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Necromancers in 5E
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6557566" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>Some thoughts:</p><p></p><p>1.) Playing as a Conjuror is very different from playing a Necromancer. The Necromancer's key advantage is that skeletons don't eat up your concentration, so combos like skellies + Stinking Cloud are actually feasible. I'm with Dausuul though on a small handful of skeletons being best/least annoying in most situations, although it's nice to have the option to summon 50 or so when you want them.</p><p></p><p>2.) The Inspiring Leader feat scales really well for necromancers, and it helps your party too. It's almost like +2 Con for everybody, and it makes your minions much more resilient to AoE effects. With Cha 13, a 13th level Necromancer's skeletons would have 40 HP, which is comfortably out of the "one fireball kills everything" range.</p><p></p><p>3.) While you're busy buying bows and arrows for your skeletons, buy them some chain mail and shields too. (Or just leave the enemy hobgoblin corpses in their armor before you raise them as zombies.) Archery is usually better than melee, but to the extent that you want minions on the front line they might as well be AC 16 to 18 minions, and you won't have all that many minions anyway so you might as well go for quality equipment.</p><p></p><p>4.) Bag of Holding: good place to keep spare corpses and/or extra skeletons while you are travelling/teleporting/in town/etc.</p><p></p><p>5.) Demiplane: I love the idea of teleporting into an enemy stronghold and unleashing a zombie-pocalypse of supercharged (uncontrolled-and-hating-all-life) undead out of my Demiplane.</p><p></p><p>6.) Chickens are 1 cp each, and each one that you kill with Vampiric Touch gives you back 9 HP due to Grim Reaper. You can heal 90 HP for 1 sp and a 3rd level spell slot, as long as you're willing to look mildly ridiculous by carting a bunch of chickens with you everywhere.</p><p></p><p>7.) Stinking cloud/Cloudkill + skeletons is indeed advantageous. Note that it also goes well with monks and summoned elementals, especially Earth Elementals due to tremorsense. (But you'll need a second caster in order to do both Cloudkill and elementals simultaneously, unless you use Planar Binding on the elemental(s).)</p><p></p><p>8.) This one is theorycraft, but: when you do go full-on Army of Darkness, prioritize spells that grant advantage to your skellies. Regular skellies are fairly ineffective against e.g. Ancient Red Dragons (15% chance to hit = about 1 DPR per skeleton), but if the Bard can somehow manage to hit the dragon with Faerie Fire or you can hit it with (no-concentration) Blindness your DPR will almost double (27.75% chance to hit). Red dragons aren't the best example here because they will kill your skellies pretty quickly but consider it as an option; and each round spent killing skellies is at least a round not spent killing non-expendable PCs.</p><p></p><p>9.) Create Undead (wight) + permanent undead slave at level 14 can add up to 12 free zombies and a supercharged wight for zero ongoing spell slot cost. It's not necessarily better than a pet ghost or vampire spawn, but it's nice not to be dependent on finding a pet. Ghast looks nice on paper but the stench DC is so low that anything that would fail the save is probably something you will shred without problem anyway.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Wind Walk is a druid spell.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6557566, member: 6787650"] Some thoughts: 1.) Playing as a Conjuror is very different from playing a Necromancer. The Necromancer's key advantage is that skeletons don't eat up your concentration, so combos like skellies + Stinking Cloud are actually feasible. I'm with Dausuul though on a small handful of skeletons being best/least annoying in most situations, although it's nice to have the option to summon 50 or so when you want them. 2.) The Inspiring Leader feat scales really well for necromancers, and it helps your party too. It's almost like +2 Con for everybody, and it makes your minions much more resilient to AoE effects. With Cha 13, a 13th level Necromancer's skeletons would have 40 HP, which is comfortably out of the "one fireball kills everything" range. 3.) While you're busy buying bows and arrows for your skeletons, buy them some chain mail and shields too. (Or just leave the enemy hobgoblin corpses in their armor before you raise them as zombies.) Archery is usually better than melee, but to the extent that you want minions on the front line they might as well be AC 16 to 18 minions, and you won't have all that many minions anyway so you might as well go for quality equipment. 4.) Bag of Holding: good place to keep spare corpses and/or extra skeletons while you are travelling/teleporting/in town/etc. 5.) Demiplane: I love the idea of teleporting into an enemy stronghold and unleashing a zombie-pocalypse of supercharged (uncontrolled-and-hating-all-life) undead out of my Demiplane. 6.) Chickens are 1 cp each, and each one that you kill with Vampiric Touch gives you back 9 HP due to Grim Reaper. You can heal 90 HP for 1 sp and a 3rd level spell slot, as long as you're willing to look mildly ridiculous by carting a bunch of chickens with you everywhere. 7.) Stinking cloud/Cloudkill + skeletons is indeed advantageous. Note that it also goes well with monks and summoned elementals, especially Earth Elementals due to tremorsense. (But you'll need a second caster in order to do both Cloudkill and elementals simultaneously, unless you use Planar Binding on the elemental(s).) 8.) This one is theorycraft, but: when you do go full-on Army of Darkness, prioritize spells that grant advantage to your skellies. Regular skellies are fairly ineffective against e.g. Ancient Red Dragons (15% chance to hit = about 1 DPR per skeleton), but if the Bard can somehow manage to hit the dragon with Faerie Fire or you can hit it with (no-concentration) Blindness your DPR will almost double (27.75% chance to hit). Red dragons aren't the best example here because they will kill your skellies pretty quickly but consider it as an option; and each round spent killing skellies is at least a round not spent killing non-expendable PCs. 9.) Create Undead (wight) + permanent undead slave at level 14 can add up to 12 free zombies and a supercharged wight for zero ongoing spell slot cost. It's not necessarily better than a pet ghost or vampire spawn, but it's nice not to be dependent on finding a pet. Ghast looks nice on paper but the stench DC is so low that anything that would fail the save is probably something you will shred without problem anyway. Wind Walk is a druid spell. [/QUOTE]
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