Wow this spell is good for infinite zombies.

Well, a zombie a day, at least. How do you spend your downtime? lol

Or 4at max level

Yall are forgetting about being an elf and resting along with being a max lvl sorcerer. Twin cast all 4 casts, spending spellslots to get the extra points needed (around 8 lvls worth). Get 8, Long rest of 4 hours 5 times to get 40, the 6th rest brings you into the new day. Ergo, 40 zombies a day.

“A long rest is a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps for at least 6 hours and performs no more than 2 hours of light activity, such as reading, talking, eating, or standing watch.”

A long rest is 8 hours regardless of how long you sleep. Elves can just spend the other 4 hours doing other light activities.

“A character can't benefit from more than one long rest in a 24-hour period, and a character must have at least 1 hit point at the start of the rest to gain its benefits.”

You could still do it often, just not as much.

My understanding was that the Elf trait shortens the long rest time because "specific beats general" rules

I would think that they still need 8 hours of rest, but only 4 as “sleep”, as the trance says it replaces sleep, but you don’t sleep for a whole 8 hours in a long rest. The rest could be taking watch or something similar.

Regardless, I don’t see how that would override no more than one long rest in 24-hours.

‪https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/rules-answers-september-2015‬

I don’t know if that is still up to date, but that seems to say a long rest is 8 hours regardless.

Even if that point differs or is ruled differently by the DM, as it is somewhat vague, I’d still think an elf couldn’t take more than one long rest per a 24-hour period.

Quote from shepardrockstar >>

My understanding was that the Elf trait shortens the long rest time because "specific beats general" rules

 Due to recent errata and changing of the wording on how a long rest works, SA got updated in 2017 with the following answer:
"Does the Trance trait allow an elf to finish a long rest in 4 hours? If an elf meditates during a long rest (as described in the Trance trait), the elf finishes the rest after only 4 hours. A meditating elf otherwise follows all the rules for a long rest; only the duration is changed. [This answer has been altered as a result of a tweak to the rules for a long rest, which appears in newer printings of the Player’s Handbook."

In addition, D&D Beyond has the updated version written as follows:

Trance

Elves don’t need to sleep. Instead, they meditate deeply, remaining semiconscious, for 4 hours a day. (The Common word for such meditation is “trance.”) While meditating, you can dream after a fashion; such dreams are actually mental exercises that have become reflexive through years of practice. After resting in this way, you gain the same benefit that a human does from 8 hours of sleep.

6th level Spell, Disentegrate: 10d6 + 40 Force

Finger of Death, a 7th level spell: 7d8 + 30 Necrotic (for more common resistance type).  

Hello to house rules for bad game design.

Quote from SergeTroy >>

6th level Spell, Disentegrate: 10d6 + 40 Force

Finger of Death, a 7th level spell: 7d8 + 30 Necrotic (for more common resistance type).  

Hello to house rules for bad game design.

 How is it bad game design? It does less damage because it instantly creates a permanent zombie out of anything you kill with it. Create Undead and Animate Dead only last 24 hours before you have to cast them again to keep control

just a bit overpowered. 7d8 + 30? thats a bit overkill for a lot of things.

Quote from SergeTroy >>

6th level Spell, Disentegrate: 10d6 + 40 Force

Finger of Death, a 7th level spell: 7d8 + 30 Necrotic (for more common resistance type).  

Hello to house rules for bad game design.

 You're missing some key features, which should be reexamined. 

-1) Saving Throws: On a successful saving throw against Disintegrate, they take no damage. A successful save against Finger of Death still results in half damage, so it is guaranteed damage, whereas Disintegrate is not.

-2) Secondary Effect: Killing someone with Disintegrate will disintegrate them, which only serves to make them harder to resurrect (and destroys their nonmagical loot). Finger of Death turns them into a Zombie, which is permanently under your control. Not only does this extend your resources (free minion!), but it even has the same effect as Disintegrate (you need a Wish or True Resurrection to resurrect an Undead). 

-3) With the other Undead Creation spells, you have to recast them everyday, putting a limiter on how many Undead you can have. Also, they have to be cast on already-dead corpses, whereas Finger of Death can slay someone and Zombify them at once. I could see a high-level Necromancer using this to save up a massive army of Undead, and use them to conquer a nation for himself. 

Basically, this spell is how you create large armies of Undead which don't need to be maintained. Great for the DM to give to enemy Necromancers to justify how they have an army of Undead. You'll notice that the Lich in the PHB knows Finger of Death, and that's no coincidence...

My tenth level Barb just barely survived a failed con save on this last session. Took 78 necrotic damage. I’m gonna RP my barb with a serious fear of Necrotic from now on. Also permanently white hair after this. 

dis is op

how is this fair

Can you upcast it for more damage?

no, if you could use a higher spell slot to make it deal more damage, it would say so in the spells description. 

It's not bad game design.

If you read the DMG, Chapter 9 (Dungeon Master's Workshop) section about spells, you'll see the following:

For any spell that deals damage, use the Spell Damage table to determine approximately how much damage is appropriate given the spell’s level. The table assumes the spell deals half damage on a successful saving throw or a missed attack. If your spell doesn’t deal damage on a successful save, you can increase the damage by 25 percent.

Here's the damage per level table:

As you can see, a 6th level single-target spell that does half on a successful save should do an average of 55 damage on a failed save. Disintegrate does an average of 75 damage, but as it deals NO damage on a successful save, we need to take that into account. 55 * 1.25 = 68.75. So, yes, Disintegrate is SLIGHTLY above average in damage. If you wanted to bring it "perfectly" in line, you could reduce it from 10d6 + 40 to just 8d6 + 40. But perhaps the designers played with it and felt it wasn't very fun to do 0 damage, so instead of multiplying the "average" damage by 1.25, they multiplied by ~1.36

Wheras Finger of Death is a single-target save (deals half on success), dealing an average of 61.5  damage. The average damage for a 7th level single-target spell which deals half on a successful save (per the table) is 60.5. Keep in mind, on TOP of that, it's also creating a zombie permanently under your control some of the time.

So, TL;DR - Disintegrate is good. Don't ignore the fact that it deals 0 on a successful save. Finger of Death is also good. It's more consistent overall, and has an upside when it kills an enemy.

If a player is taken below 0 HP with this. Do they start making death saves or are they turned into a zombie like the spell says?