Undead Raisers, give me your Wisdom. (Or Charisma in some cases.)
I am looking for the best builds for Necromancers. I am mainly looking for Divine Casters, as they have the better mix of Necromancy spells, but if you do have a good build for an Arcane Necromancer, please contribute it.
I am mainly looking for Necromancers builds that favor controlling undead hordes and debuffing opponents.
I am currently playing an Arcanist, which is obviously not divine. For flavor I'm playing him as a necromancer and his class skills fit quite well with the 'save or suck' style of play Arcane necromancers seem to use. 'Potent Magic', I think it's called, is great; whenever you use an Arcane Point to up the DC or CL of a spell, increase it by +2 instead of by +1. This allows you to start off with a Persistent Metamagic imbued spell like Enervate or Bestow Curse on big baddies then follow up with now easy to land spells like Ray of Enfeeblement with lower DC's. For mooks, you have cool things you'd do normally like Black Tentacles or Web. A quicken metamagic rod is great for True Strike so your rays never miss. I can't help much with Miniomancy builds, but I can confidently say I've had very few problems with my Arcanist Necromancer so far.
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Bones Oracle looks like a pretty solid choice. As early as level one, you can have a skeleton cohort for 3+Cha rounds per day, then you can get Animate Dead as a bonus spell and Command Undead as a bonus feat. You also get a revelation that lets you inflict negative levels as a ranged touch attack. And that's before you even pick and feats, spells known, or even your starting race.
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Bones Oracle looks like a pretty solid choice. As early as level one, you can have a skeleton cohort for 3+Cha rounds per day, then you can get Animate Dead as a bonus spell and Command Undead as a bonus feat. You also get a revelation that lets you inflict negative levels as a ranged touch attack. And that's before you even pick and feats, spells known, or even your starting race.
For a feat, pick up Experimental Spellcaster(found here) and use it to get Undeath as a 2nd, ranged, no material component undead maker! (:<
Mystic theurge, hands down. Focus on Juju oracle (from City of Seven Spears, not Faiths and Philosophies, they are drastically different) and Wizard. Use the Adept Channel feat from Orcs of Golarion to keep your channel pool caught up and enjoy animating from two separate classes.
If you want a single class, go Juju Oracle or Gravewalker Witch. There are few necromancers that can enjoy quite as much versatility within the field as the Gravewalker Witch or as many undead controlled as the Juju Oracle
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The best necromancer requires a lot dubious build options, but here it goes:
Use the old Juju Oracle and take it to 4th level. Take a 1-level dip in Sorcerer (any bloodline) and then use a SLA to qualify for mystic theurge. Take the Experimental Spellcaster feat from the optional Words of Power system to learn the Undeath word, then take it again to learn the word with your other class. Due to the precise wording of the Undeath Word, it doesn't actually work like animate dead but instead gives you a separate pool of undead altogether. This means you get four pools of undead minions: 6 HD/caster level arcane animate dead, 6 HD/caster level divine animate dead, 4 HD/caster level arcane undeath word, and 4 HD/caster level divine undeath word. That's a total of 20 HD of undead per caster level. With the magical knack trait, your caster level is only 1 behind your character level in both classes.
So by the 11th level you'll have Oracle 4 / Sorcerer 1 / Theurge 6. This gives you 200 HD of undead.
Bones Oracle looks like a pretty solid choice. As early as level one, you can have a skeleton cohort for 3+Cha rounds per day, then you can get Animate Dead as a bonus spell and Command Undead as a bonus feat. You also get a revelation that lets you inflict negative levels as a ranged touch attack. And that's before you even pick and feats, spells known, or even your starting race.For a feat, pick up Experimental Spellcaster(found here) and use it to get Undeath as a 2nd, ranged, no material component undead maker! (:<
+1
Seriously, it's the best low-level undead creator.
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I was going to suggest a cleric or bones oracle (way cooler flavor and abilities than juju IMO). But you know, the munchkinyness above kind of !makes that moot. Lol.
I meant no offense by the term. It hits my radar as munchkiny (not that I haven't or don't make some similar character types).
