I was watching Dungeon Dudes video on playing Necromancers and was wondering what spells would be good for buffing/augmenting my hoard? I'm still kinda new and going though every Wizard spell is intimidating, but the ones I've seen so far as an example are Enlarge/Reduce, Magic Weapon (with a Skeleton), and Dragon Breath as examples. While those are cool, they're all single target and require concentration. Are there any Wizard spells that allow for buffing multiple creatures? What other good buff/augment wizard spells would you recommend?
I know I could do a Cleric Necro and I could bless my minions, and I might do that, but am curious what Wizard spells fit this bill? Thanks!
Just did a search, and there is really not much at all. Longstrider (no concentration) can be upcast to cover many zombies, and could be handy to get their maneuverability up to match a normal humanoid. Other than that, the only bulk buff I can find in a Wizard's repertoire is Invisibility, upcast to cover the whole horde. Mass buff is just not a Wizard's bread and butter...
Buffing, augmenting, or generally just messing with...
Shape Water: Create some improvised ice weapons for the undead to lug around.
Mage Armor: Little bit better armor for one deadboi.
Protection from Evil and Good: Protect one undead while it fights celestials/demons/devils/undead/aberations/fey/elementals
Darkness: Cast it on an object that can be sheathed/pocketed and have your undead guy carry it around the battlefield and turn it on/off on command.
Invisibility: Not much use on low level undead for anything other than setting up an ambush, but on a ghast you can stink up the joint from safety.
Flame Arrows: Makes skeletons better archers, and nothing saying mutiple skeletons couldn't be standing around a single quiver you enchanted for the whole group.
Gaseous Form: Not much use for low level undead, but kind of funny on a ghast, and scary on a mummy who has meatier backup that can munch on paralyzed foes.
Stinking Cloud: Not a direct buff, but if you cast that on the battlefield it'll definitely turn the tide in your undead's favor. (Cloudkill even better)
Polymorph: Kinda feels like cheating, to buff your undead by making them not-dead animals. But True Polymorph... if you give a skeleton flesh, would it become a completely mind-controlled human companion that could level up alongside you as a loyal death knight? Perhaps! :D
Animate Objects Could be really cool animating a bunch of chains or something that are wrapped around a big fat zombie!
Wish: "I wish all of my dozens of skeletons exploded on death to create Fireball effects that deal poison damage."
Thanks that's very helpful! Very intrigued by having one of my skeli archers carrying a stone in a pouch that I can cast Darkness on then he can drop it providing mobile concealment.
The rest of your suggestions are awesome too and reminds me that I need to get more creative.
I think you may be better off going low-tech and giving them armor and weapons to buff their stats. Skeletons are good with bows and zombies are good with melee weapons. I wouldn't bother trying to buff zombie AC since it is so bad to begin with, but you can make them hit harder at any rate.
RAW, Flame Arrows is not allowed to be used in the way you describe, but I like the idea.
The Ammunition specifically disallows "sharing" a quiver.
Ammunition. You can use a weapon that has the ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from the weapon. Each time you attack with the weapon, you expend one piece of ammunition. Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack (you need a free hand to load a one-handed weapon). At the end of the battle, you can recover half your expended ammunition by taking a minute to search the battlefield.
Drawing from the quiver is done as a part of making an attack, and you can't pre-load a ranged weapon. Drawing from the quiver, for everyone other than the creature wearing it, requires the [Tooltip Not Found] action; taking something from another creature's person is not included in the "free" object interaction from making an attack.
Otherwise, really neat ideas.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Where does it say you can't pre-load a ranged weapon? Do you mean ANY ranged weapon? I see the line, "Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack," but that seems like more of a clarification that loading your weapon takes no additional work beyond the attack action rather than a restriction preventing you from doing the former ahead of time.
I have been wrong plenty of times before. Can you point me to the guidance that you are basing your statement on?
