Talk:Animate Army (5e Spell)

I changed the level scaling to the levels you have in the spell caster who has acquired this spell and also it does specifically say that the "undead" are zombies and act like zombies, the level scaling is made so that you can choose how many to summon without it being too many and is balanced since the zombies can turn on the caster....probably balance.

While I'm not against messing around with some of the standards and precedent of the system, spells interacting directly with caster level is a very bad idea, especially since this is creating at least 6 zombies on the spot. This is hell for managing initiative, and then generates massive balance issues via having 6(minimum) extra creatures. Sure, you can lose concentration, this is incredibly unlikely because you now have(again, minimum) 6 extra bodyguards. If you lose concentration, note that you can defend yourself by casting this spell again, which doubles the amount of zombies, which makes things even worse.

Also, note that because you lose control, they don't immediately all swarm you. If they're stuck in against an enemy, they're probably still targeting them.

This spell, for a manner of reasons, is redundant. If it's fixed to scale with spell level(which it should), it is now just slightly different animate dead. I get what you're trying to do here, but standard 5e covers this niche pretty well on it's own.--SwankyPants (talk) 08:40, 15 February 2023 (MST)

firstly they do not roll initiative since the summoner commands them to attack on the summoners turn and secondly I made some changes, I scaled it with the ability modifier so the maximum is lowered and made it easier to manage them, but thank you for the critique, also, I wasn't sure if I needed to say that you can't have two animate army spells active at the same time since its concentration.

Yes, you can lose concentration though, and the zombies remain. If you wanted to, you could purposely end concentration, then cast the spell again, and the older zombies still persist. As for the spell being for "creative DMs", this is very, very heavily discouraged, to a radical degree. It's referred to as DM Fiat, and should never be part of anything not directly controlled by them, and them alone. Forcing them to come up with what X would do puts more work on them, and potentially jeopardizes balance. Nothing on the wiki should be handled like this, barring very, very specific circumstance. --SwankyPants (talk) 10:30, 15 February 2023 (MST)

all good points I agree but I think the changes I made would meet those problems correct?