Animate Dead: What commands can skeletons follow?

[Guillaume777]

I play a cleric and I wonder what sort of commands Animate Dead skeletons can follow.

I know ordering them around takes a bonus action, so ideally I'd like to give them all instructions *before* combat starts so I don't have to use valuable actions during combat to babysit them.

I wonder what sort of commands could be followed by the skeletons.

Reminders:

- Skeletons have Intelligence 6
- The description for Animate Dead says: "you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor"
- The MM says: "skeletons are able to accomplish a
variety of relatively complex tasks[...]. However,
it must receive careful instructions explaining how such
tasks are accomplished."

Given these rules, I was wondering if a skeleton could be able to follow these commands:

1. Stay 25 feet away from me, and dodge attacks. If I fall unconscious, force me to drink a healing potion.
2. Follow me around. If a creature engages me in melee, help me fight it by distracting it.
3. Go around the corner and look around. If you see a creature, come back and point at it.
4. Shoot arrows at any creature I point at.

Seems to me that you could give these orders outside of combat, and as such they would not cost any actions during a fight.

[Greywander]

The trade-off of course is that you have skeletons that will stand around doing nothing in combat because you've instructed them to do something else (like waiting to give you a potion if you fall unconscious). The strength of necromancy would seem to me to lie in being able to effectively command your undead army in order to maximize their effectiveness. Doing it this way, you're maximizing your own effectiveness by freeing up the bonus action you would have used to command them, but at the cost of severely reducing the performance of your undead minions. Of course, you can have it both ways by giving them their commands before battle, and then giving them new commands whenever it would be more effective to do so.

Just my two cents.


4. Shoot arrows at any creature I point at.
Well that's not asking for the DM to screw you over or anything. :smalltongue:

"As you gesture toward the king, one of your skeletons draws back an arrow..."

[Guillaume777]

Doing it this way, you're maximizing your own effectiveness by freeing up the bonus action you would have used to command them, but at the cost of severely reducing the performance of your undead minions.

I see your point, but how much damage can a single skeleton deal, anyway?

Skeletons do ~5.5 damage per hit. They have +4 to hit, so they hit AC 15 on a 11 or more. They end up doing ~2.75 points of damage per turn, less if the opponent has higher AC or piercing resistance.

Having 1-2 of your skeletons on standby to auto-revive you seems more productive than doing a negligible amount of damage per turn...

[Greywander]

One skeleton standing around might not be a huge loss, depending on how many skeletons you have, but if you prescript the entire battle only to watch the plan fall apart after two rounds then you need to give new orders to your troops (assuming that their previous orders are now totally ineffective).

I guess it just comes down to a question of what a bonus action is worth to you, which will also change depending on the situation.

[the secret fire]

1. Stay 25 feet away from me, and dodge attacks. If I fall unconscious, force me to drink a healing potion.
Almost certainly too complex.

2. Follow me around. If a creature engages me in melee, help me fight it by distracting it.
Doubtful that a skeleton understands the meaning of "distract".

3. Go around the corner and look around. If you see a creature, come back and point at it.
Sure, but "creatures" may include rats, trees swaying in the breeze, or anything else that an absolute moron might take to be a "creature".

4. Shoot arrows at any creature I point at.
That ought to work.

[Asmotherion]

My way of interacting with Int 6 is treating it as IQ 60, as I sayed in an other thread. It can follow simple commands, like a trained animal could, and would interpreat them literally. It would fail to comprehend complex worlds or comands. Attack, Fetch, Guard etc sure. But cook, unless you give them instructions on what to do, they don't know what "cook" means, and unless you include all variables, you need to manually stop them from cooking.

All in all, I treat undead under your control as evil-robots; You are their programmer, you have to tell them what to do, and unless you do, they will default to factory settings of "If creature in sight is not undead or dead; kill it".

[MaxWilson]

I play a cleric and I wonder what sort of commands Animate Dead skeletons can follow.

Why are you asking the Internet instead of your DM? Nothing we say matters.

[Joe dirt]

Opening doors is an action... I have my skeletons do this while I'm ready to cast spells

[iTreeby]

Why are you asking the Internet instead of your DM? Nothing we say matters. He probably wants a few examples of what other people think. Speculating about his motives is likely beyond the scope of this thread though.

In response to the original post: I would suspect that a skeleton would maliciously comply with the command to "force" its master to drink a healing potion in a way that would kill you, I would be a bit more careful when commanding something as intelligent as a giant vulture.

[JackPhoenix]

1. Stay 25 feet away from me, and dodge attacks. If I fall unconscious, force me to drink a healing potion.

Propably not, sounds like two different commands. Also, "force me to drink a healing potion" could be dangerous. Drowning in healing potion may not be pleasant.


2. Follow me around. If a creature engages me in melee, help me fight it by distracting it.

Skeleton's interpretation of "creature engages you in melee" and "distraction" may cause problems, depending on situation. Does someone giving you a friendly slap on the back (or just touching you, which is enough for some spells) count as "engages you in melee"? Does "shoot it full of arrows" count as distraction?


3. Go around the corner and look around. If you see a creature, come back and point at it.

You and your party members are creatures. Skeleton will go around the corner, return back and point at you.


4. Shoot arrows at any creature I point at.

Be very, very careful about making any gestures near your patry members and anyone you don't want to kill.

[Naanomi]

One part of this is that most characters should never be ‘surprised’ in the moment about what their skeletons will and will not do. My Hobgoblin Necromancer has genius intelligence and ran military drills with his skeletons, he knows exactly what orders they are capable of following and not. There may be limitations on what they can do, and those limitations may vary from table to table (including how maliciously evil they are in interpreting orders)... but the ‘oh, they attack your teammates!’ stuff sprung in combat shouldn’t come up for intelligent and planful characters

[Throne12]

I play a cleric and I wonder what sort of commands Animate Dead skeletons can follow.

I know ordering them around takes a bonus action, so ideally I'd like to give them all instructions *before* combat starts so I don't have to use valuable actions during combat to babysit them.

I wonder what sort of commands could be followed by the skeletons.

Reminders:

- Skeletons have Intelligence 6
- The description for Animate Dead says: "you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor"
- The MM says: "skeletons are able to accomplish a
variety of relatively complex tasks[...]. However,
it must receive careful instructions explaining how such
tasks are accomplished."

Given these rules, I was wondering if a skeleton could be able to follow these commands:

1. Stay 25 feet away from me, and dodge attacks. If I fall unconscious, force me to drink a healing potion.
2. Follow me around. If a creature engages me in melee, help me fight it by distracting it.
3. Go around the corner and look around. If you see a creature, come back and point at it.
4. Shoot arrows at any creature I point at.

Seems to me that you could give these orders outside of combat, and as such they would not cost any actions during a fight.

That would be funny you get ready for bed forgetting you gave one skeleton the command " if I fall unconscious, force me to drink a healing potion." You wake up to a skeleton forcing you to drink something. And you can barely talk and is struggling to give it the command to stop.

[Ventruenox]

I would suggest nonlethal standing orders instead. Identify the party members beforehand. Have them knock prone and grapple any non-party member living creature who comes within 15' of your location. It could still lead to some amusing outcomes, but no one is getting stabbed or shot. Wouldn't you like to see a swarm of undead dogpile a kitten?