If you want a more....believable character with a bit less mechanical abuse and more theme or flavor, you could go with oracle bones or cleric. Juju is alright also but I am not feeling the voodoo theme at the moment.
Improved channel and command undead are two feats you will want. The bleeding revelation is awesome if you use the right spells or use a cleric channel energy (which is a rough multiclassing route to go but can work with half elf racial heritage aasimar and dual talented and then trait abuse). For debuffs you have all the nice divine spells but what you want to look at more are either the revelations (the enervating one mentioned above is nice) or the domain powers that will best suit your needs. With variant channeling you can debuff off of each channel, even if the dice total is low the debuff can still stick. The proper debuffs from channeling and domain powers can be pretty rad.
Many people like the madness domain powers. I find the darkness variant channeling is solid as are a few other harm variants (rulership is my favorite). Now that I think about it, I could probably munchkin this out and make a bleeding channeling debuffing monster who has an army of undead.
I vote of Dasrak's version...
Crap, that ruined my ninja dot. Guess I'll just leave his noisy, opinionated dot here instead....
Dot: "Personally I'd run the MT with a Dhampir with the Cruoromancer archetype and Thassilonian Gluttony specialty."
Silence dot! *Smacks the dot*
3.5 made no distinction between channeling to harm and channeling to heal. The only distinction was positive or negative energy.
The best necromancer requires a lot dubious build options, but here it goes:
Use the old Juju Oracle and take it to 4th level. Take a 1-level dip in Sorcerer (any bloodline) and then use a SLA to qualify for mystic theurge. Take the Experimental Spellcaster feat from the optional Words of Power system to learn the Undeath word, then take it again to learn the word with your other class. Due to the precise wording of the Undeath Word, it doesn't actually work like animate dead but instead gives you a separate pool of undead altogether. This means you get four pools of undead minions: 6 HD/caster level arcane animate dead, 6 HD/caster level divine animate dead, 4 HD/caster level arcane undeath word, and 4 HD/caster level divine undeath word. That's a total of 20 HD of undead per caster level. With the magical knack trait, your caster level is only 1 behind your character level in both classes.
So by the 11th level you'll have Oracle 4 / Sorcerer 1 / Theurge 6. This gives you 200 HD of undead.
What Spell-Like Abilities would you recommend for the character. I am not sure what to select. A small list would probably be best if possible.
Also, thank you all for the amazing advice. In a platonic way, I love you all.
I meant no offense by the term. It hits my radar as munchkiny (not that I haven't or don't make some similar character types).
Nope, you're spot on and calling it out for what it is.
What Spell-Like Abilities would you recommend for the character. I am not sure what to select. A small list would probably be best if possible.
Your best option is the Dhampir, using the Vermin Empathy alternate racial trait to get a qualifying SLA (speak with animals is a 3rd level bard spell). If this is not available, Aasimar is the next best pick. Both of these races give you a charisma boost, so they're already well suited to being sorcerers and oracles.
Sadly, you can no longer channel to harm people while healing undead. It is an either/or scenario in pathfinder. Now that I think on it, could we do that in 3.5? I no longer recall with 100% certainty as pathfinder is replacing my 3.5 knowledge.
Seems to be the case for me as well. Pf has been around quite a while now. Time flys.
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If 3.5 had channeling, it was in an expansion book. I just cracked open my old 3.5 PHB and there's no channeling in it. There is "turn or rebuke undead" though.
And as a matter of fact, the only 3.5 cleric I ever played was in a very roleplay-heavy campaign with barely any combat at all, and likely never even would have used channeling if he'd had it.
Your best option is the Dhampir, using the Vermin Empathy alternate racial trait to get a qualifying SLA (speak with animals is a 3rd level bard spell). If this is not available, Aasimar is the next best pick. Both of these races give you a charisma boost, so they're already well suited to being sorcerers and oracles.
This won't work. SLAs are determined in a certain order, and druid comes before bard, making Speak With Animals a 1st level divine spell-like ability.
Why has no one mentioned the Gravewalker Witch? I mean, that this vicious... and the ability to taxi around in an undead body is pretty nice..
