Animate Dead and Pact Magic

[Greywander]

This isn't a difficult combo to get RAW via multiclassing, but it does mean that your build options are limited. Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure that at-will or ritual Animate Dead would be as broken as people might think, mostly due to needing to target corpses. You can't just create an undead army out of thin air, but it would mean that any downed enemy joins your army (IIRC, Animate Dead doesn't work on undead corpses, so you can't reanimate them if they die). I suppose it also means the DM needs to be careful with their set dressing. "The hallway is constructed entirely of skulls, you say?" Even then, that wouldn't be as much of an issue with pact magic, as you'd need to short rest after every couple castings, greatly extending the time it would take to animate them all.

I've been working on a witch class that uses pact magic, and one of the subclasses has a death/undead theme. I'm definitely giving them Animate Dead in some form, I just wasn't sure if I should give it to them as a normal spell known/part of their expanded spell list, or if they should only get X castings per long rest. The biggest issue with Animate Dead with pact magic is that it greatly increases the maximum number of undead you can control, albeit at the cost of extending your long rests by several hours (so you can short rest to get your slots back to cast it again).

[Sigreid]

Well, even a good party is pretty good at making bodies. And those bodies will help make more bodies. Basically it all boils down to how much you are bothered by minionmancy of any type.

[Gtdead]

It's actually worse than what you think. A wizard/cleric 5 can cast animate dead 2 times per day. That's it. A golgari warlock can technically animate every enemy that the party killed. Once he reaches critical mass, then it's extremely easy to sustain this army, and the limit of the golgari warlock is going to be higher than the wizard/cleric, with less opportunity cost, because the wizard/cleric will probably need his spells to do other stuff.

So essentially, the warlock is better at both creating the army and maintaining it. Of course this assumes that the DM is lenient with short rests and runs a more sandbox style game.

[Cikomyr2]

Just set a limit and have the warlock invest HD in his undead army. Also remember that destroyed bodies don't regenerate or repair when overly damaged.

[Ryton]

As mentioned above, Golgari warlocks from Ravnica get Animate Dead. It's not particularly game breaking on account of needing constant short rests to recover slots, compared to classes with more and higher level slots as the game progresses.

And while not game breaking, it is still a very strong option. Maybe give it an opportunity cost, like requiring an Invocation to get it as a spell known if your witch class has a similar mechanic.

[No brains]

This will probably end up subject to arguments from various points of view on what makes the game fun, but technically you don't need an entire humanoid body for a skeleton, you just need a 'pile of bones'. It's weird that the magic can provide a person-sized skeleton complete with sword, shield, bow, some arrows, and armor scraps from the remnants of last night's chicken, but that's what it says on the spell scroll. :smalltongue:

[Valmark]

I don't think it'd be a major issue. Undead creation for Animate Dead/Create Undead is limited not only by the availability of corpses (or bones) but also from needing them humanoid and presumably needing them in an usable state. I can count a bunch of campaigns where that would have made a necromancer (intended as someone who uses undeads) absolutely useless.

And that's before considering the impact in the game world, the need to equip them and the relative frailty.

[strangebloke]

Its possible via golgari background and its absurdly overpowered, allowing you to overcome all the traditional limitations of necromancy with essentially zero opportunity cost. Like people are glossing over it, but

you aren't using concentration
you aren't investing feats, invocations, race, subclass, or spells known (because its from a background)
you have all your spell slots in combat because the animate dead slots are coming from short rests prior to combat

It's literally just "get this background, get 8-12 skeletons whenever there are bodies available."

Stupid, shouldn't be allowed.

[greenstone]

Having tried this, it is less useful than it appears.

First, you don't get many skeletons. 1 casting of the spell using a 3rd level slot gets you 1 skeleton. 4th level slot gets 3, 5th level slot gets 5.

Second, skeletons are weak. By the time a warlock gets 5th level slots, skeletons are fairly pointless. They make a good archery line, but the foes a 9th level warlock faces aren't going to be that worried about a line of CR ¼ archers.

Third, skeletons are stupid. They can't do laundry, they burn the porridge, they can't talk (so are poor sycophants), and they cause common folk to run away screaming. OK, that last one is not always a bad thing.

If you want minions, get some real minions. Just make sure you call them "player characters" to their faces. :smallsmile:

[Ryton]

Its possible via golgari background and its absurdly overpowered, allowing you to overcome all the traditional limitations of necromancy with essentially zero opportunity cost. Like people are glossing over it, but

you aren't using concentration
you aren't investing feats, invocations, race, subclass, or spells known (because its from a background)
you have all your spell slots in combat because the animate dead slots are coming from short rests prior to combat

It's literally just "get this background, get 8-12 skeletons whenever there are bodies available."

Stupid, shouldn't be allowed.

Well, per your white room example, if you have your spells free for combat, and then want to Animate some Dead, and then have your spells back for the next combat, your day is looking like Combat -> Short Rest -> Animate Dead -> Short Rest -> Repeat.

If the DM is not so much allowing as actively providing 2 short rests per combat, the issue doesn't seem to be Animate Dead on a warlock so much as an overly permissive DM... With that many Short Rests, might as well get a Mercy Monk in that party for more heals than you need...

[strangebloke]

Well, per your white room example, if you have your spells free for combat, and then want to Animate some Dead, and then have your spells back for the next combat, your day is looking like Combat -> Short Rest -> Animate Dead -> Short Rest -> Repeat.

If the DM is not so much allowing as actively providing 2 short rests per combat, the issue doesn't seem to be Animate Dead on a warlock so much as an overly permissive DM... With that many Short Rests, might as well get a Mercy Monk in that party for more heals than you need...

You're correct to say that a warlock using this strat wouldn't be able to refresh all their skeletons between every encounter, but they can pretty easily raise as many skeletons as they have corpses and time at the end (or beginning) of each day. At seventh level three hours of downtime can turn into 18 skeletons created. That's a huge amount of value, especially considering the only build cost is a background.

Like to be clear, when I say this is overpowered, what I mean is that its better than every other (non Ravnica) background by a mile and that there's no argument against taking it from an optimization perspective. It's cheesy and silly and the limitations to it (no way to access bodies, you can't recycle bones for skeletons, there are tons of powerful NPCS who will hunt and persecute you for doing this etc.) are not what I would consider good solutions. Suffice to say that if you're at a table where animate dead can be used to any degree of efficacy, this is by far the best way to do it.

[Seekergeek]

This is only tangentially related and I really hope it isn’t taken the wrong way or gets me in hot water, but since so many threads involve this particular undercurrent this seems like as good a place to raise the question as any…I’ve honestly never understood the mentality required for this to become an issue in play, and by that I mean for this or any of the other “is this OP” lines of inquiry, the person playing this character would have to actively want to break the game he is playing WITH his friends. D&D isn’t a game you can win, because it isn’t a game you are playing against someone else. I absolutely love this forum, and I find it to be probably the best dnd community online but that persistent undercurrent of fear of/desire to overshadow/out perform the rest of the party or to “break” things and beat the DM is really alien to me. Is this a white room issue or do people at other tables actually play that way?

Edit: I should say that I’m a corporate lawyer by trade, meaning I sort of exploit the rules for a living. I get the appeal I just can’t imagine playing this game that way beyond theory craft and I’m wondering how many people actually do.

