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I posted this to reddit and thought I would post it here too.
So, The Reanimator archetype from Book of the Dead is the pinnacle of necromancy that I’m sure many of us have been waiting for. However, much like many other player options provided by the book it has been met by mixed receptions. While many of its abilities are strong or at least workable (the definition of “appropriate corpse” being the subject of many future debates I’m sure when there isn’t a single word in the zombie monster definition which defines them as humanoid) I think there is one feat that doesn’t work as intended even with the most generous interpretation of its wording.
So this is going to be a small deep dive in to the wording and balance of Shambling Horror.
Disclaimer: Most of this review is based in the idea that you want an on-level minion (your level – 4) to follow you around and have the most combat efficient chance of hitting and being relevant. It also only takes into account the common skeletons and zombies found on AON and not any adventure path specific enemies.
TLDR: Shambling Horror is a spell that fails to deliver on the one thing it meant to do. Summon a competitive undead minion. Its size and level restrictions make it extremely difficult to find a target and straight up can’t be usable in some published content. Even if you stick to enemies and summons far below your level the chance you encounter them during published AP content is slim to none. While its uncommon rarity does give GMs and players a warning I don’t think that this level of mechanical blindness when creating an ability meets the standard of what paizo produces.
Level: 6 (gained at 12), Level isn’t terribly important but it does come in towards the last 50% of the gameplay. This means that the spell has less time to shine in your adventure should be judged a little harsher accordingly (not to mention its competition with class feats).
Casting Time: 3a MSV, not a big deal at first glance but poses a small issue combined with its range making it a bit awkward to use in combat.
Range: Touch, okay so using this in combat most of the time will take two rounds unless you’re hasted. Unless they died next to you as a caster you need 1 round to stride to the fallen body and 1 round to animate it.
Duration: 10 minutes, not the worst! Unlike most summoning spells this one you can take in between encounters. However, if you need to take a break to heal, refocus, or any other common 10-minute activity this spell will drop and you’ll have to cast it again. You can refocus while you have the spell up effectively allowing you to instantly up it again but that limits you entirely to what the GM will let you do while you refocus.
Targets: 1 corpse of a Gargantuan or smaller creature that has a level no greater than your level – 4 and has died since the last sunrise. So, this is where most of my problems with the spell begins. Does anyone know how rare -4 enemies are? Well, I took a look, in the entirety of the AP I run (age of ashes) from lvl 12 onwards and from the moment you get this feat until the end of the entire adventure path there are 3 level appropriate enemies to use Shambling Horror on and all of them are within book 4. However! Also consider the fact that at higher levels you’ll be fighting a wide array of creatures who don’t even necessarily drop corpses on death such as undead, elementals, and constructs and you narrow that number down to 1 single encounter that you can use this ability. Funnily enough, in the example from AOA you can’t even use it to summon an on-level undead as the creature is level 10/large and the closest undead to it is the level 8 drake skeleton. That you can now summon at level 14.
Text: So the text of shambling horror reads as follows.
The reanimated creature is an undead skeleton or zombie. Choose a skeleton or zombie stat block of the same size as the original creature and of a level no higher than the creature's original level. The shambling horror keeps Speeds it had in life, as well as melee Strikes that deal only physical damage. These attacks use the highest attack modifier from the skeleton or zombie you choose. Some of the skeleton's or zombie's abilities might not make sense for the shambling horror, and some abilities the creature had in life might not persist in undeath; the GM makes the final choice of what abilities the horror has.
This is awesome! In theory. Being able to resurrect a creature and force it to use the abilities it had it life is awesome and probably the reason you’re a necromancer. The cons are everything else. The skeleton and zombie stat block is a staggeringly restrictive list of creatures, most of which don’t even go past lvl 11 with only 1 skeleton being level 13 and gargantuan. I put together a small Table of creatures that you can summon to put it better into picture. At every level you use this ability you will strain to find CL-4 opponents and will strain even harder to find them of the right size category. However, no matter what you do or how you manage you suddenly stop having valid targets after 17th level when skeleton titan is no longer best in slot.
The second half of the text reads
A shambling horror has the minion trait. You can't control more than one shambling horror at the same time—if you create a new one while one is already under your control, you must choose one to release, causing it to lose the minion trait. Shambling horrors that have been released expire when the spell duration does. After the duration expires, you can cast shambling horror again on the same corpse to animate it once more. However, after the next sunrise, you can no longer animate the corpse as a shambling horror.
