Spiciness: 4/5

Your party will need their thinking caps on to come out with the same number of party members as they started the fight with. Fireballs & Clerics will shut this down fast, though.

Feeds any number of players, level 1-6

Scales for: Number of Players, Player Level

Ingredients

• Skeletons

Scaling the Encounter. Usually, I provide instructions on how to buff the monsters involved based on the number of people in the party, and the level of the party. For this encounter, though, I recommend simply using a tool like donjon's encounter calculator which should tell you the number to use. If you would use more than 6, I'd recommend having them come in as waves-- piles of bones on the floor that begin to animate round after round. Alternatively, you could just have one of the skeletons start off buffed from Reconstruction!

Preparation

Zombies are surprisingly diverse in their lore-- viruses, parasites, magic, "they're not really dead", there are SO many ways in which a zombie might become a zombie. Skeletons, meanwhile-- don't have much lore behind them.

Skeletons are a set of bones, reanimated by either magic or a soul "possessing" them, but usually a combination of both (magic forcing a soul to reanimate a corpse). Because of this, I wanted to our skeletons to have 2 elements of them-- a corpse, and a controlling spirit.

This was done by focusing on a Reconstruction mechanic, as well as pulling in abilities from both the ghost stat block & the skeleton stat block. The tricky part of this (which has required the most playtesting sessions out of any homebrew I've ever made before release), is the reconstruction mechanic. It was often too weak-- causing the skeletons to die before they showed off that ability, or too strong, where they were no longer a CR 1/2. Simply put-- if you have a mechanic where lots of weak things combine to make a stronger thing-- balancing that is hard.

Cooking the Skeletons

Round 1. Start the fight off by swarming two or three party members-- with one Skeleton using Horrifying Visage to give them disadvantage on attacks. They'll probably try to down that skeleton (since you cant be afraid of a dead thing), which is fine-- we want to have some bones on the floor.

Round 2. By now, a few skeletons are probably dead (especially if they have AoEs). Have a Skeleton that's low on health use Relinquish the Bones on a party member-- this will effectively cast Hold Person on that PC, and more importantly-- it kills that skeleton. That means another skeleton can use their reaction to Reconstruct, and suck up the bones of all the fallen skeletons within 30ft. Gain 1d10 HP per Skeleton Corpse, and one benefit from the reconstruction table (which you can roll or select), noting that you can only gain a benefit once. It may be better to start off with Defensive bonuses-- as soon as they see what skeletons can do, they'll focus down the "Big Boi", as my playtesters nominated him.

Round 3+. Your non-reconstructed skeletons are running support at this point. Horrifying vision & Relinquish the Bones are strong methods of doing so, with the latter not only providing a method of taking a player out of the fight for a round or two, but also letting your big boi absorb more bones to heal. Have your Big Boi stay away from frightened melee players (since they'll not be able to approach him), and instead focus down paralyzed people (for the auto-crit).

If your big boi dies-- that's fine. Another skeleton can immediately use their reaction to absorb all the bones that the previous Big Boi had, effectively giving you a new big boi, with a fresh set of health. Your party can prevent this through either using radiant damage, or by placing the bones in a fire. This makes Create Bonfire (a cantrip) extremely useful!