I spent the last post talking about Animate Objects, a historically quite popular 5th level transmutation spell available to Bards, Sorcerers, and Wizards. The spell got a redesign in 2024, though it still does what it claims to do: animating up to 5 objects, or fewer if those objects are larger, and then having them fight for you over the course of their duration.
Danse Macabre is a Necromancy spell published in Xanathar's Guide to Everything. This spell animates up to 5 corpses or piles of bones, creating zombies or skeletons, depending on what remains you're raising.
Finding which spell is more powerful is going to be a complex endeavor: Animate Objects's new version uses the caster's spell attack bonus, which will likely scale a little bit better than Danse Macabre, and is especially affected by the fact that the two different stat blocks that Danse Macabre can create don't have the same attack bonus.
Danse Macabre is an interesting alternative to Animate Dead - both spells can create zombies and skeletons, but Animate Dead does not change the stat blocks in any way, while Danse Macabre allows you to add your spellcasting ability modifier to both the attack and damage rolls of your undead minions.
Furthermore, the scaling on these spells works differently - Danse Macabre lets you add two undead creatures for every higher level spell slot, while Animate Objects increases the damage dealt by each animated object.
So, where to begin?
I think we'll start with the best-case scenario.
Skeletons deal more damage than Zombies - in the 2024 version, they deal 1d6+3, or 6.5, while zombies deal 1d8+1, or 5.5. Furthermore, skeletons have a much higher attack bonus of +5, compared to a zombie's +3.
The two are the same CR, but that's because zombies are more resilient than skeletons. But if we're talking about maximizing damage, the skeleton is the clear winner.
Interestingly, skeletons got a buff in 2025, as they previously only had a +2 to Dexterity, so their attack rolls and damage both went up.
Animate Objects simply uses your own spell attack bonus. So, how does the damage compare?
Well, here's the interesting thing: at level 9, when you first get 5th level spells, barring some magic item to increase your spellcasting ability or your spell attack (which could be something as prosaic as a Wand of the War Mage) you'd have at most a +5 to that ability, and you would have just gotten your PB to 4, meaning that you'd have a +9 to hit with spells.
With the same statistics, using Danse Macabre to make 5 Skeletons, each has a natural +5 to hit, but you get to add your spellcasting ability modifier to that, so it becomes +10, meaning these guys are slightly more accurate.
And with different attack bonuses, we're going to need to do our hit/miss/crit chance calculations. We'll assume an AC of 18, which is a reasonable AC for a boss monster in tier 2.
As we discovered in the last post, the most optimal group of objects to animate when cast at 5th level is 2 large objects and 1 medium object, so we'll assume that's what we're doing.
We'll start with Animate Objects.
If we're looking at a +9 to hit, we will hit with a roll of 9 or higher, meaning we're talking about a 60% chance to hit.
Large Objects deal 2d6+3+5 on a hit, or 15, and deal an extra 7 on a crit.
Medium (or smaller) objects deal 1d4+3, or 5.5 on a hit, and an extra 2.5 on a crit.
So, first we get 15x60%, or 9, + 7x5% or .35, giving us 9.35, and then we double it to 18.7 as our damage coming from the large objects.
Then, we get 5.5x60%, or 3.3, + 2.5x5%, or .125, for an average of 3.425 from our medium object.
Thus, this spell grants us 22.125.
Now, we look at Danse Macabre.
Our hit bonus is one higher, so we're hitting 65% of the time.
Our skeletons deal 1d6+3+5, or 11.5 damage on a hit, and an extra 3.5 on a crit.
So, we take 11.5x65%, or 7.475, and then 3.5x5%, or .175, so we're looking at a 7.65 per skeleton per turn. We have 5, so it becomes 38.25.
Clearly, that's more damage.
I had initially thought to compare this to just animating the remains with Animate Objects, which would have been the 5 medium object option, but it's clear that Danse Macabre works out better, at least at this level.
Now, I'd suspect that scaling here also favors Danse Macabre - but to be fair, let's examine that:
Animate Objects adds a damage die for each additional spell level for every object animated. Danse Macabre gives us two more undead creatures per spell level beyond 5.
Thus, with every additional spell level, with our assumptions above, we're adding 15.3 damage per round. (This being the damage we determined each skeleton was doing, and multiplying it by two for our two extra skeletons).
The math on Animate Objects is not quite as clean, especially because the scaling of that spell starts to skew toward the many smaller objects the higher you upcast it, which does favor our "use this to animate the corpses/bone piles as constructs rather than undead" scenario. But here, thanks in part to the fact that the damage increase is purely die rolls, we can actually say that we're looking at just 65% of 1d4 (60% for our hit chance, and then an extra 5% for the bonus crit damage) multiplied by our five objects, or 1.625x5, or 8.125. Clearly not as good as upcasting Danse Macabre. Even if we did for some reason have a choice between our two large and one medium options, we're basically adding up (2d6+1d4)x65%, giving us 9.5x6.5%, which is actually worse scaling (which makes sense, as we just said that the scaling favors the smaller objects).
All this being said, though, we should consider one additional thing:
Animate Objects has better attack scaling.
Even with characters getting epic boons at level 19 now, there are only a few ways to boost your spellcasting ability to give you more than a +5 bonus - it's either magic items or getting a second Epic Boon after playing at level 20 for some time (in my Ravnica campaign, I do plan to have the party receive a second Epic Boon right before the ultimate, final, truly climactic finale adventure) or getting a magic item that lets you break the usual limit (such as a Tome of Clear Thought - things I should note that the players in my Ravnica game actually got for finishing the tier 2 finale adventure. The characters mostly have +6s to their primary abilities, and the Artificer has that, as well as an Ioun Stone of Mastery that boosts their PB by 1, so they now have a +7, and then they also have a +2 All-Purpose Tool, so they're actually sitting at a spell save DC of 23, I think).
The point being: in most campaigns, you won't have a spellcasting ability modifier higher than a +5. And that means that your Skeletons will cap out with a +10 to hit. That's not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But even without any magic items, a level 17 Wizard with +5 to Intelligence will have a +11 to hit with spells, and various items like a Robe of the Archmagi or a +3 Arcane Grimoire could boost it well beyond that.
Hit chance should not be ignored, as it can have a serious effect on the damage you deal (it's why, for example, the new Great Weapon Master is better than the old one, even in tier 1, despite only adding a fifth of the extra damage on a hit that the old one could).
That being said, +10 is close to the highest attack bonus you can get without magic items, and you will only hit it at level 13, and only surpass it at level 17, again, unless you have a magic item to boost it.
The last, and perhaps most obvious caveat, is that while Danse Macabre will give you better damage, it's also much more reliant on specific objects existing in your environment. Zombies will not do as well as skeletons, and even then, if you're not in a place with a whole bunch of remains to animate, you're SOL. Animate Objects is far more versatile, as nearly any space will have some objects.
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