Quote from PhrankinStyne >>

So if I ressurect a skeleton could I (before the 24 hour period) command it to enter my "bag of holding". What will happen? They cant leave it correct? So in theory I can fill it with 10-20 skeletons and make one and have it take my bag of holding and dump it in the middle of a fight, unleashing a macabre little army? 

 ya...

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).

 OH YA THAT'S AWESOME!!

It's interesting you say that because grave clerics oppose the undead. They're clerics of the natural process/cycle of death.

Am I reading this right? You can burn one spell slot (lvl 3?) to reassert control over 4 zombies? Cuz you could build up quite an army with that... I have a lvl 9 death cleric whose spell slots are as follows: 3 lvl 3, 3 lvl 4, & 1 lvl 5. So by using all of my level 3, 4, & 5 spell slots I can create 17 zombies/skeletons (because of how the upcasting works). So can I reassert control over 16 of them by using 4 spell slots (after a long rest obviously) and then still have 2 lvl 4 slots and 1 lvl 5 slot left over? And then use those to create more?.... and just maintain an army? (Albeit with only my lvl 1 & 2 slots left over...) cuz that seems completely busted. If my math works, I could theoretically maintain up to 28 undead’s with a lvl 9 PC.... that doesn’t even sound fun to keep up with but there’s no way that this spell is intended to work like that.... can anyone confirm? Or am I off my rocker?... 

The spell Raise Dead is a level 5 spell that allows you to revive a body that has been dead for up to 10 days. It can close mortal wounds and do basically anything except for fully replace a limb or appendage. But if they’ve been dead for longer than 10 days, you’ll have to go for something like True Resurrection. It works as far back as a few hundred years I think lol. It’s also a lvl 9 spell. Neither one of these will turn your dead PC into your thrall though. It literally, assuming their soul is willing and able to return, puts their soul back in their body and revives them as they were when they died. You don’t get to control them. so you would have to just play both of them lol. They only come back under your control if you use a spell that brings them back as a zombie, skeleton, ghoul or whatever. It’s for balance reasons.  Otherwise Necromancer’s, Death Cleric’s, and the like, would be reviving anything that had even remotely cool abilities and using them to terrorize the DM. Monsters (almost all of them) have multi attack and special abilities (like lair/legendary actions and pack tactics and such) in order to be able to keep up with the players. if they didn’t have those things they wouldn’t last a single round. And if you could revive and control them with their abilities, you would break the game. Player Characters are no different. They’re powerful by design. You’re not supposed to have a slave that’s as strong as you lol 

Wish the had an extras setting for animate/ create undead like they do for find familiar/ ranger’s / beast master companion.  Especially if it adjusted stats for school of necromancy wizards.

Quote from PhrankinStyne >>

So if I ressurect a skeleton could I (before the 24 hour period) command it to enter my "bag of holding". What will happen? They cant leave it correct? So in theory I can fill it with 10-20 skeletons and make one and have it take my bag of holding and dump it in the middle of a fight, unleashing a macabre little army? 

 The bag of holding just isn’t big enough

This is the reason I'm actually here on this page. Personally, I've had dms that ruled in the past that the zombies and skeletons just continue doing the last thing they were ordered to do, with far less direction. Like, if you told them to guard a person or a place, they would eternally patrol the place and attack literally anything that came close, rather than anything that you would designate an intruder and if you had them clean, they would clean eternally, etc.

How can you command 64 skeletons?! I can't see how this is possible... 

Day 1: 3x Animate Dead at L3 (+3), 3x at L4 (+9), 2x at L5 (+10), and 1x at L6 (+7). That's 29 from spell slots alone. Arcane recovery at level 12 gives me back a level 6 slot, which is another (+7), totaling 36.

Day 2: I reassert control over 36, spending 1x L3 slots (4), 1x L4 (6), 2x L5 (16), and 1x L6 (10). I reanimate more using 2x L3 (+2) and 2x L4 (+6), totaling 44. Arcane recovery gives me another 1x L6 (+7) for 51.

Day 3: I reassert control over 51, spending all but 1x L3 (totaling 52 but with only 51 skeletons). I reanimate more using 1x L3 (+1) and my recovered 1x L6 (+7), totaling 59.

Day 4: I reassert control over 59, spending all but 1x L4, including my recovered 1x L6 (totaling 60 but with only 59 skeletons). I reanimate more using my 1x L4 (+3), totaling 62.

Day 5: I reassert control over 62, spending all but 1x L3, including my recovered 1x L6 (62). I reanimate more using my 1x L3 (+1), totaling 63.

Day 6: Now, here's where things get tricky. I have to spend all of my spell slots to maintain control over my force, so I'm stuck at 63 naturally. However, this is a role-playing fantasy game, so enter some creative thinking. I assert control over 60 of my skeletons, spending all but 1x L4. I command them to pin the 3 skeletons I could not control, and spend my 1x L4 (+3). I have 63 under my control and 3 not.

Day 7: I reassert control over 66, spending 3x L3 (12), 3x L4 (18), 2x L5 (16), and 1x+1x (recovered)  L6 (20).

This DOES require some interpretation of the phrase "you have animated with this spell." Since I have animated them and not someone else, can I assert control again once I've lost it? If so, 66 is my limit at level 12. If not, 63 is my limit. In that first case, hitting the max would only require 3 days: animating 36 on the first, 30 different on the second, and regaining control of both groups on the third.

Oh yeah, my character was an Evocation school wizard. It gets better with the Necromancy school.

Wow! Thanks for the detailed reply. I guess it is possible if you're willing to spend all your spell slots. Or at least mathematically... I believe narrativelly you'll have some trouble achieving this, specially because they aren't created with weapons in hand (unless you're doing this in a battlefield after a big conflict, or something like that). Anyway, in theory that can be done! 

Does anyone know how many you can control at a plain 3rd level spell, is it just one? Thx

using a third level spell slot, this spell can reassert control over 4 corpses. however, it can only animate 1 per casting, unless you have a feature that says otherwise.

TCE got it right with summon undead spirit which for the same spell slot is just flat out better in every way. I feel like this spell even with the necro tradition is only good for if your DM actually allows you to spam it and run 200 undead. In which case, bless them, their patience, and their table's patience. 

Wait, so can you only animate corpses one at a time?

If a player uses this on a previous PC or one of the many NPC's from the monster manual, Volos guide to monsters, etc., does that zombie/skeleton keep the previous class-features that the living counterpart had?

DMG, page 96, death cleric. 

There's death gods all around the alignment spectrum that your cleric can venerate (if you choose to venerate a god rather than a pantheon or ideology lol), and remember that clerics don't need to be the same alignment as the gods they follow. Whilst the DMG does say that "The Death Domain is an additional domain choice for evil clerics", you can easily talk to your DM to (or if you're DM-ing you could) easily allow your character to be of non-evil alignment.

what classes can learn this spell

Is it weird how I had a similar experience what you had, and my cleric name was Apollo as well?

Quote from PhrankinStyne >>

So if I ressurect a skeleton could I (before the 24 hour period) command it to enter my "bag of holding". What will happen? They cant leave it correct? So in theory I can fill it with 10-20 skeletons and make one and have it take my bag of holding and dump it in the middle of a fight, unleashing a macabre little army? 

 This is the kind of shit that I would do.

This is also the reason why my DM won't let me have an ANYTHING of Holding lol.