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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7023042" data-attributes="member: 6787650">Without Undead Thralls, you lose out on 3 skeletons. Undead Thralls brings the loss down to 2. (E.g. Animate Dead V can maintain 8 or raise 6 with Undead Thralls; otherwise it can maintain 8 or raise 5.)I'm actually thinking more of the DM side of things. 3 Blue Slaads and 3 goblins have a completely different threat profile than 3 Blue Slaads and 3 evil Pixies due to Polymorph/Confusion/Entangle/Phantasmal Force + high stealth. The least I can do is hand out 200 XP per Pixie instead of a measly 50 XP. Arguably, even CR 1 is lowballing it and I should be treating them as CR 3 and handing out 700+ XP.The summoning exploit is a side-effect of the wrong CR, not the root problem.Sure, but my multiclassing rules are not RAW. You will never have "100% RAW" and "Hemlock-designed multiclassing" at the same table, so why should I worry about what the RAW is on Pixies if I think the RAW here is unreasonable?Even without armor proficiency, zombies still make good meat shields. It gives them disadvantage on attacks and ability checks, but you can cancel that out with Stinking Cloud, Help actions (e.g. from every other zombie), or Nets. Besides, you're using them to Dodge and buy time for your skeletons to shoot, so disadvantage is only hampering their opportunity attacks, which are strictly a bonus.Proficiency is nice, especially for PCs, but it's not strictly necessary. Ghouls aren't even proficient in their own (iconic!) claw attacks!But, if the DM rules that skeletons aren't proficient in heavy crossbows/longbows/nets, it's probably better to stick to shortbows for that case because the to-hit there is more important than the extra point (longbows) or two (heavy crossbows) of damage. Doesn't make much difference to the analysis but would be something to bear in mind at the table.If you don't have archers, then your minions don't really scale in the first place. 50 zombies with greatswords are not noticeably better than 20 zombies in a fight against six mummies. There's not enough room to bring them all into play.All true. All reasons why discussing skeleton tactics is complicated, and why I said it was a "crude" assumption that only six skeletons get detailed to net throwing. If they are ruled nonproficient, you might want to detail more skeletons. (And if the target is high-AC, you might have fewer skeletons throw nets and more skeletons Help. Naturally you have to make these divisions of labor in advance because you only have one bonus action for commanding them on the fly during combat.)I can relate to that. My instincts are very much powergamer-oriented, but that only comes out in play in CRPGs when there are no other people around. As a player in TTRPG play, I like support roles, like playing an un-cleric: a pure Bard who's a confirmed atheist/secularist but likes to Bless and heal the PCs anyway. (And the fact that he can do so just as well as a priest can just confirms his atheist beliefs.) This despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that I am not an atheist in real life.I have likewise found that giving the party a Horn of Valhalla (made completely from twine; must be soaked in the blood of a humanoid prior to blowing it) gives them a terrific panic button, which in turn frees you from worrying about unintentional TPKs. Blowing the Horn of Valhalla often means essentially admitting defeat and abandoning the mission, because it can only be used once per week, but it doesn't actually TPK the party. I would recommend considering handing out a 1/month Horn of Valhalla or similar to any low-level party in a story-driven campaign where you want failure to be possible but not necessarily lethal.</blockquote>

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