Commanding the undead

[Rocky Williams 530]

I'm curious as to what uncontrolled undead do. Say you've reached your max with animate dead, then create more. Spell says they become uncontrolled. What does that mean? Do they just stand there, only reacting when attacked? Do they go on killing sprees, attacking any non-undead in sight? Do they just follow their last commands? I'm curious, both for animate dead, and the command undead feat.

[Mabven the OP healer]

Uncontrolled, unintelligent undead will simply try to destroy all life until they are destroyed themselves or controlled. Uncontrolled intelligent undead will do whatever best advances their agenda, most likely destroy all life until they are destroyed themselves or controlled.

[WhipShire]

Mabven is correct, they act as they are in the Bestiary. That mostly means they "will simply try to destroy all life until they are destroyed themselves or controlled." lol

It can be used tactically in some situations though. Such as wander them into an enemy camp and let them go... then as enemies die or undead turn on you or PC start controller select groups of them. A good thing to remember is this (from the control undead spell)
Intelligent undead creatures remember that you controlled them, and they may seek revenge after the spell's effects end.

RP problem: My group has a hard time with the RP part of a necro build/undead controller. Most PC have a problem with tons of undead hanging around and if they don;t communities/towns/cities sure due and in some places its illegal.

[Rocky Williams 530]

Darn. Kinda figured that was the way it went, but was hoping they could be commanded to just stand there and they'd do it.

I'm fine on the RP aspects of undead control. Our "home base" city is evil, and has a temple to the undead. So, until we start having hordes or large/huge undead, we'll probably be fine. I am trying to think of storage options though for when we don't want them wandering around. Thinking of trying to make a super large portable hole. March 'em in, march 'em out when needed.

[Mabven the OP healer]

Just destroy them, gather their bones into a bag of holding (or a normal bag, if you have no bag of holding, and you have a strong character to carry it), and then just dump out the bones and animate them. This is assuming skeletons - carrying around destroyed zombies is too unpleasant to think about.

[Terquem]

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that animated corpse-like monsters (skeletons and zombies) are one shot monsters and once they are destroyed they cannot be re-animated