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1) The first is to create a spell like Animate Dead that adds intelligence to the skeletons and zombies he creates. This seems a bit extreme since skeletons and zombies are mindless creatures, and the only intelligent undead in the Bestiary is a Skeletal Champion, and that cannot be created by any known magic. However, I later got to thinking that maybe some sort of undead version of Awaken (5th-level spell) might be reasonable, and this would be much more toned down than a Skeletal Champion, but maybe add +2 spell levels, so it would be a 7th-level spell...and this falls in between the spell levels of Create Undead and Greater Create Undead, which are used to create intelligent undead.
3.5 had an awaken undead spell as 7th level sor/wiz spell, that affected all mindless undead within a 25 ft. + 5 ft. / 2 levels circle. None of the undead affected could gain an Int score higher than the one that the creature had in life (so awakening some skeletal horses would only bump their Int to 2).
A version that only affected a single target could easily be one or two levels lower, particularly if it didn't affect the Hit Dice of the creature, but only granted it intelligence. [I'd totally support that. Extra hit die for becoming smarter is just a pain in the butt to adjudicate, since you have to adjust BAB, skills, saves, etc, etc. Keep the HD the same, and you'll be able to rationalize a lower level spell *and* save yourself a ton of unnecessary math.]
You should probably decide if the spell calls up some sort of wicked spirits to provide this intelligence, or, based off of the speak with dead precedent, taps into the 'echo' of the soul of the departed, allowing it to 'remember' more of the past of the previous inhabitant of these old bones. Each option will have advantages and disadvantages. If it's a jacked-up speak with dead, the undead will be limited to skills and feats that the original creature had in life. If it's random spiritual creatures from the beyond, the skills and feats may be equally random, or you may be able to select them (although I wouldn't allow that option, personally).
I'd prefer the 'jacked up speak with dead' option, myself, so that you have no control over the feats / skills, save by knowing what the former resident of the body in question was good at. (Plus there are some advantages there, in that it becomes easier to question said undead about stuff they knew while alive.)
I'd totally avoid any thought of ripping souls out of the afterlife. Some souls go on to become outsiders. Some go on to become gods. Some are devoured by daemons. Some are forged into Baatorian green steel. Some are prized personal property of Asmodeus, or a soon-to-be-really-pissed-of greater god. Just don't go there. You'd need to come up with rules for what happens to devils and demons and angels whose bones are animated and awakened, for what happens to soul-devouring fiends when a soul that has been devoured *and become part of them* is torn free, etc, etc. Soul-manipulating magic is kept at 8th (soul bind) and 9th (trap the soul) level for a reason, and even those spells, competing with such awesome game-changers as polymorph any object and wish, can't reach across planes and steal souls from the gods (or uncreate demons, angels and even some dieties).
2) His second idea is to create a spell that works like Command Undead (2nd-level spell), but instead of having mindless undead follow his commands, they follow the commands of someone else. I wasn't really sure where to start here, but I figure it should be a higher level. I thought maybe 5th-level. Then, he looked into Polymorph (5th-level)...his reasoning being that this spell lets the caster use an effect that is usually a personal spell (Beast Shape II, Elemental Body I, Alter Self) on another creature and at a spell level that is only 1 higher than two out of the three spells it mimics.
D&D has *suggested* that individuals can transfer control of undead for many years, introducing characters who 'sell' animated dead, and sometimes provide special control amulets, or crowns of bone, or perform a ritual of some sort, but there have rarely been any rules for this sort of thing. (I'm pretty sure that in Kaer Maga, in Golarion, this is a possibility as well.) Making it a spell is certainly an option, but I would make sure to give individuals a command limit of some sort, similar to that of a spellcaster, but perhaps even less (1 HD / character level?), through this means, and ensure that this command rating doesn't stack with any command rating that the character might gain through their own use of animate dead or command undead. (So that a pair of necromancers can't hand each other extra undead to allow each other to go over their normal limits.)
This sort of thing is generally assumed to be doable as a paid service, with already-animated undead being 'transferable.'
