Hi everyone, first time posting so apologies if this turns out to be the wrong place for this question.
I'm first time DM-ing a group with my own custom campaign. The end villian being a Drow sorceroress with Necromancy as a preferred magic. For the end battle with her I want her to, rather than attack directly, keep raising swathes of zombies and skeletons from the ground. Looking at actual D&D spells in the PHB the only "Raise Dead" abilities are 1 hour casting time (if I remember correctly) whereas I want something where she can use an action to instantly raise another undead. The plan being that these undead are low AC and HP so easy to kill but each time a player kills one, another one replaces it each time it comes to the Sorceress's turn.
I know that story and flavour is more important than rules in D&D, but is this kind of home brewing going to far from the rules and available spells?
I only ask here as I don't want to give anything away to my play group by discussing it with them, so thought I'd guage people's thoughts here as to whether I risk backlash from the rules lawyers among the group.
There is a spell in Xanathar's Guide to Everything that is an action and raises up to five nearby corpses as zombies or skeletons. Might be worth looking into.
Also, you could devise a spell or ability to create/summon undead that follows the style of spells like conjure woodland beings but brings undead into the fight.
Definitely not going too far to give an NPC a capability like this, but you do need to be mindful of how you intend to proceed should players request to be able to do the same thing (i.e. you need to decide if you want to make it fair enough for their character to use, or if you are going to say the ability is NPC only).
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Hi everyone, first time posting so apologies if this turns out to be the wrong place for this question.
I'm first time DM-ing a group with my own custom campaign. The end villian being a Drow sorceroress with Necromancy as a preferred magic. For the end battle with her I want her to, rather than attack directly, keep raising swathes of zombies and skeletons from the ground. Looking at actual D&D spells in the PHB the only "Raise Dead" abilities are 1 hour casting time (if I remember correctly) whereas I want something where she can use an action to instantly raise another undead. The plan being that these undead are low AC and HP so easy to kill but each time a player kills one, another one replaces it each time it comes to the Sorceress's turn.
I know that story and flavour is more important than rules in D&D, but is this kind of home brewing going to far from the rules and available spells?
I only ask here as I don't want to give anything away to my play group by discussing it with them, so thought I'd guage people's thoughts here as to whether I risk backlash from the rules lawyers among the group.
Thanks.
There is a spell in Xanathar's Guide to Everything that is an action and raises up to five nearby corpses as zombies or skeletons. Might be worth looking into.
Also, you could devise a spell or ability to create/summon undead that follows the style of spells like conjure woodland beings but brings undead into the fight.
Definitely not going too far to give an NPC a capability like this, but you do need to be mindful of how you intend to proceed should players request to be able to do the same thing (i.e. you need to decide if you want to make it fair enough for their character to use, or if you are going to say the ability is NPC only).