The Necromancer & The Oathbreaker - D&D: Optimized #36 

To inspire skeletons: "Whoever kills the archwizard gets reincarnated" *unleash the horde and watch it at work*

Paladin to Skeletons: Brave knights. You are the best and brightest in all the land. Today one of you shall prove himself. That champion shall have the honor - - no, no - - the privilege to go forth and rescue the lovely Princess Fiona from the fiery keep of the dragon. If for any reason the winner is unsuccessful, the first runner-up will take his place and so on and so forth. Some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make. Let the tournament begin! 6 INT Skellies: Seems legit

Ah yes, nothing better than hearing Homelander talk about Oathbreakers

I'd inspire my horde with one line and one line only: MEAT IS BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!

We did this once back in 3.5e a Blackguard, a Necromancer, Undeath Cleric, We had so many undead we started using rules for mass combat and had our undead hordes attacking a kingdom in a War. Using battlefield tactics and such. Basically we were the BBEG trying to conquer a nation. it was amazing.

If you’re getting a free feat and are allowed to use UA I feel like it’s illegal to not play a Reborn Oathbreaker who was resurrected by the Necromancer.

This team-up is giving me a Palpatine (Necromancer)/ Vader (Paladin)/ Stormtrooper (skeleton) kinda vibe.

"Two wights would pale in comparision of 12 skeletons" How about 2 wights and 24 zombies ? Because that's what the actual best case scenario is, since each wight can control up to 12 zombies at a time.

I think something people forget is that killing minions means the enemies aren't killing a PC. A few waves of zombies or skeletons that get wiped out in a handful of fireballs may be absorbing more than your low dex tank could have managed. And you can collect up what's left after the battle

I would add finger of death spell to the routine as it adds a zombie that is permanently under the casters control.

Paladin: "Give me victory or give me death!" Army of Undead: (Looks completely dejected) Paladin: ".....well crap"

As always excellent content. My son is playing a Necromancer in a level 10 campaign and he opted to take one level of Death Cleric at 1st level and the rest in necromancer. The ability to cast infinite twinned Toll the Dead while his undead minions attack give him a great deal of sustained damage without using additional resources.(Not to mention medium armor, shields and martial weapons)

As a DM I did the logistics to make a player mechanic necromancer, and I actually like the logistics of it, pretty fun how much you can get into the towns, catacombs, trade, you really become invested in order to make it work. Eventually the characters actually figured their deal and didn’t kill them, rather asked for help and ya, the necromancer became a mercenary of sorts to help the party and seized a castle to help them get the hobgoblin chief and reclaimed their family estate and castle. An potential bad guy who was wronged actually got to be ‘redeemed’ by helping the party and got their home back.

Oathbreaker's rousing speech to a bunch of low INT Skeletons... "The one who kills the most people gets a brand new body!!!" 😈😈

I'm afraid you underestimated the power of this combo fairly severely. If you look more closely at the text regarding the recasting of Animate Dead to retain control, you'll see that each casting can retain control over three more undead than a casting can raise. (It's unclear how that interacts with the Undead Thralls ability.) So over the course of multiple days, you will be able to accumulate a significantly larger army of skeletons than you assumed.

This is actually an incredibly useful video for a DM. This paring is an incredible villain for an undead domination plot hook. ‘As you gaze upon this small farming town, the blood of the guardsmen paints the cobbled streets in crimson. Their insides torn out and apparently eaten. The few peasants that have survived the attack approach and plead for your help’ “Please! Please you must help us!” ‘As they point to the cemetery you see a field of open graves, recently uncovered and every corpse missing’ “It were two men. One of them stood afar draped in black robes holding a staff. The other, clad in armour of ebony, and his sword drenched in the blood of our kin. They were commanding our dead like an army there was nothing any of us could do” ‘You ask the good people where these individuals went and they point you to the next town where a similar scene greets you. The trail continues. Town to town, village to village. Each report speaks of a larger army than the last. Then you realise... they’re marching on the capital.’ I’m sure as hell using this for my next plot hook. By all means, steal the idea, I wanna know if other players end up liking it.

