I've never _not_ dreamed of having my own skeleton army.

Army, for sure. For conquering. _Furtive glance at red leather jacket_

8 base to base, 5 with halberds.

Anyone else see this and immediately look up if Alecto The Ninth was out yet?

What a thrilling idea

By default, a skeleton has a short sword or a shortbow in every edition I know about.

5e rules – you don't end your turn when attacking and can move through allied squares. Iirc it counts as "difficult terrain" for movement distance or that could have just been a homebrew things So step into square, attack, step out and end turn.

Does Animate Dead give them a sword and bow? And arrows?

that's one of those mechanics that's there for brevity but kind of makes no sense within the physics of the world. this necromancy spell happens to come with a conjuration effect. also the skeleton just can't pick up the weapons it was using in life because reasons

Mechanically, the monster: skeleton has those two attacks. How works in the lore is... Vague. I prefer to think the god of death supplies every corpse with those weapons.

in DnD settings there isn't exactly lore about how they get weapons. in previous editions the assumption was they use what they had in life, what is lying nearby, or whatever the necromancer who raised them hands them. many of the design choices in 5e are you streamline new players into the gameplay without minutiae like "how many shortswords should I keep on hand to pass out to the skeletons I summon" or "can they wield exotic weapons they held in life". but, yes a solid DM can draw on knowledge of the game to tamper with stuff like this without breaking the game. like having a death god who grants shortswords to boney boys or allowing a player to arm them with other things

Can I sell the swords and shortbows? And their endless supply of arrows? Or maybe I have the skeletons shoot at me, but they hit a slime block on a piston that bounces the arrows up and down and keeps them from despawning and then I can launch all of them at an invader at once.

My DM once awarded my 13th level Warlock with a 9th-level spell slot as a boon for doing something heroic (the rest of the party also got something equally powerful). The final battle came, and the good army was fighting against semi-immortal dark elves and their humongous semi-immortal demon of death and destruction and making the puppies cry. I used that 9th-level slot to upcast *Danse Macabre*. 13 soldiers rose from the dead to answer my call. Was it useful? Heck no. Was it hilarious? Absolutely.

I guess that works but you'll be taking attacks of opportunity, still worth I guess

AoO requires a reaction. So only one is going to eat it but, meh, that's why I have 13 of em.

The baker's dozen is 13, because one of them is sacrificial.