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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 2476258" data-attributes="member: 22424">You mean Animate Dead, of course.Well, there's a few. The big one is that when the PCs examine the corpse, a Knowledge(religion) check at DC 12 will identify it as a zombie. The zombie can oppose this with a Disguise check, but since it's using the skill untrained, and has a Cha of 1, this is unlikely to succeed. Even with a +10 bonus for actually being a corpse, the zombie still only gets a +5 to the roll, which is pretty poor.The description of Animate Dead is not clear on whether you can remove the material component from the zombie after the spall is cast. I expect the answer is yes. If not, that's a dead giveaway. Likewise, the fact that the creature is immune to speak with dead might provoke a caster to use detect undead, and then the game's up. Once the zombie is identified and dealt with, speak with dead will undo the frame job quite quickly.Alternatively, the use of zone of truth and/or discern lies on the innocent man would quickly uncover his lack of guilt. Neither is truly conclusive, since both allow a save, and the latter would depend on the level of the village priest, or availability of a scroll, but either would go a long way to the truth.Also, the party druid or ranger might use speak with animals to talk to the man's horse.A character with the Track feat should be able to tell the difference between the tracks of a zombie and those of a human, even one using the same boots. I'm also very surprised that the patrons of the bar didn't notice the bloodstains on the man's clothes. Still, I guess alcohol does reduce Spot checks.The truth is that the frame job doesn't stand up to any significant scrutiny. The presence of two wounds, one of them presumably not made with the dagger, is a dead giveaway. Finding the real killer is a rather harder prospect.The biggest problem you have to deal with with your party is the paladin's detect evil ability. Now, it is possible for a murderer to have a non-evil alignment, but it's a fairly unusual case (basically, he'd have to have a long record of noble deeds, and have the murder be a significantly out-of-character action. As I said, possible but unlikely). Scanning the people in the village, the party are likely to find the assassin as the most powerful (if not only) evil character in town.</blockquote>

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