Ha ha! You know what, how awesome would it be to have a high level Cleric that could actually do this? What a fantastic story moment... then he becomes a little sidekick ala the sidekick stuff in Tasha's? Love it.
When you think about it, it’s weird not to apply the sidekick rules to the intelligent undead that you make with Create Undead. They are intelligent creatures with independent thought, maybe just leave the levelling to the DM and reset the level of any minion that dies. You could get interesting stories, like one of your wights is becoming more intelligent and ambitious, so it’s constantly trying to twist your orders to get free from your control.
@@cyborgcatrj6794 In Guild Wars 2 there is a great lich that raised one of the heroes from GW1 and the guy follows orders but is constantly questioning them and re-interpreting them to get away with sneeky shit. The lich finally gets sick of him and sends him to guard an empty cave for all eternity so he doesn't have to deal with him ever again.
Paladin to Skeletons: Brave knights. You are the best and brightest in all the land. Today one of you shall prove himself. That champion shall have the honor - - no, no - - the privilege to go forth and rescue the lovely Princess Fiona from the fiery keep of the dragon. If for any reason the winner is unsuccessful, the first runner-up will take his place and so on and so forth. Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make. Let the tournament begin! 6 INT Skellies: Seems legit
We did this once back in 3.5e a Blackguard, a Necromancer, Undeath Cleric, We had so many undead we started using rules for mass combat and had our undead hordes attacking a kingdom in a War. Using battlefield tactics and such. Basically we were the BBEG trying to conquer a nation. it was amazing.
That's essentially the game I've been looking for my whole life. Wish I could do that instead of repeatedly becoming level 5 and watching games crash from the ultimate BBEG, scheduling
Me and my friends ran an evil campaign some years ago using 2nd edition rules. Our party consisted of a necromancer, an anti paladin, a fighter/thief, and a cleric of death. It was interesting and played out pretty much the way the OP described. Early on we were minions of a lich that was giving us orders. We eventually got high enough level to kill the lich and become bbeg's in our own right.
You had me fooled for a moment, there! But Anthony Starr is a NZer, and sounds like it. Colby sounds perhaps German or from one of the Netherlands countries?
@@ChunkyTheClown imagine them passively starting to gather undead creatures, ultimately creating a new religion. If i was a dm, I'd allow it just to see what comes of it. :D
I think something people forget is that killing minions means the enemies aren't killing a PC. A few waves of zombies or skeletons that get wiped out in a handful of fireballs may be absorbing more than your low dex tank could have managed. And you can collect up what's left after the battle
If you’re getting a free feat and are allowed to use UA I feel like it’s illegal to not play a Reborn Oathbreaker who was resurrected by the Necromancer.
At that point, find a campaign set a few hundred years before the current setting time, and Just have your characters BE Vecna and Kas. Granted Vecna's not a Tortle..as far as we know..its Vecna tho so it's entirely possible he either hid that fact about himself or bodyswapped with someone for awhile
In a home game, I'm playing a reborn oathbreaker/necromancer gestalt build. It's hilariously OP because all my low level spell slots go to necrotic smites and the higher spells go for minion creation. Aura of hate and the level 6 necromancer features pair BEAUTIFULLY to make elite undead.
"Two wights would pale in comparision of 12 skeletons" How about 2 wights and 24 zombies ? Because that's what the actual best case scenario is, since each wight can control up to 12 zombies at a time.
As a DM I did the logistics to make a player mechanic necromancer, and I actually like the logistics of it, pretty fun how much you can get into the towns, catacombs, trade, you really become invested in order to make it work. Eventually the characters actually figured their deal and didn’t kill them, rather asked for help and ya, the necromancer became a mercenary of sorts to help the party and seized a castle to help them get the hobgoblin chief and reclaimed their family estate and castle. An potential bad guy who was wronged actually got to be ‘redeemed’ by helping the party and got their home back.
As always excellent content. My son is playing a Necromancer in a level 10 campaign and he opted to take one level of Death Cleric at 1st level and the rest in necromancer. The ability to cast infinite twinned Toll the Dead while his undead minions attack give him a great deal of sustained damage without using additional resources.(Not to mention medium armor, shields and martial weapons)
If you follow a statement by one of the creators you’re undead don’t have to be typical humanoids so you could theoretically offer modifications to the one who kills the most. The one with the most kills gets their bugbear leaders arms and claws.
@@DnDDeepDive A skeleton could want to be taller, so they’ll pick the tallest’s femurs and swap them for their own. Or graft their head to the body, so they can be muscular.
This is actually an incredibly useful video for a DM. This paring is an incredible villain for an undead domination plot hook. ‘As you gaze upon this small farming town, the blood of the guardsmen paints the cobbled streets in crimson. Their insides torn out and apparently eaten. The few peasants that have survived the attack approach and plead for your help’ “Please! Please you must help us!” ‘As they point to the cemetery you see a field of open graves, recently uncovered and every corpse missing’ “It were two men. One of them stood afar draped in black robes holding a staff. The other, clad in armour of ebony, and his sword drenched in the blood of our kin. They were commanding our dead like an army there was nothing any of us could do” ‘You ask the good people where these individuals went and they point you to the next town where a similar scene greets you. The trail continues. Town to town, village to village. Each report speaks of a larger army than the last. Then you realise... they’re marching on the capital.’ I’m sure as hell using this for my next plot hook. By all means, steal the idea, I wanna know if other players end up liking it.
I'm afraid you underestimated the power of this combo fairly severely. If you look more closely at the text regarding the recasting of Animate Dead to retain control, you'll see that each casting can retain control over three more undead than a casting can raise. (It's unclear how that interacts with the Undead Thralls ability.) So over the course of multiple days, you will be able to accumulate a significantly larger army of skeletons than you assumed.
Ha ha ha - nice catch! I forgot about that little bit at the end. Of all the things I was afraid I'd be accused of with this episode, underestimating it was not one of them :P
You assume you need to retain control? Pack in zombies into an iron wagon with a wooden door. Cast arcane lock on it and glyph of warding with dispell magic. Make the trigger whatever is convenient to you. You can make more and more of those wagons creating portable undead hordes. The elites of your horde would be the ones you control
@@tomraineofmagigor3499 Glyph of Warding spell fails if the glyph is moved more than 10' from the location of its casting. So those wagons aint going far.
@@adamkaris I forgot about that part Well you can set them up and people won't be able to be get in and I feel sorry for the poor soul that clears out the "abandoned" property
By my calculations, this brings the 6th level damage report up to 101 and 69, making it second only to the Yin/Yang team for that level and those ACs. That turns the "not bad" into "quite good." I didn't bother calculating adjustments to the later damage reports, because those are already ridiculous.
If using Tausha’s, the Artificer Initiate feat gives you a spell from their list and you can take Faerie Fire which you can cast with your own spells slots (that also uses intelligence as the save) from what I see. As a bonus you can also take guidance and get a tool proficiency like alchemist tools which seems thematic.
I see this duo as a perfect NPC villain duo. They scale well and would present a continuous challenging foil to player characters. Maybe have the Paladin be a friendly NPC until level 3 when he does his heel turn. And the various undead could populate dungeons, while the strike team skellies hang out with the bosses. Also, Tortle Wizard? Welcome to the Dark Side! No more elves for you, my boy, only powerhouses like Tortle and Mountain Dwarf!
Last campaign DM made a full party counter to our own as the main competition/foe for us to deal with. Only it was a good party as we were being dicks in general.. So had a knight/paladin/double wizard and cleric to deal with.. All the time saving those bloody peasants our master got us to kill off. Highly irritating.
The way I did the Oathbreaker thing with my DM was that my character was a more powerful paladin in their backstory, but breaking their oath caused them to lose their powers. So, by the time the campaign starts, they start to discover this power that's somewhat familiar, but feels... different. That explains the paladin starting at level 1 and immediately jumping into Oathbreaker at 3rd level.
So... NOW you like necros eh? AFTER our strahd campaign?! We could have been gods amongst mortals if you’d just gone oath breaker... GODS! *shakes a dozen skeletal hands at you*
I mean... you did notice that the oathbreaker’s Aura of Hate ability effects *all* undead and fiends indiscriminately right. Imagine a Curse of Strahd campaign where your paladin buffs most of your enemies.
The Oathbreaker is one of my favorite subclasses for dealing lots of damage and for roleplay. Currently, in one campaign I'm in I have an oathbreaker who was originally a Conquest paladin for an empire ruled by clerics that serves Bane. He was allowed not to be evil since he broke his oath by leaving an evil god. I won't go into his whole backstory but he's in a pretty hopeless place currently which fits the oathbreaker description in a way I think. I really enjoy him wanting and trying to be good but also dealing with a power set that is very clearly evil and undead related. If you can get your DM to lift the evil restriction (or not who know what ur playing) I think oathbreakers have the potential for a great character arc. Also, Hexblade oathbreakers are amazing you really can't go wrong with level distribution either.
Oathbreakers who once served evil in ignorance and broke their oath in righteous anger are my favourite troupe. They don't have to be evil to the party, they could be evil from the eyes of the evil cult they once followed.
You know the rp would be amazing. Himbo Paladin who just adores and does everything the really smart but somehow equally stupid Wizard says. The classic bad at being bad villain team.
I love the idea of working with a dm to scale up the undead better so you can still be a necromancer and have it not be too crazy. I had a plan to create a necromancer who only had 2 skeletons who were raised from his twin boys remains as a weird macabre homage to his family/trying to keep them "alive" and working with a dm to work them up as a good scaling but not broken.
