Necrocraft crafting vagaries

[Russell King]

First, Bestiary 4 is awesome! Great job. I particularly loved the addition of the Great Old Ones.

The necrocraft is a fantastic idea. I've played necromancers and had to homebrew when I sewed together stuff to make more powerful nasties.

The process of making one for a PC is a problem, however.

1.) Can I give it more HD?
2.) What happens to the cost if I go over the CP limit?
3.) How do I determine base stats? Would a Necrocraft be stronger if made out of hill giant zombies rather than human skeletons or would it keep the stats in the bestiary? (Would a large or a huge necrocraft still have an str of 15?)

[Pogrist the Great]

Oh, the possibilities are ENDLESS! What skills are required? Leatherwork? Taxidermy? Yes, yes, and what of using more powerful or unique creatures? Do they retain any extraordinary abilities?

I MUST KNOW!

That is to say, "BUMP"

[Russell King]

Pogrist the Great wrote:

Oh, the possibilities are ENDLESS! What skills are required? Leatherwork? Taxidermy? Yes, yes, and what of using more powerful or unique creatures? Do they retain any extraordinary abilities?

I MUST KNOW!

No skills, just a lot of onyx gems.

You need a number of already made undead to create it (a lot of them). So you pay to get those undead (25/HD) then, to create one necrocraft, you must pay an additional 50/HD, with base HD starting around 4. So, for 1 medium necrocraft, it is 325gp, or a 13HD skeleton or zombie. There is a limit to the number of upgrades (hard limit of 6 at lvl 18).

As str can never get above 19, it really is not a decent creature to create after very low levels.

I might create a homebrew for this to keep it viable at higher levels

[Gauss]

1) Only if you increase the size to the next step. HD is determined by size.

2) By RAW, there is no additional cost. However, there probably should be.
As a House Rule, I suggest using the variant skeleton rules and using +2CP for each doubling. (I am equating the Necrocraft's +2 CP being +1 CR with the Variant Skeleton's +1 CR.)

Bestiary p251 wrote:

Both of these variant skeletons can be created using animate dead, but they count as twice their normal number of Hit Dice per casting.

Note: there is no *hard limit* on the number of CP. There is only the base number of CP for the size category of Necrocraft. You may add CP to even a Colossal Necrocraft.

Bestiary 4 p200 wrote:

If a necrocraft is built with more CP than its size category would allow, its CR increases by 1 (minimum of +1) for every 2 additional CP spent.

No exception is provided stating that you cannot do this with a Colossal Necrocraft.

3) Base Stats are exactly as presented in the Bestiary. Then you modify them by size as per the normal size increase rules.
I came to this conclusion by examining the (similar) rules for Animated Object and by looking at the size increase rules in the Bestiary.

Bestiary p14 wrote:

An animated object is not simply one monster, but a whole category. The stats presented here are for a Medium animated object (with 2 CP that have not been spent to gain additional abilities), but any object can become animated, most commonly via the spell animate objects. Permanent animated objects can be built using the Craft Construct feat (see page 314). Unless an animated object uses a Construction Point to be made of another material, all animated objects are made of wood or material of equivalent hardness. Creating an animated object of a different size than Medium can be done simply by adjusting the object’s size (and thus adjusting its Strength, Dexterity, natural armor bonus, and size modifier to attack and AC as detailed on page 296) and Hit Dice.

Based on size increases you get the following (assuming I didn't make an error):

Medium: Strength 15, Dexterity 13, Natural Armor +4
Large: Strength 23, Dexterity 11, Natural Armor +6
Huge: Strength 31, Dexterity 9, Natural Armor +9
Gargantuan: Strength 39, Dexterity 9, Natural Armor +13
Colossal: Strength 47, Dexterity 9, Natural Armor +18

Minimum Prices (assumes 1 HD Undead are being used as body parts):
Medium: 325gp (4*50+5*25)
Large: 600gp (7*50+10*25)
Huge: 1125gp (10*50+25*25)
Gargantuan: 1950gp (14*50+50*25)
Colossal: 3400gp (18*50+100*25)

[Russell King]

Oh wow. I didn't factor in increases to strength from size increases. I'm making me some necrocrafts.

Thanks for the help Gauss!