Most Over/Underrated Class?

[TheUser]

On level 10 feature there was no contradiction whasoever on my part. Since you seem troubled to understand...
1° Allowing Aid to persist after end is pure DM houserule (this is the point on what is RAW).
2° It probably wouldn't change much in practice (this is the point on game balance).

And the interpretation you make is even more crazy than the one for Aid. Warlord is not a playable character, it's a monster. Its features are NOT class features. And you POSSESS the body, you are not magically fusing it to your own.
So yeah, you get that level of HP while you are possessing the body ONLY. Once body is destroyed, you're back regular Wizard.

The Aid spell is not persisting but the effect is.

This might be a hard concept to grasp but a "spell" and a "spell's effects" are not the same thing. Animate Dead for instance, the spell lasts for an instant (instantaneous duration) but the effects are quite the opposite.

I think you are confused about how Magic Jar interacts with your stats so I'm gonna really break it down for you.

Spoiler: Magic Jar

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6th-level necromancy

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: Self

Components: V, S, M (a gem, crystal, reliquary, or some other ornamental container worth at least 500 gp)

Duration: Until dispelled

Your body falls into a catatonic state as your soul leaves it and enters the container you used for the spell’s material component. While your soul inhabits the container, you are aware of your surroundings as if you were in the container’s space. You can’t move or use reactions. The only action you can take is to project your soul up to 100 feet out of the container, either returning to your living body (and ending the spell) or attempting to possess a humanoid’s body.

You can attempt to possess any humanoid within 100 feet of you that you can see (creatures warded by a Protection from Evil and Good or Magic Circle spell can’t be possessed). The target must make a Charisma saving throw. On a failure, your soul moves into the target’s body, and the target’s soul becomes trapped in the container. On a success, the target resists your efforts to possess it, and you can’t attempt to possess it again for 24 hours.

Once you possess a creature’s body, you control it. Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the creature, though you retain your alignment and your Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You retain the benefit of your own class features. If the target has any class levels, you can’t use any of its class features.

Meanwhile, the possessed creature’s soul can perceive from the container using its own senses, but it can’t move or take actions at all.

While possessing a body, you can use your action to return from the host body to the container if it is within 100 feet of you, returning the host creature’s soul to its body. If the host body dies while you’re in it, the creature dies, and you must make a Charisma saving throw against your own spellcasting DC. On a success, you return to the container if it is within 100 feet of you. Otherwise, you die.

If the container is destroyed or the spell ends, your soul immediately returns to your body. If your body is more than 100 feet away from you or if your body is dead when you attempt to return to it, you die. If another creature’s soul is in the container when it is destroyed, the creature’s soul returns to its body if the body is alive and within 100 feet. Otherwise, that creature dies.

When the spell ends, the container is destroyed.

The necromancer possess a Warlord (a humanoid) but the spell stipulates that while possessing it you retain your Int, Wis and Cha and all your class features minus any of the class features the humanoid you are posessing has (of which it has none because, as you already stated, it's a monster stat block with no level x spellcaster listed).

This allows the caster to still cast spells while posessing a new body but not get the spell casting potential of its new form (except Innate Spells) as well as things like skills, saving throws and their ability to resist death built up over years of adventuring. You can corroborate all that follows on Stack exchange when looking up Magic Jar (or just go through and read the spell for yourself).

The 2 important class features we are focusing on are "Hit Points" (the literal first thing listed under Class Features written in big bold letters) and Inured to Undeath.


So, you possess the Warlord. Bam your stats all change except the ones we listed, but, those class features that give us Max HP and the inability to have max HP reduced remain. So we take that 229 HP the Warlord has baseline and add our class feature HP (except with the new +4 con modifier of the Warlord).

229 HP becomes 319 because 229 plus 10 (level 1 HP) plus 80 (10d6+40) throw in a level 5 Aid and 339 is our new total.

At no point in time, before, during or even after the process do you lose Inured to Undeath, so when the mechanical interaction occurs where you must replace your 339 with your old lower Hit Points it doesn't happen because replacing 339 with a lower number is a reduction.


You can bemoan the non-sensical nature of a necromancer grasping on to their new found vitality and keeping it, or even the exploitative nature of mixing a level 10 necromancer wizard class feature with a necromancy wizard spell obtained at level 11....but the writing is on the wall so to speak. It's RAW as much as it chaps your ass that it isn't.


Does the game break down in tier 3? Absolutely. For Wizards moreso than most other classes. It even starts to show cracks in late tier 2 (as demonstrated by my Illusionist with Creation Interaction in prior comments). But the whole point is that the characters in tier 3 and high tier 2 are powerful entities with fantastical powers not unlike super heroes. The DM's job is to challenge them while letting use their abilities not clamp down on the abilities themselves. Right?

On Undead...
1) If you space them out in a corridor, it also means it's very simple to completely block their aim (archers) or that most of them are useless because cannot attack in melee (Zombies). The optimal use of them is to spread them out, and that requires hefty space and also leads to many kind of counters.

How low is the ceiling? Is arcing a shot simply not something your characters can do? Wouldn't the situation you've outlined shut down any other ranged or even melee character? Even wizards using a plethora of spells so why is it specficially extra bad for the Necromancer?

