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[UXLZ]

That's fine, as long as you aren't going to be overtaxed trying to make up all this stuff on your own. ^_^

[heydude6]

So that means we're having template based undead rather than creature based undead. That's great!

One of my least favorite things about 5th edition is that when you cast a spell like animate dead on something like a giant corpse, it turns into a wimpy human zombie instead. I understand that higher level necromancy involves casting spells that create ghouls, wights and ghasts, but after being spoiled on dungeon crawl stone soup and it being this way in previous editions. It makes me sad.

[Flying Dice]

Wait, seriously? Okay, chalk up another reason to never play a necromancer in 5e.

[UXLZ]

They at least gain the interesting power to control (some) undead permanently, though. but what it essentially does it make it better to control 'natural' zombies than make your own.

[heydude6]

Well the spell finger of death allows you to gain a permanent no-need-to-control zombie if you kill someone with it (and it's quite powerful on it's own), but then again it's just a 1/2 CR zombie.

[scriver]

One of my least favorite things about 5th edition is that when you cast a spell like animate dead on something like a giant corpse, it turns into a wimpy human zombie instead.

Any dm doing that would be forever marked by me as super boring

But then again getting a whole giant corpse to reaninate might require it to be fast as a higher level spell or something.

[UXLZ]

You can get Undead Beholders (CR 5), Ogre Zombies (CR 2), Minotaur Skeltons (CR 2), Vampire Spawn (CR 5, Hard to get), Wights (CR 3, Hard to get), Spectres (CR 1, Hard to get) as far as I can find at the moment permanently. The hard to get ones are the ones that have advantage on the saving throw.

Temporarily it's also possible to control Vampires and even Lich's, but they are extremely hard to get (Legendary Resistance/3 Auto-Succeeds on STs, advantage on the ST) as well as +3-5 modifiers to Charisma which is the saving throw stat, and as I said, temporary.

It would be interesting to control a vampire and force them to turn or, you control a Lich and force them to divulge their secrets. Outside of such interesting uses it's also essentially an auto-win in normal combat if it happens to succeed, so it isn't 100% useless against them.

Although the way it works is a bit annoying, since it means that even Thraz Kag'Gul, legendary Necromancer and Archmage, ruler of the ten thousand strong Undead Legions can... Fail to control a normal Zombie.

[Flying Dice]

Man, whatever happened to the old tradition of the corpses of the things you kill being part of the necro's loot? Or the helpful DMs who send you through a black onyx mine once or twice?

[heydude6]

Well, we could always homebrew a new necromancy system. All we have to do is compare the stats of living creatures to their undead counterparts and create templates based off of them.

[Flying Dice]

disgunbgud

[UXLZ]

That leads to Necros being too strong.

[Flying Dice]

Not with the way the rest of it works in 5e. Let's lay it out:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• You have to be a School of Necromancy Wizard. Cleric gets a couple of the spells but nothing else.
• How does School of Necromancy pan out in terms of supporting undead?

          +6th level:
                 When you cast Animate Undead, you can animate your normal number n plus one additional corpse.
                 Undead add your Wizard level to their HP maximum and gains your proficiency bonus to their damage rolls
          +14th level:
                 With range 60' you can attempt to bring one existing undead under your control, at spell save DC vs. Cha. If the target makes their save, you can't try again. Ever. If they fail their save, they obey you until you use it again. So you can only ever control one undead like this. Oh, and if the target has 8+ Int, it gains advantage on the Cha roll. If it has 12+ Int and fails the roll, it can retry every hour. So all this is good for is grabbing a single mundane undead; intelligent undead are going to beat the save one way or another.
          +Oh wait, that's all the school has to offer re: undead.

• Now then, spells:

1. Animate Dead, 3rd level. Only works on Medium and Small humanoids. You can command undead created like this with a bonus action if they're within 60'. Here's the kicker: "The creature is under your control for 24 hours, after which it stops obeying any command you've given it. To maintain control of the creature for another 24 hours, you must cast this spell on the creature again before the current 24 hour period ends. It scales with level, barely; each spell slot over 3rd allows you to animate 2 additional corpses of the same type.

So you're permanently gimping your casting by one 3rd/4th/5th/&c. spell slot for every 2/4/6/&c. bog-standard near-useless zombies or skeletons you want to control. Remember, 3.5e's Animate Dead creates undead that are yours until they're destroyed or you release them, with a limit based on your CL instead; further, it doesn't specify Medium or Small corpses, only limiting you by total HD controlled. And it doesn't use spell slots after the initial casting.

2. Create Undead, 6th level. Requires 150gp of black onyx per corpse. Can only be used at night. Can only be used on Medium and Small humanoids. Up to three of those become ghouls under your control. Same control mechanics, except at 120'. Exact same control parameters as Animate Dead, except that casting at 7th level adds one more ghoul, and 8th adds two ghouls or lets you do two ghasts or wights instead. At 9th you can do six ghouls/three ghasts/three wights/two mummies (your choice).

So you're burning a 9th level slot every day for shittier undead than a low-level 3.5e necromancer could get with a single cast of a 3rd level spell. Once. No repeat casts. Oh, and you're burning 150gp per corpse instead of 25gp per HD.

To make this perfectly clear: a 20th level 5e wizard gets one (count it, one) 9th and 8th level spell slot, two 7th and 6th, three 5th-3rd, and that's all you get for making undead. If you devoted all of that to Animate Dead as a School of Necromancy wizard, you could have a total of 113 Small or Medium zombies or skeletons under your control. In exchange for never casting spells above 2nd level, or burning your arcane recovery as soon as you finish your undead upkeep for a grand total of 10 levels worth of spell slots of 5th level or below. If you choose to use your 6th-9th slots to make better undead, you instead get 45 crappy undead + 14 ghouls + 5 ghouls/2 ghasts/2 wights + 6 ghouls/3 ghasts/3 wights/2 mummies.

The tl;dr is that if you're a 20th level superspecialized necromancer, you can maintain a small group of useful undead or a slightly larger group of crap undead at the cost of being completely useless for literally everything that can't be solved with a small horde of undead. Also you have to be able to get to all of your undead every day or you lose control of them.

[UXLZ]

Create Undead.

Purposefully lose control.

Control Undead.

Repeat ad infinitum.

Oh, wait, nevermind, I didn't notice how Control Undead actually works.
My god that is a nearly useless skill. All it seems like it would be good for is momentarily controlling something like a Vamp or Lich under extremely circumstantial situations, or lugging around a Beholder Zombie.

[Dwarmin]

I guess Necromancers don't make good heroes...

Still, it seems pretty incomplete. Maybe WOTC is just keeping Necro's underfed until they release 5e Ravenloft...

[UXLZ]

I think they may have just been being cautious. It's one of those things that is super easy to abuse.