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
@@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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
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
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.
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 :-)
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
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.
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!
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
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.
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…
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. th-cam.com/video/p4t10WxkZo0/w-d-xo.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 do appreciate that by the end of the video you do mention that a MAD necromancer 6/oathbreaker 7 could work, as that was what I was kind of looking for when I started this video. I agree that this is absolutely unrealistic for a combo build outside of the DM being 100% on board with it as something fun. I also agree that most people consider necromancers to be absolute garbage for playability, and that's sadly by design. WotC doesn't want evil PCs. This is also why the chromatic dragonborn was nerfed in the official release. You're supposed to play as heroes. The thing is, a lot of players only build murderhobos, so WotC technically already failed in that regard. So seeing this pair up, was nice. I would be curious to see what the other 2-3 PCs would look like. I'm thinking a Death domain cleric and an assassin rogue. Maybe a whispers bard and spores druid could make a full party of six. If you had that many undead in a campaign, there's no way multiple kingdoms wouldn't have amassed a bunch of wizards and cleric together to try take you down. Those 70+ skeletons wouldn't survive one round if a religious order was called in to take them down. Even one archmage with meteor swarm would decimate them, and would be justified in doing so. But, again, this was more of a fun build. If I had a player wanting to do this, I would definitely limit the skeletons, and push for other undead afterwards. As someone who has ran Organized Play games, the worst players were the summoners who took 10-15 minutes per turn and did nothing but clog the maps with their summons. As for more weapons and armor, I wouldn't automatically give the skeletons weapons and armor. If I raise skeletons from commoners, they don't magically grow armor and a broken sword. Not even in fantasy can anyone justify that. However, I would allow a player to use mending to fix weapons and armor that was found, as well as use creation to make adamantine or mithral (likely adamantine) so that armor could be crafted and crits would be negated.
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.
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!
As much as I love Oathbreakers, the Necromancy Wizard is just the best choice. You can permanently bind undead to your will as many times as you want per day. As soon as you bind like a vampire or something with high intelligence, you can cast a geas on it that forbids it from choosing to resist Command Undead. As far as necromancers being broken, I am not sure I agree, because it is hard to keep undead intact, under your control, and not made dead-dead by the town guards who are not going to take likely to your army of undead marching through the streets. It is a good roleplay opportunity because the player needs to figure out how to disguise them as masked henchmen that don't smell- which is why skeletons are a great place to start. For combat, I would just use mob rules. Your DM will provide the bodies lol. Resistance to non magic attacks does not matter so much when you make several attacks.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
This man heard about Crusader's Mantle and Animate Object and took it to the moon. 🤣 Side note, it seems like something that could homebrew "fix" necromancer (keep the undead horde to a reasonable size while still allowing powerful options) would be to add Necromancy bonuses at some levels to allow summoned undead to use the spellcaster's spell save DC for abilities and add the spellcasting modifier to the creatures' bonuses to hit. All bonuses are lost while not under the Wizard's control. You can also use a spreadsheet where you input dice likeliness and add in the appropriate modifiers, and just have the spreadsheet figure out "x out of my y skeletons roll nat 20s, z roll 19s" and so on. I feel the former option is safer for the realistic scenarios where if you lose concentration you're likely subjecting your party to a TPK.
I keep seeing this along the lines of Arthas and Kel'Thuzad from Warcraft 3. The paladin is a disowned prince seeking to gain empires through conquest while the wise wizard is the majordomo whispering in his ear and raises his master's minions. And I'd have the paladin take the noble background and use the variant of Retainers instead of Position of Privilege - that way, you have the servants that can push the dead body cart, handle the armory for the new minions, dig up new minions, and do any other chores/errands as needed. :D
I'm playing a wizard necromancer in my current campaign. I rolled exceptionally well on a boss loot table and got a Deck of Many Things, pulled a single card and got the Throne (i now own a keep overrun with monsters in the field right outside the main port city). I used my Roc feather token to fly me to the top of the keep where i placed the remaining cards and then we got to work spreading the news throughout town that there's a powerful legendary item atop the mysterious keep that just appeared. Now for a mere 50 gold admission fee, anyone can come risk their life and attempt to clear the keep and claim the prize. No one has done it yet and i now have a near limitless supply of corpses to raise for my army, plus some passive income :D
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.
TLDR: Do to Animate Dead spam + Undead Thralls being so effective, it is liable to do a 180 and become terrible by accident if left unchecked with no communication. For context my DM said he wanted to run the entirety of Tyranny of Dragons without weakening the encounters. We were given cart blanche to do anything legal in the books, and told us that the adventure is very deadly. So i made a Lvl 1 War Cleric(Worshiper of the Red Knight aspect of Tempus) that would multiclass School of Necromancy Wizard for every level thereafter. And let me spoil this small thing, there are a *lot* of bodies... I mean cultists. 4 things I learned from playing that necromancer. 1. 24 hour time limit means you can cast animate dead *before* you long rest, then you will have them for another 16 hours or thereabouts and all of your spell slots. Just have the ones you can't maintain destroy themselves before the time is up. 2. You can maintain control of more skeletons than you can create with the animate dead spell. So with the help of the Arcane Recovery class feature, A 6th level wizard can gain and maintain 12 skeletons after a few days. then 18 at 7th, and 24 at 8th etc. So the scaling is fantastic.(you could keep a few more with Arcane Recovery but it's a hassle) 3. In a rare case of bounded accuracy working in the favor of players the skeletons low hit roll is not a death knell to the strategy. they hit about 40-45%(without advantage or disadvantage) of the time on average at mid-high level play(In my experience). This is of course assuming normal monster ACs. 4. Having dozens of skeletons shooting at the enemies from behind cover dealing ridiculous damage is not effective for one counterintuitive reason. The DM will almost certainly re-balance the encounters to account for it, and it makes every combat a fight for your life ordeal where you rely on the skeletons damage to succeed. Keep in mind that they are each quite squishy and almost every enemy mage/magic entity is likely to have AOE now and you have a recipe for a TPK. This is almost what happened to our party, but both the DM and I(mostly the DM) hashed out how many skeletons I could bring with me into each encounter due to a curse(that I consented to OOC) in order to bring things back in line. We were both satisfied with the results.