This makes this ability even harder to use! If you thought that you could go out and find a proper undead minion to use this ability with well, you’re wrong! Along with the staggeringly small list of creatures this ability applies to and the difficulty one might have locating a proper one for reanimation the fact your pool of bodies resets every sunrise guarantees that the only way you can get a useful summon is if the GM pity throws one your way.
So, what does this all mean? Well, it’s more complicated then I first thought. The spell by itself isn’t too bad. The fact it doesn’t require sustaining and last between combats means that you can (in theory) have a nice undead minion around with you sustained by a renewable resource. My biggest issue with this spell is the incredibly restrictive size and level rules making it nearly impossible to find a target during adventure. Compounded by the fact that it is limited in another really unfun way, the lack of published content. If we had Skeletons and Zombies of every size from levels 8-16 this would be a better focus spell and, despite all its restrictions, I would encourage any reanimator to pick it up but until that happens it feels like a trap option to me.
I am really hoping I missed something or mis-interpreted some text but I don’t think I have. I am really interested in hearing in what the community has to say and maybe give some feedback/context I haven’t seen.
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Yeah that was my take as well.
I would change the wording to :target: any and then "this creature uses the abilities of a zombie or skeleton of your level -4"
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Everything in Pathfinder 2nd Edition requires the GM to pity throw you something. That's nothing new.
The developers went a long ways towards ensuring that players had no power to disrupt the GM's campaign, at least not with in-game elements.
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Maybe you can make use of the skeleton and zombie templates to get a level appropiate monster to raise?
Adding the appropriate template to a monster is a great idea and one I've seen echoed on the reddit by a few. While not all tables would be willing to make such changes on the fly I think mine would.
However, that only addresses half the issue with the other half being the incredible rareness of CL-4 enemies to apply the adjustment too. It honestly feels like the ability was written without having looked at published content. If the solution is to apply adjustment stat blocks to enemies you kill its still not helpful if you never fight CL-4 creatures.
But if we use Alastar's suggestion of targeting any creature (so more viable uses) and using any relevant skeleton/zombie stat block -4 we are back into the issue of there just not being enough printed creatures to use.
I think there's a good amount of room here for player made content obviously. A few stat blocks or even a CL-X change would make this ability much more usable. But the idea that an ability was released like this, seemingly not taking into account actual play is frustrating. Especially being the "capstone" of an archetype that at least I was really looking forward too.
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The ability would make a lot more sense if you could target any creature but the thing you pull from the corpse is your level -4 instead.
You can already pull pretty much whatever you want out of the corpse as long as it's of the right size, so the overly restrictive level requirement doesn't seem like it adds anything when we could just use that as a rule for the result.
Everything in Pathfinder 2nd Edition requires the GM to pity throw you something. That's nothing new.
Uh, what?
A lot of options, most even, just work normally. You don't need GMs to tailor entire campaigns just to make a single feature functional. Not optimal mind you, or even a good idea, but literally just functional at all.
The developers went a long ways towards ensuring that players had no power to disrupt the GM's campaign, at least not with in-game elements.
Actually, did you post in the wrong thread? I don't see how this has anything to do with the OP.
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Getting a level -4 corpse is easy. Just get a wagon and started carting around everything you kill like any respectable necromancer. Four levels later and it's ripe enough to become a shambling horror. XD
The ability would make a lot more sense if you could target any creature but the thing you pull from the corpse is your level -4 instead.
Also this.
Edit: Targets can't be dead longer than the last sunrise. Crap. That spell really does suck.
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I like the idea of whatever you reanimate being your level -4 when it arrives. It'll take a bit of fiddling with tables but once someone knows the ranges for skeleton and zombie values on the monster table it shouldn't be too difficult.
Granted that's making more work for either the player or the GM, so they'd have to be willing to do that work.
Like Onkonk said, you can use the rules for Zombie and Skeleton family abilities to create a zombie or skeleton from any creature.
So take the existing stats for the dead monster of whatever level, subtract the appropriate number from its proficiency values across the board. Change the HP to be something appropriate. Remove any special abilities that it had in life. Add some Skeleton or Zombie abilities as appropriate.
So ... maybe 10 minutes? Especially if the monster is already written onto its own monster summary sheet for an in-person game. Hand the sheet over to the player and let them take a pencil to the various bonuses.
