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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 4602084" data-attributes="member: 49613">The ritual for creating undead seems rather... boring to me. One zombie flunky that doesn't fight. Not exactly the gaming equivalent of a reckless celebrity bender. Now, I wouldn't have minded if they said zombie flunkies don't fight. But then why not just allow as many as you want? With one, you can't really make very much happen that's interesting.I've always liked that Smith story where the two Necromancers walk into a kingdom wiped out by plague and start animating everything including horses. Pretty soon they're ruling an entire kingdom of the dead. Of course, because it's Smith, they rule in a way that is vile and wrong and ultimately tragic.Anyway, in game terms, I think the "Empire of the Necromancers" approach is excellent because it makes something very interesting happen. I know a lot of DMs would balk at something like that in game:"How many undead are you guys going to raise?""All of them.""What? No... the spell doesn't work anymore."But to me, that's what great tales are made of. Rather than be restrictive, so that everything happens in a way that is predictable and staid, why not let some crazy stuff happen? No matter what happens the DM is still in control. He just has to think of how to take what the PCs did and turn it into something interesting.I'm reminded of the idea that came up in Knights of the Dinner Table, where the group finds all the cheap prices for livestock in the back of the PHB. So they buy up a bunch of chickens and goats and drive them ahead of the party through the dungeon, springing all the DM's precious deathtraps. I think that's a splendid idea! It would work great in some dungeons. Of course, the first time the herd runs into a nest of monsters, they'll lead them back to the party in their flight. Or if they run into an evil druid or an aboleth or something (like somebody with a Control Animals item) they'll all turn around and start biting the PCs! That's the stuff that great sessions are made of.This is not an "edition wars" post. But I am puzzled at how little chaos seems to be present in 4E. Chaos is the stuff of legendary games, in my experience. I want to see crazy stuff: explosions, slaughters, rampaging herds of summoned dinosaurs, the rise and fall of kingdoms, etc. But I don't plan that stuff ahead of time. I want the crazy to emerge from the hairbrained schemes of players whose characters wield wealth and power beyond the limits of their feeble prudence. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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