[Greywander]

This is only tangentially related and I really hope it isn’t taken the wrong way or gets me in hot water, but since so many threads involve this particular undercurrent this seems like as good a place to raise the question as any…I’ve honestly never understood the mentality required for this to become an issue in play, and by that I mean for this or any of the other “is this OP” lines of inquiry, the person playing this character would have to actively want to break the game he is playing WITH his friends. D&D isn’t a game you can win, because it isn’t a game you are playing against someone else. I absolutely love this forum, and I find it to be probably the best dnd community online but that persistent undercurrent of fear of/desire to overshadow/out perform the rest of the party or to “break” things and beat the DM is really alien to me. Is this a white room issue or do people at other tables actually play that way?

Edit: I should say that I’m a corporate lawyer by trade, meaning I sort of exploit the rules for a living. I get the appeal I just can’t imagine playing this game that way beyond theory craft and I’m wondering how many people actually do.
I find it pretty fun to optimize. I'm a perfectionist, so when faced with two options, one of which is clearly better than the other, I have a really hard time taking the worse option. 5e isn't as bad as previous editions, but there can still be a substantial gap between optimized and unoptimized characters, and it can make the game less fun for people. Either because the unoptimized character isn't pulling their weight, or the optimized character is stealing the spotlight. Things don't need to be perfectly balanced, but the balance gap should be narrow enough that you could at least see taking the "worse" option because you're still getting something out of it that you wouldn't get from the "better" option.

People aren't always actively trying to break the game, but different people have different ideas of what it means to play the game. One person makes a minmaxed combat beast, because that's what the game is to them: combat, and being as effective at it as you can, winning it as often as you can. Another player creates a character that fits a concept, but is a mechanical mess. 5e mostly still makes such characters viable, but obviously they're going to fall behind in raw power. Some people just want to roleplay and socialize, others just want to advance and influence the narrative, yet others just want to explore the fantastical world. And, of course, some people just want to be powerful and/or win at combat. None of these goals are mutually exclusive, but it does require the players to understand and accept their fellow players and their playstyles, and to work their own goals around the goals of the rest of the table. Most tables aren't that mature and close-knit.

There is something called freeform roleplay. It's like a roleplaying game, but there's no game. No rules. The rules that do exist are generally along the lines of "follow the forum rules, e.g. don't be a **** to the other players," and "don't godmod (control what another player's character does, or what happens to them)". You can make a character super strong, or super weak. You decide if an attack hits you or not; there are no dice rolls. Freeform roleplay doesn't really interest me, since I like the game aspect, but a lot of the same personal character qualities that would make you a good player in a TTRPG would also make you a good player in freeform roleplay. Most people don't have those qualities. Freeform roleplay might actually be a decent way to teach people to be better players.

[kazaryu]

This isn't a difficult combo to get RAW via multiclassing, but it does mean that your build options are limited. Honestly, I'm not even entirely sure that at-will or ritual Animate Dead would be as broken as people might think, mostly due to needing to target corpses. You can't just create an undead army out of thin air, but it would mean that any downed enemy joins your army (IIRC, Animate Dead doesn't work on undead corpses, so you can't reanimate them if they die). I suppose it also means the DM needs to be careful with their set dressing. "The hallway is constructed entirely of skulls, you say?" Even then, that wouldn't be as much of an issue with pact magic, as you'd need to short rest after every couple castings, greatly extending the time it would take to animate them all.

I've been working on a witch class that uses pact magic, and one of the subclasses has a death/undead theme. I'm definitely giving them Animate Dead in some form, I just wasn't sure if I should give it to them as a normal spell known/part of their expanded spell list, or if they should only get X castings per long rest. The biggest issue with Animate Dead with pact magic is that it greatly increases the maximum number of undead you can control, albeit at the cost of extending your long rests by several hours (so you can short rest to get your slots back to cast it again).

i'd say make it an invocation type deal, or a class feature. something like

'when you finish a long rest (or something like that) you can perform a special ritual that takes one hour. the ritual acts as though you cast the 'animate dead spell' however it allows you to animate x (with x being some number that scales, in some way, with level. it could be via level, it could be via proficiency bonus. it could be a value pulled off of a chart) corpses, or re-establish control over y (similar to x, but a slightly larger number, to maintain parity with animate dead) undead minions.'

obviously needs some ironing out. but the overall idea would be to give them the ability to control/maintain a small army (still limited by access to corpses, and remember, once one of their minions dies, its no long the corpse of a humanoid, its the corpse of a zombie/skeleton). i'd say probably try to balance the number somewhere smaller than what a full caster could do if they were to committ all of their spell slots to it. since they're actually giving something up for it. but still large enough that the feature feels useful. a single extra zombie is a ribbon, not a feature. 5 free zombies though? even if they deal no damage they're still useful as psuedo tanks/area control

[Sigreid]

what about treating it like a pet class. The witch gets the service of the remains of a peasant she'd bargained with in the past.

[Greywander]

One of the benefits of just putting it on an expanded spell list is that it's optional. You don't have to learn that spell. If minionmancy is an issue at your table, then it's nice to have the option of getting something else instead. If I make it a subclass feature, and you don't want to do minionmancy, you're kind of screwed.

That said, I'm leaning towards making it a subclass feature anyway, where instead of casting Animate Dead, you can just animate and control up to a certain number of minions (prof bonus?). This would also allow me to include other types of minor undead, not just zombies and skeletons. Which... looks like is mostly just the crawling claw or gnoll witherling, unless we want to bring in module-specific monsters. Hmm, I could make it any combo of undead up to a certain CR value, e.g. if the limit is CR 2 then you could control one CR 2 undead, two CR 1s, four CR 1/2s, etc.

[Sigreid]

What I was thinking was a pet along the lines of a ranger or battlesmith pet that grows stronger with you. Heck, you could even open up options for it being a fae creature, an undead, a nature spirit, an elemental or whatever that particular witch is into. You'd be trading the possibility of multiple smaller/wear minions for one that is actually worth something but still not strong enough to overshadow any of the players.

[Segev]

Mage Hand Press has a third party class (which I know is in their Valda's Spire of Secrets, and I think they had an earlier work that developed it) that is the Necromancer. I think they went way overboard in sharply limiting its minion count, but they have an optional variant rule to alleviate that to at least some degree, and it gives you a couple of minions from level 2 onwards just about whenever you want. Might be worth looking into, though I don't know the best way to do so without spending money.

I have often thought the wizard necromancer archetype needed a few lower-level minionmancy tricks, and that the temp hp thing they DO get at level 2 is boring, lame, and just sort-of forced to squeeze into the theme because they couldn't think of anything more fitting they thought was balanced. I would love to see a level 1 or 2 spell modeled on animal friendship or charm person that is called command undead and fills the same niche as the spell of that name from 3.5. I know they get something along those lines way, way later in the subclass feature list, but I would prefer more ability in this area much earlier.

Incidentally, if animate dead is taken so literally that any pile of bones always makes a humanoid skeleton (and I'm not arguing it shouldn't, though I dislike it), what would people here suggest be the best mechanism for creating all the more interesting kinds of undead in the various monster sections of books in 5e? Magic item creation rules? Should it be as hard to make a minotaur zombie as it is to make a flesh golem, at least from a player's perspective? Or should there be some in-between means that is harder than "just cast a spell" but easier than magic item crafting?

