Well i think Murderous Command would be a good spell for this character, along with ray of sickness. Not sure what role you are going to be playing in the party but those spells seem rather necrotic to me. And for a strange race I would look into Fetchling they get a +2 dex and chr, but -2 wis, and some other handy stuff.
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One thing to note is that you get either all cure spells or all inflict spells automatically added to your spell list. As a necromancer, inflict wounds is the obvious choice. If you're the only divine class in the party, though, you might also want to select cure light wounds at 1st level.
For other 1st level spells, I'd suggest shield of faith or doom.
Have you selected a curse yet? If you have Inner Sea Magic, you should check out the black-blooded oracle, which gives you a pretty good curse and access to revelations that would fit this character. If you don't have ISM, Deaf might be a good curse for you (all your spells are silent, and I've always thought stealth went well with necromancy--just sneak around and have your undead minions do the dirty work).
I have a player in my Kingmaker campaign that is playing a Bone Oracle. They just hit 10th level and, with his two big bloody skeletons (animate dead), he definitely contributes to the damage output of the group.
There's a feat called Skeletal Summoning. 1/day add the skeleton template to your summon spell.
While we're on this topic, can I get advice on the necromancer build I'm making?
It's going to be a cleric using the following archetypes:
Undead Lord
Evangelist
It's also going to use the Undeath Variant Channeling
Because there's a lot of abilities from APG/UM, I will explain some of them after the progression
I'll go level by level showing the abilities and feats:
Race: Human
LV1: Aura, Corpse Companion, Public Speaker (Inspire Courage +1), Death's Kiss
Feats: Sacred Summons, Spell focus (Necromancy), Bonus Feat: Command Undead
Domain Spell: Cause Fear
Spontaneous Casting: Command
LV3: Channel Negative Energy 1d6
Feat: Skeletal Summoner
Domain Spell: Ghoul Touch
Spontaneous Spell: Enthrall
LV5: Channel Negative Energy 2d6 (+50% to heal Undead), Inspire Courage +2
Feat: Spell Focus (Conjuration)
Domain Spell: Animate Dead
Spontaneous Spell: Tongues
LV7: Channel Negative Energy 3d6 (+50% to heal Undead), Perform as a move action
Feat: Augment Summoning
Domain Spell: Enervation
Spontaneous: Suggestion
LV8: Unlife Healer (Undeads heal an additional 50%), Death's Embrace
LV9: Inspire Greatness,
Feat: Superior Summoning
Domain Spell: Slay Living
Spontaneous: Greater Command
LV10: Bonus Feat: Undead Master
LV11: Channel 4d6 (double for undead), Inspire Courage +3
Feat: Toughness
Domain Spell: Create Undead
Spontaneous Spell: Geas/Quest
LV13: Channel 5d6 (Double for Undead), Perform as a Swift Action
Feat: Lingering Performance
Domain Spell: Destruction
Spontaneous Spell: Mass Suggestion
LV15: Inspire Heroics
Feat: Persistent Spell
Domain Spell: Create Greater Undead
Spontaneous Spell: Sympathy
LV16: Unlife Healer (Channeling Heals undeads for 60)
LV17: Channel 6d6 (Heals 72 to Undead when Channeling), Inspire Courage +4
Feat: Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy)
Domain Spell: Energy Drain
Spontaneous Spell: Demand
LV19: Channel 7d6 (Heals 84 to Undead)
Feat: ???
The Evangelist Archetype allows me to drop The lv 1, 9, and 15 channel increases. I also lose proficiency with medium armor and shields. Finally, I lose the ability to spontaneously cast Cure/Inflict spells.
In Exchange, I can use Bardic Performance as though I were a bard, (Along with Perform as a class skill). Also, Instead of spontaneously casting Cure/Inflict, I can cast the spells labeled with "Spontanous Spell"
The Undead Lord archetype restricts me to only using the Death(Undead) domain. In addition, I can do an 8 hour ritual to create an undead companion with HD equal to or lower than its cleric level. (This does not count towards the HD limit for animate dead)
I also get Command Undead as a bonus feat, and at level 10 choose from the following: Channel Smite, Extra Channel, Improved Channel, Quick Channel, Skeleton Summoner, Undead Master.
(I Chose Undead Master)
At level 8, I gain Unlife Healer, which reads:
At 8th level, the undead lord’s spells, spell-like abilities, and supernatural abilities used to heal undead heal an extra 50% damage. At 16th level, these effects automatically heal the maximum possible damage for the effect + the extra 50%. This does not stack with abilities or feats such as Empower Spell or Maximize Spell.
