5e Powergamer's Tactics Room Metagaming Series: Powergaming and Table Dynamics

[KorvinStarmast]

Or a child prodigy!

This was pre Xanathar's, so that feat wasn't available to me ... ... but if it helps, I was frequently told that I was a smartass ... close enough?

[Dork_Forge]

Spoiler: How To Break the Game with Necromancy

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Even better than skeletons, which you have to renew control of every day, is when you graduate to creating and Geasing + Mass Suggestion-ing wights, which get multiple longbow attacks per round, have a lot more HP, are immune to nonmagical weapons, and... are not immune to charm! (Therefore not immune to long-term Geas/Mass Suggestion.)

You'll have to come up with a suitable Mass Suggestion, which will probably involve paying them somehow ("Enlist in the Legion of Doom, of which I happen to be the commander"), and also renewing your Mass Suggestion every few months to a year. But 30-50 intelligent super-wights that you don't have to spend spell slots on every day, and who are capable of showing independent initiative, is a lot more fun than a hundred and fifty near-mindless skeletons. You may want to keep a dozen or two skeletons or zombies* around anyway as cheap fodder/insurance (the wights can't attack you while Geased but still, a little paranoia is healthy for a necromancer), and maybe a couple of Planar Binding bodyguards (Air Elementals?), but for the most part you can expect skeletons to go obsolete in Tier 3-4.

* Especially the perma-zombies you can make with Finger of Death.

Honestly the biggest problem with necromancers is that... they make the game so easy that players get bored and start self-limiting. The new Tasha's spells are weak enough to help with that. I can totally see Necromancers leveraging Summon Undead more than Animate Dead specifically because it's weaker than skeleton armies. Or maybe a combination: 4 zombies as meat shields/grapplers, plus a summoned Ghostly Spirit/whatever.

Slight correction, Wights are resistant to nonmagical BPS from nonsilvered weapons, they're only immune to Poison.

Otherwise, I'm not following how this is breaking the game? Reading through it, it looks like this doesn't actually come online really until 15th level for the 30 day duration of Mass Suggestion, and most of the tools are 6th level+ so you're firmly in tier 3 when you're attempting this (and need a hefty amount of downtime). So if a Wizard lives long enough* to attempt this, they end up with a small horde of undead that do mundane damage and could be obliterated by a single Cleric.

*I also have a hard time looking at this kind of necromancy without it raising all kinds of flags, not only about other adventurers and orders trying to kill you, but actual Liches and necromancers taking issue with a player trying to encroach on their territory.

[MaxWilson]

Slight correction, Wights are resistant to nonmagical BPS from nonsilvered weapons, they're only immune to Poison.

True. I wonder why I wrote "immune." Very strange mental glitch--normally I know better.

Otherwise, I'm not following how this is breaking the game? Reading through it, it looks like this doesn't actually come online really until 15th level for the 30 day duration of Mass Suggestion, and most of the tools are 6th level+ so you're firmly in tier 3 when you're attempting this (and need a hefty amount of downtime). So if a Wizard lives long enough* to attempt this, they end up with a small horde of undead that do mundane damage and could be obliterated by a single Cleric.

Nitpick: It's not necessarily mundane damage for two reasons: (1) magical longbows are only Uncommon, are pretty cheap to construct if you can find a formula, and also (2) the wights have a built-in necrotic attack that you could use to kill werewolves/elementals/Rakshasas etc. if you needed to.

Anyway, it's game-breaking in the sense that it renders the game as normally played unchallenging and un-fun. A high-level adventure which is challenging for a fighter, a rogue, a cleric, and a wizard is not challenging for a wizard, three other PCs, and a 3000 HP worth of super-wights, assuming the wizard has any clue at all how to use them. The playstyle has to shift to a higher gear or else the game ceases to be fun.

RE: Destroy Undead, obliterating the horde with a single cleric requires that that all the undead be in Fireball Formation within 30' of a 14th+ level cleric who wins initiative and obliterates them before they can obliterate him. (They also all have to fail their saving throws.) That's vanishly unlikely. How many monsters even have Destroy Undead?

*I also have a hard time looking at this kind of necromancy without it raising all kinds of flags, not only about other adventurers and orders trying to kill you, but actual Liches and necromancers taking issue with a player trying to encroach on their territory.

Without any context RE: your campaign style, NPC class level density per population, etc., it's hard to know what this means in practice, unless it's DM fiat.

[Bilbron]

I don't waste my time on someone's home movies that last 15 minutes and get posted on youtube while they try to describe D&D to me. When you say "ignores the point in the video" you are incorrect: any point that you allegedly make in a video is opaque to me since I don't waste time watching them.

I generally respond to what's written.

Fair enough. If I may, I share the same perspective as you, as a consumer. I read super fast and generally can't stand youtube because people just jibber jabber and it takes 20 minutes to get 2 minutes of information. So I take this perspective into my new venture as a producer. I make my videos tight tight TIGHT. The majority of my vids are under 10 minutes, and longer ones like my 25 minute Familiar video are, to my estimation, absolutely packed with information relative to, say, the Treantmonk vid on familiars which is the same length but is (IMNSHO) a very shallow analysis.

If you would give just one of them a chance, I would greatly appreciate it. You might be surprised!

