[3.5] How to make these undead?

[Extra Anchovies]

There are a lot of undead templates that are much more interesting/powerful than skeletons and zombies, such as the Bone Creature, Corpse Creature, and Crypt Spawn. However, a good number of the ones I have found don't have any listed means of creation. I would like to know (if you all know) if, and how, the following templates could be applied to a creature (individually, of course):
Ghoulish Creature (Dragon Magazine #307)
Ghastly Creature (Dragon 307)
Mummified Creature (Dragon 300)
Wight template creature (Dragon 300)
Wraith template creature (Dragon 300)
Juju Zombie (Unapproachable East p. 66)
If you know of any official ways for a character to create creatures with these templates, or if you know of any reasonable homebrew suggestions, that'd be great!

[Ellowryn]

While i can't say anything about the Dragon Magazine undead, it specifically states in the JuJu Zombie entry that they can be made by the Create Undead spell cast by a 16th level Spellcaster or by "certain powerful curses or diseases, such as the blightspawned's Blight Touch."

[ace rooster]

Ghouls and ghasts are usually created when a creature dies of ghoul fever. It would seem a bit odd for an ogre to suddenly become medium and lose most of their strength, so I would assume that the template would be how to do it. They would lose any class levels, but would get the ghast template if they had 4 or more. Wraiths can be created from the create spawn ability of wraiths, as can wights (from wights obviously). Wights will also rise from any creature killed with negative levels, unless they rise as some other spawn first. The default entries in the MM assume that the target is a 0RHD humanoid, but the templates generalise well to other creature types. Mummies are trickier, and I don't know of any way to do it outside of either 1000 years in a tomb, or a wish. As a player or a DM I would be ok with being unable to create 'ancient' undead from a random goblin I just killed, so I would not have any easy way to do it in my games (I rule that create undead requires a suitable corpse, but personal preference only).

With the possible exception of mummy, all these templates will lose any class levels the creature previously had. Hope this helps.

[Rijan_Sai]

Actually, the spell Create Undead (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createUndead.htm) can make Ghouls, Ghasts, Mummys and Mohrgs, based on Caster Level. So yes, technically you could make an "ancient" undead from that goblin you just killed.*

As for the templated versions, I'm not sure if they technically overwrite the MM versions (as they were printed in Libris Mortis,) or if the spell could be used to create them, and not just the standad MM versions. (I am curious about this myself.)

*Re-read your post before submitting mine, saw the line about your houserule. RAW is still "Mummy at CL15+," but yours is certainly reasonable.

[Ettina]

I thought ghouls were made when a cannibal died? So ghoulish creatures would be a cannibal X that died?

[ace rooster]

I thought ghouls were made when a cannibal died? So ghoulish creatures would be a cannibal X that died?

This is suggested in the monster manual fluff section, right before "this may or may not be true". Setting dependent.

Create undead can probably do most of them, but you will have to talk to your DM about it. As a DM I tend to prefer not to extend the abilities of spells, particularly when there are more interesting ways of achieving the same thing than "I cast x at caster level y". Create undead is also a fairly high level spell, which is why I tend not to mention it.

[ShurikVch]

Wight and Wraith are simple

If creature died from negative levels, and cause of it last up to next night, creature will rise as wight

Stick some living creature into Negative Energy Plane. At death it will transform into Wraith.

Also, both templates have Create Spawn...

[Coidzor]

There are a lot of undead templates that are much more interesting/powerful than skeletons and zombies, such as the Bone Creature, Corpse Creature, and Crypt Spawn. However, a good number of the ones I have found don't have any listed means of creation. I would like to know (if you all know) if, and how, the following templates could be applied to a creature (individually, of course):

I feel your pain. That's part of why I liked Frank and K's Tome of Necromancy when I first came across it when I was younger, because it offered a way through the undead creation feats to get one's mitts on a semi-reasonable number of these creatures as a player and also have a clear path beyond pure-handwavium for Team Evil.


If you know of any official ways for a character to create creatures with these templates, or if you know of any reasonable homebrew suggestions, that'd be great!

No official ways, but allowing the spells that create the base version to also create the template version seems pretty reasonable to me.

Those aforementioned undead creation feats might be of interest as well, but aren't exactly necessary if you're willing to go in and make houserules.

Another thing to consider is a form of, say, Greater Animate Dead, which would open up some thing other than (Dragon) Skeletons, (Dragon) Zombies, Bloodhulks, and Necrosis Carnexes for higher level minion mastery. And also maybe provide an in-character method to create those variant zombies and skeletons from Libris Mortis.

Coming up with Incantations or rituals to create various forms of undead or homebrewing up some way of making them similar to golem crafting are probably the most flavorful routes open to you, as well as the most time-consuming at first glance. But probably the niftiest way if one is really willing to invest in such and then share.


Wight template creature (Dragon 300)

Should be creatable via a Wight or death by Energy Drain/negative levels. So... Enervation or Fell Drain Metamagic should get you that.


Ghoulish Creature (Dragon Magazine #307)
Ghastly Creature (Dragon 307)
Mummified Creature (Dragon 300)

Ghouls, Ghasts, and Mummies as templates should be probably be able to be made with Create Undead, since that creates the non-template forms of the creature.


Wraith template creature (Dragon 300)

Create Greater Undead makes Wraiths, so it should also be able to make the template version.


Juju Zombie (Unapproachable East p. 66)

I'd say they'd be in line with the power of Create Undead from what I can recall of their capabilities. They're not that different from a Gravetouched Ghoul or Ghoul-as-template creature or even Mummified template put on a humanoid base creature.