Create Undead without Casting Myself

[g3taso]

I am looking for creating undead, but hopefully not having to incur the cost myself directly. So are there any outsiders I can tap via Planar Binding or Planar Ally that can cast either Create Undead spell, or perhaps some item that casts it once per day so I don't have to spend a bunch ofmoney?

[Coidzor]

Are you talking about for D&D 3.5, or...?

[g3taso]

Pathfinder or 3.5 is acceptable!

[Mastikator]

You can summon undead creatures.
http://dungeons-and-dragons-35.wikia.com/wiki/Summon_Undead_I

if you summon a wight, then that wight kills something, it will rise as a wight. Which you can then control
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/controlUndead.htm

[Oberon Kenobi]

This is the general roleplaying forum. Threads about 3.5 or PF should go to the 3.5/3rd edition forum.Indeed, you'd probably have better luck from the system-hackers over there.

For a quick-and-dirty answer, though: pick up the False Focus (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/false-focus) feat and nab yourself a snazzy holy symbol tattoo (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/goods-and-services/toys-games-puzzles#TOC-Holy-Symbol). You can only create 4HD of undead per casting for free this way, but if all you want is a zombie/skelly army, it'll do ya. If you don't mind taking the Warlock levels, you can pick up The Dead Walk and do this all day long.

False Focus also lets you kit out your army for free, if you're into that kind of thing. Fabricate (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/fabricate)'s "material component" is the materials used to make whatever you're making, so you can conjure up 100 gp worth of equipment out of thin air.
Edit: Actually, make that 200gp of equipment; manufacturing an item costs half its value in raw materials, so yeah. Depending on how mundane your GM considers black onyx to be, you might be able to Fabricate up a stockpile of the stuff and use it to create those more powerful undead, too.

This all assumes you care more about the monetary cost than the cost in time and spell slots. And I'm sure the TO crowd can drop some dagnabbed crazy knowledge on you that puts my advice to shame anyway. :smalltongue:

[noob]

Take 16 Machinesmith levels
Look how much awesome it is to create one construct able to build whatever you want and with all your abilities and feat for the crafting skills.
See that you can create one per day and that they last for ever.
Obtain unlimited wealth and create all the magic items you want with unchained use of crafting.
Create items for creating undead and make your faithful machines use the items.
Or take 20 levels of Arcanamechanist and use at will wish scrolls.
Or be a level 10 wizard and also a familiar and use duplicate familiar on yourself for having a caster able to do the job.
Or yet simply use simulacrum and create a simulacrum of someone able to create undeads (like an undead able to create spawns it controls) and then each time it kills it makes one more servitor.

[Inevitability]

Find a spawn-creating undead, such as a shadow, vampire, wight, or mohrg. Cast Command Undead, Control Undead, or Rebuke it, then let it make you some spawn. Finally you let your pet undead command his spawn to follow your every command, after which you put it somewhere where it is alive but not able to reverse its commands (demiplane, forcecage, sealed tomb, buried under a few meters of cement).

[hamishspence]

If "cost" is just "money" (the black gems) then there's ways of getting around that.

Warlocks can use "The Dead Walk" to animate undead temporarily.

[The Viscount]

If you just don't want to pay, fell animate or fell drain will get you things for free. If you have a means of negative levels, that will animate the target as a wight (though DMs might object to things that do not call out specifically) though you still have to control it. Fell animate means the creature is automatically under your control.