What determines the strength of a risen skeleton warrior?

If this is a roleplaying game scenario, I don't know why it can't be both.

If you get a lowly skeleton killing a few people for hundreds of years, if should have some extra levels.

And then there's the idea of "Evolved Undead"

Now I want to run a campaign where a skeletal army threatens and their leader is an incredibly strong skeleton lord with more strength than the average skeleton and a higher damage reduction without the usual weakness to bludgeoning weapons.

I want him to somewhere in the middle of combat shout "You cannot defeat me, I've been drinking my milk every day like a good boy!"

Skeletons aren't weak to bludgeoning weapons, just extra resistant to stabbing and cutting weapons. A stronger skeleton would have extra resistance to both.

His spookyness

>a skelleton is inside you

Literally the level of the caster minutes 5 or something like that.

Two factors:

>the aggregate power of the summoner relative to the available materials

>the identity of the individual becoming the undead in the context of how they died

For example, a really powerful necromancer could take bits and pieces of all sorts of bland skeletons then make a powerful skeleton warrior based on the accumulated materials. The inverse is also true, a poor necromancer with an amazing body could create a relatively weak entity despite having a large starting advantage.

With regards to identity, a legendary king who died in battle at peak condition is going to be more powerful than a frail old king who died on the throne, unless the legendary king was damaged too severely before he died.

Now combine these two factors, scale them exponentially based on the number and quality of skeletons versus the power of the necromancer and you have a nifty chart for determining how spooky your skelly is.

>binding a dragon soul to a human skeleton

Considering it doesn't have muscle and is pretty much just bone... Probably magic.

Hey, why not? Magic is an art AND a science.

The first Death Knights in Warcraft were made by binding the souls of Orc warlocks into human bodies (more specifically into the maces they wielded, but still).

Resident necromancer here. Skeletons of a species are all, roughly, the same. They're made by a necromantic process which chooses to shed the flesh (although lesser necromancers will have to manually remove it, or find fully decomposed bonepiles.)

It would be tougher and stronger if it were a giant skeleton, versus a human or elf skeleton. Likewise, a wolf skeleton would be quicker as the skeleton's anatomy was designed to be.

Zombies, however, have different properties due to the remaining flesh on their bodies.

Any other questions?

As a follow-up, the magic used to create stronger undead would produce a different creature entirely. "Death Knights", as one user put it above, are not merely skeletons.

I like this idea.

Cleansing a skeleton of residual flesh with farmed maggots and then preserving the bones in the usual chemicals can go a long way to ensuring the longevity of your skeletons. Further protection can be added in the form of treated linen or silk wraps to add a bit of cushion to the bones' exterior. Additionally, consider reinforcing the joints - the weak points of the skeleton - with iron spikes or similar prior to animation.

The strength it had before death. This is why necromancy is considered evil, to be effective the young and powerful must die to be raised strong.

Necromancy is considered evil because you have to manipulate the essence of life itself to reanimate corpses. That's the difference between a Necromantic creature and an animated object.

As for those mages who are posting about the power of the creature - only the physicality matters in reanimation, unless the Necromancer themself has the ability to take advantage of other traits.

Mah Necro.

I like the warhammer idea that dark magic (or negative energy) flows more naturally in some places and in some entities.
It's the idea that pain and suffering have an actual physical effect on the world.

So a Necromancer who is extremely talented can bind the energy better or more efficiently than others making for more potent undead that are less likely to unravel or are stronger, or extremely powerful/malicious people who spread so much suffering that the magic sinks into their bones making them more powerful in death ( or allowing them to rise from the grave themselves like wights), or lands that have experienced so much turmoil and conflict that dark magic pools everywhere naturally and the dead become animated/stronger while within these places.

These factors can also have a cumulative effect multiplying the power of the undead when more conditions are met. So the strongest undead are those that are raised by a powerful Necromancer, whose past lives were full of causing others intense suffering, the ritual is held in a place of terrible historic importance (like a great battle or death of a god) and it's done at a suitably appropriate time ( like a lunar or solar eclipse/great convergence of evil)