Okay /tg/, how does one go about fighting necromancers and their undead army?
Obviously with a mostly human army you're at a serious disadvantage at night when your men needs to rest. To counteract this advantage I imagine the living side would always build camp with fairly elaborate defence towards the end of the day and hold up in camp and only move and attack in the open during the day. Perhaps creatures more suitable for night fighting could be conscripted into the army for guarding the camps.
Aside from this what other special precaution does one need to take when fighting the undead?
Burn the bodies of the fallen, from both sides, to ash wherever possible. Make sure that they can't be raised or reanimated endlessly.
Holy warriors. Solved.
>>46658802
>Aside from this what other special precaution does one need to take when fighting the undead?
-Crossbows and arrows are shit because of the lack of vitals and more often than not, just leave them as walking pin cushions.
-Some undead can spread disease, so fire can be useful to destroy flesh/clean the ground (be careful using it as a weapon because they can still move for a long time before succumbing and fire hurts you too)
-Priests and clerics should spend most of their time blessing weapons in oil or water to help eliminate the resistences the undead have.
-Necromancers and other dark casters deserve priority because the battle line can collapse if the undead don't receive constant guidance.
-While passing untouched graves, order men to dig up bodies and make pyres for them.
-Pursuit over land is impossible with a battle line or caravan and only makes you weak ( you need supply trains for food and need to stop for rest, which your opponent does not). Chasing your opponent only stretches the resources thin and makes you easier to disassemble piecemeal.
-Many undead servants don't have use of metal weapons or human dexterity. Soldiers should be issued with mail and plate without exception, preferably with blunt weapons opposed to spears or pikes.
-train you men to work with human remains on a daily basis, so as not to cause panic when confronted with moving corpses.
-Never engage in a close battle, even a reasonable victory means defeat in a long campaign. You can't replenish your losses as quickly and draining your resources is the same as giving them to your opponent.
Make fights unfair, use terrain, numbers, mounts and strategic positioning your friend. -Your enemy cant micromanage as well as you can and are forced to work harder instead of smarter. The big advantage your troops have is their independent thought and brain. If you win a battle it will be thanks to the individual soldier.
Everyone trades in their spears for Lucern hammers, maces, and glaives.
>>46659232
You also have to rain them that dismemberment is more important than vital strikes.
They cant still function without a head or brain, or heart, or kidney, or lungs... you get the picture.
>>46658802
Could 25 lb skeletons stop a stampeding lance of knights?
No. Just ignore the skeletons and cut off the snakes head.
>>46659711
I imagine they would just plant the buttspike of their spear into the ground to receive charges.
>>46658802
Try to capture several low-rank necromancers and interrogate (mind-probe if you can) them about the arcane techniques they use. You are not looking to replicate, you're looking for weaknesses. Regular military intelligence is also nice.
If you have mages of your own, task them with reverse-engineering some counterspells or wards. Determine how enemy casters cast, and train your men accordingly.
If you have acess to siege weaponry, consider using it to deliver blessed substances in a big splash. If you're sure you can avoid burning zombies - related fiascos, you can go for flaming holy oil. Holy water is a safer bet. With any luck, it will burn the necromancers themselves, and might mess up their casting. If priests object to such usage of holy water, tell them that rains are natural and so are divine, especially rains that burn the flesh of abominations.
You will have to watch your troops morale. In every battle against the undead your men will face unimaginable foulness. It might be worthwile to organise mass prayers for your men. The priests are with your army not only for blessing stuff. They have to provide spiritual guidance. Integrate mass prayers into your camp discipline. They might also be useful to root out spies (if spies are highly saturated with energies of evil, that is).
>Necromancer is also a fleshcrafter
How do you fight them?
>>46659232 Underrated post.
>>46658802 A lot of people have been mentioning fire. But it's not very useful.
>>>46659185 Some undead can spread disease, so fire can be useful to destroy flesh/clean the ground
>(be careful using it as a weapon because they can still move for a long time before succumbing and fire hurts you too)
has the right idea. But otherwise fire isn't too useful (unless undead in your setting need muscles to work, etc).
Burn a corpse and you'll just end up with a charred corpse. Proper cremation (to ashes) is pretty complicated.
>>46658802
Gauldoth was a bro OP.
>>46663266
Basically best necromancer hero that isn't my OG Sandro.
Also, holy shit, demon summonning was imbalanced as fuck.
>>46663178
>Burn a corpse and you'll just end up with a charred corpse. Proper cremation (to ashes) is pretty complicated.
This. Seriously, Wiki it.
You are also assuming the necromancers can't make some kind of ash-cloud undead. Which sounds even more terrifying and unkillable than usual.
Discussing this scenario is kinda hard because necromantic powers are kinda nebulous (as are your own army's access to magic). OP setting some ground rules would help (i.e. we could go by HoMM rules without the games abstractions).
>>46658802
Send in Adventurers while you keep the general population in fortified positions and use the army to slow the undead advance.
>>46663620
I've always figured that a raised skeleton is not a perpetual motion machine. Even with magic the relentless march of time will have an effect. Bones wear out and eventually they become unusable, with the process greatly accelerated by hard work like fighting or marching.
They actually talk about this in Gauldoth's campaign. He has all these crypt dug out under his castle and they are kept cold by magic. He has his population turn over their dead which he keeps in these magical fridges until they are needed to keep them as pristine as possible.
So given that it may be possible to deny the undead army a decisive battle and wait them out.
>>46663768
My personal headcannon for HoMM necromancy is this:
You can animate things by giving them "life".
Everything has a certain amount of "life" in them, that remains even after they die. It's like poking a hole in some kind of container and the contents slowly spilling out.
Necromancy is taking dead bodies, plugging the holes up, and then syphoning life from other things to reanimate them. This even happens naturally where undead appear, which is why necromancer territories look like blackened wastelands. The better necromancer you are (and the more time you have to prepare) the less "leaky" you transfer the remaining life from one corpse to another. This is why the skeleton transformer works at 100% (since it's like a kind of transfer station where you go from alive->undead on the spot without any loss), while in the field it depends on the talent of the necromancer.
So Gauldoth probably kept the dead bodies on ice to stop the leakage, and not ruin his territory with the dead bodies spreading their disease and naturally syphoning the life out of everything around them (plus I assume they also take some attention to control, which he doesn't have to give them while they are iced).
>>46658802
Spreading engineered disease bacteria that would degrade bones extremely fast.
It wouldn't affect living beings, because they have robust immune system, and same can't be said about undead.
>>46664194
>at least zombies were somewhat human shaped before
>now we are assaulted by meat puppets that are flopping around like some kind of rotting octopus on land
>>46664441
Yeah, but skeletons are boned by the disease, and skeletons are a major portion of the undead army.
>>46658802
That depends on how intelligent the undead are in question. Never directly engage them when you can instead pick them off indirectly, such as through traps.
Holy Boobs!
>>46659711
Your knights charge into the skeleton regiment. Great. Now they're stuck there and get swarmed by the undead.
Cavalry is best used against targets that either break or are loosely formed so that your guys, who will inevitably be outnumbered, can ride through and use their mobility to swerve and come back for another go. Since undead don't give a fuck and can be very tightly packed due to this, your horsemen will get slaughtered, and now the enemy has a bunch of zombie knights under his command or even Death Knights if you were particularly retarded and ordered your best and brightest for a suicidal charge like that.
People like you are the reason evil is always fucking up our shit and killing our peasants.
>>46659711
>>46665614 this.
Besides that, I'm pretty sure that, as a GM, I'd rule that horses won't get near a horde of skeletons.
