Viable Skeleton Necromancer builds?

[PhantomVector]

Been playing a lot of diablo 3 and I kind of want to make a neutral/good leaning Necromancer based on the Priests of Rathma.

But if I want to run with a skeleton army, how effective will that end up being in later levels? I’ve seen suggestions that multiple skeletons making grapple checks isn’t bad, but I doubt that’ll be working on dragons and other larger creatures. Even en masse. But if I’m wrong please correct me :)

Using them as rows of archers or meat shields is effective but possibly expensive. I don’t know if you can give skeletons better weapons and armor? But if you can’t their effectiveness would go down I assume. Whence you start to see creatures that you need magical weapons to fight.

Are there other ways to use them that I’m not thinking of? Any feats that I should look into?

I’ve got 17,17,16 on 3 of my rolls so I’m good to basically do anything.

[smcmike]

If your DM lets you maintain a large cadre of skeletons armed with bows and arrows, they are very effective against most creatures at any level of play. The friction comes in with maintaining and transporting an army of darkness without upsetting the peasants.

[PeteNutButter]

Inspiring leader feat to give them all temporary hp. With your rolls should be able to manage a good cha.

Oathbreaker paladin if it’s avaialble is a good combination. The spell crusaders mantle which is only available to paladins (9th level) war clerics (5th) or bards (6th for lore) is a great area damage buff.

Best if allies do those things really. IMO pure wizard is the way to go. They scale excellently with the class. Not all that many enemies are immune to nonmagic weapons, but when they are... you’re still a wizard.

[PhantomVector]

If your DM lets you maintain a large cadre of skeletons armed with bows and arrows, they are very effective against most creatures at any level of play. The friction comes in with maintaining and transporting an army of darkness without upsetting the peasants.

Was thinking a bag of holding we have a few, and were decently rich I could probably afford to commission one somehow.

If I have the funds can I give them better weapons and armor? Or are they not proficient?

[PhantomVector]

Inspiring leader feat to give them all temporary hp. With your rolls should be able to manage a good cha.

Oathbreaker paladin if it’s avaialble is a good combination. The spell crusaders mantle which is only available to paladins (9th level) war clerics (5th) or bards (6th for lore) is a great area damage buff.

Best if allies do those things really. IMO pure wizard is the way to go. They scale excellently with the class. Not all that many enemies are immune to nonmagic weapons, but when they are... you’re still a wizard.

Will they remain relevant as 1/4 CR minions? I mean I dunno how many I should keep on hand.

[MaxWilson]

Was thinking a bag of holding we have a few, and were decently rich I could probably afford to commission one somehow.

If I have the funds can I give them better weapons and armor? Or are they not proficient?

Even if your DM rules they are not proficient, you can give them weapons and armor anyway. Weapons proficiency is a +2 bonus on top of Dex, and armor proficiency allows them to avoid disadvantage on attack rolls, but in both cases you can still evaluate the tradeoffs, and you still get the massive damage boost from Undead Thralls.

If they are proficient then scale mail, dual shortswords, a shield, and a heavy crossbow or longbow is a no-brainer for skeletons. (Plus a couple of nets per skeleton for special scenarios.) For zombies either chain and a greatsword, or chain, shield, and longsword/mace/whatever. The greatsword variant threatens somewhat bigger opportunity attacks but the shield variant is more durable against small fry like armies of hobgoblins.

If they are not proficient then consider ordering half of them to Help the other half in order to offset disadvantage.

Overall the most impactful way to leverage your skeletons at high level is to use your spells judiciously to divide-and-conquer the enemy (e.g. Wall of Force, Forcecage) and/or negate enemy actions (Otto's Irresistible Dance, Hypnotic Pattern) while looking for ways to provide your skeletons advantage on their ranged attacks (the easiest way to through vision manipulation, unless your DM has houseruled away advantage for unseen attackers on ranged attacks, which IMO he really ought to do because it doesn't really make sense--but if vision is run vanilla, look for opportunities to fight at night and launch arrows from outside the enemy's usually-short darkvision range while someone else illuminates the target with a Dancing Lights spell/torch/whatever, so the skeletons can see their targets but the target can't see the skeletons shooting at it).

It helps a lot if you have other party members who are good at minionmancy, e.g. a druid using Conjure Animals to summon lots of meat shields and/or Constrictor Snakes to restrain enemies for an alternate source of ranged advantage.

[MrStabby]

If your DM lets you maintain a large cadre of skeletons armed with bows and arrows, they are very effective against most creatures at any level of play. The friction comes in with maintaining and transporting an army of darkness without upsetting the peasants.

