I'm a DM in a Villain-centered campaign and one of my players is a necromancer. The party just sailed to the far reaches of the north and happened to find some corpses frozen. The necromancer wants to raise them this upcoming session but I'm curious as to whether or not it's feasible in their condition.
I don’t see why not. Zombies could be diseased or missing limbs or half rotted and still work as zombies. Frozen seems like an easy one since it will be mostly preserved. As for moving with stiff joints, it’s magic, it just works.
I'm a DM in a Villain-centered campaign and one of my players is a necromancer. The party just sailed to the far reaches of the north and happened to find some corpses frozen. The necromancer wants to raise them this upcoming session but I'm curious as to whether or not it's feasible in their condition.
Any thoughts?
RAW a corpse is a corpse. It's up to you as the DM if there's enough ice in the way to constitute total cover as opposed to the corpse just being icy (you can't cast Animate Dead through total cover, but you're the arbiter of total cover), and it's up to you if the resulting zombie is restrained by the ice it's in. Note that Animate Dead doesn't actually coerce the target corpse to stand up and function, which is why e.g. it can make a Medium zombie out of a Small corpse. The spell transforms the corpse into a zombie in exactly the same way True Polymorph would. As a result, it's entirely up to you how the corpse's circumstances impact the resulting zombie.
I'm a DM in a Villain-centered campaign and one of my players is a necromancer. The party just sailed to the far reaches of the north and happened to find some corpses frozen. The necromancer wants to raise them this upcoming session but I'm curious as to whether or not it's feasible in their condition.
Any thoughts?
I don’t see why not. Zombies could be diseased or missing limbs or half rotted and still work as zombies. Frozen seems like an easy one since it will be mostly preserved. As for moving with stiff joints, it’s magic, it just works.
Definetly should be able to raise them. What he gets however....
If I were you I would consider creating your own "Ice Zombies". Maybe consider just moving their damage from Bludgeoning to Cold.
I dont see why it couldn't if the corpse isn't totally covered in ice or frozen snow that would prevent having a clear path to it.
RAW a corpse is a corpse. It's up to you as the DM if there's enough ice in the way to constitute total cover as opposed to the corpse just being icy (you can't cast Animate Dead through total cover, but you're the arbiter of total cover), and it's up to you if the resulting zombie is restrained by the ice it's in. Note that Animate Dead doesn't actually coerce the target corpse to stand up and function, which is why e.g. it can make a Medium zombie out of a Small corpse. The spell transforms the corpse into a zombie in exactly the same way True Polymorph would. As a result, it's entirely up to you how the corpse's circumstances impact the resulting zombie.
Next step is to find a frozen mammoth in a glacier and reanimate that (okay, it was an NPC that did that in my game, but w/e).