Juju Zombies - Creation and Control

[Enkindu594]

Greetings fellow forumites!

I am currently running a game and have a player running a necromancer wizard. He has taken 1 level in Oracle with the Juju mystery and selected Spirit Vessels as his revelation:

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle/mysteries/paizo-oracle -mysteries/juju/

"Spirit Vessels (Su): You can channel wendo spirits into lifeless bodies, reanimating them to aid you. When using the animate dead spell, you can control 6 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level rather than 4 HD. In addition, any zombies or juju zombies you create using animate dead, create undead, or similar spells possess maximum hit points."

The rest of the player's levels will be put into wizard. The question comes to when he creates zombies, when and how can he apply the Juju template to a zombie?

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/zombie-juju-cr -1/

The player is asserting that because spirit vessels calls out Juju zombies he is able to add that template any time he creates a zombie following the normal rules for zombie variants under animate dead (counts as double hit dice). However my reading of animate dead and create undead I do not agree.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/animate-dead/

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/c/create-undead/

Create undead specifically calls out that is the spell used to create Juju zombies, and to my reading nothing in the Juju oracle mystery, the spirit vessels revelation or anything in animate dead supersedes that.

Please help clear up what spell and how a Juju zombie can be created.

Secondly, once created, does a Juju zombie count as intelligent undead and follow those rules for controlling it. Because Juju is specifically called out in Create undead, where the spell describes creating intelligent undead I am arguing that they are indeed intelligent. This is backed up that the Juju zombies do not have their Intelligence and Wisdom reduced to 10 like skeletons and zombies from Animate dead do, as well as the fact they retain the abilities of the base creature. My player is asserting that because he can create them using animate dead which gives him control over the undead he creates that Juju zombies similarly are under his complete control and would not need to be controlled using the Command undead feat.

Thank you for your help, and please let me know if I need to provide any clarifying details.

Have a great day.

[Coidzor]

The Curse Terrain line of spells is another way to make Juju Zombies.

Specifically you cast Curse Terrain to replicate the Perilous Demesne line of curses and then you use that to pick out hazards. In this case, there are three main hazards that create undead creatures, Animating Fog, Field of Bone, and Sour Ground.

For the purpose of making Juju Zombies, Sour Ground is what's of interest. I'm AFB, so I don't know exactly how many or how high of a CR of Juju Zombie can be created by the Sour Ground that each version of the spell creates, but you basically need to be ready to finish burying the body after casting Curse Terrain and then 24 hours later you have Juju Zombie(s). Or you can use Permanency and make it permanent.

CR 3, CR 6, CR 10, and CR 14 are the caps on the CR of the hazards that the various versions of Curse Terrain are able to create. Which may be the cap on the CR of the Juju Zombie or Juju Zombies that can be created at any one time. If so, that means you can turn up to a CR 2, CR 5, CR 9, or CR 13 creature into a Juju Zombie if you do them one at a time.

However, it should be noted that Sour Ground creates Juju Zombies that are motivated by revenge, and it's somewhat ambiguous as to whether that's against all life, against those that killed them, against those that buried them in the sour ground, or against the person who cast Curse Terrain. Or all of the above.

[zza ni]

you are using the OLD juju oracle reference (from 2010). it was edited(in 2013).
in the OLD one if you look up the spell list given to the oracle youll see this line:
'Bonus Spells: speak with animals (2nd), hideous laughter (4th), fear (6th), charm monster (8th), create undead (as a 5th-level spell; juju zombies only; see right) (10th), magic jar (12th), creeping doom (14th), trap the soul (16th), shapechange (18th).'

that is how they were going to let them bring up the juju zombies (which by the way, back then could have ANY alignment not only evil).

the new errata to this class took out the whole juju zombie easy access compliantly. (as well as the flavor text suggesting creating them '...including the actual feared juju zombie...').d
now they need the normalcreate undead spell for it. and as such also don't get any control over them.