Animate Dead

[Konto]

When I does Animate Dead spell on corpse, it create a skeleton/zombie (like bestiary) with x HD or add skeleton/zombie template to that creature's stat before dying?

[Ascalaphus]

The answer is in the template descriptions.

Skeleton template wrote:

Hit Dice: A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD. If the creature has more than 20 Hit Dice, it can't be made into a skeleton by the animate dead spell. A skeleton uses its Cha modifier (instead of its Con modifier) to determine bonus hit points.

zombie template wrote:

Hit Dice: Drop HD gained from class levels (minimum of 1) and change racial HD to d8s. Zombies gain a number of additional HD as noted on the following table.

[Konto]

Ok, follow up question.

Ascalaphus wrote:

Quote:

Hit Dice: A skeleton drops any HD gained from class levels and changes racial HD to d8s. Creatures without racial HD are treated as if they have 1 racial HD.

So that means fallen 10th level fighter associate (hired mercenary or player who decides to make new character after death) can only make 1 HD skeleton/zombie, yes?

[Ascalaphus]

Yep. The template doesn't care who you were before you died. If you want powerful minions, try to animate monsters with a lot of racial hit dice.