[3.5/PF] Dealing with a Necromancer PC?

[Wonton]

Not talking about morality/alignment issues, I just mean, how do you deal with the fact that at level 4 (using Lesser Animate Dead (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/animate-dead)), a Necromancer can potentially get sixteen skeletons under his control. Obviously, actually controlling 16 minions in combat would be horrendously slow, would clutter up every combat, and be no fun for anyone at all.

I don't really want to make the solution "you can't find enough corpses to raise", because there are graveyards everywhere and a 4th level character (especially if aided by some other morally ambiguous party members) can definitely sneak into one and evade detection.

So, what should I do? Right now, I'm leaning towards just using some templates to make him a really powerful skeleton and adjusting its hit dice up. Also probably gonna put a soft cap on the number of minions at about 4 (even that is a lot, but any more would definitely bog down combat way too much).

Any other suggestions?

[Malroth]

This sounds like an out of game problem that requires an out of game solution, Tell your player your concerns and that he can have his best 2 or 3 pets with the party but that any extras are going to be limited to off camera roles somewhere and a reasonable player will be ok with this.

[Wonton]

It is going to be an out-of-game solution, I plan to explicitly talk to this player in the upcoming session about what he wants to do regarding his undead minions. :smallconfused: I can't just give him 3 human skeletons when that's 3 out of a possible 16 HD being used, though, that just seems unfair. So the question still remains, what do I do there. Scale up their HD? Monstrous humanoids like bugbears/gnolls? Something else entirely?

[Zanos]

onstrous humanoids like bugbears/gnolls?
Bingo.
Less, more individually powerful skeletons.

[AnachroNinja]

The spell you linked is animate dead, its a 3rd level spell, so they need to be 5th level unless I'm missing some quickly pathfinder thing, but anyway.

Animate dead let's you make skeletons or zombies of any dead thing with an anatomy basically. It's not limited to humans. He gets 16 HD of whatever, though he likely can only animate 8 HD at a time. So let him find a dead thing with 7-8 HD and animate it as his bruiser. Human skeletons suck honestly.

[Wonton]

The spell you linked is animate dead, its a 3rd level spell, so they need to be 5th level unless I'm missing some quickly pathfinder thing, but anyway.

Animate dead let's you make skeletons or zombies of any dead thing with an anatomy basically. It's not limited to humans. He gets 16 HD of whatever, though he likely can only animate 8 HD at a time. So let him find a dead thing with 7-8 HD and animate it as his bruiser. Human skeletons suck honestly.

Scroll down, there's a 2nd level Lesser version.

[Extra Anchovies]

If a PC is opting to flood the battlefield with weak minions, give the enemies some area attacks. A human skeleton has 1d8 hit points, average 4. A CL 3 Burning Hands has a 98% chance of destroying any skeleton which fails the save, and a 15-foot cone is enough to catch three or four of them.

Your idea of having a few stronger skeletons is a good idea for both you and the player - combat runs quicker, and the skeletons are more likely to contribute to and survive the fights they engage in. Perhaps houserule that class-leveled creatures, when animated, can have any number of HD between their base racial HD and the total number of HD they had after their class levels? e.g. a 10th-level human fighter can be animated as a 10 HD skeleton

[Bohandas]

I believe there's rules in a couple of books (Cityscape?) for running a crowd of creatures as a single entity similar to a swarm but with larger constituents.

[Wonton]

If a PC is opting to flood the battlefield with weak minions, give the enemies some area attacks. A human skeleton has 1d8 hit points, average 4. A CL 3 Burning Hands has a 98% chance of destroying any skeleton which fails the save, and a 15-foot cone is enough to catch three or four of them.

Your idea of having a few stronger skeletons is a good idea for both you and the player - combat runs quicker, and the skeletons are more likely to contribute to and survive the fights they engage in. Perhaps houserule that class-leveled creatures, when animated, can have any number of HD between their base racial HD and the total number of HD they had after their class levels? e.g. a 10th-level human fighter can be animated as a 10 HD skeleton

As a DM, there's nothing stopping me from just adding hit dice to creatures and scaling up health/BAB/saves/ability scores as normal. Currently, I'm thinking this player gets a Bugbear, a couple Gnolls, and a Worg - perhaps the remains of a raiding party that tried to attack a nearby village, and were killed and tossed unceremoniously into the forest. Going off the Bestiary, that's only 11 HD in total, but I can scale all of them up a little to match the 16 HD total.

