Animate Dead I-IX?

[Lasher Dragon]

It is broken... I've been playing a Pale Master since Tome & Blood, "upgraded" after LM came out and at first was kinda disappointed I couldn't summon in my wraiths/wights. Then realized the Huge zombie would be a cloud giant or megaraptor LOL. I do wish they would revise the Summon Undeads, and come with more than what is it Summon Undead IV or V.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

QUICK FIX: look at Summon Nature's Ally and Summon Monster. Choose all more or less corporeal critters with few or no magic abilities. Remove the celestial or fiendish templates, if applicable. Add the skeletal template. Allow the zombie template to be used to summon an undead off the next highest list (eg. if you use Summon Undead III to summon a skeletal ape from the summon nature's ally III list, you could also use Summon Undead II to summon a zombie ape, or Summon Undead III to summon a zombie dire ape). Add the standard undead like wights, wraiths, etc. where the CR will fit. For example, a wight would probably go into Summon Undead III. Of course, temates may not be applied to summoned undead--no zombie wights, for example.

Or, we could spam custserv with questions about whether 5th level casters should be able to summon skeletal megaraptors. Lord knows they deserve it.

 

[Lasher Dragon]

LOL Dr. Awkward... tempted to do so, being kind of confused as to how useful the spells will ever be. Hmmm, summon undead 5 or disintegrate? I think I'll take disintegrate.

 

[Terath Ninir]

LOL Dr. Awkward... tempted to do so, being kind of confused as to how useful the spells will ever be. Hmmm, summon undead 5 or disintegrate? I think I'll take disintegrate.

But you can say the same of *any* summon spell. With the full round casting time, they're useless most of the time.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The original 3.5 Summon Undead from, I believe, MoF, was errated so that no summoned being may have more HD than the caster. This errata wasn't included in LM though. I think the spell is still screwy even with the errata so I'd recommend using the old 3.0 skeleton and zombie stats for the purposes of this spell only.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

In Arcana Unearthed, there's two animate dead spells, lesser and greater; each can be cast at either the default level, one lower, or one higher, and they apply an "Undead Creature" template with customizable abilities to the corpse you cast it on. So there's one animate dead spell from 3rd to 8th level. Actually, there's a separate spell for making incorporeal undead and an 8th-level animate undead legion, but that's neither here nor there. If you want, you can buy the .pdf with just AU's spells for a few dollars.

 

[dcollins]

I must admit, when I first looked at 3.0, I was really impressed by the elegance of having the mindless undead (skeletons & zombies) distinguished only by size, very clean. Guess that's out the window with 3.5.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Well, you know there is something to be said for templating the undead. It allows for a wider range of challenges, and reduces weird results. Why should a skeletal tyrannosaurus lose its bite attack? The regular tyrannosaurus has teeth. The skeletal tyrannosaurus has the same teeth. A tyrannosaurus has hardly any arms, and has no leg claw attacks, so a slam or claw attack on an undead tyrannosaurus wouldn't make any sense. It should bite, and do damage equivalent to a tyrannosaurus, with adjustments for becoming skeletal.

So what we need is some other mechanic to balance the various skeletons and zombies. We have two immediately apparent mechanics: hit dice and CR. While the skeleton by size mechanic was simple, it oversimplified. A standardized set of undead templates gives the opportunity for more interesting undead.

Now I think I'm going to have to write up the Summon Undead set of spells for my own use. I'll have to figure out the specifics, and perhaps allow for some of the weirder templates, like Vampire, at higher levels...