No Critiques on the Paladin, I think its genius! The Necromancer I would recommend Starting Artificer 1, for Con save Proficiency and Faerie Fire as a spell for more variety on what your concentration spell should be. Taking the 6 levels of wizard after to get your Animate Dead and the subclass buffs. Then take two more levels of Artificer Artillerist. Trust me, its worth it! You get infusions to make a bag of holding for your Armory that your skeletons will need AND you get the Protector Cannon consistently providing Temp HP to your Skeleton Army every single round. Far better than the 3 HP increase you miss out on. THEN pick Wizard back up and carry on!
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.
I like the idea of the paladin being an undead (Reborn Lineage/Dhampir) experiment that the wizard is desperate to recreate but for some reason they are just unable to replicate the unusual conditions or whatever minute flaw caused the fluke PC
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
"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
Level 7 Wizard spell that creates more skeletons would be Simulacrum Simulacrum yourself at the beginning of the day, and have the Simulacrum make as many undead as possible. At level 13, that'd be... 2+2+2+4+4+4+6+6+8, short rest, 2+2 for 42 more undead created per day, and if you make a new simulacrum the next day to maintain control over the maximum amount of creatures possible you'd be able to control 4+4+4+6+6+6+8+8+10, short rest, 4+4 for your new cap of controlled creatures to be +64 (Though yes probably save this for downtime instead of an adventuring day, your undead creatures are most likely going to be dying so you won't have to worry about not being able to keep up with the cap) EDIT: If simulacrum chaining isn't banned, then your upper damage cap becomes potentially infinite, going as high as the number of simulacrums you have.
Fun video. I learned a few things, thanks. I usually play a cleric and don't prep animate dead. But the campaign I'm in now I have 2 skeletons and 4 zombies. It all started with finding the The Night Caller in the Sunless Citadel. Now my group keeps calling me "The Necromancer" and that I'm going to become a litch, lol. DM is picking up Tashas so I'll have access to Aura of Vitality, Purity, & Life (dont think i can use Life on undead though). Never thought having undead minions would be so fun.
If your other teammates are game, a sorcerer could twin haste or dragon's breath some of your skeletons, just to give them some special units to the army. I think this team build could be a barrel of laughs and fun for a group trying to do a two player campaign. (dm and two players that is.) That way, much of the number crunching and logistics becomes part of the fun rather than boring all of the players not contributing to your skeleton army. Imagine these outcast drow siblings coming to the surface to make a name for themselves, amass an army, then reinvade the Underdark for a final battle with the Drow Queen that spurned them. The players completing quests, not for fame and glory, but purely for money to arm their endless supply of skeletons. I think it would be a lot of fun managing the little routines and seeing what could go wrong. Getting attacked for graverobbing, only to add a few zombies to your army rather than the skeletons you had hoped for. Exhausted after a battle? Hopefully you don't sleep too long, lest your 16 skeletons break from the spell. The paladin distributing blades and inspiring words to the skeletons while the wizard finishes resetting animate dead on all of your units. Finding a hiding spot for 30+ skeletons to stick around, with the wizard mysteriously disappearing every morning for half an hour.
Fun fact: A bag of holding can hold up to 20 skeletons. Average human skeleton is about 25lbs. 500lb capacity in the bag, the 64³ft can be an issue but if you have all of the skeletons collapse inside the bag they would amount to a pile of bones that easily fits. Turn the bag inside out and BAM! Instant Army! Like instant ramen but way more terrifying!
Animate Dead: Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small Humanoid within range. IF bones have to be also from a medium or small humanoid, then by RAW it doesn't work because once your skeli dies it's bones from a medium sized undead. You can also Summon Undead: They get pretty beefy too, the zombie one is INSANE IMO...
To really maximize the horde to a truly absurd size, use Create Undead for Wights, and upcast for more Wights. Each Wight under your control can have 12 Zombies under their control, requiring a battle map that's best carried in a tube meant for engineering plans... After you raid enough villaiges for recruits. 😅
i would dip a level of death cleric as a necromancer. you can then fire a necromancy cantrip as a ranged spell attack at 2 targets standing within 5 ft eg Toll the Dead at 2 separate targets which will end up at epic levels to injured targets as 4d12 x2 dpr, as well as all the insane damage your animated undead are doing per round
Currently using a cleric/wizard/true necromancer swarm/summon build to block enemies because we don't have a melee fighter in the group. We currently playing 3.5. Using summon undead spells to deploy a small army of undead and boosting them with radius necromancy buffs. Has kept enemies' at bay while long range ranger takes them out has been good.
I would love to play a game where all the players agreed beforehand to do an evil campaign where they all play like undead flavored characters, these 2, circle of spores druid maybe, stuff like that. And have the setting never have any undead before, your players are the first people to discover it. And their sort of goal of the campaign is to either take over the world and enslave the living, or to just wipe out every other living creature until the world is just undead and them. Instead of fighting monsters and saving people, they are fighting monsters to raise them as powerful undead minions, and then wiping villages...towns...cities, off the map. So they would also end up fighting town militias, entire city guard forces, perhaps at the end they fight a massive army of all the survivors who banded together with dragons and other living monsters who all decided that the party is the greatest threat to all of them. EDIT: Realized the idea of undeath not being a thing in the setting would screw over the paladin with control undead and probably other things. So maybe leave setting as is.
Have you considered optimising for an out of combat role? I'd love to see a party face build, or a detective build jumping around the classes for the most important skills and spells. I know it falls outside your numerical methods, but I believe in you. I'm sure you could figure out an objective measure.
For a face it would probably be a high charisma Half Elf Rogue/Bard with expertise in social skills. Skill monkey builds tend to be a mix of Rogues and Bards.
