Feats and equipment for zombies

[Aurosman]

So I've gotten far enough in my game where I am starting to awaken my undead minions to improve their fighting abilities. It got me looking and I couldn't really find any threads about good feats for zombies. We are level 9 and about to head into the underdark for probably the rest of the campaign.

I'm mainly looking for stuff for a zombie dragon that I just animated. It wasnt until now that I found out that any breath weapon feat needs con to take, so none of those work.

Also, any obscure useful equipment that would help their fighting abilities? (Artificer in party so will be able to craft whatever we need at somepoint)

Still pretty new to the game so don't know slot of thee feats yet. Any suggestions are welcome.

So in a nutshell looking for
1. Feats for generic zombies
2. Feats for more special zombies
3. Feats for a dragon zombie
4. Any equipment that would help(not weapons or armor but other types of equipment)

[The Viscount]

Depending on the size of the dragon, it might be worth looking into some of the Savage Species feats like Crush and Snatch. Lifesense is a great feat for undead in your party. A big undead dragon might actually make good use of dustup. You might consider improved flight, since you need Good or Perfect to hover, or just the Hover feat.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Awaken Undead does not say anything about giving the creature skills or feats, it doesn't do that. Those things aren't retroactively gained whenever you give it an intelligence score, but it would gain them for new hit dice or levels gained, but it cannot gain more hit dice or levels. Awaken Undead gives back extraordinary abilities, so a dragon would regain its SR if it had any, but not DR/Magic or its breath attack since those are supernatural.

The best undead creatures to awaken are skeletons and zombies of Cave Trolls (fast healing, amazing special attacks), Razor Boars (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/razorBoar.htm), and other creatures with fast healing and/or extraordinary natural attacks like a Cave Triceratops (Miniatures Handbook). Spell Resistance is an extraordinary quality, as are most energy resistances and immunities. Damage reduction for a type of material (Adamantine, Cold Iron, Silver) and DR/- is extraordinary and would be regained, but DR/Magic, Good/Evil, Epic, etc. is supernatural and would not.

[Remuko]

Awaken Undead does not say anything about giving the creature skills or feats, it doesn't do that. Those things aren't retroactively gained whenever you give it an intelligence score, but it would gain them for new hit dice or levels gained, but it cannot gain more hit dice or levels. Awaken Undead gives back extraordinary abilities, so a dragon would regain its SR if it had any, but not DR/Magic or its breath attack since those are supernatural.

The best undead creatures to awaken are skeletons and zombies of Cave Trolls (fast healing, amazing special attacks), Razor Boars (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/razorBoar.htm), and other creatures with fast healing and/or extraordinary natural attacks like a Cave Triceratops (Miniatures Handbook). Spell Resistance is an extraordinary quality, as are most energy resistances and immunities. Damage reduction for a type of material (Adamantine, Cold Iron, Silver) and DR/- is extraordinary and would be regained, but DR/Magic, Good/Evil, Epic, etc. is supernatural and would not.

I did some reading up on this subject of awakened undead and I can understand the arguments from both sides. The way I see it though and the way I think makes the most sense is that when you awaken an undead, it obviously doesn't recover feats or skills from its past life, it doesnt have that soul or memories anymore. However the new thing animating it is a new being just taking control of said body and I'd treat it awakening to intelligence like making a new character. Some see it as an X HD creature who has already missed its chance to get skills and feats for its preexisting HD but I disagree, I think that new consciousness is basically a new character (NPC at worst) and should get skills and feats as if it was just being created (because in a way it is). Example, if I create a 6th level rogue he still gets his lvl 3 and 6 feats even though he's already level 6; I think this new animating force controlling the undead that was awakened should be treated similarly and I don't think there's enough evidence to suggest RAW is 100% against it either, not to mention it's very unlikely to break anything. In fact I'd even say if you were awakening an intelligent 1HD Skeleton you could swap out its first HD for a class level just like a normal PC can, but that's me YMMV.

[Sagetim]

Which comes back to 'ask your dm for clarification'.

Away from skills and feats, gear is easier to answer. If you have fabricate and wall of iron, make your undead a bunch of masterwork suits of iron full plate from a wall of iron. It's not going to be strictly as good as steel armor would be, but it's full plate, it's masterwork, and most people to my knowledge don't really bother with sundering or item hp rules. Similarly you could make heavy iron shields and iron longswords (or just get short spears) to go with the armor, and have a phalanx, possibly with the phalanx fighting feat. Set skeletons up with breast plates, bows and arrows (along with a backup melee weapon and a buckler) and you'll have some decent firing squad backup.

