Squad: Animate Objects

DM: “You approach the guardian creatures. They seem wary, but not hostile. Your insight check reveals that they might be amenable to diplomacy.”

Floki’s Player:  I dump my sack of iron tankards on the ground and take out a cask of my finest ale.

Calico Jacque: “Ah, Floki, I see we are trying diplomacy for once.”

Floki: “What? No. The cask is for me. The tankards are for their blood.”

Floki’s Player: “I’m going to cast animate object.”

Other Players: “Groan.”

Floki’s Player: “As a ninth level spell. Eighteen tiny objects.”

Other Players: “Double groan.”

Calico Jacque: “Can’t you just cast fireball or meteor swarm?”

Monsters: “Yeah, we’ll fail our saves if you do.”

Floki’s Player: “Can they do that?”

DM: “In this case, yes.”

Floki’s Player, dumping a bag of twenty-sided dice on the table: “Still going to cast animate object.”

Animate objects is a popular spell that has the power to not only slaughter foes but slow down combat. This is because the optimal casting is to animate 10 (or more) tiny objects, each of which becomes a separate creature. This explains why players tend to find swarm-based solutions dissatisfying, since a swarm of tiny animated objects is effectively just having a suboptimal larger animated object.

This guide aims at solving this problem by presenting a squad system for running animated objects. It also addresses some common questions about the spell.

These rules emphasize speed and simplicity while endeavoring to remain as close to rules-as-written as possible.

While the focus is on animated objects, these same rules can be applied to other types of minions, such as beasts or humanoids. For details for running skeleton and zombie squads, see Bones & Brains.

This work includes:

• Rules for squads.
• Clarification of animated objects
• Animated Object and Animated Object squad statistics.
• Squad tracker sheets.
• Attack Charts

The companion ZIP file contains:

• Word file of the work.
• Fantasy Grounds Unity Module.
• Images