So... NOW you like necros eh? AFTER our strahd campaign?! We could have been gods amongst mortals if you’d just gone oath breaker... GODS! *shakes a dozen skeletal hands at you*

If using Tausha’s, the Artificer Initiate feat gives you a spell from their list and you can take Faerie Fire which you can cast with your own spells slots (that also uses intelligence as the save) from what I see. As a bonus you can also take guidance and get a tool proficiency like alchemist tools which seems thematic.

I see this duo as a perfect NPC villain duo. They scale well and would present a continuous challenging foil to player characters. Maybe have the Paladin be a friendly NPC until level 3 when he does his heel turn. And the various undead could populate dungeons, while the strike team skellies hang out with the bosses. Also, Tortle Wizard? Welcome to the Dark Side! No more elves for you, my boy, only powerhouses like Tortle and Mountain Dwarf!

You know the rp would be amazing. Himbo Paladin who just adores and does everything the really smart but somehow equally stupid Wizard says. The classic bad at being bad villain team.

The way I did the Oathbreaker thing with my DM was that my character was a more powerful paladin in their backstory, but breaking their oath caused them to lose their powers. So, by the time the campaign starts, they start to discover this power that's somewhat familiar, but feels... different. That explains the paladin starting at level 1 and immediately jumping into Oathbreaker at 3rd level.

I love the idea of working with a dm to scale up the undead better so you can still be a necromancer and have it not be too crazy. I had a plan to create a necromancer who only had 2 skeletons who were raised from his twin boys remains as a weird macabre homage to his family/trying to keep them "alive" and working with a dm to work them up as a good scaling but not broken.

The Oathbreaker is one of my favorite subclasses for dealing lots of damage and for roleplay. Currently, in one campaign I'm in I have an oathbreaker who was originally a Conquest paladin for an empire ruled by clerics that serves Bane. He was allowed not to be evil since he broke his oath by leaving an evil god. I won't go into his whole backstory but he's in a pretty hopeless place currently which fits the oathbreaker description in a way I think. I really enjoy him wanting and trying to be good but also dealing with a power set that is very clearly evil and undead related. If you can get your DM to lift the evil restriction (or not who know what ur playing) I think oathbreakers have the potential for a great character arc. Also, Hexblade oathbreakers are amazing you really can't go wrong with level distribution either.

I imagine this concept is perfect for a 1 on 1 dnd campaign with the oath breaker being your sidekick ally

1hr 20 mins? Today just got so much better!

Having the undead carry you around while you're in your shell would be so cool.

Back at the beginning of 5e I played a necromancer rules as written using armor/ weapons you aren’t proficient with grants disadvantage and plate mail halves speed if strength isn’t high enough. So I equipped 8 zombies with armor/shields and 8 with glaivs. I would use the unarmored ones to shove the armored zombies forward and when they reach the enemy they would help/ grapple any enemy’s. I also broke them down into teams to pass them to the other players at the table for them to roll the attacks/ damage. Kinda fun to have a little battalion of meatshields helping to give the others 1d10 at straight rolls. With about 6 skeletons that I granted to the ranger players. And when we would go into villages they were passed off as being a retribution squad paying for the evil they committed in life. It was a fun campaign.

Been subscribed for a few years now, and I still get a tingle down my spine when I hear "welcome home."

You’re easily my new favorite dnd content creator thank you for taking the time to put these videos out they’re exactly what I’ve been looking for :)

Finally! I have waited soo long for this video!!! They both are in my "ideal optimized party". Thanks Colby!!!!!!

Your videos are my new sleep aid, but I also re-listen while I'm awake too. Thanks for your work!

For the most effective use of your Necromancer's Control Undead feature be sure to invest in the spell Feeblemind.

