I have a question about casting Create Undead on creatures that don't fit the standard near-human template. Ghouls, Ghasts, Mummies, and Mohrgs are full-entry creatures, unlike skeletons and zombies, which are templates. And yet, Create Undead can be cast on any creature that has "a corpse." So how would you create a shambling mound ghoul? Or a dragon mummy? For simple variants like halflings or ogres, I would assume that you could use the "Young Creature" or "Giant Creature" templates, but beyond that it seems tricky.
So, what do people think? Can Create Undead be used on non-humanoid corpses? If so, how would the undead creature's stats change?
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For this, I'd fall back on 'backwards compatibility' and dig up the old ghoul, ghast, wight, shadow, etc. templates from various 3E books (the shadow creature template, IIRC, was also available in Dragon magazine).
Libris Mortis has templates for Ghost Brute, Gravetouched Ghoul, Mummified Creature and Umbral Creature, which can be pilfered and applied to pretty much anything you want to make into a Ghost, Ghoul, Mummy or Shadow by whimsically ignoring whatever creatures they advise applying the templates to (for instance, Gravetouched Ghoul is mostly meant for humanoids, giants, monstrous humanoids, etc. but there's nothing in the template that goes boom if applied to a dragon or outsider or dinosaur).
A non-template method is also usable from Libris Mortis. Take your Bulette and give it 8 levels of the 'ghoul/ghast' Monster Class, and it's a Ghast Bulette, ready to rock and roll. Monster classes for Ghoul/Ghast, Mohrg, Mummy, Vampire Spawn and Wight are available, making Libris Mortis even more of a 'go-to' book for this sort of thing.
I'm sure 3rd party necromancer-friendly products have a plethora of such templates, as well.
If you can't find a specific critter, say you are a fan of Dave Hargrave, and want to surprise your party with a 'Wight Dragon' that no amount of cold resistance will prepare them for, you can just look at the difference between a standard human and a wight, and figure out what the changes are, and then apply them to your homebrew Wight-template Black Dragon.
By Raw.... no Commit.
As this in General, and i would say more.
I would use the existing undead stat blocks, but apply the ADVANCED, GIANT, or YOUNG templates to better represent the base creature.
A large dragon mummy, for example, would just be an advanced giant mummy. Reflavor to taste.
So how would you create a shambling mound ghoul? Or a dragon mummy?
Shambling Mounds wouldn't be ghouls; ghouls are based off humanoid creatures. However, throw the zombie template onto the Mound, drop the Staggered condidtion, add the ghoul's paralysis effect to the slam attack, and call it something besides Zombie Mound (or Ghoul Mound). Let me get back to you on the wrapped dragon...
For a mummified dragon: drop the claw and replace with slam attacks, lower land and fly speed by 10 (might vary by dragon age), DR should probably remain unchanged, add Despair and Mummy Rot, change ability scores (+8 STR, -2 DEX, -4 INT, +2 WIS, +2 CHA), and change type to Undead. Fire-friendly dragons probably wouldn't possess the fire vulnerability, so perhaps acid instead? Personally, I wouldn't mummify a dragon, but that's how I would do it if I did.
For this, I'd fall back on 'backwards compatibility' and dig up the old ghoul, ghast, wight, shadow, etc. templates from various 3E books (the shadow creature template, IIRC, was also available in Dragon magazine).
Libris Mortis has templates for Ghost Brute, Gravetouched Ghoul, Mummified Creature and Umbral Creature, which can be pilfered and applied to pretty much anything you want to make into a Ghost, Ghoul, Mummy or Shadow by whimsically ignoring whatever creatures they advise applying the templates to (for instance, Gravetouched Ghoul is mostly meant for humanoids, giants, monstrous humanoids, etc. but there's nothing in the template that goes boom if applied to a dragon or outsider or dinosaur).
A non-template method is also usable from Libris Mortis. Take your Bulette and give it 8 levels of the 'ghoul/ghast' Monster Class, and it's a Ghast Bulette, ready to rock and roll. Monster classes for Ghoul/Ghast, Mohrg, Mummy, Vampire Spawn and Wight are available, making Libris Mortis even more of a 'go-to' book for this sort of thing.
Excellent. One of my players has the Libris Mortis, so I think I'll borrow it and see what I can churn out with templates and class levels.
I ran into this problem when I was creating a nest of wights in Katapesh. I thought, "What creatures would be most likely to have been attacked by the wights and converted?" So there were some humans, some gnolls, some goblins, and a pugwampi wight. It just didn't seem right to give the tiny gremlin the same stats as the gnoll wights...
Anyway, I'm fully capable of customizing my monsters, but I wanted to know if there was a more scientific method out there for it. Thanks, Set.