Clone spell + Animate Dead spell; Technical Support

[Ravenv13]

Sooo... My DM and I are quite confused on the technical aspects of the clone spell. I have a gestalt necromancer. Base point is, if you use the clone spell (while living) but do not preserve the body; is this a viable source for animate dead (or create undead/greater undead), given all other conditions are met?

[Segev]

Sooo... My DM and I are quite confused on the technical aspects of the clone spell. I have a gestalt necromancer. Base point is, if you use the clone spell (while living) but do not preserve the body; is this a viable source for animate dead (or create undead/greater undead), given all other conditions are met?

Yes. Once the clone body dies due to lack of preservation, it's a corpse.

[Ravenv13]

This could be abused heavily. I plan to use it to clone monsters. we play in an evil/antihero campaign and my necromancer is dedicated to Orcus. Im trying to earn a place as a general or commander by raising undead and using some sort of planar teleportation spell to send them to the Bone Palace. All the while using my undead minion to spread more undead across the world. I have an apocalypse plague zombie (actually just a zombie with zombie rot). Highly funny part. I also play the role of non-magical healer. The necromancer uses asclepian doctor, and anyone he cant save, he animates.

Edit: At higher levels i could make clones of myself.

[Segev]

This could be abused heavily. I plan to use it to clone monsters. we play in an evil/antihero campaign and my necromancer is dedicated to Orcus. Im trying to earn a place as a general or commander by raising undead and using some sort of planar teleportation spell to send them to the Bone Palace. All the while using my undead minion to spread more undead across the world. I have an apocalypse plague zombie (actually just a zombie with zombie rot). Highly funny part. I also play the role of non-magical healer. The necromancer uses asclepian doctor, and anyone he cant save, he animates.

Edit: At higher levels i could make clones of myself.

If you're in a position to get the materials to clone a monster, you probably could get the monster itself to kill and animate. And a zombie of yourself is nothing impressive when you're a human spellcaster. I don't see this as broken.

[Ravenv13]

If you're in a position to get the materials to clone a monster, you probably could get the monster itself to kill and animate. And a zombie of yourself is nothing impressive when you're a human spellcaster. I don't see this as broken.

The clone of myself is purely comical. And i guess that combo by itself isnt broken. I Guess the broken part is the setup; having a "lair" and the capability to capture/experiment/harvest creatures repeatedly.

Edit: on the topic of cloning pc's barbarians or archetypes thereof would probably be best.

[StevenC21]

No.

Animated Zombies & Skeletons lose all hit dice from class.

[Thurbane]

And a zombie of yourself is nothing impressive when you're a human spellcaster. I don't see this as broken.

How about a Corpse Creature clone of yourself?

[Segev]

How about a Corpse Creature clone of yourself?

I don't know enough about Corpse Creature to make a comment. What's it from?

[StevenC21]

It's from the Book of Vile Darkness.

It is similar to the Zombie template, except you don't lose class levels, you retain mental ability scores, etc.

I personally think it's a solid LA +1 template.

[Segev]

It's from the Book of Vile Darkness.

It is similar to the Zombie template, except you don't lose class levels, you retain mental ability scores, etc.

I personally think it's a solid LA +1 template.

Sounds like it. When you apply it to your clone, you have to ask yourself: are the class levels based on the body or the mind/soul? What happens when you make a Corpse Creature out of a commoner who's been in a coma his entire life?

[Quarian Rex]

How about a Corpse Creature clone of yourself?

That's actually a really interesting question. I don't think that there is any kind of RAW support for this one way or another so it would really be a DM call.

I think that it is pretty obvious that you can animate a dead pre-awakened clone based on racial HD, but as a DM I would say that class levels/memories would be based on the soul bound to the body as it died. It is impossible (AFAIK) to 'awaken' a clone with the base characters knowledge/abilities before the the death of the prior body, so I can't see any justification for undeath being able to tap into something that the meatsack never actually had.

There is actually a pretty good argument to support this in the Resurrection line of spells. No one can be brought back to life if they are undead so it would seem undeath tends to bind (and perhaps feed off of) the targets soul, and that would be a good basis for saying that undead made from the remains of someone who is still 'alive' in another body would not have access to that characters class levels/memories. So, a vampire trying to turn a wizard with a prepared Clone would get nothing more than a Vampire Spawn.

Note that this is not a RAW argument per se, I think that this is one of those niche cases where RAW bottoms out, but I think that the above is a playable and fair interpretation that gives power to the PCs (kill some good animate fodder and can make more for 5,000 gp a pop) while protecting them as well (proper cloning/resurrection contingencies prevent enemies from tapping the PCs power/knowledge through undead).

I think that the key here (as with all troublesome niche cases like this) is to just think through the consequences of you judgement (whichever way you decide to go), so you are not blindsided by the potential impact on the game, and to be consistent in your ruling.