Experiences with Enervation, negative levels and Wights (3.5e)

[lehp]

TL;DR By RAW Enervation makes wights, I feel like it could be a problem. Do you allow it to do so in your games? Do you have any clauses for it?

I have a necromancer wizard in my game and after reviewing the rules for negative levels I noticed that Enervation can, by RAW, create a wight after 24 hours if the target dies from excess of negative levels.
Now, when I first read this detail (an NPC killed an ally NPC with Enervation) it seemed absurd, and a problematic oversight, so I ruled that Enervation does not create wights upon killing.

Normally, this wouldn't be a huge issue, because "good" parties wouldn't want to abuse this anyway and, depending on setting, trying to abuse wight creation would be a dangerous idea (for example in an urban setting, it would quickly attract the attention of some authorities or factions, and trying to move around with a bunch of wights would be a challenge in and of itself).

However, in my case the party ended up turning into a bunch of power hungry lunatics who don't really sway on the "good" side of morality all that much, and one of them has become a straight up evil cleric. And sometimes a campaign moves into a location where a relatively small number of wights could reasonably go unnoticed for a quite a while.

This is to say that nothing is really stopping them from just Enervating a peasant, Rebuking the resulting wight for full control, and make it into their free wight-making machine (who is also going to be in full control of all its spawns).

So it seemed obvious to me that this coulndn't be allowed to work.
However
As I was searching for confirmation that Enervation does, indeed, create wights, I was surprised to find almost nothing about people considering this problematic. On the contrary, I found people suggesting even easier ways to abuse this (Fell Drain).

So I started to question myself, that maybe this interaction is not as problematic as I thought and that maybe I'm missing something, and I should allow this to work as written.

Which is why I wantend to ask: do you allow Enervation, and all other negative levels effects, to create wights? If so, why and how did it not become a problem?
Or did you also consider it to be an oversight and ruled against it? I know for example that this clause was removed in Pathfinder 1e.

[zlefin]

Personally I don't allow it.

Most of the char-op talk tends to be fairly hypothetical in my experience. It also depends somewhat on how high-op the opponents are. If the opponents are also high-op, then armies of wights may become irrelevant fairly quickly. I think people don't talk about it because the gentleman's agreement results in people not abusing things like that most of the time.

In general spawn undead tend to have the problem that spawn can really get out of control; resulting in a ridiculous number of minions/troops that turns most foes into the binary of dies to a horde of wights, or can't die to a horde of wights no matter how many there are. There's also the common world-building question of why there isn't an apocalypse of shadows.

Note that a foe throwing around aoes, or simply using good intel, could end up hitting their 'controller' wight resulting in all the other wights becoming uncontrolled, and potentially surrounding them.

[Zanos]

It's one of those things that you have to have Gentlemen's Agreement for if it's in your game.

Usually it's not an issue because creating an uncontrolled undead that hates all life and creates spawn that hate all life is not a very good idea. Most PCs are 1. alive, 2. don't want to die, and 3. don't have a burning hatred for all living things. In the case of someone with rebuking, you will find quite a few threads of people abusing wights or shadows for an infinite undead army, the purpose of which is mostly to just troll the campaign setting because wights and shadows are not going to do much of value against higher level threats. Personally we usually just have a houserule that when an undead creates a controlled spawn, it counts against the control limit of whoever is commanding that undead.

If a PC does actually just want to commit wanton genocide and doesn't care about control, uh, cool I guess. Someone is probably going to be cutting off his head fairly quickly when they realize he is letting an army of wights lose on the land.

In any case enervation making wights isn't the issue, you'd have the same problem as soon as the rebuking character encounters an undead that can create spawn. The issue is rebuking+spawn creation, so that needs a tweak IMO, not enervation.

[tyckspoon]

In any case enervation making wights isn't the issue, you'd have the same problem as soon as the rebuking character encounters an undead that can create spawn. The issue is rebuking+spawn creation, so that needs a tweak IMO, not enervation.

^this^. The issue raised here isn't 'killing somebody with negative energy causes wights'. It's 'Characters can trivially take control of a creature that has unlimited spawning capabilities.' Using Enervation or Fell Drain or whatever to make a wight just makes it convenient for the character to get started; if you find a controlled spawner to be a problem, you actually need to remove or modify either the spawn-capable creatures, or the abilities that allow players to usurp those creatures. Trying to limit the abilities that let players either create or locate those creatures is attacking a symptom, and one that is quite far removed from the root problem.

[Thunder999]

Honestly the issue is really just that spawn creation is pretty OP in general, because there's really no reason a Shadow, Wight etc. couldn't be just as game breakingly deadly without getting rebuked first.
Most games I've been in have just had the gentlemens agreement (often unspoken) where players and GMs just sort of ignore the potential.

