Necroing this thread because I have the same questions and they haven't been answered in this thread
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Defensive Abilities: Zombies lose their defensive abilities and gain all of the qualities and immunities granted by the undead type. Zombies gain DR 5/slashing.Special Attacks: A zombie retains none of the base creature's special attacks.
Special Qualities: A zombie loses most special qualities of the base creature. It retains any extraordinary special qualities that improve its melee or ranged attacks. A zombie gains the following special quality.
I believe that would strip away SLAs quite thoroughly.
Defensive Abilities: A skeleton loses the base creature's defensive abilities and gains DR 5/bludgeoning and immunity to cold. It also gains all of the standard immunities and traits possessed by undead creatures.
Special Attacks: A skeleton retains none of the base creature's special attacks.
Special Qualities: A skeleton loses most special qualities of the base creature. It retains any extraordinary special qualities that improve its melee or ranged attacks.
Same story.
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The Necromancy is STRONG
As Ascalaphus states, Special Qualities are lost unless they are extraordinary and boost attacks. Special Qualitities are a subset of Special Abilities and are found on the SQ line in a stat block. The rules about losing most Special Qualitities only apply to Special Qualities and not Special Abilities such as Spell-Like Abilities.
As written, I can't find anything that states that spell-like abilities are lost or changed when raising skeletons and zombies. My Occultist would appreciate your input!
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As written, I can't find anything that states that spell-like abilities are lost or changed when raising skeletons and zombies. My Occultist would appreciate your input!
They would change if the spell-like ability's casting stat changes. That would be the big one.
A Zombie of a Kinetisist PC would likely be using CHA instead of CON for their spell-like abilties (like kinetic blasts). This would likely have a large impact on the DC for a spell-like ability.
I haven't seen any stat blocks for an NPC kineticist, but I'm pretty confident (based on those of other classes with offensive spell-like abilities) that kinetic blast would show up under Special Attacks and, thus, would not be kept.
Stat blocks are annoying. I've always assumed that all spell-like abilities were dropped by those two templates.
Of course class levels are dropped with those base templates, so I'm not too worried about class granted SLAs...
But I recently raised a devil corpse and the Greater Teleport at will got me thinking about it.
Teleporting zombies.... O_O
If only I could go back in time and cash in during the most recent zombie movie epidemic...!
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Stat blocks are annoying. I've always assumed that all spell-like abilities were dropped by those two templates.
Even if they retain them, I don't think mindless zombies would use Spell-like abilties as a default attack. They might at the direct order of their controller, like via Command Undead, but I doubt they'd use spell-like abilities otherwise (at least not the ones from their former life).
Additionally, spell like abilities that require a full round or full action casting time may be difficult for a zombie, due to Staggered (Ex) which the creature obtains becoming a zombie.
Someone call the Church of Pharasma, there's some unholy works going on in this thread....
CAN ANYONE LIST ANY SQ's THAT APPLY HERE
I'm having trouble finding SQ's that improve melee/ranged attacks that aren't already special attacks that get removed...
I don't know if I can list all of them, but I can provide an example so that you know the type of thing to look for.
A skeleton T-Rex keeps it's Powerful Bite(ex) ability. Because it is an extraordinary ability that improves its melee attacks.
Worth noting that stuff like spell and spell-like abilities were under Special Attacks in 3.5, and the special abilities line is copy-pasted from there. As skeletons and zombies are mindless, I think the RAI at least is that they should not (they also had Cha 1 in 3.5, and only upgraded to 10 because PF had tied Undead hp to D8+Cha instead of straight D12.
Noably, 3.5's skeleton stats included a young adult Red Dragon, which had no SLAs.
I think the intention is that they do not; I don't believe that the lack of explict statement with regard to animated undead and SLAs was a deliberate change of philosphy by Paizo (nor a power-up), just an omission and a classic case of "implied but not stated," inherent in the change to how abilities were classified (i.e spells and SLAs no longer listed on the SA line in stat blocks.)