Create Undead: Wight Supremacy

Spell Level: 6

School: Necromancy

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: 10 feet

Duration: Instantaneous

Components: V, S, M (One clay pot filled with grave dirt, one clay pot filled with brackish water, and one 150 gp black onyx stone for each corpse)

You can cast this spell only at night. Choose up to three corpses of Medium or Small humanoids within range. Each corpse becomes a ghoul under your control. (The GM has game statistics for these creatures.)

As a bonus action on each of your turns, you can mentally command any creature you animated with this spell if the creature is within 120 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 have given it. To maintain control of the creature for another 24 hours, you must cast this spell on the creature before the current 24-hour period ends. This use of the spell reasserts your control over up to three creatures you have animated with this spell, rather than animating new ones.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a 7th-level spell slot, you can animate or reassert control over four ghouls. When you cast this spell using an 8th-level spell slot, you can animate or reassert control over five ghouls or two ghasts or wights. When you cast this spell using a 9th-level spell slot, you can animate or reassert control over six ghouls, three ghasts or wights, or two mummies.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @KoboldCrier

Create undead is D&D’s pyramid scheme. You recruit three friends (some wights), and they recruit some more friends (twelve zombies), and BAM! You got yourself some profits atop your very own triangle of dread!

The modes on this spell by up-casting it shift its power drastically. For the TLDR, the most bang for your buck are wights, but if you don’t want to manage a literal army that requires a massacre, just make ghouls.

At its baseline, three ghouls for a 6th level slot is fine, but not great. By 11th level your threatening adversaries will rarely fail the DC 10 paralyze save, and ghouls have a measly +4 to hit. Compared to other summoning magic it does its job; three attacks for up to 6d4/d6+6 a round isn’t breaking any damage charts. This is a perfectly “fair” version of summoning magic with the handy upside of requiring no concentration and lasting for a full day.

Casting it as a 7th level spell is worse; four ghouls instead of three just isn’t a major difference for the up-cast requirement. Using an 8th level slot is where the spell gets interesting; a pair of ghasts is terrible, they’re basically +1 ghouls with stench. A pair of wights, however, open up a whole new avenue of play thanks to their life drain.

Life drain allows wights to reanimate slain humanoids as zombies under their control. Each wight can have up to twelve zombies obeying them at a time; if given the orders, they can each massacre some people in exchange for being lieutenants in your burgeoning undead army. You control how each wight acts, and the wights in turn control the zombies. This paired with their longbow multiattack makes them the ideal candidates to command over a legion of the walking dead. Where it gets even more nutty is when you use both your 8th and 9th level slots to make wights; five wights each controlling twelve zombies gives you tertiary command over sixty foot soldiers through your created undead. Picture a dark robed figure wielding a gnarled skull topped staff with a half-circle of twisted skeletal wights before them, longbows drawn, barking orders down from the cliff tops to the horde of unfeeling zombies below. If you want to play the necromancer lord controlling over armies of the damned as their end game fantasy, this is it.

Mummies suck. Two mummies for a 9th level slot isn’t worth it when you could be casting wish or time stop. Make three wights instead.

Create undead is the kind of top end spell that can change how you play the game entirely. It's particularly useful in the hands of a wicked wizard working with an evil party in need of a militia. Otherwise, it’ll probably just be a fine summoning spell for a handful of ghouls to give you a bit more to do with your bonus action. At its worst, it's a fine summoning spell. At its best, create undead is SICK.

5e Spells

Create Undead: Wight Supremacy