I want my bbeg to have undead minions without having to cast a bunch of animate dead/create undead each day.
If you are looking for intelligent undead minions, many of them create their own spawn or are created through special (read: not in the spell book) ritual and are permanent and can actually agree to work with the BBEG.
Alternatively... I might recommend that you alter your beliefs as a DM, and acknowledge that your BBEG need not operate on the exact same rules as the PCs.
_Satyesu_ wrote:
I would advice you to just create them, no spell, no ability or anything. Merely a story construct.
Finger of Death results in a permanent zombie minion when it kills.
I will second thewok and go a little further, the best way is to give the big bad a ritual that players wouldn't tolerate for their PC's. I would go with something like to get lots of permanent undead (and not just zombies), you have to agree to let Orcus use you as a meat puppet one day a month (DM's choice as to the day, but you can save vs. the possession, but if you succeed, all of your undead will turn on you). I am sure there are a couple of extreme powergamers who would jump at that, but most players I know would recoil like a vampire from a holy symbol at those terms.
Monsters do not need to follow the same rules at players.
mellored wrote:
mellored wrote:
One reason I liked 3.x was because PCs and NPCs could (but not necessarily always) follow the same rules. But with 5th, you can just kinda do away with that enitrely if you want. And as a DM I entirely plan to! 
Well, within reason, of course (as opposed to 4E where NPCs and PCs were not made with the same rules in mind)
I mean, permanent skeletons are a thing, because they exist in the world. Not because a Spell says so, but because that world's lore says so.
And as others have said, make the component cost or Focus be something gnarly, like the heart of an orphan, a virgin sacrifice, or a bag of dead puppies. Stuff a BBEG would gladly collect and use, but PCs might think twice about collecting, should they access his spellbook. Or it involves deific intervention, whose cost is trivial to a madman, but might be too steep for someone with a party or adventuring plans...
Just worship Orcus, spill some victim blood on a skull in his name and chant a prayer to the demon prince of undead, while casting your Animate Dead spell. Works every single time. Even though it might get you in trouble afterwards, but... nah, permanent undead are just too great. What could go wrong? 
mellored wrote:
Ah, I recall the good old "bats and beetles" talk...
When a mummy and deady love each other lots and lots and want to start a family, they give each other a special hug....
Saelorn wrote:
In 5e zombies actually have an intelligence score and can understand the languages they knew in life. You don't need to magically bind them to your will. You could easily say that the zombies can be influenced by other means such as the bbeg provides them a steady source of flesh to consume, or they served him when they were alive and continue to serve even in death.
Synjin wrote:
reddaemon wrote:
PHB 241;Finger of Death wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Well first of all, I do like my NPCs to follow PC rules. Or rather, as a player, I expect my PC to be able to duplicate (or at least approximate) anything an NPC can do. If a DM runs a game where I can't do so because NPCs exist under a different set of fantasy physics than PCs, I would consider strongly finding a different DM that runs a world (my preferred style) rather than a story backdrop as his campaign setting.
The reason I bring this up at all is that I think telling the OP "change your game style" is an ineffective way to deal with his question.
Now...one way I would handle it would be either a big magical ritual (like a lot of people have recommended), something that an evil PC could study the same forbidden lore and figure out how to pull off. After seeing enough published D&D adventures that tend to use the idea of some magical ritual that does this or that--and doesn't seem to follow any of the normal spellcasting rules--I finally decided that the best way for me to handle it is to say that the normal spellcasting rules apply to the normal and most common usage of magic in the world. You can research how to do all sorts of other things that tap into the magical powers of the world through a variety of rituals and such. They are rare and unique enough that there isn't any particular rules governing them other than what makes sense to the DM.
Another way that is really simple is just to have the necromancer make a deal with the intelligent undead. Intelligent undead are able to be negotiated with, and if the deal is appealing enough for them such an arrangement can certainly take place. Make a deal with a bunch of intelligent undead capable of controlling mindless undead. Have them instruct their mindless minions to follow your instructions, and bam, you've got your undead horde. You can use your spell slots to keep a personal guard of undead completely loyal to yourself, because the rest of them might turn on you given the opportunity. And of course, if you want to make it personal, you can always use the create undead spell to recruit some intelligent undead. You choose not to maintain it and negotiate with them instead.
