One of my players wants to play an undead lord cleric and askedme how to stat up his corpse companion, but I thought about and said I'm not sure. How do you stat one of those buggers up?
"Corpse Companion (Su): With a ritual requiring 8 hours, an undead lord can animate a single skeleton or zombie whose Hit Dice do not exceed her cleric level."
The way I read it, that means it's a totally normal zombie or skeleton. All stats are based on the base creature's racial hit die and ability scores, as per zombie/skeleton in the Bestiary. This means that the undead lord very much wants to find a snazzy monster to animate, as most humanoid corpses will be standard zombie/skeleton, though probably with better ability scores (as they are the corpses of "fightin' men" the party has slain).
If you wanna be a cool guy, you might allow a fast zombie but beware, those suckers can be mean. (A troll or tiger fast zombie is a pretty wicked killing machine).
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Yeah, it's just a normal creature using the zombie or skeleton template, which can be found in the Bestiary, or via the links provided by the poster above me. What's interesting to me, though, is that the ability explicitly says you can use variant skeletons like bloody or flaming, but not that you can use variant zombies like fast or juju. I wonder if that's oversight, or if there's some reason that variant zombies would be too powerful when variant skeletons are not...
You can create any variant you want, though it does make the companion only allowed up to half of your cleric level. That means at level 1 it has to be a regular zombie or skeleton, but at level 2, you can spend 8 hours to create a replacement that can use any variant.
Worth noting: Skeleton Champions (which retain abilities from pre-death) are considered variants and thus can be used for the companion, though the 1/2 cleric level bit still applies. You might also want to check out Classic Horrors Revisted, the Waking (maybe Walking?) Dead section. It includes another list of variants, such as archer and spellcasting variants.
As the DM, you might want to go over the list of variants first and give a few nays on anything you think just won't play out well for the group. If your player starts taking full advantage of necromancy, he could easily start soloing dungeons by himself at mid levels. If your group is okay with this, all the better, but if you have a restrictive setting, this is important to clear BEFORE the player gets his mind set on something.
On a side note...
What if you had a guy who was a corpselord/druid?
Would you let him corrupt the animal companion, kill it, raise it as his corpse companion and still gain levels as an animal companion?
Would that be too much?
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On a side note...
What if you had a guy who was a corpselord/druid?
Would you let him corrupt the animal companion, kill it, raise it as his corpse companion and still gain levels as an animal companion?Would that be too much?
I'm pretty sure that would be too thematically awesome to be "too much".
(By RAW, this doesn't work. As a DM, I'd allow it because, as I said, it's just too awesome not to work. I'd probably let the character add their druid+corpselord levels to determine the stats of the companion, as long as they were dedicating both class abilities to it.)
As the DM, you might want to go over the list of variants first and give a few nays on anything you think just won't play out well for the group. If your player starts taking full advantage of necromancy, he could easily start soloing dungeons by himself at mid levels. If your group is okay with this, all the better, but if you have a restrictive setting, this is important to clear BEFORE the player gets his mind set on something.
That depends entirely on the availability of monster corpses (for more HD per individual skeleton/zombie) and what kinds of enemies you meet. By RAW, the monsters you can create with Create Undead are pretty lame, and whether they keep class levels or not is up to the GM. Because of higher AC, normal human zombies, skeletons and ghouls will be largely ineffective, and most enemies with magic weapons and attacks can decimate the paltry shadows from Create Greater Undead. We had an undead-creating in CoT and he sucked because almost all corpses were humanoids. Those who weren't were undead beforehand, and he never managed to control them, except some shadows.
That said, going all-out necromancy isn't really covered by the RAW, as it's mostly concerned with what "good" PCs would do. My advice is to go over this with your GM and find sensible house-rules. It's a great concept, but there are many things that should be worked out (for example: How the hell is he going to hide his troupe of undeads when in a civilized place?).
On a side note...
What if you had a guy who was a corpselord/druid?
Would you let him corrupt the animal companion, kill it, raise it as his corpse companion and still gain levels as an animal companion?Would that be too much?
I'm pretty sure that would be too thematically awesome to be "too much".