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Utilizing my skills as an experience Netromancer, I cast Animate Thread!
So, I'm building a necromancer-type. I know that if you want to be a true master of hordes of undead, the Juju Oracle is the optimal choice (or this seems to be the popular choice). I, however, don't care for the flavor of the Oracle class, and it doesn't fit my vision for my character. Here is what I'm starting with:
Class: Arcanist
Race: Vetala-born Dhampir
Alignment: Neutral Evil
Alternate Race Traits: Heir to Undying Nobility, Vampiric Empathy.
Prestige Class Goal: Agent of the Grave
(I chose those alt race traits because I like them, not for any optimization or such. Flavor. I like characters who have character.)
The characters in this game all start at level 1, but it expected to run to level 20. As such, I'm working on a 20 level build, with per-level advancement suggestions.
1) The GM has generously gifted us with 6 traits! She also allows untyped bonus to stack, such as +1 untyped caster level bonuses to a specific spell from traits, so long as they are different traits and the bonus isn't specifically called out as a "trait bonus".
2) When there is ambiguity or (often) direct conflict in the rules, we always rule on the side of RAI over RAW. For example, reading over the Command Undead feat, the spell suggests it should be operating as the Command Undead spell (with the 1 HD/level limit), but states it operates as the Control Undead spell, which has a 1 min/level duration. The conflict comes immediately after the Control Undead spell reference, when the feat states "Intelligent undead receive a new saving throw each day to resist your command." We have taken this to suggest there was an editing error, and it should function as the "Command Undead" spell, instead. RAI as we interpret them.
3) The GM is well aware of my intention to amass legions of undead, and to eventually work toward becoming a Lich, and fully supports my efforts, so will generally rule in my favor when there is a questionable or ambiguous rule.
4) Our group only uses official, Paizo-published Pathfinder materials. No third party materials are allowed (or at least assume this is the case).
So, I realize that for my first 5 to 7 levels (before I gain access to the Animate Dead spell and its Lesser variant) I will mostly be functioning as a standard sorcerer/wizard type. However, it's never to early to get the ball rolling, so I'm starting at level 1 toward building my Corpse Commander. Aside from the above, here's what I'm going with:
- Gifted Adept: Untyped +1 Caster Level bonus to one spell. Animate Dead.
- Inspired by Greatness: Untyped +1 Caster Level bonus to one spell. Animate Dead.
- Outlander: +1 trait bonus to Knowledge (arcana). Untyped +1 Caster Level and Save DCs bonus for three spells. Animate Dead, Charm Person, and Command Undead.
- Precocious Spellcaster: Untyped +1 Caster Level bonus to one cantrip and one first level spell. Touch of Fatigue and Charm Person... though I considered Chill Touch (Outlander would parity).
- Signature Spell: Untyped +1 Caster Level bonus to one spell. Animate Dead.
This combination will grant me a total +4 CL to Animate Dead, +2 CL and +1 DC to Charm Person, +1 CL and DC to Command Undead spell, and +1 CL to Touch of Fatigue. If there are better spell options for my cantrip and level 1 spells (Touch of Fatigue and Charm Person), please advise.
We use random dice rolls for stats, and mine turned out very good. After racial modifiers:
Str 9, Dex 16, Con 12, Int 20, Wis 10, Cha 17
At level 1, I chose the Quick Study Arcanist Exploit, and Spell Focus (necromancy) feat. The levels leading up to gaining access to Animate Dead are the most crucial. I'm working toward this combination of feats and exploits:
Feats - 3) Improved Familiar (to gain a Beheaded familiar... for effect, mostly), 5) Undead Master, 7) Spell Specialization (Animate Dead).
Exploits - 3) Familiar, 5) School Understanding (Necromancy -> Undead), and 7) Potent Magic.
The combination of these feats, exploits, and the aforementioned traits will grant me (using our liberal interpretation of the rules) a total +10 ECL with Animate Dead (using Potent Magic), allowing me to control 72 HD worth of undead via Animate Dead at level 8, when I gain access to the spell. We use the logical RAI interpretation of Undead Master, so it boosts the character's effective level with the Command Undead feat by +4, as well, allowing up to 12 HD to be controlled at level 8 via that feat. We also interpret the Command Undead feat RAI to function as the Command Undead spell. Therefore, any applicable boosts I get to the spell, also apply to feats and abilities which manifest as said spell.
