The Undead Lord (3.5 Villain Class, PEACH)

[Jormengand]

Spoiler: Preamble

Show

So, the great necromancer Wossname has decided to invade the kingdom of Somewhere with his army of spooky skeletons! The king of Somewhere, King Dom, has sent you to protect the kingdom against these skeletons!

The trouble with this scenario, at least in D&D 3.5, is that Wossname can't actually control that many undedad. Let's say he's a level 20 cleric, with the domain that allows you to control an extra hit die of undead per level, and the rod that doubles the number of hit dice you can control, Wossname is controlling 200 hit dice of undead, plus 20 more that he can command using rebuke undead. Fine, cool, but... 220 hit dice of undead isn't going to threaten a kingdom. The average kingdom probably has tens of thousands of hit dice of creatures at the very least, and some of those hit dice will also be caster levels. Sure, he can throw some pretty big, mean and nasty stuff, but Dom's royal guards can probably take on the entire invasion force on their own, let alone involving his legions of foot soldiers in the proceedings.

In fact, it would be far more effective if Wossname gave up and used Storm of Vengeance to destroy an entire town at once, or cast control weather in spring and watched as tornadoes sprung up within two miles of him. Or used a fire storm to incinerate forty random places within a 300 foot sphere, basically enough to burn down most cities because no-one will be able to stop him. Terrorising the kingdom with undead isn't worth it.

On a smaller scale, you get the "Budding necromancers have been raising skeletons in the graveyard south of here, please go and put a stop to them!" kind of quest. Suppose these necromancers are, say, third level clerics, which sounds about right for a budding necromancer... well, then, they have a problem, because they can't actually raise any undead. Oops.

So, let's solve both of those.

Level	BAB	Fort	Ref	Will	Special	Animate Dead	Create Undead	Create Greater Undead
1st	+0	+2	+0	+2	Animate Dead, Rebuke Undead	1/day	-	-
2nd	+1	+3	+0	+3	Corpsecrafter	2/day	-	-
3rd	+1	+3	+1	+3	Command Limit x2	3/day	-	-
4th	+2	+4	+1	+4	Bonus Corpsecrafter Feats	4/day	-	-
5th	+2	+4	+1	+4	Command Limit x4	5/day	-	-
6th	+3	+5	+2	+5	Bonus Corpsecrafter Feats	6/day	-	-
7th	+3	+5	+2	+5	Command Limit x8	7/day	-	-
8th	+4	+6	+2	+6	Create Undead	8/day	1/day	-
9th	+4	+6	+3	+6	Command Limit x16	9/day	1/day	-
10th	+5	+7	+3	+7	Create Ghasts	10/day	2/day	-
11th	+5	+7	+3	+7	Command Limit x32	11/day	2/day	-
12th	+6/+1	+8	+4	+8	Create Greater Undead	12/day	3/day	1/day
13th	+6/+1	+8	+4	+8	Command Limit x64	13/day	3/day	1/day
14th	+7/+2	+9	+4	+9	Create Mummies, Mohrgs, and Wraiths	14/day	4/day	1/day
15th	+7/+2	+9	+5	+9	Command Limit x128	15/day	4/day	2/day
16th	+8/+3	+10	+5	+10	Create Spectres	16/day	5/day	2/day
17th	+8/+3	+10	+5	+10	Command Limit x256	17/day	5/day	2/day
18th	+9/+4	+11	+6	+11	Create Devourers	18/day	6/day	3/day
19th	+9/+4	+11	+6	+11	Command Limit x512	19/day	6/day	3/day
20th	+10/+5	+12	+6	+12	Endless Ranks of the Dead	20/day	7/day	3/day

Alignment: Any Chaotic or any Evil or True Neutral
Hit Die: 1d6

Class Skills:
The class skills of the undead lord (and the key ability for each skill) are Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Disguise (Cha), Hide (Dex), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (Arcana) (Int), Knowledge (Religion) (Int), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), and Spellcraft (Int)
Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + Int modifier) × 4
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier

Weapon and Armour Proficiency
The undead lord is proficient in no kind of weapon or armour.

Animate Dead (Sp)
The undead lord can cast Animate Dead once per day per level as a spell-like ability. Every second level after first, the undead lord can control twice as many undead.

Rebuke undead (Su)
The undead lord can rebuke undead as a cleric of double his level. Every second level after first, the undead lord can control twice as many undead.

Corpsecrafter
At second level, the undead lord gains Corpsecrafter as a bonus feat. At each one of fourth and sixth level, the undead lord chooses two additional feats with Corpsecrafter as a prerequisites as bonus feats.

Create Undead (Sp)
From 8th level, the undead lord can cast Create Undead once per day, plus once more per day per two levels after eighth, as a spell-like ability. He can raise certain undead early, at the levels given on the table. He can control the undead created in this way using his animate dead pool.

Create Greater Undead (Sp)
From 12th level, the undead lord can cast Create Greater Undead once per day, plus once more per day per three levels after twelfth, as a spell-like ability. He can raise certain undead early, at the levels given on the table.

Endless Ranks of the Dead (Su)
From 20th level, the undead lord's undead are without number, and there is truly no limit to the number of undead he may control at once.

[ImperatorV]

...Seems excellent at what it's intended for.

It can't create some of the more unique types undead out there, but the double rebuking level means it can always get them somewhere else. The main issue I see is it'd have trouble commanding so many undead at once - at higher levels it probably couldn't even keep track of where they all are at a given time - but since when do villain necromancers care about fine control? On the other hand conquering a kingdom without being able to delegate would be hard.

Possible additions:

Being able to have X many awakened undead lieutenants that can give orders to your minions when you're busy somewhere else.

Ability to apply an undead template to oneself? Or some undead immunities. Unless the class was just intended to command undead and not become one, although IMO any necromancer worth his salt has some kind of plan for immortality. Maybe just put in a line that they can qualify for craft wondrous item for the purposes of lichdom.

[Jormengand]

Undead lieutenants shouldn't be a problem, given that you can just stick any of your created/greater created undead (which are all intelligent, if not necessarily very intelligent - some more, some less than an average human) and telling your skeletons and zombies to "Do what that dude says!" before giving the guy who actually has an intelligence score some more complex instructions. And I don't see a necromancer as having to, or even wanting to, become undead themselves. I see necromancers as having a redcloak-esque view of undead, treating them as tools rather than wanting to become one.

[~Corvus~]

How are you dealing with Wealth mechanics regardinf Animate Dead? Otherwise, this guy needs to have a kingdom's wealth of Onyx or have a good portion of his horde as undead Miners.

How does this guy kill things to generate his bodies? I expect if a cleric team came and wiped out his dudes, how does he generate those few initial kills before 7th level?

Perhaps a means of Draining others like the Inflict line could help, with say Fell Animate attached for free?

[Jormengand]

Spell-like a abilities have no components. He doesn't need any onyx in the slightest.

Most necromancer start-ups involve messing around at the local graveyard. People die a lot with or without your help, after all.

The undead lord isn't really meant to be able to fight personally. At best, he hits people over the back of the head with a greatsword (why not a greatsword, after all, given that he's not proficient in anything at all?) and then animates them, but really, what he does is the typical sneaking into a graveyard and digging up a few bodies, which is why he has some decent stealth and social ability scores (being non-ability-dependent helps, so you can sink points in DEX and CHA without having to feel bad about it).

[~Corvus~]

Whats the logic around Any alignment? Isnt it supposed to be at least non-good? I have a hard time seeing a corpsecrafter of Pelor.

[Jormengand]

Being LG doesn't mean that you have to be of Pelor, though I'll admit I left the default alignment in. I'll go change it.