(By RAW, this doesn't work. As a DM, I'd allow it because, as I said, it's just too awesome not to work. I'd probably let the character add their druid+corpselord levels to determine the stats of the companion, as long as they were dedicating both class abilities to it.)
I know right? I got the idea from Brotherhood of the Wolf movie, the bad guy...and how you could replicate him.
Yeah, by RAW it doesn't work becasue once the animal dies, there's negatives and such. But I figure you could RP around it to make it work. And like you said, if the player in question is willign to dedicate class abilities from two different calsses to the one companion, why not?| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That depends entirely on the availability of monster corpses (for more HD per individual skeleton/zombie) and what kinds of enemies you meet. By RAW, the monsters you can create with Create Undead are pretty lame, and whether they keep class levels or not is up to the GM. Because of higher AC, normal human zombies, skeletons and ghouls will be largely ineffective, and most enemies with magic weapons and attacks can decimate the paltry shadows from Create Greater Undead. We had an undead-creating in CoT and he sucked because almost all corpses were humanoids. Those who weren't were undead beforehand, and he never managed to control them, except some shadows.
That said, going all-out necromancy isn't really covered by the RAW, as it's mostly concerned with what "good" PCs would do. My advice is to go over this with your GM and find sensible house-rules. It's a great concept, but there are many things that should be worked out (for example: How the hell is he going to hide his troupe of undeads when in a civilized place?).
zombies, unless common sense dictates otherwise (such as a
gasburst skeleton). Likewise, except as noted, the following
variations can be stacked with one another—it’s possible to
have an exploding acid skeleton, for example.
remain in an area and attack any creature (or just a specific kind of
creature) entering the place. They remain animated until they are
destroyed. A destroyed skeleton or zombie can’t be animated again. Regardless of the type of undead you create with this spell, you
can’t create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a
single casting of animate dead. The desecrate spell doubles this limit.
...
Skeletons: A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact
corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is
made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.
Zombies: A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse.
The corpse must be that of a creature with a physical anatomy.
Numerous variant skeletons exist, such as those whose bones burn with an unending fire and those who drip with gore and reassemble themselves over time. Both of these variant skeletons can be created using animate dead, but they count as twice their normal number of Hit Dice per casting. Once controlled, they count normally against the controller's limit.
While the Create Undead spells allow you to create specific types of undead that are stat'd out as much stronger than the skeleton and zombie entries, skeleton and zombies are applying templates specifically, meaning they (for the most part) work entirely off of the base creature. The variants allow for much stronger undead than the base template, though it comes at the cost of half of their allowed hit die per undead.
However, it specifically states that they count only equal to their hit die for amount that can be controlled (that is, 4 HD per CL normally). It means you get double the number of undead with abilities that they can't otherwise have. Having a magus skeleton with 5 HD (magus is the variant that allows spellcasting) can do be much more useful than a skeleton with 10 HD.
You can mix it up, though, and have all the buff melees and variant utility ones you want.
As far as transporting them, things such as Bags of Holding and Portable Holes are generally seen as able to carry corpses. For your companion, if you didn't want him to go away, you could just throw a robe on him and order him to not speak.
I designed a 14th level Undead Lord for a game that never happened once, and I had a Skeleton Champion Orc Barbarian as a companion who carried around a coffin on his back. The coffin was linked to a demi-plane with permanency cast on it (which is only like around 18,000g) where he kept his undead. When a fight broke out, the companion slammed the coffin down and opened it, then protected the cleric. The undead would shamble out as he ordered them to, and he'd cast spells as he needed.
Thanks a lot, guys! This helps a lot.
Ive started a revamp using the summonses silicon as a guidline. It still advances as an undead th Undead Lord can choose to us his ritual once a month Lu when he levels allowing him to dimes and or call a new one.
This allow for some basically simple ideas, I added daywalkwr as a 4 point ability, have 9hd beastly corpse {basically a war dog} slapped on weapon focus bite, added bleed to the bite and enhanced the bite to increase ability dam. Gave it scent and undead beserker, now I can use it both in and out of town hunting prey with my trusty companion at my side.