Context: I"m running a campaign set in an empire that uses necromancy as a big part of its military force (being raised as an undead is the final service for an enlisted soldier, so it's seen as honorable, not evil). My house rule for using undead in combat, is that the caster can raise as many undead as they can get their grubby little hands on, but can only -command- up to 2 times their spellcasting modifier in any given round of combat. Send out your 8 or however many, and if they get killed, command some reinforcements to take their place without skipping a beat. Having a limited mental bandwidth to spread your commands feels logical to me, especially in the very short time you have to do it. Keep the extras out of harm's way (or attempt, anyway) and enjoy the added benefit of keeping the map unclogged. As for re-raising your undead after they've been killed again, that's fine, but you might have to piecemeal remains together so you have a complete body before you can raise it -- Percy lost a leg? Better find a replacement if you really want to re-raise him, Parts don't have to match -- sure, go ahead and hack a charred leg off one of those bugbears you fireballed. Percy is gonna have a serious swagger with his legs two different lengths. Why not just raise a bugbear? Well, you can replace Percy's -parts-, but you can never replace Percy, you monster.

How to have a cart of corpses Player : "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"

Honestly, if you play table top wargames (efficiently) you can play that skelly horde. Just actually care enough to play that way. If you are lazy with a minion army... don’t. Either bring your a game or do not play a minion army..

My friend and I are about to run these builds in our campaign! Thanks for the build and the help!

Important notice: Skeletons can be stored in a chest! Very good for transport purposes :D

* Walks up to high-Int Undead. * * Casts Feeblemind * * Command Undead * * Profit *

I’d love to see a tank-style damage report for the undead army here, seeing as one of their greatest strengths is that they takes hits that would otherwise be directed towards PCs. No of course the undead have no way to draw enemy fire as a “proper” tank would but I think it would be a cool exercise nonetheless

Hey new viewer and just wanted to say 1 great video! and 2 i'm watching this after having spent roughly 3-4 days looking at summons in 5e and how to make them work. I think the perfect middle ground for the necromancer wizard is having 1.5 times your level rounded up as a max on any given adventuring day. also for running them in combat the easiest rule to keep the turns fast is having them always go on your initiative and use the mob attack rules in the dmg, it gives a consistent basis for how much damage they can expect to do and how to balance against them. to lower the effectiveness on the players undead you only have to increase an enemies a.c. to 17, because then it goes from 1 out of every 2 hitting to one out of every 3, meanwhile the rest of the party probably wont notice the difference between that 16 a.c. enemy vs that 17 a.c. enemy. it makes stuff go quickly while also still rewarding the player for being a cool necromancer! of course if you need to use it as a plot point, let the character go ham and raise an army to assault the castle so the party can sneak in and get the mccguffin!

NEVER HUNGER NEVER TIRE NEVER FEAR FOR THE LEGION

I'm hyped for this nefarious duo.

One thing that I don't think you factored was Arcane Recovery. You can wake up early as an Elf, cast a whole bunch of Animate dead, take a short rest, then regain up to 10 levels of spell slots, converting that into about a dozen more skeletons

Just found this channel. Subbed instantly. Amazing stuff.

Think you hit a lot of good points. One thing I would like to letcha know is that since the undead hold their command until given another and it's not a concentration spell your commands do not end even if you die until the spells last cast control time is up. So you can actually have one skeleton with the standing order of "if I go down reach into my pouch and administer a potion" to for free get back up into the action or use that to have certain skeletons tagged to certain party members with that command which tends to make people much happier that they have essentially a free medic following them.

With Half-Drow race there's a catch-up. That Faerie Fire save DC is based on the characters Charisma. Actually, a charismatic necromancer sounds interesting, so even going with default +2CHA bonus is viable.

Sounds like a good duo for villains in a campaign with a large final battle where the players build an army of followers versus the undead army. Then the players feel cool with large AoE's spells and the frontline just hack through waves of undead.

