Sweeping for traps, blocking for a round while spellcasters fry things, flanking for the rogue, etc. You do have to be very scrupulous about making sure you're abiding the rules for commanding them however.

A couple of considerations here too - if you're planning long-term to have hordes of skeletal/zombie minions, look real hard at multi-classing as cleric/wizard. As the animate dead spell is governed by CASTER LEVEL and not character level, you can potentially have 4x your cleric caster level + 4x your wizard caster level under your control (and tack on a few more via the rebuke undead ability too). Unhallow is your friend when it comes

By adding Practiced Spellcaster for both cleric and wizard, you can bump up your caster level and compensate for mult-classing - essentially controlling 8x your character level in zombies/skeletons.

Unhallow is your friend at lower levels for animating too. A 5th level cleric could animate a 20HD creature in an unhallowed area (ouch). The bigger creatures are way more valuable than the small ones as they're tougher and more resistant to turning and rebuking (which is WAY worse if the other cleric manages to command your undead). I typically kept one creature of the largest variety I could get my hands on, and filled out my levels of control with several smaller ones.

One last fun tidbit is the vigor spells. These are great as they work on undead as well as live characters. They provide the fast healing ability (which DOES work on undead) rather than using positive energy to heal.

 

[Shin Okada]

Lesser Vigor spell says "Target : Living creature touched". So never work on undeads. So as other Vigor spells which refer to this spell.

Mass Lesser Vigor spell says "Target : One creature/two levels, no two of which can be more than 30 ft. apart". So by the wording, this spell and Vigorous Circle can target non-living creatures. But I doubt if this is how the designer intended, as those 2 spells are still Vigor spells.


Regarding caster levels cap. So, a True Necromancer Spellstitched Lich can possibly control up to x12 HD worth of Skeletons and Zombies in total? It may have caster levels as a Cleric, as a Wizard, and as a spell-like ability user.

 

[Corlon]

I hadn't thought of the utility for a player character for manual labor. I was thinking more on the BBEG army of death lines.





Jeff, if you're here, please don't read any further









The current situation is riots are being caused in different towns, and eventually armies of the undeath willl eventually be massely teleported in to kill the cities weakened by the riots (this is done because the undead are trying to take over the prime material plane by turning it into their own plane, it's a sort of abstract "not by the RAW" thing).
The guy starting the riots and keeping them going is a bard, and I figured I'd have a pale master, true necromancer, or master of shrouds as the general overseeing the taking of the city. Seems I'll go for the true necromancer (cleric 3/wizard 3/ true necromancer 4), and have him control a bunch of undead.
I'm thinking some hydras or girrilloins for a bunch of attacks.


Any other ideas?