The Necromancer: A Treantmonk Guide (part 2 of 3)
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- Welcome to my Necromancer guide! In this video let's make a master of the undead. Until we get animate dead, this is just going to feel like any wizard, but after level 6, we are really going to feel like a Necromancer. This is part 2 of 3 of this build.
For Part 1 of this build: • The Necromancer: A Tre...
For Part 3 of this build: • The Necromancer: A Tre...
Here's the link to the final build: ddb.ac/charact...
Important: cast animate dead at the END of each day, not the beginning. There are several reasons:
1. You never know how many resources you will need to use during a day. Maybe your day necessitates the casting of all 3 3rd level spells. If so, you will have had your undead minions through the whole day, and used your full magical abilities-peak wizard! Before the spell runs out, kill your minions and stuff them back in your bag of holding for when you can next animate them.
2. Animating the dead at the start of each day is a dangerous game. Suppose the party oversleeps and the spell runs out? You don’t wanna wake up to the screams of the bard as your zombies are gnawing her arm off, Walking Dead style. Unless you have some means of ensuring you can cast the spell at the same time every morning, do it every night instead.
3. Everyone knows necromantic magic is strongest at dusk going into night, not dawn going into day.
Solid advice.
Scrolled down here to say exactly that, in general this is how you should think about any spell with a 24 hour duration, because point 1 will apply to anything that lasts 24 hours.
I don’t think you can re-animate undead.
@@Steveesleddog You can reanimated skeletons easily. Zombies not that easy unfortuantely.
@@theepicduck6922 another reason skeletons are good. Mess free and easily packable for storage! Plus they never spoil!
You mention at the start of the video that fireballing with grim harvest can net you 30 hp if you kill 5 minions, although the reading of Grim Harvest seems to contradict. Here's the relevant part: "Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell’s level." It doesn't say you can gain those hitpoints per creature killed, just that you do it once, unless I am misunderstanding this ability.
I'm pretty sure that's how it works, so you're not alone in your assessment.
You are correct. Thanks. I've noted the correction in the pinned comment
Like a wizard has 30 hp anyways huehuehue
1 - Grab a Bag of Holding.
2 - Cast animate dead on a corpse/skeleton (the skeletons weigh less).
3 - Put said corpse/skeleton into the bag.
4 - Repeat ad nausem until the bag is full.
5 - Use the last animated dead to pour the content of your bag admist the enemies.
6 - ???
7 - PROFIT!
A couple notes.
Cantrips:
- Ray of Frost to cool/freeze corpses
- Mold Earth for unearthing corpses or throwing up instant cover (total cover if you do it right)
- prestidigitation to masks the rotting smell
First level spells:
- Tenser's floating disk to cart corpses around
- unseen servant as "ghostly minion"
- disguise self to get away with grave robbery or potentially mask undead as if they were still alive
second level spells
- nystul's magic aura to mask undead as non-magical and non-aligned, possibly also as non-undead; and potentially permanently if you maintain the same undead long enough
- gentle repose to sustain corpses so you can use them while they still look fresh to get the drop on their friends - especially when using illusions to speak for them
- locate object to find random corpses if the dm let's you get away with that (you are rather familiar with corpses after all)
Just to give a couple ideas for lower level spells for a necromancer.
For your skeletons - raw they have a shortsword attack and a shortbow attack, hence those you raise also have those. Aka raw you don't need to provide then with gear.
Though I have yet to meet a dm that didn't house rule that so unread are raised with what's on the corpses rather than the gear on the statblock
For zombies ... Grappling targets and aiding each other with those attempts can lock down a surprising amount of enemies.
And for all minions - there is no limit to the complexity of the general order you can give, hence you can basically program then with fairly complex behaviors ...
Lastly a house rule I use with all pet, summon, or other minion classes/builds: all NPCs under a players control have the same initiative as that PC. That way the player simply has a slightly longer turn but doesn't interior the combat with yet another minion all the time.
Ps: not sure if I remember they right, but I think undead that leave your control (24hrs are up) don't stop following orders they might still have - after all they follow those orders until they are done and there is nothing about then getting cancelled if you lose control ...
