Bone/Corpse creature template.

[Alexander123]

Reading my BoVD it seems the Bone and Corpse creature templates are superior to the Skeleton/Zombie templates. I have been thinking of using the Bone/Corpse creature templates as the standard templates in place of skeletons/zombies as they seem to provide a greater challenge to PCs. What do you think? Have you thought about doing such a thing?

 

[Dante & Vergil]

They do provide a nice challenge compared to the normal skeleton/zombie templates, the only thing different is plethora of immunities that they get as undead, some stat boosts, and the biggest, the HD changes that they get could be good or bad depending on how big the original creatures HD and constitution was, and as the CR gets higher, usually HD and Con do as well so it gets progressively worse. If possible, for a little extra challenge, use Pathfinder's undead rules. Those rules are pretty much the same, except anything that requires constitution now uses charisma instead, including hit points/HD and Fort saves.

 

[Icyshadowlord]

Dante's post seems about right. Though I am surprised, it was in Pathfinder that they started to use the Charisma system for Undead? I never checked the 3.5 Monster Manual too well (since I haven't been a 3.5 DM) and I always thought mindless undead use Con and Vampires and such use Cha on HD and such.

 

[Dante & Vergil]

No, they did not have it in the first Monster Manual in 3.5, though some undead in later books, like MM3 and after I think, did have charisma to hit points/HD.

 

[the Jester]

As an aside, the bone and corpse creature templates are approximations of two unique monsters from L1, the Secret of Bone Hill- the skelter and zombire.

 

[Nomnath]

The way it goes for undead is that cha generally only replaces con on ability DC's based on con (poison mostly).

For incorporeals, you also got cha to AC.

Stronger undead actually had a supernatural ability (quality?) that added cha to health and other areas. I generally tacked that on as part of advancing, it's like 1 CR more.