We just converted our TOEE game from Ad&D 1st edition to Pathfinder and I am trying to suss our evil cleric's newly empowered undead control skills. He gets a lot more HD worth of undead!
He wants to make his burgeoning army of zombies into Fast Zombies. (He also maintains them in pristine condition! They get to ride in the cart. A few have names. This guy is really into his zombies! I love it. ;-)
So to restate the main question, does a controlled variant zombie count double against a caster's HD control limit?
Also, can he cast Remove Paralysis on a Zombie at any time or only when first raising them? What about buffing other caster's zombies?
I think maybe the rules aren't clear on this stuff. Any house rules would be helpful too.
I have noticed several messageboard posts that state any variant undead count double and cite the Skeleton entry in the Bestiary. Referring to said Bestiary, I read that bloody or burning skellies count twice as much. It says nothing about the HD count of Fast Zombies, or Plague Zombies, or any other sort of variant undead that I could find.
So it seems the answer to my main question is no, variant zombies count the same as normal zombies.
Thing is, Fast Zombies are quite a bit more powerful. No longer Staggered + Quick Strikes ~= twice the damage output, right? Does losing DR 5/Slashing compensate for this IYO?
So I am thinking of a house rule counting them as +1 HD, so your basic human fast zombie counts as 3.
Thanks for reading through the rambling :-)