[Greywander]

Incidentally, if animate dead is taken so literally that any pile of bones always makes a humanoid skeleton (and I'm not arguing it shouldn't, though I dislike it), what would people here suggest be the best mechanism for creating all the more interesting kinds of undead in the various monster sections of books in 5e? Magic item creation rules? Should it be as hard to make a minotaur zombie as it is to make a flesh golem, at least from a player's perspective? Or should there be some in-between means that is harder than "just cast a spell" but easier than magic item crafting?
I believe Animate Dead specifically only works on humanoid corpses, so not any pile of bones. But I've wondered the same thing myself; where do all the other undead come from? Zombie beholders are in the MM, but how does one make a zombie beholder? It just seems to be one of those things where a mechanic doesn't currently exist, but that doesn't mean that lore-wise a method of doing it doesn't exist. It's just one of those things that exists in the world that doesn't have mechanics yet.

[JellyPooga]

Its possible via golgari background and its absurdly overpowered

By that line of reasoning, getting gold as treasure is absurdly overpowered because it allows you to obtain hirelings and buy them a bunch of bows. No investment beyond the monetary one required and so long as your paying your mercenaries well enough, they'll be as loyal you need them to be. Mercenaries (good ones at least) also don't burn the porridge, can carry a conversation, follow complex orders that involve individual initiative or social interaction (like shopping for supplies) and cause less of a stir when you rock up into town (still a stir, depending on the size of your warband, but at least they're not walking dead). Super OP compared to skeletons and you can do it at any level, with any class.

[Schwann145]

How is this even special and/or troublesome? It's really just "if we abuse the short rests, we can cheese a thing for a day," right?
Well... don't let that happen? Solved?

Or let it happen, and then watch the Warlock panic as they don't have enough slots to reassert all the control necessary when 24hrs hits. :)

[strangebloke]

By that line of reasoning, getting gold as treasure is absurdly overpowered because it allows you to obtain hirelings and buy them a bunch of bows. No investment beyond the monetary one required and so long as your paying your mercenaries well enough, they'll be as loyal you need them to be. Mercenaries (good ones at least) also don't burn the porridge, can carry a conversation, follow complex orders that involve individual initiative or social interaction (like shopping for supplies) and cause less of a stir when you rock up into town (still a stir, depending on the size of your warband, but at least they're not walking dead). Super OP compared to skeletons and you can do it at any level, with any class.

if you allow hirelings, then gold is very useful, yes. But everyone has comparable access to gold in a campaign, so its balanced.

The golgari agent warlock is (in this metaphor) like a background that gives you near infinite gold. It's by far the best way to use animate dead when compared with any other way of using the spell. If you just soft-ban animate dead, this isn't a problem, sure, but in that case we're in agreement that it should be banned..


How is this even special and/or troublesome? It's really just "if we abuse the short rests, we can cheese a thing for a day," right?
Well... don't let that happen? Solved?

Or let it happen, and then watch the Warlock panic as they don't have enough slots to reassert all the control necessary when 24hrs hits. :)
Oberoni fallacy and Grod's Law violation in the same post. Nice.

The short rest system largely isn't abuseable. This is one of the ways to truly abuse it, along with cofeelocking. Now you can just impose arbitrary limits on the number of short rests people can take, that works. But if your goal is just to prevent these two specific abuses, doesn't banning these two specific abuses make more sense? Basically, by saying that this allows people to exploit the mechanics to become overpowered and that you would need to ban it, you're acknowledging that this is a broken, overpowered combo.

As to forcing the warlock into a situation where the skeletons turn on their master... :smallsigh:. This won't end like you think it will. You'll need to keep pressure on the party for 24 hours straight, track the exact hour that the warlock cast the spells previously, and then after all this trouble, the warlock will just sigh and order the skeletons to take each other apart before the spell expires. "start with a fresh batch tomorrow I guess."

[stoutstien]

Honestly mass minions in any form are only and issue if you don't regularly include AoE or environmental hazards. It doesn't even need to be any single hard hitting effect to keep minions in check.

Not like we are talking about a high level DS or clockwork sorcerer chain summoning legions.

[Sparky McDibben]

If you let your PCs get an infinite undead army with no consequences...I feel like that's on you as the DM. A lot of the issues here can be solved by having interesting consequences in the world, varying your encounter design, and playing up conflicting goals.

[JellyPooga]

if you allow hirelings, then gold is very useful, yes. But everyone has comparable access to gold in a campaign, so its balanced.

The golgari agent warlock is (in this metaphor) like a background that gives you near infinite gold.

Isn't that what most background Features do though? All the ones offering "hospitality" (Acolyte, Folk Hero, etc.) are effectively giving you infinite gold to spend on living expenses, Outlander gives you infinite gold to spend on Rations (so long as you're travelling in forgeable terrain), Sailor mitigates your travel costs at sea and so forth. A Background offering you infinite gold to spend on weak minions isn't so far out of the wheelhouse for what Backgrounds actually do in a mechanical sense; which is to say, most of them alleviate your gold costs for a specific activity or circumstance. Yes, Golgari Agent offering "free" minions might appear quite powerful compared to the others, but it's also very specific on how it goes about that (you have to be a Warlock just for a start...).

[Witty Username]

Two things if it gets out of hand.

AOE monsters, something like a flameskull is pretty easy to take out but if not done quickly can take out swathes of an undead army.

Kill the CPU, if the warlock dies the undead army will become uncontrolled turning the asset into a "Night of the Living Dead" one shot adventure. Even when something like revivify it will be a memorable downside.

[Sparky McDibben]

...if it gets out of hand.

AOE monsters, something like a flameskull is pretty easy to take out but if not done quickly can take out swathes of an undead army.

Another option would be clerics and paladins in your opponents. A couple of Turn / Destroy Undead could really take a chainsaw to any Army of Darkness.

[Greywander]

Oberoni fallacy and Grod's Law violation in the same post. Nice.
You have a point, but I think there may also be room for nuance. As others have pointed out, you can get hirelings using gold. I think it's worth asking if this is actually a problem, or if it just looks like one on paper. With regard to the Oberoni fallacy, I think it's also worth asking if the DM is running the game the way it was meant to be run. The Oberoni fallacy would only apply if the DM is having to go outside of the normal way of running a game in order to curb some kind of exploit. You could also have situations of a reverse-Oberoni, where the game rules are just fine, but the DM runs the game in a particular way that's causing issues. The solution might be to create some houserules that adapt the game to the way that DM runs it, but a more likely solution is to identify what the DM is doing wrong and teach them how to do it better.

Like, an example of this might be a DM who hands out legendary magic items to a tier 1 party, and now they're unstoppable against level appropriate challenges. "Stop giving them legendary items" is a valid solution to the problem. It wouldn't be an Oberoni fallacy in that case. In the case of Animate Dead and Pact Magic, what's expected is that you get a short rest every two combats, and two short rests per long rest. Does it usually work out that way? Ha, no. It seems like WotC greatly overestimated how many encounters tables would have between long rests. If anything, this nerfs short rest classes and buffs long rest classes. I know at some tables short rests can be rare, so the problem is actually that they're not taking enough short rests.

If a party was abusing short rests, then there might be some valid advice to give to the DM to help curb this. Ultimately, if they're in a safe place and not on some kind of time limit, it's hard to justify blocking short rests, if they really want to take them. So this isn't something you would always be able to do something about, nor would you want to, as you want to alternate between rising and falling tension. But simply directing the players to locations where short resting can be dangerous (i.e. have a chance for a random encounter), or giving them a quest with a time limit that doesn't give them a lot of time to stop and rest are both potential ways of dealing with this. And this isn't just about Animate Dead. Rest abuse can apply to any class, so there are good reasons to do stuff like this anyway.


