Wands of Animate Dead

[Grytorm]

You get a bunch of casters together who can't cast Animate dead yet. One uses a wand to animate as many skeletons as he can. Then the wand is given to the next person who does it as well eventually getting to everyone. So does everyone participating now have a small force of undead?

[Duke of URL]

In theory, yes. But the wand would be frightfully expensive at that level, given the extra material component costs, since it would require the maximum component value per charge.

Level 4 wand base: 21,000 gp
Material cost: 50 charges * ([minimum caster level] 7 * 2 HD / charge) * 25 gp /HD = 17,500 gp
Total price: 38500 gp.

Edit: it could be made as a level 3 Cleric wand, but that's still 12,500 gp in material costs on top of 11,250 for the base wand.

[dsmiles]

Alternatively, you could use the AD&D (or maybe it was BD&D) version of the spell. It animated everything in (roughly translating inches to feet) a 60' radius of the caster, have that put on a stone, and voila! Animate Dead trap!

I substituted that spell in for Animate Dead in 3.5, and players had access to it, and never spammed it, believe it or not.

[Grytorm]

So it would be costly. Would a eternal wand from Eberon be any cheaper? You can only go up to third level arcane spells. The possible solution would be for a Dread Necromancer to take Animate dead through advanced learning. It might not work because you already have it on your list.

[Volthawk]

Alternatively, you could use the AD&D (or maybe it was BD&D) version of the spell. It animated everything in (roughly translating inches to feet) a 60' radius of the caster, have that put on a stone, and voila! Animate Dead trap!

I substituted that spell in for Animate Dead in 3.5, and players had access to it, and never spammed it, believe it or not.

That exists. Plague of Undead in the SpC. Turns all suitable corpses in Short range into zombies or skeletons. With max HP, to boot. 9th level spell, though...

[Duke of URL]

So it would be costly. Would a eternal wand from Eberon be any cheaper? You can only go up to third level arcane spells. The possible solution would be for a Dread Necromancer to take Animate dead through advanced learning. It might not work because you already have it on your list.

Shenanigans aside, I think eternal wands still require 50 * material cost for spells with a material component, but I'm not sure on that score. But a standard wondrous item has a note on duplicating spells with a material component:


If item is continuous or unlimited, not charged, determine cost as if it had 100 charges. If it has some daily limit, determine as if it had 50 charges.

So, I'd expect that 50 * (max) cost would be the formula for an eternal wand.