D&D 5E How Would You Build And Play A Necromancer

iserith said:

I think the biggest concern above all is:

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iserith said:

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.

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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.

Thinking back to the last time I played a Necromancer...

..it was a half-elf, Priest of Ancestors Prophet/Necromancer Mystic...

...no help there.

(yeah, those're Kits, it was like 25 years ago... I mean, I had a build for a 3e necromancer - he was going to be a jongleur who used a scrimshawed human femur in his act, a happy-go-lucky necromancer - but I never got around to it...)

Zombies, or skeletons?

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Think of it this way: Night of the Living Dead? Or Jason & the Argonauts?

Allistar1801 said:

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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It's not that it's complicated - it's just that it's more transactions per turn or round which necessarily takes longer than just the one, even with very capable players. Turn after turn, combat after combat, it adds up. An important part of DMing in my view is sharing the spotlight, that is, making sure that the PCs have more or less the same time in the spotlight over the course of the session. The more "things" the player has to manage on his or her turn virtually ensures that this balance of spotlight will go lopsided. It helps if the player is aware of this, which it appears you are, but certain delays are unavoidable especially in a complex tactical situation.

iserith said:

It's not that it's complicated - it's just that it's more transactions per turn or round which necessarily takes longer than just the one, even with very capable players. Turn after turn, combat after combat, it adds up. An important part of DMing in my view is sharing the spotlight, that is, making sure that the PCs have more or less the same time in the spotlight over the course of the session. The more "things" the player has to manage on his or her turn virtually ensures that this balance of spotlight will go lopsided. It helps if the player is aware of this, which it appears you are, but certain delays are unavoidable especially in a complex tactical situation.

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Ahhh... good old action economy. Yeah, I can see how this might interfere with that a bit.
I dunno, I'm always thinking of ways to make things less of a pain to the other players. Streamlining the whole mob business is one thing, but I also want to give the other players the spotlight and help them achieve their crazy goals (kinda the reason I love playing support).

I think If I make the zombies a meat shield to soak up hits for the paladin and give him advantage while dishing a small bit of extra damage here and there I'm not stealing too much of his thunder and helping him out in the process, all the while he is secretly enabling by build since these zombies would be much harder to pull off without his aura. It was the same way with the last divination wizard I played, he was secretly an un-optimized piece of garbage, but through some clever support/control spells and me instigating the other players we ended up having a blast and I honestly cant wait to play that character again.

iserith said:

I think the biggest concern above all is:

How much are your minions going to bog down the game?

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Yeah, that is certainly something to be aware of. In my case I'm not too worried, because I DM on the regular and I'm used to managing large groups of monsters efficiently. And since I can only give one order per round, which all of the minions then follow, and the minions in question have Int 3, there's no question of putting together elaborate strategies where this zombie goes here and then that zombie makes a shove attack and then that zombie tries a squeeze play. It's more "Each of you attack the nearest monster" and then a bunch of attack rolls. With average damage, it shouldn't take any longer than some of my fellow players spend planning their turns.

I do need to spend some time crunching the numbers on grapples and shoves, though, since opposed rolls will slow things to a crawl. I plan to work out a table or something so it's possible to execute a grapple/shove with just one die roll, without significantly changing the odds of success.

I would definitely be wary of having a necromancer player in the group who wasn't a veteran DM, if they planned to have significant numbers of minions and didn't seem like they had a plan to manage them.

Another option, if you and your DM are willing, is to split the zombies up and have each player control some part of the horde in combat. It wouldn't speed things up any - in fact it might slow things down if the other players are less skilled at handling minions - but it would split the time more evenly, and it would help the entire party to feel invested in you commanding a lot of pets.

I would start with the ad&d healer that can be found online. Change the cure spells to cause.

iserith said:

How much are your minions going to bog down the game?

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Absolutely with iserith on this one. Get buy-in from your whole table, describing it in the worst possible way so you don't minimize the impact.

If they *are* good with it, one bit of advice someone else had for summons that I loved was to put them on cards and let the other players in your party run them if they would like. So they have things to do and not as long between getting to roll dice, even if it's for a minion of yours.

Another option if you're a math nerd and like to speed things up without drastically increasing the variance of outcomes the way swarm rules do is to convert a bunch of attacks into a single roll of percentile dice, and give the DM a printout with some tables showing the thresholds for 1 hit, 2 hits, etc., then another roll of percentile dice to determine crits. I did this in my group for our bard when he got Animate Objects to reduce 8 rolls to 2. But it's a super nerdy approach, for sure, and puts the burden of reading the tables on the DM (since you have to know the target's AC to know which column to look at). Two sample tables are below; I can share the full packet if you're interested in this admittedly ridiculous thing (yes, there are sets for advantage and disadvantage too; it's a lot of tables).

8 attacks
natural roll to hit
# hits 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
8 35 58 74 84 91 95 98 99 100 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
7 7 20 35 51 64 75 84 90 95 97 99 100 -- -- -- -- -- --
6 2 5 12 21 33 46 58 69 79 87 92 96 98 100 -- -- -- --
5 -- 2 3 7 12 20 30 42 53 65 75 84 90 95 98 100 -- --
4 -- -- -- 2 4 7 12 18 27 37 49 60 72 82 90 95 99 100
3 -- -- -- -- -- 2 4 6 10 15 23 33 44 56 69 81 90 97
2 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 2 3 5 7 12 18 27 38 51 67 82
1 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 2 3 4 7 11 18 28 44

4 hits
natural roll to hit
# crits 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
4 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 100 95
3 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 100 100 100 99 98 96 90 70
2 99 99 99 99 99 98 98 97 97 96 95 93 91 88 83 75 60 32
1 82 81 79 78 77 75 74 72 69 67 63 60 55 49 42 33 21 7

Edit: I swear those were aligned before I hit post. They're aligned in the doc.

Honestly I hate the utilitarian approach. You end up again with the usual Wizard that does the same vanilla things, "efficiently" therefore boring.

If I were to play a necromancer, I would just be a Wizard with the School of Necromancy, and pick ALL necromantic spells I can get, and LEARN how to make them work well.

Then, whatever extra spells I still need to choose (assuming all necromancies won't cover the whole amount), I would allow myself to pick something known to be powerful, but I would change the narrative at least to make it look more like a necro: Unseen Servant can be described as a ghost, Cloud of Daggers may change to a cloud of sharp bones, or make Tiny Hut look like a crypt or a tomb.

Li Shenron said:

I would change the narrative at least to make it look more like a necro: Unseen Servant can be described as a ghost, Cloud of Daggers may change to a cloud of sharp bones, or make Tiny Hut look like a crypt or a tomb.

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I like it.

One of my players went crazy, in 2e, with "Sense Shifting," a spell that let you do that sort of thing, change what another spell looked like. In 3e you could do it with Spell Thematics, in a limited way, which very much fit what you have in mind, above. In 4e such re-skinning was explicitly a player option according to the how-to-read-a-power rules.

In 5e, that's more a DM thing. But, like asking for a new Background, doesn't seem unreasonable.