I've seen a few posts both here and on other websites advocating various builds for necromancer, generally advocating cleric or oracle of bones as the two best choices.
These same threads also tend to steer newcomers away from wizard necromancer and undead sorcerer builds.
Gravewalker witch tends to fall somewhere in the middle.
I've been scouring the rules, and unless I'm missing something all of the above is bad advice. Single classed, a necromancer wizard or an undead sorcerer are quite a bit weaker than a single class cleric. Necromancer wizard with a single level in undead sorcerer outscales the clerics at mid-high levels. The only real drawback is a slower start.
At character level 8
A single class cleric has the following pools:
32 HD for animate dead's HD pool
8 HD for command undead feat
x HD in whatever held by command undead spell
A wizard 7 / sorcerer 1 has the following pools:
28 HD for animate dead's HD pool
7 HD for command undead feat
x HD in whatever is held by command undead spell
**y HD in whatever is held by the Dominate Person**
The level 1 class perk for undead bloodline sorcerer applies to all spells that character casts. Which means a level of this, plus a wizard that can cast dominate person There isn't a cleric domain that grants dominate person.
Now, in addition to having an entirely new pool to play with and store minions, reading the spell description for dominate person, it looks like the perfect place to store intelligent undead. There are no daily saves, no charisma checks, and no HD pools to worry about. I would never use Create Undead with any single class necromancer, the spell becomes much more appealing with a necromancer wizard undead sorcerer. Dominate Person is also 2 harder to resist than command undead. Drop a Heighten Spell metamagic on this and you have a spell that can completely wreck a lich way better than control undead.
Also, unlike clerics, wizards have access to Magic Jar. The advantage here is pretty obvious, especially if you have a totally slick minion to posses like a dragon zombie (See dracolich as far as anyone knows :D ).
The only real drawback here (aside from having to suffer at low levels) is that a wizard sorcerer cannot cast desecrate. That's solved readily enough with points spent on Use Magic Device, which happens to be a sorcerer class skill, and buying a wand of desecrate.
Have I missed a rule somewhere or does anyone have a better build?