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I'm essentially looking for advice for building the best necromancer I can with the Arcanist/Agent of the Grave class combo from level 9 up. I plan to grab Craft Wand (either via feat or exploit) so I can craft my own overpowered Wand of Animate Dead (at my ECL). Don't know if this fits RAW or not, but we permit effects manifested through devices to function independently of (and thus, in addition to) effects manifested through the character's spells and abilities.
Advice on how I can make this budding necromancer into the world dominating Emperor of Carrion Commandos? Liberal interpretations of RAI are accepted!
Currently my two favorite Necromancer builds are Bones Oracle and Gravewalker Witch.
Bones Oracle feels a lot like the old 3.5 Dread Necromancer. It gets bone armor, negative energy touch attacks, soul stealing to regenerate your own HP, and access to the entire Cleric spell list.
Gravewalker Witch is more of the mastermind buff/debuff hordemaster Necromancer IMO. Gets a desecrate aura at will, can possess undead directly, and can turn almost all of the best necromancer touch attack spells into ranged touch attacks with her voodoo doll.
Both get the full animate/create line, both get Command Undead feat for free, etc.
So depends more on what kind of necromancer you want to play. If you want to be a more martial hands on kind of necromancer, I'd say Bones Oracle due to it getting armor and better use of touch attacks in melee. If you want to be more of a back row operator that lets your minions do the walking, Gravewalker Witch might be more your style.
My necromancer will definitely not be the hands-on type. Arcanists are squishy (like Sorcerers, Wizards, and Witches), and my physical stats are sub-optimal for being on the front line. I'm going the approach of the hybrid blaster/buffer/debuffer for my first few levels. When I can start creating my own undead, I'm shifting to be more of a mastermind buff/debuff hordemaster (as you described the GW Witch), with a sprinkling of blasty stuff, when I'm bored and want fireworks. Hahaha!
Sorry, couldn't help it.
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Okay, then my first bit of advice is to go with a Halfling Gravewalker Witch.
Why Halfling? Favored Class bonus for Halfling Witches is +1/4 caster level on spells granted by the patron. The Gravewalker's animate/command/create spells are all patron spells, so you're going to automatically start out with a higher caster level and hence more HD of undead at your control.
Halflings also get an alternate racial ability called Jinx that lets them lower the saves of their targets, and feats to let them automatically jinx anyone hit by their spells.
Oh, and that possession bit is technically magic jar which leaves your body "dead" while possessing, but if you're a Halfling just imagine animating a Large sized zombie and then having it carry your body around in it's chest or something along those lines.
You could literally be commanding your undead horde from inside of a suit of corpse power armor.
The race and class options are non-negotiable. The character has already been played (we've just hit 2nd level), so it's too late to change those factors, even if I wanted to.
I considered the GW Witch, but it ultimately didn't fit my flavor. HOWEVER... if/when I get the Leadership feat, I may consider a Witch as a cohort...
Ok... so like I say in all these threads:
Ignore Command Undead (the Feat).
Use Command Undead (the spell).
Control all the undead for days for per caster level. Double the time with a Lesser Metamagic Rod of Extend! Mindless undead get controlled with no save! Still works on Intelligent Undead!
So really any class that can cast that. I usually recommend Gravewalker Witch.
Main reasons:
1. Can control undead from level 1. Bonewhistle can be used repeatedly on the same targets. Bonewhistle also solves a Witch weakness by giving you a repeated SoD v. Undead.
2. Gravewalker gives you the three most important spells for animating minions at their lowest level - Blood Money at level 1, Command Undead as a level 2 spell and Animate Dead as a level 3 spell. Admittedly you will have to wait til 6 to start animating.
3. The other important Necromancy spell Desecrate can be replicated by a Voidstick for only 2,500 GP.
4. You can eventually get to use magic jar on your undead all day long.
So ya, Gravewalker Witch.
