#Parallel Spell Options

Looking closely at the two spells in question, I was surprised to find that having Animate Objects instead of Animate Dead is actually pretty balanced as far as game mechanics go.

• At 5th Level, both Animate Dead & Animate Objects animates the same amount of medium sized corpses, at with larger bodies or higher levels, Animate Dead works better.

• Animate Dead lasts at least 24 hours, but the zombies are weaker than Objects

• Animate Objects gives you tougher creatures, but it's Concentration up to 1 minute.

So, mechanically, there's nothing broken or seriously unbalanced about allowing this.

#Common Sense Reading

One of the 5E design goals was to try to get people back into doing common sense readings of the rules rather than legalistically define everything.

Although as I stated above, the two spells are useful in different ways, I'd personally lean against using Animate Object on the simple reasoning that the game has a spell designed to Animate Dead already, and that, once we start trying to push away from the common sense readings of the rules, it starts leading to really weird possibilities and the game stops being about fantasy adventure and becomes the weird world of "technically? What if?"

For example, if we rule corpses count as Objects, then Locate Object allows you to find dead bodies, or Fabricate allows you to take one kind of corpse and make another out of it (then probably animate it on top of all that) and things just start getting really weird.

There'll be enough reasonable edge cases in play that it makes sense to stick to the common sense reading of rules rather than open the door for finding several more places to confuse yourself.

Parallel Spell Options

Looking closely at the two spells in question, I was surprised to find that having Animate Objects instead of Animate Dead is actually pretty balanced as far as game mechanics go.

• At 5th Level, both Animate Dead & Animate Objects animates the same amount of medium sized corpses, at with larger bodies or higher levels, Animate Dead works better.

• Animate Dead lasts at least 24 hours, but the zombies are weaker than Objects

• Animate Objects gives you tougher creatures, but it's Concentration up to 1 minute.

So, mechanically, there's nothing broken or seriously unbalanced about allowing this.

Common Sense Reading

One of the 5E design goals was to try to get people back into doing common sense readings of the rules rather than legalistically define everything.

Although as I stated above, the two spells are useful in different ways, I'd personally lean against using Animate Object on the simple reasoning that the game has a spell designed to Animate Dead already, and that, once we start trying to push away from the common sense readings of the rules, it starts leading to really weird possibilities and the game stops being about fantasy adventure and becomes the weird world of "technically? What if?"

For example, if we rule corpses count as Objects, then Locate Object allows you to find dead bodies, or Fabricate allows you to take one kind of corpse and make another out of it (then probably animate it on top of all that) and things just start getting really weird.

There'll be enough reasonable edge cases in play that it makes sense to stick to the common sense reading of rules rather than open the door for finding several more places to confuse yourself.

Parallel Spell Options

Looking closely at the two spells in question, I was surprised to find that having Animate Objects instead of Animate Dead is actually pretty balanced as far as game mechanics go.

• At 5th Level, both Animate Dead & Animate Objects animates the same amount of medium sized corpses, at with larger bodies or higher levels, Animate Dead works better.

• Animate Dead lasts at least 24 hours, but the zombies are weaker than Objects

• Animate Objects gives you tougher creatures, but it's Concentration up to 1 minute.

So, mechanically, there's nothing broken or seriously unbalanced about allowing this.

Common Sense Reading

One of the 5E design goals was to try to get people back into doing common sense readings of the rules rather than legalistically define everything.

Although as I stated above, the two spells are useful in different ways, I'd personally lean against using Animate Object on the simple reasoning that the game has a spell designed to Animate Dead already, and that, once we start trying to push away from the common sense readings of the rules, it starts leading to really weird possibilities and the game stops being about fantasy adventure and becomes the weird world of "technically? What if?"

For example, if we rule corpses count as Objects, then Locate Object allows you to find dead bodies, or Fabricate allows you to take one kind of corpse and make another out of it (then probably animate it on top of all that) and things just start getting really weird.

There'll be enough reasonable edge cases in play that it makes sense to stick to the common sense reading of rules rather than open the door for finding several more places to confuse yourself.

#Parallel Spell Options

Looking closely at the two spells in question, I was surprised to find that having Animate Objects instead of Animate Dead is actually pretty balanced as far as game mechanics go.

• At 5th Level, both Animate Dead & Animate Objects animates the same amount of medium sized corpses, at with larger bodies or higher levels, Animate Dead works better.

• Animate Dead lasts at least 24 hours, but the zombies are weaker than Objects

• Animate Objects gives you tougher creatures, but it's Concentration up to 1 minute.

So, mechanically, there's nothing broken or seriously unbalanced about allowing this.

#Common Sense Reading

One of the 5E design goals was to try to get people back into doing common sense readings of the rules rather than legalistically define everything.

Although as I stated above, the two spells are useful in different ways, I'd personally lean against using Animate Object on the simple reasoning that the game has a spell designed to Animate Dead already, and that, once we start trying to push away from the common sense readings of the rules, it starts leading to really weird possibilities and the game stops being about fantasy adventure and becomes the weird world of "technically? What if?"

For example, if we rule corpses count as Objects, then Locate Object allows you to find dead bodies, or Fabricate allows you to take one kind of corpse and make another out of it (then probably animate it on top of all that) and things just start getting really weird.

There'll be enough reasonable edge cases in play that it makes sense to stick to the common sense reading of rules rather than open the door for finding several more places to confuse yourself.