After having a number of various feats and houserules and third party supplements, myself, the other DM in our group, and our on-again, off-again necromancer realize that the marvellous Animate Dead fails to satisfy unless we're collecting a menagerie of giants. And the flavorful, interesting Create Undead line lacks any meaningful methods to control the undead you create, unless you like relying on temporary, unreliable means.
The bottom line is, I'm looking for ways of getting permanent humanoid minions similar to through Animate Dead, not just having to forgo the town guard and heroes in their grave, and go hunting hydras and cyclops to reanimate.
My group has discussed things such as paying increased gold cost to animate certain varieties as per Create Undead, or ways to animate dead with increased hit dice, so on, and so forth.
What sort of methods have people used, or worked up before to have a more reasonable set of minions?
The bottom line is, I'm looking for ways of getting permanent humanoid minions similar to through Animate Dead
Do they need to be undead? 'cause Simulacra can be pretty useful, trained animals are surprisingly effective and if you pay your mercenaries enough they should allow some magic to keep them in line.
The bottom line is, I'm looking for ways of getting permanent humanoid minions similar to through Animate DeadDo they need to be undead? 'cause Simulacra can be pretty useful, trained animals are surprisingly effective and if you pay your mercenaries enough they should allow some magic to keep them in line.
I'm aware of all the goodies to be had through other forms of minions, and unfortunately, yes. It's kind of hard to be a necromancer creating an army of the dead, if, you know, they're all alive.
As a GM, I would consider allowing a necromancer with proper spells to fill his followers slots granted by Leadership feat with undeads of comparable power - ghouls, wights, shadows, assuming high enough level of followers.
Sentient Undead could acquire class levels, but they'd have to get a share of the XP to do so.
Well, judicious use of animate dead can grant better minions, with the animation of powerful creatures and possibly multiple variations. Also, the powerful creatures created with create undead are balanced by their free will, but this is hardly an issue for a clever mage with high CHA and good RP skills. Threnodic Spells don't hurt, either.
If that isn't enough, now there is the necrocraft in Beastiary 4, which allows you to combine several weaker undead into a single powerful one with customizable abilities.
And the flavorful, interesting Create Undead line lacks any meaningful methods to control the undead you create, unless you like relying on temporary, unreliable means.
If your GM is cooperative, a mere diplomacy check should be sufficient. There's always the risk that they could betray you, but if the GM is supportive then this is unlikely to happen in an arbitrary manner.
The bigger problem, I find, is that animate dead is put at too high a spell level and with too much of a material cost. By the time you get access to the spell humanoid skeletons and zombies are already obsolete. Lesser Animate Dead opens up some options for a Cleric, but at 3rd level the cost of doing so is prohibitive. Power-wise, humanoid zombies and skeletons are appropriate minions for a 2nd-4th level spellcaster, but they're too expensive for them to be practical in terms of WBL.
Dotting for interest. I have a player in my Reign of Winter campaign interested in Necromancy. I am a fan of Necromancers and so I would like to help create/use a balanced system for it (since Paizo likes good characters too much).
I like the Necrocraft, the only issue is, as with animate dead, the size category, if there were rules for slapping advanced on it instead of increasing it in size it'd work rather well, aside from the intelligence score.
As for Create Undead, I would allow a diplomacy check and then use of Leadership. The Diplomacy check will always fail after using control undead (Sylvanas and Arthas).
The Corpse Mage Variant of the 3rd party Death Mage has the "Army of the dead" class feature:
Army of the Dead (Su): At 8th level, you may have a number of undead minions which are totally loyal to you. Treat this as the Leadership feat, determining your followers and cohorts normally. However, add to all minions and your cohort either the skeleton or zombie template (your choice). Unlike most skeletons and zombies, your minions retain their class hit dice and abilities. Your cohort is a special skeleton or zombie that retains its class hit dice and Intelligence score, and acts as an intelligent undead. If you lose a cohort or minions, they are replaced when you gain a new death mage level. You may also dismiss an existing cohort or minon when you gain a level (destroying them) to select a new cohort or minions.
At 8th level you may replace a cohort or minion with one a level lower than normal that has the bloody or burning skeleton template (still retaining any class hit dice and abilities). If you are at least 10th level, your may replace your cohort or minions with new cohort or minions with the fast zombie or plague zombie templates (still retaining class hit dice and abilities). If you are at least 12th level your cohort may be a skeletal champion 2 levels lower than your normal cohort level. If you are at least 16th level your cohort may be a vampire 3 levels lower than your normal cohort level, though it lacks the ability to create vampire spawn.
When I GMed for a player who used that class, it made for interesting and useful Minions that weren't overly powerful in my eyes.