Another old shitpost I don’t think I posted anywhere.

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    As a DM, my answer would be yes because it says animate not will into existence and yes because fossilized skeletons would look awesome.

    • Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 day ago

      And also because Animate Dead, the spell the blurb in the meme is from, reads:

      Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the DM has the creature’s game statistics).

      • neoman4426@fedia.io
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        1 day ago

        Interestingly, as written the pile of bones can be any pile of bones, since the Humanoid restriction parses to only being applied to the corpse section, confirmed in the Sage Advice Compendium for 5e (the wording of the spell has not been substantially changed in 5.5 for that part, only changing what the group does when you don’t issue a command. Though I don’t think that’s included in 5.5’s SAC so far). So if you have enough, like, chicken bones to arrange into the size for the skeleton statblock, that RAW works.

        • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 day ago

          If I was DM’ing, I might let you reanimate a pile of chicken bones, but you get a chicken skeleton with a chicken stat block.

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            If I animate a wolf skeleton does it get a wolf statblock?

            A version that can animate up to specific sizes and CRs when cast at a high enough level would be pretty neat.

            • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 day ago

              I’d say sure. It’s not like the wolf statblock is crazy different from regular skeleton stats; it wouldn’t be game breaking or anything.

              RAW on Animated Dead doesn’t strictly limit the size of the creature when it’s a pile of bones, but I think keeping it to small/medium creatures is reasonable.

              • snooggums@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                D&D 5e does, not sure about other editions or other game systems off the top of my head.

                Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small Humanoid within range.

                • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  1 day ago

                  Well, that depends on how you group the statements.

                  Choose (a pile of bones) or (a corpse of a Medium or Small Humanoid) within range.

                  OR

                  Choose (a pile of bones) or (a corpse) of a Medium or Small Humanoid within range.

                  Though I suppose also:

                  Choose (a pile of bones) or (a corpse of a Medium or Small Humanoid within range).

                  Which would mean the bones version has unlimited range.

                  Yes, I am a programmer, why do you ask?

      • Naz@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        I loved casting clay or Earth golem as a melee warrior

        Nothing like beating the shit out of demons with the paving stones tanking hits

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I always saw those as something you made first and then animated, something that involved days to sculpt/construct.