Concerning the skeletons, you could just say that one are is molded into a bone blade and the other is a tube that shoots bone splinters.
@@dragonhearthx8369 the way we play them they have a short sword and bow and armor scraps (even if the corpse they were raised from didn’t because magic) but you can’t take those and try to actually use them as a short sword or sell them or something: they’re only useable by the skeleton, but you could give them other weapons or armor to use and if you do the stuff you give can also be taken back and used as normal.
I think necromancers are (surprisingly) a good candidate if you want to make a “face of the party” wizard build for a couple reasons.
1) you’re not going to be fighting on the front lines anyway, no reason to try to make yourself overly tanky
2) someone’s going to need to convince the gaurds that your skeletons will behave
3) inspiring leader feat is REALLY REALLY good, especially when combined with skeletons. If you have a +3 in charisma, which is not that hard to get if you make it your second best stat or even third best if you get a little lucky if you roll, you get to give everyone in your party 9 temporary hit points after every short rest at level 6. Which is pretty big, that’s like a whole hit blocked for free. And you can give it to your entire undead army as well. The feat has nothing limiting the number of times you can use it per rest, only how often individual creatures can gain the hit points. And the way it’s phrased it seems perfectly reasonable that you could do the inspiring during a short rest or at least while traveling so you wouldn’t even have to spend extra time sitting around. And 9 extra hit points to your summons is pretty insane, in addition to the benefit to the rest of the party. That puts your skeletons at 19hp+8 or 9temp hp so 27-28 hp. That’s a pretty tank minion. And unless you go through a really hard fight they’re unlikely to be any lower than that at the end of any given short rest.
I think with the combination of undead thralls and inspiring leader your skeletons go from decent at 6th level but scaling horribly to quite strong at 6th level and scaling decently well. Equip them with some armor and duel short swords or shield and sword or long bow (if your dm allows it) and they’re basically each an unoptimized ranger or fighter that doesn’t get extra attack, which, on their own isn’t great, but in an army of even just 4 or 8 probably makes you the strongest sustained damage dealer and best tank in the party.
If you can’t tell I much prefer skeletons because I think you can just have them sit back more if there’s lots of bludgeoning, but realistically bludgeoning is fairly rare from monsters as most things have weapons or attack with their teeth and claws in some way. Not saying bludgeoning isn’t common, it is, but not as much as piercing or slashing in my experience (although bludgeoning does tend to be more single target damage so more likely to one shot your skeletons). Also skeletons are very smart at 6 int. That’s high enough that they’re just a kind of stupid person, which means they’re definitely able to make some decisions on their own. They won’t be doing anything insane, but if you tell them a command like “kill the enemies while avoiding the guy with the club” they can actually carry that out where you could argue zombies couldn’t avoid like that.
Correction: A necromancer can only benefit from Grim Harvest once per turn, so fireball gets you 6hp Max
For Part 1 of this build: ua-cam.com/video/IHDncDeoT4Q/v-deo.html
For Part 3 of this build: ua-cam.com/video/eDTnbthShEY/v-deo.html
Here's the link to the final build: ddb.ac/characters/17820943/ovktAW
With Animate Dead there are incredible uses simply counting what you can do with a dozen tireless workers: digging trenchs, pits, open paths, building simple fortifications. Eventually carry a wagon with tools, weapons and extra bodies, also works to move the slow zombies. Seeming it's a great spell for hiding your undead as "obedient, silent zealot servants" when going to town, especially once you got wights who can go by themselves to do your business.
I just want to point out the Thematic win that is an undead that you've created riding the Phantom Steed that you created. That could be used for so many great role play things, like a headless horseman
Yes!
Evard's Black Tentacles provides advantage for all your skeletons and can also activate Grim Harvest for each enemy it kills because it deals damage on the enemy's turn. Wall of Fire is another example of a spell that can trigger Grim Harvest multiple times (dealing damage on an enemy's turn) and is a good line of sight blocker.
important : you can actually give better weapons and armor to your skelettons. a scale maol is cheap and can tremendously boost the survavibility of your skelletons
smile444 I tried that in AL. Needless to say, it was a no. Home brew is better in that way.