Synjin wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Sword_of_Spirit wrote:
Hugin wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Sitting a Lich down for a 1-on-1 Q&A interview to find out why he has 100 undead instead of 50, wouldn't be on the top list of my priorities. But anyone would be more than welcome to go ask him.
I tend to assume that magic isn't limited to daily spell slots and the spells in the PHB... because there are plenty of things in D&D's iconic settings that require more than this.
PHB spells are those mastered by travelling, combat focused tomb-robbing wizards.
Creating large armies of undead or major reshaping of landscapes (material or planar), new animals are far more than casting a single spell, even a 9th level one.
They require unique research, and combinations of spells being cast in certain places (when the stars are right!), at certain times with certain unique or rare materials.
The Teleportation Circle spell is a good indication; you can use it to create a permanent portal by casting it at the same place every day for a year! (Which would also cost 18250gp of material components)
I wouldn't always put it out of the players' reach, but it's far more than something they merely add to their spellbooks. It would be AN ADVENTURE! in it'self to obtain.
Luke-Lightning wrote:
There's also the fact that not all the undead need to be under the bbeg's direct control. The undead created by animate/create are permanent, just not permanently under your complete control. So after you raise 100 or so zombies, next day let half of them go to free up slots to create more. The freed undead can be left strewn throughout dungeons as obstacles, while the controlled undead are directed for specific purposes. And as others have mentioned, since some of the undead have intelligence, they could be pursuaded by other means too, depending on whatever the hell motivates intelligent undead.
I think the best "balanced" approach would be to cover permanent undead creation under the magic item creation rules. So creating undead would cost gold, reagents and time just like creating a golem or clockwork construct would. In this case any BBEG is likely sitting on a place of power for one of the reagents and adventures with a powerful necromancer likely have something to do with purifying this place of evil so no future necromancers could use it.
Of course there'd be nothing wrong with the PCs setting up camp there and making undead. But it'd cost them gold and time just like any other magic item.
My general opinion is that you should have NPC's following understandable game rules as frequently as possible. Laziness on the front end leads to a lower quality experience in the game.
Situations I want to avoid:
1. If I make humanoid npc's and don't roughly build out their class, there is a chance that something comes up where I don't know their abilities or their modifiers for actions.
2. Use DM fiat to give my bbeg abilities that do not exist. First, players always notice and then it becomes a distraction. Now I have to explain why an NPC isn't following the rules. If the player's are persistent about finding out the source of this NPC's power, now I am forced into 1 of 2 scenario's that I do not like. Either, I give them their power-up which was originally just a way for me to buff up a boss without making more effort or I come up with as many undesirable costs for them to get the power as possible. Either way, it will negatively impact both the player and the DM's experience.
3. Everytime you noticably modify the rules as DM, it irritates players. The fiat in DM fiat is a 4 letter word for a reason. Player's hate it when you arbitrarily take control of the game and modify the rules and ignoring the rules for npc creation is a slippery slope because it's always easier to just throw some modifiers and unexplained abilities on a npc than to build it from scratch right.
Is DM Fiat laziness, or mystery? It's up to the players AND the PCs to find out!
Also, you can create permanent undead by bumping them every 4 months or so...
(putting the "necro" in "necromancer"!)
dev6500 wrote:
Kalani wrote:
Permanent control over zombies and skeletons isn't much to brag about. Whatever expensive or convoluted method you used, it's going to waste once the PCs start killing them.
So, if you're looking for a way to populate the BBEG's lair with undead, just populate it. You could easily say that the BBEG creates/animates new low-level undead but doesn't care to maintain control over them. So they just hang around until fresh meat shows up and things work themselves out as they always do when that happens. The hardet thing to explain using this method is how the BBEG avoids becoming food for their stray pets.
Additionally, wights have a natural extent of control over up to 8 zombies, but have normal capacity for judgment on their own. So the BBEG has a sort of working contract with a number of intelligent undead (wights, vampires, etc.) who bolster his numbers with their own bound undead servants.