@@Kolonite_ Ya, and for DPS; consider a fighter. But I'm here for the hour long number crunching. And I think it can be applied to the other parts of DnD than just the combat.
I do have a couple of builds like this on my potential future episodes list. I'll be honest and say that... I haven't quite yet figured out how to quantify what they are good at, and without that, I'm not quite sure I want to do an episode on them :). I'll keep coming back to them though, and one day, who knows?
Think of Animate Dead like a gun in a marksmanship competition. The quickest way to win would be to shoot the competitors, you have to resist using the gun to its full potential in that way, but the competition will still be fun.
A fix to the necromantic horde ? A new 3 rd level spell : Bolster undead : you add stats to a undead minion you have created , you cast recast it on the same minion over and over to make it stronger , or cast it on an other minion every casting . you can up cast it to affect 1 more minion per level increase . the stat would be probably slightly less to about half as strong as creating an other undead , but would have the benefit of not being a unwieldy horde . maybe have a cap on how many times you can cast it on a single minion ?
I am jumping into this vid because I am curious about what you have in mind. Animate dead scaling with more skeletons/zombies instead of better ones can get ridiculous, but I dont think you can make any one of them a threat. At level 6, 13+6 hitpoints with 13 AC is okay at best. If you can gear them up with scalemail its 16 AC, if you give them 2 shortswords its 2d6+2+6 damage (I asume this is a reasonable loadout). But without magic items, their +4 to hit will be worse and worse, and their nonmagical BPS is going to get resisted more and more. I dont think you having 50 or 100 skellies would matter, because 1)they wont fit into every combat encounter 2) they wont hit often 3) they wont deal much damage even if they hit. These are my preconceptions, lets see what you make of the class
As a player and DM of 5e, I wish to make a few comments: 1) No character that relies on anything outside of their own character should be considered OP. Example: If a player wants to run a Necromancer, make sure you clarify things during Session Zero like not every defeated foe can be reanimated (anything crushed to death, killed by Shatter or Thunder Wave, dissolved in acid etc). You need to have a torso, a head, two working legs, and an arm in order to use the stats given. If the DM wants to homebrew an armless Undead and their bite attack that's up to them. The party also has to be okay with having a Necromancer in their midst or the campaign is pretty much a non-starter. The player will have to understand that in most places hordes of shambling undead are frowned upon. Once word gets out that you're 'that guy' don't be shocked if prices go up at shops and so forth. 2) One enemy Cleric can ruin a Necromancer's whole day. 3) Once word gets out that the party is often seen at the head of an army of the shambling dead, the Necromancer is going to have a target on his back. Just as many players will focus fire on enemy casters, the enemies might do the same. 4) If the Necromancer misses his Control spell even once, for whatever reason, his army becomes hostile. 5) As much as I enjoy your videos, I have to bring up one point and that is that your introductions are interminably long and I find myself skipping over them. As much as you tried to keep this video shorter, despite the fact that you were covering two builds, you spent nearly twenty minutes telling us what you were GOING to do or say instead of simply doing it. I appreciate that you're trying to be thorough but at the 20-minute mark you have the race and that's it. I humbly request that you try to stay more on point and instead of spending double-digit minutes explaining the contents of the video, simply get on with it.
5) I found those first 20 mins to be VERY helpful in quickly learning all the important information about the video. That way I can easily go back and take notes on the entire thing if I decide to run the build. (He has a long enough playlist that it was useful to watch just the intros to find TWO whole builds that made character ideas I had viable)
What if upcasting Animate Dead still only made 1 skeleton, but combine the hp pools and damage potential? This would cut down on the amount of rolls and reduce their consistency.
I loved playing my Necromancer, but we play Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Too many tight hallways. A challenge that is too much. I switched to evoker. My fellow players couldn't pass through those hallways. EDIT: A solution I had for the Necromancer, though we didn't use that in our campaign, was combining undead creatures into a single construct. You can get hella creative. My ruling is "Add up HP and attacks of the Skeletons and make it a single massive construct alá Nito from Darksouls, and depending on hitpoints it loses an attack. Alternatively make it one attack that gets weaker over time the less hp it has." You can make some fine constructs with that and can get creative with that. I also had an idea of very specific undead to summon, like flag bearers that boost morale in the sense that it can enhance attacks or give boni for other rolls like saving throws.
The skeletons and zombies are only a challenge 1/4 before modifications from wizard. After breastplate/plate and wizard mods they can get up to cr 3, cr4 if inspiring leader is used The numbers you quote are accurate if the army is dying every day or you are restocking fresh corpses, a 3rd level slot can exert control of 4 skeletons, +2 per level of spell meaning 6 at 4th, 8 out of 5th 10 out of 6 12 out of 7th 14 out of 8th and 16 out of 9th at 15th level I can control 24 skeletons and still have my highest level slots to cast defensive or control magic
Colby! I had a thought and I wanted you to see it and it has literally nothing to do with this episode but I wasn't sure if there was a better way to contact you (you're so good at answering your comments) I've been playing a bladesinging/fighter combo. I'm currently level 11 (9 wizard/2 fighter). And I've discovered that RAW, you're capable of casting 2 leveled spells per turn as long as they're both actions. So, I could do something like use level 4 hold person, action surge, and then steel wind strike. If I succeed on holding 3 creatures, then hit all my attacks (3 of which would be at advantage and auto crit), I'd do a total of 48d10 damage per turn, or an average of 264 damage. Thought you might like that/be able to create a build with that concept in mind.
I'd let this fly in my games, though I'd put a limit of can only one active Animate/Create Undead per Undead Creature type. So early on you get a small batch of Skeletons and another group of Zombies. Even early on you can run with a mixed crew that is satisfying. Eventually, those advanced Undead types still allow the power growth of the character.
