Undead mastery help

[STARGAZER_DRAGON]

Undead Master:

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:

his 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.

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. Editor's Note: The bloody skeleton and burning skeleton variants are created by use of the animate dead spell but count as double their normal HD when doing so.

Zombies: A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse. The corpse must be that of a creature with a physical anatomy. Editor's Note: The rule regarding costing double HD for creating variant bloody skeleton and burning skeleton variants was not included in the fast zombie and plague zombie variant zombie template details. It is left to the GMs discretion if that rule would apply to creating variant zombies.

Everywhere I read this people keep saying it allows more HD of undead to b controlled however I see nowhere in the description that says u can control more HD just that you can create more HD with a single casting and that control undead spell has double normal duration

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Far as I know a 8th lv caster who makes undead could have 16 HD of templated skeletons/zombies or 32 HD of un-templated. Though a single casting of the spell could only animate up to 16 HD at a time or 8 templated ones.

Thus a single casting could allow you to use up half of your max allowed controllable HD, or you could make your max if you had desecrate cast.

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Just tring to make sure I understand how the spell works, if a caster used desecrate to double the limit animated with a single casting, a 8th lvl caster could make a 32 HD undead - single creatures or a 16 HD varient zombie with a single casting of the spell using up all of his allowed HD of controle and having 1 massive undead minnion??

[STARGAZER_DRAGON]

can anyone help clerify?

[Gjorbjond]

It's meant to apply to both the number you animate and the max you can control. It says it works with the Command Undead feat, which doesn't animate anything.

[.seth]

animate dead let's you control all that you can create in one cast, no matter how many it is. the undead over the limit are only released from previous castings. so the feat +4 to animate dead caster level is worth 16 extra hd of undead when you cast with desecrate to get x4 cl hd instead of x2 from a single cast. the feat doesn't need to grant you control because animate dead already is. this makes the feat worth slightly less to juju oracles whose control pool is x6 and requires two castings to fill even with desecrate.