I'm confused as to how this spell works. If a level 5 fighter is made into skeleton, how is that different from a level 15 fighter?
used to be that a scroll of polymorph any object was your friend here, not sure if that still works though. if you can, try hunting down and animating a hydra skeleton. that tends to work well at low-mid levels.
So only animated monsters are worth a damn. Aniated humanoids all have the exact same (low) stats barring items. Is that right?
Also in beastiarys the hp is always just the average number by HD. Are not supposed to roll for their hp?
No you are not supposed to roll for hp in the standard game, but if ur GM increases monster hp the same should apply to ur animated minions, it is houserule territory though.
A basic skeleton of a high level warrior is not that great though it will have pretty decent strength and dexterity stats and relatively cheap components, they are pretty decent to make into bloody skeletons. For the spells purposes a 5th lvl or 15th lvl character are identical, though the 15th lvl character might have slightly better stats, though some GMs will remove the increases gained by level and inherent bonuses granted by wishes and the like.
Create Undead and Create Greater Undead are better for this, tohugh they do not confer control over the undead created like animate dead does, it is possible to make skeleton warriors or JuJu zmobies with those spells.
look into Undead Revisited for options to create alternate undead with those spells.
So only animated monsters are worth a damn. Aniated humanoids all have the exact same (low) stats barring items. Is that right?
Not exactly. They lose their class levels, but they keep their racial hit dice if they have any, and they keep their original ability scores (modified appropriately for being a skeleton) as well. So a bugbear skeleton will have 3 hit dice while a human skeleton which used to be a level 12 fighter will only have 1 hit die, but the human skeleton might have higher strength and dexterity than the bugbear skeleton does.
Also in beastiarys the hp is always just the average number by HD. Are not supposed to roll for their hp?
Whatever your DM tells you to do, or if you are the DM whatever you want to do. Personally I find it's best to just take the average, saves rolling thousands of extra dice and avoids monsters who have abnormally high or low hp popping up.
Thanks guys, that's much clearer.
I don't see that there's rules for variant skeletons. Is it harder to create Bloody Skeletons than regular ones? All I see is a CR change, but not something that would affect the Necromancer.
Variant undead count as twice their HD for purposes of animate dead (costs, number created per casting, and so on). This is listed in the Bestiary under the 'Skeleton' entry, but isn't showing up in the SRD. Unless I'm overlooking things again...
What this means is that a standard 1HD medium humanoid skeleton costs 25 gold to create. A bloody 1HD medium humanoid skeleton would cost 50 gold, but remains at 1HD.
Rules for variants are in the bestiary, bloody skeletons are worth twice their hit die as regards how many hit die a casting of animate dead can create, but just their normal amount for the limit on how many hit die can be controlled.
Damn, ninja'd!