These questions at the beginning of the video are all answered in a simple way: This is a DMPC build to be the villains in a campaign. Think Briarwoods from Vox Machina energy as reoccurring baddies that grow as the characters do (but always a few levels ahead to be more challenging, like level 1 PCs level 3 DMPCs)
re:discussion in problems with necro+animate dead: RAW, I don't believe you can re-animate a dead zombie/skeleton. Animate Dead specifically says you can raise the corpse/bones of a humanoid, but once you've raised them they become undead and thus are no longer humanoid. Similar to how there are all kinds of issues if you want to resurrect someone who was turned into a zombie.
I'd be curious the kind of build you could up with by combining the necromancy here with the Ancestral gaurdian barbarian. Essentially giving all your undead allies some more tankyness against an enemy
Would be great to see videos for all the other forms of single class necromancer builds as well. Like, Spirit Bard, Divine Soul Sorcerer, Warlock (no particular Patron but Undead would be fitting I guess), Death Cleric and Spore Druid.
Did you monoclass just to keep things simple or because it worked out best numbers wise? I wrote a build about a 6 wizard/11 warlock/2 ranger/1 cleric that maxed out at 1624 dpr against ac 10 via 124 bone friends
I want to run an evil campaign based on this! Where the party get to be the bad guys, even earning their own dungeon. Your bane is a party of goodly adventurers that keep trying to spoil your fun. Animate dead does seem broken, Upcasting to allow them to equip better gear would be cool.
Not sure why people don't think about it but you want a Wizard with AC and no MC. Gith Yanki, or Hobgoblin for an armored Wizard that even has an INT bump. You can get a CON and light Armor with a Hobgoblin and STR and Medium.
When the Wizard gets to level 17 learn Gate. Summon a Nightwalker, Storm Giant Skeleton or other desired undead to you. Use control feature to gain instant servant.
You do not lose control over your undead if you go unconscious or even die. They will follow the last general orders or specific orders until the 24 hour period is up and then and only then they are free to do what ever undead desire to do
Break down the skellys. You have a group of 4 or 5 or 6 and it becomes the super skeleton, it gets multi attack or a buffed AC and maybe a few extra hit points but it only counts as one monster for control purposes. Have a table you work out with the DM and figure what is the group of skeleton size that is to much and then start adding bonus HP/damage/to hit / AC, or what ever once who have exceeded that number
In a long rest, you have up to 2 hours (maybe 1) which you can use for non-strenuous activities (eg. Inspiring undead) so you could use inspiring leader 12 times to inspire 72 undead. If your dm doesn’t let you do this for whatever reason, a long rest can survive up to one hour of “combat stuff” so you could inspire 36 undead, delaying your long rest by an hour
I cannot resist the allure of casting Animate Dead and Create Undead multiple times to get the full spectrum of skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ghasts, wights, and mummies all at once. Although I'd probably do this in a more epic-level campaign where the PCs are, say, assaulting or defending a castle or city.
This video had me laughing out loud. Many years ago, in Diablo 2 Hardcore online, I did a lot of joke builds, since Hardcore characters are disposable anyway (permadeath). One of my joke builds was a Necromancer who just maxed out all the summon minion spells (weak auras and dps, as a result). He had an obnoxious number of revived monsters and skeletons, totally clogging up every narrow hallway with a hilariously disorganized gaggle of derp. That build was so inefficient, so incredibly dangerous when you first spawn (getting that first kill, to start your army, was really difficult), and so vulnerable to AoE (Diablo himself would just instantly wipe the whole horde)... but man... it was flippin' hilarious to watch. And surprisingly safe, once you got rolling. As a result, that total joke character ended up never dying and becoming one of the highest level Hardcore Necromancers in the world. Coincidentally, although that Necromancer was really slow on his own, he paired excellently with Paladins and Sorcerers. The main reason he reached the top levels of Hardcore was because Paladins and Sorcerers loved grouping with him. Behind his 61-man meatshield was the safest place in the world, a major asset in Hardcore, lol.
Hello! Great video once again. Just a simple question, for the necromancer race, how did you get +2 ton intel with the half-elf drow, when they give +2 to charisma and +1 to 2 other stats. Is there any sort custumization I am not aware. Thank you!
Thanks! Yes, I should more often clarify that I'm always using Tasha's Cauldron of Everything to customize our Ability Scores: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/tcoe/character-options#AbilityScoreIncreases
@@DnDDeepDive Ahhhh fairly new to custom lineage...the program I'm using does not let me change the ''race'' for example I could not take Elven Accuracy as custom lineage. Thank you for the clarification. Will definetly try the necromancer build in a one shot for sure!!! I was also wondering if you could optimize a ''gunslinger'' character. Not the Mat Mercer Fighter variant, but a complete build with core rules. Thank You :)
@@Frenzyfrank34 Right - this isn't actually taking the Custom Lineage race, it's simply assigning our Ability scores to the abilities of our choice as per that rule in Tasha's. Gunslinger is on the list!
As a DM for 6-8 regulars. Once something would bog down the game ( animate object with 10 objects rolling attacks, esp. w/ advantage) I swap it to swarm tactics, ie split them into 5 and 5 .. single attack for all. yes it increases swing of hit or miss. but I am not allowing a single player to sit there and roll dice for 5-10 minutes. I'd probably do the same with a Necromancer's skele-army.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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
Been subscribed for a few years now, and I still get a tingle down my spine when I hear "welcome home."
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.
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 :)
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..
* 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
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.
I'm hyped for this nefarious duo.
The gruesome twosome.
This kinda makes me want to see a Death Knight build
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 :)
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. "
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
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
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.
I've played the Oathbreaker hexblade part of a similar combo, yes broken AF.
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!
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
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.
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…
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. th-cam.com/video/p4t10WxkZo0/w-d-xo.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.
The number one phrase that fixes all problems with playing evil characters: evil does not equal stupid.
I do appreciate that by the end of the video you do mention that a MAD necromancer 6/oathbreaker 7 could work, as that was what I was kind of looking for when I started this video.