An actual houserule fix would probably be to limit the number of spawn a given creature can have and have that limit also apply to any spawn in controls.
Needs to apply to enemy creatures too if you want to explain why a single shadow can't slaughter an entire village and start a minor apocalypse. (Alternatively, not doing that can make for a pretty fun setting where massives hordes of spawn creating undead are a threat to all life and may or may not be winning depending on the tone you want to start with).

[lehp]

I have to admit, I hadn't thought about the fact that this issue would surface with any low-level spawn-creating undead.

When I look at it that way, it does seem more reasonable to allow Enervate (and all other generic level drain effects) to make wights, and limit or "agree to ignore" the spawn capabilities.

Granted, this still means that players can create wights for free with a 4th level spell, which is kinda odd when compared to Create Undead, which is 6th level and only allows weaker Ghouls until caster level 12. And even then, it only upgrades to Ghasts.
On the other hand, I guess having only one or two wights around isn't gonna be much help at higher levels, and it being "free" and techically better than a higher level spell isn't gonna change that.
There might still be some grey area like making the wight and setting it free in some place where they need to cause chaos or damage. Which would be sort of fine by me, if not for the fact that being able to do this at level 7 still seems like a lot.

On a side note, I'd also like to hear some overall "necromancer PC in the game" experiences, if there's some other peculiarities or issues that arose during play that might be worth taking note of?
I don't know, things like problematic spells or feats, magic items, or situations that might hamper play?

[Fizban]

TL;DR By RAW Enervation makes wights, I feel like it could be a problem.
Does it really? Does it matter? The spell says nothing about it- it takes diving into the monster manual definition for the monster version of energy drain, and porting that backwards. You can easily declare a RAW reading that no, the PHB Ennervate spell does not reference the monster version of negative levels: it says exactly what it does in the spell, where it defines negative levels.


Do you allow it to do so in your games? Do you have any clauses for it?
If it came up I would first point out that it's not nearly as apocalyptic as people want it to be, and then probably no it doesn't do that anyway.


so I ruled that Enervation does not create wights upon killing.
Great, problem solved.


This is to say that nothing is really stopping them from just Enervating a peasant, Rebuking the resulting wight for full control, and make it into their free wight-making machine (who is also going to be in full control of all its spawns).
Wights still have to hit to deliver their energy drain, and have no special defenses aside from some hit points. They can be fought by town guards and even armed peasants if they're not just standing in the street, even before the higher level town NPCs get involved. If you dump one into a crowd, the crows flees and you get at most a bare handful. If you try to sneak them around at night, the number you get is dependent on how effective you convince the DM you are at doing that.


So it seemed obvious to me that this coulndn't be allowed to work. . . On the contrary, I found people suggesting even easier ways to abuse this (Fell Drain).
Welcome to Char-Op, where "RAW" means "read the way I want it to work so I can be as broken as possible and if you say no you're wrong."


So I started to question myself, that maybe this interaction is not as problematic as I thought and that maybe I'm missing something, and I should allow this to work as written.

Which is why I wantend to ask: do you allow Enervation, and all other negative levels effects, to create wights? If so, why and how did it not become a problem?
Or did you also consider it to be an oversight and ruled against it? I know for example that this clause was removed in Pathfinder 1e.
An oversight in building up spooky negative energy fluff that the DM can decide to roll with if they want it to be a thing. The "wightocalypse" is not a particularly scary spawn creator (that title goes to the Ekolid from Fiendish Codex 2), and any actual army can be solved with basically a single spell (Celestial Brilliance from Book of Exalted Deeds, a 4th level spell creating a massive area of constant damage to undead for a week or more)- which by RAW is available to any good or neutral Cleric of 7th level or higher can cast, and cities of a certain size are virtually guaranteed such a Cleric.


I have to admit, I hadn't thought about the fact that this issue would surface with any low-level spawn-creating undead.

When I look at it that way, it does seem more reasonable to allow Enervate (and all other generic level drain effects) to make wights, and limit or "agree to ignore" the spawn capabilities.
If there's a problem with Rebuke Undead+ Create Spawn giving players "free" armies, the quickest fix is that Rebuke Undead does not give you chain control- the controlled undead either don't create spawn or don't control them as they normally would. You can also of course simply not place any spawning undead in front of the players, but fixing the first problem is easier. If they actually build a "farm" in which they turn peasants into uncontrolled undead to further hit with Rebuke/Command so they can walk around with a handful of cannonfooder minions. . . cool, you're all disgustingly Evil and I'm not running that game, and the mechanical benefit is still not very much.


