In our last session the party slayed a Giant Slug and my character raised it as a Fast Zombie using the Animate Dead spell. The Giant Slug is sort of an odd creature and I have a few questions making sure if I applied the Zombie template to it correctly.
1) Giant Slugs tongue attack does both physical and acid damage. This acid is simply part of its attack not being a special attack or extraordinary ability. Does it retain the acid as part of its tongue attack as a Zombie?
2) A Zombie gains a slam attack as part of the template in addition to any natural attacks it may have already possessed. Does this slam attack have the 15 foot reach like the Giant Slug’s tongue?
3) Does the Giant Slug retain its blindsight? Can the Giant Slug even gain darkvision from the Zombie template?
4) Zombies retain any extraordinary special qualities that improve melee or ranged attacks. A Giant Slug can spit acid as an extraordinary ability. Is having a ranged attack something that improves ranged attacks?
1) I would say yes to this, although by RAW it is unclear.
2) The giant slug has a 15 ft. reach, not just it's tongue, so yes.
3) By the RAW this is also unclear, I would say, drop the blind sight, gain Darkvision
4) I would say yes to this, IMO
Sorry I couldn't be or more help, but this really needs a rules clarification.
Creative Director
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1) Giant Slugs tongue attack does both physical and acid damage. This acid is simply part of its attack not being a special attack or extraordinary ability. Does it retain the acid as part of its tongue attack as a Zombie?
I would rule that no, it loses its acid damage. First, generating new acid, I would say, would be akin to other bodily functions like digesting food, and thus once it's dead (or a zombie) that function ceases. Furthermore, as a zombie, the slug loses its immunity to acid, and thus it'd probably just melt from the inside out if it WERE still able to generate that much powerful acid.
2) A Zombie gains a slam attack as part of the template in addition to any natural attacks it may have already possessed. Does this slam attack have the 15 foot reach like the Giant Slug’s tongue?
Yup; it retains the 15 foot reach standard for giant slugs with its slam attack.
3) Does the Giant Slug retain its blindsight? Can the Giant Slug even gain darkvision from the Zombie template?
It would lose blindsight, and would gain darkvision. It has eyes, in any case, so it can certainly gain darkvision (as part of the standard undead traits that the zombie template grants).
4) Zombies retain any extraordinary special qualities that improve melee or ranged attacks. A Giant Slug can spit acid as an extraordinary ability. Is having a ranged attack something that improves ranged attacks?
Nope; the slug loses its acid spit entirely.
The trick with both the zombie and the skeleton template is that it really ISN'T a good choice to put on monsters with lots of special abilities; the template's built mostly to create human-shaped zombies, but also to allow other types of zombies as needed. The intention is that a zombie is really not much more than a hard-to-kill slam-attacking "robot" and not much more. A giant undead slug that retains its acid attacks and blindsense and all that is a cool idea... but it should be built as a "new monster" and not as a zombie. (Alternatively, there's plenty of undead templates out there, particularly in Green Ronin's "Advanced Bestiary," that can work well to make an undead acid spitting giant slug.)
Thank you for the replies. I have a follow up question about the slam attack. Now that the Zombie Giant Slug has both its Tongue attack and a Slam Attack, does the tongue lose its 1.5 STR bonus for being its only natural weapon or is it something like a dragon's bite? As well as is the Slam attack a secondary attack for the purposes of multiple attacks? Using the Quick Strikes extraordinary ability as a full round action the Zombie Giant Slug can make a Tongue and 2 Slam attacks?