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Undead bosses are less common than mooks, and undead in general are less prevalent as you go up in tier.
Skeletons and Zombies are the bread and butter of low level encounters.
Shadows and Wights begin to appear shortly thereafter.
Ghosts can seem too common in the 5-9 range. Mummies if you're in Osirion.
There are at least two liches in 7-11 play, and some unique undead that can give you troubles.
But, really, Evil Outsiders are probably going to be a more important focus at higher levels. Not Undead.
I'd probably suggest making your very first Favored Enemy be Undead, to get through the low levels.
Then Humanoid (human). They're by far the most common across tiers.
Then Evil Outsider.
Or switch them around. Those are probably the big 3.
Based on your character, of course. If their backstory contains a village that was burned down by a Dragon, then by all means pick Dragons. Or whatever.
No matter what you choose, you'll eventually encounter whatever that is. And you can always retrain Favored Enemies using the rules from Ultimate Campaign, too.
I've literally been in a game with 4 PCs that had Favored Enemy (human), and we didn't fight a single one. So make choices your character would choose =).
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My personal experience is that they are more common in low tier adventures than high tier. Though they can and do appear in both. It is certainly a choice I have seen people make for class features and it generally comes up in a character's career. Though Evil Outsider, human, and maybe a couple other subtypes are more common IMO.
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Part of what I am wondering is if it is a bad idea to take an archetype that centered around the undead, such as Corpse Hunter?
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It's not a great archetype, but it's not terrible, either. It's actually kinda balanced and thematic. Although its 8th level ability is useful, so is a quiver of ghost-salted arrows. You're giving up the ability to choose multiple creature types as your Favored Enemy.
I'd say it's a wash. If it fits your character concept, go for it! You certainly won't run into many other ppl playing the same thing, and that has value of its own.
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It's certainly a useable archetype, though without being very careful with scenario selection there will definitely be times that no undead come up. I'd say your build would be more subject to variation than a number of other options, but there is no reason it wouldn't work and when it does come into play it works pretty well.
Edit: Nefreet said it better I think.
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Unless you have several other characters to choose from, I wouldn't recommend having a character dedicated to destroying undead. Undead are common enough, but there are many scenarios where you will feel you brought exactly the wrong character.
If you are set on the idea, just make sure that your character can contribute in a variety of other capacities.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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The archetype kinda depends, if you already have enough characters to chose your adventures based on the description, some do seem to have a higher chance to meet undead (anything with the word tomb in the description).
EDIT: I think most of the evergreen scenarios have a chance, to included undead, but your GM (or his dice) might decide against using them (even with an undead hunter in the party) since it teaching a couple of lessions early isn't a terrible idea.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Hamburg
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Well, the evergreen scenarios don't have many undead.
One scenario has not a single undead, one has 1 encounter that always has undead, and one has 1 encounter that might have undead.
On the evergreen modules, there are a few that have undead (I don't know about all of them), I know of one that has 1 encounter with undead and one that is about half filled with undead.
So while a character that exclusively hunts undead will often not get any bonus from his abilities in those scenarios, don't let yourself be talked out of it if you really like it. There are lots of non-evergreen scnearios that have undead.
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In my personal experience, Undead used to be common back in Season 0-2, but have actually become rather rare. I made an Anti-Undead Channeler, and very few times have I really gotten to use that ability.
Many times you do fight them, they are sort of polar, either it's mostly trivial or they are the BBEG, and again, just my opinion, it wouldn't be a very good focus to build around. There is one exception, though Archetypes probably will not matter, and that when Undead started to vanish in scenarios, Haunts became rather popular.
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For what it's worth, 3 of the 4 TPKs I've been a part of (as GM or PC) have included undead.
Undead are a great thing to be great at killing.
This exactly.
As long as you are still adequate against non-undead, there will probably be enough times that being awesome against undead will make the party happy that you are around that you'll be satisfied with the specialization.
Your skills might not be needed most of the time, but when they are needed they are *really* needed.
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Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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It might become expensive, but a ranger can still use scrolls/wands of instant enemy if the situation warrants it, the corpse hunter does not give up that many class abilities.
--- just checked the level 5 ability of that archetype and I am pretty surprised to learn, that undead are not immune to ability damage to their mental ability scores.... just against 99% of ways to inflict them.
If you go for the archetype, and even if you do not, get some
[quote=Holy Weapon Balm
Source Advanced Class Guide
Price 30 gp; Weight 1/2 lb.
This violet balm comes in a small ceramic pot. When applied to a weapon as a standard action, it forms a transparent coating. Weapons coated in this balm deal an additional 2d4 points of damage to undead or evil outsiders. A creature affected by the balm must succeed at a DC 10 Reflex save or take an additional 1d4 points of damage the following round. Any non-magical weapon coated with the balm affects incorporeal undead or evil outsiders as if it were a magic weapon. Any magic weapon coated with the balm affects incorporeal undead or evil outsiders as if the weapon had the ghost touch special ability. The balm remains effective until you make a successful attack with the weapon or until 1 minute has passed, whichever is sooner. Each dose of balm can coat one weapon or 10 pieces of ammunition.
Nice to have against those early young shadows..