I'm starting an underdark campaign this week, and although I've managed to crib and modify a relatively sweet dungeon, one of my 2 players hit me with a necromancer, which throws a bit of a wrench in the works in that the primary enemies will be kobold skeletons (although it now gives me a great campaign hook, in that the big bad doesn't need to necessarily be defeated right away, because he owns a big shiny necromantic power source, so it's a blessing in disguise, really :) ).
I'm not worried that this will necessarily make the encounter too easy, as I had actually designed a few failsafes because I thought the encounters might be a bit overwhelming to a pair of 1st-level characters.
My concern is that the 2nd PC is a straight fighter, and may end up feeling like a 5th wheel (although there are a few non-undead encounters where he may shine, but the big one of those is supposed to be a super-run-away encounter that I would've hoped they would leverage to help deal with the undead hordes).
Is there any advice that folks can give about balancing necromancers vs. undead vs other players in this situation? Or am I worrying needlessly?
ETA: I'm allowing core/UM/UC to narrow down the scope here
TIA
PS - this is my first time DM'ing pretty much ever, so I'm accepting that I'll likely fumble a bit at first whilst feeling my way around balancing players/encounters/fun/TPKs/etc, so I'm willing to risk entertain new and strange ideas.
The PC's don't have as big an advantage as you seem to think. First off, the Necromancers ability to Command Undead is limited by their caster level (one hit die of undead at first level). Secondly, this is a very small party and the aditional meatshields (boneshields?) will barely allow them to break even.
I'm currently playing an Undead Lord Cleric in a 3 PC party for the Carrion Crown campaign. We've just completed the first adventure, which was undead heavy in the extreme. My ability to command the dead was a life saver, and stopped our relatively small party from being completely overwhelmed.
The Undead Master feat can increase your effective controller level by four (5 HD of undead at level one!)
I've played a necromancer in a heavy undead game so I know what you mean. but I don't think you need to worry to much, but just as a suggestion never make an encounter with only 1 undead. He won't last long.
If your in the underdark then there are lots and lots of non-undead... living creatures to use, Plant's and OOzes can't be reanimated so use them now and then. Earth elementals and Outsiders too.
If there is a GOOD cleric/Pally or a Druid that should keep him from controlling for extended periods. Don't give out the material component to animate dead unless you want them to reanimte that dragon. I assume theres a dragon somewhere.
If your fighter laggs behind gear him up, undead bane/disruprting ect. or encourage him to take a level of ranger favored enemy undead.
but as I said I don't think this will be a problem fighters can keep their own.
-Flash
Great! Thanks for the advice, all; I'll just keep the adventure as-is and deal with the necromancer turning the undead against each other as much as he wants to, since it's unlikely to be anything more than one more kinda-lame combatant (but, it's got DR 5 against other skeletons, and they'll likely find a mace lying around...).
And this was more or less for a single dungeon, so I'm not concerned about the fighter long-term, as we still have an entire rift filled with soon-to-be-subjugated-by-the-big-bad monster civilizations to adventure through (and one of my side quest ideas involved negotiating with an evil fungal treant and his forest army), so I think I'll be okay there.