Advanced Necromancy Workings, Minotaurs and More

[Melphizard]

Greetings!

I'm a DM who is currently running Storm King's Thunder and the Necromancer in my party inquired about the possibilities of raising undead that are stronger then skeletons, zombies, and what create undead does. I really like the idea of allowing them to animate more advanced undead but trying to figure out how to allow yet limit that is tricky. Firstly, I really want this to work since if they, for example, kill a Minotaur, why couldn't he make a Minotaur skeleton? Stats exist for it yet there's no clear way of how they get raised. This applies for ogres and giants more specifically as zombie ogres and some versions of undead giants exist yet there hasn't really been much an update as to how a player could go about doing this.

https://cdnb.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/026/551/365/large/alex-konstx-artid-402470-grimskullgiant-final-01.jpg?1589080445.png

Main issue- In video games where Necromancy is an option it's typically hard to balance. Having an army of the undead which kills their enemies and thus makes those enemies a part of the army, essentially snowballing, is quite difficult to manage. Some games have very weak necromancers while other games have necromancers that are maybe a bit too powerful, such as Heroes of Might and Magic or Path of Exile.

tl;dr question:
Creating a general method of allowing Necromancers to animate stronger undead
ex: The necromancer w/party defeat an ogre encampment by mind blasting them with continuous tasha's mind whips and psychic lances. The necromancer now wishes to animate these ogres into his personal luggage and howdah carriers. How can I allow a system in which he could animate ogre zombies yet remain more balanced in line with the party?


My current workshop idea is to have it so he can raise stuff he kills (presuming the corpses aren't too far-gone) but maintaining them and summoning them costs points equal to the CR of the creature he's raising. These points are equal to the number of undead a spell slot of animate dead he casts can maintain.
Say an ogre is CR 2. This means that he must spend 2 maintains (which would maintain the equivalent of 2 skeleton) to make an ogre zombie.

Pro: Fairly simple and allows for him to focus on singular bigger undead when he gets to animating giants instead of a horde of skeletons which take up a large part of combat to roll for

Con: When we consider that the 6th level spell animate dead is equivilent to 3 ghouls this sorta falls a part when that could instead allow him to animate a CR 12. Additionally, this means a level 3 slot equals two CR 2 ogre zombies which is twice the CR total of a spell such as Conjure animals (though he does have to find them and can't easily sacrifice them as much).


Any advice or ideas that could help me out with this? Have you ever thought or asked this question?
Thank you!

[Kane0]

The way ive seen it done is you add up the CR or XP value of what you would normally be creating/controlling via Animate Dead and use that to calculate other forms of zombie or skeleton you can raise (MM conveniently has ogre zombie, skeletal warhorse and minotaur skeleton but you can zombify or skeletonize virtually any creature using a template).
CR was the more lenient way to measure I think, XP generally left you with a smaller budget (which didnt multiply due to numbers)

[Magicspook]

I agree and I really dislike the necromancy in DnD as a result. In the new rules system that I have been developing for a few years now (I did the first playtest last week, we had a blast!), which is mana-based, all ritual spells like 'mage armour' and 'animate dead' are permanent, but require an investment of mana that doesn't regenerate until the spell ends. See it as expending a spell slot that doesn't come back until the first rest after the spell ends. [Sorry for the slight off-topic]

In DnD, you could do one of these:
-CR-based raising: if you upcast animate dead so you can raise skeletons up to CR2, you can also choose to raise that CR2 undead minotaur. This is probably not balanced.
-Instead, you could also look at the conjure elementals spell and make a custom spell where you adjust the CR based on that (keep in mind that conjure elementals only lasts an hour while raising is permanent, maybe up the spell level by one?)
-or you could allow a limited number of undead as permanent followers as results of roleplay, just like another player would gain followers or buisiness associates.

[HPisBS]

The way ive seen it done is you add up the CR or XP value of what you would normally be creating/controlling via Animate Dead and use that to calculate other forms of zombie or skeleton you can raise (MM conveniently has ogre zombie, skeletal warhorse and minotaur skeleton but you can zombify or skeletonize virtually any creature using a template).
CR was the more lenient way to measure I think, XP generally left you with a smaller budget (which didnt multiply due to numbers)

I never considered using xp values to calculate it; that could be much less of a power boost!

... Also, applying xp to summons / creations begs the question of whether characters could technically power level themselves by fighting each other's conjured minions....

[J-H]

I like An Updated View on Necromancy (https://www.dmsguild.com/product/204466/An-Updated-View-On-Necromancy) over on the DMG.
You can animate a single more powerful undead using a 1st-level, 4-hour ritual. It counts as your familiar. The spell slot used to create it is tied up/used until the familiar is dead/replaced. By using a higher level spell slot, you can raise a more powerful creature. An ogre or green dragon wyrmling (CR 2) takes a 6th level slot, and a young dragon (CR 8) takes a 9th level slot.

This allows higher-powered undead, but keeps the SuperMinion count to 1.

[Damon_Tor]

In the past I've allowed a necromancer to use a large corpse to summon a large skeleton or zombie that deals double damage and has double hit points in place if two normal summons. Simple enough and only marginally more powerful. I haven't had any issues.