RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Is there any reason that the Death Domain 8th level power of Call Undead doesn't follow the pattern for most other 8th level magic powers of being usable for 1 round per caster level? Being able to use it once per hour seems to make it a lot more powerful than most of the other 8th level domain or school powers.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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It's not exactly once an hour. It's once an hour after the last skeleton or zombie is destroyed, and you only get skeletons or zombies.
True, but you can get troll skeletons, etc, which scale with your hd limit. Also, if you summon them, and fight a bunch, and are left with just one left, you can destroy it yourself, to start the clock ticking and wait an hour.
I don't have a problem with the duration, really. My problem is that you can get any skeleton/zombie with hit dice less than your level, but HD isn't a very good balancing factor (e.g. Polymorph). For instance, a half-dragon, half-fiendish ettin is obviously more powerful than a regular ettin even though both have the same number of HD.
I'd suggest only allowing skeletons/zombies of creatures from a limited list (like the Summon Nature's Ally N list, where N scales up with level).
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I don't have a problem with the duration, really. My problem is that you can get any skeleton/zombie with hit dice less than your level, but HD isn't a very good balancing factor (e.g. Polymorph). For instance, a half-dragon, half-fiendish ettin is obviously more powerful than a regular ettin even though both have the same number of HD.
I'd suggest only allowing skeletons/zombies of creatures from a limited list (like the Summon Nature's Ally N list, where N scales up with level).
In general, this is a good point, but I don't think it's as big of a deal when you're limited to skeletons or zombies, since most of the special abilities go away. I guess you could argue that a hydra skeleton is more powerful than most other options of the same HD, with the extra attacks, but most of the HD vs. CR issues are based on spell like or supernatural abilities, which neither skeletons or zombies inherit from their base creature.
As written, it looks like you could create a skeleton of any templated creature in existence (e.g. a half-fiend, half-dragon, lolth-touched, spellwarped kobold of legend). Naturally, no sane DM would allow that, but it's nice to spell it out in the rules.
The more overreaching issue is that the DM has to look at every creature he wants to use and ask himself: "Would I be happy if the PCs had an undead version of this they can whip out whenever they feel like it?" So creatures with large numbers of attacks (like hydras), or large Str scores relative to their HD (like firbolgs), or unusual movement methods (like fast [magical] fly speeds or the ability to burrow quickly through rock) could all potentially become fodder for the PCs. Again, it's the same problem with Polymorph (on a larger scale); if they're going to reword Polymorph (and I assume they are), they might consider putting the same safeguards into other spells and abilities which are limited by HD only.
Just my 2 cents.