Back at the beginning of 5e I played a necromancer rules as written using armor/ weapons you aren’t proficient with grants disadvantage and plate mail halves speed if strength isn’t high enough. So I equipped 8 zombies with armor/shields and 8 with glaivs. I would use the unarmored ones to shove the armored zombies forward and when they reach the enemy they would help/ grapple any enemy’s. I also broke them down into teams to pass them to the other players at the table for them to roll the attacks/ damage. Kinda fun to have a little battalion of meatshields helping to give the others 1d10 at straight rolls. With about 6 skeletons that I granted to the ranger players. And when we would go into villages they were passed off as being a retribution squad paying for the evil they committed in life. It was a fun campaign.
Can't really recommend it tbh. Last time I saw someone try to pull this stunt, some jerk tried to throw an old coot on the wagon -- an old coot who kept loudly insisting that he wasn't quite dead yet... At least it got people talking about how much better a democratic system of governance is compared to one based on watery tarts throwing swords at you...
I mean, fair on the Feeblemind, but saving on a saving throw with a -5 to the roll for Command Undead? At the level required to cast Feeblemind? Not even a 20 on the die would be enough for most character save DCs, at that level.
@@NatsuDragn33I Their INT become 1, so the undead would be under your control in 30 days, just cast Feeblemind on it at the start of 27th-28th, your DC would be 17 or 18 by lv 14, so it would be very easy after the undead failed the Feeblemind save :p
Context: I"m running a campaign set in an empire that uses necromancy as a big part of its military force (being raised as an undead is the final service for an enlisted soldier, so it's seen as honorable, not evil). My house rule for using undead in combat, is that the caster can raise as many undead as they can get their grubby little hands on, but can only -command- up to 2 times their spellcasting modifier in any given round of combat. Send out your 8 or however many, and if they get killed, command some reinforcements to take their place without skipping a beat. Having a limited mental bandwidth to spread your commands feels logical to me, especially in the very short time you have to do it. Keep the extras out of harm's way (or attempt, anyway) and enjoy the added benefit of keeping the map unclogged. As for re-raising your undead after they've been killed again, that's fine, but you might have to piecemeal remains together so you have a complete body before you can raise it -- Percy lost a leg? Better find a replacement if you really want to re-raise him, Parts don't have to match -- sure, go ahead and hack a charred leg off one of those bugbears you fireballed. Percy is gonna have a serious swagger with his legs two different lengths. Why not just raise a bugbear? Well, you can replace Percy's -parts-, but you can never replace Percy, you monster.
I like running a house rule that lets you combine four skeletons or zombies into a single Ogre Zombie or Minotaur Skeleton (without the special Charge/Gore actions) that has a Multiattack feature. The damage is about the same (fewer attacks overall, so fewer applications of Aura of Hate and Undead Thrall extra damage), and it is fewer creatures on the map at once.
I’d love to see a tank-style damage report for the undead army here, seeing as one of their greatest strengths is that they takes hits that would otherwise be directed towards PCs. No of course the undead have no way to draw enemy fire as a “proper” tank would but I think it would be a cool exercise nonetheless
Sounds like a good duo for villains in a campaign with a large final battle where the players build an army of followers versus the undead army. Then the players feel cool with large AoE's spells and the frontline just hack through waves of undead.
One thing that I don't think you factored was Arcane Recovery. You can wake up early as an Elf, cast a whole bunch of Animate dead, take a short rest, then regain up to 10 levels of spell slots, converting that into about a dozen more skeletons
Honestly, if you play table top wargames (efficiently) you can play that skelly horde. Just actually care enough to play that way. If you are lazy with a minion army... don’t. Either bring your a game or do not play a minion army..
With Half-Drow race there's a catch-up. That Faerie Fire save DC is based on the characters Charisma. Actually, a charismatic necromancer sounds interesting, so even going with default +2CHA bonus is viable.
So, I know this is a year+ old, and maybe someone's come in and said it already, but on the off chance: Regarding ghouls and elves, the short version is that the first ghoul was an elf who later regretted their life choices and prayed to their god to reverse it. They did and promised no other elf would suffer, so elves became immune to ghoul touch.
I have been both playing and DMing for years and after trying tons of ways to balance this exact issue my friends and I settled on the fix that we found to be the most surprising. We simply removed the requirement to reassert control. First off, its really nice for everyone at the table if at the end of every long rest we are not waiting for the necromancer to do all his spell slot math to make sure he doesn't lose any. Also we have found that when your minions don't expire on you the necromancer player is more likely to utilize both animate and create undead. Here is the kicker though. If your control doesn't expire you don't need to keep your army around to make sure you don't lose control. The last necromancer I had in one of my campaigns had a literal army and the party used it to keep their base safe, bury emergency soldiers, even had them wear their backup gear like treasure vaults that could fight back. The actual necromancer then just kept a handful with them for actual adventuring. The fantasy of having an undead army was satisfied, there were not double to triple digits minions in every fight, and the necromancer could use their spell slots to aid the party and so forth because they were not burnt up maintaining the army. Yes this is not a hard number fix but it works great for a table that communicates with each other well and it lets the player behavior become it's own solution. Now thats been said, this is my first time seeing one of your videos and really liked it, will definitely watch more.
Think you hit a lot of good points. One thing I would like to letcha know is that since the undead hold their command until given another and it's not a concentration spell your commands do not end even if you die until the spells last cast control time is up. So you can actually have one skeleton with the standing order of "if I go down reach into my pouch and administer a potion" to for free get back up into the action or use that to have certain skeletons tagged to certain party members with that command which tends to make people much happier that they have essentially a free medic following them.
The one party comp I'm dying to play is necromancer, oath breaker, undead warlock, death cleric, perhaps a spirit bard and spore druid maybe. Shame no one ever does evil campaigns let alone have a full party of people all wanting to go for the undead army theme 😢
Here is the basis for a build that I have been fiddling with and thinking over that has a completely unique playstyle (would require a lot of dm buy in): A build around the conjuration wizard's 2nd level feature Minor Conjuration. Your conjuration disappears if it deals any damage or if you use it again, and it must be a nonmagical object that you have seen. I don't believe there has been an official ruling, just a crawford comment, but basically you can have single-use damage work at full strength, it doesn't disappear before damage occurs. The poisons in dnd are non-magical and the poison and its container are considered a single object depending on how the dm interprets things. There are also poisons that do not deal damage, like carrion crawler mucus, drow poison, essence of ether, malice, oil of taggit, torpor, or truth serum. Many are capable of taking out a single target in a fight, and if your wizard has action surge or haste, you can likely start the fight with at least a single enemy out of commission. It isn't great action economy, but I am sure there is a way around that and to make a true cost free sustainable poisoner build. There also might be a way to get catapult involved for extra shenanigans.
Use a horde of zombies to create a ring around your frontliners and the bad guys. All undead keep their actions readied for if an enemy comes into attack range they attempt a grapple
If you want to try to mitigate how insane this is, you could have plot-related reasons why you can't bring too many undead where you're going. Then you'd still be open to use your powers to their full effect in a one-off situation.
It's worth noting that with dice rolling tools, including the default one in roll20, you can roll a whole bunch of d20's against a target number and it tells you how many are hits. Then you can roll a single damage roll and multiply by the number of hits. That lets you still get variability, since rolling a giant pool of dice tends to result is very little deviation from the average. I do this a lot as the DM. I really like taking creatures that the party were struggling with early on in a campaign and then throwing hordes of them later on when they are trivial. Digital tools really are a blessing that heavily streamline the game and let you focus on the roleplay and narrative
I had a Mind-Flayer necromancer in Out of the Abyss who obtained the wand of Orcus and used a Simulacrum by the end. He had hundreds of of minions at this point so we just ended up using the Mob Combat rules to speed up combat.
remember with command undead you can have one extra undead controlled, you can create a mummy and just use this for a general or whatever, not too strong but kind of funny if you don't find a nightwalker
I know this is an old video, but my solution for carrying/moving undead around towns is gaining access to a bag of holding. They don't need to breath, and they're in a pocket dimension so no smell or sound, plus you can easily grab them out of it. Most DMs I've played with have let me either pull out a few as a full round round action, or 1 as part of a bonus action given how bag of holding works if we're in combat and they aren't out.
As a “Forever DM…” maybe if the Necromancer summoned Wights that each had zombies, and maybe they had a Nightwalker… sounds like a tomb of horrors to me…
One way this could work is if your defending a village from a band of barbarians and your using all the skeletons in the cemetery of all the people who used to live there to protect to town :-)
I think you may have missed an opportunity to optimize your necromancer build a slight bit more. A single level of death domain cleric to start would grant: medium armor / shield proficiency (which you got around by going tortle but this allows a greater variety of race / lineage choice), doesn't hamper spell slot progression, additional cantrips and 1st level spell preparations (bless, false life, healing word, etc.) and the Reaper feature which RAW I believe works with necromancy cantrips from any class. Just make certain to take any necromancy damage cantrips with your wizard levels. Plus, I really enjoy the flavor of a character who begins as an acolyte / cleric of death but decides to travel an even darker path. Lastly, I don't believe you touched on the potential to use the spells Danse Macabre or Summon Undead in your video, both of which would benefit from a Necromancer's "Undead Thralls" ability.