The bigger issue is finding people to play with. You are bringing a war game army to a table top role-playing game. This is the friction.

There are loads of viable builds, it downtown mean they won't lose you friends.

To make it "work" don't focus on optimising effectiveness, focus on optimising time. Make these skeletons take as little time as possible to process at the table.

I found wizard/ oathbreaker paladin an almost acceptable compromise. A small number of unread doing similar things: not too many actions, statuses or HP to track.

[MaxWilson]

The bigger issue is finding people to play with. You are bringing a war game army to a table top role-playing game. This is the friction.

There are loads of viable builds, it downtown mean they won't lose you friends.

To make it "work" don't focus on optimising effectiveness, focus on optimising time. Make these skeletons take as little time as possible to process at the table.

I found wizard/ oathbreaker paladin an almost acceptable compromise. A small number of unread doing similar things: not too many actions, statuses or HP to track.

It also helps a lot if you play with people who want to play ranged PCs instead of melee PCs. Ranged PCs are more likely to appreciate the meat shields you bring to the table.

[Joe dirt]

to have skeletons u need a bag of holding,

the reason is as a gaming group they will be traveling to places where having skeletons will make u a target of local governments. animating the dead is an evil act and unless ur in an evil kingdom it is most certainly outlawed. even in an evil country an evil ruler would not let a roaming army into their land.... so a bag of holding is essential to an adventuring wizard.

on top of that u need a group of adventurers that lean neutral or evil... a party of goody too shoes will not accept the aid of a wizard having a hoard of undead, or at least they shouldn't, they would know its an evil act.

if u have a group cool with skeletons and a bag of holding, congrats, animate away.... just dont let the townfolk know and use them in the dungeons only.

as far as tactics... give them range weapons and order them to stay 10ft away from each other, the reason for the spacing is u need a viable defense against area of effect spells as skeletons dont get a ton of HP. and with range weapons they can do lots of consistent damage while ur party fighters keep the monsters busy on the front line. and if the monsters do a skeleton killing spree it will take them precious actions, actions that the fighter can use to hack at them.

[PeteNutButter]

Will they remain relevant as 1/4 CR minions? I mean I dunno how many I should keep on hand.

Definitely relevant. The amount you keep on hand varies with the situation and with amount you can quickly handle without slowing the game down. I like about 6 per tier above the first. So levels 5-10 half a dozen. A dozen from level 11-16 and 18+ from level 17-20.

They’ll start to fall off a little by tier 3 but only individually. With a dozen skeletons at level 13 they will have 40+ HP (including inspiring leader THP) with heavy crossbow (presuming proficiency) attacks that hit for 1d10+7. The +4 to hit is a bit of a bummer, but even against AC 18 foes those dozen skellys do a fantastic 54 DPR. That’s just with a bonus action.

For comparison a 20 str GWM fighter will only do about 27 DPR with his 3 attacks. Now usually the fighter will have a magic weapon and things like precision attack which allow him to close the gap. My point is the necromancer is actually ahead on the outset.

From a pure numbers standpoint the more skeletons the better, but you don’t want to slow the table down or put all your eggs in one basket.

That's ignoring any RP struggles with having an undead army about. Keep in mind that Turn Undead doesn't have exceptions. So if your party cleric wants to turn a vampire, your army might just all die.

[Mortis_Elrod]

In my opinion necromancy is one of the hardest wizard Archetypes to play. To achieve true ridiculousness you need buy in from the whole table.

So I won’t go too much in to detail, but I’ll say a few notes.

-best if your whole party is on board and supporting you. Try to get the paladin at the very least to break his oath.

-hoards require a lot of upkeep, money, time, and planning. Don’t do hoards. Having 4 extra guys is good enough.

- ready all the skeletons actions to something. This way you can roll all the dice at once and they all attack as one. Use your allies as triggers or your own actions if nothing else is available to the situation.

-don’t Be a villain. Evil is fine even accepted (though begrudgingly ). Read the overlord list everyday and don’t broadcast yourself, but also don’t go out of your way to make yourself literally appear from the shadows. Don’t cackle instead giggle or chuckle slightly or do a full belly jolly laugh. Be clean shaven with a non descript haircut. Don’t only wear black. And don’t do petty evils. Necromancy is evil enough (usually) so you got that covered. The difference is Maledread the Ruler of undead gets hunted down by a spontaneous crusade and counter party, while Matt the Wizard who summons a couple skeletons often but isn’t an ***hole usually, isn’t bothered