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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6662875" data-attributes="member: 6787650">I'd appreciate it if you would refrain from presenting your confident guesses about my world as if they were facts. In particular, please don't assume you know what kinds of complications arise in my world when someone has a squad of skeletal archers. I'll tell you right now that two of your three guesses as to the looseness of my world are wrong. There's a reason why skeletons stay behind on scouting missions in spite of having +12 to Stealth from Pass Without Trace (I'm pretty harsh on Stealth checks; each sneaking party has to make a multiple stealth checks during any approach, and a single failure from anyone blows the mission--so any large group is bad for stealth, and the scouting is done instead by the Shadow Monk and the Lore Bard who have +18 and +22 respectively, and they always have multiple exfiltration plans in place because some things like Umber Hulks and Intellect Devourers ignore stealth); and arrow logistics are in fact a thing. (The Necromancer spent one of his slots learning Fabricate partially because of this, although so far he's just stockpiled great heaping lots of arrows and weapons and spare armor, and hobgoblin bones, instead.) Skeletons aren't really much worse than fighters on arrow logistics though; inflicting 1000 points of damage from a fighter's bow and inflicting 1000 points of damage from multiple skeletal longbows is within a factor of 3x of the same cost. Instead of costing 5 gp from the fighter it might cost 15 gp from the skeletons--but you also have more bodies to carry arrows and quivers, so it works out overall. I'm also not sure but I think you have the mistaken impression that I believe in large standing armies of skeletons at all times. If so, that isn't true either. One necromancer typically has between four and thirty skeletons animated at any given time, depending on whether or not he's at home researching during peacetime or hunting down beholders in the field. (In that case, his four skeletons act mostly as bodyguards and menial servants, which creeps out his friends.) The other necromancer (in another game) just got all of his 26 skeletons blown to smithereens by a cleric, and the player has switched to playing the necromancer's anti-undead Paladin of Vengeance sister, who got killed while attacking her brother's skeletons before the cleric wasted them.</blockquote>

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