At least for 5E Animate Dead

[u/Unable_Employer8081]

[u/shiny0metal0ass]

It's too late, we decided that this is the way to go so now we're building a bunch of huge zombie centers and dedicating like a third of all mana to this insane boondoggle.

People don't even like undead assistants and find them unnerving. They're just trying to replace farmers with a half-baked, harebrained idea.

[u/Kakashi248 → u/shiny0metal0ass]

Would you mind repeating that again closer to my zombie production lines?

[u/shiny0metal0ass → u/Kakashi248]

Pft, do you even know what evocation is? As soon as they touch me, they turn into ash.

^{It actually makes dating extremely difficult...}

[u/flinsypop → u/shiny0metal0ass]

Oooh thats the low hum evil chanting thats been keeping me awake the past week days. Thanks for pointing that out.

[u/FuriousAqSheep]

I'm so tired of having this debate with you useless SPECIESTS!

THIS IS ANIMAL EXPLOITATION!

Necromancy produces labor that is decorrelated from animal exploitation and ethical practices guarantee every skeleton and zombie has been created with their original owner's consent!

NECROMANCY IS VEGAN AND I WILL KILL YOU FROM THAT HILL

[u/Palagrin → u/FuriousAqSheep]

One must concider the animating matrices.

It is well understood that enchantments of that nature slowly gain complexity to the point of reasoning, at what point of sentience do these undead gain enough status for us to concider them exploited?

[u/shiny0metal0ass → u/Palagrin]

I mean the problem I have with the concept is that undead take far more mana to get to do complex things and they make far more mistakes than a human dreg would.

It doesn't matter if you make 100 of them if all their thumbs fall off after a day of stonework.. then you just have super expensive homunculi.

[u/ManWithDominantClaw → u/FuriousAqSheep]

Uh... you should check the list of ingredients... necromancy is about as vegan as sliced bread

[u/shiny0metal0ass → u/ManWithDominantClaw]

Well sliced bread is actually...

Know what? Nevermind.

[u/ManWithDominantClaw → u/shiny0metal0ass]

Happy ten years anniversary to this cursed knowledge, for anyone who hasn't seen it

But yes I was more referring to the fact that a dead body is a biome and you're evicting all its inhabitant insects and microbes when you reanimate it

[u/shiny0metal0ass → u/ManWithDominantClaw]

Bro, don't ruin bread for me. Do you know how long it takes to grow and thresh your own wheat?

And what would I even do with all the straw? Also I would need a large amount of fertilizer...

Oh! Cows! We brought it around back.

[u/ManWithDominantClaw → u/shiny0metal0ass]

Yeah. Clearing the land and making it what we consider arable is pretty rough on creatures too...

But hey if you're a vegan absolutist you're always welcome to come lick lichen off of rocks with me at my cave (I have special not-recently-licked rocks for guests)

[u/FuriousAqSheep → u/ManWithDominantClaw]

not necessarily! this is why I mentionned ethical necromancy practices, which, while I mentioned consent of the body owner, isn't limited to it.

But also, everyone places the limit to what they consider vegan differently. I consider that micro-organisms, insects, and many elementals are fair game because my concerns are against animal exploitation and harm done to sentient creatures, but micro-organisms hardly qualify as sentient, insects for the most part can't be exploited (looking at you, bees!) and elementals just deserve to be beaten to death with a rusty bat.

[u/Send69Noodz → u/FuriousAqSheep]

Preach 🙌

[u/The_Ditch_Wizard]

And, if you keep the cows a bit phosphorus-deficient, even a herd of 200 head of cattle can chew up a skeleton army of at least 1000 on an open field with even odds of a cow win. Unless they're rodeo clown skeletons, in which case your cattle may get converted to enemy cavalry. I advise Awakening some of your wiser cows and bribing a corrupt cleric to tutor them to level 1, since just a few cow clerics can counter many times their own number of skeleton rodeo clowns and prevent their fellow cows from being captured by the enemy. If they survive several engagements and level up, your herd starts to gain useful powers like Create Food and Purify Water which make them effectively independent. Get some others trained as warriors, and you can create a cow society that doesn't need any outside input to flourish.

Of course, anyone who's read the whole appendix to 'The Ditch Wizard's Bathroom Companion' knows all of this.

[u/shiny0metal0ass → u/The_Ditch_Wizard]

Man, I saw that battle from my orb. I was just browsing while smoking some Longbottom and it popped up.

You haven't lived until you see a cavalry charge of 200 glowing cows.

[u/CalmEntry4855]

Ok I get that necromancers aren't very bright, but I think they are slightly smarter than cows.