It's a perpetual style debate, but the point isn't that a PC who is a human or elf ought to be able to pick up the breath weapon of a dragon or the life drain of an undead. It's that a PC who is a human ought to be able to learn the same sorts of things that an NPC who is a human can learn. If an NPC can learn to do something, a PC ought to be able to at least approximate it. Take the gladiator NPC for example. It is well done. If you look at what it does you can create a fighter that can do pretty much everything by taking the right feats. It won't be identical (the Battle Master parry maneuver isn't the same as the Parry monster ability) but it will still be close enough for most people.
So for some gamers, NPCs may not need to follow the same rules as PCs, but they better be able to fake it well enough so that players can potentially learn the same tricks as their opponents. Other people don't game that way, but it's a style preference--there isn't one true way here. 5e is actually designed for the DM to be able to do it however he prefers. It straight up gives you permission to create NPCs with monster rules or characters rules--it's up to you.
As far as the issue of necromancy...here's what I'd do. In LMoP (spoilers), there is a 4th level evil mage who has a dozen zombies under his control--despite the fact that he can't even cast animate dead. I treat it the same way as I treat some of the interesting comments in the Monster Manual about how certain monsters are created by spellcasters using magical rituals (that are nowhere in the rules explained). Basically, I say that normal spellcasting is merely the most common form that magic takes. There are a lot of other sorts of rituals, fantastic magical phenomena, etc. It is assumed that the necromancer has knowledge of some sort of ritual that allows him to control undead beyond what an animate dead spell would. It is probably a long, involved ordeal to make it all work and requires the equivalent of a magic item formula (described in the DMG). If a PC is able to find such a formula then they can spend a bunch of downtime doing the same sort of thing. Ever wonder why NPC spellcasters are always setting up shop in magical dungeons trying to uncover their "secrets", while PCs just blow through, grab treasure, destroy a talking statue, kill monsters and say, "deed done"? The NPC was looking for magical rituals! Assuming the PCs want to do the same sort of things, they can get the same sort of results.
Appellations to dark gods. Pacts with Orcus. Secret rituals that involve humanoid sacrifice and/or the sacrifice of newborn infants. Opening a portal to the negative energy plane. Sacrificing your own longevity, youth, and/or and vitality as a material spell component. A combination of the above, etc..... There are dozens of ways they could achieve this which would make all but the most black-hearted PC balk.
Often, the risks associated with such rituals and pacts are simply not worth the reward. Think of Faust if you are struggling to see what I mean, or perhaps Strad von Zarovich from the Ravenloft setting. Short-sighted Faustian deals are usually part and parcel of how black-hearted Necromancers achieve their goals.
Animate Dead is simply a temporary spell effect. It is by no means the only method of summoning and/or raising an army of the dead. It is the safest method though, and as such - it has severe limits. How many PCs would be willing to use the still beating heart of three dozen infants as a spell component in order to greatly enhance the animate dead spell effect?
As a DM I might simply give a lich the ability to cast in armor, to create and control more skeletons, to manipulate spells like a sorcerer or whatever I like. They are not necesarily carbon copies of the PC classes. It might be a learned skill, it might be a dark gift or the result of a ritual in similar fashion to making a magical item.
In the end it does not really matter unless the DM wants it to matter.
Kalani wrote:
Llenlleawg wrote:
I've just introduced a new Tool - the Animator's Kit. It's 200 gold.
This has 10 uses like a healers kit and allows you to make animated undead permanent for the expenditure of one slot per CR of the undead in question. So 5 gold for a 1/4 CR, 10 gold for a 1/2 CR and so on.
Each undead made permanent remains so by the equally permanent allocation of the spell slot used to animate it, meaning it doesn't return to the caster on a short or long rest.
So no more getting distracted making your breakfast and all your undead fall to peices.
It's one of the rules I really dislike about 5th edition, and makes Necromancers look like amateur muppets.
Now, for the small addition of a toolset, it's a thing of the past in my campaigns.
