If they're like these guys , then yes. Skeletons with tactics are scary
They come at you in a shieldwall formation and massacre every unlucky soul that attempts to fight in melee. You can't outlast them because undead can't get tired, you can't outmaneuver them because of how rigidly they follow the formation, you can't outrange them because arrows don't do much against bones. I now want to put them in my game, but I'm burned out on DMing
You forgot about morale, not only do they not get tired, but they don't feel fear either. So good luck winning the morale game against what is essentially an automaton.
You forgot about morale, not only do they not get tired, but they don't feel fear either. So good luck winning the morale game against what is essentially an automaton.
What do YOU think?
The only thing that can make these kinds of skeletons have a weakness is black powder weapons (since they can crush bones a bit better and even then...) and if we are using rules that if you kill the necromancer, the skeletons become either completely mindless and act on instinct or just fall to the ground and become corpses again.
> 30lb skeleton with maybe 30 lbs of armor on him (really generous) > unbreakable shield wall!!!!
Remember in the end credits of Step Brothers when the two adults just go fricking ham on the young children? That's what would happen here.
One full grown man, and let's give him 30 pounds of armor too, is going to bowl over those literal bone twigs like nothing.
Hope the necromancer can keep bringing them back because they aren't stopping shit.
Now imagine it's a unit of dudes ridding several hundred pound horses. It will literally be raining splinters of bone
>charge skeleton pike formation >have your own pikes, tall shields, and poleaxes >muscleless skeletons get literally crushed by the press of humans against them
The ideal position for a skeleton is scouting, skirmishing, and light cavalry.
>scouting
I've never known skeletons to be depicted as having great perception, intelligence, stealth, or communication skill. You might be able to make an argument for stealth, being as they don't breathe or anything. Maybe. >skirmishing
never known a skeleton to be depicted as being fast or accurate either, and skirmishers are explicitly troops that are meant to retreat when faced with proper troops, so it wouldn't take advantage of a skeleton's lack of fear/no sense of self preservation. Although in this role their immunity to fatigue could be an asset, but again, I don't think skeletons are usually depicted as being especially quick and so they could be chased down anyway >light cav
see the above
2 years ago
Anonymous
The default assumption for most undead is that they have SOME way to relay information to their masters, whether through remote viewing or with comical screeching skeleton voices.
Given their lack of flesh and joints, skeletons are flexible, lightweight, and (presumably) scentless. This means they can move through brush without disturbing it, move near wildlife without disturbing or attracting them, and settle themselves down in advantageous positions.
I think we're working from two different understandings of what a skeleton ought to act like. It sounds like the strongest impression of skellies in your mind is something like Warhammer, with its Harryhausenesque robot skellies. In that case, there's literally nowhere skeletons would be better than another sort of minion unless you want to ignore logistics (which, let's be honest, is a thing for most undead already)
2 years ago
Anonymous
yes, we are zeroing in on the "in what setting" problem, I agree.
2 years ago
Anonymous
We'll never find a conclusive all-setting answer, but we can compare trends in fiction. Off the top of my head, I can think of some prevailing trends using popular media
>Dungeons & Dragons skellies explicitly have +2 DEX >Army of Darkness & Harryhausen skellies are not visibly faster or more agile than humans, but weigh a lot less and can be knocked off-balance more easily >Dark Souls skeletons are very fast and agile, but fall apart easily >Warhammer skeletons are slow, weak, and not intelligent
So in general, most skellies are either slightly faster than the average man or about on the same level, but they're not good in a strict man-to-man test of strength.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Lances were longer than most spears. Pikes, maybe. Even so, just send dudes in the front and hit the block from the side. Like they did anyway.
I mean shit, you don't even need dudes with two handed swords to cut the ends off the pikes. Literally just have guys walk up and yank them out of their hands, unless the pike head is fricking 3 feet long (it isn't) because it's a 30 lbs skeleton with zero grip strength. It would be like taking a stick from a fricking child.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>dudes with two handed swords to cut the ends off the pikes
the whole "zweihanders countered pikes because they just cut through the shaft" is almost certainly untrue.
>just yank the pike away lol
that's like saying to someone "it's fine, if someone comes at you with a knife just take their knife away, it isn't a big deal"
Sure, disarming them is a valid strategy, but it's complicated by the fact that they are ACTIVELY TRYING TO STAB YOU
2 years ago
Anonymous
The other anon is just presuming that their lack of muscles means these skeletons are weaker than grandma without her ensure bottle. Sure, if you want to claim realism, but this anon also accepts they can move and stand on their own which makes no sense in his worldview.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Sure, just have them do that a few thousand times while constantly being poked and prodded at.
A skeleton is rarely a threat 1/1, but you'll almost never get those favorable conditions under a competent necro-mander. It's like trying to clear out an ever-filling ballpit: eventually, the balls will overwhelm you and drown you, no matter how many you throw out.
>Now imagine it's a unit of dudes ridding several hundred pound horses. It will literally be raining splinters of bone
Horses will not charge into massed infantry in good order. To a horse, a line of infantry looks a lot like a wall, and horses aren't about to throw themselves into a wall.
Nor would the rider want them to, because for as heavy as a horse is, the aggregate weight of a crowd of human beings is a lot higher. A single horse will crush the first man, and stagger the second, then lose all their momentum. Now they're stationary, surrounded by a mob of humans with lots of pointy metal things who want the horse and rider dead.
Cavalry was never used to steamroll infantry. Attempting that would be suicidal, for the horses and their riders. Instead, cavalry was used to provide morale shocks. Surprise, surprise, facing down a line of charging cavalry as an infantryman is fricking scary. And a good cavalry charge could often cause weak infantry formations to collapse immediately without even fighting. Then, once the formation was broken and scattered, the cavalry could ride through the fleeing infantry, running down or killing anyone they could reach.
But we're talking about animated skeletons, who have no morale and will never rout. In which case, cavalry is mostly useless.
There was a discussion about this upthread and the conclusion was made that while living cavalry sucks against undead for that very reason, undead cavalry against living infantry would be great because even if the infantry don't break your undead horsemen have no self preservation instinct and can be used as missiles
They make good soldiers. No food or sleep or environment worries, and the necromancer has total control of their actions. If they die they can be replenished. No kingdom can survive a foe like that.
Actual combat though they’re probably too lightweight to be a match, a combatant could easily knock them over or their weapon aside.
>Give Skeletons armor >Not because they need armor, but because they need MASS to not just get bowled over by a charge from even just untrained peasants, (a human Skeleton weighs only about 15% of their body weight)
The fact that armor is already fitted for the human body, likely to come with the corpses on a battlefield, AND is heavy, (especially if you soak it in water or mud, both easy to find on any battlefield), just makes it convenient for any necromancer to make their skeletons heavy enough to actually fight.
Plus it looks cool and ups the intimidation of your undead army by a lot too!
>15% the weight
Horrifying honestly. Imagine a human being with normal human strength that weighed less than 30 lb.
That's, almost exactly the amount you would weigh on the moon. We're talking skeletons able to do ridiculous feats of acrobatics. We're talking a 10-ft vertical leap. They'd be able to scale walls like nothing.
Sure, they could get knocked over easily but they'd be able to take running leaps deep into enemy formations. Give them a pair of knives and watch them tear apart enemy units.
>Sending your 20 lb skellies into melee
Nah you're thinking too anime. All you'd need to do is give them some crossbows or javelins and you have some NASTY skirmishers. >Literally infinite stamina >Bad terrain? Lmao 10 ft vertical leap >Infinite stamina=crossbows with winches that need a lot of fast winds, not like your skeletons will get tired winding it up like a fricking hand drill, boom your skirmishers can now shoot through a Knight's armor ez
Yeah, they're essentially futuristic robots by IRL standards - a pack of them could be integrated into the carriage of a primitive tank, or battering ram. Skeletons bound into siege engines as loaders and winders. Skeletons with just their skulls and arms tied to silk wings.
Agricultural skeletons, assembly line skeletons, etc, etc.
Deep Rot was the culmination of this line of thought, way back in the day, a calculating machine made of skeletons.
(and GURPS Abydos goes into this kind of Necro-Industrial Revolution in warfare and production)
>All you'd need to do is give them some crossbows
I am now imagining skeletons being sent flying by the recoil of their crossbows. Thanks, anon, that's better than the skelecopter.
>and the necromancer has total control of their actions.
That is a massive drawback. Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order. Some plans even count on it.
>Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order
That's an exception. Majority of battles were won because soldiers did exactly what was asked of them and the followed orders. Conversly shitload of battles were lost because soldiers were not doing what the were supposed to do.
Imagine being this stupid
If you plant a rank of skeletons to act as an anvil for a charge, they wont run and will keep fighting until the unit suffers total casualties. Humans are not so reliable.
Outside of a modern context, independent thought doesn't benefit an army.
It's time to get out of your armchair you fricking idiot.
Necromancers are essentially armchair generals where nobody can tell them their plans are shit. So any and all gaps in their strategies are hilariously exploitable and their soldiers will always carry those orders out with a time delay that prevents them from being stopped when any mistakes are committed. If they try to branch out of the very few strategies they are good at it will fail as they do multiple things at once that burdens them even more and will inevitably result in a spiral of failure once a certain threshold is reached.
The only thing skeletons have going for them is replenishment but how viable that is, is entirely dependent on how quickly the rules for necromancy allows that replenishment.
2 years ago
Anonymous
youre drunk
2 years ago
Anonymous
Worse, he's stupid.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Worse, he's stupid.
I played RTS, fighting a necromancer is exactly the same thing but he doesn't have instantaneous micro management which means every single one of his mistakes cannot be rectified in seconds when they happen. You guys fellate necromancers way too much.
2 years ago
Anonymous
we are talking about the efficacy of skeleton troops not the one time you outsmarted a necromancer.
read the above posts
look, they might be weaker than a human. sure. maybe a little slower on the attack. but let me break it down why they are the absolute top teir.
>basically silent. no chatter, maybe a little clatter but you can fix that with some cloth robes. or if you are broke just roll em around in charcoal. bam. nearly undetectable night fighters. infiltrators, or scouts.
you could send them to walk right on into the enemy camp and listen. you could have em hang out in weird places like at the bottom of a well, when the enemy goes to get water (something your boys dont need) instead they get shanked by a skeleman!
what is a mortal army without water? dead thats what.
does your army of mortals get tired? skeles dont. they can fight all night and all day bay bee.
their feet dont hurt so they can cover more ground than any marching army. so you can flank and out play mortal force
they dont eat, so no need for costly or expansive supply chain. aka the number 1 killer of real world armies. back in the days of sword and spear, scouts finding and disrupting supply lines determined the tide of battle. if they sacked enough, the enemy would surrender b4 a fight. if they got a few, then youd attack them right after their dudes start feeling the strain and have low moral ectect. skeleis dont care though. they dont even set up camp.
they dont refuse to follow orders bc they are too scared of death. THEY ARE DEATH. its basically how they reproduce.
they are limited in their ability to maintain weapons apparently. i guess. judging by all the rusted crap. i wont get into that but i think with a little work they could really improve their gear.
crazy good in seiges too. what are the defenders gonna do? shoot em with arrows? dump hot oil or boiling water on them? lol. lmao even. who cares? plus you could just fling bags of bones over the walls to cause a scene in the town while the skelecrew cuts through the front door.
lets see, what else... spys. yeah!
spys. you ever notice how humans are made out of a skeleto and some meat? dude. just take a member of the enemies royal court, remove their skeleton. create undead minnion out of it. PUT IT BACK IN ITS MEAT. send it to the enemies hq, and have it kill their leader! or literally anyone. moves like that get folk to surrender right quick. maybe not everyone, but at least one dude in the castle will be willing to cut a deal to avoid being debonified and rebonified.
also xylophones. you could put on a concert the likes of wich the world has never seen!
if you hae a tinkerer im sure you could bolt on some basic augments like a spring locking system to turn each skeleton archer into a more powerfull wielder of the bow.
there arnt very many situations where having a meat based military is even as good as a bone brigade.
zero looting and robbing when you win a seige. YOU get ALL the money! they just giv e you the money.
the pesants appreciate that a lot more too. unless ofcourse you start turning them into skele soldiers. but then who cares what they think?
i guess some situations could come up where having a bunch of skele minions is not ideal. like at a fancy dinner party. chicks might think youre weird. but
you know there are probobally plenty of other signs about that. like the castle im hosting from being made of bones, all the green flame lanturns made out of bones. all the dishes being made out of reconstituted bone dust and me making a point to bring that fact up durring dinner. they KNOW what they are getting in for with me. and if they dont like it, thats fine. man.
i think i did a good job of explaining the pros and cons
2 years ago
Anonymous
Oh okay.