This kinda makes me want to see a Death Knight build

I have to tell you. The intro music gets me pumped about watching your videos. 🙂👍

Ahhhhhhhh. I needed this. Thank you!!!!!

I like running a house rule that lets you combine four skeletons or zombies into a single Ogre Zombie or Minotaur Skeleton (without the special Charge/Gore actions) that has a Multiattack feature. The damage is about the same (fewer attacks overall, so fewer applications of Aura of Hate and Undead Thrall extra damage), and it is fewer creatures on the map at once.

Necromancer creates skeletons from bones, takes the weapon. Dispels the skeletons. Sells the weapon as scrap. Money!

Great content as always! A quite video note: I am sure you noticed, but the camera focus in on the background instead of you. You might want to consider a side screen to check that while filming :) Cheers!

So, I know this is a year+ old, and maybe someone's come in and said it already, but on the off chance: Regarding ghouls and elves, the short version is that the first ghoul was an elf who later regretted their life choices and prayed to their god to reverse it. They did and promised no other elf would suffer, so elves became immune to ghoul touch.

Still love the pkm trainer and I'm so glad that you're putting out the polls. :D Broken seems fitting for their enemies.

I've been waiting for this optomisation! I love this!

Dude you are so awesome, I love your videos so much!

The one party comp I'm dying to play is necromancer, oath breaker, undead warlock, death cleric, perhaps a spirit bard and spore druid maybe. Shame no one ever does evil campaigns let alone have a full party of people all wanting to go for the undead army theme 😢

Nice! Would love to see a Gish version of the necromancer too see how good it could be

Use a horde of zombies to create a ring around your frontliners and the bad guys. All undead keep their actions readied for if an enemy comes into attack range they attempt a grapple

It's worth noting that with dice rolling tools, including the default one in roll20, you can roll a whole bunch of d20's against a target number and it tells you how many are hits. Then you can roll a single damage roll and multiply by the number of hits. That lets you still get variability, since rolling a giant pool of dice tends to result is very little deviation from the average. I do this a lot as the DM. I really like taking creatures that the party were struggling with early on in a campaign and then throwing hordes of them later on when they are trivial. Digital tools really are a blessing that heavily streamline the game and let you focus on the roleplay and narrative

The number one phrase that fixes all problems with playing evil characters: evil does not equal stupid.

Here is the basis for a build that I have been fiddling with and thinking over that has a completely unique playstyle (would require a lot of dm buy in): A build around the conjuration wizard's 2nd level feature Minor Conjuration. Your conjuration disappears if it deals any damage or if you use it again, and it must be a nonmagical object that you have seen. I don't believe there has been an official ruling, just a crawford comment, but basically you can have single-use damage work at full strength, it doesn't disappear before damage occurs. The poisons in dnd are non-magical and the poison and its container are considered a single object depending on how the dm interprets things. There are also poisons that do not deal damage, like carrion crawler mucus, drow poison, essence of ether, malice, oil of taggit, torpor, or truth serum. Many are capable of taking out a single target in a fight, and if your wizard has action surge or haste, you can likely start the fight with at least a single enemy out of commission. It isn't great action economy, but I am sure there is a way around that and to make a true cost free sustainable poisoner build. There also might be a way to get catapult involved for extra shenanigans.

One way this could work is if your defending a village from a band of barbarians and your using all the skeletons in the cemetery of all the people who used to live there to protect to town :-)

I had a Mind-Flayer necromancer in Out of the Abyss who obtained the wand of Orcus and used a Simulacrum by the end. He had hundreds of of minions at this point so we just ended up using the Mob Combat rules to speed up combat.

If you are into mtg, playing this duo as Liliana and Josu Vess reunited could be a blast

Hello! Great video once again. Just a simple question, for the necromancer race, how did you get +2 ton intel with the half-elf drow, when they give +2 to charisma and +1 to 2 other stats. Is there any sort custumization I am not aware. Thank you!

