Best Necromancer

[Penthesylea]

Hey all!
I know that this thread is rather old, but in case anyone still visits, I just created a Necromancer Special Ability with my DM and would like some feedback. I will be using the Grave Touch and Life Sight abilities from the Core Rulebook but created a replacement for Power Over Undead based on the Share Essence ability from the Life School found in the Advanced Player's Guide and the Vampiric Touch spell from the Core Rulebook. I call it Steal Essence:

You can steal vital energy from a living creature that you touch.
As a standard action, you may choose to do one of the following:

- Spend 1 charge and make a melee touch attack against a living creature. If successful, you deal 1d6 damage + 1 for every 2 wizard levels you possess. You gain temporary hit points equal to the damage you deal. You can’t deal more damage than the creature’s current hit points + its Constitution score (only enough to kill the creature). The temporary hit points disappear 1 hour later.

- Spend 1 charge and deal 1d6 damage + 1 for every two wizard levels you possess to yourself. You may choose an ally within a range of 5 ft + 5 for every 3 wizard levels you possess to gain temporary hit points equal to the damage you deal. You can’t deal more damage than your current hit points – 1 to yourself. The temporary hit points disappear 1 hour later.

- Spend 2 charges and make a melee touch attack against a living creature. If successful, you deal 1d6 damage + 1 for every 2 wizard levels you possess. You may choose an ally within a range of
5 ft + 5 for every 3 wizard levels you possess to gain temporary hit points equal to the damage you deal. Your ally can’t gain more than the creature’s current hit points + its Constitution score (only enough to kill the creature). The temporary hit points disappear 1 hour later.

You have a number of charges per day equal to 3 + your Intelligence modifier.

To anyone out there, please let me know what you think!
Edit: Specified the Wizard School from which I found Share Essence.

[Kingsalad]

Despite not being very good at creating undead, the occultist's necromancy resonant power doubles the HD of undead that you can control(if you're willing to put all your mental focus into it.) I've been thinking of making a necromancer with that but if you want to make cooler undead you'd need to mix it with undead lord cleric or juju oracle.

[Dasrak]

Kingsalad wrote:

Despite not being very good at creating undead, the occultist's necromancy resonant power doubles the HD of undead that you can control(if you're willing to put all your mental focus into it.) I've been thinking of making a necromancer with that but if you want to make cooler undead you'd need to mix it with undead lord cleric or juju oracle.

An appropriate necro of a thread about necromancy.

Occultist is a solid choice for necromancer. He gets access to animate dead and has a decent ability for boosting it, but doesn't have access to anything else of note. As far as 6-level casters go he's actually one of the better ones for this purpose. I'm not sure what you'd get out of dipping Oracle or Cleric; the Command Undead feat has a HD cap based on class level so if you're dipping it's completely useless.

[McDaygo]

Gobo Horde wrote:

Ya I am always looking for ways to build an undead hordelord, just look at my name!

There are 3 main ways you can play necromancers. The horde, save or die and battlefield control. You can also mix and match them to a degree. Save or die is pretty straightforward up your casting stat as high as you can, up your DCs and up your caster level. Some spells like ray of enfeeblement/exhaustion or cause fear/scare or blindness and ghoul touch are good low end spells for this. Level 4 spells are a sweet spot for this guy with bestow curse, enervation and fear. Just make sure that you take some spells from other schools in case necromancy wont work.

The Horde. My favorite :) A few good links for this particular style would be
Brewers guide to undeath. A good guide with great information but not really finished.
Army of 240 hd of undead Makes use of mystic theurge to get huge amounts of undead.
A thread about making a good undead boss. Good things in here to read about and scavenge.
@ Writer. Nice! Im adding that one to my list .

For the 240 build I’d consider swapping out the last 4 cleric levels for agent of the grave.