| Luiginosuke |
If the alchemist is level 10, and a large undead corpse in front of him has 19 HD, can the alchemist raise it? The raised zombie would have 21 HD, so more than double the caster lever. Here is the discovery text:
Benefit: The alchemist gains the ability to animate a relatively complete corpse as an alchemy-powered zombie. This process takes 1 hour and costs 100 gp in alchemical reagents per HD of the corpse being animated; the dead creature gains the zombie template. Zombies that are created in this manner count as undead created by animate dead for the purposes of determining how many undead the alchemist can control. The created zombie is a creature, not a supernatural effect.
From the text, the example lvl 10 alchemist clearly cannot CONTROL more than 40HD of undead, but sounds like the 20HD CREATE limit of Animate Dead does not apply. Right?
| Pizza Lord |
I don't read that 20 HD limit to apply. The wording of the discovery is only that the alchemically created undead use the same pool of control (in this case 40 HD; caster HD x4). You could create a 41 HD undead if you found a suitable corpse, paid the cost, and raised it. It would just be uncontrolled, though you could gain control later, such as with command undead or something theoretically (the spell, not the cleric feat, which has a control pool only equal to your cleric level).
| Azothath |
Alchemical Zombie thread, 2025 a connection is drawn to Animate Dead (Zombies that are created in this manner count as undead created by animate dead for the purposes of determining how many undead the alchemist can control.) where, Regardless of the type of undead you create with this spell, you can't create more HD of undead than twice your caster level with a single casting of animate dead. The desecrate spell doubles this limit. which is not much of a limit.
CR is more the limit as 'boss' creatures at CR=APL+3 will tend to have 1.25*(APL+3) HD at most with Huge adding 4 which is less than 2*APL.
Mammoth Elephant, huge anml $3000 mount has 13HD for an 17HD Alch Zombie.
Challenge Rating(CR), Average Party Level(APL), Hit Dice(HD)
Otherwise you'll have to consult Dr. Frankenstein