The perfect speech to rally troops is darion mograines speech "hear the call of the highlord". The speech given to death knights in wow before you attack hallowed grounds
Nit Picks and Strategies for Shared Table time: - Falling unconscious has no effect on your control over the undead. They remain controlled until the spell wears off. - As mentioned elsewhere, you can be running with A Lot more skeletons. - Oathbreaker is by default an NPC class not intended for PCs, though that hasn't stopped people at my tables (I like it). - Make Monster Cards for your Skeletons and Zombies. Standing order to each individual undead: "attack what they attack" and point to another PC. Hand each PC 1-2 cards and let them run some of the minions. Bonus points for strategizing so a zombies take turns Helping the GWM fighter/Sharpshooter each round. - At level 15 use your level 8 slot to make a Wight. Use your Level 14 subclass feature on it after you've instructed it not to resist your will. Use it until you find something better than it and 12 extra zambos. Based on the Lore for Wights in the Monster Manual, there is a strong chance it will remain loyal even without the ability. - If you want to have a massive, reeking, entourage, "Harmless Zombies." You can forgo the zombie attacks to instead make them dash, dodge, and use the help action for your ally's attacks. Just making them flesh walls that surround large and smaller creatures is great. Having them cut off an enemy's movement until the foe slogs through destroying them, inflicting disadvantage on all ranged attacks, etc is potentially of greater strategic value at levels 8+ than having them attack at all. Love me the Necromancer. czcams.com/video/p4t10WxkZo0/video.html
My fave strat with zombies: Cast sickening radiance. Send zombies to grapple the enemy along the edges of sickening radiance. Have the other zombies stay at the edges ready to grapple should there not be enough enemies. party deals with other enemies or just stay away and cast debuffs on the enemies inside sickening radiance.
I recently designed a pure wizard necromancer. He took the Shadow Touched feat as a custom lineage race for 18 int and invisibility/inflict wounds as prepared int spells. Level 4 took the artificer Initiate feat for cure wounds as a prepared int spell. Not particularly optimized for massive undead armies, but that's not how I intend to play the character. He's just a normal wizard, except he's fascinated by the arcane study of life and death. Fun combo: have a Raven or owl and get 100' cure wounds / inflict wounds
Inspiring leader speech: "Tonight we dine in Hell!...which, yes, I understand that's basically where some of u dine every night, but u get my point. But I don't want u to get down about that. You may be skin and bones, but you're all heart to me, lads. To arms!"
That weird thing with ghoul's paralysis not working on elves comes back probably to the beginning of D&D. I started my adventure with D&D on 3rd Edition nearly 20 years ago, and it was already there.
I've DMed for a necromancer before, some thoughts on the issues you brought up of running it. We started at level 7, and he wanted to have all 16 skeletons that I think is the upper cap for that level. I told him we could start with 8, with opportunities to grow his horde and some minions that bent the rules a bit. New skeletons were acquired through the fallen foes or purchasing animal bones from a butcher (which people would do to make soup). While necromancy isn't unheard of in my setting, people still aren't the most ok with a small army walking into a town or a buisness. My necro had Disguise Kit proficiency, and used it to sneak them around, but not always. For bookkeeping simplicity, I treat the skeletons as having a ranged and melee attack, rather than explicitly shortsword and shortbow, since I think that was more used for enemy NPCs than summonable allies. This could be anything from sharpened femurs/ribs for melee and throwing bone darts for ranged. Same damage, just flavoring that makes sense. As for AOE, it do be like that sometimes, that's your weakness. I wouldn't put destroy undead in unless it made sense to, and any necromancer that challenges a Cleric knows full well that losing a horde may happen. The same goes for the ward spells like Forbiddence or Temple of the Gods, it is a known weakness you may have and you can't DPS your way through all problems. I let them re-summon the undead if it died, with a few caveats. If the skeleton took significant bludgeoning damage, it was considered too damaged to be reincarnated. The same goes for being hit by destroy undead. On the flip side, if the creature that they raised had a trait that made sense, they got to keep it. For example, a bugbear skeleton would have reach. One thing to note is the intelligence factor of skeletons and zombies. However, skeletons are smart enough to operate seige weaponry if shown how, so if you can acquire a cannon, trebuchet, or the like, you can up your DPS farther. All in all, he was pulling crazy DPS most of the time. Just being able to hit for 15 or 30 flat damage is brilliant. Even having one knock an enemy prone, have a second grapple them to keep the enemy from getting up, then having all the skeletons attack with advantage is huge. A lot of skeletons died, but they were expendable when the Party was not.
I love the way you handled this in your game. But how would you handle so many attacks per round? as ive seen it slow down the game, im going to become a DM soon so im interested in your response
You can use Finger of Death on your undead army to keep them under your command permanently if they are humanoid undead and you command them to fail the save beforehand. But it would mean killing a few everyday with finger of death, keeping control over the rest, sleep and repeat til your army no longer needs a spellslot to maintain. Also note: It says to RECAST to maintain control, not use the same spellslot, so you can use a lower slot to control those not re-resurrected by Finger of Death.
Funny how I found this as I'm currently playing a Drow Necromancer in the "Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frost Maiden" Campaign - Currently lvl 6. Dauwn was an Acolyte who has become disillusioned from a faith that never seemed to truly accept him. So he found himself here posing as a man of the cloth to give prayers over the dead. But secretly has been studying death and how to manipulate it. He's not well in the head but is intelligent which makes him dangerous. Before he was kidnapped by Illithids he would exhume graves to study the bodies buried within. His time with the Illithids concerns him only as they are likely to take him away from his research. He actually anticipates they may have survivors that could come looking for him. But surmises that staying close to large crowds of people would not only keep him safe. But encourage his pursuers to find easier prey. Perhaps even leaving more dead in their wake to study. All the while his familiar Veil, a Celestial spirit he's bonded to tries to discourage his necromantic studies. Veil is a hold over from when he was still trying to gain favor of his faith in Kelemvor. The two of them can often be seen in long conversations together but only Dauwn's voice can be heard. Motivation - Stop this long winter which makes exhuming bodies easier. Also, unable to properly bury the dead. Fascinated by death he wants to take the opportunity to study as much as he can in the meantime. Justifies his actions as using bodies as vessels of retribution.
Here's a Homebrew rule idea inspired by The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion. The Skeleton starts as the basic unit, then there is the skeleton Guardian, then the Skeleton Hero, then The Skeleton Champion. Maybe as your levels go up you can up-cast summons for skeletons but be stronger variants eventually having a good chunk of AP/HP along with some resistances, better weapons and armor. Naturally each variant just doubles the lesser's HP and gains +2 to hit with their weapons, Champions' of course would be the elite = to mid-level fighters with enchanted weapons and armor. Naturally they would be out classed by the Paladin and other PC's, but as supporting cast members they could put some hurt on lesser enemies that come the party's way.
The Paladin could inspire 36 undead per hour. Lawful Evil and a detailed party contract. Dress your undead in clown suits. Determine the average damage per hit vs AC and apply that. Raid old battlefields or mass graves. Arm your undead with Moon-Touched swords. They are common MAGIC items, thus cheap/easy to make. The interpretations I have found online all seem to say that is is impossible. A strict reading of the Animate Dead spell seems to indicate that the reason given for not allowing reanimation stems from it no longer being the "corpse of a medium or small humanoid", it is now the corpse of an undead creature. Creating skeletons should be okay, since they only require "a pile of bones". This would also relieve you of the grave robbing problem as apparently, any pile of bones would work. I wonder how many bones constitute a "pile? One problem with counterspell, it only has a range of 60, while fireball has a range of 150. Who makes the Giant Skeletons? Is there some way we could do it? I love this, as a DM. How are the party members going to deal with the two Chaotic Evil dudes who attack villages at random times, wiping them out and leaving destroyed undead behind.
Cool trick: Your minions obey your commands. Technically you can command them to obey your fellas (And if they get frisky with it, just change the command later). One person with 10 Skelly Steves = Slow and Long turns. Every party member with a smol squad = Equal turns, overlord fun vibes aand they even get to pimp them meaning less maintenance cost for you. To smooth the 'relations' with your lawful light wielding boii, just use the bones of your evil enemies as your minions and maybe don't tell him where all the rest came from.
Add in a Lore Bard and a Divine Soul Sorcerer(With one dip in Death Cleric (Thanks to Talking20 for the best evil magic boi build ever)) and you could have a super strong party to command a sustainable horde of undead fools. Relying on the Wizard as the engine to churn out undead, the Paladin to lead and buff them, the Bard could support them and up their damage with the *crazy* spell list, and the the Sorcerer could be incredible damage/cc. Plus the theme of the whole party leading this horde just paints a picture in my mind that gives me chills. I know that goes way beyond Optimization builds but it's still just such a cool thought in my mind that I needed to share it.
Haven't gotten to play a Necromancer Wizard yet. Did play a Tempest Cleric with Animate Dead. Self capped at 8 Skeletons for my bone brigade. Got to arm them with Long swords and long bows so a little boost. Did that because we were a melee party. On a different note it might be costly unless you're DM let's you craft Magic Items but get or make a collection of wands of magic missile. If you use my cap of 8 that is potentially 24d4×7rounds per day. Avg 60 force per round. And it gets past magic resistance. You can also put your Skeletons in robes and make it look like you have a Wizard Army for the social encounters.
Suggestion for a possible future video - a team of perfect melee butcher and perfect brainy wizard. Like a mastermind and his/her bodyguard. Would love to see this pairing :D
Gotta say, I think wights are the real reason for create undead to be recommended. If you use both your 8th and 9th level slots for that, you can create and control 5 wights ... who in turn can command up to a dozen zombies each, or 30 altogether. 5 wights + 30 zombies is somewhat better than making 26 skeletons with animate dead. Of course, it takes either DM intervention (allowing you to pass command of zombies made by other means) or taking prisoners and systematically "processing" them (tie victims down and let the wights take turns draining life until a zombie is created) to fill out your wight squads. However, ghouls/ghasts do have some advantages over skeletons. While their poison won't land too often, ghouls have quite a bit more health and a higher CR than skeletons, which reduces their weakness to destroy undead. When you can add a ghast, it grants resistance to all ghouls against being turned. So your ghouls and ghast could take the place of a skeletal melee force. One more thing that really complicates this build ... animate dead only *creates* one undead minion at base level, but allows you to *control* up to four. Your subclass does *not* increase the number you can control, but this still means you could control 2 3rd-level castings of skeletons with just 1 3rd level slot. So if you can avoid losing all your skeletons every day, you can potentially build up quite a lot more than you could create after they get totally wiped out. Personally, I'm with you that this system does not work well for player necromancers. A better option IMO would be to put an upper limit to the number of minions, but instead of using the monster manual versions, provide a monster template that incorporates how your minions will grow with you. So depending on level (and how powerful each minion gets to be), allow probably somewhere between 1 and 6 minions. One of these days I may just create a "necromancer" main class that uses this idea.
