Undead Master + Animate Dead - How does it work?

[AlcopopStar]

Does it add four to your effective level for just the creation of the undead or for both the creation and control?

Undead Master

Spoiler:

You can marshal vast armies of the undead to serve you.

Prerequisites: Spell focus (necromancy), the ability to cast animate dead or command undead.

Benefit: When you cast animate dead or use the Command Undead feat, you are considered to be four levels higher when determining the number of Hit Dice you animate. When you cast command undead, your duration is doubled.

Animate Dead

Spoiler:

This spell turns corpses into undead skeletons or zombies that obey your spoken commands.

The undead can be made to follow you, or they can be made to 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.

The undead you create remain under your control indefinitely. No matter how many times you use this spell, however, you can control only 4 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level. If you exceed this number, all the newly created creatures fall under your control, and any excess undead from previous castings become uncontrolled. You choose which creatures are released. Undead you control through the Command Undead feat do not count toward this limit.

[Alitan]

'... or use the Command Undead feat...'

So yeah, for both issues you get effective +4 bonus.

[Wraith235]

AlcopopStar wrote:

Does it add four to your effective level for just the creation of the undead or for both the creation and control?

Undead Master
** spoiler omitted **

Animate Dead
** spoiler omitted **

Level +4 for the Feat

Level +4 x2 for Animate dead is how I interpreted it

[AlcopopStar]

Sorry to necro this thread, though somewhat appropriate, but I don't feel that my question was sufficiently answered.

The direct question is, does undead master raise your control limit (4x caster level) for the animate dead spell?. I am finding the wording ambiguous.

[Bigger Club]

My group rules it does affect the number og hit dice you can have under your control, but it could be intepreted the other way. To be honest it would be quite useless feat if it doesn't apart from very low levels. Well not useless just very sub-optimal use of a feat.

Then again I am playing Dread necromancer and the Corpsecrafter line is allowed from Libris Mortis from 3.5 with so that probably scews my views.

In short we use it as +4 CL for the spells mentioned basically. I would call it a GM call how it is handled.

[magusapollo]

AlcopopStar wrote:

Sorry to necro this thread, though somewhat appropriate, but I don't feel that my question was sufficiently answered.

The direct question is, does undead master raise your control limit (4x caster level) for the animate dead spell?. I am finding the wording ambiguous.

Note the wording:

Quote:

...you are considered to be four levels higher when determining the number of Hit Dice you animate.

It does not raise the limit of total HD you can control. For animate undead, it's just an increase to the number you can create when you cast the spell; a +8 to the number of HD you can animate at once is pretty beefy.

And for Command Undead:

Quote:

You can control any number of undead, so long as their total Hit Dice do not exceed your cleric level.

So that means you can control your cleric level + 4 in HD.

[stringburka]

It seems that the amount of undead you can control through Animate Dead does is not affected by the feat by RAW. Probably RAI though.

[Synthesist7]

Undead Master is a strange feat. Per RAW, it would not help with the Animate Dead spell at all, since the feat doesn't increase your caster level, it says you are considered four "levels" higher. My question is, 4 levels of what?

In our group we ruled that it affected your ability to raise and control undead as if you were 4 levels higher in the cleric class, and also affected Caster Level when casting Animate dead.

[magusapollo]

stringburka wrote:

It seems that the amount of undead you can control through Animate Dead does is not affected by the feat by RAW. Probably RAI though.

Indeed, it's not affected; I doubt it's RAI mainly because desecrate is available to crank up the amount one can create to match the control limit.

Synthesist7 wrote:

Undead Master is a strange feat. Per RAW, it would not help with the Animate Dead spell at all, since the feat doesn't increase your caster level, it says you are considered four "levels" higher. My question is, 4 levels of what?

In our group we ruled that it affected your ability to raise and control undead as if you were 4 levels higher in the cleric class, and also affected Caster Level when casting Animate dead.

It's 4 levels higher in whatever class you're using to cast the spell.

TL;DR: It's essentially +8 to the total number of HD you can create when casting animate undead and +4 to the number of HD you can control when using Command Undead.