DM very wary of introducing PF Bloody Skeletons into 3.5. How to ease his mind?

[Roentgen]

Recently I've become aware of the Bloody and Burning skeleton variants from pathfinder, described here:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/skeleton

I asked my DM about incorporating them into our 3.5 campaign to add a bit of variety to the skeleton hoard I already have following me around. He was fine with the burning variant and initially was fine with the bloody one until he started getting hung up on the idea that DR5/bludgeoning combined with Fast Healing X would be a broken combination. He also posed a hypothetical future scenario in which the party combined with my forces are in a war-like siege against a city and cast the bloody skeletons coming back after 1 hour giving me an edge in my overall ability to win the conflict in a bad light and I have no idea why, as the actual gameplay itself will focus only on the party's actions on a micro scale and not the macro scale control of every one of my undead minions . The skeletons come back at 1 hit point so they'll just be knocked down again instantly if observed in this scenario.

I've explained to him the limitations of the Animate Dead spell in that I can only turn something that has, at maximum, 20 HD into a zombie or skeleton, with the usual limitations of the target creature. The key exception being dragons of course. I've told him, and he has read, that creating one of these variants treats the base creature as though it had twice as much HD per casting. I will need to be level 22 and have to have access to desecrate to create a bloody great wyrm dragon skeleton, the best possible iteration of the bloody skeleton. This means that with desecrate, dragons aside, the best I can manage is a Bloody ______ Skeleton of 20HD that has DR5/Bludgeoning and Fast Healing 10. I tried to tell him that when the party is all level 12 and there's so much of us that the appropriate challenge rating is something close to 18 that DR5/Bludgeoning and Fast Healing 10 won't matter much considering what we'll be facing. Keep in mind that currently we have a Wizard x/Frost Mage x in the party that does the near 100hp of damage to all targets within the aoe of his spells, ending all encounters he's involved in almost instantly. In response he complained that i'll be able to heal it even faster by having a Necrosis Carnex cling to it, have destruction retribution minions fight alongside it so when they are destroyed the negative energy shockwave heals it and of course with my own negative energy spells and so on. This is true of all the undead at my disposal, the bloody skeletons merely heal that bit faster.

What do you think I should do to help ease his mind on this matter and make him see it's not that much of a big deal at this stage in the game? Have any of you ever had experience with Bloody Skeletons in pathfinder itself or in 3.5?

[Abd al-Azrad]

I'm going to come at this question from someone who knows full well how powerful and wacky this sort of necromancy can be, and as someone who is somewhat resistant to introducing it into a game.

Basically, Bloody Skeletons are a no-cost (barring ridiculously specific conditions that few enemies will be able to field, and when they do, I as a DM will fear player backlash for "unfairly singling out the necromancer") way to create free-action DPR and battlefield control. There are few limits to what the necromancer PC can field, and it introduces a whole new element to designing battles. No longer do I, as the DM, just have to worry about CR, party balance, the encounter design, the terrain, wealth-by-level guidelines and fun; now I also have to worry about whether a given corpse could turn into an unbalanced permanent no-cost resource for the party to field.

Bloody skeletons are tougher, and last absurdly longer, than summons. They do require an up-front investment, but as I said earlier, trying as a DM to make that investment costly will almost invariably end up creating OOC conflict between the DM and the player. And they add a new level of work to the DM's job.

Finally, Bloody Skeletons, like any form of Minionmancy, create an additional one or more battlefield presences which must be played, i.e. extra dice rolling. It slows down combat, one of the principal aspects of d20 gameplay, and it places additional focus on the necromancer at the expense of the other players.

How to ease your DM's mind? Recognise these problems and work actively with him/her to minimize them. Pass the rolling of skeleton dice to other players; respect that the DM has veto rights over animating a given opponent; keep it clear that you're just trying to play your character rather than abuse a very powerful Minionmancy option; keep things flexible if something isn't working in practice.

[Roentgen]

CR, party balance, the encounter design, the terrain, wealth-by-level guidelines and fun

Funnily enough those things listed have rarely been considered properly as the DM is a novice. As a result, on the whole, encounters have been few and far between and when they do happen they're a cakewalk, albeit laborious due to the amount of players and there's almost never any resultant treasure.


Bloody skeletons are tougher, and last absurdly longer, than summons. They do require an up-front investment, but as I said earlier, trying as a DM to make that investment costly will almost invariably end up creating OOC conflict between the DM and the player. And they add a new level of work to the DM's job.

This is where the DM is getting caught up, more than anything else because he's fixated on the DR5/Bludgeoning and Fast Healing aspect. He thinks this combination will make it unkillable in combat, regardless of the post-post mortem ressurection they can do. As I mentioned above it strikes me as unlikely at this stage of encounter levels that the things we'll be facing won't be able to trivialise both its DR and Fast Healing by doing huge amounts of damage at once. The party have also made of themselves a bitter enemy of a Pelor worshipping city so perma-destruction via positive energy will be likely too. The DM has nothing to compare this to as I've only once, in my entire D&D career, consisting almost exclusively of this current campaign, reanimated large tough creatures. They were 4 frost giants and when it was finally time to do what a necromancer does they hacked down a Hydra before it could attack so they didn't even get damaged. That was the first and last thing they ever did as the next rooms entrance was too small for them to get through and the exit of the dungeon was too small for them to leave, so I had to leave them behind. For reference my Animate Dead HD pool has been 0/300ish since then and that was well before christmas.


Finally, Bloody Skeletons, like any form of Minionmancy, create an additional one or more battlefield presences which must be played, i.e. extra dice rolling. It slows down combat, one of the principal aspects of d20 gameplay, and it places additional focus on the necromancer at the expense of the other players.

How to ease your DM's mind? Recognise these problems and work actively with him/her to minimize them. Pass the rolling of skeleton dice to other players; respect that the DM has veto rights over animating a given opponent; keep it clear that you're just trying to play your character rather than abuse a very powerful Minionmancy option; keep things flexible if something isn't working in practice.

I've always maintained that if even given the chance again I'd only have a few big bruisers to fight for me rather than massive amounts of tiny things which I've never liked because, as you say, it slows things down and makes it tedious. I think he would OK it if I could just get him to understand that a skeleton with DR5/Bludgeoning and Fast Healing ≤10 isn't that much of a big deal at this stage in the game.