Making a 3.5 arcane caster. Looking for some input.

[Odessa333]

Hi all!

Thanks for stopping in. I'm making my second ever 3.5 character (perhaps ironically, 3rd /3.5 is the edition I've played the least). The party has a fighter, ranger, druid, myself, and possibly one more. I'm thinking a wizard-y type would be useful, and specifically I'm looking into the 3.5 'exclusive' stuff like Dread Necromancers. My first 3.5 character idea had been a sorcerer focusing on illusions, until the board here informed me of beguilers. I'm having a lot of fun with the beguiler, as it's a great change of pace from the my typical 5E group. A dread necromancer is my first thought, though I'm wondering what else is out there that I don't know about, if that makes sense. Any suggestions would be welcome. Thank you for your time!

[Nifft]

Is this an Evil campaign? DN is fun in an Evil campaign, but somewhat limited in a "normal" PG-13 game where you're not supposed to raise your own army of undead abominations.


In terms of an experience you can't have in 5e, I'd recommend a vanilla 3.5e Conjurer, or an Archivist (from Heroes of Horror), or an Artificer (from the Eberron Campaign Setting).

Wizards do exist in 5e, but they play very differently, and the 5e version is significantly reduced in terms of overall game-wrecking power.

[weckar]

DN can do just fine raising the legions of the grave in a non Evil campaign. You don't even have to be an Evil character in a 'normal' campaign.

The main question I would ask is: What will the druid be doing? Druids have one of their major strengths being summoning, and you don't want to step on that as a DN. If they just want to go nuts wildshaping, though, you should be fine.

[Odessa333]

The DM is keeping the game's theme close to his chest for now, only saying it's about 'chaos.' He did approve of Dread necromancer, so....maybe evil? lol. The druid said he is taking a focus in conjuring, yet was also the one who suggest the DN to 'swarm ALL the things.'

I don't recall seeing archivist or artificer. I'll look into those now :)

[Eldariel]

The DM is keeping the game's theme close to his chest for now, only saying it's about 'chaos.' He did approve of Dread necromancer, so....maybe evil? lol. The druid said he is taking a focus in conjuring, yet was also the one who suggest the DN to 'swarm ALL the things.'

I don't recall seeing archivist or artificer. I'll look into those now :)

Archivist is basically a divine Wizard of sorts with a cool ability called "Dark Knowledge" to use your Knowledge-checks to mess up people, while Artificer is the item crafter with its own list of Infusions that can do some really cool stuff, while being able to access basically all the other spell lists with magic items of various kinds. And of course make golems and homunculi and such.

But yes, Wizard is not a Wizard by any other name; 3.5 Wizard is something special so trying that might be fun. However, it's also rather book keeping heavy (much like Archivist and Artificer) so that would involve jumping into the deep end of starting to read up on all the spells in the system, since all those classes are all about using vast amounts of spells known. However, it can be incredibly rewarding and the knowledge carries over to the other classes just as well. Thus...if you're ready for the plunge, go for one of the three.

If not, Dread Necromancer is a fine class and much simpler to boot. It has a fixed list and it does its thing well. It's not as versatile and deep as the big casters but it's very good within its specialisation.

[Noldoran]

If you haven't decided on a race yet, there are two LA +0 races with net positive ability scores including INT: Lesser Axani and Lesser Cansin. (Races from Dragon #297, lesser variant from PGtF.) They are planetouched corresponding to law and chaos, respectively.

The first gives +2 Int/Wis, and the other gives +2 Int/Cha. Both also give an SLA, some skills, and some resistances. The former is particularly useful to an archivist, because their spellcasting relies on both attributes.

For a class, a domain wizard might be nice. It essentially grants an arcane domain that grants you a predetermined extra spell each level. However, if you're looking into necromancy, a dread necromancer is the way to go.