creating undead with templates? how does one do this?

[Rockbeard]

So I am running a necromancer soon in a new 3.5 game. and while looking over undead for future use and checking forums for ideas. i came across things like swarm shifter, ghost brute, and many other "undead" templates. and well how does one as a player apply these to the undead you make... or can you apply it to undead you have found? "doubt that can be done"

like if i say... kill a crow and then plan to raise said crow for simple what have you reasons. making it a ghost or the ability to just turn into sand seems really good for just s simple crow recon bird/flavor fun thing. so when i create/command/animate/summon/and so on with undead. how can i make these guys have templates. is it just a i say they have em so they do when i made them? do i need a string of feats? or im i out of luck and just have to find a already ghost/swarm shifter to steal or raise?
any idea plz let me know or links that can help please share them.

thank you for your time on this matter.

[the_david]

Some undead might have a blurb about how you can create them with Create Undead. The ones that don't... Yeah, it's just not a perfect situation. If you can't find it in the creature entry itself there probably isn't an official way to get it done.

Maybe someone made a list in a necromancer's guide.

[Rockbeard]

Some undead might have a blurb about how you can create them with Create Undead. The ones that don't... Yeah, it's just not a perfect situation. If you can't find it in the creature entry itself there probably isn't an official way to get it done.

Maybe someone made a list in a necromancer's guide.

yeah not much i can find on it really. seems it may have to be house ruled. as a DM myself at times i would most likely rule it to be at creation. or a possible upgrade done via a ritual or something. possibly add an extra cost to create per hit die. as i know its like 25g per hit die via animate. so i guess add like another 25g or more depending one the template. or maybe less as you dont get a zombie or skeleton with some things like ghost... granted a ghost skeleton would be a sweet spooker.

[Estradus]

Some undead might have a blurb about how you can create them with Create Undead. The ones that don't... Yeah, it's just not a perfect situation. If you can't find it in the creature entry itself there probably isn't an official way to get it done.

Maybe someone made a list in a necromancer's guide.

In the past I made a list of all of the undead I *could* find rules for making, and I've been planing to make to make a full 3rd party included necromancer's army handbook at *some* point. That's going to be a ways off, though. I'll see if I can find that list on my old laptop to share now.

In my recent necromancer thread, Oberron mentioned a house rule his dm made, where special variant undead (like the various alternate skeletons in the back of libris mortis) could be created by casting the Animate Dead spell from a higher level spell slot, at a rate of 1 spell level = 1/2 a cr increase. I'm not quite a fan of that, but I thought I would mention it. Other rules exist in a variety of books for casting another spell or spells along with animate dead / create undead to create these variants, but I've never seen anything like, codifying those.

Off the top of my head, useful templates or varieties of undead you can raise include:
Dread. I think theyre creatable from Animate Dead, one of the Forgotten Realms books. Basically just floating arms carrying swords. They can fly, and you can save the other bones for whatever.
Relentless Template: The Monsters Handbook from Legends and Lairs publishing has a template called Relentless, +2 hd, 3 points of fast healing, can be created by using 8 times the standard amount of onyx when animating/creating.
My favorite, though, is the Undead Beasts from Bestiary of Krynn, dragonlance setting. There are two types of Undead Beast, a giant dog-like thing that can grab guys with its rib bones and like, an undead antlion thing, and they can be created with the Animate Undead Beast spell, cleric 6. It requires a number of HD of animal corpses equal to the HD of the given undead beast, which i think is 25 for the ribdog and 18 for the antlion.

