So I got to thinking about how it might be possible to build an actual undead army in Pathfinder without having tons of lieutenants who would command the undead for you. Meaning you wouldn'tactually be fully in control...
The best thing i could come up with would be to basically make a s$+#-ton of custom Bone Bead bracelets, only making them slotless.
A Slotless Bone Bead bracelet would cost you 6,000 gold to make (12,000 to buy) and would allow you to command an additional 8HD worth of creatures. Also become an Evil Fashionista.
If you were a level 11 necromancer who had all the resources necessary to become a Lich, but suddenly decided 'screw it, ill do it later or maybe even never' and devoted all the money a phylactory costs to making those bone bead bracelets you could get 21 bracelets (19 slotless, 2 regular). So 168 HD of undead. A pretty terrible fashionista too. Like a middle schooler emo-kid wearing tons of bracelets to complement their 'dark' lifestyle. At least you can console yourself that at least you have an actual dark lifestyle, being a necromancer and all. :)
So add these 168HD into the 44HD of undead you can command for being a lvl 11 necromancer/wizard, and you are well on your way to being able to command a small undead army. 212 HD of undead, though its pretty damned expensive.
Just remember to use the 'Blood Money' spell to be able to create undead without having to spend any money, or maybe a 100gp False Focus. The blood money spell would let you create 20HD of undead using the animate undead spell, or 10HD of undead using animate undead each day. Though you would need to heal somehow. probably a spell to become temporarily undead and infuse yourself with negative energy.
Does anyone have any cheaper ways to create an undead army solely under your control?
I thought about making a small army of Wights using the bone beads to control them, and having them spawn more wights themselves from their kills, but the problem with that is when the wight that spawns the other wights dies, the wights are free. So you'd all of a sudden have a tonof free wights running around uncontrolled, plus all the wights THEY spawned,etc..
Thats basically a quick way to start a Wight-ocalypse.
I'd specialize in undead that create spawn. You create unerringly loyal undead who then create unerringly loyal spawn who are by proxy unerringly loyal to you. I know it's the pyramid structure you were hoping to avoid, but it really is the best way to create a loyal undead army.
Cheaper way- take the Experimental Spellcaster feat and pick up the Undeath word of power. It's like Animate Dead except that it has NO material cost and is only level 2 for clerics. Don't seem to be able to use templates, but its nice for a FREE way to add to your undead army.
Also please note the Agent of the Grave prestige class. It's built for necromancers.
JTibbs wrote: an actual undead army in Pathfinder without having tons of lieutenants Do you have any idea how crazy a general would become if they had to command every single soldier individually? You will always have a chain of command, and besides: it's not such a big disaster to lose control over part of your army, as long as they're in position. Mindless Undead will simply rampage, which is usually the purpose of an Undead army anyway. And Undead with a free will can be reasoned with. Do not underestimate the power of a simple communication spell and a decent Diplomacy score.
Trying to control every element of an army is a fool's errant. Just control the ones who control the ones who control the ones that matter.
VRMH wrote: JTibbs wrote: an actual undead army in Pathfinder without having tons of lieutenants Do you have any idea how crazy a general would become if they had to command every single soldier individually? You will always have a chain of command, and besides: it's not such a big disaster to lose control over part of your army, as long as they're in position. Mindless Undead will simply rampage, which is usually the purpose of an Undead army anyway. And Undead with a free will can be reasoned with. Do not underestimate the power of a simple communication spell and a decent Diplomacy score.
Trying to control every element of an army is a fool's errant. Just control the ones who control the ones who control the ones that matter. The problem with having lieutenants is where the hell are you going to get enough LOYAL necromancers to follow you without being epic?
And lieutenant intelligent undead are perfectly fine. skeleton heros, etc...
The problems I'm trying to avoid are A: shortage of necromancers of sufficient level to have undead followers, and B: most undead that create MORE undead under their control (undead pyramid scheme) release them when they die... Meaning one of you wights dies and all of a sudden you lose a good chunk of your army to indiscriminate rampages, of which YOU are a potential target.
Your guard could spontaneously decide to kill you when its master, or its masters masters master dies.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Would be easier to answer if it was defined what you mean by an army. While the link Ravondork is quite handy(Enough for traditional PC if not more), that is not an army by my standards heck that ain't even a company.
All the best necromancer(the undead raising kind) is 3rd party stuff. Rather dispointed in PF in this regard actually, altough it has been some time since I have tried building one.
Some general points, you will need a way to raise the undead without it costing any gold or construction of a proper army is not going happen if following WBL. You will want ridicolous amounts of bodies to be carried by the army so you will always be able to to raise to your HD max even if all previous creatures would be decimated.
Mystic Theurge, is not actually bad way of getting a big pool of HD since you will have 2 seperate pools. Juju Oracle for divine magic side, on arcane not that much difference. Sorceror has the advantage of same casting stat, but wizard and witch get earlier access to the Prc, ultimately a preferance thing.
Feat wise, Varisian tattoo, spell specilization and Undead Master are your friends, and of coarse later Spell Perfection. Now I think strict rreading of the rules would say that if you got spell specilization(and similar stuff) on animate dead it would work for all classes you have, but not too sure if that is the way it is intended to work.(just a note)
With quick count(aka from memory), Oracle 4/Witch 3/Mystic Theurge 8, and the mentioned feats and ion stone for +1CL. Oracle CL4+8+1+((1+2+4)x2)=25, that x6HD=300, witch is CL24 so 24x4HD=195, for total of 495HD.