On a side note, I'd also like to hear some overall "necromancer PC in the game" experiences, if there's some other peculiarities or issues that arose during play that might be worth taking note of?
I don't know, things like problematic spells or feats, magic items, or situations that might hamper play?
There's a general problem with Animate Dead in 3.5: the spell was originally designed with skeletons and zombies that had flat statistic blocks based on size, so even the largest bodies where not very useful by the time you could cast it. Since 3.5 switched to templates, now people with the spell are bloodhtirsty Pokemon trainers and you have to be careful about every single monster you use which can leave a corpse, because now instead of giving you some chaff similar to the 1st level warriors you'd get from leadership, you can capture any boss monster you've beaten as long as its hit dice are equal to or less than four times your level (because you'll get Desecrate from somewhere even if you're a wizard).

[Zanos]

Granted, this still means that players can create wights for free with a 4th level spell, which is kinda odd when compared to Create Undead, which is 6th level and only allows weaker Ghouls until caster level 12. And even then, it only upgrades to Ghasts.
On the other hand, I guess having only one or two wights around isn't gonna be much help at higher levels, and it being "free" and techically better than a higher level spell isn't gonna change that.
The issue is that Create Undead is trash. Even if you have rebuke undead, by 11th level ghouls and ghasts aren't going to be contributing much to an encounter. +2 to hit and DC 12 paralysis can only take you so far.


On a side note, I'd also like to hear some overall "necromancer PC in the game" experiences, if there's some other peculiarities or issues that arose during play that might be worth taking note of?
I don't know, things like problematic spells or feats, magic items, or situations that might hamper play?
Animate Dead is the big thing to keep an eye on. You generally don't want players creating 4*CL HD worth of 1hd skeletons and actually bringing them into a fight, since it's a mess and takes way too long to resolve. A small number of strong zombies/skeletons such as ogres or giants is more mechanically effective and less time consuming to adjudicate. In general though I'd say minionmancy requires a substantial degree of game mastery and agility, since you're having to manage many creatures with distinct statblocks and inventories while also typically being a full caster. Fully exploited animate dead is very powerful since it only costs a small amount of GP and you can cast the spells during off time.

[lehp]

Does it really? Does it matter? The spell says nothing about it- it takes diving into the monster manual definition for the monster version of energy drain, and porting that backwards. You can easily declare a RAW reading that no, the PHB Ennervate spell does not reference the monster version of negative levels: it says exactly what it does in the spell, where it defines negative levels.

It is not an extrapolation from the MM, it is in the description of "Energy Drain and Negative Levels" of the DMG.


An oversight in building up spooky negative energy fluff that the DM can decide to roll with if they want it to be a thing. The "wightocalypse" is not a particularly scary spawn creator (that title goes to the Ekolid from Fiendish Codex 2), and any actual army can be solved with basically a single spell (Celestial Brilliance from Book of Exalted Deeds, a 4th level spell creating a massive area of constant damage to undead for a week or more)- which by RAW is available to any good or neutral Cleric of 7th level or higher can cast, and cities of a certain size are virtually guaranteed such a Cleric.

Funny you should mention that, my players actually had to deal with some Ekolids; resolved to pretty much nuke the place before they could get out into the city. :smallbiggrin:
But yeah, one of the things I was wondering was indeed whether or not the wight-spawns were actually as much of a problem as I thought.
Still, I wasn't really concerned with a "wightocalypse", since such a thing would attract attention and be eventually quelled, as you pointed out. I was more worried about the players making a small band of wights while they are adventuring somewhere far from big settlements.
Sure, wights are relatively weak in battle, but they still level drain and are intelligent, so they could be commanded to perform specific tasks that regular mindless undead cannot.


The issue is that Create Undead is trash. Even if you have rebuke undead, by 11th level ghouls and ghasts aren't going to be contributing much to an encounter. +2 to hit and DC 12 paralysis can only take you so far.

Well, that's true :smallbiggrin:


Animate Dead is the big thing to keep an eye on. You generally don't want players creating 4*CL HD worth of 1hd skeletons and actually bringing them into a fight, since it's a mess and takes way too long to resolve. A small number of strong zombies/skeletons such as ogres or giants is more mechanically effective and less time consuming to adjudicate. In general though I'd say minionmancy requires a substantial degree of game mastery and agility, since you're having to manage many creatures with distinct statblocks and inventories while also typically being a full caster. Fully exploited animate dead is very powerful since it only costs a small amount of GP and you can cast the spells during off time.

Yeah, that's what we had agreed to do, for practicality. The necromancer's player doesn't really have an issue handling his statblocks at least.
I'm beginning to see some problems with items and effects that increase hd control limits.

[Fero]

Player-DM arms races seldom end well for either party. If your players are intent on doing absurd things, then they will. Necromancy alone likely has dozens of ways to bust the game wide open that are as bad or worse than wights. As such, I would recommend talking to the players out of character and either: (1) ask that they not do too broken of things; or, even better (2) explain that they can try but there may be in character consequences (paladin hordes, etc.). If you go the later route, don't just use overwhelming good to overpower the players but instead make it a focus of the campaign in its own right.