School necromancy; Level sorcerer/wizard 2; Domain inevitable 3
CASTING
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M (a shred of raw meat and a splinter of bone)
EFFECT
Range close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Targets one undead creature
Duration 1 day/level
Saving Throw Will negates; see text; Spell Resistance yes
DESCRIPTION
This spell allows you a degree of control over an undead creature. If the subject is intelligent, it perceives your words and actions favorably (treat its attitude as friendly). It will not attack you while the spell lasts. You can give the subject orders, but you must win an opposed Charisma check to convince it to do anything it wouldn’t ordinarily do. Retries are not allowed. An intelligent commanded undead never obeys suicidal or obviously harmful orders, but it might be convinced that something very dangerous is worth doing.
A nonintelligent undead creature gets no saving throw against this spell. When you control a mindless being, you can communicate only basic commands, such as “come here,” “go there,” “fight,” “stand still,” and so on. Nonintelligent undead won’t resist suicidal or obviously harmful orders.
Any act by you or your apparent allies that threatens the commanded undead (regardless of its Intelligence) breaks the spell.
Your commands are not telepathic. The undead creature must be able to hear you.
Am I missing something here? So you can already create unintelligent undead for free via animate dead and blood money (or through the experimental spellcaster and the undeath wordspell if GM bans blood money), and just bind the ones you can't control with the command undead spell, and keep rebinding them every x days, for free. Thats a virtually unlimited army. Is there some major weakness to this? Dispel magic affects command undead, but that only affects one creature per casting, and may fail. Antimagic field, but that would work on a necromancer even without command undead. I suppose the GM could just put them in a position where they are unable to rebind their minions, but then they can just make more free minions later.
This next one's an advice question: If a player tried this, how would you handle it? Ban blood money? Ban undeath word? Ban command undead the spell? Set a max hit die limit? Use pfs rules so effects aren't permanent?
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It's not for free, it means you're dedicating spell slots to keeping control. You're continually paying.
Allowing Word Magic is not really standard practice to begin with. It's not really as if "oh well, no Blood Money because the GM isn't crazy? I'll just use this obscure optional system instead" is likely to work.
It's not for free, it means you're dedicating spell slots to keeping control. You're continually paying.
Allowing Word Magic is not really standard practice to begin with. It's not really as if "oh well, no Blood Money because the GM isn't crazy? I'll just use this obscure optional system instead" is likely to work.
So if GM doesn't like blood money or words of power, you are only limited by your gp (25gp/hd of undead) your second level spell slots, and your caster level. Maintaining hundreds of hd of undead seems like a pretty efficient use of 2nd level spell slots to me.
EDIT: Found a thread about some guy who saw this spell's potential.
If we use every spell slot available to us at level 20 to take control of 20 HD skeletons, that's 240 HD worth of skeletons from Command Undead alone, and it lasts for TWELVE DAYS at level 20. Our spell slots obviously reset each day, so there's massive exponential growth to be had here if you can keep track of when each skeleton will fall out of your control.
So if that guy used his second level slots on command undead every day for 12 days (and managed to find/create 240hd of undead per die), he could maintain nearly 3000hd of undead from the command undead spell alone. Thats without using wands of command undead. Starting to get why pfs doesn't allow permanent durations.
I think it's time to make that Headband of INT which gives max ranks in Handle Animal, and Profession Mortician, and start a breeding program of 10-headed hydras.
... and thus begin my herd of (decent-smelling, thanks to the Mortician ranks) Fast Zombie 10-headed Hydras.
Anyone know where I can find a quarry which produces Onyx?
Of course, then there's always the "why isn't this game fun anymore?" aspect... I suppose all game systems have exploits because the developers either didn't see, or didn't care, about such things. It is always on the players and GM to keep things "reasonable." I quote that because, well, you're already suspending your disbelief, so "reasonable" is a relative term. :)
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It's not for free, it means you're dedicating spell slots to keeping control. You're continually paying.
Allowing Word Magic is not really standard practice to begin with. It's not really as if "oh well, no Blood Money because the GM isn't crazy? I'll just use this obscure optional system instead" is likely to work.
So if GM doesn't like blood money or words of power, you are only limited by your gp (25gp/hd of undead) your second level spell slots, and your caster level. Maintaining hundreds of hd of undead seems like a pretty efficient use of 2nd level spell slots to me.
