Knowing that Barjin was in catacombs no doubt laced with burial vaults, the wizard did not have to ask where he intended to find his army. Suddenly Barjin’s choice to assault the library did not seem so foolhardy.
–R. A. Salvatore, Cleric Quintet 1: Canticle
I’m not above reading an R. A. Salvatore novel on occasion. What better source for D&D inspiration than a novel that was inspired by D&D? It’s like opening a jpeg in Photoshop and saving it again. Some loss of quality may occur.
A necromancer is unique among leaders in that he doesn’t need to bring his army with him. He can create one anywhere he can find a graveyard. This can be useful for DMs, allowing a lot of mobility for their evil villains.
It could also add some fun twists for a high-level political campaign. If your PC rules a country, loyal necromancers might join spies and assassins as agents they can send into enemy kingdoms.
Tags: everybook
Necromancer’s finding armies anywhere they go isn’t only confined to D&D. I run a World of Darkness Mage campaign and we have necromancers too.
Since the campaign takes place in NY one of my necromancer PC’s decided to summon up an army of zombie sewer rats. Which reminds me what a great idea that really is…
You know I’ve never had a game that actually got into the world of armies and large groups? I’ve never had a GM that knew how to handle them. I’ve actually always wanted to play a game with a good aligned necromancer just to see how things would go with a character who’s principle method of fighting was to have others fight for him.
It’s interesting to think about playing a game where a casual necromancer might just lift an army of undead like it’s nothing.
I can’t help but think that something like that in my game would be viewed as a huge deal. I believe that this is something that should happen very very rarely in the world. If not the player would quickly be labeled a super villain of such and draw a good amount of unwanted attention.
I also like to restrict raise dead for the same reason. I feel that only the highest of order of priest should be able to do something like bring someone back from the afterlife. There should be side effects to this, ones that make any player or NPC think twice about doing it. Having something like this a simple game mechanic where the player just rolls some dice, laughs, and carry on without a second thought makes me feel as though the “magic’ of the RPG has been sucked out. =P
We did play one 3e game where one of our players did some Jeremy Irons-level villainous scenery chewing as he raised an army of skeletons. It was pretty badass. I’d actually like to see more of that in 4e, for the occasional evil campaign.