D&D 5E Necromancers in 5E

[TarionzCousin]

TL;DR version, 5E necromancers are solid but not overpowered. They are more effective as "wizard with a few skeleton minions" than "Army of Darkness."

Did you say the words?

 

[Cernor]

2.) The Inspiring Leader feat scales really well for necromancers, and it helps your party too. It's almost like +2 Con for everybody, and it makes your minions much more resilient to AoE effects. With Cha 13, a 13th level Necromancer's skeletons would have 40 HP, which is comfortably out of the "one fireball kills everything" range.

Doesn't Inspiring Leader have a limited number of targets it can grant its temp HP to? I'm AFB right now but I seem to recall it having a limiting factor (more than only affecting creatures in earshot). If you can't give all your skeletons temp HP, it may be better to shore up your party using the feat since they tend to be far more useful in an extra 1 turn alive than a skeleton...

 

[evilbob]

Oh, incidentally, make sure you have a way to quickly strip the flesh from corpses. You don't want to get stuck with a bunch of zombies because you didn't have time to skeletonize them. If you can talk your DM into letting you use acid splash on dead creatures, that's a good one.

I have always been under the impression - maybe due to some flavor text of previous editions - that when you choose to make a skeleton out of a corpse it automatically just drops all the non-bone parts off and is a skeleton. But the reading of the current spell certainly does not imply that. I'd have to say, of all the abuses associated with this spell, that seems like a minor one.

2.) The Inspiring Leader feat scales really well for necromancers

Doesn't Inspiring Leader have a limited number of targets it can grant its temp HP to?

Yes; it only works on 6 creatures. Not sure if that would justify the otherwise-dump-stat 13 Cha requirement, plus your precious level 12 feat. Two 4th level castings of aid by a cleric / paladin is better (although also a bit costly). Or just convince the bard to take it and include your underlings? But it is a nice feat; level 13 + 13 Cha = 14 x 6 = 84 extra hit points every single short rest (if you have 6 targets).

3) Chain mail is definitely a good idea, although it can get heavy. But sticking them all in a bag of holding is a good plan to fix that.

5) Demiplane is only a 30x30' cube. That's 36 skeletons unless you could get them to squeeze together somehow (or stand on top of each other, which seems precarious). Also there's the question of how you'd get more in when the "control duration" of the current occupants had run out. Still, it's a neat idea for transporting them around. If you could cast it through a scry (which the rules are murky about) that would be even funnier.

6) The bag of chickens would definitely fail the "bag of rats" rule.

7) Planar binding is definitely a popular one (in theory, anyway) for getting concentration spells on your powerful summons.

9) Create undead seemed pretty lackluster to me when I gave it a look months ago. You're just not getting much bang for the buck relative to what your same-level castings of animate dead can do. Maybe I'm missing something.

Wind Walk is a druid spell.

Oops, I didn't realize wizards didn't have access to this. Man, I hate how spells are organized in the PHB...

 

[Dausuul]

5.) Demiplane: I love the idea of teleporting into an enemy stronghold and unleashing a zombie-pocalypse of supercharged (uncontrolled-and-hating-all-life) undead out of my Demiplane.

Now that is a trick worth noting. If only I were two levels higher...

7.) Stinking cloud/Cloudkill + skeletons is indeed advantageous. Note that it also goes well with monks and summoned elementals, especially Earth Elementals due to tremorsense. (But you'll need a second caster in order to do both Cloudkill and elementals simultaneously, unless you use Planar Binding on the elemental(s).)

Hmm... that's right, monks do have some kind of poison resist going on, don't they? Forgot about that. We have a monk. I should check and see.

8.) This one is theorycraft, but: when you do go full-on Army of Darkness, prioritize spells that grant advantage to your skellies.

Yes, advantage and disadvantage are a big deal.

Red dragons aren't the best example here because they will kill your skellies pretty quickly but consider it as an option; and each round spent killing skellies is at least a round not spent killing non-expendable PCs.

Dragons are definitely a headache for necromancers. Except green dragons. We haven't fought one of those, but I really want to. Yeah, go on, hit my minions with that breath weapon. Just try it. Punk.

Wind Walk is a druid spell.

We ain't got one of those, either. It's me, the bard, the monk, and the crazy dwarf barbarian. (The bard has Inspiring Leader, and it's seriously awesome; but given its limited number of targets, most of it goes to protecting the PCs.)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Doesn't Inspiring Leader have a limited number of targets it can grant its temp HP to? I'm AFB right now but I seem to recall it having a limiting factor (more than only affecting creatures in earshot). If you can't give all your skeletons temp HP, it may be better to shore up your party using the feat since they tend to be far more useful in an extra 1 turn alive than a skeleton...

The limit is six targets at a time, and a target benefits once per short rest. No limit on how many times you can use it though so "inspiring" twenty people just takes forty minutes instead of ten.

I guess skeletons are inspired by talk of destruction and dripping blood?

 

[Cernor]

The limit is six targets at a time, and a target benefits once per short rest. No limit on how many times you can use it though so "inspiring" twenty people just takes forty minutes instead of ten.

I guess skeletons are inspired by talk of destruction and dripping blood?

Ah, I'd thought that Inspiring Leader could only be used during a short or long rest (like the bard's Song of Rest, but giving temp HP rather than increasing the healing from Hit Dice). If it only takes 10 minutes and can be used without resting, it's a lot more powerful than I'd initially thought.

 

[evilbob]

If it only takes 10 minutes and can be used without resting, it's a lot more powerful than I'd initially thought.

Oh wow - I hadn't thought of that, either. Technically you can inspire any number of creatures, since it just takes 10 minutes to inspire 6 and there are no other limits. There isn't even a duration on the temp HP (other than the normal "until a long rest," which skeletons don't even need to do). So the bard could inspire them whenever you made them, and continue to inspire them each time you made more.

Another cool cross-class combo: druid conjures woodland creatures: 8 pixies per cast (or 16 with a 6th level slot) who all cast fly on one creature. Flying skeleton archers, woooo!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Ah, I'd thought that Inspiring Leader could only be used during a short or long rest (like the bard's Song of Rest, but giving temp HP rather than increasing the healing from Hit Dice). If it only takes 10 minutes and can be used without resting, it's a lot more powerful than I'd initially thought.

Beware that it probably won't fly if you don't share a common language with the skeletons/pixies/wolves/whatever. (Yay for GOO warlocks! Telepathy is cool anyway but inspiring leader makes it actually kind of useful.)