Roll multiple dice at once.
For instance, if he has, say, 10 zombies following him around, he could pick up 5 d20s, roll them all, see if any are hits, then repeat. If any of those 10 attack rolls were hits, he'd then roll the damage dice (say, d6s) at once as well.
Alternatively, he could turn over some of his undead to other players to speed things up a bit (and keep them engaged).
1) The spell has the Evil descriptor, so if you are playing in a party with good members using the spell without internal conflict would be difficult at best. He may also have families of the undead he is using hiring assassins to get the bodies back.
2) At higher levels you still only create crummy zombies. Even if you create higher CR zombies you still have a ton of weakling zombies that will most likely not survive a single AoE.
3) Number of bodies will become an issue at that level. And he could control up to 40HD+ of zombies.
4) If the player is still using it in bulk, have him roll in bulk. One attack for x number of critters and then give him average damage or a certain number of dice multiplied.
5) Have him roll his attacks and damage in other people's turns.
6) DM troublesome spells as NPC only.
Just a few ideas. What is the context of your campaign?
This came up for me when I wanted to play an Oracle of Bones...without realizing that the only non-evil god that goes with that mystery is Pharasm...and she HATES undead lol
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1) The spell has the Evil descriptor, so if you are playing in a party with good members using the spell without internal conflict would be difficult at best. He may also have families of the undead he is using hiring assassins to get the bodies back.
2) At higher levels you still only create crummy zombies. Even if you create higher CR zombies you still have a ton of weakling zombies that will most likely not survive a single AoE.
3) Number of bodies will become an issue at that level. And he could control up to 40HD+ of zombies.
4) If the player is still using it in bulk, have him roll in bulk. One attack for x number of critters and then give him average damage or a certain number of dice multiplied.
5) Have him roll his attacks and damage in other people's turns.
6) DM troublesome spells as NPC only.
Just a few ideas. What is the context of your campaign?
These are excellent ideas. My players are characters in an evil PC campaign: The way of the Wicked. the sorcerer is considering taking this but asked my opinion as not to slow the game down.
I think the biggest drawback for him will be finding bodies to animate and second is the quality of the animated. Like you said crummy at best.
what do you mean by DM troublesome spells as NPC only?
It means prohibiting PCs from using difficult-to-manage spells. Make them only usable by NPCs.
If I was worried about timing, I might rule that they move and act as a mob.
If you're playing WotW then you could try using the alternate Leadership rules found in Book 2! Put the 1hd to work, digging ditches/latrines, or guarding for example, and just keep the high hit dice stuff with you for the combats. And there are some pretty usefull creatures you get to kill! Zombie Dragon anyone?
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6) DM troublesome spells as NPC only.
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These are excellent ideas. My players are characters in an evil PC campaign: The way of the Wicked. the sorcerer is considering taking this but asked my opinion as not to slow the game down.
I think the biggest drawback for him will be finding bodies to animate and second is the quality of the animated. Like you said crummy at best.
what do you mean by DM troublesome spells as NPC only?
My advice, to use or ignore as you see fit...
First, thank your player for being good enough to ask first and being more concerned about the group's fun than just being awesome on his own.
Also, I'll keep referring to "zombie" in my descriptions, but it is just as applicable to skeletons and other potential creations.
Second, I believe that Alwaysafk meant that spells which prove troublesome to the GM should be considered NPC only. I disagree with this and believe that the GM should find ways around the troublesomeness, only intervening to take something off the table when it's broken or else just not fun at all.
Third, a lot of folks seem to assume that the player is going to create a zombie horde of commoners. Ask the player if he'd rather have a zombie griffin mount or something similar. If the Sorcerer is giving up a 3rd level spell slot for a useful ride and minion, that sounds like a legit trade-off which doesn't add a great deal of book-keeping to the GM's/player's load. I'd recommend that he create such a creature with the "Fast Zombie" template and that as the GM you increase the amount of HD of control this costs him.
A lot also depends on your style. If you are using a VTT like Roll20, then you're in luck; the player can have a macro for all his crappy little zombies and get it done in no time. If you're using miniatures, then you're also in luck, since a pack of really crappy little zombie miniatures solves the problem. After about two battles with that many zombies getting in the way of the player characters, I'm sure they'll reconsider this tactic. If you're strictly narrating, well, you've got a problem.
By tenth level, most of the zombies will need a twenty to hit most of the enemies which they attack. Since the sorcerer will likely be throwing handfuls of dice at once and only looking for twenties, it won't take that long. "Ok, the six zombies on Smitey McRighteous roll to hit." {picks up 6d20} "All miss." The few times they don't need twenties, you could either tell the player their target number or roll those 6d20 yourself and tell the player how many hit.
