If someone (either a necromancer or cleric) finds an uncontrolled undead and successfully commands it, what happens if his party (who the undead can see are clearly his allies) attack it? What if he attacks it?
Is the control broken automatically?
Does the undead get a free saving throw (and what if mindless or intelligent)?
If a save is permitted, how often? Just one? One per round they are being attacked?
Is the undead forced to stand there and be obliterated?
Please help, and any links to "official" rules or errata would be most welcome?
Good question. If it's mindless, I would say "You bash it in without fighting back."
If it has half a mind (animal like): "It might ignore one or two attacks, but more than that will cause it to ignore its owner/boss".
Thanks for the replies so far. I'm asking generally as this is likely to be a campaign long question, though currently the pc has controlled a dread wraith, which is quite intelligent.
I agree that there is nothing in the spell itself (or in command undead). However, I was wondering if there is an overarching rule somewhere about magical control and its limits.
I suppose mostly I'm thinking of spells such as dominate person and charm person, which allow a save if asked to do something against its nature...and was wondering if there was some blanket statement in pathfinder that covered attacking one's own controlled creatures.
I'd say that most creatures would find it against their nature to "stand there and let us kill you", of course. At least that's how I'd rule it for dominate person.
But this isn't those spells...it's something else. I realize that, but what I don't know if there is a blanket rule that covers this overall, something like "any creature attacked by its controller gets a new save" or somesuch.
I guess my question goes along the same lines of "could you command an intelligent undead to do something entirely against its nature" and if you did, would it get any sort of save or chance to resist?
For my specific case:
Intelligent undead do normally get a save daily...though the party has bargained for this particular undead not to attempt its save because of RP reasons. So apart from the initial save, it will be choosing to make its one daily save to fend off destruction.
The evil DM side of me says that he makes his save and pretends to be under control until the opportune moment and attacks while the PCs have their hands full. The nice DM side of me would give everyone a sense motive check to notice that he is pretending to be controlled.
I just looked up the feat "command undead" as well as the spells "command undead" and "control undead".
It seems that the feat says it acts as the spell "control undead". However, the duration is as the spell "command undead" (one save per day for intelligent undead, unlimited control for mindless).
Also, the feat, available at first level, essentially allows the casting of a 7th level spell multiple times per day (however many turnings a cleric/necromancer has).
I'm starting to wonder if there was an error in "command undead" casting "control undead" rather than "command undead".
Is there an errata on this?
I agree with the black raven.
My one concern/question now is: "Did they, under the feat, really mean it does the work of a 7th level spell? Or did they mean it works as the second level spell?"
I don't want to nerf my player's ability, but man... I'm wondering if that's an error it seems so off. (Not to mention extending the 7th level spell's duration to "unlimited" and "days per level instead of minutes per level".
That's true...though I'm discussing it with my PCs at the moment over email as well.
It's an evil campaign where they might become vampires or liches...which means that if one of them ever got controlled, the rules would be pretty hard on them as well.
Agreed on the different parameters. Yes, double the HD able to be controlled, but only for 1 minute per level...not unlimited/only one save per day. I'd certainly rather have an undead slave all day long rather than grabbing control of it for a few minutes.
We may add the line from Dominate Person "Subjects resist this control, and any subject forced to take actions against its nature receives a new saving throw with a +2 bonus. Obviously self-destructive orders are not carried out." Which might be a bit of a nerf...or might not. Control undead has a pretty short description and the enchantment spells (e.g. charm person and command undead or Dominate person and Control undead) are fairly analagous.
But, I'm thinking at this point that if we decide to do that it'd be a houserule.
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Your Evil Necromancer may control hordes of undead, but he will not be a good healer for his party :-))
Charm effects automatically break when the Charmer or their apparent allies attack the creature. This is not a function of particular spells, but of charm effects in general. This is explicitly spelled out in CRB p.561.
However, as DM, I would tend to rule that mindless undead are probably incapable of distinguishing between apparent allies and other random creatures. As well as having a very poor sense of what is suicidal or not. Actively destroying itself or sitting there while being directly attacked by the Charmer would still be out.
These are not Enchantment (Charm) effects. They are (or duplicate) Necromancy spells.
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These are not Enchantment (Charm) effects. They are (or duplicate) Necromancy spells.Irrelevant. The referenced core rulebook passage is about Charm effects, not Enchantment effects. The Command Undead spell has the Charm subtype. It IS explicitly a Charm effect.
I just checked on the PRD and saw no such subtype. Where did you see it ?