DM Plans to increase CR of encounters specifically because of one players minions

[Roentgen]

Our group consists of around 10 or so characters (I know) ranging from ECL 9-14. My character is a level 11 Dread Necromancer who so far has managed to raise 23 lvl 6 pelor paladins. These haven't been factored into the CR for encounters yet and the DM hasn't made any indication that they will be. He has told me however that in future he will factor into the CR any minions I raise of significant power. For instance in the last session I had 4 frost giants and a hydra that were lost due to not being able to fit out the dungeon door! We are both relatively new to D&D having started last summer and he is newer still to DMing. His grasp of the rules is loose and he's somewhat averse to learning them, preferring instead a wing it/intuitive style which I find personally annoying as it has a huge potential to be unfair on the players.

My question is; is it normal to factor in a characters raised minions to the CR? What about familiars or other lesser tag alongs? Where is the cut off point at which they can't/shouldn't be considered anymore? I worry that by playing my class the way it was intended in this situation I will end up wildly skewing the CR which will get the rest of the party unfairly pulped by something with an inflated CR. There would also be fringe cases where the DM would plan encounters factoring in the minions but then we enter a space where the minions can't get to but because of the inflated CR the party has to face a room packed with Beholders for instance.

[mvpmack]

1: When you raise a creature, it has HD of the base creature and not its class levels. So if you raise a level 6 paladin, it's normally a 1HD skeleton or zombie. Note that it costs you 25gp per HD of undead created with animate dead.

2: Player-controlled minions created by class abilities are not included in challenge ratings, but if the DM does raise difficulty it generally just means you get more xp and loot if you can handle the encounters.

3: Honestly an army of skeletons controlled by a dread necro is a waste of WBL. It's generally better to animate bigger, tougher monsters and rather than use them as meatshields, use them as supplementary damage and protect them like party members or animal companions. Having them die really hurts.

[Roentgen]

Thanks for your response!

1: Hmm I did not know that! It certainly shakes things up a bit in terms of the sheer amount I can control. I'm glad I kept the bodies of all the other dead paladins.

2: That's a relief. More loot is always appreciated.

3: I can certainly see the value in big powerful meatshields after my short time with the Hydra and Frost Giants.

[prufock]

2: Player-controlled minions created by class abilities are not included in challenge ratings, but if the DM does raise difficulty it generally just means you get more xp and loot if you can handle the encounters.
Note that this part is not necessarily the case. For a party that is more powerful than normal (through minions, optimization, excessive wealth, etc) the DM is free to adjust your party level when making those calculations. If you have a group of 4 well-optimized level 6 characters, they could conceivably be considered a level 8 party or whatever. The DM will adjust such that encounter level 8 challenges are "appropriate" and calculate from there.

[Killer Angel]

For instance in the last session I had 4 frost giants and a hydra that were lost due to not being able to fit out the dungeon door!

eheheh... you can squeeze through small spaces, but only 'til a certain point. :smallwink:

[mvpmack]

Regarding 1), most DMs make that mistake too. Most DMs don't know the rules when it comes to animating dead.


Note that this part is not necessarily the case. For a party that is more powerful than normal (through minions, optimization, excessive wealth, etc) the DM is free to adjust your party level when making those calculations. If you have a group of 4 well-optimized level 6 characters, they could conceivably be considered a level 8 party or whatever. The DM will adjust such that encounter level 8 challenges are "appropriate" and calculate from there.

This is somewhat true (Rule 0 and whatnot after all) but it's not RAW. It's very, very easy to play the "unfair" card against a DM who pulls this tactic. Furthermore, an army of undead is not especially powerful as a 10th level character. Most things have DR and other exotic defenses.

Regarding smaller numbers of powerful undead, having more HD/HP on them means that they're less likely to die or get destroyed by enemy clerics, and you can use charnel touch to heal them after battle.

I recommend getting a nice zombie flying mount (like a hippogriff or something) and some good, high-HD small to large minions. Don't animate anything super big unless you get something awesome like a hydra. The best skeletons you can get without some hax are outsider skeletons. A barbed devil is CR11 (12 hit dice, or 300gp) and will have an insane +15 natural armor bonus and can wear armor on top. If you're more of the evil persuasion, a hound archon is a trivial challenge (CR4), has 6HD (150gp to animate) and +11 natural armor as a skeleton. Get a wizard to lesser planar binding a weaker outsider (bearded devil for instance) and bushwack it with your party.