I've been thinking about a wizard druid necromancer multi-class, and I think something that would help with the turn economy problem of turns taking too long is sticking with the "I take what I need and then leave the place better than I left it" kind of approach. I feel like it might be a good excuse to have a good aligned necromancer as well
Step 1: Be a reasonably high level necromancer. Step 2: Become a governor or mayor or something of a scenic town up the coast. Step 3: Have a social program in which, when a person is getting old and doesn't have long left, they and their family get to make a call on whether they want to be buried, or if they'd be okay with getting Reanimated. Step 4: Treat the zombies so they smell like roses and don't spread diseases, put them to work as free menial labour out on the fields. Step 5: Use money saved and gained on labour and increased productivity to finance public education for the people who used to spend their days plowing the fields and gathering food for the day. Step 6: Have some of the people become necromancers to help you administer the zombies. Have some of the people become Clerics to provide free public healthcare and the option to destroy the undead if something goes awry. Step 7: Welcome to Necrotopia!
This build is amazing mechanics wise, but where I think it really shines is the RP. Like the implications of how you logistically deal with hordes of undead thralls following you everywhere. Say goodbye to deep PC to PC monologues lol. Love this
I think the strength of the Create Undead spell is the logistics. Your calculation that many skeletons are more useful than 2-3 stronger undead is based on the idea that they can all make attacks. It's hard to white room a dungeon scenario, but I can imagine fighting in a corridor: Assuming a 15 foot wide corridor (which I think is pretty generous), you can fit 3 undead side by side. With a 30 foot range, filling the entire corridor with skeletons only gives you 6 ranks of 3 undead, or 18 total. That's not a lot, especially since you'll probably want to stick some number of PCs in that range as well. Or, maybe you enter a room, to find it filled with enemies that attack you. Even if the room were arbitrarily large, the whole mass of skeletons and players still need to be within 30 feet of the entryway to enter on their turn, meaning, assuming you're entering from the previous hallway, you can only pack 18 characters into the room per round. Better, but still a pretty severe limitation for the first few rounds. That's assuming the room is big enough, and that the enemies don't form battle lines that prevent you from pushing further into the room. By the time you get to Create Undead, the fights that let you make meaningful use of the entire horde's action economy will be a slim minority (depending on the campaign, obviously). On the other hand, a small number of more elite undead can just be stuck at the front of the horde and always see use. It's a straight upgrade in any scenario other than a relatively rare open field encounter. Incidentally, the fact that you won't make full use of the horde means you can probably save on a decent chunk of spell slots. When you have dozens of skeletons and you know you're heading into a dungeon, you may as well just kill some of them before you need to pay upkeep. You won't be using them anyway, so you might as well preserve the spell slot to hold up counterspell or polymorph or whatever it is wizards normally do.
"Dont ask me where you're getting all those bones" Fine I'll come up with my own bone zone- spend downtime when not maintaining the skelarmy building your own dungeon. Bribe bards to go forth and speak of the legendary treasures your dungeon holds to lure in overconfident adventurers, use their bones to build the foundation of your army, and their gear to fund/upgrade horde
@@pencilbender be sure to send a letter to that party congratulating them on their promotion from unwitting Victim to To target Skilled adventurers make for the best undead minions
Hey new viewer and just wanted to say 1 great video! and 2 i'm watching this after having spent roughly 3-4 days looking at summons in 5e and how to make them work. I think the perfect middle ground for the necromancer wizard is having 1.5 times your level rounded up as a max on any given adventuring day. also for running them in combat the easiest rule to keep the turns fast is having them always go on your initiative and use the mob attack rules in the dmg, it gives a consistent basis for how much damage they can expect to do and how to balance against them. to lower the effectiveness on the players undead you only have to increase an enemies a.c. to 17, because then it goes from 1 out of every 2 hitting to one out of every 3, meanwhile the rest of the party probably wont notice the difference between that 16 a.c. enemy vs that 17 a.c. enemy. it makes stuff go quickly while also still rewarding the player for being a cool necromancer! of course if you need to use it as a plot point, let the character go ham and raise an army to assault the castle so the party can sneak in and get the mccguffin!
Two quick points: First, the DM's Guide in Chapter 8 has rules for handling mobs, where you skip attack and damage and just track the number of individuals needed to land a hit and use average damage. When you get over 5 or 6 skellies that's probably the easiest way to go. Second, I know everyone is all gung ho about Ravenloft right now, but in Eberron the kingdoms of both Karnath and Aerenal have good aligned necromancers and people who volunteer to become undead to protect their people forever. Karnath are themed Russian and Aerenal are elves.
Two things I gotta point out because of my love of necromancy. 1. wights can have 12 zombies at a time so for 10skeletons you get a Wight and 12 zombies. 2. 7th slots and above should go to finger of death as when you kill someone with it they become a permanent zombie technically allowing infinite thralls. For how to play it personally I'd have all my thralls roll in groups for their hit. For example archers all are based on 1 hit die so they all miss they all hit and all crit together, and the melee skeletons roll off of their own dice meaning (in this case) only two rolls to hit are needed. You can do the same with damage or just do average damage 100% of hits.
To inspire skeletons:
"Whoever kills the archwizard gets reincarnated"
*unleash the horde and watch it at work*
Ha ha! You know what, how awesome would it be to have a high level Cleric that could actually do this? What a fantastic story moment... then he becomes a little sidekick ala the sidekick stuff in Tasha's? Love it.
When you think about it, it’s weird not to apply the sidekick rules to the intelligent undead that you make with Create Undead. They are intelligent creatures with independent thought, maybe just leave the levelling to the DM and reset the level of any minion that dies. You could get interesting stories, like one of your wights is becoming more intelligent and ambitious, so it’s constantly trying to twist your orders to get free from your control.
"The necromancer offered them life, I offered them milk." - Steven the Everchosen
@@cyborgcatrj6794 In Guild Wars 2 there is a great lich that raised one of the heroes from GW1 and the guy follows orders but is constantly questioning them and re-interpreting them to get away with sneeky shit. The lich finally gets sick of him and sends him to guard an empty cave for all eternity so he doesn't have to deal with him ever again.
@@DnDDeepDive MAKE THIS BUIL
Paladin to Skeletons: Brave knights. You are the best and brightest in all the land. Today one of you shall prove himself. That champion shall have the honor - - no, no - - the privilege to go forth and rescue the lovely Princess Fiona from the fiery keep of the dragon. If for any reason the winner is unsuccessful, the first runner-up will take his place and so on and so forth. Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make. Let the tournament begin!
6 INT Skellies: Seems legit
I am laughing out loud quite loudly at the moment.
I am friggan dead bro XD I wanna watch that again
I just watched that last night with my parents, and holy crap I can not get that out of my head now. It's perfect!
We did this once back in 3.5e a Blackguard, a Necromancer, Undeath Cleric, We had so many undead we started using rules for mass combat and had our undead hordes attacking a kingdom in a War. Using battlefield tactics and such. Basically we were the BBEG trying to conquer a nation. it was amazing.
Would you mind sharing how you did that? My party is tryna do that rn
That's essentially the game I've been looking for my whole life. Wish I could do that instead of repeatedly becoming level 5 and watching games crash from the ultimate BBEG, scheduling
Goals
Me and my friends ran an evil campaign some years ago using 2nd edition rules. Our party consisted of a necromancer, an anti paladin, a fighter/thief, and a cleric of death. It was interesting and played out pretty much the way the OP described. Early on we were minions of a lich that was giving us orders. We eventually got high enough level to kill the lich and become bbeg's in our own right.
Ah yes, nothing better than hearing Homelander talk about Oathbreakers
Million subscriber special: optimized homelander build
Homelands?... no...
Idk, I’d say he looks more like a discount Liam OBrian
You had me fooled for a moment, there! But Anthony Starr is a NZer, and sounds like it. Colby sounds perhaps German or from one of the Netherlands countries?
He's from the US. The Midwest to ne more accurate.
I'd inspire my horde with one line and one line only:
MEAT IS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!
Nah nah. Mine's, "MILK'S BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!"
Gotta keep those old bones healthy.
What if there's no milk to be drunk? Can you beat your 20+ skeleton horde? :D
@@xcron3549 under my rule, these rivers will run white with milk. It will be a time of plenty for all!
@@ChunkyTheClown imagine them passively starting to gather undead creatures, ultimately creating a new religion. If i was a dm, I'd allow it just to see what comes of it. :D
@@ChunkyTheClown that sounds so wrong lol
I think something people forget is that killing minions means the enemies aren't killing a PC. A few waves of zombies or skeletons that get wiped out in a handful of fireballs may be absorbing more than your low dex tank could have managed. And you can collect up what's left after the battle
Also in some circumstances you can reanimate your undead again
This and you can use them as trap detectors
This team-up is giving me a Palpatine (Necromancer)/ Vader (Paladin)/ Stormtrooper (skeleton) kinda vibe.
ooo... I likey
Well palpatine is basically a lich
Well, you could use the Reborn gothic lineage for the Paladin. You could make it the Necromancer's end-goal to become a Lich.
