D&D 5E Downtime XP farming with animate dead or conjuration spells

[the Jester]

By XP rules, there are no XP for conjurations and summons - they are included in the XP of the summoner. So the necromancer would have to kill himself for XP.

Is this a rule in 5e? I know it was in 3e.

 

[the Jester]

I don't buy that interpretation for two reasons:

Resurrection doesn't effect undead, however True Resurrection does.

It's thematically appropriate to assume that Animate Dead defiles a corpse.

Well, I take that to mean that you can cast true rez on (say) a mummy and return it to life, while you can't do that with regular old resurrection.

As to the thematic appropriateness reason- spells do exactly what they say they do, no more, no less. And if it's as easy to prevent resurrection as casting a 3rd level spell on a dead person, that seems too easy to me.

YMMV, of course.

 

[Salthorae]

Yeah, that’s just one where me and ole’ JC there’re gonna have to disagree.

As a 9th level spell, I’ve always read or assumed that True Resurrection could restore a creature to life who is actively undead at the time of the casting. Whereas Resurrection can’t. Until their body is dead. Then it can.

YMMV obviously!

 

[Seramus]

There is no problem with a creature having two types. A dead body can be both the corpse of an undead and the corpse of a humanoid, assuming it was humanoid to begin with.

But the most important reason is that re-animating the same undead (provided they are not completely destroyed) can make for awesome stories: The same necromancer re-animates your deceased brother each night to make him suffer a fresh death. You only re-animate former members of your family, carefully tending to their bones with mending. The town is guarded by volunteers who swore never to rest while they have loved ones to protect, giving permission to the local necromancer to raise them again after every battle. Etc.

Also makes logistics less of a pain in the rear for PC Necromancers.

 

[Mirtek]

v

That distinction doesn't make any sense, because the spells can only target dead creatures to begin with. An Animated Undead is by definition, not dead. So in order of the restriction on Resurrection to have a functional impact, an "Undead Corpse" has to be a thing.


And besides:

If a PC becomes undead, can resurrection work if the undead PC is killed?

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The sentence is just there to nip Arguments about destroying active undead foes with ressurection spells in the bud