Best Necromancer class

[Seornep]

Hi all, our play group is going to start an evil themed campaign soon and i am thinking about playing a Necromancer.

What are the best classes/archetypes do you think i should look at?

I've been looking at the Undead Master Wizard Archetype, which is only available to Evil Characters. I think that this one might be the go.

[Ragoz]

A friend of mine built a Thassilonian Specialist of Gluttony Cruoromancer Wizard Dhampir. Your bonus to necromancy caster levels and HD controlled are great. When you aren't raising the dead shooting enervation at people works really well.

[Eltacolibre]

There is a necromancy archetype or options nearly for every spellcasting classes...they all do different things.

Undead Master follows the horde minion path, the usual way people sees necromancer, walking around with horde of undead.

Bone Oracle have the advantage of doing things on the spot and don't have to walk around looking like they are evil cartoon villains or if you specialize in debuffs and the likes.

[Melshyahr]

After long thinking, my conclusion on the best necromancer that focus on minionmancy is an half-elf Bone Oracle with the Ancient Lorekeeper archetype to get the Command Undead spell. At level 1, you have a revelation to summon some skeletons, and by level 4 you start to animate undead. With Paragon surge, you even have a few more tricks than most oracles.

[Louise Bishop]

There is no overall best.

There are classes that excel at certain things better than others.

I tend to favor Magic jar and Debuffs like enervation, fear, blindness more than massive hordes of undead. I still cast animate dead but that is usually after I casted magic jar outside a room and had the Enemies tearing each other apart. I animate the corpses and push them in... reanimating as I go. So lots of HD control is not needed. I also love versility in my spells. So I play a wizard.

As that BEST fits MY NEEDS.

But what best fits your needs may be different.