I agree that this is absolutely unrealistic for a combo build outside of the DM being 100% on board with it as something fun. I also agree that most people consider necromancers to be absolute garbage for playability, and that's sadly by design. WotC doesn't want evil PCs. This is also why the chromatic dragonborn was nerfed in the official release. You're supposed to play as heroes. The thing is, a lot of players only build murderhobos, so WotC technically already failed in that regard. So seeing this pair up, was nice. I would be curious to see what the other 2-3 PCs would look like. I'm thinking a Death domain cleric and an assassin rogue. Maybe a whispers bard and spores druid could make a full party of six.
If you had that many undead in a campaign, there's no way multiple kingdoms wouldn't have amassed a bunch of wizards and cleric together to try take you down. Those 70+ skeletons wouldn't survive one round if a religious order was called in to take them down. Even one archmage with meteor swarm would decimate them, and would be justified in doing so. But, again, this was more of a fun build.
If I had a player wanting to do this, I would definitely limit the skeletons, and push for other undead afterwards. As someone who has ran Organized Play games, the worst players were the summoners who took 10-15 minutes per turn and did nothing but clog the maps with their summons.
As for more weapons and armor, I wouldn't automatically give the skeletons weapons and armor. If I raise skeletons from commoners, they don't magically grow armor and a broken sword. Not even in fantasy can anyone justify that. However, I would allow a player to use mending to fix weapons and armor that was found, as well as use creation to make adamantine or mithral (likely adamantine) so that armor could be crafted and crits would be negated.
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.
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!
13:00 yes. Jeremy Crawford stated that, as creatures, undead can equip, attune to, and activate magic weapons, armor, and items.
As much as I love Oathbreakers, the Necromancy Wizard is just the best choice. You can permanently bind undead to your will as many times as you want per day. As soon as you bind like a vampire or something with high intelligence, you can cast a geas on it that forbids it from choosing to resist Command Undead.
As far as necromancers being broken, I am not sure I agree, because it is hard to keep undead intact, under your control, and not made dead-dead by the town guards who are not going to take likely to your army of undead marching through the streets. It is a good roleplay opportunity because the player needs to figure out how to disguise them as masked henchmen that don't smell- which is why skeletons are a great place to start.
For combat, I would just use mob rules.
Your DM will provide the bodies lol. Resistance to non magic attacks does not matter so much when you make several attacks.
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.
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
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 classic speech "Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I'm willing to make."
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
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.
This man heard about Crusader's Mantle and Animate Object and took it to the moon. 🤣
Side note, it seems like something that could homebrew "fix" necromancer (keep the undead horde to a reasonable size while still allowing powerful options) would be to add Necromancy bonuses at some levels to allow summoned undead to use the spellcaster's spell save DC for abilities and add the spellcasting modifier to the creatures' bonuses to hit. All bonuses are lost while not under the Wizard's control.
You can also use a spreadsheet where you input dice likeliness and add in the appropriate modifiers, and just have the spreadsheet figure out "x out of my y skeletons roll nat 20s, z roll 19s" and so on.
I feel the former option is safer for the realistic scenarios where if you lose concentration you're likely subjecting your party to a TPK.
I keep seeing this along the lines of Arthas and Kel'Thuzad from Warcraft 3. The paladin is a disowned prince seeking to gain empires through conquest while the wise wizard is the majordomo whispering in his ear and raises his master's minions.
And I'd have the paladin take the noble background and use the variant of Retainers instead of Position of Privilege - that way, you have the servants that can push the dead body cart, handle the armory for the new minions, dig up new minions, and do any other chores/errands as needed. :D
Fabulous!
I'm playing a wizard necromancer in my current campaign. I rolled exceptionally well on a boss loot table and got a Deck of Many Things, pulled a single card and got the Throne (i now own a keep overrun with monsters in the field right outside the main port city). I used my Roc feather token to fly me to the top of the keep where i placed the remaining cards and then we got to work spreading the news throughout town that there's a powerful legendary item atop the mysterious keep that just appeared. Now for a mere 50 gold admission fee, anyone can come risk their life and attempt to clear the keep and claim the prize. No one has done it yet and i now have a near limitless supply of corpses to raise for my army, plus some passive income :D
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.
TLDR: Do to Animate Dead spam + Undead Thralls being so effective, it is liable to do a 180 and become terrible by accident if left unchecked with no communication.
For context my DM said he wanted to run the entirety of Tyranny of Dragons without weakening the encounters. We were given cart blanche to do anything legal in the books, and told us that the adventure is very deadly. So i made a Lvl 1 War Cleric(Worshiper of the Red Knight aspect of Tempus) that would multiclass School of Necromancy Wizard for every level thereafter.
And let me spoil this small thing, there are a *lot* of bodies... I mean cultists.
4 things I learned from playing that necromancer.
1. 24 hour time limit means you can cast animate dead *before* you long rest, then you will have them for another 16 hours or thereabouts and all of your spell slots. Just have the ones you can't maintain destroy themselves before the time is up.
2. You can maintain control of more skeletons than you can create with the animate dead spell. So with the help of the Arcane Recovery class feature, A 6th level wizard can gain and maintain 12 skeletons after a few days. then 18 at 7th, and 24 at 8th etc. So the scaling is fantastic.(you could keep a few more with Arcane Recovery but it's a hassle)
3. In a rare case of bounded accuracy working in the favor of players the skeletons low hit roll is not a death knell to the strategy. they hit about 40-45%(without advantage or disadvantage) of the time on average at mid-high level play(In my experience). This is of course assuming normal monster ACs.
4. Having dozens of skeletons shooting at the enemies from behind cover dealing ridiculous damage is not effective for one counterintuitive reason. The DM will almost certainly re-balance the encounters to account for it, and it makes every combat a fight for your life ordeal where you rely on the skeletons damage to succeed. Keep in mind that they are each quite squishy and almost every enemy mage/magic entity is likely to have AOE now and you have a recipe for a TPK. This is almost what happened to our party, but both the DM and I(mostly the DM) hashed out how many skeletons I could bring with me into each encounter due to a curse(that I consented to OOC) in order to bring things back in line. We were both satisfied with the results.
