D&D 5E (2024) The Undead Army Necromancer is not Designable

[Minigiant]

It's not a premise I hold to. Sounds like something cooked up by folks who don't like necromancers.

Unless you're saying we're all supposed to agree with the OP? That doesn't seem right.

It's a premise cooked up by people who saw a player summon a bunch of snakes, wolves, or velociraptors with Conjure Animals.

 

[Remathilis]

I went back and re-read the OP and there isn't any mention of profit making in the post. It's a call to simplify and shorten the length of a necromancers combat turns.

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I went back and re-read the OP and there isn't any mention of profit making in the post. It's a call to simplify and shorten the length of a necromancers combat turns.

A complex 25 skeleton wielding high level necromancer isn't undoable....it just might be incompatible with the direction that DnD is moving in.

Yes, you can have a combat between a beastmaster ranger with his pet wolf, a shepherd druid with 8 summoned pixies, a necromancer and his 6 skeleton minions, and the creation bard using 2 animated objects vs a horde of hobgoblins, their mounts, a leader and their ogre battering ram, but if EVERY combat has that many combatants, is needlessly long and complicated UNLESS the only actions most units can do is move, attack, or cast a damage/healing spell. But if you expect the pet wolf to trip, the ranger to move hunter's mark and using weapon mastery on his bow, the druid to wild shape, the pixies to cast control magic, the bard to be using inspiration, the constructs grab, the necromancer using shield and counterspell, and the skeletons to grapple, the fight will drag on forever.

That's your trade off. Is it more important to have fully formed minions, then you need to simply PCs and monsters by removing bonus actions, reactions, weapon masteries, and a lot of riders on spells and features. Is the necromancer or pixie summoner worth that?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, you can have a combat between a beastmaster ranger with his pet wolf, a shepherd druid with 8 summoned pixies, a necromancer and his 6 skeleton minions, and the creation bard using 2 animated objects vs a horde of hobgoblins, their mounts, a leader and their ogre battering ram, but if EVERY combat has that many combatants, is needlessly long and complicated UNLESS the only actions most units can do is move, attack, or cast a damage/healing spell. But if you expect the pet wolf to trip, the ranger to move hunter's mark and using weapon mastery on his bow, the druid to wild shape, the pixies to cast control magic, the bard to be using inspiration, the constructs grab, the necromancer using shield and counterspell, and the skeletons to grapple, the fight will drag on forever.

That's your trade off. Is it more important to have fully formed minions, then you need to simply PCs and monsters by removing bonus actions, reactions, weapon masteries, and a lot of riders on spells and features. Is the necromancer or pixie summoner worth that?

Yes, to my mind and at my table. Rules people don't like can be ignored in their game. It's called, "optional".

 

[Minigiant]

Yes, to my mind and at my table. Rules people don't like can be ignored in their game. It's called, "optional".

Okay.

Now who is going to design that for your table?

 

[Aldarc]

I have seen so many players underwhelmed by D&D's version of the Necromancer in 3e/PF1 and 5E because it doesn't really live up to the Necromancer archetype in video games. I do think that part of the problem is "the undead army necromancer" that some D&D players expect out of their D&D necromancer. IME, however anecdotal it may be, I just don't think that the D&D Necro is necessarily what new players want or expect out of their Necros.

Maybe it's time to reimagine the D&D Necro for the modern age.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Okay.

Now who is going to design that for your table?

Me, of course, starting with an acceptable base. It's a DIY hobby, after all.

 

[ECMO3]

There is, however, a vast amount of DM's who complain about unbalanced things in the game. A lot of complaints about the balance fixes that weren't made for 2024. Even before, you heard (and still hear) a lot of complaints about Feats, Multiclassing, overpowered spells, and more.

So what are we to say to these people? Too bad, game should be fun, the developers have no requirements to balance things? And you can't define "fun"- what's fun for one person is not fun for another, especially when it comes to finding out that your choices in making your character are simply subpar because you chose the wrong race, the wrong class, the wrong subclass, the wrong ASI or feat choices.

Obviously nothing is ever going to be 1:1, but we shouldn't go back to say, 3.5, where the Druid's animal companion was comparable to a Fighter, especially with the powerful beast-only buffs a Druid could apply to it. It may have been fun to be a Bear riding a Bear, shooting Bears, or to play a Planar Shepherd, or to be a Persistent Spell-buffed Cleric who is better than any melee character who has ever existed (save, perhaps, possibly an Ubercharger with Pounce). But it isn't fun for the people who did not choose to play such characters.

And to put all the onus on the DM to figure out, nerf, and ban things that imbalance their games, when again, they are not the professionals who get paid to make such things, is a little unfair. It's asking a lot for all players to be responsible with their character choices, when they may have no idea that they've lucked out and chose the better options, and for every DM to have the experience and judgment to foresee these problems and deal with them beforehand.

