Problems Managing Minions

[Person_Man]

So I've noticed a problem crop up from time to time related to Animate Dead (and it's variants).

The problem is that if a player uses Necromancy intelligently, they usually end up with multiple minions. Sometimes even dozens. This can make combat logistically very annoying (OK Jim Darkmagic, please move your 20 skeletons), and can sometimes create a highly variable level of optimization for a player (in that with their army of undead they are uber, but if the DM wipes out their army the character may feel nerfed) which is hard to craft encounters around. This is particularly challenging in tight dungeons (where they literally crowd out players) and with the Dread Necromancer, which is hard wired to have a ton of minions.

This can also sometimes be a problem with Dominate Person/Monster. If a player gets lucky and dominates a BBEG (which is generally rare, since they tend to have high Will Saves) they may get a second Tier 1 character with a ton of spells and special abilities to control for days.

Are there any DM hints, house rules, or other ideas people have to manage this issue?

[Ydaer Ca Noit]

Protection from good/evil protects your BBEG from mind effecting spells. Thats all I got :smalltongue:

[Person_Man]

Protection from good/evil protects your BBEG from mind effecting spells. Thats all I got :smalltongue:

Yeah, but that basically shuts down the player entirely. It prevents them from owning a BBEG, but it doesn't really balance out the larger issue.

[Altair_the_Vexed]

I had a useful chat with the chaps and chappesses over on UK Roleplayers about henchfolk - take a look (http://www.ukroleplayers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=16841). There might be something there you find useful.

My conclusions, which I'm playtesting in my casual E6 games at the moment, are: Directing minions always uses at least a move action - otherwise, the master's player get more turns than everyone else. By default, minions defend the master. Large number of minions are formed into squads - check out the template inthe SW SAGA Clone Wars book, or hack something together yourself.

[Silva Stormrage]

I find that its almost necessary to kill the minions at decently regular intervals. Otherwise you get stacking problems, i.e. necromancer has one zombie and uses it to kill two creatures and now has three zombies etc etc.

Usually this is actually easy to justify as people often use minions in combat as meat shields. Thus it is likely that the enemies will target them anyway. Using enemies who gathered items or counters is also an option, its less shutting down the character and more about enemies acting realistically. After getting their men turned into zombies for the last five fights I think at least someone would be carrying a wand of command undead.

As a side note chained command undead is freaking devastating against a necromancer. No save control CL undead.

Dominate is a one round cast time so thats usually difficult to use against the BBEG. BBEG should also have decent defenses, if they get dominated though that is problematic but thats what happened. The BBEG might be able to escape later if dispelled so thats one thing I suppose.