2 years ago
Anonymous
People get caught up in how cool mastering death is on paper and aesthetically and don't really confront how lame practical necromancy actually is. Skeletons are functionally identical to the battle droids from the Star Wars prequels, but generally even less intelligent and capable. There are other kinds of undead, but the zombies and similar creatures you also get as shock troops are usually just slow, reeking, and just kind of gross-looking, which undermines the aesthetic appeal of the field, its saving grace. What you really need to do is take that big wizard brain and repurpose that laboratory and make you some automatons. Harder, better, faster, stronger. You can even cheat death by turning yourself into some manner of construct. Face it, necromancy is obsolete.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>I played RTS
Cool
Would be better if that meant anything
2 years ago
Anonymous
RTS armies are just golems following psychic commands from a single commander so RTS is always relevant when talking about wizards using puppet armies.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You're actually dumber with every post.
Let's see how you top this.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You'll have to prove what I said is untrue so the ball is in your court. I am waiting.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Show me where I'm wrong
Why? You're still going to be wrong and dumb at the end of it. You'll disagree. You'll argue with more idiotic reasoning, and I'll have to continously counter every moronic point you try to pass.
Easier to just say you're dumb and call it a day.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You assume I am not reasonable when I already conceded to this guy
we are talking about the efficacy of skeleton troops not the one time you outsmarted a necromancer.
read the above posts
[...]
[...]
[...]
i think i did a good job of explaining the pros and cons
I will take your refusal as you being incapable of abstract reasoning and just outright refusing to acknowledge RTS tactics as being valid for your own personal beliefs.
>Give Skeletons armor >Not because they need armor, but because they need MASS to not just get bowled over by a charge from even just untrained peasants, (a human Skeleton weighs only about 15% of their body weight)
The fact that armor is already fitted for the human body, likely to come with the corpses on a battlefield, AND is heavy, (especially if you soak it in water or mud, both easy to find on any battlefield), just makes it convenient for any necromancer to make their skeletons heavy enough to actually fight.
Plus it looks cool and ups the intimidation of your undead army by a lot too!
They make good soldiers. No food or sleep or environment worries, and the necromancer has total control of their actions. If they die they can be replenished. No kingdom can survive a foe like that.
Actual combat though they’re probably too lightweight to be a match, a combatant could easily knock them over or their weapon aside.
A lot of this is going to depend on how much magic you use on each skelly. You could pare them down to 1/5th of human strength and march an army along for miles. Or you could juice them up to human norms and have them go full anime.
However, because an undead skeleton doesn't come with muscles you're going to be dependent on how much magic you've got.
The problem is that assuming that undead skeletons have the same strength as when they were alive, giving them to much armor would likely still immobilized them
Asuming the necromancers power is used to animate the skeleton. He's probably better off just getting an extra skelly. Even skelly in heavy armor would weigh significantly less than Joe Schmoe. Armor was made to be light and wearable after all.
Its pointless to make skelletons use real physics. Real physics would make it impossible for them to move Round and leverage power.
> likely to come with the corpses on a battlefield,
Not likely at all actually. Basically the only mass grave in all of history we’ve ever found was the little skirmish in visby, Gottland in the 1300’s and even then, not a single helmet was found.
Corpses are stripped of all their arms and armor after battles and either taken as they are, or taken to melt down and make new shit.
>a human Skeleton weighs only about 15% of their body weight
This poses an interesting question, Do skeletons have the same physical strength as their living counter parts because if they do then they would be ungodly fast considering how light they are
I always assumed so due to the necromantic magic which binds them coming with the added bonus of physical strength to make them a threat. One of those things you just assume.
>never tires >never hungers >night vision >excellent strength >virtually impervious to small projectiles (they pass through them, lol)
the only downside is wear&tear of the
Something which is never ever conveyed in fantasy or other /tg/ related is how mandatory supplies and food were. Before Agincourt for example, I think about 1/4 of the army died to disease, if not more. This was just upon landing in France.
Skeleton warriors not only provide a phenomenal fighting force but the complete independance of requiring any kind of food or water can't be understated.
Undead are probably the most underrated army in fantasy.
>Requires a massive amount of magic to create and run >We'll just assume that no one else has access to an equally massive amount of magic
Yeah ok if you are just going to gimp the other side ofc they win...
>and the necromancer has total control of their actions.
That is a massive drawback. Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order. Some plans even count on it.
>Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order
That's an exception. Majority of battles were won because soldiers did exactly what was asked of them and the followed orders. Conversly shitload of battles were lost because soldiers were not doing what the were supposed to do.
It's time to get out of your armchair you fricking idiot.
You guys are idiots, every army needs subdivision level command to be able to make localized decisions.
Imagine being this stupid
If you plant a rank of skeletons to act as an anvil for a charge, they wont run and will keep fighting until the unit suffers total casualties. Humans are not so reliable.
Outside of a modern context, independent thought doesn't benefit an army.
>Outside of a modern context, independent thought doesn't benefit an army.
Yeah that's why ancient armies had one general and literally no other chain of command. Fricking idiot.
Having officers and leaders =/= having the common soldier do whatever they want
Officers are given the plan and told not to frick with it unless certain circumstances are met.
Don't try to back peddle your bullshit from before now. We can literally see what you previously wrote.
You know instead of accusing others of being me you could just actually type out a post explaining why I am wrong about the RTS comparison. I'm not usually up during burger hours FYI
Even a grunt needs to have some degree of autonomy, but the main issue is that those mindless grunt need officers to make decisions for them. Even assuming your necromancer is omniscient and can respond to every last detail in a battlefield (lol, lmao) they would still be unable to function away from the necromancer. That way your army becomes a useless deathblob and everyone else can just dance circles around it.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>they would still be unable to function away from the necromancer.
Says fricking who?
You're trying to make it out as if it's absolute canon necromancy in every fictional setting that skeletons are mindless beings. Having unquestioning control does not mean mindless robot.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Says fricking who?
Voodoo roots of zombies and DnD more or less regulating your common skelly and zombie as being barely self aware with only a vague hatred towards the living.
>Yeah that's why ancient armies had one general and literally no other chain of command.
The primary purpose of an ancient commander is to ensure that coordination is kept between various pieces of the army. They were not expected to make their own tactical decisions. We know this is the case because the Romans were famous for actually permitting diffusion of command down to something like the company level and other ancient commanders that did take initiative to maneuver their own independent forces are either lauded or derided based on whether or not them doing whatever the frick they felt like won or lost them the battle. Necromancers don't need to worry about cohesion. They tell their skeleton army to march that way and kill everything and those skeletons WILL march exactly where they are told and do precisely what they are told. They'll never get lost in a ravine or confuse one formation for another. They know exactly, unerringly where to go and what to do to carry out the (admittedly simple) command they've been given. This means you don't NEED sublevel commands for line formations but you will need specialized subcommands for any other units that you do want to have tactical or strategic autonomy. Thus, a necromancer's army is likely going to consist of something like a Line Commander responsible for the general purpose skeleton infantry while there are formation commanders that can take care of alternative duties. A lot of supply, logistics, coordination, and command issues are solved by have instantaneous perfect command and control over your formations. Not needing to have your orders interpreted in a pre-modern battlefield is more of a boon than a hinderance and would make a skeleton army likely more adept at pushing through a battlefield than otherwise at the cost of you ONLY needing to deceive the commanding necromancer and not needing to fool a general and a cadre of recalcitrant officers.
An autonomous logistics train is not immune to failure and is still beholden to the rule that more complex systems have more points of failure. The advantage of an undead army is that most supplies are effectively removed and unnecessary, they are powered purely by direct feeding of energy that animates them. Rest of your post is assuming that skeletons are somehow capable of foresight when it doesn't actually matter how stupid they are at navigation because they can ignore all hazards and just trip over a cliff and be reanimated again.
2 years ago
Anonymous
It isn't a complex system. It isn't even a system. The undead don't appear to rely on anything once animated. They can linger and march on forever. The only logistics needed are for the actual Necromancers themselves. The undead don't need food or water and are immune to illness. They can march all day and all night without issue. I will concede that a smart Necromancer might still want some mild logistics train to carry ammunition that they might need or replacement weapons, but I don't feel that this is anywhere near as necessary for an army of the dead.
If you plant a rank of skeletons to act as an anvil for a charge, they wont run and will keep fighting until the unit suffers total casualties. Humans are not so reliable.
Outside of a modern context, independent thought doesn't benefit an army.
>Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order. Some plans even count on it.
Direct lagless mastermind necromancy doesn't have the drawbacks of faulty broken telephone chain-of-command that normal humans operate by
They suck as mainline fighters.
But they make great fodder as they can soak lots of ranged attacks and magic, also can help in pinning your enemies or flanking while your heavy hitters maneuver into position, in some cases can even overwhelm the enemies with sheer numbers.
They come incredibly cheap, can be recycled and your living population love that you are recruiting in the graveyards instead of making you risk life and limb in some petty squarrel.
>picture
That makes jo fricking sense. Damage resistance do not work like that, and the idea of milk making you invulnerable is ridiculous.
Picture is accurate except for lava. Why would skeletons be damaged by stabby shit at all?
Theres nothing special about the milk, he just enjoys milk
>drinking more milk means denser bones >denser bones mean more durable skeletons >more durable skeletons mean deadlier undead >deadlier undead mean more powerful necromancers >therefore, in the necromancer territories, infant breastfeeding is mandatory, dairy is a dietary staple, and distribution of baby formula and milk and cheese substitutes is punishable by torturous death and reanimation for backbreaking labor >beside the noticeably tougher skeletons, the living inhabitants that aren't drenched in corrupting death magic are healthier than most of their neighbors >most of the territory is used to feed milk cows and as a consequence, cattle ranchers are loosely associated with necromancy >apart from getting fresh corpses and live captives to experiment with, the primary drive for necromancer expansion is to get more grazing land, both to increase their living population capacity and give the necromancers more breathing room in their struggle to avoid corrupting the land so no grass will grow
>Cheap >Replaceable >Population happy that you're sending them to die instead of humans
I didn't realize skeletons had so much in common with American Midwesterners.
According to 1e Lords of Darkness, while they lack the soul of their former inhabitants, they do have the body's memories still within them to a certain extent.
This is why the skeleton of a great warrior tends to come back as a better fighter than some peasant skeleton, because it has some "muscle memory", if you'll forgive the term, of when it was alive.
However the same book also has some unexplained phenomenon as well, such as the example of a village being burned down, parents slaughtered, kids hiding under the floor and about to die of smoke inhalation, when the skeleton of grandpa, who was buried out back, comes bursting in and saves them, carrying them outside of the village and then crumbling to dust once his grandkids are safe.
Incidents like that raising the question of just how much of one's mind does truly stick to the body after death, or did his soul somehow come back from the afterlife for this one task? And in either case, what animating force allowed his body to move?
Generally not, their primary appeal is that they're dirt cheap to field and maintain versus other traditional evil armies, and won't question your orders if they're clearly suicidal. The tradeoff is that they're generally dumb and not especially strong, but that's not such an issue when you can afford to field massive quantities and supplement their massive numbers with your own dark powers and a few trusted lieutenants.
That means skeletons are effectively the opposite of orcs from a strategic standpoint. It seems like it'd be ideal to field both but the difficulty of getting there is prohibitive.
I made a group of 16 Legionnaire Skeletons and 1 Centurion Skeleton with a lung to blow his whistle to issue commands, and it almost wiped out a group of 5 level5-6 adventurers.
I can't find the stats, because this was in 2019
All I did was follow was this:
After every attack the legionnaire as a bonus action would go back to the back of line, rotating a fresh legionnaire.
I used basic Phalanx tactics and it really ruined my Adventurers' day LOL
Now to tell smell my farts and how skeleton warriors work in my game.
an acolyte of THE Necromancer can control about a regiment of skeletons, depending on his abilities, but with so many skeletons his level of control is low. he can more or less just herd them in a direction and infuse them with base savagery. the fewer skeletons the better he can control them.
More experienced acolytes control undead of higher caliber or spend most their time making independently operating undeads, which is an extremely lenghty and difficult proccess.
Don't eat, don't sleep, don't retreat, always follow orders, don't need to be paid, can't come down with VD from the camp girls, never plot to seize command...
Even if a skeleton is roughly half as effective in combat as a living human, for an army they're incredibly useful. Plus you can presumably collect new "recruits" after every battle.
If your game uses morale rules seriously, undead tend to be a massive threat. Bandits and orcs run away when they see a few of their buddies go down. The dead just keep going until you've destroyed them all.
so does a skellington only have 15% of original strength?
really intrigued by the basic idea of skeletal tools in society - farming and digging and providing endless labour - would this cause many humans to flock to a necromancer kingdom hoping to escape a life of back breaking toil?
Imagine an evil commie necromancer man. very groovy bbeg
"Skeletons as machines" ignores one of the fundamental differences between Golems and Undead, and that is that Undead powered by negative energy are so easy to raise BECAUSE said energy actively wants to inhabit a body and use it for violence. So probably not many when that farm equipment is going to actively try to murder anyone it can unless strictly controlled.
You raise a basic b***h skeleton and tell it "kill" it needs no other direction besides that.