Great video!

I have been both playing and DMing for years and after trying tons of ways to balance this exact issue my friends and I settled on the fix that we found to be the most surprising. We simply removed the requirement to reassert control. First off, its really nice for everyone at the table if at the end of every long rest we are not waiting for the necromancer to do all his spell slot math to make sure he doesn't lose any. Also we have found that when your minions don't expire on you the necromancer player is more likely to utilize both animate and create undead. Here is the kicker though. If your control doesn't expire you don't need to keep your army around to make sure you don't lose control. The last necromancer I had in one of my campaigns had a literal army and the party used it to keep their base safe, bury emergency soldiers, even had them wear their backup gear like treasure vaults that could fight back. The actual necromancer then just kept a handful with them for actual adventuring. The fantasy of having an undead army was satisfied, there were not double to triple digits minions in every fight, and the necromancer could use their spell slots to aid the party and so forth because they were not burnt up maintaining the army. Yes this is not a hard number fix but it works great for a table that communicates with each other well and it lets the player behavior become it's own solution. Now thats been said, this is my first time seeing one of your videos and really liked it, will definitely watch more.

I know this is an older video but i had to comment here now since in my group we all are necromancys (me wizard, druid spore, paladin oathbreaker) and one gloomstalker drow. (he is a snowflake not playing death cleric xD) I‘m really excited about this and shared your video with them. oh btw thanks for giving us optimizers a home colby. :)

If you want to try to mitigate how insane this is, you could have plot-related reasons why you can't bring too many undead where you're going. Then you'd still be open to use your powers to their full effect in a one-off situation.

I've played the Oathbreaker hexblade part of a similar combo, yes broken AF.

Nit Picks and Strategies for Shared Table time: - Falling unconscious has no effect on your control over the undead. They remain controlled until the spell wears off. - As mentioned elsewhere, you can be running with A Lot more skeletons. - Oathbreaker is by default an NPC class not intended for PCs, though that hasn't stopped people at my tables (I like it). - Make Monster Cards for your Skeletons and Zombies. Standing order to each individual undead: "attack what they attack" and point to another PC. Hand each PC 1-2 cards and let them run some of the minions. Bonus points for strategizing so a zombies take turns Helping the GWM fighter/Sharpshooter each round. - At level 15 use your level 8 slot to make a Wight. Use your Level 14 subclass feature on it after you've instructed it not to resist your will. Use it until you find something better than it and 12 extra zambos. Based on the Lore for Wights in the Monster Manual, there is a strong chance it will remain loyal even without the ability. - If you want to have a massive, reeking, entourage, "Harmless Zombies." You can forgo the zombie attacks to instead make them dash, dodge, and use the help action for your ally's attacks. Just making them flesh walls that surround large and smaller creatures is great. Having them cut off an enemy's movement until the foe slogs through destroying them, inflicting disadvantage on all ranged attacks, etc is potentially of greater strategic value at levels 8+ than having them attack at all. Love me the Necromancer. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p4t10WxkZo0.html

If i prepare fog cloud to cast on the cleric when he goes to turn undead, it will work? he will spend his turn undead or he can walk outside the fog and then cast?

I'm so hyped for this one, I've been meaning to make a spooky skeleton boi for a while. Keep up the excellent content Colby! BTW, any battle royales planned for the future? Loved those ones also~

remember with command undead you can have one extra undead controlled, you can create a mummy and just use this for a general or whatever, not too strong but kind of funny if you don't find a nightwalker

I love necromancers so much! Colby, you are the awesomeness

This build is amazing mechanics wise, but where I think it really shines is the RP. Like the implications of how you logistically deal with hordes of undead thralls following you everywhere. Say goodbye to deep PC to PC monologues lol. Love this

This is totally going to be a villainous set of brothers in the campaign I'm running. Awesome!

