Player summons/animate dead issues

[vegecannibal]

Hi, I'm currently playing a necromancer in an AL game, and was wondering how people generally go about handling large numbers of raised dead.

At first i made a single character sheet for multiple skeletons (making multiple tokens from one sheet), but damage to one became damage to all, so that was out. I made a few more character sheets for the time being because the party paladin used turn undead near my skeletons and some enemy undead, and i'm down to 3 skeletons. One sheet per skeleton works, but it's a lot to handle and i plan on having upwards of 20 skeletons in the back shooting arrows (to keep them out of the way of the party).

My first idea was to make character sheets for groups of skeletons, using larger tokens, (one that would take up 4 squares would be 4 skeletons, 9 squares 9 skeletons) but the issue there is that individual damage to skeletons becomes damage to the group.

I can't think of any other solutions however, so I'm wondering how the rest of you deal with large amounts of player summons within fantasy grounds.

[Zacchaeus]

Use NPCs. The DM can give you control of NPC characters as and when needed. Another possibility is to have one PC sheet with the stats for a single NPC but with the HPs of several. You could use preparation mode to set up a tick box and mark off one tick every time you lose the number of HPs for one individual. But really for various reasons you need to have one NPC each with its own token for every summoned Undead.

[vegecannibal]

Use NPCs. The DM can give you control of NPC characters as and when needed.
We did this at first but my DM asked me to make character sheets for them (presumably to lessen the load on him), that way i could update them with the equipment i buy for them/ upgrades from being a necromancy wizard easily.

[Zacchaeus]

What ruleset allows you to buy equipment for raised dead and upgrade them? How long do these things last?

And what happens when you wander into town with 20 ghouls in tow?

[vegecannibal]

The 5e PHB. Animated Dead animated by a necromancy wizard increase their health by the character's wizard level, and add the character's proficiency bonus to damage rolls. When a zombie or skeleton is raised, it is raised with the equipment the corpse has on it at the time, if the corpse has nothing, they have nothing, buying a shortbow and ammo for a skeleton may be the only way that the skeleton gets a weapon. I would personally have my skeletons put on robes that cover their faces and bodies. However, ideally I would simply wait outside of town with them.

[Zacchaeus]

Good grief, I wasn’t aware that the necromancer could have himself an army, and I can see exactly why your DM threw the work right back at you.

Sounds like you are going to have to get cracking making up those character sheets :)

[vegecannibal]

Right. And if need be I'll do it, i just don't want to flood the character portion at the top of the fantasy grounds with tons of the same npc. To be clear, i'm fine with the work of updating their stats, maintaining their gear and all that, I was just hoping there was a way to run multiple tokens off a single sheet without them sharing health, or achieve the same effect.

[Zacchaeus]

Right. And if need be I'll do it, i just don't want to flood the character portion at the top of the fantasy grounds with tons of the same npc. To be clear, i'm fine with the work of updating their stats, maintaining their gear and all that, I was just hoping there was a way to run multiple tokens off a single sheet without them sharing health, or achieve the same effect.


Nope, the token isn't the key thing that FG uses but the character or NPC sheet and to be effective all of the NPCs need to be on the CT and each one on the CT needs a separate token. If you place just tokens on the map then they won't be linked to the character sheet and so attack, damage rolls and saving throws etc wont work properly or at all. So at the very least you need some kind of NPC sheet (or PC sheet) for each individual.
My earlier suggestion of sharing an NPC won't work either because you won't be able to edit it. I can't think of any other way you can have such an army without creating a PC sheet for each one I'm afraid.

[damned]

Id work out a system with the GM to group them into a smaller number of more power units like you would with mass combat rules.
You have 10 skeletons. You roll one attack - if it hits you roll 10 damage dice or one damage dice x 10. If it misses every arrow misses.

[Zacchaeus]

Id work out a system with the GM to group them into a smaller number of more power units like you would with mass combat rules.
You have 10 skeletons. You roll one attack - if it hits you roll 10 damage dice or one damage dice x 10. If it misses every arrow misses.

That actually sounds do-able; but how do you handle the positioning on the map for each individual and how do you handle damage taken? From a DM point of view I'd probably be happy enough with just one target to roll against rather than 10 since having those kind of numbers would slow everything down to a crawl. The more I think about this the more I think 'Theatre of the Mind' and dispense with the need for tokens at all and just have one sheet to record damage and numbers.