You build a rudimentary Golem and you can't tell it "kill", you'd need to make sure it even understands what "killing" is in the first place.
>ancient lost civilization dungeons are hermetically sealed specifically because the precursor-race was getting tired of wildlife and hobos stumbling onto the work floor and being slaughtered
2 years ago
Anonymous
It's kinda funny when you know that the Körperwelten was used to make human evidence disappear.
2 years ago
Anonymous
wow crazy claim, you got proof of it?
2 years ago
Anonymous
If you're talking about Body Works specifically then Anon's off base (Von Hagens, the artist behind it, returned some Chinese "donor" bodies that had obviously been executed). As for the copycats? Wouldn't be surprised.
>would this cause many humans to flock to a necromancer kingdom hoping to escape a life of back breaking toil?
This has been a premise of "good necromancers" for more than a decade.
A lot of people don't like the concept and add additional rules like undead poisoning crops or mindlessly rampaging if not carefully supervised to make sure it doesn't work.
You're assuming the common people would actually benefit from Skeleton labour, rather than lose their jobs and means of income.
It's basically like automation in the real world. While it can theoretically help people out a ton, especially by reducing the prices of goods, it also results in mass unemployment, especially if the people cant be trained for skilled labour. Though that wouldn't be too bad if there are robust social safety nets and cheap access to reeducaiton, a necromancer ruled kingdom probably isn't that altruistic. There probably would be some new jobs showing up because of the undead work force, but it shouldn't be nearly as many as were lost. Like if one necromancer can raise a hundred skeletons, then there isn't an option for most of those people to become necromancers themselves, as they dont need that many. Especially since there would be only so many dead bodies to go around after a while.
Though for people with valuable skills, merchants and the rich it would probably be ideal, since the country's efficient labour force would result in low prices in general.
As another anon said they don't need to eat or sleep. You create more by slaughtering your enemy. You can raise them from your enemies graveyards too. Skeletons are strategically amazing, and tactically weak. Each skeleton company should be attached to a squad of living that can take advantage of the skeletons fearlessness and boost their effectiveness.
They'll miss often, overtime or if you buff them there more effective, but the fireball is a big chunk of damage right here and now, for a single spell slot.
Skeletons entirely depend on their setting's specific rules and may differ massively depending on those.
For example, an animated skeleton has no muscles and very little mass. So, does it have the strength and poise of a normal man? Or is it weak and light-weighted? Or is it supernaturaly strong?
Is the skeleton a self-sufficient combatant with some moderate capacity for improvisation? Or is it an automaton that will mindlessly execute the orders it has been given,without any ability to deviate from them? Or is it a puppet whose every movement is directly, actively controlled by a necromancer? And in the latter case, how many skeletons can be controlled by a single necromancer if he has to pull the metaphysical strings of every step and every swing?
And if the skeleton has any autonomy, is it slow and lumbering, or does it retain the combat experience and prowess it had in life?
Do the skeletons 'die' to a strong strike to the chest, or do you have to break off every limb to disable it? Or can it even reconstitute its broken-off parts infinitely?
All these questions have setting-specific answers, because skeletons are entirely supernatural creatures. They're held together and allowed to move and strike by unnatural forces; they have no muscles and tendons, no nerves nor brain, and don't have any vital organs, so everything about how they function is dependant on the setting's take on these supernatural forces.
>they'll never get tired >they'll never be full >they're immune to alcohol poisoning >they can just have a bucket beneath them when they drink to recycle beer
A skeleton party lasts until the paladins show up, it will never stop on it's own
Quantity over quality is the horde undead's motto.
While less bulky than zombies, they can wield weapons making them a better choice should you have the resources. But the key to skeletons is their numbers, so no, they don't make great warriors (at least, not traditional skeletons) as they are frail and not smart enough to perform any fancy maneuvers meaning the necromancer who cares for them will need to completely coordinate where they go and what they do which can often be impossible given the amount of undead needing to be controlled.
In traditional war combat, they would be a good portion of the army along with zombies and more intelligent undead such as wights, and even some mortals which could help compensate for the skeleton's weaknesses.
>no need for sleep >no need for food >no feeling of pain >no mercy >never desert >no bleeding out >no symptoms of exhaustion >will continue fighting with cut off limbs >trigger existential fear in opponents due to memento mori shtick >built in xylophone
yes.
Depending on the setting they're usually somewhere between "lookit all that cheap cannon fodder!" and "those don't really count as human bones anymore and cutting them down without hitting their soulfire or whatever does frickall since they can just recombine like a Voltron made of Calcium and nightmares".
Yes, undead constructs require no supplies, therefore they require no supply lines, and thusly can strike when other armies would be overextended. Skeletons and zombies can march for days and immediately fight a battle without resting first.
>tireless and need minimal supplies >perfect discipline/morale >perfect formations (as long as the necromancer is semi-competent) >every enemy killed is another recruit
Even if they're shit at fighting compared to a living warrior, the logistics and efficacy of undead soldiers means that an army of them is an absolute menace
>tireless and need minimal supplies >perfect discipline/morale >perfect formations (as long as the necromancer is semi-competent) >every enemy killed is another recruit
Even if they're shit at fighting compared to a living warrior, the logistics and efficacy of undead soldiers means that an army of them is an absolute menace
>it's foolproof! Skeletons don't need to eat, sleep, or heal! >lose 25% of your forces to tripping on uneven ground and accidental trampling before even arriving to the battlefield
>skeleton trips, falls down a hill >bones disconnect and get stomped into the mud by its five hundred brothers >skeleton either gets back up sans a few bones or loses a leg and has to drag itself from now on >repeat until you reach your destination
>skeleton trips >falls down a hill
Have you ever been hiking, rucking or even walked on a hill?
No one "rolls" down an entire hill. If you're marching and someone falls over you don't just walk over them.
It might surprise you but armies don't march to their destination as a giant tightly packed unorganised horde.
>If you're marching and someone falls over you don't just walk over them.
Hajj pilgrims would disagree
2 years ago
Anonymous
>millions of religiously fervent unorganised pilgrams >A military formation
Do you see the difference?
But hey, some people get squashed to death at soccer games so I guess going to a classical concert means I'm going to have the same thing happen, right? That's how it works in your mind, isn't it?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>a horde of nonsapient (or actively evil) undead monsters >a military formation
2 years ago
Anonymous
If you're setting has skeletons too stupid to march in formation, they're also too stupid to use a weapon and shield for any value and might as well be resident evil tier mindless zombies.
Could skeletons, given some shovels, effectively entrench? Digging a ditch is a simple monotonous task so they should be able to understand the order, and they only need pretty narrow trench since they don't have full mass of a person.
The answer is yes. skeleton tunnelers would be way more scary though. >give each skeleton a pickaxe or a shovel >let them build a large tunnel into the enemies stronghold during a potentially neverending siege (they don't eat or get tired) >they'll take their time but they'll get there >enemy can literally do nothing to prevent this even if he even notices it >hell, you could just have them pickaxe down the enemy wall since arrows do almost nothing to them anyway
My skeletons are generally weak and stupid, capable of following a few simple orders and mindlessly attacking all living creatures without the mage's mark (including insects, friendly creatures, and plants). They're not the best warriors but they're cheap and can be left in unoccupied dungeons to keep out wildlife and poorly prepared explorers.
However the Necromancer who raised them can assume direct control of any of his skeletons, giving them glowing eye sockets the mage sees from, buffed stats, and letting their master direct their actions. This turns skeletons into potentially more dangerous opponents, lets Necromancers give orders to skeleton hordes from distance, and lets the Necromancer talk to the party without being in mortal peril.
Within the known world there are only 2 polities that use skeletons in their militaries: the chaotic Iron Legion and the Principality's Lich Lords. Neither have especially good military records, outside of confined spaces lacking abundant life they're too difficult to control and vulnerable to crushing weapons, artillery, and magics to be more than a gimmick.
Seems like they'd be best served as some sort of distraction or supplement to something else. Giving them some spears to bristle up a flank before a cav charge, who cares if they get crumbled because they'll soften the horses up so that they can't touch the actual soldiers there. Or perhaps tying up some enemy's force or push for awhile and making a move somewhere else. I am not sure but it is fun to think of how battles would go with disposable skele-dudes around.
Not really how cavalry works. In fact skeletons would be incredible anti cavalry infantry solely because, being bones, they feel no fear and therefore a cavalry charge can't break them at all, whether from the front or the flank.
If you tried to do a cavalry charge like they do in the lord of the rings movie or various other fantasy films, you simply wouldn't. Cavalry charges worked by breaking the infantry they were charging without contact. A horse will not slam into what looks like a solid, incredibly pointy object, unless something forces it to, like its death by ranged weapon. So an undead infantry block would be an incredible thing against cavalry. That being said, the knights with their much longer weapons could just stop in lance range and start slapping the skeletons on the head aggressively.
Hmm... If living cavalry is impossible to have charge into a wall of infantry, what about undead cavalry? Suppose a contingent of armoured wights with long-hafted axes astride zombified horses charged into a line of men-at-arms, hollywood-style. How effective would that be? My mind thinks it would be suicidal and get them killed (again) in short order but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know for sure.
>If living cavalry is impossible to have charge into a wall of infantry, what about undead cavalry
Undead cavalry would be horrifying for that exact reason. They have no sense of self-preservation (or of right or wrong) and as long as they're heavy enough they could break the cohesion of infantry literally by slamming into them.
>be pikeman in ye olden army >sworn to the gods, loyal to the crown >company is marched out to put down undead uprising >easily the worst in a generation, several fiefdoms have already fallen >the hated necromancer is marching on a major, unwalled trade city >commanders think they can intercept him for a decisive blow, the necromancer's been known to spread plagues and we don't want him anywhere near the cemeteries >manage to intercept the enemy army, if it can be called that, in an open field >see a hideous horde of corpses milling around, try not to vomit, fail, to much sympathy >pray, then told to brace pikes to cover the left flank >battle is joined, mobs of carcasses throwing themselves into our center but as long as the flanks hold, we should be fine >hear deafening hoofbeats at the same time everyone else does >hundreds of rotting horses, each one with a corpse bolted or stitched on the top, every one of those with a mallet or woodcutter's axe >barreling straight for our lines at a breakneck speed, we brace our pikes >tell myself we should be fine, after all, I'm not in the frontline and no horse would ever throw itself on a blade >screams begin and I realize, to my horror as the man in my front's head is caved in by a gory hoof, that that's exactly what they're doing
2 years ago
Anonymous
That's actually terrifying
The answer is yes. skeleton tunnelers would be way more scary though. >give each skeleton a pickaxe or a shovel >let them build a large tunnel into the enemies stronghold during a potentially neverending siege (they don't eat or get tired) >they'll take their time but they'll get there >enemy can literally do nothing to prevent this even if he even notices it >hell, you could just have them pickaxe down the enemy wall since arrows do almost nothing to them anyway
Skeleton tunnelers could be countered pretty easily by counter-tunneling, just like in real life. In fact, I'd say they have the disadvantage there since the main advantages of skeleton troops (numbers, cohesion) count for naught in tunnel fighting. Remember, in a 1 on 1 fight, a single skeleton with armour who's 60 pounds soaking wet will just get bulldozed by a human soldier with a modicum of training.
Might be able to make up for it by just having a ridiculous number of tunnels, though
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Skeleton tunnelers could be countered pretty easily
not if they target the strongholds graveyard
2 years ago
Anonymous
what if they tunnel below the walls to make it collapse though? counter tunneling in this case would effectively bring down your own fortifications
2 years ago
Anonymous
Not if you don't collapse your own tunnel amd don't make it wider than it needs to be.
2 years ago
Anonymous
fair point would still be pretty scary to open a doorway to the enemie outside with thousand of tons of stone above you
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'd say the notion of someone hacking you to death with a sharp piece of steel is much scarier than a cave in.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'd argue the combination of both doubles the spookyness
2 years ago
Anonymous
skeletons could literally be directed to tunnel under the castle years ago. like you could direct them to start tunnelling under the castle from the other side of the planet and they would until either cave in, tectonic frickery or they got their. you can tunnel so far in advance you can line it up before the siege begins
2 years ago
Anonymous
Imagine also giving the skeleton cavalry crossbows and longbows with projectile tips being coated in toxic pungent corpse biomass
Really gives me a boner, if you know what I mean
2 years ago
Anonymous
>hundreds of rotting horses, each one with a corpse bolted or stitched on the top, every one of those with a mallet or woodcutter's axe
Thanks. I have a name for my undead cavalry unit in my setting now: orcadian horsemen
I don't know how effective they'd be on offense, but they'd be absolute hell to fight. Presuming they stay intact through magic rather than the collection of bones just rattling apart at the first impact, you'd have a person-shaped framework that's significantly more narrow, can't bleed out, is vastly harder to hit with arrows and bullets, harder to hit with spears, swords could get caught in the various holes and you'd need each strike to impact hard enough to meaningfully cut into solid bone...