Agreed, Gravewalker would be even better in PFS since sanctioned PFS tends to be a meat grinder in the first place, so builds that can stay far away from active combat will make you live a lot longer.
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I'm not the original poster, but what are the best necro builds for PFS?
Witch and Oracle have a lot of merits. For PFS the Witch is the superior option hands down.
Outside PFS:
I use Necromancy Wizard...Gluttony if it is allowed.
I love the wizards package. It is hard to go wrong with a wizard. If a DM allows 3PP getting Improved Familiar: Small Negative Energy Elemental you can have Maximized Enervation by level 7 and be using Command Undead (feat) as 2 levels higher. You can also throw some Transmutation buffs on him and have a mini body guard that can smack your Undead and heal them. It is a pretty nasty combo.
I just love Wizards lol. They are a lot of fun.
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Agreed, Gravewalker would be even better in PFSWitch and Oracle have a lot of merits. For PFS the Witch is the superior option hands down.I thought Gravewalker wasn't PFS legal. Did I miss something?
F____ PFS IDK the ridiculous ban list that they impose anymore. If it is...then go Oracle. It's best to avoid using/animating Undead in PFS cause they want you to not be evil and you really skirt the lines playing a necromancer. But if you enjoy riding the razor figure out what options are NOT banned first and then decide whats the best that is left.
The Twilight Sage Arcanist would be cool, but just wasn't suited to my Necromantic machinations. Breath of Life is a cool spell, but the limitation on the spell itself (within 1 round of dying), combined with the additional limitation of the ability (must sacrifice the life of a willing or unconcious living creature with hit dice equal to or greater than the recipient) make its usage extremely limited and circumstantial. Plus, my evil necromancer would be more inclined to cast Animate Dead and add them to his horde, Animate Dead and walk the new fast zombie back to town (whenever he gets around to it, then destroy them for a Resurrection), or Create Undead and let them decide if they want to go back to town for that Resurrection or keep their new form.
Evil... Necromancer. Mwahahahaha! ;)
I might need to get myself a Rod of Selective Spell at some point. My friends might get a little cranky if I kill their characters with my (eventual) Circle of Death.
Speaking of which, I think I may need to make that another candidate for the Spell Specialization feat, and it may even replace one of the spells (likely Charm Person) I've chosen to enhance with my Outlander trait. Hmmm....
. . . . .
Cue Sir Elton John
It's the Circle of Death...
And it slays them aaaaaaaaall...
Feel despair, no hope...
Charon's grasping claaaaaaw...
You shall find your place...
Down Styx river winding....
In the Circle...
The Circle of Death...
Edit: Psh... Never mind! Stupid 9 HD limitation. How is that even useful for a level 11+ spell caster? Are you really expecting low level encounters? Hmmm. I guess I could use it when I go to town to fill out the ranks of my undead army with slain villagers... But not nearly as cool as it should be.
Kind of like the difference between the Turn Undead and Command Undead feats. First one has no HD limit and affects all undead in the area. Second one is limited to 1 HD worth of undead per level. Personally, I'd gladly drop the duration of Command Undead (feat) to 1 minute, or better, give the two feats parity and make them both 1 minute/level, to have no HD limit on the Undead the feat could command/control.
I swear, there is very little consistency with this game system all too often.
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I might need to get myself a Rod of Selective Spell at some point. My friends might get a little cranky if I kill their characters with my (eventual) Circle of Death.
Speaking of which, I think I may need to make that another candidate for the Spell Specialization feat, and it may even replace one of the spells (likely Charm Person) I've chosen to enhance with my Outlander trait. Hmmm....
. . . . .
Cue Sir Elton John
It's the Circle of Death...
And it slays them aaaaaaaaall...
Feel despair, no hope...
Charon's grasping claaaaaaw...
You shall find your place...
Down Styx river winding....
In the Circle...
The Circle of Death...Edit: Psh... Never mind! Stupid 9 HD limitation. How is that even useful for a level 11+ spell caster? Are you really expecting low level encounters? Hmmm. I guess I could use it when I go to town to fill out the ranks of my undead army with slain villagers... But not nearly as cool as it should be.
