I have a veteran player (playing a fighter) who plans to cast an animate death via a scroll and the skill Use magical device, giving him the possibility to control undead.
Can a player really do that? Can any class use any spell via UMD
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I have a veteran player (playing a fighter) who plans to cast an animate death via a scroll and the skill Use magical device, giving him the possibility to control undead.
Can a player really do that? Can any class use any spell via UMD
I would allow your player to do this, BUT, keep in mind the following:
1. The scroll is more expensive than the standard 3rd level spell scroll because it has an expensive component (25 gp per HD of undead).
2. He can "create" the undead, but note that he cannot "control" the undead as he has NO CASTER LEVEL. He can control a maximum HD of undead equal to 4 x his caster level. 4 x ZERO = ZERO.
I base #2 on my reading of the spell. It seems clear to me that the control aspect is based on the controller's own level, not the caster level of the spell cast. So, for example, if a 3rd level Wizard got ahold of a CL12 scoll of animate dead that was designed to create 20 HD of undead, our 3rd level Wizard can (if he makes the appropriate caster level checks) create 20 1-HD skeletons, but can only control 12 of them (4 x his caster level).
I base #2 on my reading of the spell. It seems clear to me that the control aspect is based on the controller's own level, not the caster level of the spell cast.
....you can't create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a single casting of animate dead.
....
No matter how many times you use this spell, however, you can control only 4 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level.
Both the HD raisable and the HD limit use the same language(X per caster level). That indicates that they both work off the same caster level - in this case, that of the scroll. This is consistent with how every other spell in the game works. I don't know of a single spell that cares about the caster's current level. Based on the language, animate dead shouldn't care about the user's current caster level after being cast any more than a cl minute duration spell instantly ends after the moment after a rogue UMDs a scroll.
HOWEVER
This spell has a whole pile of question marks as to how it is intended to operate(RAI).
Does it check caster level only at casting time, or continuously (even though this is not how instantaneous spells work)?
Is the second "per caster level" in reference to the caster level of the spell, or the actual caster level of the caster (even though this is not how spells work)?
How does this interact with multiple caster levels (I don't even know)?
How do multiple castings with differing CL interact?
Does lowering CL instantly cause a loss of control?
Essentially there are more or less two ways to rule this that at least pretend to adhere to RAW.
One,CL equals spell CL, is likely to lead to a long list of questions and a big pile of demented edge cases (the details of which depend on how those questions are answered). Seriously, try interpreting it this way and then figuring out how the spell is supposed to work in detail, RAW, without bringing in a set of insane edge cases. You are probably going to have a bad time.
The other, CL=caster/user CL, which might be closer to RAI, requires taking the implied meaning of a term (Caster Level) that can be applied uniformly and consistently for every other spell in existence, and setting that interpretation on fire just for this one spell.
tl;dr Raw is ambiguous and basically broken, pick an interpretation and tell your player how you are running it.