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This is more aimed at NPC'S rather than PCs but I have a hatred for "rules don't apply" when it comes to NPCs if they can do it players should be able to do it (and vice versa)
I'm dabbling with ye old undead army for a lich and I'm tossing up with 3 options so I figured I'd post it here for feedback on what people think of them.
Option 1
Allow Leadership to increase control undead on a 1 for 1 basis. That is if you have leadership allowing 7 1st level and 1 cohort you can control 7 additional undead. The cohort can be a specially created undead with class levels as your personal bodyguard/assassin.
Option 2
No limits on undead you can create/control.
Option 3
You can give complex commands to undead equal to the number you can in core but you can give simple ones to any number e.g. attack/stay/guard. So you can create 15 skeletons and tell them to "guard" an object but they'll act like mindless undead just charging to attack anyone else approaching it. They won't for example protect the 4 archers or think they're being lured off just guard and act as per the description for uncontrolled ones.
I can see pros and cons for each my personal inclination is for 3 and maybe 1 if combined with 3. It would allow for an actual army even if its tactics are just attack and they could be dealt with using proper flanking and other options but a necromancer could have a larger elite guard and even say a graveknight or slayer (class) as their finest creation.
So thoughts good/bad/suggestions?
Necromancers typically have 3 buckets that they can put undead in, and that's Animate Dead: 4HD/CL, Command Undead (Feat) 1HD/CL, and Command Undead (Spell) "unlimited" HD.
Animate Dead and Command Undead (Feat) have decent sized buckets that can be boosted via CL-increasing items/feats, but they are quite limited, but Extended Command Undead is not limited. It has no HD cap, and can be casted hundreds of times in only a matter of a couple weeks.
The spell Command Undead is 1day/level, and this can be increased to 2days/level with Extend Spell MM, and increased again to 3days/level with the Undead Master feat. So basically the amount of Undead you can control with this is only theoretically limited by how many Extended Command Undead spells you can prepare each day and the likelihood that these Extended Command Undead spells can be resisted by the undead in question. In theory, you could prepare every single spell slot as Extended Command Undead with the Heightened MM feat to ensure minimum (or zero) resists.
For example, level 6-7 is about the first time you could have both Undead Master & Extended Spell online (a wizard necromancer could do it by level 5 though), so that's 3days/level = 21 days of control for a particular undead. Likewise, level 15 would be 3days/level = 45 days of control. If you're preparing multiple Extended Command Undead per day, then that's a massive amount of undead you could control before you have to start your "juggling" act of casting Extended Command Undead on the undead who have their spell duration expired, and none of this is limited by HD of the undead.
So, I say unlimited HD with quotations because as the GM, it's explainable to have a veritable horde of Undead due to the Necromancer having a high Extended Command Undead DC and depending on the Necromancers level you could have anywhere from 3 to 7 weeks-worth of casting Extended Command Undead (and possibly pearls of power) prior to the PC's arrival. This can equate to the "hundreds of castings" of Extended Command Undead.
Not only could you Animate Dead to customize your own Undeads, and then purposefully drop them from your Animate Dead bucket so that you can juggle them with Extended Command Undead, but you can also cast Create Undead and then cast Extended Command Undead on them as well. This whole process is very flexible in how you create/enslave undead.
TLDR: If you want to have "unlimited" undead, it's entirely plausible and easily explainable. And you don't need leadership to do it.
Yeah, but that's why its important that whenever you cast Animate Dead, make sure you Desecrate first, then you double the HD you can create with that single casting. This allows you to plug in more templates to your zombie/skellies. You can make some pretty powerful customized zombie/skellies this way. And don't forget that your zombies/skellies get +1 HP per HD when you Animate Dead in a Desecrate.
After adding in all the bonuses from your Caster Level, Undead Master, and Desecrate, you could end up with 100HD worth in a single casting of Animate Dead. This still only produces a ~10HD skelly, but you'd have 90HD worth of templates you can imbue that 10HD skelly with, and it only counts as a 10HD skelly for your Animate Dead bucket. So you could add 90HD worth of Zombie Templates or Skelly Templates to your undead but he still only counts as 10HD in terms of how much you can control in your bucket.
If that 10HD skelly causes you to go past your total HD allowed for Animate Dead, yeah drop him from your control and then cast Command Undead on it, and now you've got a customized skelly/zombie that you can juggle and doesn't count towards your total HD controlled via Animate Dead.
In theory, you only want to keep your really important undead under your Animate Dead bucket so you don't have to make checks against them. Anything you won't mind losing should be juggled with your Command Undead. <--- this is mainly advice for a PC necromancer though. Since you're the GM, you can fudge these rolls as auto-pass.
As far as creating undead, if you want you *could* say that your necromancer used scrolls of Create Greater Undead if you're trying to give him undead that are stronger than what you can create with Create Undead.
As far as your lich, did you have a particular class in mind? Because I would argue that the best class for creating the strongest ye olde undead army is a Juju Oracle. Their Juju Zombies are always created with unrolled maximum health, so they're highly robust. As an added bonus, Juju Oracles' Animate Dead is 6HD per caster level, not 4HD per caster level like everyone else.
The worst part about a Juju Oracle is that they can't get access to Command Undead until level 11, and they can only do this by multiclassing, or PrCing into Agent of the Grave <--- I highly recommend AotG btw.
Go Oracle to lvl 6, AotG to level 11 (and use the AotG5 ability to buy the Wizard spell Command Undead), and then go back to OracleX.
Alternatively, you could go GravewalkerWitch3 (or Wizard3), Juju Oracle4, Mystic Theurge3, AotG5, then back to Mystic Theurge8 til 20. <-- this is a bit of a mess, but if you're going levels 15+ it's worth the mess because you get the largest Undead Zoo this way.
I use leadership for most of my NPC necromancers. I also use it to allow them to gain intelligent minions. Animate Dead and Command Undead(Feat) is used for their equivalent of a levy, but Leadership is what I use for their real army. The undead that are gained through leadership also have more powerful templates. Usually at least Skeletal Champion, but occasionally a tougher template is used. I don’t allow evil PC’s and none of my players are interested so this means it is strictly an NPC thing.
My current campaign is a high level mythic campaign with undead focus. Most of the PC’s are heavily optimized to deal with undead. Using normal skeletons and zombies would be way too easy for the party.
With intelligent minions the necromancer can expand out the number of undead he controls, by having some of the minions being classes that can also command undead. Even a few lower level (4th to 6th) level clerics can expand out the number of undead the lich can control. It also allows the undead to be healed when needed. A skeletal champion cleric is always a good addition to a necromancer’s army.
As a GM you can pretty much do whatever you need. When you are running a high level mythic campaign the standard undead are not much of a challenge. I used the leadership feat to give a lot more undead followers and tougher ones than normal. My party would have decimated standard skeletons so Skeletal Champions were used. They still went through the lower level ones pretty quick, but the skeletal anti-paladins and clerics with the command undead feat where a nasty surprise.
There were actually two armies of undead. The first ones were the ones the necromancer and his minions raised using the normal animate dead and command undead feat. They were just to cause the party to use up resources. After they caused the players to waste spells and channel energy the real army attacked.