No Critiques on the Paladin, I think its genius!
The Necromancer I would recommend Starting Artificer 1, for Con save Proficiency and Faerie Fire as a spell for more variety on what your concentration spell should be. Taking the 6 levels of wizard after to get your Animate Dead and the subclass buffs. Then take two more levels of Artificer Artillerist. Trust me, its worth it! You get infusions to make a bag of holding for your Armory that your skeletons will need AND you get the Protector Cannon consistently providing Temp HP to your Skeleton Army every single round. Far better than the 3 HP increase you miss out on. THEN pick Wizard back up and carry on!
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.
I like the idea of the paladin being an undead (Reborn Lineage/Dhampir) experiment that the wizard is desperate to recreate but for some reason they are just unable to replicate the unusual conditions or whatever minute flaw caused the fluke PC
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!
"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
This is totally going to be a villainous set of brothers in the campaign I'm running. Awesome!
Level 7 Wizard spell that creates more skeletons would be Simulacrum
Simulacrum yourself at the beginning of the day, and have the Simulacrum make as many undead as possible. At level 13, that'd be...
2+2+2+4+4+4+6+6+8, short rest, 2+2 for 42 more undead created per day, and if you make a new simulacrum the next day to maintain control over the maximum amount of creatures possible you'd be able to control
4+4+4+6+6+6+8+8+10, short rest, 4+4 for your new cap of controlled creatures to be +64
(Though yes probably save this for downtime instead of an adventuring day, your undead creatures are most likely going to be dying so you won't have to worry about not being able to keep up with the cap)
EDIT: If simulacrum chaining isn't banned, then your upper damage cap becomes potentially infinite, going as high as the number of simulacrums you have.
Fun video. I learned a few things, thanks. I usually play a cleric and don't prep animate dead. But the campaign I'm in now I have 2 skeletons and 4 zombies. It all started with finding the The Night Caller in the Sunless Citadel. Now my group keeps calling me "The Necromancer" and that I'm going to become a litch, lol. DM is picking up Tashas so I'll have access to Aura of Vitality, Purity, & Life (dont think i can use Life on undead though). Never thought having undead minions would be so fun.
A Cleric Necro... nice :)
If your other teammates are game, a sorcerer could twin haste or dragon's breath some of your skeletons, just to give them some special units to the army. I think this team build could be a barrel of laughs and fun for a group trying to do a two player campaign. (dm and two players that is.) That way, much of the number crunching and logistics becomes part of the fun rather than boring all of the players not contributing to your skeleton army. Imagine these outcast drow siblings coming to the surface to make a name for themselves, amass an army, then reinvade the Underdark for a final battle with the Drow Queen that spurned them. The players completing quests, not for fame and glory, but purely for money to arm their endless supply of skeletons. I think it would be a lot of fun managing the little routines and seeing what could go wrong. Getting attacked for graverobbing, only to add a few zombies to your army rather than the skeletons you had hoped for. Exhausted after a battle? Hopefully you don't sleep too long, lest your 16 skeletons break from the spell. The paladin distributing blades and inspiring words to the skeletons while the wizard finishes resetting animate dead on all of your units. Finding a hiding spot for 30+ skeletons to stick around, with the wizard mysteriously disappearing every morning for half an hour.
Fun fact: A bag of holding can hold up to 20 skeletons. Average human skeleton is about 25lbs. 500lb capacity in the bag, the 64³ft can be an issue but if you have all of the skeletons collapse inside the bag they would amount to a pile of bones that easily fits. Turn the bag inside out and BAM! Instant Army! Like instant ramen but way more terrifying!
Animate Dead: Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small Humanoid within range. IF bones have to be also from a medium or small humanoid, then by RAW it doesn't work because once your skeli dies it's bones from a medium sized undead.
You can also Summon Undead: They get pretty beefy too, the zombie one is INSANE IMO...
To really maximize the horde to a truly absurd size, use Create Undead for Wights, and upcast for more Wights.
Each Wight under your control can have 12 Zombies under their control, requiring a battle map that's best carried in a tube meant for engineering plans... After you raid enough villaiges for recruits. 😅
i would dip a level of death cleric as a necromancer. you can then fire a necromancy cantrip as a ranged spell attack at 2 targets standing within 5 ft eg Toll the Dead at 2 separate targets which will end up at epic levels to injured targets as 4d12 x2 dpr, as well as all the insane damage your animated undead are doing per round
Currently using a cleric/wizard/true necromancer swarm/summon build to block enemies because we don't have a melee fighter in the group. We currently playing 3.5. Using summon undead spells to deploy a small army of undead and boosting them with radius necromancy buffs. Has kept enemies' at bay while long range ranger takes them out has been good.
I would love to play a game where all the players agreed beforehand to do an evil campaign where they all play like undead flavored characters, these 2, circle of spores druid maybe, stuff like that.
And have the setting never have any undead before, your players are the first people to discover it. And their sort of goal of the campaign is to either take over the world and enslave the living, or to just wipe out every other living creature until the world is just undead and them.
Instead of fighting monsters and saving people, they are fighting monsters to raise them as powerful undead minions, and then wiping villages...towns...cities, off the map. So they would also end up fighting town militias, entire city guard forces, perhaps at the end they fight a massive army of all the survivors who banded together with dragons and other living monsters who all decided that the party is the greatest threat to all of them.
EDIT: Realized the idea of undeath not being a thing in the setting would screw over the paladin with control undead and probably other things. So maybe leave setting as is.
Just found this channel. Subbed instantly. Amazing stuff.
This is sounding a lot more like a villain duo tailored to challenge my party.
Have you considered optimising for an out of combat role?
I'd love to see a party face build, or a detective build jumping around the classes for the most important skills and spells.
