D&D 5E Max Army of Darkness, Necromancer Math

[FormerlyHemlock]

How are those spell slots banked? I assume you're burning warlock slots for spell points, but spell points are capped by the table, so....

You have two 3rd level warlock slots. You cash them both in for 6 sorcery points with two bonus actions. Every time you accumulate 7 sorcery points, you turn them into a sorcerer spell slot with another bonus action. You can never have more than 9 sorcery points, but you can have as many 5th level sorcerer slots as you pay for.

But if you ever take a long rest, all those spell slots go away.

 

[Ovinomancer]

You have two 3rd level warlock slots. You cash them both in for 6 sorcery points with two bonus actions. Every time you accumulate 7 sorcery points, you turn them into a sorcerer spell slot with another bonus action. You can never have more than 9 sorcery points, but you can have as many 5th level sorcerer slots as you pay for.

But if you ever take a long rest, all those spell slots go away.

An interesting interpretation. The way around the clear spell point limitation is to convert and store them in a way less well circumscribed. I cannot find a rule to show you wrong, sir, but think that interpretation very dodgy and unlikely to garner a lot of agreement from DMs. I, for one, would congratulate you on the inventiveness right before I laughed it out of my game.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

An interesting interpretation. The way around the clear spell point limitation is to convert and store them in a way less well circumscribed. I cannot find a rule to show you wrong, sir, but think that interpretation very dodgy and unlikely to garner a lot of agreement from DMs. I, for one, would congratulate you on the inventiveness right before I laughed it out of my game.

That's why it's in green text. Green = "theoretically legal by RAW but not something that would ever happen in a real game."

(Because let's be honest--"maximum theoretical skeleton army size" is not something which happens in real games either. I have never seen more than twenty-four skeletons in play at once even though the Necromancer was capable of much more; in fact I rarely see over a dozen.)

 

[gyor]

You could probably do that just as a Favoured Soul, with some warlock levels maybe.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

You could probably do that just as a Favoured Soul, with some warlock levels maybe.

Yes, but then they would be weak skeletons, not uber skeletons with triple HP and double damage.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Actually, I think I just changed my mind. Maybe it would happen in a real game, as part of a BBEG plot. A BBEG might actually be crazy enough to go without real sleep (only catnaps) for months on end, and to horde thousands of bodies, just so that he can unleash his Army of Darkness on his nemesis (the Free City of Pythium!) and have his moment of murderous triumph. Then he doesn't care if he can still keep control of the skeletons afterward--they're already in the city.

The PCs may get hints of his ambitions early on, and may have a chance to stop him (epic fight against a guy with nigh-unlimited Armor of Agathys/Dimension Door/etc., and probably a dozen or so skeleton bodyguards at all times even while he's storing up spell slots--presumably he just casts Animate Dead III out of warlock slots) but there is also plenty of room there to explain why the guy is passive enough to give the PCs a chance to stop him: he doesn't want to go out on missions to find out who is destroying his armor and weapons caches and corpse stockpiles, because he's busy resting.

Honestly, that idea sounds kind of awesome to me. It's a little bit like Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners series with the villain Obliteration: he lies around in the sun for weeks on end, storing up energy, and then he destroys a city with the stored-up energy. Same vibe from this necromancer chap.

 

[zaratan]

the animate deads don't stop obeing after 24h?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

the animate deads don't stop obeing after 24h?

They do stop obeying, but he doesn't care since he just wants to destroy the city. Killing is what skeletons do by default, and 8000 uber-skeletons will do a great job at killing everything in an unprepared city.

 

[zaratan]

They do stop obeying, but he doesn't care since he just wants to destroy the city. Killing is what skeletons do by default, and 8000 uber-skeletons will do a great job at killing everything in an unprepared city.

all, now I get it, I saw the "under your control" part and wasn't understanding, lol.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That's why it's in green text. Green = "theoretically legal by RAW but not something that would ever happen in a real game."

(Because let's be honest--"maximum theoretical skeleton army size" is not something which happens in real games either. I have never seen more than twenty-four skeletons in play at once even though the Necromancer was capable of much more; in fact I rarely see over a dozen.)

An odd convention, and one that doesn't show up when reading on tapatalk. More explicit tags might be advisable.