Yeah, and also the ammunition rules and quiver rules don't have any sort of language specifically stating or even implying that quivers can't be shared by two creatures standing side by side... The PHB Chapter 9 "other interaction" rules don't explicitly require that it be an object on your person or in your square, but it wouldn't be an unreasonable ruling for a DM to make. I do think that Flame Arrows includes limitations that would stop that getting too out of control, since the spell ends after 12 flaming arrows have been drawn; whether it's one creature drawing arrows over several rounds or a bunch drawing them all in one round, the same amount of damage will require the same number of successful attack rolls over the life of the spell.
It's exactly that line which establishes it to be so. To be more precise, there are zero general rule references to ranged weapons that do allow you to pre-load a ranged weapon, and the Ammunition property does establish loading happening during the actual attack itself. It applies to any ranged weapon that carries the Ammunition property.
Not rules related, but carrying a loaded weapon is almost universally a poor decision. It is a universally poor decision for tension weapons (bows/crossbows)--accidental discharge, broken strings, warped bow arms, etc. Even modern firearms carry inherent risk of discharge cocked & locked while in a holster, and some of the most popular pistols with newer internal firing pins/strikers are worse with this issue than older designs.
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You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I get the whole "you can't because there is no rule that says you can" bit, but you can follow this rabbit hole to the point of absurdity. I mean, the rules talk about how drawing your (melee) weapon is part of the attack action (PHB 190) but I have found zero general rule references to melee weapons that do allow you to pre-draw a melee weapon. In fairness, the rule for the ammunition property only says that the loading is done as part of the attack action--not before it. You could always (re)load your weapon as part of the attack action after you have fired it and doing so would meet the letter of the rule. In fact, not only does does the exact wording provide for drawing your ammo as part of the attack action, but you could say that this specific rule beats the general rule that you use your object interaction to pick up your ammunition from, for instance, a barrel of arrows sitting on the ground between two archers.
All of that being said, you're probably right. It just never occurred to me to read that rule in a way that imposed a limit on firing a weapon. It always seemed to me to be written to expand what you can do with your turn. I do find it weird that I can find absolutely no other discussion about this online, save for one Stack Exchange article that seems to think it's ok to pre-load your crossbow.
I'll skip the second part of your response and stick to the rules discussion.
I don't disagree with the spirit of the issue. This is one area where very clearly stating what you can do (with ammo) is significant, and the complete lack of any such statement in the basic rules is... also significant. 😶
[edit] TD, little bit of knowledge you might find interesting: just because you can follow an argument to the point of absurdity does not make the actual argument in question absurd. That's literally one definition of a slippery-slope fallacy. Not saying that's what you're doing; just info I figured you'd enjoy knowing.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Not that I'm the DM, but I think I'd rule that you "have ammunition" when it's within reach in your square. So I'd say, especially if I had a standing quiver made in game for this purpose, that I could put that quiver on the point between four squares, and four archers could use it at once. To me that's a good combination of realism and still having some limitation, in that it wouldn't allow you to have one archer holding that quiver, or two quivers lol, in the middle of a 3x3, allowing 9 archers to use it.
See how if I blow it out of proportion more it makes my ruling seem more reasonable? lol thanks for all the input this really shed a lot of light on the issue!
I think you're better off using fantasy media than real life as your frame of reference when it comes to D&D. How many books, video games, and movies have you seen where someone pulls back their cloak or kicks open a door and just fires a shot from their crossbow without loading it first? Reading back through this old thread, I do get a kick out of the idea of someone taking the 'use an object' action to pre-load their crossbow and then when they want to fire, the DM makes them unload it first so that they can load it as part of the attack action :) It reminds me of a little kid running down the hallway in grade school then the teacher makes them go back and walk.
I think that necromancers as PCs in 5e basically blow. All you can really manage is to summon up a bunch of very weak creatures, and at the point where you're able to start summoning them, they're already more or less useless in combat. Who is really going to blow a 3rd level spell slot to create a Zombie or Skeleton?. Well, a committed roleplayer I guess... But with the introduction of summon undead, animate dead looks even worse. danse macabre is slightly stronger than animate dead but what caster with 5th level spells really needs the help of 5 Skeletons for an hour over summoning an elemental with conjure elemental? And let's not get started on wasting a 6th level spell slot to create undead.