Kind of like the difference between the Turn Undead and Command Undead feats. First one has no HD limit and affects all undead in the area. Second one is limited to 1 HD worth of undead per level. Personally, I'd gladly drop the duration of Command Undead (feat) to 1 minute, or better, give the two feats parity and make them both 1 minute/level, to have no HD limit on the Undead the feat could command/control.
I swear, there is very little consistency with this game system all too often.
could be useful if you enter the middle of the town square wanting to kill everyone instantly and reanimate after..... going against anything with a decent CR, Circle of Death isn't worth preparing.
@ Derek Dalton
I understand how many of the feats and such sound good, but functionally are little more than a feat tax for no real return.
We are using generous interpretations of Rules as Intended, and I would NEVER take Undead Master, for example, if it functioned as RAW.
First, the Command Undead feat is being interpreted as follows:
We are assuming there was an editing error, and that this feat functions as the spell of the same name (Command Undead spell), with a Hit Dice cap. The verbiage of the feat (taking out the Control Undead spell reference) reads like that is how it was intended to function, thus we view the spell reference as an editing oversight. Control Undead only lasts minutes, so how are intelligent undead getting a new save each day (as described in the Command Undead spell)? What level do you have to be for minutes to become days!? Logic dictates this was an oversight, as they don't give a duration on the feat. If it is indefinite, there should have been a clarification to that effect.
Taking that into account, we are also using the following interpretation of the Undead Master feat:
Animate Dead spell: Caster is treated as CL +4 for ALL purposes of this spell, including number of HD worth of undead controllable.
Command Undead feat: Channeler is treated as Channel Level +4 for ALL purposes of using this feat, including applicable save DCs, maximum number of HD worth of undead controllable, and the duration of the control (as it pertains to the spell, as mentioned in our interpretation above.)
Command Undead spell: No change here, save for this doubling of the duration of the spell also doubles the duration of the feat, as we are ruling it acts as the spell.
Additionally, my GM is allowing traits which don't specifically call out their bonus as "trait bonuses" to stack as untyped bonuses from different sources, such as those which grant +1 CL to a specific spell. Reasoning being that different magic items which grant untyped bonuses are stackable, provided they are not identical items (so, no stacking two Orange Ioun Stones). Since traits have different names, they are not the same source, and therefore have been ruled to be stackable, unless they provide a "trait bonus".
.....
A lot of the interpretations we are using are heavily based in the descriptive text of the source (feat, trait, spell, etc), especially if the source conflicts with itself in any way (such as with the Undead Master feat). Baring that, we base these interpretations on the overall "feel" of the source, when there are conflicts (such as with the Command Undead feat).
Prerequisites are unedited, which makes things a little more difficult to attain as an arcanist than they would be for a cleric or oracle.
@ Derek Dalton
Regarding the Occultist... I really like the feel of this archetype, and being a full caster level Summoner (minus eidolon, which I don't care for anyway) at the cost of 1 exploit is pretty freakin' sweet. I'm not sure I like giving up the other exploit, however, for an ability I'll probably never use (Augury 1/day, Contact Other Plane 1/week). In the long run, I know many exploits are garbage, and this won't have a huge impact on my character once I run out of useful exploits to take, but it's losing them both in the short game (particularly the L7 exploit) that hurts.
Two questions:
1. Were I to apply this archetype to my character (say my GM lets me retrofit the archetype when I hit L3), would it be worth it (more than just thematically) to take the Skeleton Summoner feat? I like the feel of the feat, and the idea of summoning skeletal monsters spontaneously (popping up out of the ground, for visual effect, whenever possible), but is it worth a feat to apply the Skeleton template to the majority of my summons?
2. How exactly does the Occultist archetype make me a better necromancer? Certainly, it makes my credentials regarding becoming an Agent of the Grave PrC more reasonable to assume. But how does it help me be a better master of the walking dead?
I'm probably not going to take levels in Undead Master Cleric. It's a cool class/archetype combo, but would ultimately hurt my spell casting potential as both an Arcanist and Cleric, and I don't want to go Mystic Theurge on top of Agent of the Grave to shore up the weakness, which would almost be a necessity.
