- can an animated dead still cast spells? I know they have no int and awful char, and they lose class levels, but let's say a dragon
- what about spell-like abilities?
Both, skeletons and zombies, lose any kind of special ability. This included spellcasting, spell-like ablilities, dragon's breath, the gaze of a medusa, a snake's poison and so on. They lose EVERYthing unless the template explicitly states they retain it (like movement, natural attacks etc).
- since I'm lvl 10, I can raise a 10 HD bloody skeleton with a single casting (and it's worth a 500 gp onice). Then I can raise another 10 HD bloody skeleton with another casting.
If I get it right, at this point my amount of controlled undead is 20 HD, because after casting they shouldn't count as double.
Can I then raise one last 10 HD bloody skeleton and reach 30 HD total, and then one last regular 10 hd skeleton to reach my 40 HD cap?
I'm pretty sure that's how it works.
The "HD per casting" and "total controled HD" are individual numbers that don't influence one another. SO there's no "you already control 30 HD and can't raise another 20 HD" rule.
Animating either a zombie or skeleton removes all special qualities that the creature possessed in life. If it was an extraordinary ability that improved their attacks, they keep it. A creature loses access to all spellcasting from race, and all spellcasting from class due to losing all class levels. A dragon, in this instance, would lose all spellcasting (both spell-like abilities and class level spellcasting) if made into an undead or skeleton, since the templates both remove those features explicitly. They are both special qualities of a creature.
The amount of HD in undead you can raise does not interact with the quantity of undead you can control using animate dead. As a 10th level sorcerer, you can raise up to 20 HD of undead in one casting of animate dead, or 40 while within a desecrate effect.
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.
A bloody skeleton of 10HD still counts as a skeleton of 10HD for controlling the creature. The doubling of effective HD is only important for raising it with a template. Additionally, if the maximum HD of undead creatures you can raise per casting of animate undead allows it, you can add as many templates as you please when you initially raise an undead creature, so long as you recalculate the effective HD for each template (x2 for one, x3 for two), and use an appropriately priced onyx.
Yes.
And by attacks, I mean attacks with ranged or melee attacks. Like bites and claws, or with weapons.