Tell them to all go into a hated NPC's house.  Especially if he knew the people you turned into zombies.  

Quote from Kuroi_Ayumi >>

I smell heresy, the "god" you are praying to is probably Orcus. 
The part that their spirit is already in the afterlife is the problem. You are mocking the gods by infusing some form of false life into these poor dead people. That's why nobody will burn you at the stake for the "good" necromancy spells like: Raise Dead, Revivify, Resurrection etc. you are just returning the soul to it's body, if it found an early demise.

But yeah the morality with necromancy is somewhat grey, it's like should we condem germ theory, because of biological weapons?

Also it's not really fun to run a combat encounter with a horde skeletons at the side of the PCs. You either just annihilate them with AoE spells, which isn't fun for the player controling the skeletons or combat grinds to a halt as you wait for the player to roll his own attacks and all of the attacks for his undead (13 attacks if he uses a 9th level slot). For an NPC necromancer it's just part of the course to have 10 or more of his servants killed with a fireball.

2 Skeletons sounds reasonable though. As long as you don't have a bard and a druid with conjure woodland beings...

 A fourth level animate dead makes a skeleton crew for a ballista. A third level gets you one more skeleton. Casting it again at third level lets you command them for 24 hours. Buy/Build a Ballista, have the extra guy use the help action or grapple the target in place. The three amigos can fire once per round giving you a 1d20+6 for 3d10 damage attack to roll possibly with advantage. Not game breaking, still cool, still powerful, and its efficient.

Heresy? Just get an Alchemical Compendium and transmute rocks and sticks into bones. Vegan meat shields.

Sorry. Its not a ritual spell. 

So my Death Cleric has a house with Temple to his god there.  He built a pit trap with a twenty five foot drop in it.  After each adventure he just has the skeletons lower themself into a pit.  Then he lets the spell lapse.  Its a pretty cool trap for anyone who tries to invade his temple.  There's a ton of skelly's down there.  After the fall they land into his horde of skelly's. 

Quote from Monster_Master >>

I made a warlock subclass Called "The Undead (Necromancer)" that had a lvl. 1 feature that makes all summoned undead obey you permanently without thinking about how OP this could be. Should I eliminate or change this feature because at lvl. 5 it would be OP or should I leave it like that because at levels 12 or 13 these undead basically can't hit the enemies since they have a too high AC for them?

 Maybe increase the level you get it at? maybe get it at level 10? or it just adds say a number of hours equal to your warlock lvl or maybe your PB+Cha mod

Quote from Nekozenji >>

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.

 

It's not overpowered and working as intended. Especially since even an average level 5 cleric could level that army by sneezing at it. Not to mention the limitations inherent to commanding a huge body of creatures unable to follow complex commands or execute a complex strategy efficiently. It would work great as a guard force/meat(bone?)shield however.

 You're gonna want the Zombies to be used as meat shields and the Skeletons in the back with shortbows

Paying for all the arrows is prohibitively expensive at higher levels but having 5 extra attacks as a bonus action is worth it

if you're going to be playing a necromancer just have like 10 d20s and 10d6 on hand, roll all the d20s at once on their turn and then roll d6 for however many hit

For everyone saying it's OP and they have a huge number of undead at their control, the spell says you can ONLY reassert control over UP TO 4 with this spell, and that's BEFORE the AT Higher Levels paragraph, and that paragraph doesn't mention reasserting control over more undead at higher levels. So RAW if you create 20 undead with this spell, you could only Maintain control over 4 of them and have to fight the rest. Correct? 

When the caster dies, what happens to their raised undead? Is the magical necromantic energy lost? or do they just continue as undead without command? Thoughts?

"Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid"
So.. does it HAVE to have been a humanoid in life, or could one rearrange the corpse/bones of something similarly sized else into a humanoid shape before raising it? ...asking for a friend.

Can someone settle this disagreement.  The link to the skeleton and zombie descriptions are what we go on RAW correct?  The skeleton description says that skeletons have and can use armor and weapons. So can we put better armor on our skeletons that we find around the battlefield or not.  Does this apply to zombies since it doesn’t mention armor in the descriptions? RAW can we armor or rearm our minions that we control?

Quote from BenedictNik >>

For everyone saying it's OP and they have a huge number of undead at their control, the spell says you can ONLY reassert control over UP TO 4 with this spell, and that's BEFORE the AT Higher Levels paragraph, and that paragraph doesn't mention reasserting control over more undead at higher levels. So RAW if you create 20 undead with this spell, you could only Maintain control over 4 of them and have to fight the rest. Correct? 

 Incorrect:

"At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, you animate or reassert control over two additional undead creatures for each slot level above 3rd. Each of the creatures must come from a different corpse or pile of bones."

If he/she really wanted to, a level 20 wizard could maintain control over 148 skeletons/zombies.  That's using every spell slot of 3rd level or higher plus both the 1st level Arcane Recovery ability and a 20th level Signature Spell.  Would it be worth it?  Doubtful.

Yes. Most undead are malicious and if your party is around they usually attack the one that reanimated them but that is up to the DM. Otherwise they would just wander and kill random passerby's.

Oh, the pixies. Why so many pixies? 

If I use this spell on just a hand, could it be a floaty hand that can use a low tier scratch move? My character lost his hand, and I kinda wondered if I could replace it with a cooler, de-attachable one.

do you have to buy a book for this spell or is there other ways to get it?

do they get hit dice to use for a short rest? do they full heal during a long rest?

they will attack you if you don't roll to regain control or something like that.

They'll attack whoever is nearest. If you leave your zombie outside the tavern you're reseting in and forget to recast then it's going to attack the first passerby it sees once the control wears off. 

i have a question based on the wording in this if i were to cast animate dead. say level 4 spell cast?  so three zombies? before combat

 use my bonus action to  attack and charge at some enemies?

can next turn i cast spirit weapon for my bonus action? while still having my zombie allys continue attacking my targets?

round 3:

i assume if i need them to attack someone else i wouldnt be able to use my spirit weapon attack again because my bonus action is used up

then round 4 because
spirit weapon is around i use it to deal damage letting my undead army deal damage to the creatures.

Quote from 5hammer >>

i have a question based on the wording in this if i were to cast animate dead. say level 4 spell cast?  so three zombies? before combat

 use my bonus action to  attack and charge at some enemies?

can next turn i cast spirit weapon for my bonus action? while still having my zombie allys continue attacking my targets?

round 3:

i assume if i need them to attack someone else i wouldnt be able to use my spirit weapon attack again because my bonus action is used up

then round 4 because
spirit weapon is around i use it to deal damage letting my undead army deal damage to the creatures.

"you can issue a general command"

I believe "attack anything I attack" is general command enough.