Skeletons would make absolute defensive powerhouses, and by that virtue alone they would be horrific opponents in attrition warfare.
Even broken bones wouldn't be nearly as much of a hindrance since what takes us down is usually pain, shock or bleeding out from our bone fragments tearing our flesh. Without that, even an entirely blunt-force strategy wouldn't be overly effective.
All of this depends on the quality of the skeletons themselves, but even bottom-tier skeletons would probably be ridiculously good. Maybe they can't easily hurt you, but they can wear you down.
look, they might be weaker than a human. sure. maybe a little slower on the attack. but let me break it down why they are the absolute top teir.
>basically silent. no chatter, maybe a little clatter but you can fix that with some cloth robes. or if you are broke just roll em around in charcoal. bam. nearly undetectable night fighters. infiltrators, or scouts.
you could send them to walk right on into the enemy camp and listen. you could have em hang out in weird places like at the bottom of a well, when the enemy goes to get water (something your boys dont need) instead they get shanked by a skeleman!
what is a mortal army without water? dead thats what.
does your army of mortals get tired? skeles dont. they can fight all night and all day bay bee.
their feet dont hurt so they can cover more ground than any marching army. so you can flank and out play mortal force
they dont eat, so no need for costly or expansive supply chain. aka the number 1 killer of real world armies. back in the days of sword and spear, scouts finding and disrupting supply lines determined the tide of battle. if they sacked enough, the enemy would surrender b4 a fight. if they got a few, then youd attack them right after their dudes start feeling the strain and have low moral ectect. skeleis dont care though. they dont even set up camp.
they dont refuse to follow orders bc they are too scared of death. THEY ARE DEATH. its basically how they reproduce.
they are limited in their ability to maintain weapons apparently. i guess. judging by all the rusted crap. i wont get into that but i think with a little work they could really improve their gear.
crazy good in seiges too. what are the defenders gonna do? shoot em with arrows? dump hot oil or boiling water on them? lol. lmao even. who cares? plus you could just fling bags of bones over the walls to cause a scene in the town while the skelecrew cuts through the front door.
spys. you ever notice how humans are made out of a skeleto and some meat? dude. just take a member of the enemies royal court, remove their skeleton. create undead minnion out of it. PUT IT BACK IN ITS MEAT. send it to the enemies hq, and have it kill their leader! or literally anyone. moves like that get folk to surrender right quick. maybe not everyone, but at least one dude in the castle will be willing to cut a deal to avoid being debonified and rebonified.
also xylophones. you could put on a concert the likes of wich the world has never seen!
if you hae a tinkerer im sure you could bolt on some basic augments like a spring locking system to turn each skeleton archer into a more powerfull wielder of the bow.
there arnt very many situations where having a meat based military is even as good as a bone brigade.
zero looting and robbing when you win a seige. YOU get ALL the money! they just giv e you the money.
the pesants appreciate that a lot more too. unless ofcourse you start turning them into skele soldiers. but then who cares what they think?
i guess some situations could come up where having a bunch of skele minions is not ideal. like at a fancy dinner party. chicks might think youre weird. but
you know there are probobally plenty of other signs about that. like the castle im hosting from being made of bones, all the green flame lanturns made out of bones. all the dishes being made out of reconstituted bone dust and me making a point to bring that fact up durring dinner. they KNOW what they are getting in for with me. and if they dont like it, thats fine. man.
Concearning the weight thing I always just assumed skeletons have sort of an invisible "shadow body" that holds together the bones, gives them necromantic "muscles" (otherwise a sword alone would be half their body weight) and pulls them down to earth like some type of black magc gravity force in order to give them living people weight and strenght
>don't get demoralized >don't rebel >don't flee >don't starve >don't dehydrate >don't freeze >don't get sick >dont sleep >don't drown
The problem is that most people just depict skeletons as "huge slow blob, giant horde, don't quit" instead of considering their strategic strengths. How often do skeletons conquer a castle and then just sit on that shit without anyone being able to get them out? They're perfect for long-term warfare and exhausting meatbag enemies, rather than just silly hordes of doom heading for a cataclysmic giant confrontation.
>when you are the evil necromancer who used his army of skeletons to dam rivers at their source up in the mountains where the armies of good can't reach. >And when they find out you did it, there's already too much water in the dam, so blowing it up would kill everybody downstream. >also, as a proper Dark Lord, you naturally constructed all of your evil works with yourself as the main supporting pilar, so you're going to take everybody with you if they think they can just assassinate you
My reign of terror will be eternal. Pay your water bills.
Dracoliches generally refuse to work with others and run their own companies. Death Knights tend to be enforcers and carry out operations like Coca-Cola's death squadron, which is a real thing totally unrelated to necromancy or fantasy.
>release a few dozen warhounds >entire army fall apart in a matter of minutes, necromancer spend six months gathering back all various bones scattered in random holes across the landscape
Nothing personnal, skeleboys.
Dogs are short-term thinkers, they know that the bone army needs its bones for waging the campaign, while the flesh army is trying to smash as many bone people as possible, clearly leading to ahuge surplus of bones. Therefore, they will side against the bonemen.
>Humans smash skeleton >Skeleton becomes pile of bones >BONES FOR DOG
Dog knows that if the bone army has its way, the bones will be reanimated, and therefore useless.
Dogs absolutely don't know about skeletons, it's like how they can't see colourblind people
2 years ago
Anonymous
He learns from experience. Pale nerd calls him GOOD BOY = he receives few bones after a battle. Ruddy jock calls him GOOD BOY = he gets mountains of bone after a battle.
I don't think I've ever seen a ttrpg or even adjacent video game setting where the weight and weakness of a skeleton is taken into account semi-realistically.
A lance with a knight and charger behind it strikes with the force of .50 BMG. The contemporary historian and noble Anna Karenina witnessed a charge of Christian knights and noted it was capable of bringing down the walls of Constantinople, comparable in power to the Turkish anti tank rifles then in use.
Skeletons don't have immunity to non bludgeoning damage in d20
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yes they do? Piercing and slashing.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Half damage from piercing and slashing, assuming we are going with older editions.
2 years ago
Anonymous
That doesn't make sense. They have nothing to pierce or slash. You have to smash them.
2 years ago
Anonymous
That doesn't make any sense, damage types are just a roundabout way to categorize weapons then any actual physics.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>They have nothing to pierce or slash
Swords do terrible things to bone, especially without the fleshy exoskeleton to protect it. There's at least one example of an anglo-saxon war skeleton with his entire face caved in from a sword stroke.
2 years ago
Anonymous
That still sounds like the skull was bludgeoned. Damage types are dumb.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>That still sounds like the skull was bludgeoned
It was
Because all damage is in fact bludgeoning damage
A "cut" is when you get bludgeoned by a very thin hammer, like an axe or knife while a "puncture wound" is when you get bludgeoned by a very pointy hammer, like a sword thrust or spear
2 years ago
Anonymous
Piercing concentrates all energy to a single point, slashing concentrates all energy into a line (or straight or curved do cause different effects). The reason a skeleton is resistant is because piercing and slashing severs muscles and tendons that skeletons do not have, they also do not bleed so they don't bleed to death otherwise when you attack a skeleton with those weapons you are aiming to do the same thing bludgeon weapons are doing in combat. All of it is simplified but the logic is sound.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>piercing is 1 dimensional damage >slashing is 2 dimensional damage >bludgeoning is 3 dimensional damage
So what does 4 dimensional damage? Cigarettes? Depleted uranium rounds?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Bards bullying people through novelizations. Or poison and bleeding or any other DOT effect.
2 years ago
Anonymous
So you should be able to choose to deal bludgeoning damage with a lance or a sword, right? The games don't appear to allow it raw. You'd need a smart DM.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The half damage is a compromise because weapons are categorized by type. Its monster description even notes the resistance is special and needs to be explained.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Yes they do? Piercing and slashing
In 5E they're only immune to p'son, like verdigrease, and take double damage from bludgeoning. In 3.5 they take half damage from non bludgeoning physical damage, but lances do 2X on a charge. Half damage also applies in AD&D2e. Can't speak for 4e, AD&D1, or Basic.
If we think there's even more skeleton horrors we could make
Skeleton horses loaded with stones for formation breaches, loaded with plague barrels for immediate ww1 experience, loaded with exlosives for siege, or we could stuck another skeleton inside so each horse bears two skellies, one on top and another inside
Skelephants - basically horse version but larger, literally apc filled with skellies squads
>Skelephants - basically horse version but larger, literally apc filled with skellies squads
Sound horrifying as frick. This shit have no blind spot, it can just charge in the fray while the skeletons inside grab and stab all that come near.
Skeletons warriors are not real. They are fantasy and make believe, so they can be made to be as good or as bad as the game system needs them to be. You can also base them off of what is seen in the movies like Jason and the Argonauts (60s), Army of Darkness (90s), or any of the other movies depicting skeleton warriors.
Really, it is only your imagination that what makes these real.
Skeletons being totally inept morons who are only good in combat with huge numbers is cringe
Skeletons should be giga chads, few in numbers but very tough to kill and hit unbelievably hard, they're powered by magic so it's moot to try and argue that it's "unrealistic" for a skeleton to massacre your average human in melee. What's the point of skeletons as people ITT view them as when they have the exact same role as zombies? They're just inferior zombies by every metric
Why is this really the only post-Harryhausen live-action film that heavily features skeletons? At most you get them for occasional gags like in Scary Movie 2.
Zombies are just skeletons weighed down with the curse of fleshly existence. Also they have all that brain eating baggage. When people think skeleton warriors, they're not thinking warriors who are also skeletons, like deathknights or wights from Warhammer, which are the gigachad skeletons you desire.
>skeletons are cool, humans are drool >bones are hard, flesh is soft >skeletons party hard, human parties are lame >skeletons have natural talent with many instruments making great bards >skeletons cannot feel negative emotions, humans constantly cry >skeletons will turn on you if you're not cool enough to rule over them
Depends on the setting and how your Necromancy works.
Does it make them as strong as they were in life? Skeletons weight fricking nothing and unless you wanna armor your massive horde of bones they're not going to hold together very well. A few hits and they're breaking. God forbid someone aims a regular old canon into a rank of skeletons and turn a column to dust.
Or does your Necromancy make them rock hard and stand up to regular weapons. Does it make them give zero fricks about slogging through shin deep mud
What I am getting from this thread is that Skeletons, in reality, are among the best soldiers in "reality" than almost any other race. Unlimited attrition, zero disease and you can outlast an enemy indefinitely, especially if the necromancer is also immortal.
So an army of Wights seems to be the final step towards skeletal domination.
Yeah the lack of morale issues is a huge boon. They might be shit fighters and shit killers but the job of infantry is to hold the line and by god that's what skelemen will do. You have your vampire knights and monsters and magic to do the actual killing.
>no need for food/water/rest/entertainment >immune to low morale, always follows orders >immune to weather/climate >can see in the dark >resistant to non-bludgeoning attacks >immune to poisons, diseases, critical hits, etc undead shit
That's a big fricking deal.
Skeletal horses would be good mounts for many of those reasons.
The main downside is once they've completed an order they just stand around or mindlessly attack until they get new ones, and if you kill the necromancer they become mindless attackers with no plans or ability to reason.
However, many anons have pointed out that they should be very lightweight yet they're never portrayed that way. Also I would think armor wouldnt fit them and they'd have a hard time gripping things. They *should* be resistant to elemental damage as well, but you don't see that either. Even in games with hard rules like D&D I'm still not sure if they can sprint forever without taking damage.
I think this could be a good story concept. Comic wise anyway
>middle aged necromancer constructing his tower >surface level the"heroes" believe he is intending to conqeur the land with an army of undead >the truth is the necromancer is trying to find a way to properly revive his lost wife >finds the social isolation is getting to him and he raises a Wight who, unbeknowst to him and due to ignorance of bone anatomy is in fact a woman >thanks to magic is stronger than she ever was in life >necromancer thinks the wight has limited intelligence but is in fact fully self aware >wight plays along anyway and gets some old but very strong suit of armour and weaponry from an old grave >hijinks ensue
It would gradually become a case where the wight starts to grow feelings for the necromancer and tries to get back her flesh and blood body all the while the necromancer is completely gormless
Things escalate when the necromancer actually ressurects his wife succesfully but she turns out to be horrible and abusive, making the wight attempt to remove her.
This thread inspired me to come up with this trash.
Not >Necromancer wants win hearts of humans >Organises a series of interpretive dancing skeleton groups >Brings skelly musicians and dancers to mortal parties >Takes a hit when a skeleton picks a bone with a counts wife >The matter is dismissed because skeletons don't have genitals >Or at least that's what you tell them
You missed your chance
Something which is never ever conveyed in fantasy or other /tg/ related is how mandatory supplies and food were. Before Agincourt for example, I think about 1/4 of the army died to disease, if not more. This was just upon landing in France.
Skeleton warriors not only provide a phenomenal fighting force but the complete independance of requiring any kind of food or water can't be understated.