I guess the big issue i have with building an army is the fact i just don't like multiclassing too much and i like wizards too much. Oh well.
I really wish Pathfinder would come out with some necromancer wizard feats to do things like raise the number of undead you can control and that sort of thing.
A feat doubling the HD you can control per Caster Level would be pretty sweet.
Also Bigger Club, you can raise undead essentially 'free' using either a False Focus (up to 100gp can be skipped in cost, though this takes a feat), or you can cast the 1st level spell 'Blood Money'. Blood money does 2d6 damage to yourself (static non scaling), and gives you one point of strength damage per 500gp of material cost you want to skip for a second spell. the only limit to how much material cost you can skip is your strength score. A wizard with 13 strength can cast limited wish and mimic raise dead without spending a single GP worth of diamonds. They will just be bed ridden for a few days, and weak until 13 days after the casting.
So with Blood Money, you could cast it once a day and animate between 10HD and 20HD undead depending on what spell you used essentially for free. No gems required to raise undead.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Bigger Club wrote: Would be easier to answer if it was defined what you mean by an army. While the link Ravondork is quite handy(Enough for traditional PC if not more), that is not an army by my standards heck that ain't even a company.
That's what lesser create demiplane is for. She can store nearly unlimited uncontrolled undead in pocket planes, then unleash the hoards upon unsuspecting enemies. The ones shown are just her elite bodyguards or transit systems.
(I envision the rocks carrying her and her cyclops captain about when aerial attacks/speed/quick escape/reconnaissance is required, and her purple worm acting as something of a subterranean "groundcraft carrier" that can carry bloody skeleton giant troops about in its stomach or even sink whole cities with sink holes.
Excuse the lack of quotes but since the posts I am replying are just above I felt there was no need.
@JTibbs: Yes I am aware of both options, I worded myself poorly, I just ment that anyway you go about it you will need one. BTW like I said the good stuff is elsewhere, 3.5 has so many goodies for necromancers. So if a homegame might be able to get some options from there on case-by-case accepted.(Of coarse that is more a thing for the advice forums)
@Ravindork: True true, I just prefer not using uncontrolled undead unless forced to or if I do I use them like nukes, unleash on settlement/base and forget. It is a very nice character, I was more using it as an example that army is pretty fluid term.
Anyways, I am pretty sure MT is the build that can get most undead, but it is a rough thing if not starting at relativly high level. On single class Juju Oracle takes the cake in PF.
Wights and ghouls are the undead nukes. Smuggle enough into a city, and you could see the city turned into a necropolis in a day or two.
Pretty unrelated, but has anyone ever heard of 3x3 eyes?
I think it would be a pretty cool optional necromancer high level ability to be able to take a creature or person as a 'Wu'.
Basically an unkillable personal bodyguard. A living Lich who serves you and you are their phylactory.
.
.
.
Actually that ability is very similar to the Juju's Living Zombies. just they aren't quite unkillable. I guess a Wu would just be the next step, essentially a Juju Living Zombie with regeneration.
You can also stack sources of undead. The best I got by this method was an oracle of bones. They got had the Undead Master feat and Animate Dead as both a spell and spell-like ability at level 20. Using a robe of components to sub for material costs they could control, just by this means, 192HD.
They also had a revelation which acted as Channel Energy with the Command Undead feat, granting another 24HD, as well as the Eldritch Heritage feats for the Sacred Cistern power of the Empyreal bloodline, taken with the actual Command Undead feat to gain another 18 HD.
That alone gets you to 234HD.
Then just add in a page of spell knowledge with the Command Undead spell. This has no HD limit and has a duration of 1 day/level. Furthermore, an oracle with a +6 Cha mod can cast it 8/day. Keeping 1/2 those spells in reserve (just in case a mutiny occurs), you can easily control an additional 80 undead (total count, regardless of HD).
This last one should be primarily targeted towards controlling undead which can spawn armies but have low saves. That said, you can easily boost the save DC by taking the spell focus feats (necromancy, +2 DC), and by carrying around a darkskull (+4 DC) which boosts the DC of resisting this spell to an impressive 24 for a 2nd level spell (with the aforementioned stat mod) before modifiers such as Persistent Spell or Heighten Spell.
Even just using this on shadows with a simple 2 tier doubling pyramid scheme nets an additional 560 undead, each with at least 3HD (assuming you weren't specifically targeting greater shadows) for an additional 1680HD of undead.
Oh, & if you are going this route, I highly suggest either taking the Dhampir race or the Resist Life revelation, as this way you become immune to negative energy attacks and even heal from anything that would deal negative energy damage (such as your own Inflict and Mass Inflict spells which can be enhanced with negative energy bleed via the Bleeding Wounds revelation. Heck, if your DM is nice you might even get temporary fast healing.)
Recap: 234HD of undead + 80 undead (irrelevant of HD, easily multiplied to over 560 TOTAL via a simple two tier doubling pyramid). Sure it has risks, but you did ask for an army. ;)
Edited for math
Slight problem with the bone beads. The description says you can control up to 8 hd of undead, not an additional 8 hit dice. which means the second bone bead bracelet enables you to control up to 8 hd of undead, as does the third... etc. this means they overwrite each other and not stack.
Don't forget the Threnodic metamagic feat. You can use it to use control spells to control roaming undead and dead that are already controlled by other necromancers. A Threnodic Mass Fascinate spell would allow you to control a group of undead without it counting against your max HD for creating and controlling undead.
Just be, a dhampir wizard, get leadership, and lead an army of dhampir wizards. that'll help
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