@@dustinsmith2021 not even a shield or by fixing their taterred armor ? Your gm sucks
You can put the armor on, but I wouldn't assume proficiency
@@TreantmonksTemple what about using mending on the damaged armor they are supposed to wear ?
Skeletons and zombie templates say “... profiency it had in life...” it’s still dm defendant.
I think what to do with all the undead you summon would be a fantastic video. Part 4 of the necromancy video. Necromancer tactics.
This was so helpful! I’ve been wanting to do a necromancer and now I get to do so. I’ll be using wood elf but the otiluke’s resilient sphere choice made me laugh.(I may have had my Bbeg cast that in the last campaign I DMd and let their minions soften the party up).
So I love this build, but it may be my twisted humor, but I'm planning this with a Fire Genasi. #1, good Con on the outset. Yes, that means a lower Dex, but that can be shored up. #2, free Produce Flame (decent Cantrip that combines a weaker Light and a weaker Fire Bolt IMO) and Burning Hands (not great, but it's a damage spell). So my plan is to use Produce Flame as my ranged Cantrip and Toll as my Save Cantrip. Plus, an "Ash" Genasi has a flavor to it that is just awesome
0:46 Hey! Psst! _Fear_ is an illusion spell in this edition. _Cause fear_ is necromancy.
argh!
I'll never understand the enchantment hate of this edition.
@@WexMajor82 I get the feeling that that disdain won't last much longer, if the new cantrip from the sorcerer and warlock UA is anything to go off of. _Mind sliver_ may be the start of a lovely new string of enchantment spells.
> Involving the other players
Just have them play your undead minions, fullstop.
For conjure animals, and therefore it applies equally to undead minions, I just bought a huge amount of cheap dice in differing color sets. I have them essentially auto-move to the nearest foe if zombie, or stay if skeleton with bow (I often don't bother with a mini, and I just use a colored stone to represent them). I assign a color to each undead minion, and roll their attack and damage dice as the same color (so the Green zombie stone gets a green d20 and a green d6, etc.) and then I just throw all the dice together at once. This makes the turn go MUCH faster, and has the added fun of throwing a bunch of dice at once. It's like I am throwing a big fireball every round.
Bestow curse is a really powerful spell if used to stun/incapacitate an enemy or one can potentially use it to give vulnerability to bludgeoning or piercing damage or quite a few other nasty things. Plus if up casted to 5th it's no longer concentration. Yes it's touch but if your afraid of that familiar could deliver it for you while your undead distract the target.
20:42 Hearing the way you pronounce words is one of the great joys of this channel. I'd say that was close enough...
I'm pretty sure that's a common UK pronunciation. If so then it's all good. I mostly hear/say 'Muh-cahb', ignoring the -re ending though. Both are acceptable. Oxford Dictionary lists the way he says as correct, if that's any consolation to Treantmonk.
That I was even close I consider a Monday miracle!
Skeleton you can store 20 of them in a bag of holding and drop it in the middle of a BBG fight.
Does the Seeming spell work on your undead minions? The imagination of a necromancer and his little army traveling through towns disguised as townsfolk seems pretty appealing for me. Especially, if the Necromancer is able to choose when the spell effect drops for some awesome roleplay moments.
So I did the damage calculations for danse macabre and discovered, whether you’re summoning skeletons or zombies, any necromancer who uses the spell will have minions that will out-damage animated objects, and last for an hour instead of a minute. Don’t even get me started on damage dealt if you can assure advantage-knock bad guys prone or blind them, then watch your zombies tear them apart!
On top of that, the spell scales amazingly. If you cast it at level 17 with your 9th level spell (maybe you multiclassed your necromancer, like I did), you can expect your skeleton army to deal out over 100 points of damage a round, using only a single bonus action at the start of each combat to set up.
Of course, these baddies get much better if you have some magic weapons to equip them with. Grab a bunch of +1 light crossbows (simple weapons, so the skeletons likely have proficiency) or +1 shortswords, and have your normal animated dead hand them out to your skellies when you cast danse macabre. A kind of cool way to set this up: lay out the bodies and weapons in your demiplane. In the big combat, open up your demiplane, step inside, cast your 9th level danse macabre, and issue commands. It takes a little setup, but by round 3 you’re safe in your demiplane, and your minions are rushing out to wreak havoc on your hapless foes. To make setup easier, you could just have your animated dead carry properly-equipped corpses, and when combat begins, you just cast danse macabre and they start dishing out damage. That can make it tricky to traipse through a marketplace, though.
