Luckily, I have significant experience with necromancers, so I have a few pointers that I feel I can offer. One is that clerics and dread necromancers make the best necromancers, bar none. Wizards can be ok at necromancy, but will never be at the same level as the other necromancer classes as far as animating undead goes. They lack many of the key necromantic spells like the inflict line(which heals your minions) and the ever important desecrate. Wizards however, can make great debuff necromancers who focus more on throwing around enervations and metamagiced rays of enfeeblement and less on actually animating undead.
However, if you want to run around with a horde of minions, the best non-3rd party or homebrew way to do it is via the cleric or dread necromancer. However, if your DM is open to homebrew and 3rd party content you have a lot more options. Frank and K made a great thread called the "Tome of Necromancy" which had many nice feats and necromantic prestige classes that are actually playable and a few actually make a necro themed wizard into a real necromancer rather then a conjurer who memorizes a few more necromancy spells then usual.(The current necromancy themed PrCs while cool in concept are hardly optimal and sometimes even traps(True Necromancer I'm looking at you.))
Also, Pazio publishing, the masterminds behind the great Pathfinder RPG produced a book called "The Dragon compendium" which updated much of dragon magazine's old 1e content to 3.5e. This book contains the death master, who is most likely the best arcane necromancer there is if your DM dose not allow you to alter/fix the Dread Necromancer's spell list. Speaking of which, a if you plan on playing a Dread Necromancer, you should really ask your DM if you can fix it's horribly handled spell list. For a good fix, check out this thread from GITP forums..
"Fixed" Dread Necromancer Spell List. - Giant in the Playground Forums
Even if your DM wants to stick to the books, he/she should let you at least make a logical fix like the one above. Especially since that fix uses all core spells and dose not give the class anything other then what it needs to function at it's full potential.
As for frank and K material, PM me if your interested in it, I can send you a well-crafted pdf that is a collection of all of frank and K's homebrew which I had downloaded a while back. They, after all, did cool things other then make necromancy more viable, like creating a version of the fighter class who's on par with fullcasters, improving/fixing the monk class, making a new feat system and making lots of options for monsters.(Which is nice if you happen to be a DM as well.)
Oh, and one other fun thing you could try is an "uttercold assult necromancer." That's basically a wizard who uses energy substitution(Cold) and the lord of the uttercold feat to turn all your blasty evocation spells into free heals for your undead minions. It's actually one of the few ways in the game to actually make evocation useful, and the only thing the wizard is better at then the cleric as far as necromancy goses.
However, if you want to run around with a horde of minions, the best non-3rd party or homebrew way to do it is via the cleric or dread necromancer. However, if your DM is open to homebrew and 3rd party content you have a lot more options. Frank and K made a great thread called the "Tome of Necromancy" which had many nice feats and necromantic prestige classes that are actually playable and a few actually make a necro themed wizard into a real necromancer rather then a conjurer who memorizes a few more necromancy spells then usual.(The current necromancy themed PrCs while cool in concept are hardly optimal and sometimes even traps(True Necromancer I'm looking at you.))
Also, Pazio publishing, the masterminds behind the great Pathfinder RPG produced a book called "The Dragon compendium" which updated much of dragon magazine's old 1e content to 3.5e. This book contains the death master, who is most likely the best arcane necromancer there is if your DM dose not allow you to alter/fix the Dread Necromancer's spell list. Speaking of which, a if you plan on playing a Dread Necromancer, you should really ask your DM if you can fix it's horribly handled spell list. For a good fix, check out this thread from GITP forums..
"Fixed" Dread Necromancer Spell List. - Giant in the Playground Forums
Even if your DM wants to stick to the books, he/she should let you at least make a logical fix like the one above. Especially since that fix uses all core spells and dose not give the class anything other then what it needs to function at it's full potential.
As for frank and K material, PM me if your interested in it, I can send you a well-crafted pdf that is a collection of all of frank and K's homebrew which I had downloaded a while back. They, after all, did cool things other then make necromancy more viable, like creating a version of the fighter class who's on par with fullcasters, improving/fixing the monk class, making a new feat system and making lots of options for monsters.(Which is nice if you happen to be a DM as well.)
Oh, and one other fun thing you could try is an "uttercold assult necromancer." That's basically a wizard who uses energy substitution(Cold) and the lord of the uttercold feat to turn all your blasty evocation spells into free heals for your undead minions. It's actually one of the few ways in the game to actually make evocation useful, and the only thing the wizard is better at then the cleric as far as necromancy goses.
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