Can Necrocarnum Zombies be worth it?

[Smokey_the_bear]

I've got two 21HD Necrocarnum Zombies to work with but nothing really seams worth it since they loose all Special Attacks and all Special Qualities. Playing in a relatively tame 21st level game and I was wondering if it's worth it to be wasting my time scouring through the MMs or if I should just drop even trying to make them useful at this level. Your thoughts BG?

[Negative Zero]

Dread Linnorm from MM2 seems like a pretty solid choice. Or a Titan.

[archangel.arcanis]

As in all things lvl 21+ Epic spellcasting.

I would personally make a new spell to use to animate them without the stupid obsidian cost and with them retaining a more reasonable amount of abilities. That way you now have a spell for animation purposes that is custom fit to the power level of your game. Remember mitigating factors are your friend.

[Negative Zero]

I don't know Incarnum very well, but I'm pretty sure that telling an Incarnum user to just make an epic spell doing X is about the same as telling a Warblade to do it.

[Operation Shoestring]

I've got two 21HD Necrocarnum Zombies to work with but nothing really seams worth it since they loose all Special Attacks and all Special Qualities. Playing in a relatively tame 21st level game and I was wondering if it's worth it to be wasting my time scouring through the MMs or if I should just drop even trying to make them useful at this level. Your thoughts BG?

They lose all of them?  I know regular zombies keep breath weapons, at least.... (9-headed Cryohydra?)

[Negative Zero]

Why not twelve-headed? That was my first thought, but I figure that 12 HD Hydrae might not be competitive at level 21.

[Operation Shoestring]

Why not twelve-headed? That was my first thought, but I figure that 12 HD Hydrae might not be competitive at level 21.

Don't zombies' double HD?  So 10-headed would be 20 HD already.

[Negative Zero]

Oh, is that so? My fault, then.

[Smokey_the_bear]

I've got two 21HD Necrocarnum Zombies to work with but nothing really seams worth it since they loose all Special Attacks and all Special Qualities. Playing in a relatively tame 21st level game and I was wondering if it's worth it to be wasting my time scouring through the MMs or if I should just drop even trying to make them useful at this level. Your thoughts BG?

They lose all of them?  I know regular zombies keep breath weapons, at least.... (9-headed Cryohydra?)

I'll check the draconomicon. But it says all of them. I think I might go with the Dread Linnorm. Two of them walking around with me isn't too shabby 

EDIT: All of the entries in the draconomicon are based off of using the animate dead spell which I am not. Does that mean it really would lose everything?

[Negative Zero]

Special Attacks: A necrocarnum zombie loses all the special attacks of the base creature.
Special Qualities: A necrocarnum zombie loses all the special qualities of the base creature, and it gains the follow-ing special qualities.

Sorry, but that's the specific rule.

[Smokey_the_bear]

Special Attacks: A necrocarnum zombie loses all the special attacks of the base creature.
Special Qualities: A necrocarnum zombie loses all the special qualities of the base creature, and it gains the follow-ing special qualities.

Sorry, but that's the specific rule.

I figured. Wishful thinking otherwise I suppose.

[Negative Zero]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

[Smokey_the_bear]

It's actually not that bad now that I think about it. It's BaB is higher than a dragons zombies and its natural armor doesn't get cut in half

EDIT: Well, he gets +11 NA which totals to a 48. 31 base, +2 from the dex increase, and up to another +4 from incarnum defense so that's not bad. He keeps all of his feats and skill points. Now that I've taken a closer look, this isn't too shabby.

[bearsarebrown]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

Strangely... it doesn't lose intelligence. And it keeps all monster HD.

So, it keeps all it's feats!

[Negative Zero]

Oh. That's odd. Well, at least it has that. Still, sort of annoying that you can't awaken them to get their Ex racial abilities back.

[BowenSilverclaw]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

Strangely... it doesn't lose intelligence. And it keeps all monster HD.

So, it keeps all it's feats!

Time for some Psychic Reformation

[bearsarebrown]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

Strangely... it doesn't lose intelligence. And it keeps all monster HD.

So, it keeps all it's feats!

Time for some Psychic Reformation

I've been looking at this for the PbP game. Psychic Reformation is Mind Affecting. You'd need to cast it BEFORE you kill the creature. Meaning, you need to Dominate it, then Reform it.

[PhaedrusXY]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

Strangely... it doesn't lose intelligence. And it keeps all monster HD.

So, it keeps all it's feats!

Time for some Psychic Reformation

I've been looking at this for the PbP game. Psychic Reformation is Mind Affecting. You'd need to cast it BEFORE you kill the creature. Meaning, you need to Dominate it, then Reform it.

You can use Polymorph shenanigans to get around that (I've done it with psicrystals...), but it might be difficult polymorphing it, also. You'd have to use some item that it can use on itself.

[Sinfire Titan]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

Strangely... it doesn't lose intelligence. And it keeps all monster HD.

So, it keeps all it's feats!

Time for some Psychic Reformation

I've been looking at this for the PbP game. Psychic Reformation is Mind Affecting. You'd need to cast it BEFORE you kill the creature. Meaning, you need to Dominate it, then Reform it.

You can use Polymorph shenanigans to get around that (I've done it with psicrystals...), but it might be difficult polymorphing it, also. You'd have to use some item that it can use on itself.

An item in the Draconomicon can turn them into a Dragon for 1 hour/day, so it should be able to work for this purpose.

[BowenSilverclaw]

You could always Awaken it. Awaken Undead is from Spell Compendium.

Strangely... it doesn't lose intelligence. And it keeps all monster HD.

So, it keeps all it's feats!

Time for some Psychic Reformation

I've been looking at this for the PbP game. Psychic Reformation is Mind Affecting. You'd need to cast it BEFORE you kill the creature. Meaning, you need to Dominate it, then Reform it.

You can use Polymorph shenanigans to get around that (I've done it with psicrystals...), but it might be difficult polymorphing it, also. You'd have to use some item that it can use on itself.

Get a Scroll of Teleport and pay a Psion for the Psychic Reformations? Those aren't THAT expensive...