Undead are probably the most underrated army in fantasy.
What do YOU think?
If they're like these guys , then yes. Skeletons with tactics are scary
They come at you in a shieldwall formation and massacre every unlucky soul that attempts to fight in melee. You can't outlast them because undead can't get tired, you can't outmaneuver them because of how rigidly they follow the formation, you can't outrange them because arrows don't do much against bones.
I now want to put them in my game, but I'm burned out on DMing
You forgot about morale, not only do they not get tired, but they don't feel fear either. So good luck winning the morale game against what is essentially an automaton.
The only thing that can make these kinds of skeletons have a weakness is black powder weapons (since they can crush bones a bit better and even then...) and if we are using rules that if you kill the necromancer, the skeletons become either completely mindless and act on instinct or just fall to the ground and become corpses again.
> 30lb skeleton with maybe 30 lbs of armor on him (really generous)
> unbreakable shield wall!!!!
Remember in the end credits of Step Brothers when the two adults just go fricking ham on the young children? That's what would happen here.
One full grown man, and let's give him 30 pounds of armor too, is going to bowl over those literal bone twigs like nothing.
Hope the necromancer can keep bringing them back because they aren't stopping shit.
Now imagine it's a unit of dudes ridding several hundred pound horses. It will literally be raining splinters of bone
okay I guess spears and pikes don't exist
>charge skeleton pike formation
>have your own pikes, tall shields, and poleaxes
>muscleless skeletons get literally crushed by the press of humans against them
The ideal position for a skeleton is scouting, skirmishing, and light cavalry.
>scouting
I've never known skeletons to be depicted as having great perception, intelligence, stealth, or communication skill. You might be able to make an argument for stealth, being as they don't breathe or anything. Maybe.
>skirmishing
never known a skeleton to be depicted as being fast or accurate either, and skirmishers are explicitly troops that are meant to retreat when faced with proper troops, so it wouldn't take advantage of a skeleton's lack of fear/no sense of self preservation. Although in this role their immunity to fatigue could be an asset, but again, I don't think skeletons are usually depicted as being especially quick and so they could be chased down anyway
>light cav
see the above
The default assumption for most undead is that they have SOME way to relay information to their masters, whether through remote viewing or with comical screeching skeleton voices.
Given their lack of flesh and joints, skeletons are flexible, lightweight, and (presumably) scentless. This means they can move through brush without disturbing it, move near wildlife without disturbing or attracting them, and settle themselves down in advantageous positions.
I think we're working from two different understandings of what a skeleton ought to act like. It sounds like the strongest impression of skellies in your mind is something like Warhammer, with its Harryhausenesque robot skellies. In that case, there's literally nowhere skeletons would be better than another sort of minion unless you want to ignore logistics (which, let's be honest, is a thing for most undead already)
yes, we are zeroing in on the "in what setting" problem, I agree.
We'll never find a conclusive all-setting answer, but we can compare trends in fiction. Off the top of my head, I can think of some prevailing trends using popular media
>Dungeons & Dragons skellies explicitly have +2 DEX
>Army of Darkness & Harryhausen skellies are not visibly faster or more agile than humans, but weigh a lot less and can be knocked off-balance more easily
>Dark Souls skeletons are very fast and agile, but fall apart easily
>Warhammer skeletons are slow, weak, and not intelligent
So in general, most skellies are either slightly faster than the average man or about on the same level, but they're not good in a strict man-to-man test of strength.
Lances were longer than most spears. Pikes, maybe. Even so, just send dudes in the front and hit the block from the side. Like they did anyway.
I mean shit, you don't even need dudes with two handed swords to cut the ends off the pikes. Literally just have guys walk up and yank them out of their hands, unless the pike head is fricking 3 feet long (it isn't) because it's a 30 lbs skeleton with zero grip strength. It would be like taking a stick from a fricking child.
>dudes with two handed swords to cut the ends off the pikes
the whole "zweihanders countered pikes because they just cut through the shaft" is almost certainly untrue.
>just yank the pike away lol
that's like saying to someone "it's fine, if someone comes at you with a knife just take their knife away, it isn't a big deal"
Sure, disarming them is a valid strategy, but it's complicated by the fact that they are ACTIVELY TRYING TO STAB YOU
The other anon is just presuming that their lack of muscles means these skeletons are weaker than grandma without her ensure bottle. Sure, if you want to claim realism, but this anon also accepts they can move and stand on their own which makes no sense in his worldview.
Sure, just have them do that a few thousand times while constantly being poked and prodded at.
A skeleton is rarely a threat 1/1, but you'll almost never get those favorable conditions under a competent necro-mander. It's like trying to clear out an ever-filling ballpit: eventually, the balls will overwhelm you and drown you, no matter how many you throw out.
Skeletons can brace the pikes against the ground, you know.
>Now imagine it's a unit of dudes ridding several hundred pound horses. It will literally be raining splinters of bone
Horses will not charge into massed infantry in good order. To a horse, a line of infantry looks a lot like a wall, and horses aren't about to throw themselves into a wall.
Nor would the rider want them to, because for as heavy as a horse is, the aggregate weight of a crowd of human beings is a lot higher. A single horse will crush the first man, and stagger the second, then lose all their momentum. Now they're stationary, surrounded by a mob of humans with lots of pointy metal things who want the horse and rider dead.
Cavalry was never used to steamroll infantry. Attempting that would be suicidal, for the horses and their riders. Instead, cavalry was used to provide morale shocks. Surprise, surprise, facing down a line of charging cavalry as an infantryman is fricking scary. And a good cavalry charge could often cause weak infantry formations to collapse immediately without even fighting. Then, once the formation was broken and scattered, the cavalry could ride through the fleeing infantry, running down or killing anyone they could reach.
But we're talking about animated skeletons, who have no morale and will never rout. In which case, cavalry is mostly useless.
There was a discussion about this upthread and the conclusion was made that while living cavalry sucks against undead for that very reason, undead cavalry against living infantry would be great because even if the infantry don't break your undead horsemen have no self preservation instinct and can be used as missiles
I hate these frickers so goddamn much
They make good soldiers. No food or sleep or environment worries, and the necromancer has total control of their actions. If they die they can be replenished. No kingdom can survive a foe like that.
Actual combat though they’re probably too lightweight to be a match, a combatant could easily knock them over or their weapon aside.
>Give Skeletons armor
>Not because they need armor, but because they need MASS to not just get bowled over by a charge from even just untrained peasants, (a human Skeleton weighs only about 15% of their body weight)
The fact that armor is already fitted for the human body, likely to come with the corpses on a battlefield, AND is heavy, (especially if you soak it in water or mud, both easy to find on any battlefield), just makes it convenient for any necromancer to make their skeletons heavy enough to actually fight.
Plus it looks cool and ups the intimidation of your undead army by a lot too!
>15% the weight
Horrifying honestly. Imagine a human being with normal human strength that weighed less than 30 lb.
That's, almost exactly the amount you would weigh on the moon. We're talking skeletons able to do ridiculous feats of acrobatics. We're talking a 10-ft vertical leap. They'd be able to scale walls like nothing.
Sure, they could get knocked over easily but they'd be able to take running leaps deep into enemy formations. Give them a pair of knives and watch them tear apart enemy units.
Sounds to me like you just end up with an Army of Darkness situation
>Sending your 20 lb skellies into melee
Nah you're thinking too anime. All you'd need to do is give them some crossbows or javelins and you have some NASTY skirmishers.
>Literally infinite stamina
>Bad terrain? Lmao 10 ft vertical leap
>Infinite stamina=crossbows with winches that need a lot of fast winds, not like your skeletons will get tired winding it up like a fricking hand drill, boom your skirmishers can now shoot through a Knight's armor ez
Yeah, they're essentially futuristic robots by IRL standards - a pack of them could be integrated into the carriage of a primitive tank, or battering ram. Skeletons bound into siege engines as loaders and winders. Skeletons with just their skulls and arms tied to silk wings.
Agricultural skeletons, assembly line skeletons, etc, etc.
Deep Rot was the culmination of this line of thought, way back in the day, a calculating machine made of skeletons.
(and GURPS Abydos goes into this kind of Necro-Industrial Revolution in warfare and production)
>All you'd need to do is give them some crossbows
I am now imagining skeletons being sent flying by the recoil of their crossbows. Thanks, anon, that's better than the skelecopter.
Just make plans that don't count on it, jeez.
Necromancers are essentially armchair generals where nobody can tell them their plans are shit. So any and all gaps in their strategies are hilariously exploitable and their soldiers will always carry those orders out with a time delay that prevents them from being stopped when any mistakes are committed. If they try to branch out of the very few strategies they are good at it will fail as they do multiple things at once that burdens them even more and will inevitably result in a spiral of failure once a certain threshold is reached.
The only thing skeletons have going for them is replenishment but how viable that is, is entirely dependent on how quickly the rules for necromancy allows that replenishment.
youre drunk
Worse, he's stupid.
I played RTS, fighting a necromancer is exactly the same thing but he doesn't have instantaneous micro management which means every single one of his mistakes cannot be rectified in seconds when they happen. You guys fellate necromancers way too much.
we are talking about the efficacy of skeleton troops not the one time you outsmarted a necromancer.
read the above posts
i think i did a good job of explaining the pros and cons
Oh okay.
People get caught up in how cool mastering death is on paper and aesthetically and don't really confront how lame practical necromancy actually is. Skeletons are functionally identical to the battle droids from the Star Wars prequels, but generally even less intelligent and capable. There are other kinds of undead, but the zombies and similar creatures you also get as shock troops are usually just slow, reeking, and just kind of gross-looking, which undermines the aesthetic appeal of the field, its saving grace. What you really need to do is take that big wizard brain and repurpose that laboratory and make you some automatons. Harder, better, faster, stronger. You can even cheat death by turning yourself into some manner of construct. Face it, necromancy is obsolete.
>I played RTS
Cool
Would be better if that meant anything
RTS armies are just golems following psychic commands from a single commander so RTS is always relevant when talking about wizards using puppet armies.
You're actually dumber with every post.
Let's see how you top this.
You'll have to prove what I said is untrue so the ball is in your court. I am waiting.
>Show me where I'm wrong
Why? You're still going to be wrong and dumb at the end of it. You'll disagree. You'll argue with more idiotic reasoning, and I'll have to continously counter every moronic point you try to pass.
Easier to just say you're dumb and call it a day.
You assume I am not reasonable when I already conceded to this guy
I will take your refusal as you being incapable of abstract reasoning and just outright refusing to acknowledge RTS tactics as being valid for your own personal beliefs.
A lot of this is going to depend on how much magic you use on each skelly. You could pare them down to 1/5th of human strength and march an army along for miles. Or you could juice them up to human norms and have them go full anime.
However, because an undead skeleton doesn't come with muscles you're going to be dependent on how much magic you've got.
The problem is that assuming that undead skeletons have the same strength as when they were alive, giving them to much armor would likely still immobilized them
Asuming the necromancers power is used to animate the skeleton. He's probably better off just getting an extra skelly. Even skelly in heavy armor would weigh significantly less than Joe Schmoe. Armor was made to be light and wearable after all.
Its pointless to make skelletons use real physics. Real physics would make it impossible for them to move Round and leverage power.
> likely to come with the corpses on a battlefield,
Not likely at all actually. Basically the only mass grave in all of history we’ve ever found was the little skirmish in visby, Gottland in the 1300’s and even then, not a single helmet was found.
Corpses are stripped of all their arms and armor after battles and either taken as they are, or taken to melt down and make new shit.
Fresh or biohazard battlefields, then
>a human Skeleton weighs only about 15% of their body weight
This poses an interesting question, Do skeletons have the same physical strength as their living counter parts because if they do then they would be ungodly fast considering how light they are
I always assumed so due to the necromantic magic which binds them coming with the added bonus of physical strength to make them a threat. One of those things you just assume.
>Requires a massive amount of magic to create and run
>We'll just assume that no one else has access to an equally massive amount of magic
Yeah ok if you are just going to gimp the other side ofc they win...
>and the necromancer has total control of their actions.
That is a massive drawback. Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order. Some plans even count on it.
>Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order
That's an exception. Majority of battles were won because soldiers did exactly what was asked of them and the followed orders. Conversly shitload of battles were lost because soldiers were not doing what the were supposed to do.
You guys are idiots, every army needs subdivision level command to be able to make localized decisions.
>Outside of a modern context, independent thought doesn't benefit an army.
Yeah that's why ancient armies had one general and literally no other chain of command. Fricking idiot.
Having officers and leaders =/= having the common soldier do whatever they want
Officers are given the plan and told not to frick with it unless certain circumstances are met.
Don't try to back peddle your bullshit from before now. We can literally see what you previously wrote.
