Necropolitan vs +1 LA Bone Creature vs Other Undead Templates

[danskjavel]

I am building a necromancer as a backup character or a character for an up coming campaign. After looking through all of the options I feel like there are two options that I prefer to the others. Those are Necropolitan, the classic, and Bone Creature, from BoVD which my DM has placed at +1 LA.

The Necropolitan has the advantage that there is never any LA to deal with but you do have to survive to third level to become undead. Surviving till level 3 is the problem I have with this option as knowing I will become undead makes me want to severely dump Con as any points put there are lost at level 3 and therefore not put to good use. It is a simpler solution but it does not maximize the benefits of being undead by not starting off undead. Necropolitans do heal as living creatures when resting, a nice bonus, and have +2 turn resistance and profane bonus against control undead.

The Bone Creature option is great. Often times, the starting gold of the character classes I am looking at affords me a cast of Fell Energy Desecrate as my starting equipment allowing for 1d12+6 HP per level. It also gives a +4 bonus to dexterity, not something I would go out of my way to get but certainly not a drawback. Cold Immunity as well as halving damage from piercing and slashing is great. It also grants some candy such as natural attacks and a natural armor bonus. They are not any less susceptible to undead control, a definite drawback, but can be circumvented completely by taking the feat Human Heritage (and perhaps trying to argue with the DM to allow me to apply it before the template).

There are, of course, other options and the best include, from what I have read, Gravetouched Ghoul, Ghost (at +3 LA since we are using LA-assignment archives for this campaign), and Mummified Creature (+2 LA, also from LA-assignment archives). All of these have the same tricks available as a Bone Creature but have more LA.

If you were presented with these options for your Dread Necromancer or Death Master character, which would you choose? Or do you have any better alternatives (we are using the LA-assignment archives for this campaign)?

[Silva Stormrage]

Bone creature has a significant advantage over Necropolitain which is a bit hidden. It is animated via a spell (Create Undead) and thus can benefit from Corpse Crafter and similar feats.

If you are animated via a Dread Necromancer with Corpse Crafter in an area of Desecrate that is a sizeable bonus to HP and other stats even without assuming the necromancer has things like Nimble Bones and such. Since Necropoltian is animated in a ritual you don't get corpsecrafter benefits.

If you are using LA Buyoff the Bone Creature becomes even better as +1 LA is much easier to buy off.