Finally, Variant Channeling (Undeath)
When I channel Negative Energy, I heal an additional 50% to undead, and 50% less for non undeads (Although i use negative energy, so idk what else it could apply for). Combined with Unlife Healer, my channel negative energy heals double (50+50). If i use Negative Energy to harm living creature, then it only deals regular damage.
The feats revolve around summoning. Sacred Summons allows me to summon creatures with a * as a standard action instead of a full round action. Moreover, with Augment/Skeletal summons, I can make some mean big undead machines.
I think the main spells this character is gonna be using are some buffs and will also use touch spells like Bestow Curse.
After battle, I can use Death's Kiss to touch my allies and give them undead traits long enough to heal them all with my channel energy
I'm open for suggestions!
Also, would it be worth it to take Greater Spell Focus along with persistent spell to make sure stuff like bestow curse work?
I guess the inflict spells also benefit from it
FYI, Inspire Courage is a mind-affecting ability. Unintelligent Undead are immune to mind-affecting abilities. So while Evangelist are pretty interesting, they don't help you as a necromancer at all.
Aw crap.
Any feats that could help remedy this?
Personally I would ditch sacred summoning in favour of Undead Master, the ability to control undead as a 5th level cleric at level one is just too good to pass up in my book, then again it depends on what level you are starting at.
Start at level 4.
I also considered using stuff like Harm when in battle, since im already using spell focus necro
EDIT: I made a few changes to the feats, which I'm going to edit in my first post.
Then you can also take advantage of the lesser animate dead spell at a much higher caster level: 14 HD minion (28 HD under the desecrate spell). The only problem with this plan? Finding the corpse to animate.
For some reason I can't edit my early post, So I'm going to repost the build after dropping Evangelist.
Race: Human
LV1: Aura, Corpse Companion, Death's Kiss, Channel Negative 1d6
Feats: Undead Master, Spell focus (Necromancy), Bonus Feat: Command Undead
Domain Spell: Cause Fear
Spontaneous Casting: Inflict Light Wounds
LV3: Channel Negative Energy 2d6 (+50% to heal undead)
Feat: Skeletal Summoner
Domain Spell: Ghoul Touch
Spontaneous Spell: Inflict Moderate Wounds
LV5: Channel Negative Energy 3d6 (+50% to heal Undead)
Feat: Sacred Summons
Domain Spell: Animate Dead
Spontaneous Spell: Inflict Serious Wounds
LV7: Channel Negative Energy 4d6 (+50% to heal Undead)
Feat: Spell Focus (Conjuration)
Domain Spell: Enervation
Spontaneous: Inflict Critical Wounds
LV8: Unlife Healer (Undeads heal an additional 50%), Death's Embrace
LV9: Channel 5d6
Feat: Augment Summoning
Domain Spell: Slay Living
Spontaneous: Mass Cure Light Wounds
LV10: Bonus Feat: Extra Channel
LV11: Channel 6d6 (double for undead)
Feat: Quicken Spell
Domain Spell: Create Undead
Spontaneous Spell: Mass Inflict Moderate Wounds
LV13: Channel 7d6 (Double for Undead)
Feat: Greater Spell Focus (Necromancy)
Domain Spell: Destruction
Spontaneous Spell: Mass Inflict Serious Wounds
LV15: Channel 8d6
Feat: Superior Summoning
Domain Spell: Create Greater Undead
Spontaneous Spell: Mass Inflict Critical Wounds
LV16: Unlife Healer (Channeling Heals undeads for 96)
LV17: Channel 9d6 (Heals 108 to Undead when Channeling)
Feat: Heighten Spell
Domain Spell: Energy Drain
LV19: Channel 10d6 (Heals 120 to Undead)
Feat: Persistent Spell
Yes, dropping Evangelist was probably a good idea, then again I'm channel focused anyway.
Well it was because I thought I could boost my undeads...I liked the idea of being all "Rise my children" and "Today you feast on their flesh! Let their cries for Mercy go unheard as they are torn limb from limb!" too get my undead monsters to tear through opponents.
Nice, I like the fluff of that at least.
Well there was a 3.5 feat in Libris Mortis called Requiem, it allowed you to use bardic music effects on undead.
There are other ways to buff them up (just say that you are giving a speech as the vocal component for a spell) prayer, desecrate, they're just the two I can think of off the top of my head.
Thea 3.5 courpse crafter feat chain in Libris Mortis was verry handy for creating tougher/more flavorful undead, it's a little feat intenceive but effective.
Cleric is definitely the superior necromancer. I'm not a fan of the udnead lord archetype however I always feel that can be better served by a second domain.
Being a proper necromancer requires a lot of spells to function properly and if you hve to pick and choose what spells you know that makes things difficult. At least with clerics you can leave a few spell slots open in case you run into a situation where you really want to raise some undead but already blew through soem spells.
So, advice on feats?