after having looked over brewer's guide to undeath, it lists just the creatures from bestiary 1 (which is awesome and i thank him for the effort).
i do know that certain templates are quite useful, like the bloody skeleton, fast zombie (or their better big brother, relentless zombies and void zombies), and--my personal recommendation, in some cases--juju zombies. i'm also interested in the usefulness of multiplying skeletons (from classic horrors revisited, like the relentless zombies).
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the general categories noted in the guide are:
-bloody skeletons whenever possible (they're quite resilient and less likely to waste your money)
-fast zombies (for flying things, and things over 20HD)
one thing i note for juju zombies that makes them semi-competitive with fast zombies is that they don't have the staggered condition tacked on (like fast zombies), and while they dont get the extra attack, they keep their weapon proficiencies and defensive abilities (and gain more fom the template). this makes it useful for creatures with proficiencies from before you killed them (i.e. things with class levels, like fighters, barbarians, gunslingers, etc) and things with regeneration, such as trolls.
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creatures to look out for (from my understanding):
giants (hill<frost<fire<cloud<storm):
big, strong, decent on the HD. they make for a good brute squad.
pouncy things/things that get lots of natural attacks ((dire) lions<(dire) tigers<hydras<dragons):
your standard fare DPS, they charge in and blenderfy what they're attacking.
an addition of mine:
trolls/things with regeneration (moss<ice<scrag<regular<rock<two-headed<mountain):
decent HD for their CR (6-9HD for anything but mountain trolls), regen 5
mountain trolls are quite neat; 18HD at CR14, 40 strength with juju template, 23 natural armor with juju template, 40ft land speed and climb, 10ft. burrow, regen 10.
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does anyone who's more experienced at necromancy have any preferred undead for their entourage? i know purple worms make for good transport.
Dot.
EDIT: sorry, I'm a bit burned for now. Later, though, maybe.
I was wondering where this had run off to, seems it sank in the pages. this'll be my only bump for it, since the staggering lack of anything (besides tacticslion's interest) shouldnt warrant this stay up if there isn't reason to.
but yeah; any necromancers out there care to share their favorite undead (be it for combat, utility, whathaveyou)?
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I prefer skeletons for the quick, zombies for the strong, and fast zombies for flying mounts to start with. Animating enemy leaders, even into simple zombies and skeletons, is good because their greater strength and dexterity can be retained if their minds cannot. Skeletal or fast zombie horses are a simple boon for a carriage that can move day and night without rest.
I'm particularly interested in the various other bestiaries for new "raw materials"for skeletonizing/zombifying/jujuing
hell, had i the time (and a proper rating system) i'd probably just make a weekend of trawling through d20pfsrd's monster section and making a big list by CR.
then again i'm not sure what the rating would be like (probably by size, HD, str/dex, number of natural attacks, and utility like flight or possibly useful defensive abilites to keep via juju), or how many points for what
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Sorry, with all the anti-necromancer sentiments flying about in other forums, I felt the need to "resurrect" this thread for some fun undead combinations...mwahaha...
Zombie brain-eating elephant who simply grabs up humanoids and eats thier heads like grapefruit? (Stemmed from a conversation about most horrible zombie animals imaginable)
Ghoul wolves? Their ability to work together, trip, and paralyze...
Swarms of exploding and/or plague zombie rats?
What of a vampiric walrus? A giant, bloated, pinkish-pallid creature with natural fangs the size of longswords! Now imagine the beast uses gasseous form or shape changes into a dire bat (or better, a partial shape change to turn flippers into bat wings...), gains altitude and sneak attacks from above with those massive tusks!
...and they said I was mad...
Mwahahaha!
But enough "fun" ones...
My skeletal quickling archer was extremely useful, as was the advanced bugbear zombie, fast-zombie horses and wyvern... What have YOU animated lately?
unfortunately since the way of the wicked game i'm in is on hiatus, nothing :'(
Speaking of Way of the Wicked, I'm a JuJu Oracle in another campaign of that (Oracle 6/Agent of the Grave 3).
My current undead army is:
1 Fast Zombie Minotaur (George)
2 Bloody Burning Skeleton Hellhounds (Fluffums and Wuffums)
3 Fast Zombie Crocodiles (Tick-Tock, K.Rool, and Louis)
Fast Zombie Giant Constrictor Snake (Sir Slithers 5.0...this is a reanimated version of the 4th iteration of one of the other party member's previous character's Animal Companion)
2 Isitoq (currently unnamed...I had three but one got toasted by a Silver Dragon approximately 5 minutes after I set him at his post)
1 Fast Zombie Hydra (Head-ly)
1 Fast Zombie Giant Gorgimera (Trithraxus, he was already named so he's stuck with such a boring moniker)
9 Bloody Skeletons (Carol, Mike, Greg, Marcia, Peter, Jan, Bobby, Cindy, and Alice aka "The Bony Bunch")
Planned:
A Killer Croc inspired Necrocraft, created from the corpses of all those useless guards that keep getting slaughtered.
JuJu Zombies (of course!)
Some incorporeal undead. Had some Wraiths (One Dread, 6 normal) for a day but decided they were too much dang trouble to keep around if they were going to try to break free every day.
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*casts animate dead on thread*
I recently got back into the subject of necromancy (how fitting), and i was wondering some stuff on skeleton animation:
there's a hard 20HD limit on making skeletons out of things--does this count template increases (such as bloody or burning skeletons doubling their effective HD)? would that mean you could only make a 10HD bloody skeleton at best (this would explain the popularity of bloody skeleton hill giants)?
also, how does CR increases from other templates affect this, such as making a bloody skeletal champion hill giant (or something similar)? skeletal champion doesn't increase or affect HD in its entry, so would that just be free to tack on or what?