I also have Animator's Workshops that give bonus spell slots for exclusive use for the creation of corporeal undead, as long as they are made there. Not only does it allow the same permanence to be worked into animating undead as an Animator's Kit (at the same price in rare ingredients), it also gives the Necromancer a bonus spell level per 2500 invested in the workshop - Apprentice Mortarium 2500 gold, Adept's Mortarium 5000 gold, Masters Mortarium 7500 gold, Grandmasters Mortarium 10,000 gold, Legendary Mortarium 15,000.
Sword_of_Spirit wrote:
Kalani wrote:
mellored wrote:
Or how about an artifact?? Boom, done.
In the same way that the game does not need to provide spells for flying castles and perm teleporters, it does not need to provide a mechanic for creating undead armies. In 5e you can simply add a new spell or magical item to your game world. Heck, you could even bring back the permanacy spell for this purpose if you so desired. With 5e, you are not forced to have different rules for monsters and PCs.
Of course, characters will most certainly think there is a way to create perm undead minions. In fact, a group of PCs might go out of their way to discover how it's accomplished. For this reason, I think the DM and the players should play the game with the understanding that not all the spells and magical items in the game world exist in the core rule books.
This reminds me of a 2e adventure that included a Create Mummy spell. I do recal being very excited when my character found a unique spell and sat down to scribe it into his spell book. Finding new unique spells that can be used in and out of combat can be a lot of fun. I certainly wouldn't want to remove that excitement from my games.
Caliburn wrote:
Synjin wrote:
Pandaemonius wrote:
In my campaigns NPCs regularly do things PCs cannot, just like PCs can do thing NPCs cannot. A necromancer may be good at raising an army of undead, but never mastered the ability to cast a spell with the snap of his fingers.
Just like IRL I like to think a pretty competent application developer but would have no idea how to engineer an internal combustion engine. I may be able to understand the concepts behind the engine, but actually design one? Not going to happen.
I am running a four horseman game. All of the horsemen are made using phb rules but are level 40 (level 20 in 2 classes). Death has the potential for an undead army (though he is L. Neutral so he'd not invade any cities. Here's how it works:
If he kills someone, digs up a grave, or finds a dead body he raises it and brings it to his shack (he lives very modestly). He has them walk into a mass grave (disguised with illusion magic). They then lie down in the grave and he kills them.
All of his money goes to making spell scrolls to animate dead. At the moment Death has enough scrolls for an army of around 2,000 undead, though his mass grave usually has only about 500-1000 usable corpses (as per the rate of decomposition.) Since casting the spell takes 6 seconds that means he could have the army ready to go in under an hour. Using this, I will tell you how to effectively use your undead.
Attack a City: Walk them into town. Get out of town. When the spell wears off they will act as undead.
Defend a Building: Walk them into a building. Close the door.
Anything else you need to do with an army of zombies?
Kalani wrote:
Kalani wrote:
I agree that the necromancer is not well done at all. Even for a "White" Necromacer a Transmuter is a better option. A Transmuter can raise the dead, but it is a thematically inappropriate power for that sub class. It goes against the very definition of transmutation and necromacy provided in the PHB.
The designers had NO freaking clue how to design a minion based class. The pathora of different rules that govern beasts, familairs, animate dead etc are evidence of this.
dmgorgon wrote:
Animate Dead creates permanent zombies. They just don't obey you after 24 hours. You can fill your dungeon full of PLENTY of zombies and other monsters. You don't actually have to control them, just have your evil Wizard have an escape plan if the zombies decide he's tastier than the PCs. Bonus points if you have lower-level apprentices who use Animate Dead to take control of your zombies and lead them into battle. Also, Liches and other intelligent undead tend to be able to lead zombies/skeletons because they're ALSO undead (the zombies don't have any reason to attack them), are more powerful than the zombies/skeletons, and are usually willing to lead the horde to living things to kill, which the undead tend to want to do anyway.
Your evil wizard can command an army of zombies to attack a town because he commands a few of the ones at the front of the pack, and the rest of the zombies follow the ones you're commanding. Or you have ghoul lieutenants command the pack. It's like Thriller.
The idea that to successfully kill a PC-style necromancer and his army of undead only requires you to distract them at dawn (or whenever) for long enough for their army to collapse because of missing the recast 'window' is just lame.