Isn't that what most background Features do though? All the ones offering "hospitality" (Acolyte, Folk Hero, etc.) are effectively giving you infinite gold to spend on living expenses, Outlander gives you infinite gold to spend on Rations (so long as you're travelling in forgeable terrain), Sailor mitigates your travel costs at sea and so forth. A Background offering you infinite gold to spend on weak minions isn't so far out of the wheelhouse for what Backgrounds actually do in a mechanical sense; which is to say, most of them alleviate your gold costs for a specific activity or circumstance. Yes, Golgari Agent offering "free" minions might appear quite powerful compared to the others, but it's also very specific on how it goes about that (you have to be a Warlock just for a start...).
This is an interesting way of looking at it, and it certainly makes Animate Dead look less powerful that previously thought. If you really want to get the most out of Animate Dead, you should be using them for things you can't use hirelings for. For example, making them work 24/7 thanks to their exhaustion immunity and the fact that they won't complain or get bored. Sending them into environments that would be hostile to the living, such as poison gas or extreme heat or cold (again, exhaustion immunity protects them). You can also send them on suicide missions and they'll execute them without hesitation. If you're just using them like regular hirelings, then you may as well just get regular hirelings instead. Remember, Animate Dead is costing you a spell known, and while it may save you some gold, there are a lot of other great 3rd level spells you could get instead.

[strangebloke]

Honestly mass minions in any form are only and issue if you don't regularly include AoE or environmental hazards. It doesn't even need to be any single hard hitting effect to keep minions in check.

Not like we are talking about a high level DS or clockwork sorcerer chain summoning legions.

Two things if it gets out of hand.

AOE monsters, something like a flameskull is pretty easy to take out but if not done quickly can take out swathes of an undead army.

Kill the CPU, if the warlock dies the undead army will become uncontrolled turning the asset into a "Night of the Living Dead" one shot adventure. Even when something like revivify it will be a memorable downside.
I agree with both of these sentiments, but this is sort of the problem. Minionmancy breaks the game not in the sense that its completely overpowered, but in the sense that its either incredibly good or incredibly bad. Against a 19 AC ancient dragon, your skeletons are just dragon breath fodder, but in other cases the minions are this insane wall of meat and/or bows that just completely locks down a huge encounter and kills everything.

Animate dead is particularly troublesome in this respect because of how much of an all-or-nothing spell it is, where you're potentially investing a lot of gold and days of downtime and daily resources to make it work, but it has the advantage over traditional minionmancy of the minions being mindless and/or under your control.

A background that combines with a class to completely remove the element of significant investment is just kind of definitionally overpowered compared to other options and I don't really think that animate dead was weak before.

If you let your PCs get an infinite undead army with no consequences...I feel like that's on you as the DM. A lot of the issues here can be solved by having interesting consequences in the world, varying your encounter design, and playing up conflicting goals.
I'm not sure completely what you mean. Do you mean that a DM should allow this combo and then punish the player by bringing in a powerful anti-necromancer inquisitor to beat him up?

Because I really disagree with that sort of approach. It's better to just say, "hey, I'm not going to let you do that specific cheese."

Isn't that what most background Features do though? All the ones offering "hospitality" (Acolyte, Folk Hero, etc.) are effectively giving you infinite gold to spend on living expenses, Outlander gives you infinite gold to spend on Rations (so long as you're travelling in forgeable terrain), Sailor mitigates your travel costs at sea and so forth. A Background offering you infinite gold to spend on weak minions isn't so far out of the wheelhouse for what Backgrounds actually do in a mechanical sense; which is to say, most of them alleviate your gold costs for a specific activity or circumstance. Yes, Golgari Agent offering "free" minions might appear quite powerful compared to the others, but it's also very specific on how it goes about that (you have to be a Warlock just for a start...).

I think calling an acolyte's ability to get free room and board sometimes "infinite money" is a pretty extreme exaggeration. Realistically its 2 gp a day, which gets you... a single skilled hireling who has at least one relevant proficiency (skill or weapon.)

Golgari agent adds way more to warlock than any other background.

You have a point, but I think there may also be room for nuance. As others have pointed out, you can get hirelings using gold. I think it's worth asking if this is actually a problem, or if it just looks like one on paper. With regard to the Oberoni fallacy, I think it's also worth asking if the DM is running the game the way it was meant to be run. The Oberoni fallacy would only apply if the DM is having to go outside of the normal way of running a game in order to curb some kind of exploit. You could also have situations of a reverse-Oberoni, where the game rules are just fine, but the DM runs the game in a particular way that's causing issues. The solution might be to create some houserules that adapt the game to the way that DM runs it, but a more likely solution is to identify what the DM is doing wrong and teach them how to do it better.

Like, an example of this might be a DM who hands out legendary magic items to a tier 1 party, and now they're unstoppable against level appropriate challenges. "Stop giving them legendary items" is a valid solution to the problem. It wouldn't be an Oberoni fallacy in that case. In the case of Animate Dead and Pact Magic, what's expected is that you get a short rest every two combats, and two short rests per long rest. Does it usually work out that way? Ha, no. It seems like WotC greatly overestimated how many encounters tables would have between long rests. If anything, this nerfs short rest classes and buffs long rest classes. I know at some tables short rests can be rare, so the problem is actually that they're not taking enough short rests.

If a party was abusing short rests, then there might be some valid advice to give to the DM to help curb this. Ultimately, if they're in a safe place and not on some kind of time limit, it's hard to justify blocking short rests, if they really want to take them. So this isn't something you would always be able to do something about, nor would you want to, as you want to alternate between rising and falling tension. But simply directing the players to locations where short resting can be dangerous (i.e. have a chance for a random encounter), or giving them a quest with a time limit that doesn't give them a lot of time to stop and rest are both potential ways of dealing with this. And this isn't just about Animate Dead. Rest abuse can apply to any class, so there are good reasons to do stuff like this anyway.

Yeah, sorry, I disagree. Adventuring day design is already enough of a design burden that most DMs I know don't even bother with it. It destroys all difficulty, balance, and tension, but planning out 5-6 encounters with 2 short rests every adventuring day is just too much for people.

Adding in a new restriction that you have make short resting really hard such that the party gets exactly two short rests because of specifically golgari warlocks is ridiculous. Just ban the stupid combo, it almost certainly wasn't intended and those backgrounds don't even make sense outside ravnica anyway. There isn't really a way to abuse short rests outside of this and a few other stupid warlock combos (AKA coffeelocking)

[Sparky McDibben]

I'm not sure completely what you mean. Do you mean that a DM should allow this combo and then punish the player by bringing in a powerful anti-necromancer inquisitor to beat him up?

Because I really disagree with that sort of approach. It's better to just say, "hey, I'm not going to let you do that specific cheese."

Disagree. I play to find out what will happen. If a player discovers an "exploit" (it's not really an exploit, it's just taking a game mechanic to a logical conclusion), I will usually let them get away with it unless they're making other players uncomfortable. Obviously in this edition, with this change of allowing warlocks to have animate dead, that means figuring out some way to run hordes of undead.

I will then sit down with the player, adjust any mechanics as needed (that is, pitch my "here's how you run your undead so they're not a burden to play" system and get their buy-in), and remind them the world can and will react to what they're doing. So yes, if you are running around robbing graveyards, you should expect the freaking inquisition to show up and ask uncomfortable questions. That's not me being a jerk or even adversarial, that's me imposing logical consequences from the world.

