How do you play a Necromancer start?

[4Hooves2Appendages]

As the topic name suggests. When starting out as a Necromancer what do you guys do?

I memorised Animate Skeleton. Is it useful? Mostly I kill stuff with Pain, which is pretty powerful.

I tend to have three or so skeletons with me, but in reality they don't do very much. Easy opponents die to Pain, difficult enemies crush the skeletons. The only purpose I see is for buying time when running away. That's nice, but is it really worth it?

Plan is to train Necromancy until I can learn Animate Dead. Is that even sensible? Am I better off training some weapon skill?

Am I generally better off starting as a fighter and then joining Kiku?

What are good ability picks? My plan is to take strength, so that I can comfortably wear heavier armor later.

Any other general tips?

[Sar]

Animate Skeleton is extremely useful. I usually animate everything I can early. Individual skeletons are weak, but en masse they can down some very strong foes. Plus, they can buy you time to escape.
Vamp Draining is very good, you should get it ASAP.
Kiku is good. Corpse delivery + Animate Dead will kill pretty much everything for a solid chunk of the fame.
You don't really need that much Int to cast most Necro spells except maybe for Necronomicon ones (but if you go Kiku you probably want pain weapon). So you can split it between Int and Dex, doesn't matter that much.

[Mulzaro]

Animate skeleton is a good spell because you don't actually lose anything when you cast it. You get an ally AND the chunks. As Sar said, a mass of them is pretty strong, but individually they are quite weak. It's a very good idea to branch into melee quite soon when playing a necromancer: you can defend yourself better this way and get more exp from killing the enemy yourself (instead of your minions doing the job). Animate dead is a nice milestone to go for, especially when choosing Kiku.

When it comes to attributes, the species you play and how you want to build your character play a hefty role. Going Fighter and joining Kiku does work, but you will have less int and a potentially worse spellset when doing that.

[cerebovssquire]

Animate Skeleton is really, really strong for a level 1 spell (and since it scales with the strength of monsters that appear, while most other level 1 spells don't become more useful to the same extent, the disparity between animate skeleton and other level 1 spells becomes larger as the game progresses). Good skeletons tend are hard-hitting (e.g. ogres, iguanas) or fast (e.g. adders); obviously kobolds, hobgoblins and the like aren't much more than cannon fodder.
If you are restricting yourself to about 3 skeletons - there isn't a reason why you wouldn't animate as many skeletons as you can. If you have enough weak skeletons they can still do some damage. In order to get larger groups of skeletons, don't waste skeletons on enemies you can kill easily with other spells.
If you are using skeletons as cannon fodder, that isn't just useful for running away. If, for instance, a strong enemy takes ~5 turns to kill your 3 weak skeletons, if you are positioning yourself well than will translate to several casts of Pain on the enemy during which it isn't even approaching you.

Animate Dead will only take ~8 Necromancy unless you have bad int. You can train almost exclusively Necromancy until then but since regen, animate skeleton, and vampiric draining are all useful spells, you might need some spellcasting as well to get animate dead as soon as possible. I wouldn't train a melee skill beforehand (exceptions like TrNe exist). In most cases, try to improve your defenses rather than instantly switching to melee training after that; don't underestimate 0 skill melee with good weapon types and/or brands.
Animate Dead + Kiku corpse gifts will kill most enemies in the game, it's still a very strong spell without Kiku.

Necromancer is one of the best starts there is. Fighter has become better with the improved starting weapons and potion of might but necromancers are still a lot stronger.

With regards to stats: without knowing which race you are playing, I can't really give specific advice here. Int is generally much more useful for spellcasting characters than Str. Heavy armour isn't required for great AC (take a look at the defenses you can get with mottled dragon armour, for instance, where AC in the high 20s is easy to get).

[4Hooves2Appendages]

You don't really need that much Int to cast most Necro spells except maybe for Necronomicon ones (but if you go Kiku you probably want pain weapon). So you can split it between Int and Dex, doesn't matter that much.

So you don't recommend Str then? My character started with 8, which won't let me wear a FDA while casting I guess. Am I wrong?

[Magipi]

Is there any reason for not telling your character species? Is this some guessing challenge?

[Sar]

Well if you are hell-bent on getting an FDA you can pump a bit of Str, up to eleven-ish I think.
You can also play something like HONe, they start with decent Str IIRC, and get Str naturally on levelups.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Is there any reason for not telling your character species? Is this some guessing challenge?

I was trying to keep it general, but I am playing Ds.

[Hurkyl]

13-14 str. More if you want to wear 11 encumbrance armor before you have a lot of Armour skill. Less if you want to trade spell success for spell power (or EV).

[Moanerette]

As regards your melee option, it's good to hang on and see what good weapons you find. However, if you are rolling with an undead/summoned army then polearms have a definite appeal as you can lurk behind a minion and reach to attack.

[and into]

For stat choices, you aren't going to go wrong if you just put the stats where they will help the most right now, and in the short term. For DsNe that probably means putting your first couple into intelligence, then putting them into dexterity around the time (or just before) you start training dodging. If/when you find a somewhat heavier armor that you'd like to wear, throw some points into strength. If you don't, but you find some higher spells you'd like to cast, put some more into intelligence. If neither of the above, dexterity for more EV. You can adjust this based on what items you find and what mutations you get, as necessary.

Dragon armors seem really cool but really they aren't the end all, be all of armor choices. If FDA works out for this character, great. But it might not be in the cards—oftentimes, it isn't. And piling points into strength when it is not helping you very much, and wouldn't help you nearly as much as int or dex, is just going to gimp your character.