Necromancy and AL

RulesJD said:

Ah yes, the good ol' screw the players attitude that I love so much in AL forums. *clap clap* It would just be soooo much effort I know, ugh so hard.

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No, you come across as entitled with that attitude.

The fact is: you read the rules. You note that there is no way to bring info about a clone from one session to the next. THEN you get to decide whether it's worth the trouble of casting the spell.

What you can't expect is the AL to work like your home game. That some spells become less valuable or even worthless is only parameters of the game.

If you find Clone to be worthless if you can't bring your clone from one adventure to the next, then the correct response is to not cast Clone. Not bitch about it on a forum to people with no power to change the rules, accusing them of "screwing the players".

Best Regards,

RulesJD said:

Ah yes, the good ol' screw the players attitude that I love so much in AL forums. *clap clap*

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I think of it more as 'pre-emptively stop players who would otherwise turn an AL session into two hours of monitoring what's going on with their clone in their own private demi-plane'. The DM has just as much right to keep that player from ruining the game as she would to keep a player who just wants to attack the Lord Regent of Phlan rather than save him.

The best way to avoid problems with having to track huge numbers of additional combatants is to avoid having huge number of combatants in the scenario. The module designers can ensure this when writing modules, but it's up to the DM to keep the same from happening on the players' side of the table.

It should be noted, if Kalani is correct that DMs aren't required to honor the amount of HP totals of undead under the control of a necromancer from a previous game session, then that same DM is under no obligation to honor the casting of a Clone or Similacrum spell in a session she wasn't adjudicating -- the principle is the same. Keep that in mind before trying to implement any Clone/Similacrum shenanigans at high level.

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Pauper

Pauper said:

I think of it more as 'pre-emptively stop players who would otherwise turn an AL session into two hours of monitoring what's going on with their clone in their own private demi-plane'. The DM has just as much right to keep that player from ruining the game as she would to keep a player who just wants to attack the Lord Regent of Phlan rather than save him.

The best way to avoid problems with having to track huge numbers of additional combatants is to avoid having huge number of combatants in the scenario. The module designers can ensure this when writing modules, but it's up to the DM to keep the same from happening on the players' side of the table.

It should be noted, if Kalani is correct that DMs aren't required to honor the amount of HP totals of undead under the control of a necromancer from a previous game session, then that same DM is under no obligation to honor the casting of a Clone or Similacrum spell in a session she wasn't adjudicating -- the principle is the same. Keep that in mind before trying to implement any Clone/Similacrum shenanigans at high level.

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Pauper

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What??? Do you even know how the Clone spell works???

The Clone sits there. Congrats, you've monitored it until the Wizard dies.

Also, that's awesome. That also means I don't need to honor any equipment, at all, that my AL players bring to the table right? They start buck naked? Because there is no section on the Adventure Log for equipment you are carrying. Obviously no health potions carry over, no potions of (insert name here) either so all those treasure rewards are useless. Oh Wizards don't get spells they've written into their spellbooks because obviously that would be too much trouble to keep track of, 2 per level and that's all they get.

No mounts between sessions obviously. OH and of course no magic items unless you have the cert because that's too much trouble to track.

You realize that's not how the system works right? That we already keep track of several things that aren't in the Adventure Log, and there is zero functional difference between tracking spell effects (Clone) and tracking major purchases (Mounts/Spells/Etc) right? I'm all for a DM not allowing a Zombie horde to walk through a town willie nillie. I'm not okay with treating something that is functionally the exact same as any equipment purchase as any different.

RulesJD said:

I'm not okay with treating something that is functionally the exact same as any equipment purchase as any different.

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That's fine. But what they are saying is that the next DM might not agree with your approach, so players should keep that in mind when choosing their spells, effects, even mundane purchases, etc. For better or for worse, that's the double-edged sword of having no verifiable way of tracking stuff besides the honor system.

If someone plays pretty much with the same group of players/DMs at the same location, sure, probably most all of them will be familiar with what happens. But the moment you step outside that area and go to, say, a convention or game day somewhere else, you're a completely new and unknown individual to those folks. Maybe your stuff is legit, maybe it's completely made up; they have zero means of knowing. That other DM is under no obligation to allow you the use of anything on your record log, if he feels he has good reason to suspect otherwise. And 'good reason' is completely subjective to each DM.

RulesJD said:

Ah yes, the good ol' screw the players attitude that I love so much in AL forums. *clap clap* It would just be soooo much effort I know, ugh so hard. Good thing we don't already have a system for tracking items purchased with a lot of gold (plate barded up elephant), renown, downtime, etc.

Anyways, suggestions on the above?

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Sarcasm appreciated. It's not so much screw the players as "these are the sort of things you need to compromise on to reap the benefits of OP." It'd be nice if the AL had this, but it's far from required.

Take for example Leomund's secret chest. While my DM can verify that I paid the 5050gp for the spell components, there is no way of verifying how many days have transpired since I last cast the spell. As such, I always make a habit of saying "on the first day of travel, I prepare and recast leomund's secret chest". This despite the fact that I a) regularly play with a mix of the same 15 odd players and b) may have only just recast it in the previous adventure.