[J-H]

That was my solution - I told my DN that I didn't want a bunch of small minions running around to track.

Your player will be happier too. A 5HD skeleton with +9 to hit is a lot better than 4 2HD skeletons with +2 to hit.

[Zanos]

That was my solution - I told my DN that I didn't want a bunch of small minions running around to track.

Your player will be happier too. A 5HD skeleton with +9 to hit is a lot better than 4 2HD skeletons with +2 to hit.
Generally yes, but having a bunch of 1hd minions rolling aid another checks and flanking for your party can be pretty helpful. Using them to actually attack, you're probably just fishing for 20s.

[Wonton]

Generally yes, but having a bunch of 1hd minions rolling aid another checks and flanking for your party can be pretty helpful. Using them to actually attack, you're probably just fishing for 20s.

My main worry for balance there would be that 16 mobs with DR 5 could really tank incredibly effectively, making the group hardly take any damage. But maybe I underestimate the damage of CR 4/5/6 monsters, things aren't exactly doing 1d6+2 damage anymore. And a single Channel Energy destroys all of them at once.

[Zanos]

My main worry for balance there would be that 16 mobs with DR 5 could really tank incredibly effectively, making the group hardly take any damage. But maybe I underestimate the damage of CR 4/5/6 monsters, things aren't exactly doing 1d6+2 damage anymore. And a single Channel Energy destroys all of them at once.
I wouldn't worry too much about them tanking. As mentioned, one good area spell will wipe all of them. A minotaur is a pretty beefy bruiser at cr4, and he hits for 3d6+6 with his greataxe, so he can drop basic skeletons all day.

Alternatively, they could just ignore the creatures that can barely hurt them anyway. Smart use of the m then would be for BFC, blocking charge paths and clogging up chokepoints.

Unless you really trust the player, I'd just advance a few skeletons or use some other base creatures, as you mentioned. The only time I had a lot of minions, they were all archers so I just rolled a fistful of d20s, counted the hits, then rolled a fistful of d8s. Seemed to be quick enough.

[CasualViking]

Provide him with a few tasty high-HD medium sized skeletons (I thought the spell was limited to humanoids, but i cant actually find that limitation), and other than that, just wait it out until he gets actual animate dead very soon, he will want to replace his squad of fodder with fewer, better corpses.

[denthor]

What does the material component cost for the spell ?

How do you get the components?


Desecrationof a grave yard is an evil act casting the spell is an evil act ? Using undead is without question evil.

Is the player ready for how evil is treated?

[Quertus]

Step 1 - find out what he wants to do.

Step 2 - discuss with the playground ways to make that plan work in your game.

Step 3 - make sure he always has plenty of corpses of the right type to continue with his plan.

If you understand what he is doing, and make the game run smoothly for exactly that, you'll be good, so long as he continues doing exactly that.

Whether that's that's a few powerful creatures, a single mighty minion, or a slew of useless cannon fodder, as long as you have the correct techniques and tools in place, it's not an issue.

The hardest is probably what I like to do, which is about 2 really strong creatures, and then as many useless fodder as I can make on top of that. I solve this problem by writing my own little custom apps to roll all my dice for me

[Segev]

With large numbers of minions, it's probably best to distribute them amongst the other players. If you want to do it IC, have him delegate control to other PCs. IF you don't, just let other players control some of them. Encourage things like using them for flanking and Aid Another. Remove die rolls by requiring two skeletons to work together to Aid Another a single other creature, but make them auto-successful in doing so. (It will work out on average, as weak skeletons will have a +0 BAB.) (e.g. two skeletons working together to Aid Another grants the guy they're Aiding a +2 to hit or to AC automatically. Not each, just between the two of them. You're assuming one failed and the other succeeded, essentially.)

If they MUST be engaged in individual combat actions, having other players choose those actions and roll for them won't speed it up, but it will let them stay equally engaged.

[Vizzerdrix]

The last time I played dread Necro, I split my undead up with the players so everyone could have equal turns. Combat was slow but everyone enjoyed it. We used a 2 unit rule. You clumped your undead in groups of 2 for init. Later on that became a 3 unit rule. We all died before it got to 4.

