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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Magesmiley" data-source="post: 2947549" data-attributes="member: 26292">Having played a necromancer-style cleric on a couple of occasions (as well as DMing a bunch over the years), commanding is complete control. You can order them to even do suicidal things. This is a powerful ability, but, there are some limitations.1. You need to use a standard action to command the undead. This is very significant if your cleric is running around with some undead under his/her control. Follow this scrupulously and you'll find that your party's cleric is spending a bunch of time directing his/her undead during combat rather than casting spells and whatnot. Directing the undead to "attack the enemy" is different from attacking a specific creature (which can be very significant if you have multiple undead). Using the first would typically cause the undead to attack the nearest one, whereas the latter would cause them to concentrate on one target (and you'd need to give another command on subsequent rounds to attack another).2. The death of the cleric. This is bad. Very, very bad for the players. My group had this happen when I had an athach skeleton under my control. It was very ugly as they suddenly had another threat to contend with in addition to the doppleganger sorcerer who had just fireballed the group.3. Other evil clerics (ooh look, undead to control!). Its entirely possible for another evil cleric to rebuke/control your undead. This can be very ugly, particularly if both of the clerics have undead they've brought to the fight.</blockquote>

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