Animate Daed: Yes, It Still Counts as Necrophilia
Spell Level: 3
School: Necromancy
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 10 feet
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: V, S, M (a drop of blood, a piece of flesh, and a pinch of bone dust)
This spell creates an undead servant. Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the GM has the creature’s game statistics).
On each of your turns, you can use a bonus action to mentally command any creature you made with this spell if the creature is within 60 feet of you (if you control multiple creatures, you can command any or all of them at the same time, issuing the same command to each one). You decide what action the creature will take and where it will move during its next turn, or you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor. If you issue no commands, the creature only defends itself against hostile creatures. Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete.
The creature is under your control for 24 hours, after which it stops obeying any command you’ve given it. To maintain control of the creature for another 24 hours, you must cast this spell on the creature again before the current 24-hour period ends. This use of the spell reasserts your control over up to four creatures you have animated with this spell, rather than animating a new one.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, you animate or reassert control over two additional undead creatures for each slot level above 3rd. Each of the creatures must come from a different corpse or pile of bones.
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Necromancy really takes the idea of waste not want not to a whole new level. While your paladins and clerics are out here “respecting the dead” by doing burials and other nonsense rituals, you, a wizard of fine taste, use those lifeless lumps for a greater purpose. Animate Dead IS the necromancer fantasy option in 5th edition.
If you’re looking into using Animate Dead there are a few basics to keep in mind. First, skeletons and most humanoid zombies both have their upsides and downsides. If you’re looking for bags of hitpoints to take hits for you, zombies are probably where you want to be, as undead fortitude paired with more hit points makes them often the better front line option. Skeletons come with the ability to make ranged attacks, though, meaning if you’re looking to get a backline battery to offer suppressing fire at range, they are the way to go. When you’re getting larger and larger numbers of them at higher levels, a battalion of skeletons firing off arrows each round can be devastating.
Another element to consider is zombies tend to keep the physical characteristics of the dead humanoid in question. Skeletons will typically just have the skeleton stat block; with zombies, you can conceivably get additional features that their living counterpart once had depending on your DM and what stats they create. If you’re DMing for a necromancer with Animate Dead, consider keeping fun abilities like gnolls’ rampage and orcs’ aggressive to offer unique tools on their future zombies.
Animate Dead compares closely to summoning magic. When using a 3rd level slot on it, it's going to look a lot more like the modern Summon Beast and Undead. Where those options scale better with a single creature and probably are offering a better initial minion under your control, Animate Dead gives you the ability to cast it without concentration and never have to worry about losing your pet by dropping said concentration. This means you can cast it as many times as you like, offering a potential build with dozens of creatures under your control.
This is definitely the kind of spell that can grow wildly out of control when left unchecked; having a handful of extra creatures at your disposal early can be backbreaking to a lot of early encounter balance. Counteracting it though tends to be pretty easy. Undead are usually slow, and don’t have particularly high to hit modifiers or damage. Area of effect damage often will gut the necromancer's pool of minions. As the game tier gets higher and higher, humanoids can become harder to find, making the wizard either need to commit evil acts to acquire new bodies or manage their bodies more carefully.
All in all, Animate Dead is a great spell. It fulfills the undead overlord super edgy wizard fantasy well. It is undoubtedly powerful as most summoning effects are, but not nearly as game warping as spells like Conjure Animals or Conjure Minor Elementals. You’re getting limited abilities in exchange for the flexibility of casting, and while the minions without DM help are definitely some of the weakest options, the quantity you can build up to and tools to navigate getting exactly what you need is great. Try out Animate Dead if you’re into the necromancer fantasy even a little bit; you won’t be disappointed.
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