Animate Dead customer support

[Ymmijx]

i realize this thread died a long time ago but for anyone who comes here looking for info on how best to animate dead:
1. play occultist. you dont get animate dead until lv 7 but you can control and animate 4 extra hit die per level you posses. now 1 casting gets you 6hd per level you have.
2. spell specialization raises your effective level by 2 for all aspects of a chosen spell. now you can raise 4 more hit die with each casting.
3. invest in a voidstick. it desecrates the area it is placed in. now you can animate a total of 8xlevel+8.
4. ask your dm if stacking templates falls under the same multiplying rules as other pathfinder mechanics such as crit multipliers.
if yes: you can animate a 16 hit die bloody burning skeletal champion at level 7
if no: you can animate a 16 hit die bloody skeletal champion at lv 7!!!
all you need is to somehow find a 14 hit die corpse or equivalent thereof.

[LordKailas]

1. to be fair I haven't read this class but at a glance I don't see the ability you are refrencing. Are you talking about The Occultist?
The occultist?
or The Occultist

An Oracle with the Juju Mystery not to be confused with the Juju Mystery does get to control 6hd per level with animate dead via the spirit vessels revelation. Undead they animate also get Max hp and oracles get access to 3rd level spells at 6th level.

2. You are correct that the spell counts as 2 levels higher, certainly this will let you create more per casting, but it's up to the DM if it would also allow you to control more. Depending on how it's interpreted this spell can be heavily abused. For example, if I get a "bucket" of undead control per class then I could get a lot of undead just via use magic device and a bunch of scrolls scribed by different classes. If Caster level is checked at the time of casting only then it means effects like level drain won't cause the necromancer to lose control of undead. If it's checked continously then a scroll of animate dead is less useful to non-casters since they will never be able to control any undead they animate.

3. While it could be better written, this appears to be a single use item. So it will only create a desecrate effect for 10 hours. You're probably better off just casting desecrate yourself. If I'm wrong and it isn't single use, it is waaay underpriced for what it does. A use activated magic item that produces a continuous desecrate effect (and nothing else) would have a base price of 27,500gp before adding in all the other things it can do. The voidstick has a listed price that is less than a 10th of this.

4. Skeletal champions are created via Create Undead not animate dead. Juju zombies are the same way. You also have to be a minimum of 11th level in order to create them with create undead. Create undead unlike animate dead doesn't grant automatic control over the thing once you create it so you'll have to use another method to control it (leadership, command undead[spell] or command undead[feat]). Also, while this spell has no HD limit, it also does not mention the ability to add templates to the creatures you create. So you would have to confirm with your DM first if you can make a bloody skeletal champion.