What did you do when the skeletons stopped obeying you? After the 24 hr period?

Recast Animate Dead. It reanimates 1 skeleton or *regains control of up to 4* at 3rd level.

People are forgetting, ritual casting. A level 20 Lich who does not require sleep could maintain 644 skeletons in a day with 6 minutes to relax. You could also use 5 Wights to turn 30 of your personal skelebois into 5 Wights and 60 zombois. Then you can kit out the Wights with shields and the best medium Armor money can buy. Then give that 614 rapiers, shields and similar armour. Now go make your own undead nation.

If you want to check my math, it is : ((((24 x 60) - 15)/11) x 4) + 128).

Quote from Etro24 >>

People are forgetting, ritual casting. A level 20 Lich who does not require sleep could maintain 644 skeletons in a day with 6 minutes to relax. You could also use 5 Wights to turn 30 of your personal skelebois into 5 Wights and 60 zombois. Then you can kit out the Wights with shields and the best medium Armor money can buy. Then give that 614 rapiers, shields and similar armour. Now go make your own undead nation.

If you want to check my math, it is : ((((24 x 60) - 15)/11) x 4) + 128).

 Just one problem. This is not a ritual spell. You cannot ritual cast a non ritual tagged spell

Damn, didn't realise, but if your DM allows it there is always homebrew.

Besides if you are DMing a Lich encounter you could say the lich can do this because they have unlocked the secrets of life and death, gaining greater mastery over necromancy. This allows for "army encounters", tyranny from hordes of skeletons burning villages (maybe a "defend the people", "fend off the horde" or "rescue the civilians encounter"), and causing the spellcaster(s) of the group to expend some fireball slots in the final confrontation.

And if you want slightly tougher, mindless undead, once again using the almighty power of homebrew, you could give player levels (lets say 1 per 4 CR/Lv of necromancer), and voila, level 5 monk-zombies and level 5 fighter-skeletons, maybe level 5 fighter-wights although they may get more as the dedicated generals.

Anyways thanks for pointing that out.

You probably have to have supreme magic power over the arts of necromancy, like that of a lich.

Exactly a powerful being with enough control over death, maybe even one of the oldest and strongest liches.

one thing i wonder with this spell. if you wanted to get rid of your skeletal army to say put them in a bag of holding for later use, would the skeletons defend themselves if you control them?

Great advice I heard for this spell: cast it at the stroke of midnight.

Not only is that thematically fitting, it gives you time to take a long rest and get those spell slots back, before going to adventure in the morning.

Quote from Mandabar >>

Quote from Etro24 >>

People are forgetting, ritual casting. A level 20 Lich who does not require sleep could maintain 644 skeletons in a day with 6 minutes to relax. You could also use 5 Wights to turn 30 of your personal skelebois into 5 Wights and 60 zombois. Then you can kit out the Wights with shields and the best medium Armor money can buy. Then give that 614 rapiers, shields and similar armour. Now go make your own undead nation.

If you want to check my math, it is : ((((24 x 60) - 15)/11) x 4) + 128).

 Just one problem. This is not a ritual spell. You cannot ritual cast a non ritual tagged spell

 That being said, you can still give a Lich as many skeletons or zombies as you want.

Lesser undead tend to naturally obey Legendary Undead, like Liches, Mummies, and Vampires, even without spells.  It’s only living necromancers who need to worry about their creations turning on them.

Quote from Taemikeemt >>

So I made my first wizard and focused his school in enchantment. 

I want to see how I can play this... My previous Dragonborn Barbarian was killed two weeks ago and I want to animate him. 

Is there any way via PH or other sources to animate him as a servant/slave and still keep higher power - able to rage or use his Great axe and not merely just slam an enemy? Like can I give him armor and buff's so he can become my thrall. 

 

And do I have to be evil to do this???

This is an old post, but it present an interesting dilemma.

The DM can give monsters class levels, there are rules for it in the DMG and I believe the Monster manual.  A skeleton has a better chance than a zombie, as they have better mental attributes and can use weapons and armor.

If you can manage to raise him as a superior form of undead, with a spell like create undead, the chances of retaining levels are yet better.

Quote from Nagog >>

Does this imply Constructs are also Heresy? What about Warforged, are they similar to intelligent undead in this way? In death, all return to the earth, therefore how does using the body of one who is deceased differ from creating a construct of wood, earth, or clay? 

This spell doesn’t just puppeteer a sack of flesh like an Animate Objects spell would.  It rips a scrap of spiritual matter from wherever is closest at hand (usually somewhere not nice, like the Shadowfell or Negative Energy Plane) and stuffs it into the corpse.  That’s why it’s an instantaneous effect which cannot be dispelled.