Using them as cover is nice but at the level where you can pump out a dozen skeletons, many enemies can kill one (or several) in a single round. Let's recall that Skeleton has 13 HP as a base. At level 10, it has 23 HP. Nice. It also has only 13 AC, which is fairly low. So yeah, it acted as a nice meat shield. Cool. It also dealt some damage. Cool.
Will it survive the fight? Unless it was a fight easy enough that you didn't need them in the first place, or unless enemy party had a way to completely disable them, probably not.
How is that game-changing really? It's just a nice boost in damage in some situations, at the cost of hefty preparations and anticipated slot consumption. Not an "all-win" strategy like you sell it out.

In the many sessions I've played a Necromancer (how many have you played btw? Might be a good way to gauge just how valuable your input on this particular topic is), I've had my skeletons equip weapons and armor. It's in the lore text describing them:

"A skeleton can fight with weapons and wear armor"


Expensive? Not always. If the DM is throwing humanoid enemies at you already equipped in armor then they have the gear already. In essence the skeletons become better as your enemies do. You've got something to work with already. Heavy Armor is a bit tricky with reducing their move speed so I avoid it on skeletons.



I need you to really pay attention to what is being written under what context. It bothers me greatly that I have to re-explain and recontextualize your lazy reading of my previous statements. For instance:

Zombies are what were being used in tier 3 for cover and have 22 hit points +11 (we were discussing tier 3 right? +10 means tier 2). And also get to make saving throws before dying at 0 hp (though taking 33+ damage presents a save they could never make but it still helps them stay up). They are walking around in Chainmail and using a full length tower shield or a large metal door.

If the Zombies are using big metal doors to provide full cover, they are also providing it for themselves. Enemies needing to use awkward angles or well placed AoE to even target them ups their resillience greatly.

Skeletons as an example were used in tier 2. In all examples presented by me both are used in small numbers (never dozens). The only number I've thrown out is 4.

The numerical value of skeletons sustained damage should not be understated (especially when compared to other wizards). 4d6+20-24 is being put up in addition to the passive damage of a wizard and because it takes them half the ramp up cost in level 3 Animate Dead spells and they are far more likely to survive an encounter, it's more likely to stay at 4d6+20-24. It's like having an extra two wizards of at will damage (moreso but I am accounting for their reduced accuracy). Other wizards can't get this mileage out of the spell. Twice as hard to ramp up and much more difficult to keep alive. Hopefully I don't have to run you through this whole logical chain a third time...

Especially since world will adapt if you're always using the same strategy. Either through a direct arms-race, or by trying to choose the environment for face-off, or maybe turning those undead against you.

Great examples you've provided of all the spells and abilities that steal Undead...sounds like more DM fiat to me.

2) My point was that if you want to use them for utility digging and such, then it's a very minor speed improvement over a regular Wizard who could conjure less of them,

TIL +100% improvement for "speed" on level 3 slots is a "minor improvement." I think your bias is showing tbh.

but could also simply hire peasants. The HP buff is only relevant in fighting, and even that won't make any big difference as long as enemy has some AOE, until you get at least level 12+.

Peasants as minions is not even remotely a strong comparison; they have morale, need food, don't respond well to dangerous or suicidal orders, need to sleep, and aren't telepathically linked to you so their depth of combat strategy is probably far more limited.

3) "Well this is sort of veering into DM Fiat territory. If you enter a town with your skeletons hooded, masked, and with clothes stuffed with leaves/feathers then random folk won't know any better." So you expect citizens to see a large group of hooded, armed, skinny people with strange way to walk and behave to... Not react? It's a wonder those citizens lived so far already.
It's not a matter of DM being bitchy, it's a matter of being rationale. Unless DM told session 0 "necromancy is widely accepted", in usual setting it's NOT. It's up to you as a player, that chose the character, to deal with it.
Since you pick the "Wild Shape problem", well, I'd have no quarrel with a DM telling me "sorry pal, you cannot Wild Shape into a dinosaur, those simply don't exist in the setting". The DM decides what the world is, how it evolves. Session 0 is here to take care of the main expectations. Discussion is always possible thereafter when something unexpected comes up, and player's choices and actions should also affect the world, but I won't consider the DM as an *** just because he didn't agree with my view.

Bit of a strawman here. DM's and I disagree all the time; I don't consider them an ass for that, but if a player develops a strategy based on class features revolving around say wildshaping into dinosaurs and a DM tells them "tough noogies no Dinos here" instead of saying something like "you can use the stat block if you can come up with a beast that acts in the same way but isn't a dinosaur" you've got a DM trying to work with the player to help everyone have fun.

One allows the player to do the thing they want without disrupting the narrative, the other is lazy and somewhat combative.

And again discussing session zero doesn't do much for the discussion.

"diFfEreNT DMs hAvE DifFeReNT iNTeRpReTatIOnS & HouSE rULeS" is not an argumet because it quite literally sways both ways.

Anyway, if we continue this and you continue to misrepresent my points either intentionally or accidentally I probably won't respond. I'm tired of repeating myself to someone who can't or won't be bothered to read what I say.