This can also be a great spell for an evil necromancer wizard, maybe in combination with the guards and wards spell. The PCs enter into a dungeon and find it flooded with oppressive fog. Suddenly, unseen undead start shooting at them out of the fog with pinpoint accuracy. Roll for initiative, and brace for a possible TPK!
Note: damage calculations assume our necromancer has an Intelligence score of 20.
If your DM lets your dansing undead dual-wield weapons, such as shortswords or handaxes, they become even more deadly. 5 dansing skeletons dual-wielding shortswords at level 9 or 10 will become an incredible threat on the battlefield, because your bonuses still apply to off-hand attacks. So for each skeleton, it gets 1d6+11 damage for the first attack, and 1d6+9 damage for its off-hand attack-not much of a reduction! Now, your DM may not allow your undead to dual wield for that exact reason-but you can feel free to remind them that these undead, especially the skeletons, fold like paper, and they can always target your concentration as well, or restrict you from accessing corpses to cast the spell on.
Nice, I got a Drow Necro in the Icewind Dale campaign. If I make it to casting animate dead I plan on taking advantage of the 4 hour long rest to get more undead over the normal 8 hours others need to take.
A fun thing you forgot to mention. By RAW, the feat Inspiring Leader can be used on the undead minions you create with spells like Animate Dead. Granted, thats probably not RAI, and the feat works off Charisma, traditionally a dump stat for a wizard, but you only need Cha 13 to qualify for it (not hard), and even with just the +1 cha mod from Cha 13 using inspiring leader on undead effectively doubles their HP, as instead of getting just wizard level as bonus HP, they now are getting wizard level + character level +1. Granted, you might not want to go Kobold if you do this, but the benefit to inspiring leader is it dose not require you to get close like the Kobold's race feature does, and even on the Kobold build you could easily get Cha 13 by dumping Wis instead of Cha and lowering Dex or Con to 14 after race.
On my Necromancer Wizard, Alice, I used Inspiring Leader on my own undead to great effect, and the 14 Charisma she had actually came in handy in RP situations since she was a noble and thus proficient in deception and persuasion. She was a variant human, BTW, and started with stats of Str 8 Dex 14 Con 14 Int 16 Wis 8 Cha 14, using the feat Resilient (Con) to get that 14 starting Con from her actual starting Con of 13, and also proficiency on constitution saving throws. She didn't take Inspiring Leader till level 8 due to not having undead pets before then, but it could be taken as soon as level 4 since it can also benefit allies.
Heck, if you really wanted to, you could even go down to Dex 12 to get Cha 16 on the variant human build; since you start with resilient (Con) right at 1st level, you could easily get Int 20 and Cha 20 to up your undead's HP by wizard level + character level + 5 at the height of your power, and still have another feat slot to either get Con to 16 or grab warcaster to have a +2 con mod + con save proficiency + advantage on concentration checks, which would also not be a terrible place to be concentration-wise. The 12 dex will hurt at low levels, but as you said with the 1st level version of this character, if your doing your job you should not be attacked at all, and if you are attacked mage armor + shield will give you a respectable 19 AC, which while not great at high levels, is pretty solid at low levels when AC actually matters for a wizard.
The Cha is also great to have for RP reasons, though the main reason you'd pump it to 20 is just to squeeze as much HP out of inspiring leader as you could and possibly abuse it further with a warlock dip. You could either dip 2 levels into warlock at some point to abuse the Cha further with Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast, though that would cut you off from your last ASI. Conversely, if you wanted to keep all your ASIs you could abuse it in a different way: a 1 level dip into Hexblade Warlock would net you medium armor and shields to compensate for that lower starting Dex, and the ability to use that Cha on weapon attacks, which could make for a cool death knight kind of character if you pick up cantrips like Green Flame Blade and Booming Blade. It would play a lot like a bladesinger, in that your mostly a wizard who occasionally goes into melee but still hangs back most of the time, expect instead of relying on Int and light armor for defense, you'd be using the best medium armor and shield you could get your hands on, and relying heavily on green flame blade and booming blade to compete melee-wise, since you don't get the second attack the bladesinger does. Still a pretty potent "death knight" kind of character, I'd say....and the build seems like it has legs due to the ammount of extra HP it can grant its undead pets.
