Astral Deva Skeleton

[Dukai]

First things first, you can make a skeleton out of an outsider, right? I'm sure it would be difficult to locate one, but the angel section says that there are fallen angels who no longer dwell in the good realms which means some could be found living on the material plane and thus ripe for harvesting into the legions of the undead. Obviously, this first questions determines if the others are even needed, but I'm pretty sure you can.

Now onto the real questions:

1. When creating a skeleton, the template says that skeletons keep all subtypes other than alignment and kind (such as giant). Is Angel a "kind" subtype? I can't seem to find anything that specifically deliniates what is and what is not a "kind" subtype.

2. When creating a skeleton, the template says that skeletons lose all special qualities other than extraordinary abilities that improve melee or ranged attacks. I assume this means it will lose the "Stun (su)" ability, but does that mean it also loses "Uncanny Dodge (ex)"?

[Remco Sommeling]

yes, angel is a "kind". This one seems pretty obvious without a book telling what exactly is a kind of creature.

Uncanny dodge is a defensive ability not something that increases attacks, stun is supernatural, so they are both out.

I kinda hope this is a hypothetical question though, I can only imagine people going through the bestiary book to target a creature to animate with the most awesomest abilities hehe.. I know each to their own :p

[Dukai]

Remco Sommeling wrote:

I kinda hope this is a hypothetical question though, I can only imagine people going through the bestiary book to target a creature to animate with the most awesomest abilities hehe.. I know each to their own :p

no, not hypothetical, but it's cuz I was gonna do some stone giant skeletons, but large creatures are so unwieldy. I decided to try and find a medium sized creature with at least somewhat similar stats. The Astral Deva won hands down. The difficult part will be justifying finding one (or three) and successfully taking them down in order to animate them.

I also thought that it was delightfully ironic to make mindless undead out of the righteous messengers of the gods :)

[Set]

The 'traditional' evil necromancer tactic for gaining access to Outsider skeletons to use a Calling spell, such as Planar Binding or Planar Ally, and summon them into a room filled with ridiculous amounts of deadly traps. An Outsider who is Called (and not Summoned) to the plane is there in physical body, and leaves a corpse behind for terriblebadwrongfun.

I've never seen it as anything other than a messageboard thought exercise, 'though. The rules might allow such things, but few GMs would be interested in accomodating such shenanigans.