As a “Forever DM…” maybe if the Necromancer summoned Wights that each had zombies, and maybe they had a Nightwalker… sounds like a tomb of horrors to me…

Great video, dude

This is PERFECT FOR ME!!! my friend and I JUST started a two man campaign using a necromancer and a paladin who hasn't decided their oath yet

The perfect speech to rally troops is darion mograines speech "hear the call of the highlord". The speech given to death knights in wow before you attack hallowed grounds

This is the 2nd video of yours I've seen with a Paladin (the other being the Oath of Vengeance), and I am surprised to have not yet seen a multi-class into a Hexblade Warlock. If one of the big difficulties with a Paladin is having to keep 3 stats high, planning an early 1 Lv dip into Hexblade means you can keep your STR at 14 (for heavy armor and pre-dip solid chance to hit and damage), and just pump CON and CHR to 16 and Max CHR. In addition to Hexblade's Curse once per short rest, "Armor of Agathys" (which would be a great surviving spell that would scale solidly with the Paladin spell slots and the 1 hour duration means it can be cast before combat begins) and Eldritch Blast in case the Paladin can't get up close and personal, I would be very curious to know what the math says about the viability of the Witch Knight, and the optimal point to take that dip.

It's hard to raise a family... but it most certainly helps if they are buried close to each other. - anonymous necromancer.

Fun video. I learned a few things, thanks. I usually play a cleric and don't prep animate dead. But the campaign I'm in now I have 2 skeletons and 4 zombies. It all started with finding the The Night Caller in the Sunless Citadel. Now my group keeps calling me "The Necromancer" and that I'm going to become a litch, lol. DM is picking up Tashas so I'll have access to Aura of Vitality, Purity, & Life (dont think i can use Life on undead though). Never thought having undead minions would be so fun.

This would be really fun to run as a villain for a DM or a PVP game.

I've DMed for a necromancer before, some thoughts on the issues you brought up of running it. We started at level 7, and he wanted to have all 16 skeletons that I think is the upper cap for that level. I told him we could start with 8, with opportunities to grow his horde and some minions that bent the rules a bit. New skeletons were acquired through the fallen foes or purchasing animal bones from a butcher (which people would do to make soup). While necromancy isn't unheard of in my setting, people still aren't the most ok with a small army walking into a town or a buisness. My necro had Disguise Kit proficiency, and used it to sneak them around, but not always. For bookkeeping simplicity, I treat the skeletons as having a ranged and melee attack, rather than explicitly shortsword and shortbow, since I think that was more used for enemy NPCs than summonable allies. This could be anything from sharpened femurs/ribs for melee and throwing bone darts for ranged. Same damage, just flavoring that makes sense. As for AOE, it do be like that sometimes, that's your weakness. I wouldn't put destroy undead in unless it made sense to, and any necromancer that challenges a Cleric knows full well that losing a horde may happen. The same goes for the ward spells like Forbiddence or Temple of the Gods, it is a known weakness you may have and you can't DPS your way through all problems. I let them re-summon the undead if it died, with a few caveats. If the skeleton took significant bludgeoning damage, it was considered too damaged to be reincarnated. The same goes for being hit by destroy undead. On the flip side, if the creature that they raised had a trait that made sense, they got to keep it. For example, a bugbear skeleton would have reach. One thing to note is the intelligence factor of skeletons and zombies. However, skeletons are smart enough to operate seige weaponry if shown how, so if you can acquire a cannon, trebuchet, or the like, you can up your DPS farther. All in all, he was pulling crazy DPS most of the time. Just being able to hit for 15 or 30 flat damage is brilliant. Even having one knock an enemy prone, have a second grapple them to keep the enemy from getting up, then having all the skeletons attack with advantage is huge. A lot of skeletons died, but they were expendable when the Party was not.

Couple interesting things that come to my mind, sorcerer twinning animate dead to further increase numbers/spell slot efficiency. And using "bag of undead holding" aka bags of holding you cram your skeletons into to go into towns. Could also work to transport corpses/bones around with you so you don't need to raid the local grave yard.

