@Anoplexian 5e adventures are more linear than a sandbox style campaign will be, but many of them do have branching paths or multiple solutions. Also, a good GM will use the context of the adventure to provide even more options or branching paths if the players need them (as my players often did back when I GM'd)
2E was closer to the Gygaxian era and often included difficult, trap filled mazes, and sometimes expected players to be plotting their own map. Times have changed design-wise in premade adventures. There are still challenges, there are still mazes, but often they do not have instant death as the price of failure.
Oh, when you hit 0HP, you're incapacitated. If no one revives you, on your turn you roll to recover. If you roll three failures before you roll three successes, you die.
You buffer overflow the game state causing your shared player world to blue screen of death and end in a fireball as the big bang occurs and restarts the instance.
@DavidCoffron Probably up to the GM? If it's the devourer's soul, then tricking the devourer into casting magic jar could be a clever way of removing the possession
@NautArch Maybe I'm misremembering. I know the 3rd-level version is limited to humanoid skeletons/zombies, and they're weak. But I thought the higher-level version had better options
I like the idea of this encounter but there are a lot of ways the players can easily foil it
If you don't have enough necromancers, then the players may notice them trying to raise the corpses, and interfere before the zombies are fully raised
yes it is, but the ogre doesn't seem very smart to begin with. I don't know if it is "reduce mental scores to very low" or "reduce mental scores a bit:" I think the former makes more sense
The only case we have of raising creatures that aren't from animate dead or create undead is from the Wand of Orcus.
So the limit from RAW is zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghasts, wights, and mummies. If you have a homebrew creature/spell, it should be at one of those CR (to fit with the right level of CR for the spells)
@MikeQ a custom spell could work just as well (maybe a level 7 version of Raise Dead that allows resurrecting CR 1 undead); that's basically equivalent to what can be done with Create Undead
Though I find it easier and fairer to have homebrew things fit into the existing rules as much as possible so I don't have an endless wave of rules I have to change for it.
It possibly gives time for the players to stop (some) of them, it gives multiple ways to deal with the threat and potential allies should saves get made
@NautArch Or even if its a 1-10 minute casting time, nothing says the party arrives "right" after the event. Maybe the spell comes with an arcana check or the undead attacks the creator (Frankenstiens monster style)
@DavidCoffron huh? I don't care about CR. All I care is how they should be different. From the Ogre-Ogre Zombie, the difference is -2 DEX, +2 CON, -2 INT, -1 WIS, and -2 CHA
@Vylix I think the best answer you are going to get if the question is reopened is "there are no hard rules" and then a bunch of opinions on what you could/should do
@Vylix Well that is certainly answerable (as long as people don't think its too broad). There are many examples in adventure books and a few in the DMG
Why have I favored monosyllables for game terms, skills, attributes, etc over the years?
They’re friendlier for layout.
A monosyllable is typically short, meaning it’s less likely to deform justified text or become decoupled from dice or modifier indicators due to wrapping.
@DavidCoffron I figured that mold earth (pronounced Mole Dearth) would mean that I no longer have little blind beasties eating my lawn to death from the underside.
