How to Raise an Army of the Dead?

[Matafuego]

If you mean the Rituals from Relics And Rituals, In my opinion it is because they need lots of spellcasters sometimes.

 

[Nail]

....facinating...I didn't know this either before today...

Of course not!

Your walls need to be 15 ft. thick: When you have a six ft. wall, the ghost is within 5 ft' of the OTHER side

As usual, "it depends". I depends on how you read "exterior" and "pass entirely through". Here's the SRD text:

An incorporeal creature can enter or pass through solid objects, but must remain adjacent to the object’s exterior, and so cannot pass entirely through an object whose space is larger than its own.

Does the interior wall of a cave have an exterior?

Can a incorporeal creature pass thru an object larger than itself, even if it's only 1 foot larger?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Of course not!

Your walls need to be 15 ft. thick: When you have a six ft. wall, the ghost is within 5 ft' of the OTHER side

Doesn't matter.

The wall is an object six feet thick. The wraith's space is five feet. An incorporeal creature cannot pass entirely through an object larger than its space.

There's no "switching walls"; six is bigger than five.

-Hyp.

 

[Nail]

The wall is an object six feet thick. The wraith's space is five feet. An incorporeal creature cannot pass entirely through an object larger than its space.

That's the way I'd play it too.

Imagine a very long wall, 5 feet 1" thick. (The floor and ceiling are infinitely thick.) Can a wraith pass thru the wall?

No, because to do so would require it to stop being adjacent to one side, and then become adjacent to the other. There is a point in time where the wraith is not adjacent to either side of the object....and that's not allowed.

Not crystal clear, perhaps, but still not allowed.



Now, for further fun:
It says it can't pass entirely through the object. Could a part of it pass thru the object?

 

[Hypersmurf]

Not crystal clear, perhaps, but still not allowed.

I'm not sure how much clearer it could be.

1. The object is larger than the creature's space, therefore
2. The creature cannot pass entirely through the object.

-Hyp.

 

[Nail]

I'm not sure how much clearer it could be.

Well, there's thread on it here, eh? Or at least a hijacked one

Still, I wanna hear what you say about a "part of the creature" being able to pass thru the object.

 

[Bismark]

The easiest way to raise an army of the dead (or darkness) is to say the following words while taking the necronomicon....


KLATU-VERATA-NECKTIE!!!!!

Sorry... couldn't resist.

Glad I read this thread all the way through before posting. I was gonna use this from the moment I read the subject.

You...line stealing bastard. From someone who was going to steal it from a movie.

 

[eryndel]

Well that works too. But still think City of the Dead kicks ass as "I wanna turn you all into my personal army of undead!"

I don't typically like to contradict sages, but... here goes.

Look closely at City of the Dead and you'll notice that all the undead created are mindless and uncontrolled, which doesn't work so well for creating an army. Also, the XP expenditure is sizeable, I think 3K per spellcaster (and you'd need maybe a score of spellcasters to tackle a decent sized city.)

Werner

 

[Saeviomagy]

I don't typically like to contradict sages, but... here goes.

Look closely at City of the Dead and you'll notice that all the undead created are mindless and uncontrolled, which doesn't work so well for creating an army. Also, the XP expenditure is sizeable, I think 3K per spellcaster (and you'd need maybe a score of spellcasters to tackle a decent sized city.)

Werner

So that means that Nightfall was wrong not once, but three times.

Yay Nightfall.

On to the topic at hand:

Raising an army of undead isn't too difficult - multiple castings of animate dead do it.

Controlling them is a different matter.

Potentially you could use illusions to move the undead to wherever you want them to fight - skeletons attack mercilessly, and presumably attack any living thing mercilessly. They're never going to be able to disbelieve an illusion that they don't get near, so leading them around with a permanent illusion would seem to fit the bill.

Alternately choosing a controlled skeleton, outfitting it with a "hat of disguise" and leading your uncontrolled skeletons around with that would presumably also work, and would be a more long-term solution.

When you want the force to stay still, you merely let the illusion lapse, or order your skeleton to stop using the hat.

This is assuming, of course, that skeletons (or zombies, or whatever) don't attack other undead.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Here's another nasty possibility: the Cauldron of Zombie Spewing from the Book of Vile Darkness. Fifty corpses dumped in a day yields about 25 zombies on average. Of course, the necromancer will need to make a deal with the devil(s) to get them to command the zombies. Oh, and a dose of liquid pain needs to be stirred into each batch.

Nice thing about this is it provides adventure hooks for PCs: a specific artifact target to prevent the wizard from making more zombies, and specific targets, the devils, to remove control of the army. Of course, that could be just as bad.