Editing Dread Necromancer (section)

===Prestige Classes===
You can stick with Dread Necro all the way to 20 without trouble, but before setting course that way, you should decide if you want to actually be a lich, or just make yourself into some other kind of undead thing. There's nothing "bad" about lich by itself, but if you actually plan to play past level 20 into epic shit, you should be aware that lich adds a positively hideous +4 LA on your ECL. That means you lose 4 character levels other folks are getting, and all lich really gives you are slight bonuses to your mental stats, some good defense, and a few offensive options. By contrast, as early as level 3 or 4, you can basically take a level lost and some XP lost to become a necropolitan (Liber Mortis) and get all the fun of being undead without any LA.

(Side note: Necropolitan is one of the least overpowered undead packages you can get: no crazy abilities, no debilitating hunger stuff, you're just a sentient corpse with turn resistance who can actually get healing from rest like a regular person. Note you can't have it both ways with Dread Necro: the mechanic of becoming a lich at level 20 means it overwrites and supercedes your necropolitan template (unless you're playing as a nonhumanoid race). So no self-healing and all that LA. Most optimizers say "fuck being a lich" and go find four levels of something fun to do.)

Past that, there's only a few really great options to take in terms of prestige classes.

The best one to take on top of Dread Necro with nothing extra is Pale Master. Now, you don't get any Rebuke Undead advancement, and you miss some really fun stuff in the upper levels of Dread Necro that may not be worth it to you. But you do get some pretty neat advantages. You get a per-day animate dead that doesn't require material components, which by itself is pretty fucking good; if you plan to have a nice, big undead army, this is the way to do it for free. The other great things are the undead graft, which gives you even more crazy touch-attack stuff to do. Other bonuses you get are darkvision, deathless vigor (nice Fort bonus except against spells that also work on objects), and tough as bone. The best thing here? Deathless master's touch, which allows you to create zombies that aren't subject to your normal cap on the HD of undead minions you can have. Yes, this does in fact mean you can create armies of weaker zombies, put them up somewhere, and then call upon them when needed, backing up your actual decent minions when it's time to go ham on some fuckers. One big disadvantage here is, you don't advance Rebuke Undead at all, so think carefully before doing this one, because you will have to put in all the work of making undead without simply stealing them from other necromancers when you find them (which is a ''delightful'' way to mess with certain BBEGs). With this build, you just go Dread Necro 10 / Pale Master 10, though you could drop Dread Necro to 8 if you want to play with more multiclassing.

Another good option without getting crazy with multiple classes is Fiend-Blooded. It's not as "pure" necromancy as Pale Master, but it's still actually really decent. The 10th-level capstone is worth the loss of spellcasting, because you get a pretty big stat boost along with a few other goodies. Special note here, Fiendish Sorcery is like the regular Advanced Learning you get, except you can add any fire-subtype, enchantment, illusion or necromancy spell. This is fucking great, because it means you can add in a lot more spells you may want for special builds or situations. Want to dip Mindbender for telepathy (and the delicious Mindsight feat from Lords of Madness)? Cool, build Dread Necro 8 / Fiend-Blooded 2 / Mindbender 1, then finish off the rest of Fiend-Blooded and a spare level of Dread Necro or whatever.

If your DM is either retarded enough or likes you enough to let you visit the Hidden Jungle Temple of Couatls before you hit level 11, then you're in for a giant pile of cheese, because this opens up the [[Rainbow Servant]] prestige class. Levels 1-9 of this class aren't terribly impressive; they'll give you some cleric domains and gay rainbow wings, and they'll only advance your Dread Necromancer spellcasting progression by 6 levels. But the capstone ability makes it all worth it: "A 10th-level rainbow servant can learn and cast spells from the cleric list, even if they don’t appear on the lists of any spellcasting class he has." When stacked on top of a bard, sorcerer, wizard, or other fairly conventional arcane caster, it doesn't teach any spells retroactively; the player must continue advancing in their original caster class in order to actually ''learn'' any cleric spells. The Dread Necromancer, however, automatically knows every spell on its class spell list - or, in this case, ''lists'' - so once you hit Rainbow Servant 10, the entire goddamn Cleric spell list just gets dumped straight into your tiny Necromancer brain, allowing you to spontaneously cast from it like a Favored Soul hopped up on methamphetamine and Viagra

(Why do you need cleric spells? First off, they are jam-packed with buffs that turn you from a bad-BAB fuckstain into a walking fucking war-machine; ''divine power'', ''righteous might'', ''magic vestment'', and a few other buffs allow you to turn into a strangely effective stick-jockey. Second, there's several spells in there to turn your ordinary necromancer's lair into a fucking deathtrap that will stop any meddling kids from messing with you. Oh, and also you can use items that the party cleric can, which should make you really fucking popular if shit goes wrong. Christ, you can even ''resurrect'' people, if needed.)

Want to get trickier and more powerful? Of course you do, you filthy bitch.

One of the most powerful builds you can probably do is the Ur-Priest / True Necromancer build. It's pretty disgusting; a DM may not flip the table, but he might chuck a book your way. It works like this: you need to start with a high Wis and Cha, trying to get to 20 in both of them (or at the very least 19, so you can actually cast the spells you get access to). Go Dread Necro 8 (for Undead Mastery), then dip Ur-Priest 2 for 2nd level spells. Now you qualify for True Necromancer, which is basically the super-charged Necromancy Mystic Theurge. You need to take True Necromancer 10 to get your 9th-level cleric spells from Ur-Priest, but don't even fret over that: like Dread Necro, True Necro gets shit every level to make up for any problems you might have had otherwise. You get ''create'' (''greater'') ''undead'' as SLAs, but sadly still need to pay for the components. However, this build fully advances your Rebuke Undead ability (all classes involved get it, so all contribute to it). In addition, True Necro gives you caster level boosts to all your necromancy spells/SLAs and Rebukes, and you even get a ''desecrate'' aura that penalizes turn undead and buffs your own undead with more attack, damage, saves, and hp. While the free ''animate dead'' of Pale Master is spiffy, the only really good undead you will ever create will be from ''create'' (''greater'') ''undead'', so it's a little bit of a moot point.

If you don't care as much about having undead mastery, you can do a Dread Necro 7 / [[Warlock]] 3 / [[Eldritch Theurge]] 10 build. This one is tricky because the invocations you get to shore up your necro abilities. For least invocations, take ''baleful utterance'', ''eldritch spear'', and ''entropic warding''; for lesser invocations, take ''eldritch chain'', ''flee the scene'', and ''walk unseen''; for your greater invocations, get ''chilling tentacles'' and ''vitriolic blast''. The big play here is to use spellblast to drop area spells in your list on target, use eldritch spellweave to put ''vitriolic blast'' on targeted spells (so that they do acid damage and bypass SR), and use greatreach blast to drop ''inflict'' and other touch spells directly on choice targets. Note that fiendish resilience will work on you even if you're undead, so enjoy the increased heal rate, as well as the nice bit of DR you pick up to avoid getting punked down too easily. You shouldn't take ''fell flight''; there are more and better ways to get flight for a Dread Necro.