Animate Dead Questions


Rules Questions


When animating a corpse does the caster choose how many HD the creature becomes or is it dependent on the corpse?

Scarab Sages

It looks like it's based on the HD of the corpse.

At least, that's how I would interpret it.

Hopefully a staff member can verify this for us! ^^


Its dependent on the RACIAL HD of the corpse. Class levels will be right out. So casting animate dead to animate human corpses will result in 1 HD skeletons or 2 HD zombies.

Basically, take whatever corpses are the target of the spell and apply the skeleton or zombie template to it, as they are set out in the Bestiary.


Father Dale wrote:

Its dependent on the RACIAL HD of the corpse. Class levels will be right out. So casting animate dead to animate human corpses will result in 1 HD skeletons or 2 HD zombies.

Basically, take whatever corpses are the target of the spell and apply the skeleton or zombie template to it, as they are set out in the Bestiary.

Hi there,

just aksing to be sure that i understande things right, hope you can help me out:

What about animating a humanoid skeleton worth with more than 1 HD ? When you take a look at the bestiarys variant skeletons, just take the bloddy skeleton for example:

On of their special abilities says:

Fast Healing: A bloody skeleton has fast
healing equal to 1 per 2 Hit Dice it possesses
(minimum 1).

That would mean a humanoid skeleton only 1 point of fast healing.

In that case a Level 7 Wizard using Animate Dead can animate 28 humanoid skeletons (max. 4HD per Caster Level = 28 ) because their only worth 1 HD,right?

Furthermore,if i understood this right, a level 7 Wizard can animate up to 14 humanoid skeletons at once ( Regardless of the type of undead you create with this spell, you
can’t create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a
single casting of animate dead)?

So long...
MM


Quote:
MeanMachine wrote:
Father Dale wrote:

Its dependent on the RACIAL HD of the corpse. Class levels will be right out. So casting animate dead to animate human corpses will result in 1 HD skeletons or 2 HD zombies.

Basically, take whatever corpses are the target of the spell and apply the skeleton or zombie template to it, as they are set out in the Bestiary.

Hi there,

just aksing to be sure that i understande things right, hope you can help me out:

What about animating a humanoid skeleton worth with more than 1 HD ? When you take a look at the bestiarys variant skeletons, just take the bloddy skeleton for example:

On of their special abilities says:

Fast Healing: A bloody skeleton has fast
healing equal to 1 per 2 Hit Dice it possesses
(minimum 1).

That would mean a humanoid skeleton only 1 point of fast healing.

In that case a Level 7 Wizard using Animate Dead can animate 28 humanoid skeletons (max. 4HD per Caster Level = 28 ) because their only worth 1 HD,right?

Furthermore,if i understood this right, a level 7 Wizard can animate up to 14 humanoid skeletons at once ( Regardless of the type of undead you create with this spell, you
can’t create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a
single casting of animate dead)

A Level 7 Wizard could create:


  • 14 1HD Skeletons (14HD)
  • 7 2HD Skeletons (14HD)
  • 7 Bloody Skeletons from 1HD creatures (14HD)
  • 3 Bloody Skeletons from 2HD creatures. (12HD)(*)
  • 4 3HD Skeletons (12HD)(*)
  • 2 bloody skeletons from 3HD creatures (12HD)(*)
  • 1 bloody skeleton from 4HD creatures (8HD)
  • Etc.Etc.Etc.

* Left over HD can be used to create lesser undead if corpses are available up to 14HD.

He can control up to 28HD of undead, with those from older castings of animate dead becoming uncontrolled if he exceeds the limit.

Note: not all humanoids are 1HD look up Bugbear 3HD Humanoid

Dark Archive

Snapshot wrote:
Bloody Skeletons ...

Actually no. There is nothing mentioned in the spell about creating a templated monster so bloody skeletons and fast zombies are out of the equation.

Look at "Raise the Dead" for an example of this, where is specifically notes that once the oracle reaches level 7 they are able to add a number of templates to the creature when they are raised.

If raise dead and similar spells already had this feature then that bit would be entirely redundant and even self limiting. Not to mention a waste of space in an already tightly packed book.


Carbon D. Metric wrote:
Snapshot wrote:
Bloody Skeletons ...

Actually no. There is nothing mentioned in the spell about creating a templated monster so bloody skeletons and fast zombies are out of the equation.

Look at "Raise the Dead" for an example of this, where is specifically notes that once the oracle reaches level 7 they are able to add a number of templates to the creature when they are raised.

If raise dead and similar spells already had this feature then that bit would be entirely redundant and even self limiting. Not to mention a waste of space in an already tightly packed book.

While the spell does not list this feature in the PFphb... the PFBestiary description for skeletons does list this as a feature that one can take with the animate dead spell.

The skeleton enter for bloody or burning skeleton is easy = They count as twice the number of HD to create vs a normal skeleton.

The Zombie enter for Fast/Plague zombies requires other spells to create, but does not list how these spells are combined with animate dead to create the zombies. ((If i had to guess, i would say they also count as twice the HD to create + said spells then cast within 1 round after animate dead so they are combined to the skeleton. but then again that is a just a guess... and left to the DM ))..

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