You could ask the player if he'd be OK with the zombies having an analog to the "Minion" rule in 4th edition, meaning they drop as soon as they take a hit or fail a save. At tenth level, that's about what happens anyway.
The player might also consider what a horde of weak undead will do to the party's ability to travel as well. Zombies would slow the group to a crawl and prevent Teleport and similar spells from being useful. So in addition to cluttering the battlefield so much that the other players will likely hate the things, they will slow down most attempts to travel. Not only that, at 25 gp per HD for the material component, he's going to wind up losing a whole lot of his wealth to making speed bumps.
Animate Dead is really not that useful to adventuring parties because the parties usually take on tasks that would be an objective raid in military parlance. They don't usually construct a static defense. However, if he is tenth level, he could certainly do better by making a "Big" zombie.
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I once ran a group of 4 clerics who all had and used animate dead. To put that into perspective, at 5th level they each had 5 x 4 = 20 HD worth of undead minions, putting the number of minions they had at once to 80 HD worth of minions. Here are some tried and true methods of handling animate dead (and any scenario with lots of summons / minions).
1) Encourage players to think about what they and their minions are going to do on their turn before their turn arrives. Undead are at least simple. You don't have to worry about lots of special abilities. Just pick someone to attack and roll your d20s.
2) Lots of 1 HD humanoids are frail but get lots of attacks (most of these will need natural 20s to hit most enemies) so spamming d20 and counting the 20s that show up work well here. This is easiest if your undead have ranged weapons (slings are free) which can allow them to fish for 20s from up to 500 ft. away.
3) Beefier undead are more useful and fewer in number (making them manageable). It's not difficult to encourage the PC to animate fewer humanoids and more animals or other creatures with multiple HD (for example, it's more useful and probably less offensive to have zombie aurochs than zombie people). If management is a concern, encourage a few very strong undead rather than many weak undead. This also will likely save your necromancer some woes anyway, since having tons of weak undead is just asking for AoEs to wipe their field (fireball, channel energy, and similar spells will level 1-2HD worth of undead in short order, wasting many HD worth of components).
4) If everyone at the table agrees, you can divvy up undead into units. This can let everyone get in on the fun and cut down the amount of work that the lone necromancer has to do. For example, if a 5th level cleric animates 20 orc skeletons, you could have him assign 5 skeletons apiece to each party member (thus giving the other 3 PCs some minions to play with). This can be fun and beneficial to the party (the rogue might have his own little posse of flanking buddies, the fighter has someone to help hold the lines, etc). This also can encourage a sense of comradere between the necromancer player and the other players (because instead of trying to hog the show he's sharing the love). Some players may even foot he bill for material components when their gifted minions snuff it.
Optional House Rules That May Help
#1: Averaged Attacks & Damage
You can dispense with rolling entirely and just use their average. Easy to do if you have a calculator. If you've got tons of undead (like 20 1 HD skeletons) and they all wanna shoot at something (say you've got them all armed with shortbows) just take their average damage (3.5 for shortbow), add it all together (20 * 3.5 = 70). Then multiply that by the % chance that they would actually hit.
The % chance that they would actually hit is based on the natural d20 roll they must roll to hit.
20 = 5%
19 = 10%
18 = 15%
17 = 20%
16 = 25%
15 = 30%
14 = 35%
13 = 40%
12 = 45%
11 = 50%
10 = 55%
9 = 60%
8 = 65%
7 = 70%
6 = 75%
5 = 80%
4 = 85%
3 = 90%
2 = 95%
1 = 95%
If our skeletons need a natural 20 to hit the enemy, then they would deal 70 * .05 = 3 damage to the target. If they needed a natural 10, they'd deal 70 * .55 = 38 damage. If they needed a 2 or less to hit the foe they would deal 66 damage to the target.
Dealing with DR If you're shooting at an enemy with DR, subtract the DR from the the enemy's individual damage before adding them together. So if your skeletons are shooting shortbows at zombies (DR 5/slashing) then their average damage vs the zombies are 3.5 -5 = 0, making the skeletons basically useless at shooting the zombies.
Critical Hits? You can mostly ignore critical hits when doing this. It's not really important with these guys. If you want to do the extra math, it's possible to slip a simple formula into it to account for crits as well.
#2: Empowering Undead
If your PCs have their heart set on humanoid undead (perhaps for stylistic purposes), consider allowing them to empower their undead by creating them with more HD than they are supposed to have. For example, allowing our 5th level cleric to raise the HD of an undead up to their caster level would allow them to create 4 5HD humanoid skeletons instead of 20 1 HD humanoid skeletons (this allows them to have useful undead while keeping the number of minions to a minimum).