Simulacrum Questions (and an idea for mass use of them)

[Chilingsworth]

First: Do Simulacra that have racial spellcasting get it cut in half? I can clearly see the reasoning behind giving them full access to the original's spell like abilities (namely, there's no stated progression for those abilities to be gained.) But, it seems to me that something that can easily be reduced (such as effective spellcasting) would be.

Also, when you reduce a creature's HD, they lose feats. How do you chose which of the original's feats are lost?

Second: is there a Simulacra handbook somewhere out there?

Lastly, an idea: How well would large numbers of strategically placed Formian Queen Simulacra work as "cell tower" equivilants?

[rockdeworld]

1. No, they don't. It would be sane and logical to reduce their CL (and remove access to abilities if their CL is lower than the minimum needed to cast an equivalent spell). Unfortunately, some monsters have CL much higher than their HD (eg. Nightmare Unicorn).

In the case of simulacra, there's no RAW answer for the feats. I'd just count from left to right.

I don't know of any handbook, although Simulacrum is used in a lot of dirty tricks. In fact, I used it in a campaign I ran, and the party never got all the clones. I also used it for Santa, from last December's Iron Chef. Feel free to write a handbook for it.

Formian Queen cell towers: it works. Of course, they have to start the call.

[Yora]

Spell-like abilities usually have the same caster level as the creatures HD. There are exceptions, but as a GM designing monsters, and making a ruling of what the PCs can do with a simulacrum, I would say that these exceptions are effectively "Caster Level = HD +/- x".
A succubus has 6 HD but a caster level of 12th, so their caster level would be HD+6. And if you make a simulacrum, it's CL 9th.

Same thing for a nymph who has 6 HD and casts spells like a 7th level druid. Her spellcaster level would be HD+1 and in a simulacrum CL 4th.

Now an interesting question is this: Can a creature with CL 6th have 4th level SLAs? And SLAs do have a spell level, since that's how the save DC is calculated.
If creatures do indeed need a sufficient CL to use SLAs, then a simulacrum might lose some of them.
Edit: Yes it can, the SRD explicitly says so.

With Feats, the choice which ones are lost is made by the GM as he sees fit. As long as you don't keep feats for which the creature lost the prerequisites, it should be fine.
Feats marked with "B" ignore both number of feats per HD, as well as any prerequisites.

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Nightmares don't even have SLAs, their abilities are Supernatural.