If you think any of these spells are worth casting, take a look at conjure animals and conjure woodland beings. Even ignoring the "I summon 8 pixies, 4 of them cast polymorph on the party, turning them into Tyrannosaurus Rexs, the other 4 cast Fly on them" nonsense, conjuring 8 charging elk is so far superior to what a necromancer can hope to accomplish with their summoning spells, Necromancers are by far the weakest summoners in the game.
This thread is actually inspiring me to make homebrew versions of these spells that actually do something useful.
Out of curiosity, were there other versions of D&D or other TTRPGs that handle summoning classes in general and necromancers specifically in a better way? I would love to do a deep dive into what makes a good necromancer good in practice as well as in theory.
I think that necromancers as PCs in 5e basically blow. All you can really manage is to summon up a bunch of very weak creatures, and at the point where you're able to start summoning them, they're already more or less useless in combat. Who is really going to blow a 3rd level spell slot to create a Zombie or Skeleton?. Well, a committed roleplayer I guess... But with the introduction of summon undead, animate dead looks even worse. danse macabre is slightly stronger than animate dead but what caster with 5th level spells really needs the help of 5 Skeletons for an hour over summoning an elemental with conjure elemental? And let's not get started on wasting a 6th level spell slot to create undead.
I think you accidentally overlooked the part where animate dead lasts 24 hours without concentration vs 1 hour with concentration. And after animating 1 (or 2 with undead thrall feature), each casting maintains control over 4. That can get out of hand pretty easily.
Create undead can make wights at higher level which can each permanently control 12 zombies.
And the 14th level feature can permanently control a mummy lord which can cast create undead itself.
Necromancers can RAW control more than 100 zombies at a time. That doesn't blow.
I think D&D has struggled with balancing summoners/companions since .. well at least since 3rd. Summons were pretty powerful in 3rd, because there was no Concentration, and the summon had all their actions. Then 4e said "Action economy is important!" and summons became total weak-sauce.
5e kept that philosophy, and then found out that Beast Master Rangers sucked even more in 5e than they did in 4e. So all the updates for a while have been to provide us with more spells and options to make summons/companion suck less. Hence Summon Undead is better than Animate Dead (most of the time.. upcast Animate Dead is arguably more powerful by RAW anyway.)
I was watching Dungeon Dudes video on playing Necromancers and was wondering what spells would be good for buffing/augmenting my hoard? I'm still kinda new and going though every Wizard spell is intimidating, but the ones I've seen so far as an example are Enlarge/Reduce, Magic Weapon (with a Skeleton), and Dragon Breath as examples. While those are cool, they're all single target and require concentration. Are there any Wizard spells that allow for buffing multiple creatures? What other good buff/augment wizard spells would you recommend?
I know I could do a Cleric Necro and I could bless my minions, and I might do that, but am curious what Wizard spells fit this bill? Thanks!
Just did a search, and there is really not much at all. Longstrider (no concentration) can be upcast to cover many zombies, and could be handy to get their maneuverability up to match a normal humanoid. Other than that, the only bulk buff I can find in a Wizard's repertoire is Invisibility, upcast to cover the whole horde. Mass buff is just not a Wizard's bread and butter...
Buffing, augmenting, or generally just messing with...
Shape Water: Create some improvised ice weapons for the undead to lug around.
Mage Armor: Little bit better armor for one deadboi.
Protection from Evil and Good: Protect one undead while it fights celestials/demons/devils/undead/aberations/fey/elementals
Darkness: Cast it on an object that can be sheathed/pocketed and have your undead guy carry it around the battlefield and turn it on/off on command.
Invisibility: Not much use on low level undead for anything other than setting up an ambush, but on a ghast you can stink up the joint from safety.
Flame Arrows: Makes skeletons better archers, and nothing saying mutiple skeletons couldn't be standing around a single quiver you enchanted for the whole group.
Gaseous Form: Not much use for low level undead, but kind of funny on a ghast, and scary on a mummy who has meatier backup that can munch on paralyzed foes.