If you’re getting a free feat and are allowed to use UA I feel like it’s illegal to not play a Reborn Oathbreaker who was resurrected by the Necromancer.
yusssss
Playing a reborn oathbreaker now actually, he died in a shadow attack. So now he uses command undead everyday to keep another shadow around
No longer a UA, it’s now in Tasha’s, so go nuts
At that point, find a campaign set a few hundred years before the current setting time, and Just have your characters BE Vecna and Kas. Granted Vecna's not a Tortle..as far as we know..its Vecna tho so it's entirely possible he either hid that fact about himself or bodyswapped with someone for awhile
In a home game, I'm playing a reborn oathbreaker/necromancer gestalt build. It's hilariously OP because all my low level spell slots go to necrotic smites and the higher spells go for minion creation. Aura of hate and the level 6 necromancer features pair BEAUTIFULLY to make elite undead.
"Two wights would pale in comparision of 12 skeletons"
How about 2 wights and 24 zombies ? Because that's what the actual best case scenario is, since each wight can control up to 12 zombies at a time.
I like skeleton archers. Positioning is key🎉
Wights are the sergeants of your army!
I would add finger of death spell to the routine as it adds a zombie that is permanently under the casters control.
As a DM I did the logistics to make a player mechanic necromancer, and I actually like the logistics of it, pretty fun how much you can get into the towns, catacombs, trade, you really become invested in order to make it work.
Eventually the characters actually figured their deal and didn’t kill them, rather asked for help and ya, the necromancer became a mercenary of sorts to help the party and seized a castle to help them get the hobgoblin chief and reclaimed their family estate and castle.
An potential bad guy who was wronged actually got to be ‘redeemed’ by helping the party and got their home back.
Love this.
As always excellent content. My son is playing a Necromancer in a level 10 campaign and he opted to take one level of Death Cleric at 1st level and the rest in necromancer. The ability to cast infinite twinned Toll the Dead while his undead minions attack give him a great deal of sustained damage without using additional resources.(Not to mention medium armor, shields and martial weapons)
Thanks! And that is fantastic!
Paladin: "Give me victory or give me death!"
Army of Undead: (Looks completely dejected)
Paladin: ".....well crap"
Lol
Oathbreaker's rousing speech to a bunch of low INT Skeletons...
"The one who kills the most people gets a brand new body!!!" 😈😈
Wait, but do you actually give a body to the winner? And what would it do with the body? ha ha
@@DnDDeepDive The winner would get to eat the tasty, fresh body, of course. What else would a zombie do with a newly deceased corpse?
@@scroth0303 lol
If you follow a statement by one of the creators you’re undead don’t have to be typical humanoids so you could theoretically offer modifications to the one who kills the most. The one with the most kills gets their bugbear leaders arms and claws.
@@DnDDeepDive A skeleton could want to be taller, so they’ll pick the tallest’s femurs and swap them for their own. Or graft their head to the body, so they can be muscular.
This is actually an incredibly useful video for a DM. This paring is an incredible villain for an undead domination plot hook.
‘As you gaze upon this small farming town, the blood of the guardsmen paints the cobbled streets in crimson. Their insides torn out and apparently eaten. The few peasants that have survived the attack approach and plead for your help’
“Please! Please you must help us!”
‘As they point to the cemetery you see a field of open graves, recently uncovered and every corpse missing’
“It were two men. One of them stood afar draped in black robes holding a staff. The other, clad in armour of ebony, and his sword drenched in the blood of our kin. They were commanding our dead like an army there was nothing any of us could do”
‘You ask the good people where these individuals went and they point you to the next town where a similar scene greets you. The trail continues. Town to town, village to village. Each report speaks of a larger army than the last. Then you realise... they’re marching on the capital.’
I’m sure as hell using this for my next plot hook. By all means, steal the idea, I wanna know if other players end up liking it.
love it!
Add in a 3rd character using the Death Cleric build and we have the beginnings of an evil nemesis npc party! Muwahahahaha!!!
@@dhavaram8064 Add an Echo Knight Fighter & Mastermind Rogue & you have a full evil party, you could run it, or what I think is more fun, play it.
I'm afraid you underestimated the power of this combo fairly severely. If you look more closely at the text regarding the recasting of Animate Dead to retain control, you'll see that each casting can retain control over three more undead than a casting can raise. (It's unclear how that interacts with the Undead Thralls ability.) So over the course of multiple days, you will be able to accumulate a significantly larger army of skeletons than you assumed.
Ha ha ha - nice catch! I forgot about that little bit at the end. Of all the things I was afraid I'd be accused of with this episode, underestimating it was not one of them :P
You assume you need to retain control? Pack in zombies into an iron wagon with a wooden door. Cast arcane lock on it and glyph of warding with dispell magic. Make the trigger whatever is convenient to you. You can make more and more of those wagons creating portable undead hordes. The elites of your horde would be the ones you control
@@tomraineofmagigor3499 Glyph of Warding spell fails if the glyph is moved more than 10' from the location of its casting. So those wagons aint going far.
@@adamkaris I forgot about that part
Well you can set them up and people won't be able to be get in and I feel sorry for the poor soul that clears out the "abandoned" property
By my calculations, this brings the 6th level damage report up to 101 and 69, making it second only to the Yin/Yang team for that level and those ACs. That turns the "not bad" into "quite good." I didn't bother calculating adjustments to the later damage reports, because those are already ridiculous.
If using Tausha’s, the Artificer Initiate feat gives you a spell from their list and you can take Faerie Fire which you can cast with your own spells slots (that also uses intelligence as the save) from what I see. As a bonus you can also take guidance and get a tool proficiency like alchemist tools which seems thematic.
I see this duo as a perfect NPC villain duo. They scale well and would present a continuous challenging foil to player characters. Maybe have the Paladin be a friendly NPC until level 3 when he does his heel turn. And the various undead could populate dungeons, while the strike team skellies hang out with the bosses.
Also, Tortle Wizard? Welcome to the Dark Side! No more elves for you, my boy, only powerhouses like Tortle and Mountain Dwarf!
Could you make it a villain trio by adding a death priest? hmmm.... HMMMM.... I like your way of thinking!
I’m adding a lower-level UA undead patron warlock to make a trio. Can you guess who the patron is? 🤔 And I’m taking the Pally/Wizard combo to lvl12
Nice. Imagine if everyone in the party were undead but didn't know it (except for maybe the necromancer and the oathbreaker).
Last campaign DM made a full party counter to our own as the main competition/foe for us to deal with. Only it was a good party as we were being dicks in general.. So had a knight/paladin/double wizard and cleric to deal with.. All the time saving those bloody peasants our master got us to kill off. Highly irritating.
... And this is the reason I come to the comments. Bravo!
(Also, totally stealing this.)
The way I did the Oathbreaker thing with my DM was that my character was a more powerful paladin in their backstory, but breaking their oath caused them to lose their powers. So, by the time the campaign starts, they start to discover this power that's somewhat familiar, but feels... different. That explains the paladin starting at level 1 and immediately jumping into Oathbreaker at 3rd level.
Love it.
I imagine this concept is perfect for a 1 on 1 dnd campaign with the oath breaker being your sidekick ally
So... NOW you like necros eh? AFTER our strahd campaign?! We could have been gods amongst mortals if you’d just gone oath breaker... GODS! *shakes a dozen skeletal hands at you*
Ha ha! They’re broken! :) (can you imagine if we tried to bring more than the few you already had into the castle? That final fight was so crowded!)
I mean... you did notice that the oathbreaker’s Aura of Hate ability effects *all* undead and fiends indiscriminately right. Imagine a Curse of Strahd campaign where your paladin buffs most of your enemies.
@@cyborgcatrj6794 That would be... amazing! ha ha!
The Oathbreaker is one of my favorite subclasses for dealing lots of damage and for roleplay. Currently, in one campaign I'm in I have an oathbreaker who was originally a Conquest paladin for an empire ruled by clerics that serves Bane. He was allowed not to be evil since he broke his oath by leaving an evil god. I won't go into his whole backstory but he's in a pretty hopeless place currently which fits the oathbreaker description in a way I think. I really enjoy him wanting and trying to be good but also dealing with a power set that is very clearly evil and undead related. If you can get your DM to lift the evil restriction (or not who know what ur playing) I think oathbreakers have the potential for a great character arc. Also, Hexblade oathbreakers are amazing you really can't go wrong with level distribution either.
Oathbreakers who once served evil in ignorance and broke their oath in righteous anger are my favourite troupe. They don't have to be evil to the party, they could be evil from the eyes of the evil cult they once followed.
You know the rp would be amazing. Himbo Paladin who just adores and does everything the really smart but somehow equally stupid Wizard says. The classic bad at being bad villain team.
Like Kronk and Yzma or Shego and Hego type team
@@Kolonite_ YES! I love Kronk. This actually would be amazing.
Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Pinky and the brain
Old school Skeletor, shouting “Nyah!!” just because.
I love the idea of working with a dm to scale up the undead better so you can still be a necromancer and have it not be too crazy.
I had a plan to create a necromancer who only had 2 skeletons who were raised from his twin boys remains as a weird macabre homage to his family/trying to keep them "alive" and working with a dm to work them up as a good scaling but not broken.
Been subscribed for a few years now, and I still get a tingle down my spine when I hear "welcome home."
1hr 20 mins? Today just got so much better!
Ha ha - I always get so nervous when the videos go extra long... thanks for calming my fears :P
Having the undead carry you around while you're in your shell would be so cool.
Tortle toss me boys!
Back at the beginning of 5e I played a necromancer rules as written using armor/ weapons you aren’t proficient with grants disadvantage and plate mail halves speed if strength isn’t high enough. So I equipped 8 zombies with armor/shields and 8 with glaivs. I would use the unarmored ones to shove the armored zombies forward and when they reach the enemy they would help/ grapple any enemy’s. I also broke them down into teams to pass them to the other players at the table for them to roll the attacks/ damage. Kinda fun to have a little battalion of meatshields helping to give the others 1d10 at straight rolls. With about 6 skeletons that I granted to the ranger players. And when we would go into villages they were passed off as being a retribution squad paying for the evil they committed in life. It was a fun campaign.