Regardless, its something I thought you'd like to know, since I think that feat makes the necromancer build even better than it would be normally, provided your GM is fine with the RAW and not going to hold you to what they assume is the RAI.
I keep my skeletons in my bag of holding, and i bought bows for all of them. Next up is getting my hands on a portable hole, so i can walk around without causing an uproar but still be able to deploy them quickly.
This is Mel from the Unexpectables.
I played a level 8 Orc Necromancer that solo killed a higher level drow cleric while hiding in brush using Chill Touch with bookend Fireballs. At the time, i had no zombies or skeletons at the time.
Hi Chris,
There's a new sage advice entry that's relevant for the animate dead spell and it's repeated use of the same corpses:
Can I cast animate dead on the humanoid-shaped
corpse of an undead creature such as a zombie or a
ghast? No. Animate dead targets only the corpses of crea-
tures that have the humanoid creature type.
I'd take move earth for one of the cantrips so you can more easily just go to a grave yard and did up bodies to animate. haha
Fear is a illusion
It should be fairly clear the necromancer is in fact better done with other classes or subclasses. But , with a willing dm you can buff animate dead by allowing the use of armor, items, and equipment on them. Another augmentation might be to allow zombies to grapple. All of these options would be dm dependent, but fairly easy arguments.
Which classes/subclasses are better necromancers?
@@TreantmonksTemple Depending on your conception of necromancer, a divination wizard makes a better curse caster or conjuration wizard makes better minions. Combine that with a dip into sorcerer for twining spells and you certainly don't lose much and gain many other advantages.
I’d really like different benefits for what race of zombie you raise. I’d also love to be able to create a non-human minion before level 14. Any shortcomings can be overcome with the right dm.
What do you think of taking stinking cloud (instead of fireball) as your 3rd level big gun spell? It has some synergy with zombies (which are immune to the effects of SC; with skeletons too, I guess, though zombies are better grapplers; a shame that they aren't immune to fear, this would have been a stronger synergy) if you instruct them to grapple targets and get them or hold them inside the SC's AoE. Do you think that even if we took SC we would probably end up re training it later on (just like you did with fireball), cause it wont hold up at higher levels?
I really love your idea of casting Otiluke's resilient sphere and having one minion move us around. And then combining that with the grovel kobold's trait. Really cool. Using skulker to hide (like with the conjurer build), probably after using a concentration spell on our first turn, while letting the undead minions do most of the work would be fitting too, at least thematically (creepy necromancer hiding in the shadows), cause no synergy with grovel.
I was wondering if it would be worth upgrading from web to Evard's. Aside from such bc spells being useful, we want spells that restrain to give our skeletons archers advantage, but I've seen the idea that Evard's can potentially synergize well with grim harvest (cause it triggers on each enemy's turn, so chance to regain hp more than once per round; though the damage is probably too low to ever want to rely on that). I can see though why you went with watery sphere instead. Now we have one stationary AoE that restrains and one we can move around. In case you didn't notice it, do you maybe think that the synergy between Evard's and grim harvest is good enough to trade it for the ability to move watery sphere around (and maybe rely on zombies grappling, assuming no allies like grapplers or repelling blast warlocks, to make up for not being able to move the AoE)?
Mending could be a useful cantrip too, to keep our skeletons' arrows supply steady.
Not convinced about danse macabre. I guess it's a very easy and straightforward way to make our minions stronger, though we can kind of do that already with lower level spells (web, stinking cloud, black tentacles, watery sphere). Perhaps not as well, though some of those spells provide some additional benefit in battlefield control that if we have a chance to apply effectively (and assuming just web and watery sphere, we have good enough versatility I think), then it would make up for the slightly smaller punch. Plus, danse macabre competes for slots with wall of force and transmute rock, and potentially with some other picks that I am curious if you will end up taking at part 3, (not that the other spells don't compete with slots, but I am tempted to think that the competition there is smaller). Not a bad spell by any means for a necromancer, but I am mostly seeing it as a (probably good enough) back up for when we cannot count on some of our non-friendly AoE's.
