Best Skeletons and Zombies by CR?

[Coidzor]

Anyone know that the time has been taken to look at this issue and formally lay it out? Or even just by HD of the base creature/resultant undead? Especially with Awakening taken into account...

I imagine for the CRs they're at, Hydras handily come in top at least as far as zombies go just from their sheer number of attacks.

[Divide by Zero]

My epic DN mostly used a lot of titan skeletons (not sure if they were efficient, but they were cool and made it easier to burn through the 1000+ HD) and dragon zombies. Hydras, of course, but that just feels cheesy. Halfling skeletons make good ranged mooks because they keep their +1 to thrown weapons and slings.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Taking Awaken Undead into consideration, Cave Troll (MM3) and Arrow Demon (MM3) are at the top of my list.

[Silva Stormrage]

As you said Hydras are incredibly useful as zombies. Awaken them and they gain their fast healing back too.

Zombie Dragons retain their breath attack and frightful presence as per Dranocmicon (Sp?). As well as other benefits making them very powerful flying mounts.

[adecoy95]

by challenge rating? im not shure, but you can use the druid handbooks to find good wild shape forms, they in turn will make decent skeletons. at least most of the time.

the charts will be more hit dice based than challenge rating based, but it could still be a decent place to start.

[Runestar]

Zombie and skeletal dragons (draconomicon) seem rather scary, since they retain their base bab (rather than using crappy HD). Take a skeleton young white dragon. For a cr2, that certainly outclasses every other cr2 foe in existence! :smalleek:

Ghaeles don't seem too bad with their tough NA and str scores.

[Tvtyrant]

Skeletons are probably best as archers, since they get a dex bonus and are resistant to arrows. Pick something with an obscene dex score and make it a skeleton, then give it a bow.

They also get claws on any hands they have, so Mariliths might be interesting.