[Esprit15]

As someone playing a dread necromancer in a reasonably high leveled game, I can safely say the best thing to do is work with your player on what is expected. For example, yes, I could command a shadow, then hunt down some street urchins and commoners and kill them with said shadow, creating an army of incorporeal creatures that all follow the orders of an intelligent undead, meaning I can get arbitrarily many mooks making touch attacks on things that all do strength drain, killing them at 0. I don't though, because nobody has fun with that. So I make one, and feed him occasionally, possibly having them go do other things for me off screen. Maybe go kill a small hamlet to clear the area for a stronghold, if the DM is okay with that kind of behavior. Same with any other intelligent undead I make. Build your army to become a BBEG in a future game.

The other thing for on screen undead is making big beat sticks that help the rogues and fighters of the party with flanking, or grapple things for them. A zombie doesn't do much in combat, with its single action, but with their massive HP and decent attack bonus, plus DR, they'll be sticking around plenty long for the rogue to finish off the guy they distract. If they're the zombie of something big, like an ogre, that's something like 25 Strength, +4 BAB, and a +4 to grapple checks. At level 4, a +15 to grapples is going to be kind of dangerous for any NPC that isn't equipped to fight them. At higher levels, things like that tend to taper off in usefulness, since anything with a worthwhile BAB is going to have too many dice to zombify, but by then you have more interesting things to make.

In the end though, communicate with your player about what is okay, and what stomps on the game. Also, it's very easy as a cleric to optimize Turn Undead, and the Sun domain ability (1/day, destroy undead that would have been turned) is a pain to deal with as a necromancer. If the player does make too much of a name as a necromancer terrorizing the lands, one such cleric may get dispatched to to deal with him.

[Fizban]

So they've taken a version of the spell that specifically locks you to weaker minions, and the suggestions are to give him stronger minions? The main problem with Animate Dead is that it gives you essentially a whole new class feature (scaling minions) for no appreciable cost (one of your many spells known and a piddly amount of gp).

Obviously, actually controlling 16 minions in combat would be horrendously slow, would clutter up every combat, and be no fun for anyone at all.
I question the validity of this statement. If the player is capable of handling their turn plus 16 minions in the same time it takes anyone else to take their turn, what's the problem? I'll all but guarantee you someone else at the table with a mundane character is still taking forever to pick a direction and swing a sword. No, the problem is that they can do this at 4th level where a 1HD skeleton is still a significant battlefield presence that can take away from the other players, and that's squarely on whoever wrote a 2nd level version of the spell without thinking about what they were actually doing.

The solution, as with so many things, is to nerf the offending spell. Cut the control limit to 1/2 or 1/4 for 2 HD/level or 1 HD/level for the lesser version (if not the whole thing). While you're at it you should probably review a whole bunch of other Pathfinder spells, I'm pretty sure that for every spell they "fixed" (some quite well) they added a new spell that's worse than the old one at the same level.

[Hogsy]

There are rules in pathfinder, as someone has already mentioned(but for 3.5 books) that let you use a number of individual creatures as one big block of creatures, such as a swarm. I believe these are the rules for mass combat (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/mass-combat). You could homebrew a rule where they use let's say 8 of his undead minions as an undead swarm using those rules. Otherwise, your idea to have them use less but stronger minions is pretty good, considering 16 minions with 1 HD will not only slow down the fight by an immense amount, but they'd also fail at everything they do. You could perhaps homebrew special spells for the PC to use whenever they have more than x HD of minions on the battleground, where the could fuse them up to form a bone wall or a bone golem and stuff like that. Be creative!


EDIT: Lesser Animate Dead would have to be cast 16 times to get 16 HD 1 minions. Just make it harder for the Necromancer to find bodies. Create a dominant religion that burns their dead, rather than burying them and there you have it.

[bookkeeping guy]

So this question has already come up with and addressed in the... the complete book of necromancers has the necromancer kits and it has a fix in there. There's a lot of cool stuff in there that will help for necromancers.

First off, the necromancy having infinite pets at that level shouldn't happen. But at higher levels it would be cool, especially for having some villains that aren't something your characters will laugh at. Originally in the earlier versions of D&D or AD&D ...forgot which the first animate date was a tier 5 magic spell that you could only get when you achieved tier 5 spells at that point a mage would be pretty badass anyway so it would work out. Having it at tier 5 is more appropriate. You shouldn't have a level 4 necromancer with an army yet.