That being said, I wouldn't start with a powerful inquisitor showing up. I'd start with an uneasy village priest asking the PCs to please leave their undead outside town because they're scaring the children. Then I'd show the villagers, terrified of an undead army on the march, quaking in their boots and giving the PCs offerings of food and luxury items as a "in advance, please don't kill us" gesture, flinching away from the PCs as they move as though expecting a blow. Next, the whole town might evacuate, fleeing in advance before the "evil necromancer" kills them.

Then I'd have some scrying spells show up, or a couple well-disguised agents of the Inquisition arrive in the area to act as spies.

Then I'd have the local lord show up with a half-dozen knights and ask for a parley, with the specific intention of finding out a) who the hell these people are, and b) when they are going away. Then I'd have a small force of knights (maybe a couple with lower-level paladin and cleric abilities) led by that lord attack if the PCs don't move on or pay a "bone tax" or something.

Then, if all of that fails, that's when the wizards' college takes an interest, and the full-bore Inquisitors show up, and the king demands to know why the hell y'all're assaulting nobility.

In short, consequences are fine, but they should feel like a logical extension of the world. If the PCs react to the villagers with kindness and compassion, leaving their undead outside the town (or destroying them), or explaining why they raised all these undead, that would change the course of events. If they negotiate with the local lord, that would change the course of events - that guy probably has all sorts of problems an undead army would be useful in solving. If they spot the scrying spells and reach out to the local wizards' college in advance, offering to share lore and asking if there are any problems the party can solve, that would also change the course of events.

And finally, if it gets that bad...your peasants start cremating bodies. Hell, maybe the first thing that happens after a battle from now on is that you burn your dead, and the other guys' dead, too. See what I mean? I play to find out what happens. If "what happens" is that a player discovers a way to traumatize an entire continent, well, that sounds like a grand ol' time to me.

[Sigreid]

What about a more legacy style of animate dead that allows you to use a wider variety of creatures and has them permanently bound to you, but actually has a cost that matters. Something like 25gp per hit die or the base creature. So an Ogre skeleton could be animated for (i think) 50gp, but doesn't have to have control refreshed every day. Yes, with a big enough budget this could get a very powerful army going, but when they're destroyed you are out the gold.

Edit: alternately you could have them created as magic items similar to animated armor with the DM declaring rarity by HD.

[Greywander]

Yeah, sorry, I disagree. Adventuring day design is already enough of a design burden that most DMs I know don't even bother with it. It destroys all difficulty, balance, and tension, but planning out 5-6 encounters with 2 short rests every adventuring day is just too much for people.

Adding in a new restriction that you have make short resting really hard such that the party gets exactly two short rests because of specifically golgari warlocks is ridiculous. Just ban the stupid combo, it almost certainly wasn't intended and those backgrounds don't even make sense outside ravnica anyway. There isn't really a way to abuse short rests outside of this and a few other stupid warlock combos (AKA coffeelocking)
I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that DMs aren't running the intended number of encounters per day/per short rest, and that this was nerfing short rest classes and buffing long rest classes. When the guideline is 6 encounters per day, 2 per short rest, but the DM is only running 2 encounters per long rest, that's a nerf to short rest classes. The point I was making is that short rest classes, like warlock, are already being nerfed because of how DMs typically run their games, and as such I don't know that Animate Dead with Pact Magic would be a problem most of the time.

On the other hand, if you find that the players are abusing short rests (in spite of the above), I simply gave a few ideas for things the DM could do to curb that, part of which may involve moving back towards the intended number of encounters. Again, I suspect it may not be as big of an issue as you think it might be, but just in case it is, there are some things that can be done about it. I'm not keen on banning options (though Ravnica backgrounds I generally assume aren't allowed), and it's not just the Golgari background. A Necromancer wizard 9/warlock 11 would have 3 pact magic slots at 5th level, and gets the bonuses from being a necromancer, too. Now, that's at 20th level, but you could get this online as early as 10th level with a wizard 5/warlock 5. I don't really see this as worth doing, personally.

I'm curious if you've actually seen short rest abuse at a table, or if it's only a theorycraft exercise? I know sometimes something looks overpowered or broken on paper, but in practice it doesn't quite work out that way. I am worried that giving access to Animate Dead on a class with pact magic might cause issues, but so far I'm not convinced that it actually will.

[JellyPooga]

I think calling an acolyte's ability to get free room and board sometimes "infinite money" is a pretty extreme exaggeration. Realistically its 2 gp a day, which gets you... a single skilled hireling who has at least one relevant proficiency (skill or weapon.)

Golgari agent adds way more to warlock than any other background.

Realistically, Golgari isn't giving a Warlock 8-12 skeletons either, but such was your claim. Realistically, a Warlock is getting 2-3 short rests a day which also have to account for any spells that Warlock wants to cast other than Animate Dead; that's only 6-8 spell slots for a Lvl.<11 Warlock per day. Theorectically, a Warlock is able to maintain 8-12 skeletons (level depending), yes, but in actual play getting to that point is hardly the "gimme" you claim. Look at the baseline; a level 5 Warlock looking for an entourage of 8 skeletons.

1) They need 8 piles of bones from 8 individual humanoid creatures. Ok, our Warlock is an adventurer, that shouldn't be too hard to accomplish if they're fighting typical foes like orcs and drow. Let's ignore the possibility that the adventure features mostly giants, undead, fiends, beasts, elementals and so forth (I'll contend that this is also an increasing probability the higher your level, but I digress).
2) They need to cast Animate Dead 8 times. Our Warlock only has 2 spell slots per short rest, so this is going to take them three short rests to accomplish. Four if they want to have spell slots for their adventuring day. Let's assume the latter. In a 16 hour workday, that's a quarter of it that the Warlock isn't participating in or is holding the party up for.
3) Let's assume the Warlock does this on a spare day (downtime or whatever) and only has to maintain their 8 skeletons. An extra hour on the end of the party Long Rest isn't so bad...except at level 5, you can bet your bottom dollar you no longer have 8 skeletons to maintain after a days adventuring. Particularly if you're using them in a manner you wouldn't be able to use hirelings (i.e. with less care for their wellbeing, which is after all the major advantage of them). Every skeleton lost is another spell slot to spend (and another corpse to find). Lose 2 skeletons and that's another hour of your day gone.

You add that time up and unless you're playing a very laidback campaign in which time is of no consequence, that's a lot of time investment that many parties won't be willing to invest. At the end of the day, every hour your Warlock spends is multiplied by the number of party members. Two hours for a party of four is 8 working hours. Realistically, in actual play I wouldn't expect a Golgari Warlock to be able to maintain more than 4-6 skeletons a day and even that might be pushing the envelope, leaving that Warlock a little short on spell slots in some encounters. That's not even mentioning the social consequences of having a bunch of walking corpses following you around.

[Gtdead]

I think this balance matter is blown out of proportion. If someone believes that necromancer is a problem, then a Golgari Warlock is a worse problem because he can get more, even without coffeelock cheese, at least up to level 9. I haven't calculated for T3 and onwards, but at levels 5 and 7 Warlock beats Necromancer, and at lvl 9 they are pretty equal. Necro's summons are stronger, but this matters for Skeletons more than Zombies imo and the bonus is usually not enough to give them any meaningful survivability, so the Warlock can compete.

