The text in the description of Zombie Skin Shield reads:
"This +1 light steel shield is wrapped in a layer of gray skin. Once per day, the wearer can animate the skin as a human zombie under her control, as if she had created it with animate dead, for a period of 5 minutes. When the time expires, the zombie returns to the shield. If the zombie is destroyed or cannot reach the shield by the time it expires, placing the shield on a Medium humanoid corpse for 1 hour recreates the shield's skin."
It doesn't specify, however, anything about the power level of the zombie, like how many HD it has etc. I hope it doesn't make the standard 1/2 CR zombie because then it doesn't seem like this item would be worth it. I would guess that the zombie would be as many HD as the person using the shield could make if casting the spell? Any insight would be helpful
It would appear to be a garden variety zombie.
seems pretty lame if that is indeed the case
Not all items are intended to be gamebreaking. And, indeed, the ability to create a zombie with twice as much HD as you, with no material component, is ridiculously strong even if it's only for five minutes a day.
As is, it's still useful as another warm body you can put in the way of things. Erm, figuratively speaking.
Well, animate dead only does 4 HD per caster lvl so my lvl 9 cleric would make a 20 HD zombie. But I see what you are saying. Thanks for the responses.
Oh, thanks. I couldn't find a specific entry for human zombie on d20pfsrd.com. Guess I was looking in the wrong place.
According to this the shield has a CL of 5.
According to this animate dead creates up to 2x CL or 4x CL with desecrate.
So I could see the argument for: 1/day for 5 minutes you get a 10 HD zombie, which is approximately CR4. That doesn't seem too awful of an effect though it does make the shield seem pretty cheap.
The RAW reading though is that you get a creature named "Human Zombie" per James Risner's post.
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A +1 light steel shield would cost 1,159 gp.
A spell with a material component costs 50 times the material component if the effect is in a x/day. So 25 gp * 50 = 1,250 gp.
3rd level command word = 3 * 5 * 1,800 gp = 27,000 gp and 1/day = 1/5 of that or 5,400 gp
1,159 + 1,250 + 5,400 = 7,809 gp
You don't even have money left over after the 50x 25 gp material components for the 1/day of a 3rd level spell.
So they significantly discounted this item for 1/day you get a 2d8 Human Zombie. Be happy.
According to this the shield has a CL of 5.
According to this animate dead creates up to 2x CL or 4x CL with desecrate.So I could see the argument for: 1/day for 5 minutes you get a 10 HD zombie, which is approximately CR4. That doesn't seem too awful of an effect though it does make the shield seem pretty cheap.
The RAW reading though is that you get a creature named "Human Zombie" per James Risner's post.
The CL given at the item section tells you the CL that is at least required for the creator of the item in order to craft the magic item.
The spell then isn´t cast by yourself, it is cast by the item. As it is written in the item description, the shield animates the skin to a human zombie, that´s a 1/2 CR Monster. There is no evident in the text, that the shield lets you cast the spell freely on targets you want.