Not normally a fan of necromancers or summons but excited to see you max out the action economy.

If your DM let's you use the alternate Tasha's rule that lets you assign the racial ability bonuses to any statistic (as you assumed here) I've found that a good racial alternative that I prefer for this class and Wizards in general is the Mountain Dwarf. It gives you +2 to any two stats (So INT and Con), proficiency in Light and Medium armor (Which can give you an AC of 17 with a +2 to DEX). Granted, it might take a little bit longer to acquire that 17 AC because you need to get your hands on some Half-Plate, but you get an extra +1 to your constitution in exchange and a resistance to poison damage, advantage on saving throws against poison, and Darkvision. You also get a few bonuses: Dwarven Combat Training - Proficiency with the Battleaxe, Handaxe, Light Hammer, and Warhammer Tool Proficiency - Your choice of SMith's tools, brewer's supplies or mason's tools Stonecunning - Advantage on Intelligence (History) checks on stonework Those are however just extra that a wizard won't find use for all the time. All in all, I've found a mountain dwarf to be quite a nice choice for wizards in general if you aren't looking for a free feat.

any thoughts on Feat: MetaMagic Adept? Twin/Distance/Subtle ? could be nice to cast Hold without being able to be countered, or changing some Self/touch spells to 30' ranged...

Did you monoclass just to keep things simple or because it worked out best numbers wise? I wrote a build about a 6 wizard/11 warlock/2 ranger/1 cleric that maxed out at 1624 dpr against ac 10 via 124 bone friends

great video though I'm confused how good control undead is, would you be able to keep using it to reassert control or will there be an "oh crap it saved" moment, and now you got an undead problem

I think you may have missed an opportunity to optimize your necromancer build a slight bit more. A single level of death domain cleric to start would grant: medium armor / shield proficiency (which you got around by going tortle but this allows a greater variety of race / lineage choice), doesn't hamper spell slot progression, additional cantrips and 1st level spell preparations (bless, false life, healing word, etc.) and the Reaper feature which RAW I believe works with necromancy cantrips from any class. Just make certain to take any necromancy damage cantrips with your wizard levels. Plus, I really enjoy the flavor of a character who begins as an acolyte / cleric of death but decides to travel an even darker path. Lastly, I don't believe you touched on the potential to use the spells Danse Macabre or Summon Undead in your video, both of which would benefit from a Necromancer's "Undead Thralls" ability.

Two quick points: First, the DM's Guide in Chapter 8 has rules for handling mobs, where you skip attack and damage and just track the number of individuals needed to land a hit and use average damage. When you get over 5 or 6 skellies that's probably the easiest way to go. Second, I know everyone is all gung ho about Ravenloft right now, but in Eberron the kingdoms of both Karnath and Aerenal have good aligned necromancers and people who volunteer to become undead to protect their people forever. Karnath are themed Russian and Aerenal are elves.

Cody, how would this build change if at all in a Spelljammer setting with the new released races?

Inspiring leader speech: "Tonight we dine in Hell!...which, yes, I understand that's basically where some of u dine every night, but u get my point. But I don't want u to get down about that. You may be skin and bones, but you're all heart to me, lads. To arms!"

What if you did something like recommended feats/ASIs for when people do start with higher than the standard array or point buy at the end of the build?

Add in a Lore Bard and a Divine Soul Sorcerer(With one dip in Death Cleric (Thanks to Talking20 for the best evil magic boi build ever)) and you could have a super strong party to command a sustainable horde of undead fools. Relying on the Wizard as the engine to churn out undead, the Paladin to lead and buff them, the Bard could support them and up their damage with the *crazy* spell list, and the the Sorcerer could be incredible damage/cc. Plus the theme of the whole party leading this horde just paints a picture in my mind that gives me chills. I know that goes way beyond Optimization builds but it's still just such a cool thought in my mind that I needed to share it.