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Message: <blockquote data-quote="QuietBrowser" data-source="post: 7034615" data-attributes="member: 6855057">So, I've been slowly chipping away at my stockpile of spells to convert, and I've hit upon an issue where I'm unsure how to proceed. In Ravenloft's "Van Richten's Guide to the Walking Dead", there's a 9th level necromancy spell called Army of Darkness, which has a 1 day casting period but animates 5 hit dice worth of zombies/skeletons per caster level at the end of it. In the "Libris Mortis", there's an equivalent spell called Plague of Undeath, which does the exact same thing, but only takes 1 action to cast.Now, I'm aware of Animate Dead's ability to raise more undead through upcasting. Problem is, a 9th level Animate Dead creates a grand total of thirteen (13) zombies or skeletons, which is no army by any stretch of the imagination.I'm currently thinking that the two spells can work in 5e, but how to do so is the issue. After all, raising massive amounts of individual undead would essentially destroy action economy and drive the DM nuts.What I'm thinking for Army of Darkness is that A: it drops back down to being a 1 action casting time, and B: it animates an Undead Horde - which is basically a Large/Huge/Gargantuan Swarm template applied to the Zombie/Skeleton base creature. This allows the caster to have something that really feels like an army of the undead, but which still only uses up actions as per a single minion. Does this make sense to anybody else?Plague of Undeath is trickier. What seems the best way to distinguish it from Army of Darkness, in my opinion, is to make it the "zombie plague" spell; a sort of super-Contagion that's infectious and turns those who die into zombies. But, how can you make that workable for a PC caster? I could really use somebody to talk to about this.</blockquote>

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