You know instead of accusing others of being me you could just actually type out a post explaining why I am wrong about the RTS comparison. I'm not usually up during burger hours FYI
Even a grunt needs to have some degree of autonomy, but the main issue is that those mindless grunt need officers to make decisions for them. Even assuming your necromancer is omniscient and can respond to every last detail in a battlefield (lol, lmao) they would still be unable to function away from the necromancer. That way your army becomes a useless deathblob and everyone else can just dance circles around it.
>they would still be unable to function away from the necromancer.
Says fricking who?
You're trying to make it out as if it's absolute canon necromancy in every fictional setting that skeletons are mindless beings. Having unquestioning control does not mean mindless robot.
>Says fricking who?
Voodoo roots of zombies and DnD more or less regulating your common skelly and zombie as being barely self aware with only a vague hatred towards the living.
>Yeah that's why ancient armies had one general and literally no other chain of command.
The primary purpose of an ancient commander is to ensure that coordination is kept between various pieces of the army. They were not expected to make their own tactical decisions. We know this is the case because the Romans were famous for actually permitting diffusion of command down to something like the company level and other ancient commanders that did take initiative to maneuver their own independent forces are either lauded or derided based on whether or not them doing whatever the frick they felt like won or lost them the battle. Necromancers don't need to worry about cohesion. They tell their skeleton army to march that way and kill everything and those skeletons WILL march exactly where they are told and do precisely what they are told. They'll never get lost in a ravine or confuse one formation for another. They know exactly, unerringly where to go and what to do to carry out the (admittedly simple) command they've been given. This means you don't NEED sublevel commands for line formations but you will need specialized subcommands for any other units that you do want to have tactical or strategic autonomy. Thus, a necromancer's army is likely going to consist of something like a Line Commander responsible for the general purpose skeleton infantry while there are formation commanders that can take care of alternative duties. A lot of supply, logistics, coordination, and command issues are solved by have instantaneous perfect command and control over your formations. Not needing to have your orders interpreted in a pre-modern battlefield is more of a boon than a hinderance and would make a skeleton army likely more adept at pushing through a battlefield than otherwise at the cost of you ONLY needing to deceive the commanding necromancer and not needing to fool a general and a cadre of recalcitrant officers.
An autonomous logistics train is not immune to failure and is still beholden to the rule that more complex systems have more points of failure. The advantage of an undead army is that most supplies are effectively removed and unnecessary, they are powered purely by direct feeding of energy that animates them. Rest of your post is assuming that skeletons are somehow capable of foresight when it doesn't actually matter how stupid they are at navigation because they can ignore all hazards and just trip over a cliff and be reanimated again.
It isn't a complex system. It isn't even a system. The undead don't appear to rely on anything once animated. They can linger and march on forever. The only logistics needed are for the actual Necromancers themselves. The undead don't need food or water and are immune to illness. They can march all day and all night without issue. I will concede that a smart Necromancer might still want some mild logistics train to carry ammunition that they might need or replacement weapons, but I don't feel that this is anywhere near as necessary for an army of the dead.
Imagine being this stupid
If you plant a rank of skeletons to act as an anvil for a charge, they wont run and will keep fighting until the unit suffers total casualties. Humans are not so reliable.
Outside of a modern context, independent thought doesn't benefit an army.
It's time to get out of your armchair you fricking idiot.
>Armies succeed because soldiers are not perfectly following every order. Some plans even count on it.
Direct lagless mastermind necromancy doesn't have the drawbacks of faulty broken telephone chain-of-command that normal humans operate by
That's a moronic take on strategic doctrine. Possibly one of the most moronic takes I've ever seen.
>what is battle of hastings
>what is any battle where the army routed or panicked?
>WHAT IS MORALE
They suck as mainline fighters.
But they make great fodder as they can soak lots of ranged attacks and magic, also can help in pinning your enemies or flanking while your heavy hitters maneuver into position, in some cases can even overwhelm the enemies with sheer numbers.
They come incredibly cheap, can be recycled and your living population love that you are recruiting in the graveyards instead of making you risk life and limb in some petty squarrel.
>picture
That makes jo fricking sense. Damage resistance do not work like that, and the idea of milk making you invulnerable is ridiculous.
Picture is accurate except for lava. Why would skeletons be damaged by stabby shit at all?
Theres nothing special about the milk, he just enjoys milk
>Damage resistance do not work like that
damage reduction does though. Broaden your horizons beyond 5e
lmfao
it's pretty obvious you've never actually fought a skeleton irl
I've generally got a low opinion of name bags.
But you should honestly have a nice day.
>drinking more milk means denser bones
>denser bones mean more durable skeletons
>more durable skeletons mean deadlier undead
>deadlier undead mean more powerful necromancers
>therefore, in the necromancer territories, infant breastfeeding is mandatory, dairy is a dietary staple, and distribution of baby formula and milk and cheese substitutes is punishable by torturous death and reanimation for backbreaking labor
>beside the noticeably tougher skeletons, the living inhabitants that aren't drenched in corrupting death magic are healthier than most of their neighbors
>most of the territory is used to feed milk cows and as a consequence, cattle ranchers are loosely associated with necromancy
>apart from getting fresh corpses and live captives to experiment with, the primary drive for necromancer expansion is to get more grazing land, both to increase their living population capacity and give the necromancers more breathing room in their struggle to avoid corrupting the land so no grass will grow
nice
>Cheap
>Replaceable
>Population happy that you're sending them to die instead of humans
I didn't realize skeletons had so much in common with American Midwesterners.
Skeletons are now getting added to the bestiary in Minarchy v1.3 and will have overpowered stats because of your post.
According to 1e Lords of Darkness, while they lack the soul of their former inhabitants, they do have the body's memories still within them to a certain extent.
This is why the skeleton of a great warrior tends to come back as a better fighter than some peasant skeleton, because it has some "muscle memory", if you'll forgive the term, of when it was alive.
However the same book also has some unexplained phenomenon as well, such as the example of a village being burned down, parents slaughtered, kids hiding under the floor and about to die of smoke inhalation, when the skeleton of grandpa, who was buried out back, comes bursting in and saves them, carrying them outside of the village and then crumbling to dust once his grandkids are safe.
Incidents like that raising the question of just how much of one's mind does truly stick to the body after death, or did his soul somehow come back from the afterlife for this one task? And in either case, what animating force allowed his body to move?
Generally not, their primary appeal is that they're dirt cheap to field and maintain versus other traditional evil armies, and won't question your orders if they're clearly suicidal. The tradeoff is that they're generally dumb and not especially strong, but that's not such an issue when you can afford to field massive quantities and supplement their massive numbers with your own dark powers and a few trusted lieutenants.
That means skeletons are effectively the opposite of orcs from a strategic standpoint. It seems like it'd be ideal to field both but the difficulty of getting there is prohibitive.
JUST GET SOME ORC SKELETONS
THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR
>OI LADS IT'Z TIME TO STOP RATTLIN' ABOUT IT'Z TIME TO OSSIFY SOME OMMIES
I made a group of 16 Legionnaire Skeletons and 1 Centurion Skeleton with a lung to blow his whistle to issue commands, and it almost wiped out a group of 5 level5-6 adventurers.
I can't find the stats, because this was in 2019
All I did was follow was this:
After every attack the legionnaire as a bonus action would go back to the back of line, rotating a fresh legionnaire.
I used basic Phalanx tactics and it really ruined my Adventurers' day LOL
inspired me to make this
https://files.catbox.moe/dwauu9.mp3
That's legit terrifying man
bonezone status: entered
Now to tell smell my farts and how skeleton warriors work in my game.
an acolyte of THE Necromancer can control about a regiment of skeletons, depending on his abilities, but with so many skeletons his level of control is low. he can more or less just herd them in a direction and infuse them with base savagery. the fewer skeletons the better he can control them.
More experienced acolytes control undead of higher caliber or spend most their time making independently operating undeads, which is an extremely lenghty and difficult proccess.
No
good soldiers, poor combatants
this, they're more like cannon fodder than warriors
Depends how common clerics are
All that swag in one place?
Don't eat, don't sleep, don't retreat, always follow orders, don't need to be paid, can't come down with VD from the camp girls, never plot to seize command...
Even if a skeleton is roughly half as effective in combat as a living human, for an army they're incredibly useful. Plus you can presumably collect new "recruits" after every battle.
If your game uses morale rules seriously, undead tend to be a massive threat. Bandits and orcs run away when they see a few of their buddies go down. The dead just keep going until you've destroyed them all.
>Ah you hit my funny bone
so does a skellington only have 15% of original strength?
really intrigued by the basic idea of skeletal tools in society - farming and digging and providing endless labour - would this cause many humans to flock to a necromancer kingdom hoping to escape a life of back breaking toil?
Imagine an evil commie necromancer man. very groovy bbeg
"Skeletons as machines" ignores one of the fundamental differences between Golems and Undead, and that is that Undead powered by negative energy are so easy to raise BECAUSE said energy actively wants to inhabit a body and use it for violence. So probably not many when that farm equipment is going to actively try to murder anyone it can unless strictly controlled.
You raise a basic b***h skeleton and tell it "kill" it needs no other direction besides that.
You build a rudimentary Golem and you can't tell it "kill", you'd need to make sure it even understands what "killing" is in the first place.
>said energy actively wants to inhabit a body and use it for violence
Depending On The Setting.
Even within DnD they've vacillated between Negative Energy being EEEEEVIL and it being a totally non-moral force of nature.
And of course, some settings simply don't define it as anything special - just the same shaped magical power that could make a fireball or a heal.
>mostly peaceful uncontrolled skeletons
>tfw your skeleton assemblyline needs to be completely reset because a rat got into the room and they dropped everything to stomp it
>ancient lost civilization dungeons are hermetically sealed specifically because the precursor-race was getting tired of wildlife and hobos stumbling onto the work floor and being slaughtered
It's kinda funny when you know that the Körperwelten was used to make human evidence disappear.
wow crazy claim, you got proof of it?
If you're talking about Body Works specifically then Anon's off base (Von Hagens, the artist behind it, returned some Chinese "donor" bodies that had obviously been executed). As for the copycats? Wouldn't be surprised.
Yes.
>would this cause many humans to flock to a necromancer kingdom hoping to escape a life of back breaking toil?
This has been a premise of "good necromancers" for more than a decade.
A lot of people don't like the concept and add additional rules like undead poisoning crops or mindlessly rampaging if not carefully supervised to make sure it doesn't work.
Welcome to Bone valley, where we have all kinds of bonetech - bonecrowsoft, bonezon, skel, marrowpay, skeletronic arts, etc.
You're assuming the common people would actually benefit from Skeleton labour, rather than lose their jobs and means of income.
It's basically like automation in the real world. While it can theoretically help people out a ton, especially by reducing the prices of goods, it also results in mass unemployment, especially if the people cant be trained for skilled labour. Though that wouldn't be too bad if there are robust social safety nets and cheap access to reeducaiton, a necromancer ruled kingdom probably isn't that altruistic. There probably would be some new jobs showing up because of the undead work force, but it shouldn't be nearly as many as were lost. Like if one necromancer can raise a hundred skeletons, then there isn't an option for most of those people to become necromancers themselves, as they dont need that many. Especially since there would be only so many dead bodies to go around after a while.
Though for people with valuable skills, merchants and the rich it would probably be ideal, since the country's efficient labour force would result in low prices in general.
No
As another anon said they don't need to eat or sleep. You create more by slaughtering your enemy. You can raise them from your enemies graveyards too. Skeletons are strategically amazing, and tactically weak. Each skeleton company should be attached to a squad of living that can take advantage of the skeletons fearlessness and boost their effectiveness.
No, unless they're animated by magic or something.
Be a 7th level evil cleric in 5e and walk around with a squad of 6-8 skeletons all of whom can fire their shortbows every round then you tell me.
Frick a fireball.
They'll miss often, overtime or if you buff them there more effective, but the fireball is a big chunk of damage right here and now, for a single spell slot.
How useful an undead army is direct correlates with how strong magic is in the setting
they're not the strongest but always happy to bone up on their skills
Skeletons entirely depend on their setting's specific rules and may differ massively depending on those.
For example, an animated skeleton has no muscles and very little mass. So, does it have the strength and poise of a normal man? Or is it weak and light-weighted? Or is it supernaturaly strong?
Is the skeleton a self-sufficient combatant with some moderate capacity for improvisation? Or is it an automaton that will mindlessly execute the orders it has been given,without any ability to deviate from them? Or is it a puppet whose every movement is directly, actively controlled by a necromancer? And in the latter case, how many skeletons can be controlled by a single necromancer if he has to pull the metaphysical strings of every step and every swing?
And if the skeleton has any autonomy, is it slow and lumbering, or does it retain the combat experience and prowess it had in life?
Do the skeletons 'die' to a strong strike to the chest, or do you have to break off every limb to disable it? Or can it even reconstitute its broken-off parts infinitely?
All these questions have setting-specific answers, because skeletons are entirely supernatural creatures. They're held together and allowed to move and strike by unnatural forces; they have no muscles and tendons, no nerves nor brain, and don't have any vital organs, so everything about how they function is dependant on the setting's take on these supernatural forces.
