Undead Lord: Help my daughter survive!

[That Darn Rogue]

So, I am playing an Undead Lord. The Undead Lord has this cool class ability:

"With a ritual requiring 8 hours, an undead lord can animate a single skeleton or zombie whose Hit Dice do not exceed her cleric level. This corpse companion automatically follows her commands and does not need to be controlled by her. She cannot have more than one corpse companion at a time. It does not count against the number of Hit Dice of undead controlled by other methods. She can use this ability to create a variant skeleton such as a bloody or burning skeleton, but its Hit Dice cannot exceed half her cleric level. She can dismiss her companion as a standard action, which destroys it."

My GM graciously allowed me to begin the game with the reanimated corpse of young daughter.

Now, the class ability obviously assumes you will me discarding your corpse companion periodically for better ones, but I obviously don't intend to just throw away my daughter (or...set her on fire...), and she ain't getting any stronger.

Now, I don't want her to be very combat proficient--just reasonably durable. My GM said she'd be down for this, but I have to give her ideas for progression.

Probably the best suggestion i've heard is from my buddy--Just treat her as a familiar.

Any other suggestions?

[David knott 242]

How about repeating the ritual each time you gain a level, with the new ritual resulting in your corpse companion gaining enough hit dice to equal your cleric level?

You would basically be giving up the ability to acquire larger corpse companions to reliably keep the same one around at all levels.

[That Darn Rogue]

That would probably be good enough--certainly better than current. But what about saves?
Maybe use the cleric's save progression?

[David knott 242]

Undead already have good Will saves.

[Dasrak]

Given your concept you are definitely way better off exchanging the corpse companion for an equivalent undead familiar. The corpse companion is very much a disposable minion with the life expectancy of tissue paper; it is highly unlikely to survive more than 2-3 rounds if brought into a combat situation (this is actually a major problem with the archetype, as 8 hours of downtime is just way too long to create a corpse companion given how incredibly fragile they are). Trading it off to use the familiar rules would be a lot easier on you and better suit the concept you're going for. See if your GM will go for it.

[Chris Mortika]

To the OP, referring to just the title of the thread: too late.