@SoS, nobody is telling the OP to change his game style because he never stated his style of play. People are merely making suggestions.
I'm in the camp of do what you want for the story as a DM, but it's also incredibly easy to implement any number of actual game mechanics to make it possible also.
Lots of great ideas in here.
Talreign wrote:
Problem is every time you have an NPC break the rules of the 'world' and bypass RAW just because, you break your world a little bit. Anything a PC witnesses creates the potential that the PC will look at the situation and say 'how?'...But if the PC won't let it go, you are on the spot to come up with an explanation....I mean you can already have infinite simulacrums of yourself that can cast infinite wishes to cover your party with all sorts of permanent abilities...U only gotta be 17th level for that.
Good example is the researcher trait.....says you basically know how to find whatever information you are looking for. So suddenly you introduced the possibility that one can create infinite undead soldiers and they want to know how....now u have to either give a real answer, or come up with an impossibe location. PC disenfranchisement is a big deal....You lose at DMing if your PCs realize you are just railroading them with your plot and they arent actually a part of the story.
Then yeah you have the problem of theoretical magic potentials......If a lich can animate 5 skeletons a day permanently and he doesn't have to expens any magic to control then a year from now you have 1500 skeletons.....1500 attack rolls even only hitting on 20s averages 75 natural 20s dealing 600 damage per round....congratulations u own the world. Which of course is still less damage than 1500 simulacrums casting meteor swarm but still...so maybe I rendered my own argument irrelevant.
Byakugan01 wrote:
The only rules are what the DM says. It plainly states in the DMG that the rules serve the players and DM, not the other way around.
In other words, do what is fun to the group. It wouldn't be world breaking in the least in our game.
Byakugan01 wrote:
ModusPonens wrote:
So the BBEG spent years/decades researching how to create undead that remain permanently under their command, without having to ever recast a spell to retain said command, through a vile ritual. Not wanting others to be able to copy their works, they wrote all of their research and results in complicated code. The spell Comprehend Languages wouldn't be able to decode it at all, and most people competent enough in fighting likely lack skill in cryptography to even start decoding it. Keep in mind that the genres expected for play have magic users jealously guard their secrets (or at least their powerful secrets/spells), as that's a way for them to maintain a position of power that others can't then take away from them. After all, it's not good practice to give your opponents/competitors easy access to your trade secrets.
This also means that once the PCs kill the BBEG and raid their library they won't even know which books hold the BBEG's readily available spells, their diaries, research notes, horrible angsty poems, etc, as it could read as general bureaucratic records, bird watching, cookie recipes, terribly written adult literature, or any other number of content types. And that assumes they keep said notes written in books and scrolls instead of as a series of different stitch types in a tapestry, patterns in the wainscotting on the walls, represented in murals and paintings throughout their lair, the arrangement of plants in their courtyard, or in even more unusual ways.
Perhaps they blundered into how to raise the undead permanently under their command, or arrived at how to do such without extensive research. What if they were trying to make a resurrection spell but messed up the formula? What if the ritual appeared to them in a dream? What if a stroke of genius hit them partway through research and they never wrote down the latter half of how to complete the ritual? What if they have eiditic memory and so never bothered to write down their research notes at all? If they're undead themselves perhaps they figued out how to create a special bond/dependency through negative energy? Perhaps their undeath is powered by the creation of undead servants and the only true way to defeat them is by destroying all of them? There are really many ways that such an army could be built that the characters wouldn't be able to learn the methods for themselves.
Even if a character with the Sage background knows where to find information on different subjects does not mean the information they're looking for is actually written down or known anywhere on that plane of existance, or even any of them. After all, it's not like they can just go to a certain library to find out the exact date a volcano will erupt next, how many apples the first king ate on his third day after coronation, what the local blacksmith dreamt on night of their 7th birthday, or other such facts or lore. A Sage might know the best place to look for information, but it doesn't mean the information is there. Of course, the Sage might know the best place to find out the capabilities of the BBEG is to go to the BBEG themselves, but that's not really an option if they want that information before facing the BBEG.