True Necromancer Builds?

[Giygas]

The true necromancer is a new class to me. I read about it in the Manuel and it looked VERY fun, but kinda hard to create an effective AND RP friendly build.

I came up with two different concepts for possible builds, but I want some more input and ideas. I have not yet selected feats and such for builds, but rather have general concepts of what they are like RP wise and how they will play out in the game...

Necromantic Master-
A true master of undeath. A  power-hungry dread necromancer who turned to evil gods as a path to greater power, the necromantic master is the ultimate lord of the grave  who can both amass a massive army of undead, and strengthen them with his wicked power.

25 Dread Necromancer/5 Cleric/10 True Necromancer

The ultimate necromancer, the cleric levels are basically ignored for the most part and only used as a gateway into the true necromancer class. They can be of some use though, mainly as minor heals(inflect spells) and boosts for your undead and defenses for yourself. However, the real power lies in the combination of the dread necromancer and true necromancer classes. The dread necro can control a massive amount of undead thanks to his undead mastery feat, the zone of animation feat and spells such as plague of undead. The True Necromancer's zone of desecration in turn powers up your undead army. Combined that with some of the minor cleric buffs and perhaps some corpsecrafter feats, you have a VERY scary undead hoard at your command.

Master of Dark Magics
A power-hungry spellcaster  who has devoted her life to gaining the greatest magical power possible. Gaining her powers  from both the favor of evil  gods and vigorous study the arcane arts, she has become a truly frightening caster capable of casting both the most powerful of divine and arcane spells as well as using her dark magic to bolster her undead minions.

23 Cleric/7 Wizard/10 True Nercomancer

This build is much less a "true necromancer" then the first,  but in turn for giving up some necromantic powers like zone of animation and undead mastery,  this character becomes the ultimate evil caster, capable of casting both 9th level cleric and wizard spells(via scroll learning) In fact, this kind of character, like a normal wizard, has the potential to learn and be able to cast EVERY wizard spell and every cleric spell. Meaning that you have a VERY versatile caster who has power over the undead to boot. Also, a little side note about this build, if you decide you REALLY want zone of animation and undead mastery, then there is a way to do it. Chose Ithlid as your race. The monster bonus to int means you can take less points in it and put them to charisma, and you also get nice charisma and wisdom bonuses of +6, meaning you can essentially do what is impossible for most other races and have three extremely high stats.

The details of said builds are still being worked out,  but if you have any other build ideas, please tell.

[Stratovarius]

Well, the first thing to note is that the DNecro caps out at level 20. It does not have epic levels.

Also, the minions summoned by the True Necro go up in level based upon how strong your TNecro is. And at maximum level, a single TNecro minion can melee a Dracolich to death without spell support, so its well worth advancing the TNecro at the expense of other classes. Combined with mass buffs from the wizard spellcasting, they become almost indestructible.

[Giygas]

Like I said, I do not know much about the true necro, so thanks for the tips. I only just looked at the class, but it seams better then the dread necro, especially since I am not sure if the dread necro can actually use epic spells due to the lack of epic levels and although the dread necro gets more undead, the true necro's undead will always be stronger, so it's more quantity vs.quality I guess. But again thanks, and I now know what my first build will be when I get PRC 3.3 installed.(5 cleric/5 wizard/30 True Necro)

[Stratovarius]

The DNecro can cast epic spells once you reach epic and can cast at least 9th level spells with it.

The True Necro is basically there for the summonable minions, of which you can have 4. They scale quickly in power, and level 14, that first time you get one, makes for a huge step upwards.

[Giygas]

I see, But the Dread Necro can't reach epic levels if it caps off at 20. Unless taking a level in another class even gives you acsses to it, even if that class is at low level and Dnecro is at 20? Or is all you need for epic spellcasting the lore and spellcraft requirements, and thus if you have them as a DNecro, the fact you can't go epic dose not matter because having the said lore and spellcraft requirements is the only things you need for epic spellcasting?

[xwarren]

For epic spellcasting you need 24 lore, 24 spellcraft, and 9th level spells.

[Giygas]

So you don't need to have epic levels to get epic spellcasting, then? Also, could I after reaching 20 in dread necro and becoming a litch, take levels in another class and even if I gained the spellcraft and lore requirements for epic spells and  had ninth level dread necro spells but  was at low levels in the class I was currently taking,  I could still get epic spellcasting, no?

Also, I looked up the PnP True Necro and in PnP it works like the Mystic theauge, leveling up both your arcane and divine spellcasting, yet in the manuel, it said the class only levels your arcane casting. Is that a manuel mistake, or did you change the class? Also, if it dose level both, do you  as a True Necro and Mystic Theauge actually get new cleric spells like in PnP or do game limitations forbid that?(Since clerics don't have to chose spells, they come with their caster lv.)

[xwarren]

Only epic characters can get 24 lore and spellcraft, but you don't need to have epic levels in any class to gain epic spellcasting (if you meet the requirements). ie: wizard 17/warrior 23 can have epic spells, even though he has no epic levels of wizard.

True Necro levels are added to his highest arcane class caster level only (except for the Necromancy feat - when casting a spell from necromancy school all spellcasting classes are added to determine caster level)

Mystic Theurge gains access to higher level spells - only in case of wizard you'll need to buy scrolls to learn new spells.

[Giygas]

Thanks, but in any case, if I took dread necro as my arcane class for True Necro or mystic theauge, since dread necromancers like clerics, know all spells in  a spell level when they reach it, would the True Necro/mystic theauge gain dread necro spells, or dose NWN game programing prevent that?

[Stratovarius]

You'd get spells up till level 20.

[Giygas]

Thanks, I see a little bit of a math error there(since you need 6 levels of DNecro to become a TNecro, it would only take 14 levels to get all DNecro  the spells since you would already have all the spells of a lv.6 dread necro, and 20-6= 14.)  though unless you meant that I get all the spells that a dread necro would get up to 20, because they don't get any new spells after that. However, I am not going to annoy all of you with any more questions as I just remembered I can "cheat level" characters in NWN, so all my questions on getting new spells ect... I can  answer by making a throw away character and cheat leveling them to see what happens upon level up.

Thanks for all the help though, if I do get a Dread Necro/Cleric/True Necro build thats good, I will be sure to post it here and perhaps even on bioware's forum if I feel it's worth doing so(Hey, they already had a PRC only epic build for GOOD GUYS(>.<) ..So why not try and get one up there for the villains?)

[Stratovarius]

Yeah, villains need some love. Evil will triumph because good is dumb.

[Giygas]

Yeah, I already got an idea for a build. It would be a full necromancer for the most part. Using animate dead and create undead spells to summon forth a zombie army while your more powerful True Necro summons add some really nasty threats to your undead army and your zone of desecration powers up your undead horde even further. Also, since dread necro is a charisma based class, between dread necro rebuke, cleric rebuke and True necro rebuke you will have some serious rebuking ability, and that rebuking combined with a naturally high charisma can be put to good use later on by buying one the zone of animation and undead mastery feats to add even more undead to your legions. Like I said, it's basicly a pure necromancer build, but thats what I wanted

Also, dose PrC take away that nasty level cap? My reason for asking is that you have to take 6 dread necro levels to get into true necro, and thus you would end the game with  only 29 TNecro levels due tot he.v.40 cap.However, how much would this underpower the TNecro summons?  Or is the cap moved via PrC?

[Stratovarius]

You'd still hit level 40 and stop. But I think the last level for the TNecro summons is actually 28. It pulses every three levels, and that was the last one that fit. So, you *should* only need 28 levels of TNecro to get the uber-summons.