Now that you mention it, Stinking cloud would be a great choice here!
Main use of danse macabre is the cast time, if your horde of undead get killed by an aoe or you see some new potential bodies you wish to supplement your army with it's an action to raise 5 of them and give them a slight boost and send them in, as opposed to the normal 1 min cast time for animate dead/create undead that you can't really use mid combat. That you don't have to worry about them going crazy as they fall down however the spell ends be it after an hour or broken concentration.
I'm surprised that Steel Wind Strike wasn't recommended for a spell choice -due to the kobold's pack tactics advantage*, from either the other players positioning or all their minion allies who could be positioned next to each enemy. Also, If you play with flanking rules you could previously bonus action commanded the minions to attack [ready attack action] the enemy in front of them at the instant you appear and attack from behind. That's kind of a risky gambit though because the enemy could destroy it or leave your minions reach between your minions turn and yours.
* Pack Tactics advantage is contingent upon the target not being in bright sunlight.
There's also a spell in Xanathar's, I think it might actually be a homebrew I don't remember, that is basically if it hits a living creature it does damage if it hits undead it heals.
Negative Energy Flood, but it gives temp hitpoints to UD instead of healing.
@@N20Joe ...weird
Nice pronunciation of “danse macabre” (in French btw)
I got one right! That's a first.
Way to channel that French! The spell sounds cooler with that pronunciation and may make more sense given the adjective noun flip.
So kind of a weird question, but assuming we are not playing a kobold, is there any merit to dipping 1 level into grave cleric? Assuming the DM allows it of course.
Edit: I think I meant death. Don't comment before your morning coffee kids
Caleb Rogers that sweet, sweet duel casting
1 level dip in cleric is never a terrible idea with a wizard. Doubling up on cantrips is a pretty good boost too.
So between Inured to Death and Grim Harvest, would you say Necromancer is the only type of wizard who can reasonably use Life Transference without it being suicidal?
Life cleric would be a neat alternative.
a spell to replace fireball would be vitriolic sphere
I am kinda not feeling this build. There is too much of one-trick-pony on this one (not entirely, but it's highly focused) and so many things are resistant or even immune to non-magical damage as you get into mid and higher tiers that you could be left with a bunch of minions who can only do the help action. Which itself may not be great because they're also getting in the way of your allies.
While I agree with the comment, don't you think that's more a limitation of the options Necromancy school and spells offer? What else would one do to squeeze as much as possible out of the school? I wouldn't be surprised if Chris makes a treantmonk revised version of this school, which is kinda meh at all levels.
@@elpablodiabloepd There are things you can do to shore up the weaknesses of the undead minions. I mentioned elsewhere crafting items for them with fabricate spell. You could also pick up spells like Magic Weapon to make their weapons magical.
@@markcronan magic weapon only buffs one weapon as far as I know, and your fighter, barbarian, ranger or paladin would use that so much better than a Skelly. Same with fabricate- why not just buy the weapons? If you want to talk buffing hordes, and what I think would've been a more interesting build would've been an oathbreaker multiclass to really buff them.
Or you could have some attack and the rest take dodge actions, preferably in choke point positions, or just use one attack and one damage roll for all of them.
Super Thanks!
I wonder why you like Pyrotechnics over Blindness? Neither requires Concentration and they both target Constitution but Blindness has a chance of lasting more than one round.
Pyrotechnics can effect multiple enemies.
I asked if you found any worthvile homebrew wizard subclass, you said you didnt even look.
COnsidering the theme and the comments, might I suggest looking at Grimlore's Pale Master? True, not a wizard subclass, but I think it is a better necromancer, and I would like to know what you think
OK, thanks, I will.
Edit: Checked it out, looks well done, though it's really mostly just a 5e conversion of the 3.5 pale master.
@@TreantmonksTemple yes, thats what I was searching for when I stumbled upon it.