Okay, I found the sheet I made like, 10 years ago, so this content is probably only a fraction of what I could get today and I'm not 100% certain right now what some of these book acronyms are, but here's what I've got that I have like, actual rules for making
Husk Template: whatever book "toc" is, basically skeleton template for bugs, animate dead
greater zombie template: TOC again, better than regular zombies, barely intelligent, create undead
Bone creature and corpse creature (Templates), book of vile darkness, basically intelligent skeletons and zombies, create undead
Spectral mage (Template): magic of faerun, create greater undead cl 16
Dread Warrior template: Unapproachable East (Faerun) special animate dread warrior spell
Juju zombie (Template): Unapprpachable East, create undead cl 16
Bonesinger template (Ghostwalk): create undead cl12, target has to be a bard
Crypt THing, fiend folio, create undead 14
Baneguard and direguard, lost empires of faerun, skeletons with some SLA's, create undead 14 and 16
Dread, animate dead, lost empires, floating arms
Flame Skull: Lost Empires, create undead 14, only works on spellcaster
Dread Ram, ghostwalk, create undead 14
Decroplasm, ghostwalk, create undead 14
Undead Martyr, Ghostwalk, Create undead 14
Spectral Steed, ghostwalk, create undead 15
Bloodhulk, monster manual 4, animate dead
Defacer, MM4, create undead 14 on a creature that uses magic to mimic others, like a doppleganger
Necrosis Carnex, MM4, animate dead cl 11
Blackwing, MM5, a large sized bird is buried in an unhllow zone for 6 months then hit with create undead level 18
Sanguineous Drinker, MM5, create undead level 15
Bonespur, mm5, create undead level 8 - i didnt even know anyone could cast create undead that low
Serpentir, mm5, create undead 10
spectral rider, mm5, create undead 12,
Skulleton, tome of Horrors. Ritual requires level 9, you get the skull of a humanoid or monsterous humanoid, a few bones, 1 pint of dirt. powder the spare bones and mix with the dirt, cast the following spells in order: contagion, fly, stinking cloud, and animate dead. within 1 hour, the Skulleton animates.
Blaspheme, libris mortis i think? With possibly having more info somewhere else? Can be created with a week long ritual that costs 15000g.

That's what I have off-hand. I might make that handbook sometime soon.

Edit: In retrospect, that wasnt really any of those templates added to an undead. Sorry. I think theres something called blood skeletons in pathfinder that's a template? But I don't know much about that off hand.

Edit 2: Create Undead Beast is a level 8 cleric spell. The Stank 14 hit dice, huge, 28 strength and resembles more a wingless dragon than a dog (my bad). The Gholor is the one like an antlion, 20 hd, burrow speed, can use lure and funnel to draw targets in. The spell needs HD of dead animals equal to the hd of the undead beast, a clay statue in the shape fo the beast you're making, and 50g onyx / hd, and takes 2 hours to cast. It could reasonably be used to make other similar giant undead animaly critters, last time I made a necromancer I went for trying to make one that could hunt underwater.

[Braininthejar2]

Or RP through experimenting with necromancy.

Researching how to do all that is what all the NPC necromancers are busy with when adventurers interrupt them.

[Estradus]

Or RP through experimenting with necromancy.

Researching how to do all that is what all the NPC necromancers are busy with when adventurers interrupt them.

The problem with that is not having a fair basis for most of such monsters. It can be tricky to look at a given undead and say "what does it take to make this and be (relatively) balanced?" Does it take just adding the right spells? Does it take extra GP or does it cost more to control?

Some undead in their lore suggest that they arise spontaneously from people who die in certain circumstances, you could try to recreate those circumstances - one adventure I saw involved a guy trying to make a psionic allip by finding a psionic guy and intentionally trying to drive him insane and then kill him. Other types of undead specify they were made by wizards and just don't specify how, like MMIII's Bonedrinkers. I'd compare challenge ratings of what is createable and see what happens.

Here's an idea: perhaps it could take personal investment on the necromancers part. If a necromancer want to make a swarm-shifter undead, they also need to take levels in a vermin-associated class (or sandshaper for the grave dust swarmshifter). A caster can create revived fossils if they have access to some sort of earth-magic based prestige class and give the bones a chemical bath or flesh to stone spell or something.

In general though, responding to OP, when it comes to applying templates to an existing undead I would generally not allow that? Depending on the template, of course. Evolved, yeah a normal undead can become an evolved undead, that's reasonable. I feel like Swarm Shifter should be something applied when you create the undead - when you animate a mummy or ghoul or whatever, you choose then to have it become a swarm shifter mummy (assuming you have an acceptable means for such).

[ShurikVch]

There is one (broken*) possibility: Shrouds of the Unholy (http://web.archive.org/web/20161101074900/https://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x)
These shrouds, like shrouds of the holy, look like ordinary funerary wrappings for dead bodies and are often decorated with symbols and icons representing the dead rising. If a dead body is wrapped in the shroud, and the command word spoken, the body will return as undead. The type of undead it returns as is determined by the speaker of the command word. The undead creature is not under anyone's control when it rises. Wrapping a body takes 10 minutes. The magic of the shrouds is usable only once, after which the wrapping becomes ordinary, fine cloth.*Broken - because there are no stated limits on which, exactly, Undead can be created with it...

[Segev]

I keep meaning to try to do a comprehensive project for making up ways to create the various undead with no listed way to do so. I have a few ideas, but haven't really done the hard work yet.