In this case, I'd rule it to require a bone token of some sort (a rod or circlet, symbols of rulership?) to command the undead, and if the recipient of the undead loses his bone token of rulership (or it is sundered), he loses control of the undead attached to that token, making it a risky proposition. Perhaps the token feeds on life-energy, and for every HD worth of undead it controls, the bearer must annoint it with 1 hp worth of his own blood. (Which, since he won't be able to control more than 1 HD / character level through such a token, he'll get back overnight anyway, assuming he isn't otherwise damaged.)
The bone rod or crown would be made from small bones taken from each of the undead to be controlled, bound together into a bony 'crown of thorns' or a rod made of many smaller bones lashed together, like a Roman fasces (without the axe).
Alternately, a single bone ring, each made from bone taken from the respective undead, could represent control of each undead, and the bearer might have a half-dozen or more rings on his fingers. I prefer the rod or crown idea, 'though. The fasces/rod is especially fun, 'cause you can totally call yourself a fascist, and get away with it. :)
I don't really see any reason why this spell would be higher than 3rd level (2nd for clerics).
3) The last idea is to create spells like Enlarge Person and Reduce Person that...
Seems like a suitable idea. You could either come up with a feat that allows you to cast certain transmutation spells on your undead, or research variations on the spells themselves.
[The Crypt Lord Prestige Class, from Relics & Rituals had a class ability that allowed it to convert transmutation spells into necromancy spells, with the side effect of the spells conferring an undead appearance, so that bull's strength became 'vampire's strength' and had the same effects, but made the subject pale and cool to the touch, with glowing red eyes, while 'zombie's endurance' made one look like a zombie and 'ghoul's dexterity' gave one a ghoulish appearance.]
Sour milk (calcium, good for bone growth!) or rancid meat might make good spell components for one of these spells, and the undead affected by enlarge undead might appear to wildly grow many new bones, rather than expand in a more normal fashion (so, instead of looking like a hill giant skeleton, it would look more like a hill giant-sized collection of many human skeletons, lashed together).
Since enlarge person and reduce person are 1st level spells, and this is really a more target-limited version of those, I would make it either 1st level or 2nd level, depending on my mood.
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Outsiders that leave a corpse can be made into skeletons and zombies, what Set's referring to is that while mortals have souls that are separate but attached to their mortal forms, angels, demons, and devils *are* souls given corporeal form. And when they are destroyed on their home plane, that soul energy is recycled by the plane; either absorbed back into the weave of the plane itself, or reshaped into new outsiders. Also, when an outsider consumes a soul, it becomes a physical part of it, absorbing into the corporeal-soul-matrix [or however you want to describe the situation with outsider souls].
If you're drawing back an entire soul to animate an undead creature, you would have to figure out just what happens to the source of the soul. Understandably, this is a topic that Paizo hasn't really delved too deeply into so far.
Check out "The Great Beyond" for more details on how souls work in Pathfinder.
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I had a question about this paragraph...
You'd need to come up with rules for what happens to devils and demons and angels whose bones are animated and awakened,I am a bit confused by the bolded section. Are you saying that an angel or devil cannot be made into a skeleton or zombie? As far as I can tell, there is no rule that restricts this.
As Stockvillain says, it's not a question of animating the body of a dead outsider, but animating the mortal human remains of something that has since gone from petitioner to lantern archon to whatever. Does the angel (demon, devil, god, etc) dissolve in a shriek of agony as the soul it was once is torn from it to inhabit the awakened corpse of it's former life?
Caveat;
This sort of thing, using some uber-rare ritual, or as part of a plot seed, could be awesome, some mad necromancer attempting to rip souls out of the afterlife to fuel some revolting necromantic construct stitched together out of a dozen corpses, only to discover belatedly that he's torn the souls out of a daemon that devoured them, and so, inadvertantly, has sucked raw daemonic essence out of Abaddon and into his necromantic colossus, turning it into a fiendish construct with daemonic power and intent (and not at all under his control...). Do not call up what ye cannot put down, as they say.
