Raising the dead

[Bxtreme]

Hi everyone, new to the board and also a bit new to pathfinder. Sorry if these are some noob questions :p

I have a couple of questions about raising the dead. First off, I want to go Cleric - Undead Lord. But as I was comparing that to a Cleric that chooses the death domain, I'm not sure why the Undead Lord is favorable...Yes he gains a companion (At an even lower HD than animate dead can), but it doesn't seem like there is a benefit to having it as a "companion".

My second question is, is there any way that my pets/minions can scale? It doesn't seem like they would get any better as I level. Neither undead lord nor using the normal animate dead gives me the ability to make my raised minions any stronger...Am I missing something here?

[Fake Healer]

Undead Lord is a good flavor/bad execution class. Almost a trap.
To try to scale the undead look towards templating them....burning skeletons, bloody skeletons, fast zombies....
bloody is nice because they heal themselves, and can reform after being chopped down so they stick around better than most undead.
BTW, wizards have some nice options for undead controlling and creation also...some say they could be better than clerics for having undead minions but I am not terribly familiar with the subject.

[Zhayne]

Important terminology note ...
What you are discussing is ANIMATING the dead (aka creating undead).

Raising the dead restores people to full life, not unlife. Totally different animal.

[Bxtreme]

Thanks Fake Healer, and thanks for clarifying Zhayne. Yes I am trying to create undead. So it looks like the only way for both the undead lord or Cleric with the death domain to actually scale the undead minions is to make higher level monsters they fight into pets?

I see what you mean by the template. Both chars would be able to do that...so the question remains...why undead lord? Looks like it is a bit of a trap...

I'll do some more research on wizards and undead.

[Diekssus]

Bxtreme wrote:

Thanks Fake Healer, and thanks for clarifying Zhayne. Yes I am trying to create undead. So it looks like the only way for both the undead lord or Cleric with the death domain to actually scale the undead minions is to make higher level monsters they fight into pets?

I see what you mean by the template. Both chars would be able to do that...so the question remains...why undead lord? Looks like it is a bit of a trap...

I'll do some more research on wizards and undead.

The question is what you want to do with your character. An undead lord effectively gets 1-hd of undead per level more. It also allows for higher hd minions then animate dead would allow. and this is always in addition of command undead and animate dead. So you get more undead and can heal them better.

Necromancers can also animate and command undead. however don't get any unique/exclusive ways of maintaining more undead.

The differences are small. And it all comes down to how usefull or fun you consider undead minions to be.