I know it falls outside your numerical methods, but I believe in you. I'm sure you could figure out an objective measure.
For a face it would probably be a high charisma Half Elf Rogue/Bard with expertise in social skills. Skill monkey builds tend to be a mix of Rogues and Bards.
@@Kolonite_ Ya, and for DPS; consider a fighter. But I'm here for the hour long number crunching.
And I think it can be applied to the other parts of DnD than just the combat.
I do have a couple of builds like this on my potential future episodes list. I'll be honest and say that... I haven't quite yet figured out how to quantify what they are good at, and without that, I'm not quite sure I want to do an episode on them :). I'll keep coming back to them though, and one day, who knows?
Think of Animate Dead like a gun in a marksmanship competition. The quickest way to win would be to shoot the competitors, you have to resist using the gun to its full potential in that way, but the competition will still be fun.
A fix to the necromantic horde ?
A new 3 rd level spell : Bolster undead : you add stats to a undead minion you have created , you cast recast it on the same minion over and over to make it stronger , or cast it on an other minion every casting . you can up cast it to affect 1 more minion per level increase .
the stat would be probably slightly less to about half as strong as creating an other undead , but would have the benefit of not being a unwieldy horde . maybe have a cap on how many times you can cast it on a single minion ?
I am jumping into this vid because I am curious about what you have in mind.
Animate dead scaling with more skeletons/zombies instead of better ones can get ridiculous, but I dont think you can make any one of them a threat.
At level 6, 13+6 hitpoints with 13 AC is okay at best.
If you can gear them up with scalemail its 16 AC, if you give them 2 shortswords its 2d6+2+6 damage (I asume this is a reasonable loadout).
But without magic items, their +4 to hit will be worse and worse, and their nonmagical BPS is going to get resisted more and more.
I dont think you having 50 or 100 skellies would matter, because
1)they wont fit into every combat encounter
2) they wont hit often
3) they wont deal much damage even if they hit.
These are my preconceptions, lets see what you make of the class
As a player and DM of 5e, I wish to make a few comments:
1) No character that relies on anything outside of their own character should be considered OP. Example: If a player wants to run a Necromancer, make sure you clarify things during Session Zero like not every defeated foe can be reanimated (anything crushed to death, killed by Shatter or Thunder Wave, dissolved in acid etc). You need to have a torso, a head, two working legs, and an arm in order to use the stats given. If the DM wants to homebrew an armless Undead and their bite attack that's up to them. The party also has to be okay with having a Necromancer in their midst or the campaign is pretty much a non-starter. The player will have to understand that in most places hordes of shambling undead are frowned upon. Once word gets out that you're 'that guy' don't be shocked if prices go up at shops and so forth.
2) One enemy Cleric can ruin a Necromancer's whole day.
3) Once word gets out that the party is often seen at the head of an army of the shambling dead, the Necromancer is going to have a target on his back. Just as many players will focus fire on enemy casters, the enemies might do the same.
4) If the Necromancer misses his Control spell even once, for whatever reason, his army becomes hostile.
5) As much as I enjoy your videos, I have to bring up one point and that is that your introductions are interminably long and I find myself skipping over them. As much as you tried to keep this video shorter, despite the fact that you were covering two builds, you spent nearly twenty minutes telling us what you were GOING to do or say instead of simply doing it. I appreciate that you're trying to be thorough but at the 20-minute mark you have the race and that's it. I humbly request that you try to stay more on point and instead of spending double-digit minutes explaining the contents of the video, simply get on with it.
5) I found those first 20 mins to be VERY helpful in quickly learning all the important information about the video. That way I can easily go back and take notes on the entire thing if I decide to run the build. (He has a long enough playlist that it was useful to watch just the intros to find TWO whole builds that made character ideas I had viable)
Not normally a fan of necromancers or summons but excited to see you max out the action economy.
What if upcasting Animate Dead still only made 1 skeleton, but combine the hp pools and damage potential? This would cut down on the amount of rolls and reduce their consistency.
I loved playing my Necromancer, but we play Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Too many tight hallways. A challenge that is too much. I switched to evoker. My fellow players couldn't pass through those hallways.
EDIT: A solution I had for the Necromancer, though we didn't use that in our campaign, was combining undead creatures into a single construct. You can get hella creative. My ruling is "Add up HP and attacks of the Skeletons and make it a single massive construct alá Nito from Darksouls, and depending on hitpoints it loses an attack. Alternatively make it one attack that gets weaker over time the less hp it has." You can make some fine constructs with that and can get creative with that. I also had an idea of very specific undead to summon, like flag bearers that boost morale in the sense that it can enhance attacks or give boni for other rolls like saving throws.
A vampire mounted oath breaker with mounted combat feat :D
The skeletons and zombies are only a challenge 1/4 before modifications from wizard. After breastplate/plate and wizard mods they can get up to cr 3, cr4 if inspiring leader is used
The numbers you quote are accurate if the army is dying every day or you are restocking fresh corpses, a 3rd level slot can exert control of 4 skeletons, +2 per level of spell meaning 6 at 4th, 8 out of 5th 10 out of 6 12 out of 7th 14 out of 8th and 16 out of 9th at 15th level I can control 24 skeletons and still have my highest level slots to cast defensive or control magic
Colby! I had a thought and I wanted you to see it and it has literally nothing to do with this episode but I wasn't sure if there was a better way to contact you (you're so good at answering your comments) I've been playing a bladesinging/fighter combo. I'm currently level 11 (9 wizard/2 fighter). And I've discovered that RAW, you're capable of casting 2 leveled spells per turn as long as they're both actions. So, I could do something like use level 4 hold person, action surge, and then steel wind strike. If I succeed on holding 3 creatures, then hit all my attacks (3 of which would be at advantage and auto crit), I'd do a total of 48d10 damage per turn, or an average of 264 damage. Thought you might like that/be able to create a build with that concept in mind.