But that's something that should be a GM-controlled event, not 'standard practice' for casting animate dead or awaken undead. Nobody would ever cast either spell, if random demons, devils, angels, holy paladin souls, and the random diety got pulled into their skeleton baggage-handlers and they ended up having to fight them off all the time. Plus the XP rewards would be ridonkulous if a 5th level cleric could animate dead and 'accidentally' kill a solar or a demon lord. :)
Of course, *deliberately* summoning up extraplanar entities to temporarily possess/inhabit human corpses also has potential as a completely different spell or ritual or process. Lemures or dretches would be well suited to this sort of thing, and the zombies they possess would function normally, until slain, and the fiend is then released for a number of rounds before it dissipates back into the lower planes (basically animate dead with a summon monster II or summon monster III rider that goes off when the zombie is defeated). While possessed, the zombie has the intellect and abilities of the possessing demon (bupkiss, for the most part, for a lemure-possessed zombie, but a few neat tricks for a dretch-ridden corpse), making it potentially a bit more useful than the average zombie, and potentially a lot harder to control...
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Also, as far as I can tell, there is no limit to how many undead you can control with command undead, so a necromancer doesn't even need another necromancer to bump up his limit in this way. He can do it as often as he can cast the spell. The animate dead spell and Command Undead feat seem to be the only ones with HD limits.
Even if the standard command undead has no HD limit, the transfer command option should definitely have one. It doesn't make much sense for a random non-spellcaster to be able to have more HD worth of undead under his command than a cleric with the Command Undead feat, or a necromancer who has cast animate dead to build himself the perfect beast.
If it has a temporary duration, like command undead, which seems counter to the point, since the recipient would have to come back to the necromancer/priest every X number of days and have it recast, it might be palatable to just base it straight off of command undead, but I had envisioned such a spell as being one of those Instantaneous / permanent things, that once cast, lasted until the undead were destroyed (or the recipient died).
If Instantaneous / permanent, I'd limit it to 1 HD / character level of the recipient, same as if the recipient was a cleric with the Command Undead feat.
2) His second idea is to create a spell that works like Command Undead (2nd-level spell), but instead of having mindless undead follow his commands, they follow the commands of someone else. I wasn't really sure where to start here, but I figure it should be a higher level. I thought maybe 5th-level. Then, he looked into Polymorph (5th-level)...his reasoning being that this spell lets the caster use an effect that is usually a personal spell (Beast Shape II, Elemental Body I, Alter Self) on another creature and at a spell level that is only 1 higher than two out of the three spells it mimics.
Might be worth basing this off Imbue with Spell Ability, which is only 4th (as opposed to your thoughts of 5th).
You could either (a) have the necromancer have to cast the command himself first, and then pass the control by means of the "imbue-like" spell (and thus only those specific undead are affected), or (b) you could have it work more like Imbue, you cast the spell and your memorized Command goes into the other guy.
Assuming that the command-based variables are then based on the recipient (as they should be), I would say that (a) would probably be 3rd level, while (b) would be 4th (like Imbue) -- though in both cases, there would also be the need for the Command Undead spell to be used. [I'd make (b) higher level because it lets the recipient cast it when he wants to, on the undead he'd like to affect]
Of course, this methodology wouldn't restrict the recipient to mindless undead since Command Undead doesn't have that limit -- though the Will save the intelligent undead get could be boosted if someone imbued casts the spell (and even without that, lower int means lower DC)
The one thing that gets cut out is this caveat: "In the meantime, you remain responsible to your deity or your principles for the use to which the spell is put." Which seems fine to free it up some since there are less spells that can be imbued, so maybe that loss of restriction helps even the balance too. Also, by making this a necromancy spell, he can use his bonus school slot for it.
Anyway, does this seem reasonable?
I think so -- it works in the bonus slot for sure -- and arcane casters aren't beholden to deities for their power, so the exclusion makes sense.
I would argue that you could probably get away with lowering the HD limits on spell transfer if you also drop the bit about the variables being based on the caster's level, but that's up to you.
This ends up being more flexible than just handing over command of undead, but when used for that it does exactly what you'd want it to -- mindless undead get no save, so the fact the (imbued) caster isn't packing a +4 int bonus to help the DCs is irrelevant. (And if the guy's crazy enough to cast it on intelligent undead, well, here's hoping they roll poorly).