Undead Armys

[Burn_Boy]

Well if you are willing to throw in a little 3.5 then undead leadership would be great. Get Improved cohort so you can have some awesome undead only 1 lvl lower than you and a +! to leadership. If all your followers are undead you also get another +2 to leadership. And I would honestly recommend taking the old dread necromancer class. They are the original undead army spawners. If your worried about the carry over to pathfinder for that class I could walk you through it. It would be fairly simple.

3.5 supplements still have a strong place in our games so that'd be fine. Can you get me a link to the Dread Necromancer class, I can convert it to Pathfinder myself though.

As for the whole cauldron thing, I was thinking more of a crystal of some sort... I just like crystals. But yes, a thing like that is the way I'm thinking, but the hierarchy idea is also good. With the crystal, would you just say the crystal does it or turn it into an artifact or something and give it specific destruction rules.

 

[Salthorae]

Well, It would depend on what level the PC's are going to be.

It's going to be hard enough getting the crystal from your BBEG, so if desired it could be a more "mundain" item that simply gives multiples to the max # of undead controlled. In which case I would recommend that destroying it be fairly straight forward, you could make it a transparent adamantine shard that just looks like crystal so that it's somewhat hard.

OTOH you could make it a minor artifact and have a whole quest after the defeat of the BBEG on how to destroy the item and also keep it from the hands those who want to steal it from the PCs to use for themselves...

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

Hey Burn_Boy. I cant find the original 3.5 on the net for some reason but I know it was from heroes of horror. But I did find 1 already reworked for pathfinder here Pathfinder Database - Dread Necromancer . Other than that here are 2 more sources that would greatly help with your necromancer build K's Revised Necromancer Handbook . Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible . I hope these help you make a truly memorable villain for your players .

 

[Burn_Boy]

OTOH you could make it a minor artifact and have a whole quest after the defeat of the BBEG on how to destroy the item and also keep it from the hands those who want to steal it from the PCs to use for themselves...

That was my initial plan. Destroying an artifact is a nice high level quest, especially since there would be other Lich's or evil necromancers who'd love to be able to raise as many Undead as they could. The trouble is coming up with good destruction rules.

Hey Burn_Boy. I cant find the original 3.5 on the net for some reason but I know it was from heroes of horror. But I did find 1 already reworked for pathfinder here Pathfinder Database - Dread Necromancer . Other than that here are 2 more sources that would greatly help with your necromancer build K's Revised Necromancer Handbook . Whoops! Browser Settings Incompatible . I hope these help you make a truly memorable villain for your players .

Thanks a lot! Bookmarking these babies!

 

[Salthorae]

I would suggest starting with the artifacts destruction methods presented in the DMG and possibly toning them down a bit since those are presented for Major Artifacts!

 

[enrious]

I would suggest starting with the artifacts destruction methods presented in the DMG and possibly toning them down a bit since those are presented for Major Artifacts!

Artifacts are the stuff of undead armies...or legends, which is the same thing really.

 

[Burn_Boy]

I know this is hijacking my own thread, but what do you think about the enemy using catapults to fire Earth Elements onto the walls instead of boulders.

 

[Salthorae]

You could, but you could also fling boulders still and have your Earth Elementals use their Earth Glide ability to just move under the enemy walls and attack from below...

I would probably put fire elementals into the catapults to fling them over the walls and down into the flammable town square... assuming they don't take too much falling damage that should be effective, or get Air Elementals to carry torches and drop them

 

[Set]

In my Scarred Lands game (set in Hollowfaust) I had the city come under attack by an army of 10,000 skeletons.

The defenses of the city were merely being tested by a single high-level spellcaster (and his assistants) from a neighboring country, and they used a True Ritual (basically an Incantation) to animate the army. It required a high level caster, some assistants, some time and XP expenditure, and a city full of dead people. The undead of the city were controlled via the skull of their ruler, which the evil dude kept with him. The PCs had to smack him around (until he fled via word of recall) and then destroy the skull (which was immune to physical damage), to cause the army to fall apart.

As the bad-guy had prevented anyone from moving the skull by sovereign gluing it to a heavy table, he thought it was fine, until the strength-buffed half-orc picked it up, table and all, and ran into the distance (away from the army of thousands of skeletons, attempting to kill the party), while the rest of the party ran behind him, attacking the skull with anything that *could* hurt it (alchemist's acid, magic missiles, etc.) while several thousand skeletons slowly gained on them...

I hadn't intended it to turn into a Benny Hill sketch, but, what the hey, it worked.

Using an Incantation to bind a crapload of skeletons to follow the skull of their original leader in life (a general, a king, etc.) would be one way to work this undead army up.

 

[gamerprinter]

Not to hijack your thread, but I'll be running a much smaller undead unit battle, consisting of four graveknights: a leader antipaladin, 2 cavaliers and a magus myrmidarch. Also for backup, I have a gang of mohrgs that could be released after the fourth round of combat, in case the PCs are handling the undead knights too easily.

The setup for this is the party enters a chamber resembling the inner sanctum of a lawful good church with devas, archons, cherubs decorating the interior as statues and wall relief carvings. At the center of the chamber, nearest the altar is a statue of a deva, bearing a greatsword in it's two hands (+4 holy defender). The sword is 'cursed' to changing the alignment of the wielder to lawful good.

Currently the party consists of neutral alignments only, except 1 PC that has a good alignment. The goal is that the weapon is more powerful than any the PCs currently have, and is so desireable despite being of obvious good alignment (they don't realize it will change alignment by touching it). The sorcerer is the good member of the party, so unlikely to take the weapon herself. Touching/lifting the sword causing the alignment change is just to facilitate the antipaladin, who has no legal target for his smite (except the sorcerer), and I want one of the fighter tanks of the party to become a valid target, which is the point of including the alignment changing sword in the first place.

All the undead cavalry is hidden as embroidery on a large tapestry on the wall behind the sword altar, facing the PCs as if in a charge. When the sword is lifted from the altar, the altar, angel statues and wall relief crumble to dust, revealing the inner sanctum of an evil temple of black stone and demon statues and relief beneath the fallen angel relief. One round after the sword is lifted, the undead cavalry materializes and charges forth from the tapestry to begin the actual encounter.

This is going to be a nasty, evil encounter - bwahahaha!

Sorry, your thread got me thinking about my own weekend game... I don't have your problem though, I don't need to control the horde with one necromancer, rather the undead cavalry troop are intelligent undead working together to defeat the party that wields the holy defender sword.

I don't have a 'control' issue with my party of undead.