I have a player who wants to play a Wizard specializing in Necromancy and a Cleric (who likes playing with the dead) with the Death Domain. Keep in mind a necromancer gains a bonus feat of command undead.
What I am wondering is how do his Command Undeads stack? He gets it for free for being a Necromancer, should it also apply to his Cleric. if so should he keep seperate track of how many time he can command (theres a #/day given for necromancers and a #/day for Clerics). Should he be forced to get Command Undead seperately for his Cleric levels?
Say I've used my command undead for being a necromancer and am at my HD limit on how many I can command (I'm 20th level so 20 HD undead) can I then command undead through my Clerical abilities and control another 20HD? (Im also a 20th level cleric)
Ive cast an arcane animate dead and am controlling my full 80HD (4X my CL) can I cast a divine animate dead multiple times and gain ANOTHER 80 HD?
Thank you in advance
Oscar
I have a player who wants to play a Wizard specializing in Necromancy and a Cleric (who likes playing with the dead) with the Death Domain. Keep in mind a necromancer gains a bonus feat of command undead.
What I am wondering is how do his Command Undeads stack? He gets it for free for being a Necromancer, should it also apply to his Cleric. if so should he keep seperate track of how many time he can command (theres a #/day given for necromancers and a #/day for Clerics). Should he be forced to get Command Undead seperately for his Cleric levels?
Say I've used my command undead for being a necromancer and am at my HD limit on how many I can command (I'm 20th level so 20 HD undead) can I then command undead through my Clerical abilities and control another 20HD? (Im also a 20th level cleric)
Ive cast an arcane animate dead and am controlling my full 80HD (4X my CL) can I cast a divine animate dead multiple times and gain ANOTHER 80 HD?
Thank you in advance
Oscar
The wizard special ability puts specific instructions on it, so I think you would have to go wizard levels as written, but I don't think it would break the game to let them combine. If he want to control a lot of undead the dread necromancer(3.5) is not a bad idea. You might want to talk to the player about the number of undead he would try to control at once however, so he does not take up too much time.
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I would say as a general rule things do not stack. I would suggest making up a feat to break that rule to allow the class levels to stack for command undead. So simply if you have a 3rd level cleric 3rd level wizard, do the command undead as if the character were 6th level.
I don’t think it would be necessary to get command undead twice.
I hope this helps
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I don't see why he couldn't use his necro-granted Command Undead with his cleric-granted channel energy, in the same way a wizard/cleric can use his wiz-granted Scribe Scroll feat to scribe his cleric spells.
For simplicity, I'd have him track his channel energy uses as a common pool. They're going to have the same DC, and unless someone has a weird prestige class ability that says "you may spend a CLERIC channel energy usage to blah blah blah," they're essentially identical.
As for max HD caps, that would be based on your cleric + necromancer level.
I don't see why he couldn't use his necro-granted Command Undead with his cleric-granted channel energy, in the same way a wizard/cleric can use his wiz-granted Scribe Scroll feat to scribe his cleric spells.
For simplicity, I'd have him track his channel energy uses as a common pool. They're going to have the same DC, and unless someone has a weird prestige class ability that says "you may spend a CLERIC channel energy usage to blah blah blah," they're essentially identical.
As for max HD caps, that would be based on your cleric + necromancer level.
The Dungeon Master Guide II features an NPC stat block of a mystic theurge who combines his undead controlling abilities in order to be able to control LUDICROUS amounts of undead. Might want to check it out.
I would allow the levels to stack for 'command undead', and would allow the player to use the feat to command with his cleric channels as well if he wanted. If only because 'cleric/wizard' is not exactly a great multiclassing option to begin with, and necromancy in particular gets almost no synergy from doing so.
There's some question about whether by the rules Animate Dead would keep two separate control pools or only have the control pool of your most recent casting, whether that be Arcane or Divine. RAW the latter seems to be the case, although, as already mentioned, in 3.5 there was a sample character in the DMGII that had two separate pools of undead. In general, though, the Animate Dead spell already has a large enough control pool to really ruin games if maxed out, so I would advise your player to show some restraint in that regard. Maybe keep most of his undead back home guarding the PCs' base of operations, with only one or two body guards coming along with on adventures. Or maybe bring one undead creature for each party member, and order them to follow the commands of specific PCs. That way all the players get cool undead pets and the Necromancer gets to feel useful and animate a bunch of undead without monopolizing all the play time in combat with his army of corpse puppets.
Again, though, Wizard + Cleric is not a great combination, so unless the rest of the party similarly goes for high fluff, low optimization characters, he may start lagging behind around mid levels. If so, just throw him a bone, they way you might toss a mid level fighter a plot important artifact weapon if the rest of the party is a bunch of high powered, optimized spellcasters.
If you find you need to give the W/C a powerup, try looking at the 'Slaymate', a monster from the 3.5 book 'Libris Mortis', which reduces the spell level adjustment for metamagicked necromancy spells that are prepared in its presence.
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From the recent channel energy stacking FAQ, I want to confirm that I understand exactly how channeling with a cleric/necromancer is supposed to work.
You keep track of cleric channeling and necromancer channeling as separate pools and the will save DC for the Command Undead or Turn Undead feats is derived from the source of the channeling that you use at the time.
You'd have two pools of Command Undead hit dice, whose total should equal your level. Undead Mastery should apply to each pool allowing you to have a lot of low HD minions. (This one I'm not so sure of...)
Improved Channel would apply to each form of channeling, turning, or commanding.
Extra Channel would provide an additional two channel attempts one would presumably want to allocate to whichever pool had the highest save DC.
Could you ask the player why he wants to be a necromancer and a death domain cleric? If you do that and ask for a background you will most likely find your answer.
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Could you ask the player why he wants to be a necromancer and a death domain cleric? If you do that and ask for a background you will most likely find your answer.
It's a Savage Tide AP game upgraded to pathfinder rules. One of the primary temples in the city is the temple of Wee Jas, the goddess of magic and death.
Any god with the magic domain is likely to have a higher percentage of mystic theurges and other multiclass wizard/clerics. For her, those would likely be necromancer specialists wizards.
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The only thing I'm unclear about....
Assuming you mean the Undead Master feat from UM, yes, you're getting it right (and likewise for your post right after my FAQ post in this thread).
The rules are a guide line so this conversation it best had with the game master, but when it comes down to mechanically speaking. These two abilities do not stack the way you think they could. the command undead feat is on thing, it specifically says caster levels so your 6th level right? now the wizard only commmand undead is different: Power over Undead (Su): You receive Command Undead or Turn Undead as a bonus feat. You can channel energy a number of times per day equal to 3 + your Intelligence modifier, but only to use the selected feat. You can take other feats to add to this ability, such as Extra Channel and Improved Channel, but not feats that alter this ability, such as Elemental Channel and Alignment Channel. The DC to save against these feats is equal to 10 + 1/2 your wizard level + your Charisma modifier.
I find this feat to be very specific in its allowances, but on the other hand, having command undead as the standard feat is great.