This is an article in the continuing series, “Fun with Magic”, where I examine spells from the D20 System Reference Document, which corresponds to spells from the Player’s Handbook v. 3.5. These spells are in almost every campaign and form the foundation of spells used in Yön. Each article demonstrates strengths and weaknesses of a particular spell and some unique applications for each, to the limit of the author’s imagination, such as it is.
Animate Dead
Necromancy [Evil]
Level: Clr 3, Death 3, Sor/Wiz 4
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Targets: One or more corpses touched
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No
This spell turns the bones or bodies of dead creatures into undead skeletons or zombies that follow your spoken commands.
The undead can follow you, or they can remain in an area and attack any creature (or just a specific kind of creature) entering the place. They remain animated until they are destroyed. (A destroyed skeleton or zombie can’t be animated again.)
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)
The undead you create remain under your control indefinitely. No matter how many times you use this spell, however, you can control only 4 HD worth of undead creatures per caster level. If you exceed this number, all the newly created creatures fall under your control, and any excess undead from previous castings become uncontrolled. (You choose which creatures are released.) If you are a cleric, any undead you might command by virtue of your power to command or rebuke undead do not count toward the limit.
Skeletons: A skeleton can be created only from a mostly intact corpse or skeleton. The corpse must have bones. If a skeleton is made from a corpse, the flesh falls off the bones.
Zombies: A zombie can be created only from a mostly intact corpse. The corpse must be that of a creature with a true anatomy.
Material Component: You must place a black onyx gem worth at least 25 gp per Hit Die of the undead into the mouth or eye socket of each corpse you intend to animate. The magic of the spell turns these gems into worthless, burned-out shells.
Ah,
animate dead, the evil priest’s or necromancer’s first instant minions spell. Players don’t generally use this spell much because of the [Evil] descriptor. Particularly nasty evil priests or necromancers (and when have you seen one that wasn’t?) will cast this spell on fallen comrades—if possible, after casting
death knell to finish them off—and reanimate them as skeletons so the surviving adventurers get to watch the flesh fall off the bones of their friends, which then seek to slay them. The morale effect is way out of proportion to the strength of the spell, since skeletons and zombies only pose a problem to inexperienced adventurers. Of course, if they’ve had time to moulder, zombies of fallen friends work well for striking fear and disgust into those pesky adventurers, too.
A quick glance at the spell shows that evil priests will be more likely to use the spell than evil arcane casters: it is lower level for them and they have more ways to buff undead creatures, such as using desecrate spells or an evil cleric’s bolster undead class ability.