How to have a cart of corpses
Player : "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"
Can't really recommend it tbh. Last time I saw someone try to pull this stunt, some jerk tried to throw an old coot on the wagon -- an old coot who kept loudly insisting that he wasn't quite dead yet... At least it got people talking about how much better a democratic system of governance is compared to one based on watery tarts throwing swords at you...
For the most effective use of your Necromancer's Control Undead feature be sure to invest in the spell Feeblemind.
* Walks up to high-Int Undead. *
* Casts Feeblemind *
* Command Undead *
* Profit *
I mean, fair on the Feeblemind, but saving on a saving throw with a -5 to the roll for Command Undead? At the level required to cast Feeblemind? Not even a 20 on the die would be enough for most character save DCs, at that level.
@@NatsuDragn33I Their INT become 1, so the undead would be under your control in 30 days, just cast Feeblemind on it at the start of 27th-28th, your DC would be 17 or 18 by lv 14, so it would be very easy after the undead failed the Feeblemind save :p
Context: I"m running a campaign set in an empire that uses necromancy as a big part of its military force (being raised as an undead is the final service for an enlisted soldier, so it's seen as honorable, not evil).
My house rule for using undead in combat, is that the caster can raise as many undead as they can get their grubby little hands on, but can only -command- up to 2 times their spellcasting modifier in any given round of combat. Send out your 8 or however many, and if they get killed, command some reinforcements to take their place without skipping a beat. Having a limited mental bandwidth to spread your commands feels logical to me, especially in the very short time you have to do it. Keep the extras out of harm's way (or attempt, anyway) and enjoy the added benefit of keeping the map unclogged.
As for re-raising your undead after they've been killed again, that's fine, but you might have to piecemeal remains together so you have a complete body before you can raise it -- Percy lost a leg? Better find a replacement if you really want to re-raise him, Parts don't have to match -- sure, go ahead and hack a charred leg off one of those bugbears you fireballed. Percy is gonna have a serious swagger with his legs two different lengths. Why not just raise a bugbear? Well, you can replace Percy's -parts-, but you can never replace Percy, you monster.
Ha ha! I like this :)
I like running a house rule that lets you combine four skeletons or zombies into a single Ogre Zombie or Minotaur Skeleton (without the special Charge/Gore actions) that has a Multiattack feature. The damage is about the same (fewer attacks overall, so fewer applications of Aura of Hate and Undead Thrall extra damage), and it is fewer creatures on the map at once.
Finally! I have waited soo long for this video!!! They both are in my "ideal optimized party". Thanks Colby!!!!!!
Your videos are my new sleep aid, but I also re-listen while I'm awake too. Thanks for your work!
I’d love to see a tank-style damage report for the undead army here, seeing as one of their greatest strengths is that they takes hits that would otherwise be directed towards PCs. No of course the undead have no way to draw enemy fire as a “proper” tank would but I think it would be a cool exercise nonetheless
Sounds like a good duo for villains in a campaign with a large final battle where the players build an army of followers versus the undead army. Then the players feel cool with large AoE's spells and the frontline just hack through waves of undead.
One thing that I don't think you factored was Arcane Recovery. You can wake up early as an Elf, cast a whole bunch of Animate dead, take a short rest, then regain up to 10 levels of spell slots, converting that into about a dozen more skeletons
The Necromancer & The Oathbreaker - D&D: Optimized #36
Level 01:(see above) [wizard 1 & race + paladin 1 & race]
Level 02:(see above) [wizard 2 & subclass + paladin 2 & fighting-style]
Level 03:(@34:19) [wizard 3 + paladin 3 & subclass]
Level 04:(@39:23) [wizard 4 & ASI + paladin 4 & ASI]
Level 05:(@41:04) [wizard 5 + paladin 5]
Level 06:(@48:15) [wizard 6 + paladin 6]
Level 07:(see above) [wizard 7 + paladin 7]
Level 08:(@56:23) [wizard 8 & ASI + paladin 8 & ASI]
Level 09:(@57:11) [wizard 9 + paladin 9]
Level 10:(see above) [wizard 10 + paladin 10]
Level 11:(@1:02:07) [wizard 11 + paladin 11]
Level 12:(@1:05:27) [wizard 12 & ASI + paladin 12 & ASI]
Level 13:(@1:06:18) [wizard 13 + paladin 13]
Level 14:(see above) [wizard 14 + paladin 14]
Level 15:(@1:09:36) [wizard 15 + paladin 15]
Level 16:(@1:11:24) [wizard 16 & ASI + paladin 16 & ASI]
Level 17:(@1:11:54) [wizard 17 + paladin 17]
Important notice: Skeletons can be stored in a chest! Very good for transport purposes :D
I'm hyped for this nefarious duo.
The gruesome twosome.
NEVER HUNGER
NEVER TIRE
NEVER FEAR
FOR THE LEGION
This kinda makes me want to see a Death Knight build
Honestly, if you play table top wargames (efficiently) you can play that skelly horde. Just actually care enough to play that way. If you are lazy with a minion army... don’t. Either bring your a game or do not play a minion army..
With Half-Drow race there's a catch-up. That Faerie Fire save DC is based on the characters Charisma. Actually, a charismatic necromancer sounds interesting, so even going with default +2CHA bonus is viable.
So, I know this is a year+ old, and maybe someone's come in and said it already, but on the off chance:
Regarding ghouls and elves, the short version is that the first ghoul was an elf who later regretted their life choices and prayed to their god to reverse it. They did and promised no other elf would suffer, so elves became immune to ghoul touch.
Necromancer creates skeletons from bones, takes the weapon. Dispels the skeletons. Sells the weapon as scrap.
Money!
ha ha
That's just graverobbing with extra steps
I have been both playing and DMing for years and after trying tons of ways to balance this exact issue my friends and I settled on the fix that we found to be the most surprising. We simply removed the requirement to reassert control. First off, its really nice for everyone at the table if at the end of every long rest we are not waiting for the necromancer to do all his spell slot math to make sure he doesn't lose any. Also we have found that when your minions don't expire on you the necromancer player is more likely to utilize both animate and create undead. Here is the kicker though. If your control doesn't expire you don't need to keep your army around to make sure you don't lose control. The last necromancer I had in one of my campaigns had a literal army and the party used it to keep their base safe, bury emergency soldiers, even had them wear their backup gear like treasure vaults that could fight back. The actual necromancer then just kept a handful with them for actual adventuring. The fantasy of having an undead army was satisfied, there were not double to triple digits minions in every fight, and the necromancer could use their spell slots to aid the party and so forth because they were not burnt up maintaining the army. Yes this is not a hard number fix but it works great for a table that communicates with each other well and it lets the player behavior become it's own solution. Now thats been said, this is my first time seeing one of your videos and really liked it, will definitely watch more.
Think you hit a lot of good points. One thing I would like to letcha know is that since the undead hold their command until given another and it's not a concentration spell your commands do not end even if you die until the spells last cast control time is up. So you can actually have one skeleton with the standing order of "if I go down reach into my pouch and administer a potion" to for free get back up into the action or use that to have certain skeletons tagged to certain party members with that command which tends to make people much happier that they have essentially a free medic following them.
The one party comp I'm dying to play is necromancer, oath breaker, undead warlock, death cleric, perhaps a spirit bard and spore druid maybe. Shame no one ever does evil campaigns let alone have a full party of people all wanting to go for the undead army theme 😢
I have to tell you. The intro music gets me pumped about watching your videos. 🙂👍
Ahhhhhhhh. I needed this. Thank you!!!!!
Here is the basis for a build that I have been fiddling with and thinking over that has a completely unique playstyle (would require a lot of dm buy in): A build around the conjuration wizard's 2nd level feature Minor Conjuration. Your conjuration disappears if it deals any damage or if you use it again, and it must be a nonmagical object that you have seen. I don't believe there has been an official ruling, just a crawford comment, but basically you can have single-use damage work at full strength, it doesn't disappear before damage occurs. The poisons in dnd are non-magical and the poison and its container are considered a single object depending on how the dm interprets things. There are also poisons that do not deal damage, like carrion crawler mucus, drow poison, essence of ether, malice, oil of taggit, torpor, or truth serum. Many are capable of taking out a single target in a fight, and if your wizard has action surge or haste, you can likely start the fight with at least a single enemy out of commission. It isn't great action economy, but I am sure there is a way around that and to make a true cost free sustainable poisoner build. There also might be a way to get catapult involved for extra shenanigans.
Use a horde of zombies to create a ring around your frontliners and the bad guys. All undead keep their actions readied for if an enemy comes into attack range they attempt a grapple
If you want to try to mitigate how insane this is, you could have plot-related reasons why you can't bring too many undead where you're going. Then you'd still be open to use your powers to their full effect in a one-off situation.
It's hard to raise a family... but it most certainly helps if they are buried close to each other. - anonymous necromancer.
The number one phrase that fixes all problems with playing evil characters: evil does not equal stupid.
If you are into mtg, playing this duo as Liliana and Josu Vess reunited could be a blast
My friend and I are about to run these builds in our campaign! Thanks for the build and the help!
Nice! Would love to see a Gish version of the necromancer too see how good it could be
It's worth noting that with dice rolling tools, including the default one in roll20, you can roll a whole bunch of d20's against a target number and it tells you how many are hits. Then you can roll a single damage roll and multiply by the number of hits. That lets you still get variability, since rolling a giant pool of dice tends to result is very little deviation from the average.