Life Transference: Not much buffing, but one of the few ways to heal an undead without a cleric to cast Inflict Wounds. See also Negative Energy Flood
Stinking Cloud: Not a direct buff, but if you cast that on the battlefield it'll definitely turn the tide in your undead's favor. (Cloudkill even better)
Polymorph: Kinda feels like cheating, to buff your undead by making them not-dead animals. But True Polymorph... if you give a skeleton flesh, would it become a completely mind-controlled human companion that could level up alongside you as a loyal death knight? Perhaps! :D
Animate Objects Could be really cool animating a bunch of chains or something that are wrapped around a big fat zombie!
Wish: "I wish all of my dozens of skeletons exploded on death to create Fireball effects that deal poison damage."
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Thanks that's very helpful! Very intrigued by having one of my skeli archers carrying a stone in a pouch that I can cast Darkness on then he can drop it providing mobile concealment.
The rest of your suggestions are awesome too and reminds me that I need to get more creative.
I think you may be better off going low-tech and giving them armor and weapons to buff their stats. Skeletons are good with bows and zombies are good with melee weapons. I wouldn't bother trying to buff zombie AC since it is so bad to begin with, but you can make them hit harder at any rate.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
RAW, Flame Arrows is not allowed to be used in the way you describe, but I like the idea.
The Ammunition specifically disallows "sharing" a quiver.
Drawing from the quiver is done as a part of making an attack, and you can't pre-load a ranged weapon. Drawing from the quiver, for everyone other than the creature wearing it, requires the [Tooltip Not Found] action; taking something from another creature's person is not included in the "free" object interaction from making an attack.
Otherwise, really neat ideas.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Where does it say you can't pre-load a ranged weapon? Do you mean ANY ranged weapon? I see the line, "Drawing the ammunition from a quiver, case, or other container is part of the attack," but that seems like more of a clarification that loading your weapon takes no additional work beyond the attack action rather than a restriction preventing you from doing the former ahead of time.
I have been wrong plenty of times before. Can you point me to the guidance that you are basing your statement on?
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Yeah, and also the ammunition rules and quiver rules don't have any sort of language specifically stating or even implying that quivers can't be shared by two creatures standing side by side... The PHB Chapter 9 "other interaction" rules don't explicitly require that it be an object on your person or in your square, but it wouldn't be an unreasonable ruling for a DM to make. I do think that Flame Arrows includes limitations that would stop that getting too out of control, since the spell ends after 12 flaming arrows have been drawn; whether it's one creature drawing arrows over several rounds or a bunch drawing them all in one round, the same amount of damage will require the same number of successful attack rolls over the life of the spell.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
It's exactly that line which establishes it to be so. To be more precise, there are zero general rule references to ranged weapons that do allow you to pre-load a ranged weapon, and the Ammunition property does establish loading happening during the actual attack itself. It applies to any ranged weapon that carries the Ammunition property.
Not rules related, but carrying a loaded weapon is almost universally a poor decision. It is a universally poor decision for tension weapons (bows/crossbows)--accidental discharge, broken strings, warped bow arms, etc. Even modern firearms carry inherent risk of discharge cocked & locked while in a holster, and some of the most popular pistols with newer internal firing pins/strikers are worse with this issue than older designs.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
I get the whole "you can't because there is no rule that says you can" bit, but you can follow this rabbit hole to the point of absurdity. I mean, the rules talk about how drawing your (melee) weapon is part of the attack action (PHB 190) but I have found zero general rule references to melee weapons that do allow you to pre-draw a melee weapon. In fairness, the rule for the ammunition property only says that the loading is done as part of the attack action--not before it. You could always (re)load your weapon as part of the attack action after you have fired it and doing so would meet the letter of the rule. In fact, not only does does the exact wording provide for drawing your ammo as part of the attack action, but you could say that this specific rule beats the general rule that you use your object interaction to pick up your ammunition from, for instance, a barrel of arrows sitting on the ground between two archers.
All of that being said, you're probably right. It just never occurred to me to read that rule in a way that imposed a limit on firing a weapon. It always seemed to me to be written to expand what you can do with your turn. I do find it weird that I can find absolutely no other discussion about this online, save for one Stack Exchange article that seems to think it's ok to pre-load your crossbow.
