Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Etiquette_Gnome 01-31-07, 08:46 AM	I have a necromancer up and coming for my game, and while I plan on doing the standard routine to get the most bang for my buck with my minions (equip with high quality armor and weapons), I want to have an idea of what to shoot for. I'm curious as to what would be the best monsters to animate as skeletons or zombies. Their CR is directly related to HD, and only retain the type/subtype, natural attacks, base Strength and Dexterity, & special qualities that improve melee/ranged attacks. Obviously, the better I can find a monster with those kind of statistics, the better off I'll be. I'd like to stick to the core monsters for the time being. Obviously preference would be done in tiers of Hit Dice, so I know which would be the best 1HD skeleton/zombie I could make, the best 3 HD, etc.
hogarth 01-31-07, 09:20 AM	There are a few threads discussing the best undead army; I think PhaedrusXY knows where they are. Generally for combat purposes you're probably better off with one huge monster than a bunch of small ones, but it can be handy to have a bunch of flunkies, too. A few (core only) suggestions: 1 HD: Githzerai (for high-dex archers), orc 2 HD: Sahuagin mutant, skum 3 HD: Hippogriff, yeth hound (can fly) 4 HD: Centaur 5 HD: 5-headed hydra, ogre mage (can fly) 6 HD: 6-headed hydra, nightmare (can fly)
Bonzai 01-31-07, 10:28 AM	As the poster above said, you usually want to go for quality, not quantity. With that in mind, Dragon zombies and skeletons as found in Draconomicon, allow you to bypass the HD limit, and have some zombies that scale some what. However there is an exception to the rule of quantity vs Quality. And that is if you can animate dead for free, like a pale master. This allows you to take a different approach to animating. There are various versions of this trick, but it boils down to Free animating + Corpse Crafter + Destruction Retrobution + fractional hd zombies/skeletons. Take a rat for example, at 1/4 hd. Thats 4 per hd you control, and you control 4hd per caster level. So a wiz 5/palemaster 2 can animate up to 96 rats. Thanks to destruction retrobution, each of those rats can explode for 1d4 damage (save for half). So swarm the enemy with rats, and then toss a fireball on them. Thats 96d4 from the rats, and 6d6 for the fireball. Not bad at all for a 7th lvl character.
LordBOB777 01-31-07, 01:34 PM	Check out Lords of MAdness for some undead making/crafting (i think) feats. They might help you out. EDIT: Its actually Libris Mortis
Soltares 01-31-07, 02:08 PM	Some useful stuff http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=599129 http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=759515 http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=467457
PhaedrusXY 01-31-07, 02:45 PM	HOLY CRAP! The Death Priest and Animate Dead thread got pruned! Edit: So did my Possessor thread... :weep:
forrestfire15 01-31-07, 03:49 PM	if you have access to Polymorph Any Object (even from a scroll), use that to make better corpses. How? use polymorph any object to add templates to the corpse. Example: Corpse was: a dead Ankheg Corpse is now: a dead spellwarped, half-dragon (all types), half-troll, half-celestial, half-fiend, monster of legend Ankheg. Ability score changes Spellwarped: Str. +4, Dex. +2 Half-Dragon (All dragons from Monsters of Faurun, Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, Oriental Adventures, And Draconomicon [38 in all]): Str. +304 Half-Troll: Str. +6, Dex. +2 Half-Celestial: Str. +4, Dex. +2 Half-Fiend: Str. +4, Dex. +4 Moster Of Legend: Str. +10, Dex. +6 In All: Str. +332, Dex. +16 Animate it as a skeleton and its ability scores would be: Str. 353 (modifier: +171) Dex. 26 (modifier: +8) Con. -- Int. -- Wis. 10 Cha. 1 Its Attacks Would Be: Bite +174 Melee (2d6+256)
hogarth 01-31-07, 03:50 PM	HOLY CRAP! The Death Priest and Animate Dead thread got pruned! Edit: So did my Possessor thread... :weep: They're possibly archived somewhere. Finding them might be tricky, though.
neth2 01-31-07, 06:07 PM	fire giants...15HD? and ettins...12HD? are quite nice
hogarth 02-06-07, 01:15 PM	One more comment -- Animate Dead is based on hit dice only, so if you can find templated creatures to animate, so much the better. A 5-headed hydra is nice, but a 5-headed half-dragon hydra is nicer!
hogarth 02-12-07, 01:37 PM	HOLY CRAP! The Death Priest and Animate Dead thread got pruned! Edit: So did my Possessor thread... :weep: If you have a broken link to a thread, you can derive the link for the archived thread, I believe. For instance, the URL to Funny Slaughter's 3.5 Polymorph thread used to be: http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=175846 Now the new archive URL looks like: http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-175846.html
PhaedrusXY 02-12-07, 03:58 PM	Rise from the grave! (http://boards1.wizards.com/wotc_archive/index.php/t-140914) :emp: :evillaugh