I do this a lot as the DM. I really like taking creatures that the party were struggling with early on in a campaign and then throwing hordes of them later on when they are trivial. Digital tools really are a blessing that heavily streamline the game and let you focus on the roleplay and narrative
You’re easily my new favorite dnd content creator thank you for taking the time to put these videos out they’re exactly what I’ve been looking for :)
Thanks Jake! Glad you're enjoying :)
I had a Mind-Flayer necromancer in Out of the Abyss who obtained the wand of Orcus and used a Simulacrum by the end. He had hundreds of of minions at this point so we just ended up using the Mob Combat rules to speed up combat.
remember with command undead you can have one extra undead controlled, you can create a mummy and just use this for a general or whatever, not too strong but kind of funny if you don't find a nightwalker
I know this is an old video, but my solution for carrying/moving undead around towns is gaining access to a bag of holding. They don't need to breath, and they're in a pocket dimension so no smell or sound, plus you can easily grab them out of it. Most DMs I've played with have let me either pull out a few as a full round round action, or 1 as part of a bonus action given how bag of holding works if we're in combat and they aren't out.
As a “Forever DM…” maybe if the Necromancer summoned Wights that each had zombies, and maybe they had a Nightwalker… sounds like a tomb of horrors to me…
I smiled and a single tear rolled down my face when you said you weren’t multi classing🥲
One way this could work is if your defending a village from a band of barbarians and your using all the skeletons in the cemetery of all the people who used to live there to protect to town :-)
"Mommy, I saw Grandpa helping fend off the Barbarians last night! Except he looked... different..."
Party leader: "We swear we will depend this town with our lives!!"
Fighter: "You have sword."
Ranger: "And my bow."
Necromancer:"And your parents. "
I think you may have missed an opportunity to optimize your necromancer build a slight bit more.
A single level of death domain cleric to start would grant: medium armor / shield proficiency (which you got around by going tortle but this allows a greater variety of race / lineage choice), doesn't hamper spell slot progression, additional cantrips and 1st level spell preparations (bless, false life, healing word, etc.) and the Reaper feature which RAW I believe works with necromancy cantrips from any class. Just make certain to take any necromancy damage cantrips with your wizard levels.
Plus, I really enjoy the flavor of a character who begins as an acolyte / cleric of death but decides to travel an even darker path.
Lastly, I don't believe you touched on the potential to use the spells Danse Macabre or Summon Undead in your video, both of which would benefit from a Necromancer's "Undead Thralls" ability.
This would be really fun to run as a villain for a DM or a PVP game.
The perfect speech to rally troops is darion mograines speech "hear the call of the highlord". The speech given to death knights in wow before you attack hallowed grounds
Nit Picks and Strategies for Shared Table time:
- Falling unconscious has no effect on your control over the undead. They remain controlled until the spell wears off.
- As mentioned elsewhere, you can be running with A Lot more skeletons.
- Oathbreaker is by default an NPC class not intended for PCs, though that hasn't stopped people at my tables (I like it).
- Make Monster Cards for your Skeletons and Zombies. Standing order to each individual undead: "attack what they attack" and point to another PC. Hand each PC 1-2 cards and let them run some of the minions. Bonus points for strategizing so a zombies take turns Helping the GWM fighter/Sharpshooter each round.
- At level 15 use your level 8 slot to make a Wight. Use your Level 14 subclass feature on it after you've instructed it not to resist your will. Use it until you find something better than it and 12 extra zambos. Based on the Lore for Wights in the Monster Manual, there is a strong chance it will remain loyal even without the ability.
- If you want to have a massive, reeking, entourage, "Harmless Zombies." You can forgo the zombie attacks to instead make them dash, dodge, and use the help action for your ally's attacks. Just making them flesh walls that surround large and smaller creatures is great. Having them cut off an enemy's movement until the foe slogs through destroying them, inflicting disadvantage on all ranged attacks, etc is potentially of greater strategic value at levels 8+ than having them attack at all.
Love me the Necromancer. czcams.com/video/p4t10WxkZo0/video.html
My fave strat with zombies:
Cast sickening radiance. Send zombies to grapple the enemy along the edges of sickening radiance. Have the other zombies stay at the edges ready to grapple should there not be enough enemies. party deals with other enemies or just stay away and cast debuffs on the enemies inside sickening radiance.
You can re-raise a minion over and over as long as it's body still exists. The magic of the spell pieces them back together.
I've played the Oathbreaker hexblade part of a similar combo, yes broken AF.
I recently designed a pure wizard necromancer. He took the Shadow Touched feat as a custom lineage race for 18 int and invisibility/inflict wounds as prepared int spells. Level 4 took the artificer Initiate feat for cure wounds as a prepared int spell. Not particularly optimized for massive undead armies, but that's not how I intend to play the character. He's just a normal wizard, except he's fascinated by the arcane study of life and death.
Fun combo: have a Raven or owl and get 100' cure wounds / inflict wounds
Inspiring leader speech: "Tonight we dine in Hell!...which, yes, I understand that's basically where some of u dine every night, but u get my point. But I don't want u to get down about that. You may be skin and bones, but you're all heart to me, lads. To arms!"
ha ha ha
13:00 yes. Jeremy Crawford stated that, as creatures, undead can equip, attune to, and activate magic weapons, armor, and items.
It'd be cool to see this concept with the Tasha's Necromancer build released by Treantmonk
That weird thing with ghoul's paralysis not working on elves comes back probably to the beginning of D&D. I started my adventure with D&D on 3rd Edition nearly 20 years ago, and it was already there.
I've DMed for a necromancer before, some thoughts on the issues you brought up of running it.
We started at level 7, and he wanted to have all 16 skeletons that I think is the upper cap for that level. I told him we could start with 8, with opportunities to grow his horde and some minions that bent the rules a bit. New skeletons were acquired through the fallen foes or purchasing animal bones from a butcher (which people would do to make soup).
While necromancy isn't unheard of in my setting, people still aren't the most ok with a small army walking into a town or a buisness. My necro had Disguise Kit proficiency, and used it to sneak them around, but not always.
For bookkeeping simplicity, I treat the skeletons as having a ranged and melee attack, rather than explicitly shortsword and shortbow, since I think that was more used for enemy NPCs than summonable allies. This could be anything from sharpened femurs/ribs for melee and throwing bone darts for ranged. Same damage, just flavoring that makes sense.
As for AOE, it do be like that sometimes, that's your weakness. I wouldn't put destroy undead in unless it made sense to, and any necromancer that challenges a Cleric knows full well that losing a horde may happen. The same goes for the ward spells like Forbiddence or Temple of the Gods, it is a known weakness you may have and you can't DPS your way through all problems.
I let them re-summon the undead if it died, with a few caveats. If the skeleton took significant bludgeoning damage, it was considered too damaged to be reincarnated. The same goes for being hit by destroy undead.
On the flip side, if the creature that they raised had a trait that made sense, they got to keep it. For example, a bugbear skeleton would have reach.
One thing to note is the intelligence factor of skeletons and zombies. However, skeletons are smart enough to operate seige weaponry if shown how, so if you can acquire a cannon, trebuchet, or the like, you can up your DPS farther.
All in all, he was pulling crazy DPS most of the time. Just being able to hit for 15 or 30 flat damage is brilliant. Even having one knock an enemy prone, have a second grapple them to keep the enemy from getting up, then having all the skeletons attack with advantage is huge. A lot of skeletons died, but they were expendable when the Party was not.
I love the way you handled this in your game. But how would you handle so many attacks per round? as ive seen it slow down the game, im going to become a DM soon so im interested in your response
The classic speech "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
You can use Finger of Death on your undead army to keep them under your command permanently if they are humanoid undead and you command them to fail the save beforehand. But it would mean killing a few everyday with finger of death, keeping control over the rest, sleep and repeat til your army no longer needs a spellslot to maintain. Also note: It says to RECAST to maintain control, not use the same spellslot, so you can use a lower slot to control those not re-resurrected by Finger of Death.
Funny how I found this as I'm currently playing a Drow Necromancer in the "Icewind Dale, Rime of the Frost Maiden" Campaign - Currently lvl 6.
Dauwn was an Acolyte who has become disillusioned from a faith that never seemed to truly accept him. So he found himself here posing as a man of the cloth to give prayers over the dead. But secretly has been studying death and how to manipulate it. He's not well in the head but is intelligent which makes him dangerous. Before he was kidnapped by Illithids he would exhume graves to study the bodies buried within. His time with the Illithids concerns him only as they are likely to take him away from his research. He actually anticipates they may have survivors that could come looking for him. But surmises that staying close to large crowds of people would not only keep him safe. But encourage his pursuers to find easier prey. Perhaps even leaving more dead in their wake to study. All the while his familiar Veil, a Celestial spirit he's bonded to tries to discourage his necromantic studies. Veil is a hold over from when he was still trying to gain favor of his faith in Kelemvor. The two of them can often be seen in long conversations together but only Dauwn's voice can be heard.
Motivation - Stop this long winter which makes exhuming bodies easier. Also, unable to properly bury the dead. Fascinated by death he wants to take the opportunity to study as much as he can in the meantime. Justifies his actions as using bodies as vessels of retribution.
Here's a Homebrew rule idea inspired by The Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion. The Skeleton starts as the basic unit, then there is the skeleton Guardian, then the Skeleton Hero, then The Skeleton Champion. Maybe as your levels go up you can up-cast summons for skeletons but be stronger variants eventually having a good chunk of AP/HP along with some resistances, better weapons and armor. Naturally each variant just doubles the lesser's HP and gains +2 to hit with their weapons, Champions' of course would be the elite = to mid-level fighters with enchanted weapons and armor. Naturally they would be out classed by the Paladin and other PC's, but as supporting cast members they could put some hurt on lesser enemies that come the party's way.