I'll skip the second part of your response and stick to the rules discussion.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I don't disagree with the spirit of the issue. This is one area where very clearly stating what you can do (with ammo) is significant, and the complete lack of any such statement in the basic rules is... also significant. 😶
[edit] TD, little bit of knowledge you might find interesting: just because you can follow an argument to the point of absurdity does not make the actual argument in question absurd. That's literally one definition of a slippery-slope fallacy. Not saying that's what you're doing; just info I figured you'd enjoy knowing.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Not that I'm the DM, but I think I'd rule that you "have ammunition" when it's within reach in your square. So I'd say, especially if I had a standing quiver made in game for this purpose, that I could put that quiver on the point between four squares, and four archers could use it at once. To me that's a good combination of realism and still having some limitation, in that it wouldn't allow you to have one archer holding that quiver, or two quivers lol, in the middle of a 3x3, allowing 9 archers to use it.
See how if I blow it out of proportion more it makes my ruling seem more reasonable? lol thanks for all the input this really shed a lot of light on the issue!
Its a common practice for bow hunters to have an arrow nocked, but not drawn. In DnD, this is Ready action imho
Think Archers holding guard on captured prisonsers, nocked but not drawn
At least 50% of the Attack action steps are done (Retrieve Ammo\Nock\Draw-aim\Release)
I think you're better off using fantasy media than real life as your frame of reference when it comes to D&D. How many books, video games, and movies have you seen where someone pulls back their cloak or kicks open a door and just fires a shot from their crossbow without loading it first? Reading back through this old thread, I do get a kick out of the idea of someone taking the 'use an object' action to pre-load their crossbow and then when they want to fire, the DM makes them unload it first so that they can load it as part of the attack action :) It reminds me of a little kid running down the hallway in grade school then the teacher makes them go back and walk.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think that necromancers as PCs in 5e basically blow. All you can really manage is to summon up a bunch of very weak creatures, and at the point where you're able to start summoning them, they're already more or less useless in combat. Who is really going to blow a 3rd level spell slot to create a Zombie or Skeleton?. Well, a committed roleplayer I guess... But with the introduction of summon undead, animate dead looks even worse. danse macabre is slightly stronger than animate dead but what caster with 5th level spells really needs the help of 5 Skeletons for an hour over summoning an elemental with conjure elemental? And let's not get started on wasting a 6th level spell slot to create undead.
If you think any of these spells are worth casting, take a look at conjure animals and conjure woodland beings. Even ignoring the "I summon 8 pixies, 4 of them cast polymorph on the party, turning them into Tyrannosaurus Rexs, the other 4 cast Fly on them" nonsense, conjuring 8 charging elk is so far superior to what a necromancer can hope to accomplish with their summoning spells, Necromancers are by far the weakest summoners in the game.
This thread is actually inspiring me to make homebrew versions of these spells that actually do something useful.
Out of curiosity, were there other versions of D&D or other TTRPGs that handle summoning classes in general and necromancers specifically in a better way? I would love to do a deep dive into what makes a good necromancer good in practice as well as in theory.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think you accidentally overlooked the part where animate dead lasts 24 hours without concentration vs 1 hour with concentration. And after animating 1 (or 2 with undead thrall feature), each casting maintains control over 4. That can get out of hand pretty easily.
Create undead can make wights at higher level which can each permanently control 12 zombies.
And the 14th level feature can permanently control a mummy lord which can cast create undead itself.
Necromancers can RAW control more than 100 zombies at a time. That doesn't blow.
It does for the DM
"Not all those who wander are lost"
I think D&D has struggled with balancing summoners/companions since .. well at least since 3rd. Summons were pretty powerful in 3rd, because there was no Concentration, and the summon had all their actions. Then 4e said "Action economy is important!" and summons became total weak-sauce.
5e kept that philosophy, and then found out that Beast Master Rangers sucked even more in 5e than they did in 4e. So all the updates for a while have been to provide us with more spells and options to make summons/companion suck less. Hence Summon Undead is better than Animate Dead (most of the time.. upcast Animate Dead is arguably more powerful by RAW anyway.)
At Sanvael. The campaign I'm currently hard carrying in begs to differ that Necromancers are not good summoners..