I think it is thematically stronger (undead graft vs grim harvest), it solves your questions at least partially about summons about proficiencies (2 feats at lvl 10 for perishing bond pets).
I was hoping you would give some detailsd about yay or nay
17:04-17:20 - how are the undead and allies gaining advantage here? I didn't get it
It is connected to the first video & race choice. The Kobold character option has a feature that allows the PC to grovel, cower, and beg as an action, giving advantage to allies attack affected creatures within 10 feet of the Kobold until the Kobold PC's next turn. Do that with your undead minions, not just your ally PCs, and there you go!
It is part of the concept of the build: Kobold can use the sphere, go in with undead minions, & give them advantage while being safe.
Skeletons + Cheap-ass Scale Armor (which i guess you could upgrade to Breastplate or Halfplate, when you're loadedwith cash) + Heavy Crossbows = Awesome.
16AC with 1d10+2+Prof damage - just have a lot of them and volley fire!
For Zombies you'd probably want Chain Mail, due to their shit Dex and 13 STR, and a shield for 18 AC
Fabricate spell. Just remember to get Proficiency with Smith's Tools and voila!
Do skeletons have proficiency?
If you're making an archer skeleton horde, consider mending as your cantrip or consider hiring a fletcher to follow you around. You're gonna burn through arrows/bolts. :)
@@TreantmonksTemple The only reference I see is under Obedient Servants where it says "A skeleton can fight with weapons and wear armor..." Also the creature card for Skeleton does mention (armor scraps) next to AC.
The reference under zombies states: "...clad in the moldering apparel they wore when put to rest" and elsewhere "A zombie armed with a weapon uses it, but a zombie won't retrieve a dropped weapon...
You probably couldn’t command undeads from animate dead and danse macabre with the same bonus action.
(They both say, you can use you bonus action to command creatures made by This spell)
However, you can command the undead to accept your verbal commands (which have no action required)
Well you know, you could make a daisy chain of command. You (Animate dead) do what they do, they (Danse macabre) attack those creatures.
Obviously there will be some kinks to doing it like this, but for most of the purpose it should still work really great.
With all those attacks with the undead, would the lucky feat be able to be applied?
No, they aren't your attacks
A question to Inured to undeath interaction with homunculus:
if you use the spell homunculus you can sacrifice hp to give them to your homunculus. since you are immune to max hp reduction does that mean that you can't give your homunculus hp? or can you give them hp without sacrificing your own?
RAW you can't give it HP.
@@WexMajor82 can you explain why?
the text suggests to me the opposite.
it says roll a die. then your hp max is reduced and the homunculus gains hp. both those statements refer to the die roll and not to each other.
"When you do so, roll each die and add your Constitution modifier to it. Your hit point maximum is reduced by the total, and the homunculus’s hit point maximum and current hit points are both increased by it."
if they were linked wouldn't it read like "and the homunculus's hp[...] are both increased by the ammount you've lost"
@@deirakos It's because the increase in HM HP is subservient to your loss.
But I can see how someone could interpret it the other way.
I am not that sure anymore...
You sacrifice hit die but no, it doesn't reduce your hp. This interaction was confirmed on sage advice.
@@mylesdrake2949 but the sage advice does not talk about if it also increases the homuncculus's hp, does it?
kobold skelies
you need more images of kobold necromancer/wizards and less of primatekind necromancers. For the sake of heaven, have some pride, man!
At least use images of based raccoon wizards!
for the summon spells, it says: "you can use a bonus action to mentally command the creatures you make with this spell". That doesn't imply that you can use the same bonus action for creatures made with this spell and with another spell. Therefore how do you know if it is possible to command the undead from animate dead and danse macabre, and maybe create undead in the same bonus action? if you can't, then i don't see the point of using both in most cases, except maybe use danse macabre as a quick refill when all your skeletons die
Something to keep in mind is danse Macabre can be used beyond just attacking. Have some skeletons operate a siege weapon or a panic button to have a wall block someone. Plus by this level Rary's Telepathic Bond exists to just start designating some elite command structure to send orders readily should need be. Just designate an elite undead you have a bond to and so on. Even a zombie is just barely intelligent enough to be affected (definately won't make them smarter than attack or horde movements but hey there's that).