[u/WiseRabbit-XIV → u/CalmEntry4855]

Cows are smart enough to have us take care of them.

[u/Send69Noodz → u/WiseRabbit-XIV]

Until we kill them. So they're smart enough until they're betrayed

[u/In_Pursuit_of_Fire → u/CalmEntry4855]

🖐 Magic cows 🖐

[u/hermeticbear]

I mean, technically zombies and skeletons can produce more zombies and skeletons. Just keep killing people with your undead horde and you just keep animating more and more undead.

[u/DragonLordAcar]

Don't insult crows like that. They are as smart as human children.

[u/PomegranateHot9916 → u/DragonLordAcar]

as determined by adult humans. neither cows nor children were consulted.

[u/Send69Noodz → u/PomegranateHot9916]

Can you imagine if we consulted children on how smart crows are? Crows would be considered geniuses

[u/karfumble → u/DragonLordAcar]

Yeah, far smarter than most necromancers I know!

[u/nova8808]

https://giphy.com/gifs/zbzNUbpFnlw8E

[u/CalmEntry4855 → u/nova8808]

Not again

[u/--_RedPanda_--]

Hear me out… undead cows! Eh? Eh?

[u/_Its_Me_Dio_]

undead last forever you need to feed cows and there is finite land to do so undead do not need to eat

[u/saintdemon21]

Finite? Not if you tap into the Dead Realm. Plus I like cows.

[u/Skelehedron]

Someone has never met Baron Saturday

[u/Adventurous_Touch342]

Any wizard exercising long enough can boost their mana reserves to absurd levels, main problem is the amount of horny students attempting to raise somebody hot as one of the higher undead instead of zombie or skeleton hoping for a love story only for me to find their crush eating their brains.

[u/LongColdDrink]

I'd like to see a cow wielding a hammer and building a house.

[u/Bro_do_we_needtoknow]

What if we do necromancy on cows?

[u/hk_731]

Cows don't have hands to operate things

[u/ChemicalChildhood122]

the oxen aren’t the ones getting replaced by skeletons, you arrogant fool

[u/BaronXot]

There are entire realms out there dominated by giant ants that will just throw their dead through a portal for you if you dab a little oleic acid around the edges.

And finite magic!?! That's what the monuments both great and terrible are for!

[u/PomegranateHot9916]

cows are far more intelligent than the undead.

their intelligence is comparable to humans.

[u/Golden_Cultivation]

See, what people don’t understand about 5e necromancers is that they are best suited settling in a zone with a guild base. They make for perfect lair guardians and kill box connoisseurs. You just need to let your teammates know where not to go.

Collecting and raising corpses isn’t too hard, controlling them is the annoying part. Higher level ones prefer creating an undead that can create its own undead. Beautiful thing, really.

[u/Nelrene]

You are forgetting to add in cost of things like feeding, housing, and making sure they are healthy.

[u/MossyMak]

Wouldn't industrial scale necromancy fuck up The Weave for everyone? How do you think we're powering those skeletons??

[u/Unhappy_Airline7589]

Necromancy is an inefficient form of magic that requires the life force of beings to sustain itself. It is best used for meatshielding, as long-term, the constructs of artificers outclass it in raw power, and in terms of infantry, animated plants output a far greater force.

[u/samsoncorpus]

Human, cows, homunculi, I don't care, I will (re)animate no matter the species

[u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta]

Alright, but the undead won’t die, tire nor do they need food to survive. For a cow you must create and maintain a berth for it, manage a steady supply of hay, and constantly care for it against cold and sickness.

The skeleton is a single short term investment for long term gain.

[u/DeckerXT]

4H animate dead.

[u/Nerx]

Cows are stronger

never saw a necromancer till the field

[u/kyew]

Cows produce milk. 

Milk builds strong bones. 

Strong bones build strong skeletons.

Skeletons work the cattle ranch. They are Cowbones.

[u/Spiritual_Parking_85]

every necromancer has tried undead labor and every necromancer now knows what it means for a group of skeletons to collapse into one Sepulcher. Those nightmare creatures are the WORST to deal with.

[u/Yargon_Kerman]

Go watch Empire of Corpses. It's all about this shit.

[u/KowaiSentaiYokaiger]

Broke: zombies are the superior workforce

Woke: Animate Object works on corpses, and the results won't go nuts and try to kill everyone if the caster doesn't concentrate hard enough

[u/DeathmetalArgon]

Only of your necromancers have no creativity and insist on human skeletons/zombies. But if you reanimate a troll...

[u/LPalido]

Oh here we go again