We are not trying to break this spell here. We are trying to put it to use. This means no assumptions about things that are out of our control, except of the more standard ones like the average adventuring day. We don't assuming anything about our downtime, or social interactions, or available cemeteries with a million corpses nearby etc. Only what we can do during the adventuring day. And the most reliable use is reanimating the vanquished humanoid enemies. Considerations like the type of enemies, how the world reacts to the zombies, homebrewed nerfs or whatever else are besides the point. That's like saying Fireball and Meteor Swarm should never be used because the Fey kingdom will sent assassins to avenge the death of trees. You are the DMs, do whatever floats your boats, but keep the discussion inside a frame that works for everyone. Your smart "social implications" model doesn't work if the campaign happens in Karrn for example. Also you need to ban Seeming too because it messes with your model.

Animate Dead also does more than just a dpr increase. I use zombies on my Cleric as magic stone throwers and grapplers because they have Undead Fortitude. Cleric is probably the worst user of this spell. Warlock has native access to magic stones and is the best user of this spell so he can use it even better. A critical mass of archers isn't the only use and while it is very potent, it's not the best use either. If you think that a couple of zombies aren't an important addition to the party, then you can't really appreciate the spell and warlock's access to it. It also means that you don't mind spells like Conjure Animals for example because you either nerf them or believe the effect to not be as strong as advertised, or that the effect is reasonable for a level 3 spell. However, a few days back we had a heated discussion about how "strong" familiars are in combat. If familiars in combat are important enough to have a discussion about them, then a couple of zombies should give the DM paralyzing panic attacks.

[strangebloke]

Disagree. I play to find out what will happen. If a player discovers an "exploit" (it's not really an exploit, it's just taking a game mechanic to a logical conclusion), I will usually let them get away with it unless they're making other players uncomfortable. Obviously in this edition, with this change of allowing warlocks to have animate dead, that means figuring out some way to run hordes of undead.

I will then sit down with the player, adjust any mechanics as needed (that is, pitch my "here's how you run your undead so they're not a burden to play" system and get their buy-in), and remind them the world can and will react to what they're doing. So yes, if you are running around robbing graveyards, you should expect the freaking inquisition to show up and ask uncomfortable questions. That's not me being a jerk or even adversarial, that's me imposing logical consequences from the world.
Right, and all this stuff is fine to do with respect to animate dead, but its not how you should balance the game.

Its simply not practical in a lot of campaigns. Some campaigns have necromancy as a tolerated thing, and buying 50 corpses at the city morgue is accepted. Some campaigns are evil campaigns already. Some campaigns take place is destroyed hellscapes where even if people are disturbed by necromancy, they're not going to be able to do anything about it. Not every campaign is in Faerun.
Consequences of this sort are inherently disruptive to everyone else's fun, since ultimately they're dealing with whatever problems Geord the Golgari warlock brought in as much as Geord is. This leads to "lovely" in character discussions like "yeah actually I just leave Geord with the police, he deserves this."
What if they're "just" getting in three short rests at the end of the day and converting the six bodies of enemies they killed into free minions? Isn't it still pretty ridiculously powerful to get 6 free minions whenever its practical? I would still argue that from an optimization perspective there's no reason to pick any non-ravnica background for a warlock if they're available.


I don't disagree that talking with a player about what would be disruptive is important. But I would describe this entire combo as disruptive. Animate dead by itself is already an annoying spell, but making it free makes it far worse.


Realistically, Golgari isn't giving a Warlock 8-12 skeletons either, but such was your claim. Realistically, a Warlock is getting 2-3 short rests a day which also have to account for any spells that Warlock wants to cast other than Animate Dead; that's only 6-8 spell slots for a Lvl.<11 Warlock per day. Theorectically, a Warlock is able to maintain 8-12 skeletons (level depending), yes, but in actual play getting to that point is hardly the "gimme" you claim. Look at the baseline; a level 5 Warlock looking for an entourage of 8 skeletons.

1) They need 8 piles of bones from 8 individual humanoid creatures. Ok, our Warlock is an adventurer, that shouldn't be too hard to accomplish if they're fighting typical foes like orcs and drow. Let's ignore the possibility that the adventure features mostly giants, undead, fiends, beasts, elementals and so forth (I'll contend that this is also an increasing probability the higher your level, but I digress).
2) They need to cast Animate Dead 8 times. Our Warlock only has 2 spell slots per short rest, so this is going to take them three short rests to accomplish. Four if they want to have spell slots for their adventuring day. Let's assume the latter. In a 16 hour workday, that's a quarter of it that the Warlock isn't participating in or is holding the party up for.
3) Let's assume the Warlock does this on a spare day (downtime or whatever) and only has to maintain their 8 skeletons. An extra hour on the end of the party Long Rest isn't so bad...except at level 5, you can bet your bottom dollar you no longer have 8 skeletons to maintain after a days adventuring. Particularly if you're using them in a manner you wouldn't be able to use hirelings (i.e. with less care for their wellbeing, which is after all the major advantage of them). Every skeleton lost is another spell slot to spend (and another corpse to find). Lose 2 skeletons and that's another hour of your day gone.

You add that time up and unless you're playing a very laidback campaign in which time is of no consequence, that's a lot of time investment that many parties won't be willing to invest. At the end of the day, every hour your Warlock spends is multiplied by the number of party members. Two hours for a party of four is 8 working hours. Realistically, in actual play I wouldn't expect a Golgari Warlock to be able to maintain more than 4-6 skeletons a day and even that might be pushing the envelope, leaving that Warlock a little short on spell slots in some encounters. That's not even mentioning the social consequences of having a bunch of walking corpses following you around.



its silly to say that a party would only have 1-2 hours of non-adventuring. Overland travel as one example necessitates 6-7 hours of nonadventuring non-LR. 6 hours would be time to make 12 skeletons.
Even if your table has insane time pressure where every hour is accounted for (I have played at such a table) its unreasonable to say that every table NEEDS to be run like this by default.
Most modules from what I've seen have huge amounts of freetime built in
You talk about losing your skeletons as though its some real dunk on this build, but it isn't. This isn't a build. The whole point is that you've invested very little into getting this to work. You're not spending 6 hours after a day of travel, you're spending a couple seconds every hour to duck back to the corpse wagon and raise some dead.



I think this balance matter is blown out of proportion. If someone believes that necromancer is a problem, then a Golgari Warlock is a worse problem because he can get more, even without coffeelock cheese, at least up to level 9. I haven't calculated for T3 and onwards, but at levels 5 and 7 Warlock beats Necromancer, and at lvl 9 they are pretty equal. Necro's summons are stronger, but this matters for Skeletons more than Zombies imo and the bonus is usually not enough to give them any meaningful survivability, so the Warlock can compete.

We are not trying to break this spell here. We are trying to put it to use. And the most realistic use is reanimating the vanquished humanoid enemies. Considerations like the type of enemies, how the world reacts to the zombies, homebrewed nerfs or whatever else are besides the point. That's like saying Fireball and Meteor Swarm should never be used because the Fey kingdom will sent assassins to avenge the death of trees. You are the DMs, do whatever floats your boats, but keep the discussion inside a frame that works for everyone. Your smart "social implications" model doesn't work if the campaign happens in Karrn for example. Also you need to ban Seeming too because it messes with your model.

