Simulacrum update please

[ericthecleric]

Ok, I started a thread in the general D&D discussion section about the simulacrum spell.
Please could you have someone officially update the spell, especially regarding CR calculation; whether a simulacrum's an intelligent construct or not; and how you choose which class levels are lost (when it matters).
Thanks. I'm willing to co-write it if help is wanted.

[James Jacobs]

ericthecleric wrote:

Ok, I started a thread in the general D&D discussion section about the simulacrum spell.

Please could you have someone officially update the spell, especially regarding CR calculation; whether a simulacrum's an intelligent construct or not; and how you choose which class levels are lost (when it matters).
Thanks. I'm willing to co-write it if help is wanted.

This spell certainly needs some clarification, I agree. But including a "CR calculator" in the spell's description is too much, especially since CR is one of the LEAST quantifiable values in the game. A creature's challenge rating isn't static. It depends as much on the makeup of the part as it does on the creature itself, it seems to me. As a general rule, if you create a simulacrum of a creature with class levels, its CR should probably equal the total number of levels it has as a simulacrum. If the creature has only racial Hit Dice, compare the simulacrum to similar creatures with equal Hit Dice and assign it a CR equal to the comperable creature.

[Callum Finlayson]

I don't think CR's the problem -- it's no different figuring it for a simulacrum than for any other creature.

The spell as a whole needs a couple of thousand words devoting to it -- given the effort that was made on polymorph I was surprised that simulacrum -- and speak with dead, and a couple of others -- weren't similarly refined/improved/clarified.