Allistar1801
Explorer
I think the biggest concern above all is:
How much are your minions going to bog down the game?
Because, frankly, they will, at least to some degree. In a game like mine which runs fast, it's very noticeable. When a player in my game wanted to play a necromancer, he had the good sense to ask me for my opinion on how many undead he could have at one time. I told him "When the game slows down unreasonably on your turn, then that's too many." So he generally stuck to 2 to 4 undead, tops, and it worked fine. Still slower than other players, but not so much that it was negatively impacting the game experience.
I was a player in another game wherein they had a necromancer who also cast summoning spells. It was terrible. I quit the game because, among other reasons, that player's turn would take an age to resolve and the player of that character was so self-absorbed that he didn't understand what the problem was as everyone else waited around for him to finish up.
So, I would have a discussion with your DM and the other players and ask for their opinion on this before you make any decisions about playing a necromancer. I would also do some critical thinking about my own abilities to see if I could pull it off without slowing down the game. Then I would ask the DM about using mob rules (DMG, page 250) to speed up resolution of my turns. After all, the goal of play is for everyone to have a good time and to create an exciting, memorable story during play. That's harder to achieve with a bunch of undead slowing down the game.
Yep, we already thought about that, that's why I said we've already talked about it in the strategy section. We were actually going to use a variation of the mob rule, to make sure it didn't bog down play. I also in general don't think summoning spells and minions should ever take very long since you either control 1 guy in specific to do something, or you order the entire group to do something. It's not complecated.... just go down the list of mooks... if your target is alive then you're good, if not just go to the next guy.
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