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..
How can we stop a spellcaster from using this spell on some dead bodies? Sure disintegration or complete total destruction (cremation, etc...) of the body will do it. But what if you don't have the means or the time for such things.
On a related note, a dead creature becomes an object. How many hps and how much hardness would a corpse object have?
Remove the spine and the corpse is no longer intact. Since the body doesn't have hardness when alive, it doesn't have any when dead. For bones I'd look at the bone material.
Go with the great zombie/skeleton trope and say they must have a head to be mostly intact. A corpse without a head can't be animated. That isn't RAW just my interpretation.
Mutilating the corpses is standard procedure if your enemies might have an evil cleric.
Or do you mean as a GM?
Mostly it's just curiously seeking a RAW solution to the indeterminate wording of "mostly intact corpse or skeleton". I tried to search "prevent animate dead", but didn't find much. Most threads were about how animate dead prevents raise dead. I want other peoples ideas of what "mostly intact" means to them.
How much mutilation seems to be the question. Dismemberment and mutilation in general suffers from the "Skeleton" question. A skeleton seems to be a bunch of bones without much if any connective tissue. Also, while many shows have headshots being how you kill a zombie there are plenty of shows that have zombie body parts having a life of their own and reattaching after being cut off.
Again this not RAW just how I run with it. I would expect 80% as long as it had the head.
10% head and neck
40% torso
20% arms (10% each arm)
30% legs (15% each leg)
Therefore you could have a zombie with no arms, or with one leg but not both.
I dont think anyone wants a zombie without a slam or bite attack so I would cut off the arms and head.
Animate Dead is a touch spell. Add a few runes or traps to make sure the necromancer joins the corpses...
Beside that, you could animate these corpses yourself, take them with you, feed them to something else or use Sculpt Corpse to make them look less interesting (smaller and weaker creature, usually).
I dont think anyone wants a zombie without a slam or bite attack so I would cut off the arms and head.But do they need their arms to slam?
Yes.
|
Go old-school and set up a pyre.
This seems easiest.
Or feed it to something that doesn't leave a usable corpse behind, like your lion companion, or that pot of green slime in your backpack.
Green slime is also good to make sure that big bad evil guys aren't easily raised from the dead by their followers.
Acid splash can also do the trick, if you're patient and don't want to build a fire. Eat up that corpse, 1d3 hit points per round.