Some of this is "fluff," too, for enhancing the experience of making canon-creatable undead.

Boneyard: Can be made with Create Greater Undead, but requires its hit dice in already-animate skeletons, plus at least one dragon skull and enough other bones to make up the bulk.

Ghouls: must be made from corpses of people who've committed cannibalism. Not as hard to achieve as you might think, since animating a zombie and feeding it some flesh of its own kind will let you then use create undead to fully make a ghoul out of it. Ghoul fever causes cannibalistic hunger, making it easy to tempt or cajole such behavior, and zombies that rise from the corpses of those who died from the disease naturally act on that hunger without prompting.

Ghasts: Must be made from elven corpses; otherwise as ghouls. May be possible to achieve with non-elven corpses if the flesh fed upon was elven.

Slaymates: Can be made with Create Undead by a level 12 caster, but must use the corpse of a prepubescent child killed through the betrayal or negligence of a guardian who was supposed to care for them.

[Estradus]

I keep meaning to try to do a comprehensive project for making up ways to create the various undead with no listed way to do so. I have a few ideas, but haven't really done the hard work yet.

Some of this is "fluff," too, for enhancing the experience of making canon-creatable undead.

Boneyard: Can be made with Create Greater Undead, but requires its hit dice in already-animate skeletons, plus at least one dragon skull and enough other bones to make up the bulk.

Ghouls: must be made from corpses of people who've committed cannibalism. Not as hard to achieve as you might think, since animating a zombie and feeding it some flesh of its own kind will let you then use create undead to fully make a ghoul out of it. Ghoul fever causes cannibalistic hunger, making it easy to tempt or cajole such behavior, and zombies that rise from the corpses of those who died from the disease naturally act on that hunger without prompting.

Ghasts: Must be made from elven corpses; otherwise as ghouls. May be possible to achieve with non-elven corpses if the flesh fed upon was elven.

Slaymates: Can be made with Create Undead by a level 12 caster, but must use the corpse of a prepubescent child killed through the betrayal or negligence of a guardian who was supposed to care for them.

I like a lot of this, if you ever want to do some teamwork on this, send me a message. I especially like incorporating more to these than just physical properties, like with the slaymate. It makes sense with the nature of magic involving a lot more than what is physically visible, and can turn trying to acquire one of these minions into a full quest.

I'm unsure of the viability of upgrading zombies into ghouls, though. By the point where they're mindless creatures, I'm not sure if it constitutes "cannibalism" any more. It would be like accusing a rock slide for murder, it lacks the consciousness (and possibly the physiology) - though using that to upgrade regular zombies into voracious zombies could be a thing through another spell. Cannibalism through deception ("Oh come join us for a lovely dinner at my manor! There's nothing suspicious here!") could allow the body to make a will save to resist animation, but intentional cannibalism it might be tricky to keep the body down *before* you get to raising it.

I just always get thrown off by whats an acceptable caster level for things. Slaymates, being such a powerful tool for any necromancer, probably shouldn't be easy.

[Segev]

I like a lot of this, if you ever want to do some teamwork on this, send me a message. I especially like incorporating more to these than just physical properties, like with the slaymate. It makes sense with the nature of magic involving a lot more than what is physically visible, and can turn trying to acquire one of these minions into a full quest.

I'm unsure of the viability of upgrading zombies into ghouls, though. By the point where they're mindless creatures, I'm not sure if it constitutes "cannibalism" any more. It would be like accusing a rock slide for murder, it lacks the consciousness (and possibly the physiology) - though using that to upgrade regular zombies into voracious zombies could be a thing through another spell. Cannibalism through deception ("Oh come join us for a lovely dinner at my manor! There's nothing suspicious here!") could allow the body to make a will save to resist animation, but intentional cannibalism it might be tricky to keep the body down *before* you get to raising it.

I just always get thrown off by whats an acceptable caster level for things. Slaymates, being such a powerful tool for any necromancer, probably shouldn't be easy.

I'll PM you if I ever really sit down to work on this, sure! :) I'm not going to claim I'm starting any time soon, though.

The zombies->ghouls thing isn't really to "upgrade the zombies" so much as it is to make ghouls something you CAN manufacture. One tweak to ghoul fever I'd make is that it makes you have cannibalistic urges, and while I wouldn't try to force it on PCs (no "will save or eat your friend" or anything), I'd rule that NPCs often give into it. The purpose here being that ghouls thus can happen from ghoul fever, not to give horror hunger to PCs. (Though maybe I'd let the negative symptoms of ghoul fever abate without curing the disease if cannibalism is performed.)