Honestly though, a 10-person party is just going to steamroll everything. Try to keep as much of your control limit tied up in single, big creatures to save on time. It's a super pain to roll through 20+ monster turns.

[Surpriser]

A Dread Necromancer focused on minions can very easily get of out-of-hand and become virtually unplayable (I speak from experience).
Especially since you have such a large party, adding even more creatures will only make combat last ages.

Having an army of weak undead is not a good idea for several reasons:
- They are weak: For most threats at this encounter level, a lowly skeleton (or even 20 of them) will not even be a nuisance. In addition, a single area attack can (and will) wipe them all out, making all the work for nothing. Note that no matter how many class levels the body had in life, once you animate it as a skeleton or zombie, it loses all of them. So your lvl 6 paladins have the same stats as skeletons as a lvl 1 commoner skeleton.
- They are an army: Each and everyone of your skeletons needs to take actions in combat and someone to handle them. This takes up large amounts of time and keeping track of a multitude of monsters is annoying ("Wait, was that #5 or #17 who took that damage?"). The maximum amount of creatures I would recommend to be present in addition to your party is one per party member. This way, each of your friends can handle one of your undead and everyone gets to have fun. Otherwise, half of the combat will be spent with you calculating misses, while the rest watches.
- They seem much stronger than they are: From the DMs point of view, a party of 30 seems much stronger than a party of 10 - even if 20 of the former are virtually useless in a fight. This will result in harder fights, as your DM has mentioned already.


I would suggest that you limit yourself to a few undead bruisers (not more than maybe 4, I have had very good results using ettin skeletons) and some "utility undead" (A nightmare skeleton can still fly :smallwink:, and the one or other shadow or allip will be very useful).
Even completely without any controlled undead, a Dread Necromancer can be very powerful and fun to play.

EDIT: Swordsaged :smallbiggrin: Just follow mvpmacks advice!

[Roentgen]

Thanks for the advice guys. It's hugely appreciated.

In light of this new information I'll let them go from my animate pool and shuffle them into my Undead Leadership 1st level undead pool (I also have Leadership, oh yes, it's happening). With that in mind I think I'll only use them from an RP standpoint - getting small outposts and villages to surrunder peacefully when they see 90 odd ruined undead former paladins of pelor, that kind of thing. :smallbiggrin: Thanks to spell-stitching I also have access to Awaken Undead so I'm definitely going to go back to that dungeon when I get the chance and blow open the doors for that Hydra to get out. I'll have to wait a month of in game time as the dungeon seals shut and teleports to a different place/plane based on lunar cycles.


Even completely without any controlled undead, a Dread Necromancer can be very powerful and fun to play.

Oh don't I know it!


Get a wizard to lesser planar binding a weaker outsider (bearded devil for instance) and bushwack it with your party.

Dread Necromancer gets both forms of Planar Binding on his spell list but, famously, no magic circle against ________. I suppose the intent was to just summon the thing and then immediately enter combat to kill it rather than bargain with it.

[mvpmack]

Spellstitching is a bit different. IF you spell-stitch Animate Dead, then you can use it without material components and thus avoid paying GP for HD. If that's the case you really want a small number of mega-powerful outsiders.

Again, if you're a good guy, a barbed devil or glabrezu is a great minion once you hit level 11 and can planar binding it (though you might have some issues with it teleporting out). Before then, just grab some bearded devil skeletons with lesser planar binding; if a team of 10 characters over ECL7 can't slay a 6hd devil in one round, I think they have more problems than anyone can solve. If you're a bad guy, just substitute bearded devils with hound archons. If you need a 12HD good outsider to bushwack you can grab a trumpet archon, I suppose.

[Roentgen]

Oh, my character is Chaotic Evil. Most of the party is evil in fact. The best it gets is a few true neutrals. I'll have a hard time convincing them to do anything to help my character outside of throwing gold at them as they're all in the mindset of "why should I help?". I'll keep planar binding in mind. My undead familiar is spell-stitched and her level 6 spell is Revive Undead. My undead cohort's stitched level 6 spell is Awaken Undead.

[Nibbens]

Here ya go!


Speaking as a DM who has a player with several golems following him around, and a paladin riding an oversized triceratops, and just a regular sorcerer as a party (they're all level 16 btw) I have a little bit of experience in this area.

My poor sorcerer is screwed on action economy, as the paladin and the golemancer have access to more "actions per round" than she does - but this, she's okay with as she's sort of the party face and favors RP over combat. However, i have to take into consideration the "Party size" when designing encounters or otherwise the golemancer gets his turns to fight and everyone else just watches.