Animate Dead also does more than just a dpr increase. I use zombies on my Cleric as magic stone throwers and grapplers because they have Undead Fortitude. Cleric is probably the worst user of this spell. Warlock has native access to magic stones and is the best user of this spell so he can use it even better. A critical mass of archers isn't the only use and while it is very potent, it's not the best use either. If you think that a couple of zombies aren't an important addition to the party, then you can't really appreciate the spell and warlock's access to it. It also means that you don't mind spells like Conjure Animals for example because you either nerf them or believe the effect to not be as strong as advertised, or that the effect is reasonable for a level 3 spell. However, a few days back we had a heated discussion about how "strong" familiars are in combat. If familiars in combat are important enough to have a discussion about them, then a couple of zombies should give the DM paralyzing panic attacks.

Yep, all this. Everything you said is exactly correct.

Even if all your zombies are doing is filling up the field and eating attacks from the frost giants you're fighting, they're doing an amazing job.

[verbatim]

Animate Dead was actually on the Warlock list in the UA for Extended Spell lists but not in the finalized version published Tasha's.


I’ve honestly never understood the mentality required for this to become an issue in play, and by that I mean for this or any of the other “is this OP” lines of inquiry, the person playing this character would have to actively want to break the game he is playing WITH his friends.

I think the decision to not give it to them in Tasha's (or in the phb honestly) probably stems more from not wanting to encourage a type of play style that is very likely to derail the campaign and centralize focus on only one of the party members than it is because that play style is specifically "too good".

[stoutstien]

The way I see if a shadow monk spamming Pass without a trace hasn't caused the absolute destruction of the game then a few minions probably won't. as long as the table is decent at managing them to prevent wasting table time and it meshes with the style of play I don't think it's any worse than any of the other high tubed tactics.

[Greywander]

It occurs to me that a much simpler solution exists for the specific use case I mentioned in the OP. I'm working on a homebrew witch class, and one of the subclasses is death/undead themed. Why not just write up a homebrew spell that works similarly to Animate Dead, but tuned toward being used with Pact Magic? I'm not sure how I'd tune the spell for short rest use, maybe the spell only allows you to control a max number of minions, even if you recast the spell. Casting it at a higher level would get you a higher minion cap. Allowing it to work on beasts could also be interesting; the DMG has templates for both skeletons and zombies, so you can just take a beast stat block and apply one of those templates. This means we're probably using a CR cap, rather than a total number of minions cap (though I'm not sure how to count CR 0 creatures; maybe two CR 0 = one CR 1/8?).

[Witty Username]

I think the decision to not give it to them in Tasha's (or in the phb honestly) probably stems more from not wanting to encourage a type of play style that is very likely to derail the campaign and centralize focus on only one of the party members than it is because that play style is specifically "too good".

Yeah, this kind of ability does lend itself more toward a tactical wargame. I would say a character isn't getting more focus necessarily depending on the party. Large number of minions will have the spotlight, but also the rogue that can snipe out a fireball spammer. or the ranger( or Druid) that is maintaining a massive battlefield control spell like plant growth.

[strangebloke]

I'm curious if you've actually seen short rest abuse at a table, or if it's only a theorycraft exercise? I know sometimes something looks overpowered or broken on paper, but in practice it doesn't quite work out that way. I am worried that giving access to Animate Dead on a class with pact magic might cause issues, but so far I'm not convinced that it actually will.

I run with gritty rest rules, so a short rest is 8 hours of sleep 1/day, so this kind of thing is impossible at my tables. With that said, just because something hasn't been a problem at a specific table doesn't mean that it isn't something that should be allowed. Coffeelocks are a worse version of the same problem (short rest abuse) and they can and will break your game if attrition of resources matters at your table (and if it doesn't, sorcadins will break the balance at your table).

I don't think this will break your game, but I would say that "picking a background that's nonsensical in-setting so I can create a minigame by abusing short rests to get lots of minions" is probably one of the most annoying things I can imagine a player saying to me, regardless of balance considerations. Yes, please tell me why its necessary to your roleplay concept to be a Golgari Agent Hexblade in the Empire of Rhudland. (admittedly Golgari and Hexblade do have some thematic ties.)

And even if it doesn't break the game, its definitely pretty much the best imaginable thing you can do with your background. I would really prefer for backgrounds to remain flavorful and not a point of optimization.

As for Warlocks being underpowered in games without short rests, I don't really see it. They have very efficient options (summons, EB, hex) that allow them to get a lot of value out of their two spell slots, and their invocations work all day. If you wanted for flavor reasons to have them to use undead... well, they do have summon undead and danse macabre. If you specifically want them to have a posse of undead around, you could probably make a balanced invocation that allows them to cast animate dead x/LR... which actually that already exists (though imo this ability should be reworded so you can actually build up a posse of zombies somehow... I would need to think about it.)

Basically what I'm telling you is, this is a pretty well-supported concept already and the only reason people want to do this cheese with the golgari background is because its cheesy and overpowered.


The way I see if a shadow monk spamming Pass without a trace hasn't caused the absolute destruction of the game then a few minions probably won't. as long as the table is decent at managing them to prevent wasting table time and it meshes with the style of play I don't think it's any worse than any of the other high tubed tactics.
I mean, PWT is something shadow monks can spam, and that's part of why they're so good. It's not broken because you don't need +10 to stealth at all times, and because it only lasts an hour so if you put up PWT and short rest to regain the expended ki, the spell runs out anyway.

It's not really comparable to this at all. There's basically no feature in the game that gives you a lasting benefit on a short rest other than healing. Once again I still don't think it's broken I just think its annoying and that there's no reason to allow it.


Yeah, this kind of ability does lend itself more toward a tactical wargame. I would say a character isn't getting more focus necessarily depending on the party. Large number of minions will have the spotlight, but also the rogue that can snipe out a fireball spammer. or the ranger( or Druid) that is maintaining a massive battlefield control spell like plant growth.

Right. It deepens the issues with animate dead by removing many of the restrictions from it. If you trust a player to manage 10+ skeletons effectively and for the rest of the party to be okay with it (I don't, I've been down that road before with a player) I can see being okay with it, but

I don't think that's most tables
it shouldn't be keyed off a background

[Witty Username]

It occurs to me that a much simpler solution exists for the specific use case I mentioned in the OP. I'm working on a homebrew witch class, and one of the subclasses is death/undead themed. Why not just write up a homebrew spell that works similarly to Animate Dead, but tuned toward being used with Pact Magic? I'm not sure how I'd tune the spell for short rest use, maybe the spell only allows you to control a max number of minions, even if you recast the spell. Casting it at a higher level would get you a higher minion cap. Allowing it to work on beasts could also be interesting; the DMG has templates for both skeletons and zombies, so you can just take a beast stat block and apply one of those templates. This means we're probably using a CR cap, rather than a total number of minions cap (though I'm not sure how to count CR 0 creatures; maybe two CR 0 = one CR 1/8?).

Arguably that would be Dance Macabre, quick animation of 5 bodies that gets a damage bonus equal to either your casting mod or prof bonus, I don't remember which.

[Gtdead]

II'm curious if you've actually seen short rest abuse at a table, or if it's only a theorycraft exercise? I know sometimes something looks overpowered or broken on paper, but in practice it doesn't quite work out that way. I am worried that giving access to Animate Dead on a class with pact magic might cause issues, but so far I'm not convinced that it actually will.

This happened in 3.5e and back then I didn't care about powergaming and optimization because I couldn't be bothered to learn the game to such an extend.

