Evil Overlord

[ksbsnowowl]

Dunno how well this would fit what you want, but Spell Weavers (MM2) are interesting.  Throw Lolth-touched on it to give it respectable hit points.  A Lolth-Touched Spell Weaver is a 10 HD, CR 11 creature that casts as a 12th level sorcerer.  Every 3 HD that you add increases its CR by +1, but gives it 3 additional levels of sorcerer casting.

It also has that nice ability to cast multiple spells at once (six levels of spells total at one time).  For even a low-optimization attack, it can cast six magic missiles at once, getting 30d4+30 damage, automagically.

Won't really engage the PC's in conversation, though.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

Fiend of Posession, dip thrallherd, possess your thrall.  When the party kills the 'boss' it was just your thrall....
 they might be mad if the thralls weapon has obvious weapon enhancements that disappear when they pick up the loot

[phaedrusxy]

@Abusing the CR system: I dunno, that just seems wrong. Like StP Favored Discipline(Magic)-level nasty. ESPECIALLY the Adept, as once the CR went up one, it'd get epic spells.

Dread Necromancer with the Mother Cyst feat.  The good guys may be prepared to deal with his massive undead army, but can they handle his living minions that could be almost anyone or anything?  Necrotic Tumor is a ridiculously amazing spell.

Hm. I'd been throwing this around, but the simple DC15 Sense Motive check makes this problematic. Does a level 10 Kalashtar qualify for Thrallherd?

On a side note, Magic Jar; Is it possible to make the swap permanent, like it is for regular Mind Switch?

Yes. There is a spell called Imprison Possessor, from the Book of Vile Darkness. It's made for trapping fiends with the possession ability, but nothing says you can't use it on yourself... I'm the one playing the Stranger with the Burning Eyes in SirP's game, but I've made a lot of different versions of that character over the years, many of them long before I discovered that PrC.

That class is also originally from Frank and K's excellent "Tome" series, some of the best homebrew around, IMO.

[Mooncrow]

Wouldn't work. They'd still be entitled to the pathetically easy check.

Unless there's an errata I'm unaware of,  Necrotic Tumor is not a dominate effect so the Sense Motive DC should be 25.

[Cyclone Joker]

Wouldn't work. They'd still be entitled to the pathetically easy check.

Unless there's an errata I'm unaware of,  Necrotic Tumor is not a dominate effect so the Sense Motive DC should be 25.

Oh, wow, you're right. Actually, strictly speaking, Necrotic Tumor is neither Enchantment nor Mind-Affecting, and so doesn't actually allow any Sense Motive check. I had misremembered it as being just a permanent Dominate effect. Very nice catch.

[ksbsnowowl]

On a side note, Magic Jar; Is it possible to make the swap permanent, like it is for regular Mind Switch?

Yes. There is a spell called Imprison Possessor, from the Book of Vile Darkness. It's made for trapping fiends with the possession ability, but nothing says you can't use it on yourself...

Very nice...

Any way to easily keep your original body in range? (keeping the jar in range shouldn't be a problem)  Just in case of dispelling.

[sirpercival]

Shrink Item + Permanency

[ksbsnowowl]

I suppose your "corpse" would count as an object at that point...

[sirpercival]

Here's a question -- can you still shrink your body once you reinhabit it?

[Cyclone Joker]

Okay, I've ran into a small problem. In most places in my setting, even the most benign necromancy is almost universally considered morally questionable at best. This is pretty ingrained into the setting, and would be quite difficult to remove. For most villains, this isn't a problem, this one is has to deal with other nations and people, so such a blatant example as hordes of the shambling dead are going to be problematic. Invasions by most of the civilized nations in the local setting does tend to cause problems. Subtler necromancy is fine, but

So, is there a different way to get similar power and levels of sheer awesome via mind control, golems, summons(Temporarily summoned demons are much more discrete than hordes of undead), or so on? I'm currently looking at an artificer to make golems, and go all Batman in combat, but that seems kinda... plain. Same with the commoner build I've been looking at. Boring to the more metagamy players. I can make the necro-dude work, but it'd be difficult, and I'd rather, if possible, use a more setting-compatible build.

[Mooncrow]

Hrm, there aren't a whole lot of non-necromantic choices for going the "horde of minions" way.  Thrallherd with an artificer cohort, maybe? 

[sirpercival]

Well, the necrosinger's minions aren't visibly undead.  They're not shambling hordes, or whatever.  But they are detectable, so I dunno how much that matters.  They also retain their alignment, so Pallys can't detect them.

[Cyclone Joker]

Well, the not breathing, the blood pooling, the not healing, the potential gaping wounds, disfigurement, or horrid burns, and the possibility of rot, depending on how the undeath exactly works, would be somewhat hard to miss.

How good are effigies, or the Effigy Master PrC?

[sirpercival]

Well, the not breathing, the blood pooling, the not healing, the potential gaping wounds, disfigurement, or horrid burns, and the possibility of rot, depending on how the undeath exactly works, would be somewhat hard to miss.

Details...   Seriously, mundane disguises.  True seeing don't help with that.  But I do see your point.

