Undead Leadership & Awaken Undead...

[RolandOfGilead]

OK, my Necromancer has Undead Leadership, and wants to cast Awaken Undead on his Followers. (Note: These are followers, not controlled undead). Is this fine by most standards? It doesn't say you cant cast it on your followers, or that they then stop following you. If you had human followers, and cast other permanent spells on them, they wouldnt suddenly become non-followers. I think of it like this: This is HOW they are followers. Undead wont be followers if they arent intelligent.

So how would you interpret it?
I have some more specifics, but I want to see how the community feels about that step first.

 

[Thundering_Dragon]

So long as you give his followers personalities and motivations after he awakens them, it should be fine. They would generally be initially loyal to him, since they ARE followers, but the downside of any sentient followers is they always have the possibility of turning on you if your goals ever diverge too radically from theirs.

 

[RolandOfGilead]

I think its a pretty good idea, it makes his followers elite among his undead.
I guess a good follow up question would be: Would skeletons and zombies awakened in this way be able to communicate? Awaken allows its target to speak one language the caster speaks. Awaken Undead doesnt specify this. Would you think this is an oversight? I think it is.. but thats me. Awaken undead is also level 7 versus level 5. Hmm.
Based on this, lets say with undead leadership I can have a 4th level follower.. (normally a level 4 warrior, or a 4 HD skeleton) Could I have a 1hd skeleton level 3 warrior? since its awakened? that way most of my skellies could be human or some such.

 

[RolandOfGilead]

Come on, noone has any input or ideas? hehe.

 

[Thundering_Dragon]

There's no reason you cannot have monster HD and class levels integrated into one creature. The specific rules for this are provided in the Savage Species handbook, I believe.

 

[Selenim]

Since the rules allow you to pick a monstrous cohort with the "normal" leadership feat I wouldn't have any problems with low lvl monsters for the lower lvl followers if the leader's background justifies it. One of my lycanthrope players has several infected humanoid followers (Malarite cult so it's a "blessing" to be bitten).

Having skeletal followers would be fine (and probably easier to keep unless you tend to pick fights with the local clerics ) for a necromancer. I would allow awakened undead to speak Common at least (depending on the intelligence score). Mindless undead can understand verbal commands so speaking is not that much of a stretch.

 

[RolandOfGilead]

Yeah - if you ever get 20th level you could have 80 hd of controlled undead and 135 1hd followers, + 2nd,3rd,4th,5th +6th level followers. nice!