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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5060732" data-attributes="member: 58197">Ehhh... I'm of two minds about this.Pre-3E, animate dead had the potential for gross abuse. With a few months to work in and a few handy graveyards, you could create an army of warriors who could march endlessly without rest, didn't need food or water, weren't vulnerable to disease, and obeyed all orders without question or hesitation. (Ask your local historian how many real-life medieval warlords would have sold their souls for any one of those traits in their soldiers, let alone all!) It needed fixing.Yet while I didn't like the implementation, I did like the idea. Ever since 3E came out, D&D magic has focused more and more on adventuring-oriented spells, with less and less attention paid to the larger world the PCs inhabit. Spells like animate dead put the wizard into context within that larger world - in this case, as a necromancer-warlord.Could you make a ritual that would do in 4E what animate dead was capable of in 2E, without having it be hideously overpowered? I'm not sure. I think you would need some kind of mass combat system for 4E before it was even possible to judge. But in principle, I like such spells and want to see more of them.</blockquote>