However..... I'm considering Vile Leadership at my earliest convenience, and my minion... er... "cohort" may be either Undead Master Cleric, Gravewalker Witch, Juju Oracle, or some other option which would amplify my undead army.
Like I said, we are going with how we interpret "intent", particularly when something seems questionable. By RAW, the Undead Master feat actually does NOTHING for the Command Undead feat, as it specifies you are treated as +4 levels when determining the number of undead you ANIMATE (which is exactly ever going to be ZERO with the Command Undead feat). Since it does nothing to the Command Undead feat, why even mention that feat? Because... poorly written/edited. The only real benefit to the feat is regarding the Command Undead spell, doubling its duration. This feat does little to allow you to "marshal vast armies of the undead to serve you", and so underwent RAI judgement. I feel my GM's interpretation of the feat is much more in-line with how it should function.
Have you read the Command Undead feat? It's garbage! Especially when compared with Turn Undead! Look at it. It Command offers no duration (it's generally assumed it's indefinite, but there's not much to support that assertion), states it offers intelligent undead a new save each day (the only statement to support the previous assertion), but references function as a spell with a 1 minute per level duration! It has a hit dice cap! Turn, on the other hand, offers a definitive duration (1 minute), and has NO HIT DICE CAP! Level 1 cleric could (theoretically) turn a swarm of 90+ dread liches! We actually DEBUFFED the Command feat to give it a duration in-line with the intelligent undead save caveat. I get the limits, but the feats have no real parity.
If I were to rework these, as a GM or developer, I would give them some parity. Since Command Undead is arguably more versatile than Turn Undead I would give the former a duration of 1 minute/effective level, while giving the latter a duration of 10 minutes/effective level. They would both have a Hit Dice cap of level x 4, with a caveat that no individual undead affected could exceed level x 2 (or maybe just effective level). Intelligent undead would be granted additional saves, say every minute... maybe every round, in the case of Command (again, due to it's increased versatility). If there were a hard duration limit, I might make that limit 1 day for Turn and 1 hour for Command. Considering such a duration, Turn might not make the undead flee as if panicked, but instead restrict them to being forced to make every effort to stay a minimum of 30' from the channeler, and unable to attack (in any way) anyone within that radius.
Just spit-balling there.
Look... I've said this several times... and will sadly have to say it more:
Ignore Undead Master... it's trash.
Ignore Command Undead (the feat) it's trash.
Use Command Undead (the spell), it's the best. Unintelligent undead (you know the things you reanimate) get NO SAVE. And it controls them for DAYS! PER! LEVEL! Combine with a Lesser Metamagic Rod of Extend. Double your days per level means even more arbitrarily large number of undead to cotnrol. That undead has 22HD? Controlled for days per level. At level 3 if you want.. no save! Control several more 22HD for many many days just by using a 2nd level slot. You'll easy break 100's of HD worth of undead. So cares about Animate Deads control cap or Undead Master, or Juju Oracle, or the poorly named feat.
Just use the spell.
@ Anzyr:
Undead Master (feat) is, as you say, basically trash as it's written. However... It does ONE good thing, which plays into what you're talking about. It doubles the duration of the Command Undead spell. Combine that with Extend Spell (MM Rod), and now you have control for four times as long as the base spell duration. While this may not be enough to take the feat, it does mean you have to renew that Command even less often. Also, it's a cheap way to double the duration of the spell at a low level, or if you have a GM who is restrictive on loot.
@ Derek:
Re-read the Undead Master feat. If you really scrutinize it, you will see that, while it references the Command Undead feat, the wording of it actually does nothing for the feat, since the feat does not actually ANIMATE anything.
Dot
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Click on this alias for a mid-leveled cruoromancer wizard build (minion blocks included!). It's dhampir only, but still very fun. This good thing about this build is the favored class bonus for dhampir wizards which increases the DC of necromancy spells. If you look under her spell sections, her necromancy spell DCs are pretty terrifying.
Her backstory is something that creates nightmares too, but that's beside the point.