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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6815754" data-attributes="member: 58197">I view a skeleton or zombie as a single-minded, savage killer. Its nature is to slaughter the living, and while it is far from being a clever tactician, it understands the basics: If you've got a sword and a bow, you use the sword on stuff that's close by, and the bow on stuff that's far away. (The fact that the standard MM skeleton has a sword and a bow implies that it's bright enough to know when to use each.) So you don't have to be super specific on which weapon to use.The skeleton does not understand much beyond killing, however, and it takes a &quot;when you've got a hammer&quot; approach to interpreting commands. If you don't give it very explicit, simple orders, it processes them like this:1. The boss says &quot;Do X.&quot;2. Who do I kill to accomplish X?3. Go kill them.4. Based on my very limited understanding, has X been accomplished?5. If yes, then stop.6. If no, or unsure, return to step 2.So, if you tell it to guard the paladin, it'll follow the paladin around and kill anyone who approaches. If the paladin is on the ground bleeding out, and another PC runs up with a healing potion, the skeleton will kill that PC. It will then proceed to kill anybody who approaches the paladin's corpse.You can get the skeleton to do things besides kill, but it doesn't do them well, and it's not a computer - you can't &quot;program&quot; it with a long, complex sequence of conditionals. You have to stand over it and tell it what to do at every stage. In the &quot;guard the paladin&quot; example, I'd say you could carve out a handful of exceptions, so the skeleton won't try to kill other PCs who approach the paladin; but that's about the limit. If you get more complex than that, the skeleton becomes confused, and its default behavior when confused is to kill things until the world is less confusing.As far as setting off traps or doing brute manual labor, yes, you can make the skeleton do those things, as long as you're there to supervise.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 6815754, member: 58197"] I view a skeleton or zombie as a single-minded, savage killer. Its nature is to slaughter the living, and while it is far from being a clever tactician, it understands the basics: If you've got a sword and a bow, you use the sword on stuff that's close by, and the bow on stuff that's far away. (The fact that the standard MM skeleton has a sword and a bow implies that it's bright enough to know when to use each.) So you don't have to be super specific on which weapon to use. The skeleton does not understand much beyond killing, however, and it takes a "when you've got a hammer" approach to interpreting commands. If you don't give it [I]very[/I] explicit, simple orders, it processes them like this: 1. The boss says "Do X." 2. Who do I kill to accomplish X? 3. Go kill them. 4. Based on my very limited understanding, has X been accomplished? 5. If yes, then stop. 6. If no, or unsure, return to step 2. So, if you tell it to guard the paladin, it'll follow the paladin around and kill anyone who approaches. If the paladin is on the ground bleeding out, and another PC runs up with a healing potion, the skeleton will kill that PC. It will then proceed to kill anybody who approaches the paladin's corpse. You [I]can[/I] get the skeleton to do things besides kill, but it doesn't do them well, and it's not a computer - you can't "program" it with a long, complex sequence of conditionals. You have to stand over it and tell it what to do at every stage. In the "guard the paladin" example, I'd say you could carve out a handful of exceptions, so the skeleton won't try to kill other PCs who approach the paladin; but that's about the limit. If you get more complex than that, the skeleton becomes confused, and its default behavior when confused is to kill things until the world is less confusing. As far as setting off traps or doing brute manual labor, yes, you can make the skeleton do those things, as long as you're there to supervise. [/QUOTE]

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