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You must remember, my dear magus, that pure number of Hit Dice isn't really a good determining factor when looking at what is a threat... Twenty 1-HD skeletons is in no way as dangerous as one 20-HD skeleton.
And, even if a necromancer has a 20-HD skeleton under her control, that monster is only a CR 8... a reasonable encounter for a group of PCs who are not yet considered powerful enough to register on a legend lore spell.
Really, mindless, feeble skeletons and zombies are no more dangerous than a bunch of living bakers and butlers to the high level characters of the world.
Not to mention the social implications that necromancers have, they are misunderstood and feared...
Not to mention the social implications that necromancers have, they are misunderstood and feared...
Or, one could say that the people who fear them understand them all too well.
I used a necro as a big time stat drainer, and could fear for crowd control.
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No necromancer worth his skull-mask deals with basic animated undead. The art of necromancy is about creative use of a group of non-standard tools.
In the early levels you want to control Shadows as soon as possible and have them sink into the ground and slap other people's ankles for strength damage.
As soon as you can you want to start building resetting movement triggered Cause Light Wounds traps, and you want to wire them into your skeleton's chests. 1d8+1 regen every round is pretty cool. It's even cooler if it's an area effect (overlapping auras is mean).
Take Bluff, Disguise and Still Spell. Dress yourself and all your minions up in identical gear complete with masks. Move like them. Cast spells on your enemies while they flail about trying to find the real necromancer.
Animate a good sized dragon or a Roc as a zombie. Hollow out it's chest. You now have the fantasy version of a b-52. Come up with amusing and terrible things to drop on the country side. If you have a ring gate this can get really silly.
1 hd skeletons make fantastic suicide bombers. Fill a 2 gallon jug with black powder and caltrops. Set it into mr. bone's rib cage. Arm him with a torch. You get the idea.
Sounds like fun lol. Has anyone heard of someone taking bones from various creatures and humanoids to create a unique type skellie / Zombie
That's generally in the realm of GM-fiat territory, but I'd allow it. I've had Necromancers who have used multiple incomplete corpses with fabricate to create whole corpses for use with animate dead. Not so far off from concept basically.
In the 50s, a soviet surgeon successfully spliced two living dogs together (creating a two-headed dog), which lived for several weeks. Seems like necromancy should be capable of doing some stranger things with less risk of failure than a scalpel and clever surgery.
Given that there are pretty decent rules for creating monsters, and universal monster rules (such as standardized natural attacks), it seems like it wouldn't be difficult to do something similar and keep stuff fair. If you'd like a guideline, I would suggest...
For every natural attack you add to the beastie, increase the HD of the beast by +1 or +2. So if you wanted to make some sort of "Cerberus" riding dog, then add 2 HD for each head (and thus bite attack) you add to the finished product. That will generally keep the stats of the creature in line with creatures of similar strength (remember that every 4 HD you increase an ability by +1). Using this method, you could create some interesting creatures without getting out of hand. EDIT: By out of hand, I mean CR 1/3 or 1/2 skeletons with 5 bite attacks, or similar.
Incidentally, doing things like making 6-armed hill giants would be pretty cool; but unless you can get feats like multiweapon fighting, you may have issues in getting them to actually land attacks. :P
An example of what I meant from my earlier post.
Six Armed Skeletal Hill Giant CR 8
Large undead
Init +4; Senses Darkvision 60 ft., Perception +0
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AC 20, touch 9, flat-fooed 20 (+11 natural, -1 size)
Hp 81 (18d8)
Fort +6, Ref +6, Will +11
Defensive Abilities DR 5/bludgeoning; Immune cold, undead traits
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Speed 40 ft.
Melee 6 slams +21 (1d8+8)
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Str 27, Dex 10, Con -, Int -, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +13, CMB +22, CMD 32
Feats Improved Initiative
I have enjoyed reading these. Can't remember if there was a spell that shaped bone much like Stone shape.
Fabricate works.
Craft: stoneworking to carve statues, then stone to flesh = custom corpses.
