| GhostDash |
*Minor spoiler warning for Game of Thrones*
So I was watching the GoT TV series yesterday and I saw a White Walker animating what had to be hundreds, if not thousands of new wights (which had been killed by wights in the first place) with one spell/motion, and I got curious if that could be replicated within the existing Pathfinder rules.
The core rule for controlling undead in PF is that a spellcaster can only control his caster level in HD of undead, spread out among various undead as he sees fit. This makes controlling entire armies of undead pretty much impossible on your own, bar certain spells, feat and class abilities which increase this number.
Then I got to thinking. A common trait of undead created from the Create Spawn ability of an undead is that it reanimates under the control of its creator. Wight spawn certainly follow this rule. Now I got curious. Do new undead created by an undead that was created by a spellcaster count towards his HD limit? If yes, then this question is moot. But if it doesn't, it raises some interesting possibilities.
Let's got back to the GoT episode. The White Walker raises his hands and every human in the village behind him rises as a (frost) wight. Now, what if he wasn't actually animating them? What if that was simply a unique AoE spell/ability that speeds up the "animation time" of 'naturally' created wights to nothing? That way, he's not actually creating undead, he's just speeding up something that would have happened anyway, which I think is much simpler.
I don't believe I have ever seen a HD limit on undead with the Create Spawn ability in any of the bestiaries, so apparently those undead can create pretty much as many undead as they want, provided they do it personally. Spawn sometimes don't have the ability to create spawn of their own, but suppose they do.
Can undead command their own spawn over a distance?
Do they need to speak or is it a mental action?
Do spawn obey the creator of their creator?
Are there hierarchies among undead? Vampires in most fictions certainly seems so.
If this would be RAW possible, then a spellcaster "only" needs to create one undead with the Create Spawn ability, defend it while it kills and creates a suitable large number of spawn, then keep the "prime" undead controlled and safe while s/he sends out the new horde to kill and grow, while he keeps control of them with the "prime" undead.
What are your thoughts on this?