The fact that an "undead master" ( this is the kit's name ) can have infinite pets meant that he had to give up something in return too. Like he could have lifetap spells and undead spells with necromancy but not have evocation spells like fireball or be able to toss lightning bolts everywhere. Even with no evocation spells that's a laugh when you have so many little minions.

In the undead master kit he can make infinite pets but he couldn't control all of them at once too. So using it to guard a place works but not to storm every castle within a hundred miles. It instead had you have only an inner circle of lieutenant undead that would control the rings of smaller pet squads. There you can say that they can't mobilize all at once...because its all sticky now maybe it will take d3 rounds or whatever you think is appropriate to mobilize his little army (which is fair if they have tons of power. )

Also there would be other problems too.

Necromancer kits usually had you take huge hits to charisma and social interactions as trade offs. There could be penalties on whenever you want to buy stuff...maybe you can only buy stuff through the black market because people will identify you as the local pedo etc.

This is precisely why some people like some of the retro versions where you don't have stuff be too overpowered and wreck balance.
Hope that helps.

[Segev]

Another approach is to use them for utility purposes. As has been noted, 1 HD skeletons and zombies are kind-of fragile. But they can be great manual labor. Carrying stuff, breaking down doors, holding things up in cooperative efforts... Give your necromancer suggestions how to use them outside of combat, because they honestly might not last very long in combat.

[Quertus]

So they've taken a version of the spell that specifically locks you to weaker minions, and the suggestions are to give him stronger minions? The main problem with Animate Dead is that it gives you essentially a whole new class feature (scaling minions) for no appreciable cost (one of your many spells known and a piddly amount of gp).

My bad, I didn't read the lesser spell. But, the OP indicated in the very first post that they wanted to go in this direction anyway...

Limiting the spell (EDIT: to its actual abilities) actually makes the situation worse, because their tactics might change next level, when they get access to a better spell.

A program to roll all the undead attacks, where you can just say, "they attack what? <click> ok, record X damage" is your friend.


EDIT: Lesser Animate Dead would have to be cast 16 times to get 16 HD 1 minions. Just make it harder for the Necromancer to find bodies. Create a dominant religion that burns their dead, rather than burying them and there you have it.

Other than the fact that the OP indicated that they didn't want to go this route, a) they're adventurers, where will they ever find bodies?; b) one cooperative player and a pile of dead bards later, and they've got all the corpses they need; c) would the spell work on chickens?

[Bohandas]

I believe there's rules in a couple of books (Cityscape?) for running a crowd of creatures as a single entity similar to a swarm but with larger constituents.

Ok, I checked, there are rules for mobs of small or medium creatures in Cityscape page 124, and more much abbreviated mob rules in Dungeon #134 (they can be extrapolated from the mob on page 46).

I think they also appeared somewhere else, but I forget where

[Darth Ultron]

My main worry for balance there would be that 16 mobs with DR 5 could really tank incredibly effectively, making the group hardly take any damage.

A lot of the balance is how you run undead minions.

If the undead can read the players mind, always do exactly what they want,how and when they want it and teleport at will.....then your looking at something that can ruin the game.

If you play the undead as really mindless then they become much weaker and even more so if you require the character to control them all the time.

[Azoth]

As has been mentioned earlier, even if he goes the army of mooks route and drags them into combat, a single AoE blast and they are gone. For the average player that is a chunk of wealth that isn't inconsequential, and they don't want it to happen again. Pointing them to making stronger (higher HD) minions is a good thing.

What would be worrisome, is if the player knew of the second level spell Summon Cacodemon and used it to harvest soul gems from fallen enemies. Even lvl1 commoner souls are worth 100gp as a material component. That would allow animating 4HD of creatures for every slain enemy at minimum. So hello free undead minions! Then their tactics and strategies with them would not matter all too much as expendable minions would be rather plentiful and incredibly cheap.

[elonin]

There are two approaches that I can think of. First, treat them like you would minionomancers. Followers and thrall herds are often left at base doing other stuff with likely only one coming along. Second, a custom at some of the tables i've played at is if a player has a numbers of rolls to make to make and hold rolls for attack and damage etc while others are taking their turns so the results can be reported to the dm.