I'd let this fly in my games, though I'd put a limit of can only one active Animate/Create Undead per Undead Creature type. So early on you get a small batch of Skeletons and another group of Zombies. Even early on you can run with a mixed crew that is satisfying. Eventually, those advanced Undead types still allow the power growth of the character.
These questions at the beginning of the video are all answered in a simple way: This is a DMPC build to be the villains in a campaign. Think Briarwoods from Vox Machina energy as reoccurring baddies that grow as the characters do (but always a few levels ahead to be more challenging, like level 1 PCs level 3 DMPCs)
re:discussion in problems with necro+animate dead: RAW, I don't believe you can re-animate a dead zombie/skeleton. Animate Dead specifically says you can raise the corpse/bones of a humanoid, but once you've raised them they become undead and thus are no longer humanoid. Similar to how there are all kinds of issues if you want to resurrect someone who was turned into a zombie.
What does an undead utilisation focused kinda balanced party look like?
I'd be curious the kind of build you could up with by combining the necromancy here with the Ancestral gaurdian barbarian. Essentially giving all your undead allies some more tankyness against an enemy
Would be great to see videos for all the other forms of single class necromancer builds as well. Like, Spirit Bard, Divine Soul Sorcerer, Warlock (no particular Patron but Undead would be fitting I guess), Death Cleric and Spore Druid.
Could reskin the Tortle as a hermit crab that is using a skull as it's shell.
Did you monoclass just to keep things simple or because it worked out best numbers wise?
I wrote a build about a 6 wizard/11 warlock/2 ranger/1 cleric that maxed out at 1624 dpr against ac 10 via 124 bone friends
I want to run an evil campaign based on this! Where the party get to be the bad guys, even earning their own dungeon. Your bane is a party of goodly adventurers that keep trying to spoil your fun. Animate dead does seem broken, Upcasting to allow them to equip better gear would be cool.
Not sure why people don't think about it but you want a Wizard with AC and no MC. Gith Yanki, or Hobgoblin for an armored Wizard that even has an INT bump. You can get a CON and light Armor with a Hobgoblin and STR and Medium.
When the Wizard gets to level 17 learn Gate. Summon a Nightwalker, Storm Giant Skeleton or other desired undead to you. Use control feature to gain instant servant.
I imagine the inspiring speech to undead to be more like an unholy chant using words of power.
You do not lose control over your undead if you go unconscious or even die. They will follow the last general orders or specific orders until the 24 hour period is up and then and only then they are free to do what ever undead desire to do
Break down the skellys. You have a group of 4 or 5 or 6 and it becomes the super skeleton, it gets multi attack or a buffed AC and maybe a few extra hit points but it only counts as one monster for control purposes.
Have a table you work out with the DM and figure what is the group of skeleton size that is to much and then start adding bonus HP/damage/to hit / AC, or what ever once who have exceeded that number
In a long rest, you have up to 2 hours (maybe 1) which you can use for non-strenuous activities (eg. Inspiring undead) so you could use inspiring leader 12 times to inspire 72 undead. If your dm doesn’t let you do this for whatever reason, a long rest can survive up to one hour of “combat stuff” so you could inspire 36 undead, delaying your long rest by an hour
I love the idea as these two as a combo bbeg for a clericless group
DING “Bring out your dead!”
DING “Bring out your dead!”
I cannot resist the allure of casting Animate Dead and Create Undead multiple times to get the full spectrum of skeletons, zombies, ghouls, ghasts, wights, and mummies all at once. Although I'd probably do this in a more epic-level campaign where the PCs are, say, assaulting or defending a castle or city.
This video had me laughing out loud. Many years ago, in Diablo 2 Hardcore online, I did a lot of joke builds, since Hardcore characters are disposable anyway (permadeath). One of my joke builds was a Necromancer who just maxed out all the summon minion spells (weak auras and dps, as a result). He had an obnoxious number of revived monsters and skeletons, totally clogging up every narrow hallway with a hilariously disorganized gaggle of derp. That build was so inefficient, so incredibly dangerous when you first spawn (getting that first kill, to start your army, was really difficult), and so vulnerable to AoE (Diablo himself would just instantly wipe the whole horde)... but man... it was flippin' hilarious to watch. And surprisingly safe, once you got rolling. As a result, that total joke character ended up never dying and becoming one of the highest level Hardcore Necromancers in the world.
Coincidentally, although that Necromancer was really slow on his own, he paired excellently with Paladins and Sorcerers. The main reason he reached the top levels of Hardcore was because Paladins and Sorcerers loved grouping with him. Behind his 61-man meatshield was the safest place in the world, a major asset in Hardcore, lol.
Does grim harvest work when your skeletons / zombies kill things?
Hello! Great video once again. Just a simple question, for the necromancer race, how did you get +2 ton intel with the half-elf drow, when they give +2 to charisma and +1 to 2 other stats. Is there any sort custumization I am not aware. Thank you!
Thanks! Yes, I should more often clarify that I'm always using Tasha's Cauldron of Everything to customize our Ability Scores: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/tcoe/character-options#AbilityScoreIncreases
@@DnDDeepDive Ahhhh fairly new to custom lineage...the program I'm using does not let me change the ''race'' for example I could not take Elven Accuracy as custom lineage. Thank you for the clarification. Will definetly try the necromancer build in a one shot for sure!!! I was also wondering if you could optimize a ''gunslinger'' character. Not the Mat Mercer Fighter variant, but a complete build with core rules. Thank You :)
@@Frenzyfrank34 Right - this isn't actually taking the Custom Lineage race, it's simply assigning our Ability scores to the abilities of our choice as per that rule in Tasha's. Gunslinger is on the list!
As a DM for 6-8 regulars. Once something would bog down the game ( animate object with 10 objects rolling attacks, esp. w/ advantage) I swap it to swarm tactics, ie split them into 5 and 5 .. single attack for all. yes it increases swing of hit or miss. but I am not allowing a single player to sit there and roll dice for 5-10 minutes. I'd probably do the same with a Necromancer's skele-army.