If they start counting as characters and gain xp accordingly, you're probably going to be eating into your own party's xp gain rate by having them in combat with the rest of you. If, however, you use these undead to deal with encounters that are essentially beneath the party's efforts, you could parcel out undead to particular other players in the group and run them as a secondary party fighting lesser underdark threats while the main party does other things.

I'm left wondering if you invested in feats like corpsecrafter and anything else from that chain of feats though. It seems like the easier way to get potent undead than awakening them. Which, if I recall right, costs you xp or at least money. That said, if you did pick up corpse crafter and some of the others, it could be a rather unique experience to run that phalanx and archers as a secondary party, because they would have decent to good stats, and maybe some turn resistance preventing them from just being annihilated/controlled by the nearest cleric.

[Aurosman]

As for the whole debate on whether awakened undead gain feats or not, my GM ruled they do. If you wanna discuss this more make a new post and will be willing​ to discuss there.


I am currently a dread necromancer, at level 9. And I do have copsecrafter + one or 2 of the sub feats(don't have my sheet on me right now). As for minions I have 20 1hd generic skeletons, 2 5hd skeletons, 2 5hd very young black dragon skeletons, 1 13hd jouvinile green dragon skeleton, and 1 19hd adult black dragon zombie.(we ended up killing a family of dragons cause they kept wanting revenge after we killed 1 before I could animated it) and about to have a zombie Naga also.

I got the green dagon skeletons feats already thought up, imp. Natural weapon x3(one for bite, claw, and wing),and then multiattack and imp. Multiattack. And the others are mainly going to be used as fodder/guards at night, so not really worried about them.

I like the flight feats, but I have a feeling flight is gonna be useless in the underdark, never been there before so please tell me if I'm wrong.

[Sagetim]

I was going to say something about flyby attack or that flying breath feat for laying waste like a bomber dropping napalm in vietnam...and then I remembered we're talking about dragon skeletons that don't necessarily have breath weapons.

If they still count as spellcasters, then using flying is a great way to out-range opponents and keep them from simply running up and smashing. But, again, you're going down into the underdark. While there Are giant caves down there, they're still more cramped than the effectively limitless expanse of the sky.

Oh, Dread Necromancer. No Fabricate, No Wall of Iron. Good to know then. On the bright side, if your GM lets you stack corpse crafter with Undead Mastery, that's a +8 to strength and +4 hp per hit die on those undead minions.

With your generic skeletons, you could split them into two teams of 10. Archers and Phalanx troops, and keep them in the back for when things inevitably go south and your dragons get torn through by something big, mean, and scary. Then you have the phalanx of skeletons between you and that and can keep running away while they keep it busy and continue shooting, respectively. Since skeletons aren't going to complain about carry capacity (and they don't need to carry food or other gear) you could have the phalanx skeletons also carry bows and arrows and act as ranged support attackers alongside the dedicated archer skeletons. The main problem is going to be shooting into melee at some point, but if the archer skeletons have a level of fighter instead of undead, they can take point blank shot and precise shot as their feats, while the phalanx fighters can take phalanx fighting and...I don't know. Weapon focus maybe?

Your 5Hd skeletons are in a good position to either act as snipers or a vanguard for your personal defense. I'd opt for vanguard, because dread necromancer is kind of squishy. Suit them, if nothing else, up in full plate with a Heavy shield and spear and have them hanging out on either side of you. A short sword or hand axe as a backup weapon would do them well. Phalanx Fighting requires a +1 BAB and shield proficiency, so they can take it as a level 3 feat. As long as they are fighting with a heavy shield and a light weapon they get a +1 to AC. They can also form up next to each other and form a shield wall for +2 more to AC, and a +1 to reflex saves. Since they don't have 1 BAB at 1st hit die, Improved Shield Bash might serve them well as a means of doing bludgeoning damage without losing their shield bonus to AC.

Also worth mentioning is that you could saddle up those dragons and put skeletons (or party members) with mounted combat on them. They might not be controlling where it goes all the time, but they could ride along on top of the dragon and use their ride check to try and negate attacks that would otherwise hit.

[The Viscount]

For these dragons are you using the skeletal dragon and zombie dragon templates from draconomicon? They're also made by animate dead, and they allow you to keep more stuff (including reduced breath weapon).

[Aurosman]

Yes they are created with the dragon animate dead templates. So my zombie does have its breath. But it can't get any feats to improve it's breath cause all the feats need con scores.