The Paladin could inspire 36 undead per hour.
Lawful Evil and a detailed party contract.
Dress your undead in clown suits.
Determine the average damage per hit vs AC and apply that.
Raid old battlefields or mass graves.
Arm your undead with Moon-Touched swords. They are common MAGIC items, thus cheap/easy to make.
The interpretations I have found online all seem to say that is is impossible. A strict reading of the Animate Dead spell seems to indicate that the reason given for not allowing reanimation stems from it no longer being the "corpse of a medium or small humanoid", it is now the corpse of an undead creature. Creating skeletons should be okay, since they only require "a pile of bones".
This would also relieve you of the grave robbing problem as apparently, any pile of bones would work. I wonder how many bones constitute a "pile?
One problem with counterspell, it only has a range of 60, while fireball has a range of 150.
Who makes the Giant Skeletons? Is there some way we could do it?
I love this, as a DM. How are the party members going to deal with the two Chaotic Evil dudes who attack villages at random times, wiping them out and leaving destroyed undead behind.
Cool trick:
Your minions obey your commands. Technically you can command them to obey your fellas (And if they get frisky with it, just change the command later).
One person with 10 Skelly Steves = Slow and Long turns.
Every party member with a smol squad = Equal turns, overlord fun vibes aand they even get to pimp them meaning less maintenance cost for you.
To smooth the 'relations' with your lawful light wielding boii, just use the bones of your evil enemies as your minions and maybe don't tell him where all the rest came from.
Add in a Lore Bard and a Divine Soul Sorcerer(With one dip in Death Cleric (Thanks to Talking20 for the best evil magic boi build ever)) and you could have a super strong party to command a sustainable horde of undead fools. Relying on the Wizard as the engine to churn out undead, the Paladin to lead and buff them, the Bard could support them and up their damage with the *crazy* spell list, and the the Sorcerer could be incredible damage/cc. Plus the theme of the whole party leading this horde just paints a picture in my mind that gives me chills. I know that goes way beyond Optimization builds but it's still just such a cool thought in my mind that I needed to share it.
Haven't gotten to play a Necromancer Wizard yet. Did play a Tempest Cleric with Animate Dead. Self capped at 8 Skeletons for my bone brigade. Got to arm them with Long swords and long bows so a little boost. Did that because we were a melee party. On a different note it might be costly unless you're DM let's you craft Magic Items but get or make a collection of wands of magic missile. If you use my cap of 8 that is potentially 24d4×7rounds per day. Avg 60 force per round. And it gets past magic resistance. You can also put your Skeletons in robes and make it look like you have a Wizard Army for the social encounters.
Suggestion for a possible future video - a team of perfect melee butcher and perfect brainy wizard. Like a mastermind and his/her bodyguard. Would love to see this pairing :D
will put it on the list!
Gotta say, I think wights are the real reason for create undead to be recommended. If you use both your 8th and 9th level slots for that, you can create and control 5 wights ... who in turn can command up to a dozen zombies each, or 30 altogether. 5 wights + 30 zombies is somewhat better than making 26 skeletons with animate dead. Of course, it takes either DM intervention (allowing you to pass command of zombies made by other means) or taking prisoners and systematically "processing" them (tie victims down and let the wights take turns draining life until a zombie is created) to fill out your wight squads.
However, ghouls/ghasts do have some advantages over skeletons. While their poison won't land too often, ghouls have quite a bit more health and a higher CR than skeletons, which reduces their weakness to destroy undead. When you can add a ghast, it grants resistance to all ghouls against being turned. So your ghouls and ghast could take the place of a skeletal melee force.
One more thing that really complicates this build ... animate dead only *creates* one undead minion at base level, but allows you to *control* up to four. Your subclass does *not* increase the number you can control, but this still means you could control 2 3rd-level castings of skeletons with just 1 3rd level slot. So if you can avoid losing all your skeletons every day, you can potentially build up quite a lot more than you could create after they get totally wiped out.
Personally, I'm with you that this system does not work well for player necromancers. A better option IMO would be to put an upper limit to the number of minions, but instead of using the monster manual versions, provide a monster template that incorporates how your minions will grow with you. So depending on level (and how powerful each minion gets to be), allow probably somewhere between 1 and 6 minions. One of these days I may just create a "necromancer" main class that uses this idea.
I've been thinking about a wizard druid necromancer multi-class, and I think something that would help with the turn economy problem of turns taking too long is sticking with the "I take what I need and then leave the place better than I left it" kind of approach. I feel like it might be a good excuse to have a good aligned necromancer as well
Step 1: Be a reasonably high level necromancer.
Step 2: Become a governor or mayor or something of a scenic town up the coast.
Step 3: Have a social program in which, when a person is getting old and doesn't have long left, they and their family get to make a call on whether they want to be buried, or if they'd be okay with getting Reanimated.
Step 4: Treat the zombies so they smell like roses and don't spread diseases, put them to work as free menial labour out on the fields.
Step 5: Use money saved and gained on labour and increased productivity to finance public education for the people who used to spend their days plowing the fields and gathering food for the day.
Step 6: Have some of the people become necromancers to help you administer the zombies. Have some of the people become Clerics to provide free public healthcare and the option to destroy the undead if something goes awry.
Step 7: Welcome to Necrotopia!
This build is amazing mechanics wise, but where I think it really shines is the RP. Like the implications of how you logistically deal with hordes of undead thralls following you everywhere. Say goodbye to deep PC to PC monologues lol. Love this
I think the strength of the Create Undead spell is the logistics. Your calculation that many skeletons are more useful than 2-3 stronger undead is based on the idea that they can all make attacks. It's hard to white room a dungeon scenario, but I can imagine fighting in a corridor: Assuming a 15 foot wide corridor (which I think is pretty generous), you can fit 3 undead side by side. With a 30 foot range, filling the entire corridor with skeletons only gives you 6 ranks of 3 undead, or 18 total. That's not a lot, especially since you'll probably want to stick some number of PCs in that range as well. Or, maybe you enter a room, to find it filled with enemies that attack you. Even if the room were arbitrarily large, the whole mass of skeletons and players still need to be within 30 feet of the entryway to enter on their turn, meaning, assuming you're entering from the previous hallway, you can only pack 18 characters into the room per round. Better, but still a pretty severe limitation for the first few rounds. That's assuming the room is big enough, and that the enemies don't form battle lines that prevent you from pushing further into the room.
By the time you get to Create Undead, the fights that let you make meaningful use of the entire horde's action economy will be a slim minority (depending on the campaign, obviously). On the other hand, a small number of more elite undead can just be stuck at the front of the horde and always see use. It's a straight upgrade in any scenario other than a relatively rare open field encounter.
Incidentally, the fact that you won't make full use of the horde means you can probably save on a decent chunk of spell slots. When you have dozens of skeletons and you know you're heading into a dungeon, you may as well just kill some of them before you need to pay upkeep. You won't be using them anyway, so you might as well preserve the spell slot to hold up counterspell or polymorph or whatever it is wizards normally do.
"Dont ask me where you're getting all those bones"
Fine I'll come up with my own bone zone- spend downtime when not maintaining the skelarmy building your own dungeon. Bribe bards to go forth and speak of the legendary treasures your dungeon holds to lure in overconfident adventurers, use their bones to build the foundation of your army, and their gear to fund/upgrade horde
Until the dm sends in a capable party and you lose all your loot
@@pencilbender be sure to send a letter to that party congratulating them on their promotion from unwitting Victim to To target
Skilled adventurers make for the best undead minions
34:40 - Dragon’s Breath can be really useful to slap onto your (owl) familiar (to give them a damaging action they can do) since it’s not an attack.
Hey new viewer and just wanted to say 1 great video! and 2 i'm watching this after having spent roughly 3-4 days looking at summons in 5e and how to make them work. I think the perfect middle ground for the necromancer wizard is having 1.5 times your level rounded up as a max on any given adventuring day. also for running them in combat the easiest rule to keep the turns fast is having them always go on your initiative and use the mob attack rules in the dmg, it gives a consistent basis for how much damage they can expect to do and how to balance against them. to lower the effectiveness on the players undead you only have to increase an enemies a.c. to 17, because then it goes from 1 out of every 2 hitting to one out of every 3, meanwhile the rest of the party probably wont notice the difference between that 16 a.c. enemy vs that 17 a.c. enemy. it makes stuff go quickly while also still rewarding the player for being a cool necromancer! of course if you need to use it as a plot point, let the character go ham and raise an army to assault the castle so the party can sneak in and get the mccguffin!
Thanks! Nice idea!
> "What would you say to a Skeleton to inspire them?"
Clearly they're the backbone of my undead army.
Two quick points: First, the DM's Guide in Chapter 8 has rules for handling mobs, where you skip attack and damage and just track the number of individuals needed to land a hit and use average damage. When you get over 5 or 6 skellies that's probably the easiest way to go.
Second, I know everyone is all gung ho about Ravenloft right now, but in Eberron the kingdoms of both Karnath and Aerenal have good aligned necromancers and people who volunteer to become undead to protect their people forever. Karnath are themed Russian and Aerenal are elves.
Two things I gotta point out because of my love of necromancy.
1. wights can have 12 zombies at a time so for 10skeletons you get a Wight and 12 zombies.
2. 7th slots and above should go to finger of death as when you kill someone with it they become a permanent zombie technically allowing infinite thralls.
For how to play it personally I'd have all my thralls roll in groups for their hit.
For example archers all are based on 1 hit die so they all miss they all hit and all crit together, and the melee skeletons roll off of their own dice meaning (in this case) only two rolls to hit are needed.
You can do the same with damage or just do average damage 100% of hits.