[Cyclone Joker]

Well, the not breathing, the blood pooling, the not healing, the potential gaping wounds, disfigurement, or horrid burns, and the possibility of rot, depending on how the undeath exactly works, would be somewhat hard to miss.

Details...   Seriously, mundane disguises.  True seeing don't help with that.  But I do see your point.

Yeah, I'm having trouble seeing a mundane disguise covering a gaping hole in the chest, much less death by "Oh, god it BURNS!"

So, I think I'm going to go with effigies(Either Effigy Master or Artificer, I think) for now, since I've haven't thrown many enemies like that at them. I am quite leery of throwing Ikea Tarrasques at them, though, so I want to avoid most templated monstrosities. This leads to two questions; What base or single template monsters are the most absurdly under-CRed for their statline and attacks with low(Under 15) HD, ignoring special abilities and so on, and how many good effigies would it take to destroy a small kingdom? So far, Firbolgs stand out, as do knell beetles, but that's all I got.

Also, are Elder Eidolons enough better than effigies to merit the price increase?

[phaedrusxy]

1) Be a Thrallherd
2) Have all of your followers be warforged
3) Refluff as having created them, rather than them just joining you
4) Kill them, and animate them as zombies (or use the Necrosinger trick) via a Thrall (or do it yourself, if you can manage to do both this and be a Thrallherd)

How can you tell if a warforged zombie is undead, or just a mindless construct?

[Cyclone Joker]

1) Be a Thrallherd
2) Have all of your followers be warforged
3) Refluff as having created them, rather than them just joining you
4) Kill them, and animate them as zombies (or use the Necrosinger trick) via a Thrall (or do it yourself, if you can manage to do both this and be a Thrallherd)

How can you tell if a warforged zombie is undead, or just a mindless construct?

Detect undead? Or a relatively easy Knowledge(Arcana, Engineering, or Religion) check? Or Contact Other Plane?

[phaedrusxy]

1) Be a Thrallherd
2) Have all of your followers be warforged
3) Refluff as having created them, rather than them just joining you
4) Kill them, and animate them as zombies (or use the Necrosinger trick) via a Thrall (or do it yourself, if you can manage to do both this and be a Thrallherd)

How can you tell if a warforged zombie is undead, or just a mindless construct?

Detect undead? Or a relatively easy Knowledge(Arcana, Engineering, or Religion) check? Or Contact Other Plane?

OK, so it sounds like you're really, really opposed to using undead, even though this is supposed to be for a BBEG. So I'm going to just reply once, and then drop it.

Detect undead? Or a relatively easy Knowledge(Arcana, Engineering, or Religion) check?

Can be countered by  Bluff checks ("Oh no, they're not undead! They're just constructs that happen to be powered by negative energy. During our research, we found that using negative energy instead of elemental power... blah blah blah.")

Contact Other Plane?

Will that hold up in court? It's still going to be (the PC's?) word against his.

So I think it is totally believable that a BBEG using this "trick" could have an undead army right in everyone's face, if his PR was good enough, and have most people not believe it. The PCs will probably catch on quickly, but what are they going to do about it? If the BBEG is really popular, most people will be very resistant to believing that he's actually using undead. And if they start making a stink, he'll probably try to "take care" of them.

He will also have some warforged thralls/believers that are actually still alive. So he can bring them out as "proof" that his minions aren't undead when needed, and make sure to hide all the zombies during such times...

Sounds like good adventure hooks to me.

[darqueseid]

 think getting down the motivation for your evil is more important honestly. 

Are your characters in a particular city?  do they have a home base that could be infiltrated? 

I had an idea for a hjengeyokai sparrow thrallherd in a cage.  The sparrow is the one with all the power, and his thrall just carries him around everywhere.  They infiltrate your city and quickly begin taking over.  whats cool about the idea is that if the party kills the thrall, they haven't killed the true evil. 

Remember that the thrall and followers, aren't the only thing the Thrallherd gets, there is improved Psionic dominate at 10th level which should be more than enough to use to capture a city. 
lets say they move in, and anyone who meets the sparrow becomes an ally, so they start dominating people and getting followers promoted in the ranks of different organizations of the town.  then when dominate wears off they re-domnate the power-brokers and rinse/repeat.  Anyone they can't dominate they kill.

you see what evil powers want is usually more power,  in a woodland campaign the thrallherd doesn't make sense.  maybe you want to look at an evil druid and go with evil animals ;-)  But the point is, Evil masterminds should always be interested in expanding their power. 

Thrallherd is probably the most powerful choice, if your not thinking undead hordes.  Undead, while fun doesn't seem like the best option for what you want to do-sure, its pure evil and all, but Dominating living people is still pretty evil.  The main reason I say don't go undead, is that you can't easily infiltrate and gradually take things over.  Cities will always just fight against the hordes of undead, but they can't fight against a creature that dominates them from within

[ariasderros]

OK, so it sounds like you're really, really opposed to using undead, even though this is supposed to be for a BBEG. So I'm going to just reply once, and then drop it.

It sounds like you really, really, like the idea of Necron BBEG's.