I'm also not a big fan of those spells even for necromancers (at low levels) due to the component cost.

[Bohandas]

My main worry for balance there would be that 16 mobs with DR 5 could really tank incredibly effectively, making the group hardly take any damage. But maybe I underestimate the damage of CR 4/5/6 monsters, things aren't exactly doing 1d6+2 damage anymore. And a single Channel Energy destroys all of them at once.

What I was getting at was running the 16 skeletons as a single mob

[Coidzor]

So they've taken a version of the spell that specifically locks you to weaker minions, and the suggestions are to give him stronger minions?

Lesser Animate Dead isn't limited to only animating dinky things. It's still exactly within the spirit of the rules and spell and necromancy to use it to make a few higher HD minions instead of lots of dinky ones. It's also a lot more efficient in terms of spell slots and time.


The solution, as with so many things, is to nerf the offending spell. Cut the control limit to 1/2 or 1/4 for 2 HD/level or 1 HD/level for the lesser version (if not the whole thing). While you're at it you should probably review a whole bunch of other Pathfinder spells, I'm pretty sure that for every spell they "fixed" (some quite well) they added a new spell that's worse than the old one at the same level.

It's already nerfed. Better to just admit that you hate it and talk to your players directly about alternative character ideas if you feel that strongly about minionmancy.

Also, yes, worse in both senses and directions.


As has been mentioned earlier, even if he goes the army of mooks route and drags them into combat, a single AoE blast and they are gone. For the average player that is a chunk of wealth that isn't inconsequential, and they don't want it to happen again. Pointing them to making stronger (higher HD) minions is a good thing.

What would be worrisome, is if the player knew of the second level spell Summon Cacodemon and used it to harvest soul gems from fallen enemies. Even lvl1 commoner souls are worth 100gp as a material component. That would allow animating 4HD of creatures for every slain enemy at minimum. So hello free undead minions! Then their tactics and strategies with them would not matter all too much as expendable minions would be rather plentiful and incredibly cheap.

Blood Money is a 1st level spell, too, so there are multiple paths to dealing with the gp cost of mindless undead minions.


Other than the fact that the OP indicated that they didn't want to go this route, a) they're adventurers, where will they ever find bodies?; b) one cooperative player and a pile of dead bards later, and they've got all the corpses they need; c) would the spell work on chickens?

Only if the chickens are Small or Medium.


As a DM, there's nothing stopping me from just adding hit dice to creatures and scaling up health/BAB/saves/ability scores as normal. Currently, I'm thinking this player gets a Bugbear, a couple Gnolls, and a Worg - perhaps the remains of a raiding party that tried to attack a nearby village, and were killed and tossed unceremoniously into the forest. Going off the Bestiary, that's only 11 HD in total, but I can scale all of them up a little to match the 16 HD total.

Remember you can always trade out his piddly skeletons by having them destroyed by their replacements.

[Hogsy]

Other than the fact that the OP indicated that they didn't want to go this route, a) they're adventurers, where will they ever find bodies?; b) one cooperative player and a pile of dead bards later, and they've got all the corpses they need; c) would the spell work on chickens?


Well, due to an undead epidemic in my setting a couple centuries ago, the big guys(kings etc.) have made it a cultural tradition to burn the dead so they may go to the next world without being tethered unwillingly to the real world. The body represents regrets, missed opportunies etc. so it becomes a flesh sacrifice and they get to go to spiritual paradise or whatever. That makes it much harder and way more unique to be a necromancer with strong minions. And currently, the main enemies my PCs face are minions of an Elder Evil esque god who turn to black dust when they reach 0 hp. There's lots of ideas you can utilize to hinder a minions master-type PC. If your fighter hits like 40 dmg with each hit, have him hack and slash their target's body. That'd leave you with undead amputees ::smallbiggrin:. Well, since this Necro's party doesn't have a problem with him raising their dead enemies, just rework the spells themselves to need concentration and to have the undead be put into groups the player controls, rather than a bulk of 16 undead or whatever.

Before OP does anything though, I'd personally suggest to let the player handle it for themselves for a session. Maybe he has an idea of his own on how his undead minions will and can work. You can discuss it with them before the session, and come up with a cool idea together too of course. The most common idea to have a "special" undead control the lesser ones is the coolest imo.