While they are a 3 player party, they have the fighting power of an 8 player party when you consider quickened spells potential + golems + mounts. I aim for a variance of when I'm designing encounters depending on how fast I want combat to go, and how much of their resources I want to deplete over a period of time.

So my party of 3 players is an APL of -1 (because there are only 3 players) so they are an effective APL of 15.

However, I could also calculate them as an 8 player group for a APL of +1, so they are considered APL 17 in this scenario.

If I want the battle to drain a lot of resources, I consider them a APL 17 and design a +4 CR encounter (CR21) to make them weep.

If I want them to get through a combat and onto the next on, I design a CR15 or 16 encounter.

The true combat comes from how the encounters are designed and if the DM is being smart about his baddie selection and tactics. Have him read this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit?pli=1). While it is tooled for pathfinder, the concepts are more important than the CR shenanigans he talks about.

And to answer your questions:


My question is; is it normal to factor in a characters raised minions to the CR? What about familiars or other lesser tag alongs?

Depends on the DM. As stated earlier, while It's not always added in to my consideration of encounters, I know it's there.


Where is the cut off point at which they can't/shouldn't be considered anymore?

This, again, depends on the DM. I feel one shouldn't always consider it, but one should always know it's there adding to the PC firepower.


I worry that by playing my class the way it was intended in this situation I will end up wildly skewing the CR which will get the rest of the party unfairly pulped by something with an inflated CR.

Unfortunately, this will come with experience. Dming is not an exact science and is a learned skill. Roll with the punches!


There would also be fringe cases where the DM would plan encounters factoring in the minions but then we enter a space where the minions can't get to but because of the inflated CR the party has to face a room packed with Beholders for instance.

This should be considered in your tactics as a minion-mancer. How would HE deal with that type of scenario? Also, what others said earlier about bringing a big bruiser to contribute to DPS is another way around this.

TLDR: Have your DM read this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit?pli=1).

[prufock]

This is somewhat true (Rule 0 and whatnot after all) but it's not RAW. It's very, very easy to play the "unfair" card against a DM who pulls this tactic. Furthermore, an army of undead is not especially powerful as a 10th level character. Most things have DR and other exotic defenses.
It actually is RAW, but somewhat vaguely so. See: page 39 of DMG, under "Modifying XP Rewards" and "Assigning Ad Hoc XP Awards." Circumstances matter in assigning EL/XP, including an army of minions or highly-optimized PCs.

[Hamste]

The real question is, how did the giants and Hydras get down there if they can't fit through the door?

[torrasque666]

The real question is, how did the giants and Hydras get down there if they can't fit through the door?

Simple, it was built around them/they were teleported in/a wizard did it.

[sideswipe]

eheheh... you can squeeze through small spaces, but only 'til a certain point. :smallwink:

that certain point being the small intestine (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?238255-New-amp-Improved-Assplomancer)

[Qc Storm]

I've been thinking about this, having played a Skelemancer dread necro myself. The plague of undead that will inevitably follow your wake quickly becomes overwhelming, since if the DM uses stronger monsters against you, you become stronger yourself. Until you're basically traveling with an encounter of challenging CR, except on your team.

What if healing undead was impossible? It would make them a bit more temporary, and force you to lower your standards when reanimating. The DM could target some of the strong minions, knowing that every bit of damage is progress. Compared to trying to bust through a zombie dragon's gorillion HP when he knows you can just heal it back up for free after the battle.

In exchange, perhaps the DM could wave the gold cost associated with raising the dead.

Just a thought I may bring up with my DM.

[Flickerdart]

What if healing undead was impossible?
What, you think these are mummies I command? No, they're just zombies being kept together by duct tape.

[Deophaun]

Dread Necromancer gets both forms of Planar Binding on his spell list but, famously, no magic circle against ________. I suppose the intent was to just summon the thing and then immediately enter combat to kill it rather than bargain with it.
Slight problem if that was the intent:

Casting this spell attempts a dangerous act: to lure a creature from another plane to a specifically prepared trap, which must lie within the spell’s range.
If there's no trap (that is, a magic circle), then the spell just doesn't work.

[Roentgen]

I've been thinking about this, having played a Skelemancer dread necro myself. The plague of undead that will inevitably follow your wake quickly becomes overwhelming, since if the DM uses stronger monsters against you, you become stronger yourself. Until you're basically traveling with an encounter of challenging CR, except on your team.