A skeleton mimics entirely the movements of the wizard behind the curtain.
He will go for the eyes and ears.
They make cheap warriors
>don't need food
>don't need water
>don't need to sleep
>don't need warmth
>can't get sick
>can't get tired
Their fighting skills are often represented as mediocre but a large formation of cheap-shit undead is a dream when it comes to 'soft' factors.
>ignoring the famous skeletal urge to carouse
Ain't no party like a skeleton party
>day 63 of the siege
>the skeletons are still partying
>they'll never get tired
>they'll never be full
>they're immune to alcohol poisoning
>they can just have a bucket beneath them when they drink to recycle beer
A skeleton party lasts until the paladins show up, it will never stop on it's own
Quantity over quality is the horde undead's motto.
While less bulky than zombies, they can wield weapons making them a better choice should you have the resources. But the key to skeletons is their numbers, so no, they don't make great warriors (at least, not traditional skeletons) as they are frail and not smart enough to perform any fancy maneuvers meaning the necromancer who cares for them will need to completely coordinate where they go and what they do which can often be impossible given the amount of undead needing to be controlled.
In traditional war combat, they would be a good portion of the army along with zombies and more intelligent undead such as wights, and even some mortals which could help compensate for the skeleton's weaknesses.
Yeah they're pretty solid.
>no need for sleep
>no need for food
>no feeling of pain
>no mercy
>never desert
>no bleeding out
>no symptoms of exhaustion
>will continue fighting with cut off limbs
>trigger existential fear in opponents due to memento mori shtick
>built in xylophone
yes.
Depending on the setting they're usually somewhere between "lookit all that cheap cannon fodder!" and "those don't really count as human bones anymore and cutting them down without hitting their soulfire or whatever does frickall since they can just recombine like a Voltron made of Calcium and nightmares".
Yes, undead constructs require no supplies, therefore they require no supply lines, and thusly can strike when other armies would be overextended. Skeletons and zombies can march for days and immediately fight a battle without resting first.
>tireless and need minimal supplies
>perfect discipline/morale
>perfect formations (as long as the necromancer is semi-competent)
>every enemy killed is another recruit
Even if they're shit at fighting compared to a living warrior, the logistics and efficacy of undead soldiers means that an army of them is an absolute menace
If they made good warriors they'd have survived instead.
i believe in second chances
Imagine the logistics. It's a general's dream. Even a totally non-martial character could become a powerful threat.
>it's foolproof! Skeletons don't need to eat, sleep, or heal!
>lose 25% of your forces to tripping on uneven ground and accidental trampling before even arriving to the battlefield
>Skeleton trips over
>"oh no he's dead"
You do realise they're already dead right?
>skeleton trips, falls down a hill
>bones disconnect and get stomped into the mud by its five hundred brothers
>skeleton either gets back up sans a few bones or loses a leg and has to drag itself from now on
>repeat until you reach your destination
>skeleton trips
>falls down a hill
Have you ever been hiking, rucking or even walked on a hill?
No one "rolls" down an entire hill. If you're marching and someone falls over you don't just walk over them.
It might surprise you but armies don't march to their destination as a giant tightly packed unorganised horde.
>If you're marching and someone falls over you don't just walk over them.
Hajj pilgrims would disagree
>millions of religiously fervent unorganised pilgrams
>A military formation
Do you see the difference?
But hey, some people get squashed to death at soccer games so I guess going to a classical concert means I'm going to have the same thing happen, right? That's how it works in your mind, isn't it?
>a horde of nonsapient (or actively evil) undead monsters
>a military formation
If you're setting has skeletons too stupid to march in formation, they're also too stupid to use a weapon and shield for any value and might as well be resident evil tier mindless zombies.
We already established skeleton's weigh about 30 lb. That's not enough pressure to break bones
Could skeletons, given some shovels, effectively entrench? Digging a ditch is a simple monotonous task so they should be able to understand the order, and they only need pretty narrow trench since they don't have full mass of a person.
The answer is yes. skeleton tunnelers would be way more scary though.
>give each skeleton a pickaxe or a shovel
>let them build a large tunnel into the enemies stronghold during a potentially neverending siege (they don't eat or get tired)
>they'll take their time but they'll get there
>enemy can literally do nothing to prevent this even if he even notices it
>hell, you could just have them pickaxe down the enemy wall since arrows do almost nothing to them anyway
The best. Even when they’re wrapped in fl*sh.
Depends on the setting/system.
My skeletons are generally weak and stupid, capable of following a few simple orders and mindlessly attacking all living creatures without the mage's mark (including insects, friendly creatures, and plants). They're not the best warriors but they're cheap and can be left in unoccupied dungeons to keep out wildlife and poorly prepared explorers.
However the Necromancer who raised them can assume direct control of any of his skeletons, giving them glowing eye sockets the mage sees from, buffed stats, and letting their master direct their actions. This turns skeletons into potentially more dangerous opponents, lets Necromancers give orders to skeleton hordes from distance, and lets the Necromancer talk to the party without being in mortal peril.
Within the known world there are only 2 polities that use skeletons in their militaries: the chaotic Iron Legion and the Principality's Lich Lords. Neither have especially good military records, outside of confined spaces lacking abundant life they're too difficult to control and vulnerable to crushing weapons, artillery, and magics to be more than a gimmick.
Seems like they'd be best served as some sort of distraction or supplement to something else. Giving them some spears to bristle up a flank before a cav charge, who cares if they get crumbled because they'll soften the horses up so that they can't touch the actual soldiers there. Or perhaps tying up some enemy's force or push for awhile and making a move somewhere else. I am not sure but it is fun to think of how battles would go with disposable skele-dudes around.
Not really how cavalry works. In fact skeletons would be incredible anti cavalry infantry solely because, being bones, they feel no fear and therefore a cavalry charge can't break them at all, whether from the front or the flank.
If you tried to do a cavalry charge like they do in the lord of the rings movie or various other fantasy films, you simply wouldn't. Cavalry charges worked by breaking the infantry they were charging without contact. A horse will not slam into what looks like a solid, incredibly pointy object, unless something forces it to, like its death by ranged weapon. So an undead infantry block would be an incredible thing against cavalry. That being said, the knights with their much longer weapons could just stop in lance range and start slapping the skeletons on the head aggressively.
Hmm... If living cavalry is impossible to have charge into a wall of infantry, what about undead cavalry? Suppose a contingent of armoured wights with long-hafted axes astride zombified horses charged into a line of men-at-arms, hollywood-style. How effective would that be? My mind thinks it would be suicidal and get them killed (again) in short order but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know for sure.
>If living cavalry is impossible to have charge into a wall of infantry, what about undead cavalry
Undead cavalry would be horrifying for that exact reason. They have no sense of self-preservation (or of right or wrong) and as long as they're heavy enough they could break the cohesion of infantry literally by slamming into them.
>be pikeman in ye olden army
>sworn to the gods, loyal to the crown
>company is marched out to put down undead uprising
>easily the worst in a generation, several fiefdoms have already fallen
>the hated necromancer is marching on a major, unwalled trade city
>commanders think they can intercept him for a decisive blow, the necromancer's been known to spread plagues and we don't want him anywhere near the cemeteries
>manage to intercept the enemy army, if it can be called that, in an open field
>see a hideous horde of corpses milling around, try not to vomit, fail, to much sympathy
>pray, then told to brace pikes to cover the left flank
>battle is joined, mobs of carcasses throwing themselves into our center but as long as the flanks hold, we should be fine
>hear deafening hoofbeats at the same time everyone else does
>hundreds of rotting horses, each one with a corpse bolted or stitched on the top, every one of those with a mallet or woodcutter's axe
>barreling straight for our lines at a breakneck speed, we brace our pikes
>tell myself we should be fine, after all, I'm not in the frontline and no horse would ever throw itself on a blade
>screams begin and I realize, to my horror as the man in my front's head is caved in by a gory hoof, that that's exactly what they're doing
That's actually terrifying
Skeleton tunnelers could be countered pretty easily by counter-tunneling, just like in real life. In fact, I'd say they have the disadvantage there since the main advantages of skeleton troops (numbers, cohesion) count for naught in tunnel fighting. Remember, in a 1 on 1 fight, a single skeleton with armour who's 60 pounds soaking wet will just get bulldozed by a human soldier with a modicum of training.
Might be able to make up for it by just having a ridiculous number of tunnels, though
>Skeleton tunnelers could be countered pretty easily
not if they target the strongholds graveyard
what if they tunnel below the walls to make it collapse though? counter tunneling in this case would effectively bring down your own fortifications
Not if you don't collapse your own tunnel amd don't make it wider than it needs to be.
fair point would still be pretty scary to open a doorway to the enemie outside with thousand of tons of stone above you
I'd say the notion of someone hacking you to death with a sharp piece of steel is much scarier than a cave in.
I'd argue the combination of both doubles the spookyness
skeletons could literally be directed to tunnel under the castle years ago. like you could direct them to start tunnelling under the castle from the other side of the planet and they would until either cave in, tectonic frickery or they got their. you can tunnel so far in advance you can line it up before the siege begins
Imagine also giving the skeleton cavalry crossbows and longbows with projectile tips being coated in toxic pungent corpse biomass
Really gives me a boner, if you know what I mean
>hundreds of rotting horses, each one with a corpse bolted or stitched on the top, every one of those with a mallet or woodcutter's axe
Thanks. I have a name for my undead cavalry unit in my setting now: orcadian horsemen
Being sieged by a skeleton army would be awful.
Enemy army can literally stand at guard day and night for months on end without issue.
Erie atmosphere of knowing a clackity menace could be unleashed at any moment and no matter how badly they get cut down they won't suffer morale loss.
Meanwhile your squishy army is getting hangry and fatigued with no ability to resupply.
I don't know how effective they'd be on offense, but they'd be absolute hell to fight. Presuming they stay intact through magic rather than the collection of bones just rattling apart at the first impact, you'd have a person-shaped framework that's significantly more narrow, can't bleed out, is vastly harder to hit with arrows and bullets, harder to hit with spears, swords could get caught in the various holes and you'd need each strike to impact hard enough to meaningfully cut into solid bone...
Skeletons would make absolute defensive powerhouses, and by that virtue alone they would be horrific opponents in attrition warfare.
Even broken bones wouldn't be nearly as much of a hindrance since what takes us down is usually pain, shock or bleeding out from our bone fragments tearing our flesh. Without that, even an entirely blunt-force strategy wouldn't be overly effective.
All of this depends on the quality of the skeletons themselves, but even bottom-tier skeletons would probably be ridiculously good. Maybe they can't easily hurt you, but they can wear you down.
look, they might be weaker than a human. sure. maybe a little slower on the attack. but let me break it down why they are the absolute top teir.
>basically silent. no chatter, maybe a little clatter but you can fix that with some cloth robes. or if you are broke just roll em around in charcoal. bam. nearly undetectable night fighters. infiltrators, or scouts.
you could send them to walk right on into the enemy camp and listen. you could have em hang out in weird places like at the bottom of a well, when the enemy goes to get water (something your boys dont need) instead they get shanked by a skeleman!
what is a mortal army without water? dead thats what.
does your army of mortals get tired? skeles dont. they can fight all night and all day bay bee.
their feet dont hurt so they can cover more ground than any marching army. so you can flank and out play mortal force
they dont eat, so no need for costly or expansive supply chain. aka the number 1 killer of real world armies. back in the days of sword and spear, scouts finding and disrupting supply lines determined the tide of battle. if they sacked enough, the enemy would surrender b4 a fight. if they got a few, then youd attack them right after their dudes start feeling the strain and have low moral ectect. skeleis dont care though. they dont even set up camp.
they dont refuse to follow orders bc they are too scared of death. THEY ARE DEATH. its basically how they reproduce.
they are limited in their ability to maintain weapons apparently. i guess. judging by all the rusted crap. i wont get into that but i think with a little work they could really improve their gear.
crazy good in seiges too. what are the defenders gonna do? shoot em with arrows? dump hot oil or boiling water on them? lol. lmao even. who cares? plus you could just fling bags of bones over the walls to cause a scene in the town while the skelecrew cuts through the front door.
lets see, what else... spys. yeah!
spys. you ever notice how humans are made out of a skeleto and some meat? dude. just take a member of the enemies royal court, remove their skeleton. create undead minnion out of it. PUT IT BACK IN ITS MEAT. send it to the enemies hq, and have it kill their leader! or literally anyone. moves like that get folk to surrender right quick. maybe not everyone, but at least one dude in the castle will be willing to cut a deal to avoid being debonified and rebonified.
also xylophones. you could put on a concert the likes of wich the world has never seen!
if you hae a tinkerer im sure you could bolt on some basic augments like a spring locking system to turn each skeleton archer into a more powerfull wielder of the bow.
there arnt very many situations where having a meat based military is even as good as a bone brigade.
zero looting and robbing when you win a seige. YOU get ALL the money! they just giv e you the money.
the pesants appreciate that a lot more too. unless ofcourse you start turning them into skele soldiers. but then who cares what they think?
i guess some situations could come up where having a bunch of skele minions is not ideal. like at a fancy dinner party. chicks might think youre weird. but
you know there are probobally plenty of other signs about that. like the castle im hosting from being made of bones, all the green flame lanturns made out of bones. all the dishes being made out of reconstituted bone dust and me making a point to bring that fact up durring dinner. they KNOW what they are getting in for with me. and if they dont like it, thats fine. man.