This is a compromise I am willing to make even with a spell which acts as a glorified bag of holding. In the case of animate dead, simulacrum and similar spells - these creatures have HPs and your DM has no way of verifying how many HPs they lost in previous sessions. Your DM may allow you to have full HPs on your animated dead/simulacrums; they might trust that you are honest with your creatures remaining HPs; or they might say that you need to recast them.

Saying that you cannot verify mundane equipment as a counter is silly. Mundane equipment can be verified simply by looking at your logsheet and seeing where they were purchased. Now, if you happened to lose/break any of your mundane equipment - your DM has no way of knowing this fact unless you recorded it somewhere. Mundane equipment doesn't cost much either (as a rule), and in my experience - most DMs don't even try to verify your mundane gear.

Mounts are also a bad example, as like PCs - they start an adventure with full HPs (barring uncurred diseases or other effects which the PC did not heal using downtime recovery or a spellcasting service). It is only undead and spell effects like simulacrum which may begin an adventure at depleted HPs. Also, your DM has no way of verifying whether such creatures were destroyed in a previous adventure, let alone verify how many corpses you had access too.

I find these complaints are disingenuous. AL is built on an honor system and part of that system involves making compromises with your DM on occasion, especially in respect to information they cannot verify because they were not physically present in a previous session. 4E tried the hyper-tracking approach in the early days of LFR - and it was an unmitigated disaster. Errors frequently appeared or DMs failed to update one or more sessions of information, forcing players to use the information that was entered (even if incorrect). It also caused serious issues for conventions and large game stores who had dozens of players to enter information about (averaging 5min per character, assuming no mistakes).

Then there were issues with the database itself being sometimes unreliable.... In any event, short of returning to an extensive character database like they used in LFR, AL has done a fairly good job of trusting players with a lot of information, but at the same time asking that they make compromises on occasion as well.

kalani said:

Your DM may allow you to have full HPs on your animated dead/simulacrums; they might trust that you are honest with your creatures remaining HPs; or they might say that you need to recast them.

(snip)

Mounts are also a bad example, as like PCs - they start an adventure with full HPs (barring uncurred diseases or other effects which the PC did not heal using downtime recovery or a spellcasting service). It is only undead and spell effects like simulacrum which may begin an adventure at depleted HPs. Also, your DM has no way of verifying whether such creatures were destroyed in a previous adventure, let alone verify how many corpses you had access too.

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Not sure where you got that undead can't recover health.
Animate dead can recover hp via hit dice, the healer feat, and can still use long rests.

Undead during shortrests:
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/05/11/healing-undead-minions/

My DM allows a couple undead to roll over, as long as I'm not abusing his generosity. But I know that if I were to play my necro bard anywhere else, I'm much less likely to get such treatment.

Inconnunom said:

Not sure where you got that undead can't recover health.
Animate dead can recover hp via hit dice, the healer feat, and can still use long rests.

Undead during shortrests:
http://www.sageadvice.eu/2015/05/11/healing-undead-minions/

My DM allows a couple undead to roll over, as long as I'm not abusing his generosity. But I know that if I were to play my necro bard anywhere else, I'm much less likely to get such treatment.

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I've seen judges at conventions do both...if the party is weaker or only 3 or 4 players, the undead are accepted. At more full tables, they tend to make clutter and by the end of the game, that player doesn't bother. expect your experience to vary....it's just grey.

Cascade said:

I've seen judges at conventions do both...if the party is weaker or only 3 or 4 players, the undead are accepted. At more full tables, they tend to make clutter and by the end of the game, that player doesn't bother. expect your experience to vary....it's just grey.

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I try to make the group and my regular dm's lives easier and try not to take up time and space. I stuff the skeletons in a bag of holding when not in use and rather than rolling to hit like 8 or 9 times, my dm uses the "Handling Mobs" rules on page 250. It makes the game significantly faster for groups with necromancers.

Inconnunom said:

Not sure where you got that undead can't recover health.

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It seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable extrapolation of the existing rules:

- Undead are immune to Cure Wounds and all similar spells, thus cannot gain hit points by healing.
- Undead are immune to having their life force destroyed via a Nine Lives Stealer.
- Some undead are given explicit healing abilities; the Vampire, for instance, needs them to adjudicate how long it takes for the creature to return from its gaseous form after being reduced to zero hit points.

The long rest is presented as a form of 'natural healing': not only do "characters" (SRD 5.0, p.87) regain their HP when finishing a long rest, they also regain some portion of their previously expended hit dice, reduces the character's exhaustion level (if any) by 1 (SRD, p.192), and can recover from diseases (SRD, p.204).

The undead (a.k.a.: "restless dead") are not vulnerable to most of these things, not having a life force to need 'refreshing', and thus have no reason (or, to some, ability) to rest.

A DM could certainly allow animated undead to use the rest and recovery rules to regain hit points, but there is plenty of justification in the rules for making the alternative ruling, that undead do not heal 'naturally' and only regain HP if they have specific means to do so (as the Vampire does) or are restored in some other fashion.

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Pauper