Here's my perspective on communication on a forum: we interact in a text based medium here on this forum. You want to make a point? Write it, and write it clearly. I'll pay attention. (We may agree or disagree). You want to say "here, watch this" then you have failed to make any point at all. My time is my own to spend (or waste) and you don't get that 15 (or 13 or 12 or 8) minutes of my life.

I am glad that you got a variety of responses that you found to be of interest.

@Max: 1980. That's when I graduated with a Bachelor's degree. Yikes, I are an old fart.

I am very happy to engage in text. It is my preferred medium. Youtube is a strategic decision for me because, as I see it, only like 10% of people read and most watch videos... it's not a personal preference. I'm just trying to maximize my ability to impact and possibly help people (okay, and maybe make a buck one day, real talk). And much of the work/fun of building a channel is arguing with people in forums, so bring it on, any time and any topic, lol.

In any case, I will keep what you have said in mind, going forward.

[Dork_Forge]

True. I wonder why I wrote "immune." Very strange mental glitch--normally I know better.

We all get muddled up from time to time, no biggie.

Nitpick: It's not necessarily mundane damage for two reasons: (1) magical longbows are only Uncommon, are pretty cheap to construct if you can find a formula, and also (2) the wights have a built-in necrotic attack that you could use to kill werewolves/elementals/Rakshasas etc. if you needed to.

So assuming you're at the 15th level threshold for this to work, at 3000hp you're talking... 50 Wights?

1) whilst you could furnish them with magical longbows, it's both so ridiculously costly (100 work weeks & 10,000GP) but also remarkedly unlikely to happen as you'd need to acquire the special ingredients to the bow 50 times, after already having found the formula. It's one thing if you're looking to outfit a personaly bodyguard detail of 2-4 creatures in magical gear, but equipment on this scale is more the realm of a high magic kingdom, not a Wizard. As a result I think it's safer and more reasonably to assume mundane damage.

2) I disregarded the Life Drain ability just because you often refer to bows and knowing how you like to handle things as CAW it feels like your forces coming into melee would be a tactical failure (and result in them being torn apart a lot of the time).

Anyway, it's game-breaking in the sense that it renders the game as normally played unchallenging and un-fun. A high-level adventure which is challenging for a fighter, a rogue, a cleric, and a wizard is not challenging for a wizard, three other PCs, and a 3000 HP worth of super-wights, assuming the wizard has any clue at all how to use them. The playstyle has to shift to a higher gear or else the game ceases to be fun.

We probably have differing opinions here, at 15th level the game should already be vastly different to how you start out in tiers 1 and 2. Buffed Wights are nice, but they're individually so far below the general tier of play I can't see them being game breaking if you do get to the point where you can amass 50 of them.

RE: Destroy Undead, obliterating the horde with a single cleric requires that that all the undead be in Fireball Formation within 30' of a 14th+ level cleric who wins initiative and obliterates them before they can obliterate him. (They also all have to fail their saving throws.) That's vanishly unlikely. How many monsters even have Destroy Undead?

Monsters? The only thing off the top of my head would be a Death Cleric, though if you're raising an army of undead it'd hardly be unexpected for a DM to throw some Cleric based opponents your way (A DM that does not adjust will certainly have their game broken just by virtue of being a higher level).

Without any context RE: your campaign style, NPC class level density per population, etc., it's hard to know what this means in practice, unless it's DM fiat.

It can be DM fiat or a coherent in world reason, the amassing of an army of undead (and as you suggest some Finger of Death use, via questionable means to say the least) in a lot/most settings will result in regarding you as a threat/evil. You become something kingdoms chase off their land and adventurers are hired to derail you plans, and when people start turning up to stop you creating an army of undead, I'm not sure how many party members would stand by you (if they haven't personally objected already). Separate from that though:

This seems like a logistical nightmare in everyway shape and form...

-How much downtime do you actually need to reliably establish and control this army? Gut feeling say's probably months where you're doing downtime and constantly down on your highest level spells (read: vulnerable)
-Carting this many creatures around with you and having battlefields large enough to actually utilise them (especially the range of the Longbows) not only seems inconvenient but also unrealistic. The moment you hit a more confined dungeon you're confined to just flooding it with the undead first, where they'll get torn apart by traps and monsters appropriate for the level you're actually playing at (I'm not saying that they won't ultimately triumph in this first instance, but the rate of your losses compared to the time and resource investment in creating them to begin with just doesn't make sense
-Wights have Sunlight Sensitivity
-A player actually managing the creation of this many Wights along with the differing rates at which their control degrades is some spreadsheet level organisation
-The moment a single Wight turns on you (with it's own troops) things will go badly quickly as the army tears itself apart from the inside
-This is all assuming you can even convince creatures to fight to the death for you with Mass Suggestion and if you can, why are you not using it on something more substantial than Wights?

This may sound devasting and possible on paper, but in an actual game I can't see this happening unless the party are actually trying to raise an army for a war, at which point it's not gamebreaking, it's just participating.

[KorvinStarmast]

In any case, I will keep what you have said in mind, going forward.

Thank you for your gracious reply. If one of your future offerings hits a topic of interest to me, I'll have a look and offer you objective feedback on quality and signal to noise ratio. I'll have a bit of free time over the turkey holidays, and again over Christmas.