The scenario was about 2 warring states and our party would be a special unit that would go behind enemy lines and cause as much havoc as possible, forcing the enemy to withdraw from the border. We would start at a higher level, 8 IIRC and I wanted to recreate Arthas from Warcraft 3. I didn't like Paladin mechanically, so I rolled a Cleric, and found the Bone Knight prc that I really liked for the concept. Found a build in the old WotC forums and started discussing it with the DM, figuring out the background and how it will fit the lore.

So long story short, I told him that I was planning to raid a village, kill everyone then raise them as zombies and send them to the next village and at that moment he knew that the mission was pointless, so he told us that he raised the starting level and we would skip that mission. We were supposed to raid armed convoys and set fire to some crops and I was about to win the war by myself while the enemy army was at the border.

Of course he overreacted because just like me he wasn't the most knowledgable guy. I hadn't even figured the logistics of what I wanted to do (I still haven't). it was just an idea based on Warcraft 3 campaign where I was loading meatwagons with corpses and massing necromancers to spam the enemy with skeletons. I still don't know if a lvl 8 Cleric could do something like that to an extend that would matter but I'm fairly sure that a lvl 9+ Golgari Warlock can actually do it with coffeelock shenanigans, especially with some help from his wizard friend.

[sambojin]

I'm not saying you couldn't break stuff with this, but how good is it? Compared to a Spores Druid or Golgari Moon (or Stars or Land) Druid? +4 to-hit is pretty weak, as is the damage when they do hit. 30' move isn't the height of tactical movement, and they don't have any other attack riders or things to do either. It's "roll dice and hope" levels of *wow! So powerful!*.

On one hand, with a Spores, this kind of behaviour is pretty much intended, and you get heaps of other summoning spells alongside it. Just giving your skellies some warhorses or giant owls or giant eagles to ride around on so they can kite or fight is great. Or a dragon :)

For Moon druids, since you can wildshape a lot of problems away anyway, you've got your short rest "encounter spells" sorted, and you've still got more summoning if you want it. You can block for your archers as a huge beast too, or provide more lockdown. A restrained foe makes +4 to-hit a lot better for archers.

Stars just archers or casts as well, with them as the big archer, and can even do Archer constellations/ Weal/Woe in wildshape. If you've got such a permissive DM, you've probably got frilled deathspitters available too, even reskinned as Dire Skunks or Giant Honey Badgers or something. Lots of shooting or attacks then....

Land just blows their Natural Recovery to maintain the skellies, while their summons and instants (possibly good spells) do everything else. A couple of Giant Octopuses to provide lockdown and you're set. Restrain-on-hit is very, very good.


So, is having an archer line off pact magic that big? Not really. Skellies are pretty easy to blow up. There's other classes where it's kind-of potentially built-in anyway, and the background with even more summoning is far more busted than abusing short rests could be. Without even messing around with the rules. It just slows it down just as much as full-on summoning druids, but they can have even more impact with it, even if it's more slot heavy. It's just way less campaign/ DM dependant. Druids can easily have some slots leftover each day if they plan for it. How many skeletons do you really want, anyway?
(It's about 4-8, riding around on warhorses at the very least, preferably a flying mount though. Give each party member control of a mounted skelly or two, and let them run amok with charge-downs and shooting aplenty, no matter *their* class or background).


((Golgari Wildfire Druids get *teleporting* mounted skeletons by lvl5/7, that are easy to heal by 10th level (and more instant damage spells for damage backup), and a Golgari Shepherd gives them Bear totem tHP or Unicorn healing, and their other summons have magical attacks. I'd be a lot more scared of that as a DM than "you get a big army of weak archers, as long as I let you abuse short rests". Golgari 'Locks are good, and make good shooters themselves, but druids are way scarier with the background.))

(((But yeah, give me up to 5hrs a day of basic druid summons/ conjures a day at 5th level, and wildshape familars and features, no rules screwing required, than any amount of pact magic/ animate dead shenanigans. Way more powerful, and is built-in to the class and DnD "played as intended(?)". And they truly do get better with more levels of druid, way better. Animate Dead on top of it? Maybe, but just for a laugh. It's probably weaker than what I could do with the spell slots anyway
At 9th level as a Druid I have up-to 1hr of a ridable dragon or lots of beast/fey conjures, 2hrs of a 2xattack teleporting summoned fey or many spell-battery conjured fey/ mephits or more beasts, 3hrs of basic beast conjures or a teleporting fey, and 3hrs of a summoned beast with pack tactics or fly. And 4xlvl1 spell slots. And wildshape 2/sr, that can be help action familiars, to increase my summon's to-hit chances (or be a subclass wow-thing). I'll never need that many summons, so I have a totally modifiable list of other spells each day too, even instant damage ones, for when I want to nova hard. Way better than Pact Magic squishy hopeless archers, and I didn't even have to ask the DM or choose a weird background for it.

When warhorses, that you could actually just buy permanently for +540lbs-riderweight carry capacity, and 60' movement, even without spell slots, are better than your "game breaking combo!", nah, it's not that game breaking. No +attacks included)))
-------------

PS. @Greywanderer, I do actually want to see where you're going with the Witch sub/class. There's way better things to do with pact magic spells than Animate Dead. I doubt it would be broken with "normal" table play, but would be a nice little option sometimes. If I had to choose the spell out of my very limited Warlock options, I wouldn't. So giving it as a subclass known spell probably isn't too bad. It just steers people in probably the wrong direction. I'd give them Summon Undead & Summon Fey and be done with it. There's nothing saying you can't have more than 2 extra known spells at lvl5 in a subclass, and those two do many potential types of witches of many different flavours, without the book-keeping :)
You could give Animate Dead (or Summon Fey/ Undead) as a +casting-mod (or PB) per long rest uses at lvl6 if you wanted. That makes it less abusable, yet still a core part of the subclass. And frees up the rest of the spell casting and class features for proper uses as well. I'd be tempted to give all three. A summoner/ animator, of many different flavours. Blow your concentration, or don't, but any option is good.

At level 6:
"You can cast either Summon Fey or Summon Undead at a spell level equal to your proficiency bonus, a number of times per long rest equal to your proficiency bonus. You don't need the normal material components to cast either spell, but you must have the skull of a non-beast creature on hand, and this skull is consumed on casting." probably covers it though.

Makes it *really good*, but not that abuseable. Yes, it's a lot of free lvl3-6'ish spell slots, but it still takes your concentration. It gives you a lot more player-chosen flavour for your subclass, and a lot more tactical combat/ exploration/ social options in any campaign, than "roll more dice and slow down play a lot" ever would. And it's actually a lot of sustain for the class, to always have summons on hand. The consumed skulls makes it feel a lot less like summoning, and more like animating the spirits of the dead. You'll still have a freaky predilection for corpses, just all of them, not simply humanoids (but you won't be killing ants to cast up corpses into being). It scales, slowly, but it scales. Having 2 extra attacks by lvl9, and 3 at lvl17 is weak, but 4-6 a day of them isn't :)
It lets you focus more on curses and abilities and thematic known spells a lot more, because they have an entire toolkit of flavour and usefulness at lvl6.
You could give Animate Dead as a known spell on top of that at lvl5, but I wouldn't bother.

(Compare genie patron. 10mins of non-concentration flight and resistance, PB times a day. Essentially a lvl3+ spell, and always useful. This isn't that much different, but it takes up your concentration, which is a huge burden)