How fun is it for a player to build the character they want, only for the DM to nerf them or ban their choices, because it was more than they could handle? And how many DM's really understand what's more than they could handle?

I've played at tables where the DM swore Rogues were overpowered. And who can forget Monkday, when a random person will start a thread expounding the brokenness of Monks, who dodge all the attacks, stun all the things, and are unstoppable at their tables, when so many people have examined the class and found it lacking edition after edition (until, well, now, by all accounts).

To say "WotC should make undead armies possible because that's fun for...well, players who want undead armies" and put it on the DM to say "hahaha, no, not at my table" seems irresponsible on the part of a game designer. And if something gets the reputation for being too good, and it ends up being nerfed or banned at a notable percentage of tables, what good is it, really?

Look at how many people griped about things like the Twilight Cleric, and refused to use it. And how hard is it, if you don't care about balance, to just say, as a DM "animate dead lets you have 12 skeleton warriors, all under your control simultaneously, lasting until they die. Or you lose control and they turn on you, bwahahaha!"

The only thing you can say is "well, not enough DM's would make that choice". Which I think makes my point for me. An option that is only allowed by a few is a waste of space.

All that having been said, I don't see WotC as paragons of balance. That hasn't been their goal with 5e. There's a lot of things that are imbalanced (mostly spells). I despise how they turned magic items from something everyone could expect to find as rewards, to something that DM's are afraid to even put in their game for fear it would destroy things. And worse, forced you to pick and choose between cool, interesting items and stuff that directly increases your power in a wide variety of situations because you can only attune to three items at once.

If they've balanced anything, it sometimes feels like it's by accident. I've long called them the Bethesda of TTRPG's. They put out a broken product, expecting their fans to fix it for them! And somehow, they make money this way! It's a travesty, really.

An experienced DM can make their own rules, their own game, they can mod their own systems. Why on Earth they pay WotC for the privilege of spending all that effort modding their game to make it playable is completely insane.

Anyways, we all know their goal is not to make the best game for anyone. But to keep a large enough percentage of their players happy so they can keep selling their oatmeal that you can flavor for taste, and maybe with enough fruit and brown sugar you can pretend it's not just warm soggy oats.

But given my druthers, I would prefer a game that doesn't come pre-broken, with the option to break it, than one that I may very well be forced to fix, when I'm not being paid to do so.

I mean, when you shell out 50 bucks or more for a damn book, it'd be nice if it wasn't "uh, so, here's busted power creep, use it or don't. Fix it or ban it. We can't be bothered to even explain why we thought this was OK compared to other options".

Well IMO balance is not fun. I think a "balanced" game is going to be boring and dull. People who worry about whether one PC is more powerful than another or whether one ability is more powerful than another are the ones who are not having fun IME.

I don't think the game is broken and the Necromancer abilities we are talking about here are not even powerful at all compared to what other full casters bring to the table.. While we are saying "Necromancer" it is something every Wizard, Cleric, Bard and some other full casters could do and is on the weak side if you are at high level and using your spell slots to conjure lots of undead. I think the primary complaint here is it slows down the game, which is not the same as saying it is unbalanced and neither of those are the same as not being fun.

People complaining about something (in this case some DMs) is not the same as people not having fun. There is a ton to complain about in the new rules, especially with the redesigned martial classes, but I have had fun playing them and playing with other people playing them.

There is very little I don't use in the official rules when I DM. In 2024 I tweaked the fighter (changed indomitable back to the old version), and I made Mage Slayer the old 2014 version of the feat with a bonus to any stat.

 

[ECMO3]

Isnt the premise of this discussion is that the fun for Undead Army Necromancer usually comes at the expense of the fun of other players at the table

Maybe that is inferred but if the player is wasting slots summoning undead it is a safe bet that is part of what he or she wants in a character.

And that the fans of the Undead Army Necromancer must choose something to sacrifice in order to get the other players to sign up for a UAN.

Unless the other players are fans too, which I think they almost always are in cases like this.

 

[mellored]

Well IMO balance is not fun. I think a "balanced" game is going to be boring and dull. People who worry about whether one PC is more powerful than another or whether one ability is more powerful than another are the ones who are not having fun IME.

It's more fun when you are more powerful than the other PCs.
It's less fun when you are weaker than them.

So balance is important.

Of course, you can have 18 skeletons and still be weak.

I.e. any damage your skeleton takes, you take instead. And they only have 10 AC and vulnerable to bludgeoning and fire.

I don't think the game is broken and the Necromancer abilities we are talking about here are not even powerful at all compared to what other full casters bring to the table..

What about what martials being to the table?

When can the rogue summon 18 shadow clones?

 

[FarBeyondC]

Have fun playing your Solo game then, because you obliviously won't need the rest of the party.

If my skeleton squad makes me so unbalanced that the rest of the party is irrelevant, then I'm clearly slumming around.

Normally, I'd take that opportunity to manage the less interesting but necessary stuff so that they can handle what most interests them with a sort of safety net.