EDIT: Found a thread about some guy who saw this spell's potential.
If we use every spell slot available to us at level 20 to take control of 20 HD skeletons, that's 240 HD worth of skeletons from Command Undead alone, and it lasts for TWELVE DAYS at level 20. Our spell slots obviously reset each day, so there's massive exponential growth to be had here if you can keep track of when each skeleton will fall out of your control.So if that guy used his second level slots on command undead every day for 12 days (and managed to find/create 240hd of undead per die), he could maintain nearly 3000hd of undead from the command undead spell alone. Thats without using wands of command undead. Starting to get why pfs doesn't allow permanent durations.
And then... what? You're a 20th level caster, and you think it's your 3000HD worth of controlled undead that's scaring the world? The things you can do at that level are so much worse.
Mindless undead are not all that exciting at high level. They lack special abilities needed to take on enemies with any kind of special defenses, are vulnerable to area effects, are easy to subvert, aren't very mobile, and require lots of micromanaging from you to go anywhere.
Their best use is to terrify low-level people, but that can be done with a lot less bookkeeping..
In fact, why bother to control them at all? If you're level 20, just use a private demiplane to stockpile a few million undead, and then just open a gate into your enemy's capital and let them run rampant. Who cares that you don't control them? You're obviously an insane evil dude by now, why care about the collateral damage?
There is a lot of bookkeeping. I'm not sure how much fun that would be.
There is a lot of bookkeeping. I'm not sure how much fun that would be.
None. But maybe for some people. And As alaphus, that was just an example the guy gave. A player could start comrolling ridiculous numbers with the command undead spell as soon as they, or an ally, could cast animate dead. Agreed that the undead would become irrelevant at high levels. Then its time for other exploits like blood money+fabricate to make diamonds for wish, or just 52 strength and blood money for free wish.
I would imagine you'd incur the wrath of the rest of the table, GM and players alike as well. "When is it going to be my turn?" "Next month."
The problem is that animating dead is an evil act. Do it enough and local law enforcement or other groups opposed to such activities are going to come along and stop you either by killing you or tossing you in a nice cozy dungeon. If you are too powerful for them to lock up then you are powerful enough to attract a group of adventurers who come along and kill you and take all your stuff. If you are lucky and become powerful enough that they can't actually kill you they just imprison you beneath Gallowspire for a few hundred years.
The problem is that animating dead is an evil act. Do it enough and local law enforcement or other groups opposed to such activities are going to come along and stop you either by killing you or tossing you in a nice cozy dungeon. If you are too powerful for them to lock up then you are powerful enough to attract a group of adventurers who come along and kill you and take all your stuff. If you are lucky and become powerful enough that they can't actually kill you they just imprison you beneath Gallowspire for a few hundred years.
So then there really is no downside to this strategy besides GM intervention and an upset table? Just asking if it works, I know its horrible.
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Right up until you run into another spellcaster with Command Undead and he takes control of your minions with no saving throw.
Cue opposed Charisma checks to prevent your own minions eating your face!
What I want to know is if spells like unhallow and Desicrate effect the dc of command undead. They both say increase the dc for channeled energy... That applies to the command undead feat, but does it apply for the spell command undead too?
If no then it becomes much more risk reward balance. Yes you can increase the dc of a spell, but my channel energy dc is 26 while my command spell dc is 18... Small bit if a gap there... For the risk of a lower chance to succeed at commanding your undead you're paid off in days / level rather than a higher dc they get to save vs every day.
The spell doesn't allow a save when used against mindless undead. Also, if someone else comes along and casts command undead on it then an opposed cha check is all that's needed if it's given orders that contradict it's current orders. Otherwise it just listens to both. The fact that it lacks a save is both what makes it nice and is what makes it terrible. If a more charismatic necromancer comes along they can literally steal your undead away from you.
As has been mentioned at 20th level there are far worse things you could do, like casting cursed earth on the lands of your enemies. Or create a demi-plane and a spawn creating undead (like shadows for example) and then stuff a bunch of slaves into it. Wait a few days and then go to the town you want to attack and open a gate to your demi-plane of undead. They won't even go after you if you cast something as simple as hide from undead on yourself.
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