I'm also being deliberately vague on what, PRECISELY, counts as "cannibalism."

Note: it's not really a "guilt" thing, here. Just that ghouls are cannibalistic undead, and giving the corpse the "taste for it" is a requirement.

As to "upgrading zombies with another spell," that's kind-of what's happening: create undead is a much more powerful spell than animate dead.

My goal here is to avoid overcomplicating things, so the "usual" playstyle works just fine and most of this can be backgrounded. No sense making it harder to make ghouls, for example, than it already is, mechanically.

[Thurbane]

There is one (broken*) possibility: Shrouds of the Unholy (http://web.archive.org/web/20161101074900/https://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20021031x)

*Broken - because there are no stated limits on which, exactly, Undead can be created with it...

I mean, its definitely poorly written, but it seems the obvious intent was to have them function as animate dead, create undead and create greater undead respectively, as per the prerequisites:


Caster Level: 20th; Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Item, animate dead, create undead, or create greater undead as appropriate; Market Price: 1,550 gp (animate dead), 12,250 gp (create undead), or 16,000 (create greater undead); Weight: 10 lbs.

[ShurikVch]

I mean, its definitely poorly written, but it seems the obvious intent was to have them function as animate dead, create undead and create greater undead respectively, as per the prerequisites:1) Obviously, RAW > RAI
2) Item prerequisites aren't always that clear cut: say, Rod of Possession (Book of Vile Darkness) required imprison soul and impotent possessor spells, but acts as neither of them

[Death_Lord12]

If your DM allows houserules, I made my own houserule you can use that allows creation of pretty much any undead, templated undead included. I've tweaked it a bit since I ran it in my campaign so it's not fully play tested, and even when it was I ran a high powered campaign so your DM may want to tweak it some more, but here it is if you want.

Using 1 use of the Rebuke Undead ability (the player using it in my campaign was a Dread Necromancer) you can create an undead that is under your control. The maximum CR of an undead you can create is determined with the formula

CR = 1/2 your caster level +1 per 4 extra control HD you spend

Extra control HD means that you use more control HD than the normal HD of the undead creature.
There is a limit on the extra CR beyond the 1/2 CR. for every +1 CR you need, the creature being created also needs 4 HD.
You also cannot create an undead with a CR higher than your caster level - 2.

In addition, each undead need specific requirements to be created, usually in the form of spells cast and/or a location or specific type of corpse.

When creating undead with templates, the CR you need to determine is the base CR + the CR from the template.



What I did is find the minimum caster level required to create a specific undead, and give it specific requirements based on the undead.

Say I wanted to create a Mummy with the Swarm-Shifter template.
The Mummy has a base CR of 5, and 8 HD.
Swarm-Shifter adds +1 CR (if applied only once anyways), bringing it to CR of 6 and 8 HD.

To get the minimum caster level you need to make this, take 1/4 the creature's HD (rounded down), so 2. This lets you add +2 to the CR formula, at the cost of 8 extra control HD, so controlling this undead would use up 16 of your control HD. Subtract the +2 from the target CR, so you get 4, then double this to get the minimum caster level needed to create it, so 8.
Since CR 6 is less than or equal to the caster level - 2, no adjustments to the minimum caster level are needed.
(If adjustments are needed, just raise the minimum caster level so the caster level = CR + 2.)

Some requirements for making a mummy may include, providing a humanoid (alive or dead), and possibly some wrappings, and then casting Bestow Curse and Contagion.
Some requirements for making a swarm-shifter may include casting Summon Swarm.

So to make a mummy swarm-shifter, you would need to provide a humanoid, the wrappings, and cast Bestow Curse, Contagion, and Summon Swarm.


Also, because this is the minimum caster level needed using the extra control HD, at higher levels you can get some of your control HD back because you can control stronger undead without using the extra HD.

So, say you have a caster level of 10. The base maximum CR you can create is 5 (from 1/2 your caster level), so to make the mummy swarm-shifter you need to use +4 extra control HD to get that +1 max CR, compared to +8 extra control HD if you were at caster level 8.
So essentially as you get stronger, an individual undead become easier to control, which means you can focus more of your control HD on other undead.


Also, I treated this entire process as a "spell", so increases to caster level without increasing class level would benefit this.

Hopefully this or one of the other posts helps. I always wished there were more ways to make the various undead out there.