This process is rather damaging to the spiritual fabric of the world, which is why making a zombie is considered axiomatically “evil”, as opposed to a Flesh Golem (though those aren’t exactly popular either).  And, that may sound like superstitious hogwash, but bare in mind that these are settings where Great Aunt Gertrude’s ghost might come back to badger you if she doesn’t like how you buried her.

Of course, not all characters know (or care) about the full extent of this process, and details vary wildly by setting.  You certainly aren’t required to be evil to use this spell.  But, it should be an ethical quandary for a “good” character, who fully understands the process.

Ok, this may be a stretch but, as a DM, I reward creativity and versatility with the game but for this, I think I would need an outside opinion on if it's possible.  Is it possible to train your zombies and/or skeletons in the wizarding ways to simply learn the 3rd level spell Animate Dead?  Then you create a pyramid scheme of self perpetuating undead army that casts the spell on each other and causes them to continue to stay under the top of the pyramid (my) command.  I would love to get feedback on this.  Now I understand that they would technically start to obey other undead in the casting hierarchy and become a sentient almost hive mind army that will ultimately turn on the original taster and wreak havoc amogst their current plain but that's something that future caster will have to deal with.  I'm just wondering about if it's possible to begin this.  Might make an interesting PC, NCP, or even a dungeon.

That is a hilarious plan ^^

Skeletons have an intelligence score of 6. That is technically intelligent enough to become a wizard, but not exactly smart.

I would not allow this, unless your game is basically over. This plan will either make your character into an allpowerful warlord, or it will backfire, and destroy your entire game world. I also have to question the motivation of the PC for such a plan, as necromancy itself is not exactly good in a moral sense.

There should be enough corpses (and corpses to be) to build such an army, at least after you have gained a critical mass of skeletons. However, keep in mind, that this hivemind army is still very vulnerable. Similarly to the death star, it has one fatal flaw: the pc

Once the necromancer dies, the entire army becomes disorganized.

If the PC really wants to do this, I would tell him, that he would basically turn into the villain of a new sidequest, and that he would have to make a new character.

the PC started out with noble intentions, he just wanted to create this undead scheme to lend them to lords and kings for their battles - against a fee.

But soon he became power hungy, split off from the rest of the party, and started to gain more and more followers. Being around the dead all day leaves its mark on ones mind.

He also became extremely paranoid, building his own fortress which looks more like a giant labyrinth than a home. (he uses the skeletons as workers)

Your players can not defeat such a powerful undead horde, nor can anybody else. But you can possibly defeat your former, now insane, friend.

Your sidequest would be an infiltration mission. You would kill specific high up skeletons, so that you can take our chunks of the army at once. Then, you try to sneak into the castle unseen and confront your former ally. 

But remember, he is paranoid and waiting, and has lots of time...

Might be a fun end for the character.

Thanks for the support and the extra ideas.  This will help me build a good npc/setup for sidequest adventure for sure!!  

So could this be used as a wizard variant of "Speak with Dead"?

both skeletons and zombies state, that they understand any language they knew in life, but can't speak.

So no.

Besides, both are 3rd level spells. If you allowed that, speak with dead would become totally useless.

I wouldn't allow it.

If your players are smart, they might try to get around that, by giving the animated creature a pen and a paper.

However, remember, that the Zombie only has an intelligence of 3 (so he certainly can neither read nor write, it is less intelligent than most animals.) and a skeleton has an intelligence of 6.

6 is the intelligence of an ape. They are cerainly intelligent, intelligent enough to follow complex plans, but imo not enough to write. 

well there is the death domain and Undead being evil is really up to philosophy. Undead can be the equivalent of using robots or it can be a twist of life. in 3.5 there were some good versions of undead... they were rare. If you look at Spore Druid they have a very different view of undead. 

I also heard of a story were a necromantic mage was using undead to keep a disease at bay... the country's healers could not cure this plague and famine was taking over but the undead were a solution... they would work without food, they would keep hope to love ones who just lost their lover or child. is that still evil?

Honestly talk to your game master if you want to play in the gray zone of undead. Undead are rarely good... but their is gray were they might not be bad.

maybe it is dependent on your DM... because a bag of holding only holds 500lbs... so that might be 6 skeletons not 10-20 but I see no reason you couldn't.

Quote from xenozfan2 >>

This spell is way, way OP. I'm a level 12 Wizard, and using my Arcane Recovery, can command up to 64 skeletons using all my spell slots. Keeping the level 0-2 spells for defense, I'm nearly unbeatable. (Haven't run into any holy warriors yet, thank goodness.) Glad we took over a castle filled with bodies, eheheheh.

 cool!