Undead Barbarians, Morale Effects, and so on.

[The Black Bard]

I read through the archives and while it seems the RAW is pretty clear that undead just make crappy barbarians due to the fact the primary benefits of rage are morale bonuses, and the undead type is immune to morale effects, I wanted to see if there was any official ruling on this one way or another.

I don't like calling for developer intervention, but there have been enough undead barbarians in the modules (including ones described as gaining said levels after becoming undead) that I think it might be nice to put this to rest once and for all.

So, does anyone know of a stated confirmation? Or is this just a slightly grey area made blurry grey by the time when the Beta listed rage as typeless bonuses?

And for bonus points: if you cast Create Undead on a peasant, you can get a ghoul. If you cast it on a 4th level fighter, can you get a Ghoul with 4 levels of fighter? I'm not advocating Create Undead as poor man's ressurection (well, maybe, but not for those reasons). Just curious if that is withing the rules, not allowed, or just not covered.

[kyrt-ryder]

Last time I checked, undead (barring a few specific cases) are created based on the base creature's racial hit dice, class levels had nothing to do with it. A ghoul from a level 1 human commoner and a ghoul from a level 20 elf Paladin are one and the same (though it's possible I could be mistaken.)

[DarthEnder]

I guess the question here is whether a Morale bonus is considered the same thing as a Morale effect.

[Tharg The Pirate King]

kyrt-ryder wrote:

Last time I checked, undead (barring a few specific cases) are created based on the base creature's racial hit dice, class levels had nothing to do with it. A ghoul from a level 1 human commoner and a ghoul from a level 20 elf Paladin are one and the same (though it's possible I could be mistaken.)

may be that he is asking when its an intteligent undead and they keep class levels. because that does make a difference.

[Serisan]

The Black Bard wrote:

I read through the archives and while it seems the RAW is pretty clear that undead just make crappy barbarians due to the fact the primary benefits of rage are morale bonuses, and the undead type is immune to morale effects, I wanted to see if there was any official ruling on this one way or another.

I don't like calling for developer intervention, but there have been enough undead barbarians in the modules (including ones described as gaining said levels after becoming undead) that I think it might be nice to put this to rest once and for all.

So, does anyone know of a stated confirmation? Or is this just a slightly grey area made blurry grey by the time when the Beta listed rage as typeless bonuses?

And for bonus points: if you cast Create Undead on a peasant, you can get a ghoul. If you cast it on a 4th level fighter, can you get a Ghoul with 4 levels of fighter? I'm not advocating Create Undead as poor man's ressurection (well, maybe, but not for those reasons). Just curious if that is withing the rules, not allowed, or just not covered.

Create Undead is based only on HD of the creature created, not class levels.

My table ruling would be that immunity to morale effects would include Rage. I'm hardly a developer, though.