Looking for help - Pale Master?

[NEXxREX]

your god, so the skys the limit. if you want him to emulate a class then do that and take off the limit to undead he can control. or combine parts of several classes into one.

also you could have him "experiment" with some of the weaker bodies to make say a flesh golem or other nice undead not usually creatable with the animate dead spell. theres so many cool looking undead that pc's cannot create and considering this guys living in a necropolis your bound to have a few different varieties besides generic zombies and skeletons.

 

[Greenfield]

Found him. Sort of.

I spoke swapped e-mail with the DM who'd run the original, and he scratched his head and dug into a book or two.

The creature was a unique being named Malgrin. He was a Baetzu (sp?) devil who had specialized in necromancy. He couldn't control an unlimited number of Undead, but his capacity was close to a hundred. He controlled his army by controlling greater undead who were capable of controlling lesser undead, and thus by proxy he could manage a huge number.

The critter was from a Green Ronin book on the 9 Hells. He was CR 17, by himself, and way overkill for the party even without his retinue.

So I created a powerful undead, about a CR 12, and set him up to manage his army on the same model.

The game played out well, with the party having to make a number of hard decisions along the way.

The party Monk had to face his alignment issues: He'd been traveling with a bunch of raging chaotics (the rest of the party), and had played along with more than a few of their distinctly non-lawful episodes. Now he had the opportunity to help save a city, or he and the party could save themselves.

They force-marched themselves to the point of collapse to get to the city in time to warn it of the undead army heading for it. They managed to downplay the fact that they were the ones who had stirred up the army, and the fact that it hadn't so much been marching on the city as it was chasing them in that direction. (They really, *REALLY* pissed off the Pale King, personally.)

Then we had the grand battle, with the PCs playing a key role in taking down the Big Bad. It worked, they won, and we had a grand victory.

 

[Wyvernhand]

There are 2 1-20 "necromancer" classes outside of the traditional cleric or wizard. Dread Necromancer from Heroes of Horror is "official". It has both necromancy spells (for animating dead, Cha based spontaneous from a fixed list) and Rebuke Undead (for controlling intelligent undead), along with a bunch of features that slowly turn you into a lich and give you bonuses for animating and creating undead. The other is the Death Master from the Dragon Magazing Compendium Vol 1. It also gets rebuke undead and Int based (less synergy), and it gets a fun little skeleton pet like a druid's animal companion. It has fewer other features. Its notable that both turn you into a Lich at level 20.

True Necromancer is bad for a PC, but not so bad for an NPC since you can just make them higher levels. There is a quote from K's Revised Guide to Necromancy, however, that mentions the True Necro. True Necros lose so many caster levels that you could be a fighter and take leadership, and your cohort be a fighter with leadership, and HIS cohort would bring more necromancy to the table than you would. Heck, most True Necros can't even cast Animate Dead until like, ECL9 or 10.

As far as other things to increase your minionmancy, make sure that the area you animate is Desecrated, preferably tied to an evil alter, and if you can snag the Deathbound domain (ECS, IIRC), you get even more HD worth. You could probably hit like, 250 HD worth of undead animated by ECL20 if you planned correctly.

 

[NEXxREX]

He couldn't control an unlimited number of Undead, but his capacity was close to a hundred. He controlled his army by controlling greater undead who were capable of controlling lesser undead, and thus by proxy he could manage a huge number.

do you know the names of the undead he controlled that could control other undead?? or was it one of those god says it happens so it happened?

 

[Greenfield]

Consider templated Undead like Vampires. They can have class levels, such as Necromancer.

Lich is an obvious one as well.

 

[Shin Okada]

Ak'Chazar Rakshasa (CR 15) in MM3 is a nasty Necromancer. This critter can use various Necromancy spells as CL 20 spell-like abilities, Rebuke Undead as a 20th-level Cleric and casts arcane spells as a 12th-level Sorcerer. It can use Animate Dead and put 80 HDs worth of undeads under his control. And use Rebuke (Control) Undead for controlling +20 HDs worth of critters. And it can use Control Undead spell-like ability to temporally (20 minutes) control +40 HDs worth of undead critters.

80 +20 +40 =140 HDs. Say, 140 human skeletons or 70 Zombies. That's a horde! Also, he can raise fallen enemy soldiers on the fly, as his Animate Dead is a spell-like ability (no components needed). He can use it 3/day.

The Rakshasa can change his shape. So you can give him any guise you want.

Also, check Fell Animate metamagic feat in Libris Mortis and Animate Legion spell in Heroes of the Battle. A spellcaster has many ways to raise undead in the middle of battlefield.

 

[Shin Okada]

Another option could be Death knight template (CR +3) in MM2 (MM2 has an official update PDF for 3.5e).

Roll up some evil cleric or necromancer and give it this template. As a Death Knight can have undead followers (up to twice his HDs in total), in addition to the undead monsters which he created/controlled by his class abilities.

 

[Wycen]

If you are able to get 3rd party stuff, the Green Ronin Secret College of Necromancy has a full 20 level necromancer class.

And there are upteen number of 3rd party necro luvin' prestige classes as I recall.

One way to control more undead using the core books is with spells. I think there is a spell called General of Undeath or something like that in the Spell Compendium.