Necromantic Servant Occultist Focus Power

[StygianRose]

Hi everyone! Can you help me settle something about this focus talent?

Necromantic Servant:

Necromantic Servant (Sp): As a standard action, you can expend 1 point of mental focus to raise a single human skeleton (Pathfinder RPG Bestiary 250) or human zombie (Bestiary 288) from the ground to serve you for 10 minutes per occultist level you possess or until it is destroyed, whichever comes first. This servant has a number of hit points equal to 1/2 your maximum hit point total (not adjusted for temporary hit points or other temporary increases). It also uses your base attack bonus and gains a bonus on damage rolls equal to 1/2 your occultist level. At 5th level, whenever the necromantic servant would be destroyed, if you are within medium range (100 feet + 10 feet per level) of the servant, you can expend 1 point of mental focus as an immediate action to cause the servant to return to full hit points. At 9th level, you can choose to give the servant the bloody or burning simple template (if it’s a skeleton) or the fast simple template (if it’s a zombie). At 13th level, when you take an immediate action to restore your servant, it splits into two servants. You can have a maximum number of servants in existence equal to 1/2 your occultist level. At 17th level, the servant gains a teamwork feat of your choice.

A DM of mine has tried to tell me that despite the fact that this has the text "From the ground to serve you" and calls out specific statblocks and not templates, this acts in all ways as Animate Dead and requires a humanoid (human) corpse to use... who then replaces all of their stats with yours?

Which one of us is right?

[Weirdo]

You are correct. The text does not reference Animate Dead - it's a separate ability with it's own rules.

[Nixitur]

Yup, it's very little like Animate Dead and you do not require a corpse. It's more like you're summoning something that looks and works like a zombie from the ether.
Another interesting difference: No [Evil] descriptor. By the rules, if you overuse Evil spells like Animate Dead, your character will inevitably move towards Evil. Can't find the source on this, but I know I've read it somewhere before. But Necromantic Servant is explicitly not an evil SLA and doesn't mess around with actual corpses, so your local Paladin or Pharasmin priest will quite frankly have little to complain about.