Yes, they are magical robots. Mass is whatever the magic brings with it.
Are there any systems out there where even 'simple' undead have upkeep requirements?
Concearning the weight thing I always just assumed skeletons have sort of an invisible "shadow body" that holds together the bones, gives them necromantic "muscles" (otherwise a sword alone would be half their body weight) and pulls them down to earth like some type of black magc gravity force in order to give them living people weight and strenght
>don't get demoralized
>don't rebel
>don't flee
>don't starve
>don't dehydrate
>don't freeze
>don't get sick
>dont sleep
>don't drown
The problem is that most people just depict skeletons as "huge slow blob, giant horde, don't quit" instead of considering their strategic strengths. How often do skeletons conquer a castle and then just sit on that shit without anyone being able to get them out? They're perfect for long-term warfare and exhausting meatbag enemies, rather than just silly hordes of doom heading for a cataclysmic giant confrontation.
>when you are the evil necromancer who used his army of skeletons to dam rivers at their source up in the mountains where the armies of good can't reach.
>And when they find out you did it, there's already too much water in the dam, so blowing it up would kill everybody downstream.
>also, as a proper Dark Lord, you naturally constructed all of your evil works with yourself as the main supporting pilar, so you're going to take everybody with you if they think they can just assassinate you
My reign of terror will be eternal. Pay your water bills.
I didn't know Necromancers worked for Nestle.
Infant bone powder in all premium infant products, you say?
The board of directors consists entirely of Dread Liches, one Mimic, and an Elder Vampire.
>no Dracoliches or Death Knights
Shit company
Dracoliches generally refuse to work with others and run their own companies. Death Knights tend to be enforcers and carry out operations like Coca-Cola's death squadron, which is a real thing totally unrelated to necromancy or fantasy.
Take this you stupid skellies
AIEEE NOT THE BONE HURTING JUICE
>release a few dozen warhounds
>entire army fall apart in a matter of minutes, necromancer spend six months gathering back all various bones scattered in random holes across the landscape
Nothing personnal, skeleboys.
Based. Skelespammers BTFO and exiled from the board. They have no argument against this tactic
>He thinks the dogs are on his side
We can offer them more bones than you could ever dream of.
Dogs are short-term thinkers, they know that the bone army needs its bones for waging the campaign, while the flesh army is trying to smash as many bone people as possible, clearly leading to ahuge surplus of bones. Therefore, they will side against the bonemen.
>Dogs are short-term thinkers
>Gives long term reasons why they'd stay
We have more bones
Simpel as
>Humans smash skeleton
>Skeleton becomes pile of bones
>BONES FOR DOG
Dog knows that if the bone army has its way, the bones will be reanimated, and therefore useless.
How the hell does the dog know that?
do you think dogs don't know about skeletons
Dogs absolutely don't know about skeletons, it's like how they can't see colourblind people
He learns from experience. Pale nerd calls him GOOD BOY = he receives few bones after a battle. Ruddy jock calls him GOOD BOY = he gets mountains of bone after a battle.
I don't think I've ever seen a ttrpg or even adjacent video game setting where the weight and weakness of a skeleton is taken into account semi-realistically.
>Skeleton Warriors
LIGHTSTAAAAAR! HE HAS THE POWER!
Do skeletons make good friends?
Yup, no bones about it
>no one posted the theme song
Fine I'll do it myself.
This plays automatically when I get my dick out
hell yeah
Most damage done in wars was done by arrows and lances
Skeletons are basicaly immune to those two types of damage
Put them in skeleton horses
>Skeletons are immune to lances
lol lmao
The frick you gonna do
Pierce yhe fricking thing in between yhe ribs?
A lance with a knight and charger behind it strikes with the force of .50 BMG. The contemporary historian and noble Anna Karenina witnessed a charge of Christian knights and noted it was capable of bringing down the walls of Constantinople, comparable in power to the Turkish anti tank rifles then in use.
Lances don't do bludgeoning damage in d20.
Skeletons don't have immunity to non bludgeoning damage in d20
Yes they do? Piercing and slashing.
Half damage from piercing and slashing, assuming we are going with older editions.
That doesn't make sense. They have nothing to pierce or slash. You have to smash them.
That doesn't make any sense, damage types are just a roundabout way to categorize weapons then any actual physics.
>They have nothing to pierce or slash
Swords do terrible things to bone, especially without the fleshy exoskeleton to protect it. There's at least one example of an anglo-saxon war skeleton with his entire face caved in from a sword stroke.
That still sounds like the skull was bludgeoned. Damage types are dumb.
>That still sounds like the skull was bludgeoned
It was
Because all damage is in fact bludgeoning damage
A "cut" is when you get bludgeoned by a very thin hammer, like an axe or knife while a "puncture wound" is when you get bludgeoned by a very pointy hammer, like a sword thrust or spear
Piercing concentrates all energy to a single point, slashing concentrates all energy into a line (or straight or curved do cause different effects). The reason a skeleton is resistant is because piercing and slashing severs muscles and tendons that skeletons do not have, they also do not bleed so they don't bleed to death otherwise when you attack a skeleton with those weapons you are aiming to do the same thing bludgeon weapons are doing in combat. All of it is simplified but the logic is sound.
>piercing is 1 dimensional damage
>slashing is 2 dimensional damage
>bludgeoning is 3 dimensional damage
So what does 4 dimensional damage? Cigarettes? Depleted uranium rounds?
Bards bullying people through novelizations. Or poison and bleeding or any other DOT effect.
So you should be able to choose to deal bludgeoning damage with a lance or a sword, right? The games don't appear to allow it raw. You'd need a smart DM.
The half damage is a compromise because weapons are categorized by type. Its monster description even notes the resistance is special and needs to be explained.
>Yes they do? Piercing and slashing
In 5E they're only immune to p'son, like verdigrease, and take double damage from bludgeoning. In 3.5 they take half damage from non bludgeoning physical damage, but lances do 2X on a charge. Half damage also applies in AD&D2e. Can't speak for 4e, AD&D1, or Basic.
>A lance with a knight and charger behind it strikes with the force of .50 BMG.
And stirrups negate newtoninan laws, we know.
That's not even the most wrong thing about that post anon
>a knight can generate 15,000 ftlbs
Not a fricking chance dude.
>The horse immediately stops upon impact
>There is no carried momentum
>Already dead
>Have slightly above intelligence than zombies
>Can equip arms and even bows
Yes.
If we think there's even more skeleton horrors we could make
Skeleton horses loaded with stones for formation breaches, loaded with plague barrels for immediate ww1 experience, loaded with exlosives for siege, or we could stuck another skeleton inside so each horse bears two skellies, one on top and another inside
Skelephants - basically horse version but larger, literally apc filled with skellies squads
Enlarged skele-kroteks for burrowing
Skeltal whales for something
Skeletal walruses for agriculture
Giraffe skellies for sieges as ladders
>Skelephants - basically horse version but larger, literally apc filled with skellies squads
Sound horrifying as frick. This shit have no blind spot, it can just charge in the fray while the skeletons inside grab and stab all that come near.
Skeletons warriors are not real. They are fantasy and make believe, so they can be made to be as good or as bad as the game system needs them to be. You can also base them off of what is seen in the movies like Jason and the Argonauts (60s), Army of Darkness (90s), or any of the other movies depicting skeleton warriors.
Really, it is only your imagination that what makes these real.
>Skeletons warriors are not real.
H-haha yeah...
Shut it down
Not really but you ever hear one complain about marching for days on end?
Skeletons being totally inept morons who are only good in combat with huge numbers is cringe
Skeletons should be giga chads, few in numbers but very tough to kill and hit unbelievably hard, they're powered by magic so it's moot to try and argue that it's "unrealistic" for a skeleton to massacre your average human in melee. What's the point of skeletons as people ITT view them as when they have the exact same role as zombies? They're just inferior zombies by every metric
>he doesn't take his inspiration from the classics
Why is this really the only post-Harryhausen live-action film that heavily features skeletons? At most you get them for occasional gags like in Scary Movie 2.
Because skeletons are dumb, bro.
Zombies are just skeletons weighed down with the curse of fleshly existence. Also they have all that brain eating baggage. When people think skeleton warriors, they're not thinking warriors who are also skeletons, like deathknights or wights from Warhammer, which are the gigachad skeletons you desire.
Humans are just exoskeletons for skeletons
>skeletons are cool, humans are drool
>bones are hard, flesh is soft
>skeletons party hard, human parties are lame
>skeletons have natural talent with many instruments making great bards
>skeletons cannot feel negative emotions, humans constantly cry
>skeletons will turn on you if you're not cool enough to rule over them
>Do skeletons really make good warriors?
no not really. they just kind of lie there.
Depends on the setting and how your Necromancy works.
Does it make them as strong as they were in life? Skeletons weight fricking nothing and unless you wanna armor your massive horde of bones they're not going to hold together very well. A few hits and they're breaking. God forbid someone aims a regular old canon into a rank of skeletons and turn a column to dust.
Or does your Necromancy make them rock hard and stand up to regular weapons. Does it make them give zero fricks about slogging through shin deep mud
They make better friends.
What I am getting from this thread is that Skeletons, in reality, are among the best soldiers in "reality" than almost any other race. Unlimited attrition, zero disease and you can outlast an enemy indefinitely, especially if the necromancer is also immortal.
So an army of Wights seems to be the final step towards skeletal domination.
Yeah the lack of morale issues is a huge boon. They might be shit fighters and shit killers but the job of infantry is to hold the line and by god that's what skelemen will do. You have your vampire knights and monsters and magic to do the actual killing.
All warriors I saw ended as skeletons, so I guess they do
>no need for food/water/rest/entertainment
>immune to low morale, always follows orders
>immune to weather/climate
>can see in the dark
>resistant to non-bludgeoning attacks
>immune to poisons, diseases, critical hits, etc undead shit
That's a big fricking deal.
Skeletal horses would be good mounts for many of those reasons.
The main downside is once they've completed an order they just stand around or mindlessly attack until they get new ones, and if you kill the necromancer they become mindless attackers with no plans or ability to reason.
However, many anons have pointed out that they should be very lightweight yet they're never portrayed that way. Also I would think armor wouldnt fit them and they'd have a hard time gripping things. They *should* be resistant to elemental damage as well, but you don't see that either. Even in games with hard rules like D&D I'm still not sure if they can sprint forever without taking damage.
>no need for food/water/rest/entertainment
This, they're always entertained
They piss me off
>Necromancer
>Raise skeletons
>fill the chest cavities with fire bombs
>send them out on a hugging mission
>But the firebombs never detonate
>Skellies improvise and break their necks
I think this could be a good story concept. Comic wise anyway
>middle aged necromancer constructing his tower
>surface level the"heroes" believe he is intending to conqeur the land with an army of undead
>the truth is the necromancer is trying to find a way to properly revive his lost wife
>finds the social isolation is getting to him and he raises a Wight who, unbeknowst to him and due to ignorance of bone anatomy is in fact a woman
>thanks to magic is stronger than she ever was in life
>necromancer thinks the wight has limited intelligence but is in fact fully self aware
>wight plays along anyway and gets some old but very strong suit of armour and weaponry from an old grave
>hijinks ensue
It would gradually become a case where the wight starts to grow feelings for the necromancer and tries to get back her flesh and blood body all the while the necromancer is completely gormless
Things escalate when the necromancer actually ressurects his wife succesfully but she turns out to be horrible and abusive, making the wight attempt to remove her.
This thread inspired me to come up with this trash.
Not
>Necromancer wants win hearts of humans
>Organises a series of interpretive dancing skeleton groups
>Brings skelly musicians and dancers to mortal parties
>Takes a hit when a skeleton picks a bone with a counts wife
>The matter is dismissed because skeletons don't have genitals
>Or at least that's what you tell them
You missed your chance
>never tires
>never hungers
>night vision
>excellent strength
>virtually impervious to small projectiles (they pass through them, lol)
the only downside is wear&tear of the
Something which is never ever conveyed in fantasy or other /tg/ related is how mandatory supplies and food were. Before Agincourt for example, I think about 1/4 of the army died to disease, if not more. This was just upon landing in France.
Skeleton warriors not only provide a phenomenal fighting force but the complete independance of requiring any kind of food or water can't be understated.
Undead are probably the most underrated army in fantasy.
>Before Agincourt for example, I think about 1/4 of the army died to disease, if not more.
Spicy roman opinions on native brittons.jpg
No, they don't have the guts for it.