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Say you're a 13th level Necromancer. Ever since 6th level you've been running around with a handful of skeleton archers (let's say you're up to an even two dozen, even though that's a bit on the large side IME), re-casting Animate Dead on them every single day as part of your daily routine, and re-populating their ranks when they fall. But now you're 14th level, and you have access to other tools like Mass Suggestion VII (forces a dozen creatures to "pursue a [non-suicidal] course of action" for up to 10 days) and Geas VII (charms a creature for one year, preventing it from attacking you, plus it has to carry out some service for you or take psychic damage).

How many necromancers out there would keep up the daily grind of Animate Dead, and how many would switch over to simply Geasing their skeletons ("don't hurt anyone I don't try to hurt first or tell you to hurt") and Mass Suggesting them to "follow me around and try to kill whatever I try to kill, and nothing else". You'd no longer have telepathic control of your skeletons as a bonus action--they'd be more like a poorly-disciplined mercenary army, a la the skeletons in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness--but you could scale up way past the army size you could otherwise afford to control, e.g. eighty skeletons at a time is no sweat, given some downtime. (At 15th level you can start converting skeletons over to wights and have 80 wights in your army, which is a big improvement both from a combat perspective and from the Command-and-control "minions with intelligence" perspective. Pity the poor fool who decides you're a menace to society and runs straight into a company of supercharged (Necromancer-created) wights with 60 HP (resistant to non-magical non-silver weapons) and 2x(d8+7) attacks. That's 4800 HP and (1840 * hit percentage) damage per round. And they're stealthy too.)

The (idle) question I have for you is, how many of you would switch over despite the downsides, and how many would just keep casting Animate Dead methodically every day?


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jaelis

jaelis

Oh this is where the title goes?

TBH, as a DM, I don't think I'd let you use such an open-ended and multi-pronged suggestion.


I don't know what you're on about, clearly you're a Wizard 5/Warlock 5 casting it hourly :p

Both Mass Suggestion and Geas imply a single objective or service, and I wouldn't call "don't hurt X" either of those.


Fanaelialae
I'd stick with animate dead. A DM who doesn't want you to be able to expand your army of undead is going to be able to find loopholes with either of those spells. Whereas, with animate dead, you are getting a known quantity that most DMs are unlikely to mess with (outside the typical RP repercussions of having an undead army following you around).

For example, the DM could very easily have your geased skeletons attack innocents despite the geas, thereby committing suicide (what do they care, they're nearly mindless undead). In the case of suggestion, as pointed out above, he could very easily deny such a complex suggestion as being beyond the scope of the spell.


jgsugden

Each approach has merits as adjudicated by the DM.