Evil Cleric question.

[pibnemo]

So my character is an evil cleric and I'm really starting to get into the full fledged necromancy portion of it. A couple of my fellow adventurers died killing each other and I preserved their bodies and kept them! My question is this: Can I bring them back and animate their dead? And if I can would they be stronger than the typical zombie they would normally be? My theory behind this is that they were adventurers! So the should be stronger than average Joe zombie. DM said if you can find something and it seems good I can use it! So please help haha.

[myancey]

They'll just be zombies. But check through Libris Mortis for alt. spells. Undead Lieutenant might bring them back with their personalities, albeit with an evil, negative-energy inspired twist.

[Divide by Zero]

Create (Greater) Undead can create intelligent undead, and Awaken Undead from Libris Mortis might sort of work depending on how your DM interprets it.

[begooler]

If your DM is willing and thinks it is appropriate that they become more than 'just zombies' see if he will let you raise them as Necropolitans. That's a playable undead race in LM. It has no LA, but they would lose a level from being raised.

(You would have to refluff the race slightly, since in the book there is a ritual that the necropolitan to be has to go through before dying and being raised.)

Normally though, with animate dead, you just make normal zombies or skeletons. They lose their class levels, even if they were super duper adventurers.

Caution though... I could see you and you're DM doing this for the sake of story, but really, it's way too overpowered for you to go around raising dead and giving them class levels. (Well, until you get the higher level spells that let you do that.)

[Olo Demonsbane]

Create (Greater) Undead can create intelligent undead, and Awaken Undead from Libris Mortis might sort of work depending on how your DM interprets it.

Specifically, Create Undead at a 15+ CL will let you raise them as Mummies, and with the rules for Mummy Lords being so ill-defined...

[WinWin]

The zombie entry in the monster manual and SRD spells this out.

Drop any HD from class levels. A normal humanoid instead gains 2 undead hit dice.

Lose all feats. Gain Toughness.

Wisdom becomes 10. Charisma 1. No intelligence or Constitution. +2 to strength, -2 to dex.

So a 10th level fighter with a 20 strength would become a 2 HD zombie with 22 strength.

[Undercroft]

You could maybe ask your DM to allow you to animate them as Karnathi Skeletons/Zombies instead of the bog standard ones. They've got 3HD (rather than the 1 or 2 HD they'd normally have) and have an int score (so feats and skills). Maybe suggest paying an extra 150g per corpse to pay for the special alchemical ingredients needed to animate them this way.

also i think there's some blood-filled zombie type monsters you can get using animate dead. Its in MM3 or MM5 i think (really can't remember which off the top of my head)

[Greenish]

Animate Dread Warrior is from one of the FR books, maybe Unapproachable East or Shining South. I'm AFB, but I think it does something.