For the OP, here is what I put on my private forum, for adjudicating interactions with the undead.
Undead without Intelligence are essentially running off the creator's knowledge. For example, without Intelligence, a zombie has no concept of what a road is, nor any other basic thing such as a room, a person, etc. Therefore, the creator's commands are "infused" with his/her own concepts. In other words, a zombie doesn't know what a road is, but if given the command "walk down this road until it ends" it will instantly acquire an impression of what walking is, what a road is, and what an ending is. These impressions would be shallow mirrors of the caster's own understanding. The undead then uses its wisdom to execute the job as competently as possible.
As for obstacles (such as a wall across the road), since the obstacle was not part of the command, the undead would have no concept of what a wall was or how to climb it. But the undead would have its ability to perceive things. So it would sense an unknown barrier, and circumvent it as best it can, probably without leaving the road. If the wall completely intersected the road, it's likely the undead would think that matched its impression of the road ending, and stop moving.
I formed most of my opinions about undead in
this discussion on enworld.org. However, I differ from that discussion in that I think undead DO have wisdom (which I consider to be common sense), so I believe they will execute commands without goofy ridiculous bunglings. However, their wisdom is only average, and without intelligence many things in the environment are unknown, so expecting better outcomes than that of a dim commoner would be asking for too much.
A person in control of undead can sense when the undead leave control. As an example, suppose your character orders 3 skeletons to kill anyone entering a room. A cleric
does enter the room, and manages to kill one skeleton and take control of another. The original caster would sense that he no longer controlled 2. He would not know
why (no sense that one was controlled and one was killed -- instead, they'd both just be "gone" from his senses).
Because they do not have intelligence (which I consider to be accumulated knowledge), certain things do not work:
- They have no memory of their past, and thus cannot take action on it (such as "take me to your home")
- They don't understand spoken language anyway. Intelligence is required for that.
- They could be ordered to understand/act on a keyword, as long as it was IN the command so it became part of what they could draw from.
- Commands must be simple. The human brain without long term memory can only hold about a 7-digit phone number or 6 or 7 word sentence. I rule that commands up to 15 words are possible.
- Orders don't stack -- there is no capacity to remember old commands, so they cannot follow orders such as "do anything the girl suggests." (Edit: I take that back, slightly. I think that they would act on the initial command, which would enable them to follow the girl's lead. However, since the undead cannot interpret language, the girl would need to use specified hand signals or keywords or something pre-designated -- nothing open-ended. So for example, "Attack when she lowers her arm, flee when she circles her arm around her head" would be OK and come in at exactly the 15 word limit.)