[damned]

That actually sounds do-able; but how do you handle the positioning on the map for each individual and how do you handle damage taken? From a DM point of view I'd probably be happy enough with just one target to roll against rather than 10 since having those kind of numbers would slow everything down to a crawl. The more I think about this the more I think 'Theatre of the Mind' and dispense with the need for tokens at all and just have one sheet to record damage and numbers.

If the 10 skeletons have 6hp each the unit has 60hp. If the unit takes 20 damage then 3 have been killed and on the next turn that they successfully hit they do 7x damage instead of 10x. They are mooks and they are gonna die plenty of times. As they are low level they will prolly miss most of the time but when they do hit they will do great damage. To keep it more interesting for the player I would split them into 2 units so they do get to roll twice. Or if they have more than 20 have 10 per unit. At the end of the battle she might have 5, 3 and 8 left so combine them back into 2 groups of 8 until more are animated...

Its not just the bookwork and tracking that the player needs to do - allowing her to make 20+ attack rolls every turn is cruel and unfair on all the other players and they will probably be off mowing the lawn by the time their next turn comes around. The game would probably be quite sucky for the other players if you didnt combine them into fewer units.

[Zacchaeus]

Its not just the bookwork and tracking that the player needs to do - allowing her to make 20+ attack rolls every turn is cruel and unfair on all the other players and they will probably be off mowing the lawn by the time their next turn comes around. The game would probably be quite sucky for the other players if you didnt combine them into fewer units.

This is what I'd have the biggest problem with but I like your idea. Incidentally even skeletons have 13 hp and potentially 10 of them could do 10d6+20 damage in one turn so there's potential for incredibly damage. Additionally these undead thralls can hang around since the spell doesn't require any concentration to keep up. The only limit to the numbers is the number of spell slots the Necromancer has.

[damned]

This is what I'd have the biggest problem with but I like your idea. Incidentally even skeletons have 13 hp and potentially 10 of them could do 10d6+20 damage in one turn so there's potential for incredibly damage. Additionally these undead thralls can hang around since the spell doesn't require any concentration to keep up. The only limit to the numbers is the number of spell slots the Necromancer has.

Yeah but compare it to spells like a fireball etc which are far more likely to hit and do damage to multiple targets etc. It does sound OP which is probably why they want to play it however it probably doesnt boil down to being that much more powerful than more traditional spell casters... 55 damage to a single target but only if you hit...

No way Id allow for one player to have 20 attacks per round...

[vegecannibal]

I really don't care how effective/ ineffective it turns out being i just want a skeletal archery lines ready when we face tiamat. My maximum animated dead atm is 24, however at lvl 20 it would be nearly 100

[damned]

I really don't care how effective/ ineffective it turns out being i just want a skeletal archery lines ready when we face tiamat. My maximum animated dead atm is 24, however at lvl 20 it would be nearly 100

As discussed above - Id have a chat with your DM about where you see yourself taking this character and exploring some mass combat style options so that your character is a part of the team and not 90% of the team once combat starts.

[Bidmaron]

This is a fault of WotC's game, not FG. If this overpowered character (it seems) is standard in 5e, then the rules should tell you how to deal with it. Then FG could be mod'd to deal with what those rules are. This is at least as much of a problem at a RL table game as it is in FG.

[vegecannibal]

In RL games i would use a few packs of 36 mini d6's to mark their locations, but the issue of combat still remains, and i don't want to slow down combat trememndously, which is why the mass combat sounds like it would work, but the rules for mass combat seem to be for Army vs Army not Army vs Indivudual. https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf There is also the issue of "Morale." Would Morale always be maximum because they aren't affected by it, or would it still be used as a substitute for actual individual health? Would it be BR vs AC?

[Zacchaeus]

There isn't morale in 5e and damned isn't suggesting you actually use any mass combat rules. He's suggesting that you group the undead into say 5 or 10 units and you roll one dice to see if the group hits. If they do then you get to roll 5d6 or 10d6 damage or whatever. This is instead of rolling to hit for every individual undead.

[vegecannibal]

Oh, i see, that could work. I sent my DM a link to this post, i think I'd do groupings of 4 or 9, since that way the increased token dize would equal the size of the actual army.

[Tabarkus]

I would look at the optional "Handling Mobs" rule in the Dungeon Master's Guide, page 250. This handles mobs fairly easily with a little bit of math on the side. This in conjunction with "unit" concept for the FG character sheet the others are talking about works well for me as a DM.