The DM has expressed that to me in between sessions. I told him there's no point pulling his punches and depriving the rest of the party of a good fight for fear of the enemy in question falling in line with the rest of the undead afterwards. I've told him about how animate dead works with the base creatures HD and not class levels and he commended me on my honesty with regards to my 23 lvl 6 paladins becoming significantly weaker as a result and he's less antsy about sending an old party member (player moved to another country) at the party as a high level challenge. Although I suppose that's what the Bone/Corpse templates from the BoVD are for :smallwink:


TLDR: Have your DM read this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nx-o8VAjhUwh3nnfzDQT-JA5eFLnN_BZJiBitGjBMDg/edit?pli=1).

Thanks for this. I've passed it along to him - hopefully he reads it!


Slight problem if that was the intent:

If there's no trap (that is, a magic circle), then the spell just doesn't work.

Welp. I probably wasn't going to fall back on it anyway as my character despises extra planar beings from anywhere other than the Negative Energy Plane. He's kind of an objectivist anti-theist (Namely Pelor but his hatred extends to all gods and beings that think themselves gods.)

[Nibbens]

Thanks for this. I've passed it along to him - hopefully he reads it!

You're welcome. I hope he does too! I live and die by those principals now. lol.

[Grand Poobah]

A barbed devil is CR11 (12 hit dice, or 300gp) and will have an insane +15 natural armor bonus and can wear armor on top.



You can if you're happy for them to take an armour check penalty on their attack rolls.

[Sliver]

You can if you're happy for them to take an armour check penalty on their attack rolls.

Not all armors have ACP. :smalltongue:



I'm usually DMing games with Gestalt or some other rules that give PCs boosts of power. I found that if I don't adjust the party's effective level when deciding on encounters, there really is no challenge. A party of level 6 gestalts with max hp and extra feats steamrolls through almost anything up to CR 10, only starting to break a sweat at CR 11... Fitting for my adjusted party level of 8, instead of 6.

[Grand Poobah]

Not all armors have ACP. :smalltongue:


That'll be when armour is essentially just a coat then ;)

[Deophaun]

I've told him about how animate dead works with the base creatures HD and not class levels and he commended me on my honesty with regards to my 23 lvl 6 paladins becoming significantly weaker as a result and he's less antsy about sending an old party member (player moved to another country) at the party as a high level challenge. Although I suppose that's what the Bone/Corpse templates from the BoVD are for :smallwink:
Keep in mind: Bone/Corpse creatures are made with create undead, which means you don't control them when they're made. You need to either use command undead (which works just like charm on them, so it's still limited) or you need to rebuke them with an effective cleric level twice their HD. And then you are using a significantly smaller control pool equal to your effective cleric level HD (so, without any magical items to boost that, like a rod of defiance, the best you can do currently is something like two 5HD corpse/bone creatures).

So, while a bone or corpse creature does make for a good lieutenant/right-hand-undead-man, they will never be an army (until Epic level when you take Undead Mastery to make that 10Xcleric level HD).

[Roentgen]

Keep in mind: Bone/Corpse creatures are made with create undead, which means you don't control them when they're made. You need to either use command undead (which works just like charm on them, so it's still limited) or you need to rebuke them with an effective cleric level twice their HD. And then you are using a significantly smaller control pool equal to your effective cleric level HD (so, without any magical items to boost that, like a rod of defiance, the best you can do currently is something like two 5HD corpse/bone creatures).

So, while a bone or corpse creature does make for a good lieutenant/right-hand-undead-man, they will never be an army (until Epic level when you take Undead Mastery to make that 10Xcleric level HD).

Funny that you mention it, a lieutenant is exactly what I intend for that previous player character. He was PrCing into Bone Knight when he left so I suppose all's well that ends well! I've composed a shopping list of items that include items that boost effective cleric level so I'm working on that. Now that you mention Epic feats I must ask - do you specifically have to be level 20+ to take them? In a few levels i'll be bumping against the ceiling of Leadership/Undead Leadership without even adding in modifiers so I'm looking into Epic Leadership at the minute.

[Deophaun]

Unless the character is of the Dragon type, yes, you do need to be above level 20 to take Epic feats.

And even if your character is of the Dragon type, don't do it. :smallbiggrin:

[Flickerdart]

Now that you mention Epic feats I must ask - do you specifically have to be level 20+ to take them?
Not 20+, 21+. 20th level characters cannot take Epic feats. You explicitly must have 21 levels (so for anyone that has LA, tough cookies).

However, many of the Epic feats (though definitely not Epic Leadership) are very weak, and suitable for use by non-epic characters without any consequences, such as Dire Charge.