In my current campaign I am looking at picking up an intelligent undead under my control because I have some fun abilities I can pass to melee fighters but they don't work with our only melee fighter.
I'm looking at a skeletal champion. My dm has already ok'd the idea, but I need already way to control the undead permanently.
I'd rather not deal with abilities that grant a save every day.
ANY suggestions welcome.
There’s a Mesmerist archetype that can do this as a level 20 ability. I think that’s it, excluding archetypes that get an undead companion.
Take the Leadership feat and a skeletal champion as cohort? It won't actually be under your control, but it'll be guaranteed to be loyal as long as you treat it decently, which is arguably better.
You could take a dip in undead bloodline sorcerer then just keep your undead charmed.
Bloodline Arcana: Some undead are susceptible to your mind-affecting spells. Corporeal undead that were once humanoids are treated as humanoids for the purposes of determining which spells affect them.
Or you can keep them under control with the command undead spell. I'd recommend against letting it lapse though.
There are very few good options for controlling intelligent undead. The Command Undead spell is the best of the bunch, and it still offers a new save every week or so (1 day/level duration) and requires an opposed charisma check every time you need to issue an order. If you're a Sorcerer that's a workable option, but if you aren't you'll probably need to get creative.
Some kind of "kill switch" could work very well, although off hand I can't think of any good options that could insta-kill an intelligent undead creature on a contingency hair trigger. Another possibility is that you could take the leadership feat, and work out some in-character reason why the skeleton champion follows your orders.
Are your abilities something which wouldn't work with unintelligent undead?
All the options are very high level class abilities. What class are you?
Negotiate with it. Reach a mutually acceptable solution.
Command Undead (Mythic) is a way to permanently control intelligent undead but it's Mythic so it might not be an option; I thought I'd mention it.