intelegent, animated, undead humanoid skin graft

[Noxangelo]

so late last night before i went to bed, my brain went weird and wondered about taking an illithid humanoid skin graft, making it an intelligent item, permanently animating it, then making it an undead forsaken shell before grafting onto some poor sucker.

is it actually possible and how would you do it?

[Analytica]

Is this the Venom symbiont?

[Noxangelo]

lol, i'm just curious, random thought i had.

[Bphill561]

How about I lend you a hand...

Not completely RAW, but maybe use a crawling hand (Monsters of Faerun and other sources) as an undead mummy's hand graft (libra mortis). It is technically a construct so you can add the Sacred Guardian template from the Dragonlance beastiary of Kyrnn to make it intelligent. Pick Death to match flavor.

Next move on to weapon grafts under Illithiads. What you graft in keeps its properties but does not count as a magical. Graft in a spiked gauntlet on the same hand with the throwing and returning enchantment. This is an example for the savage species Necklace of natural attacks, where the necklance grants throwing and returning to natural weapons, so why not here. Now the whole hand can detach. Make the spiked gauntlet intelligent as well with a high ego score and match it to the hands alignment instead of the graftee. Make sure to give the gauntlet the ability to talk and dimension door on itself and wielder. I declare the wielder to be the hand not the person, so again it can get away. Add the flight enchantment from Magic of Faerun so it can fly around once loose.

It gets a special power based on domain selected from Sacred Guardian and 5e crawling hand descriptions say some of them are able to make more crawling hands. Maybe make a special domain power or put some other spell casting daily use spell to make more hands. Not as creepy as skin, but maybe you could swing it with a liberal Dm.

[Noxangelo]

i love the crawling claw but i've never though to turn an undead graft into a crawling claw, my usual though is to turn an intelligent Hand of the Mage (DMG) into a crawling claw, mainly because the thought of it conjuring the mage hand as a second hand to do a sarcastic clap every time the BSF does something stupid.

also the gauntlet graft method seems a little convoluted, why not go crawling claw mummies hand with a monks belt and a necklace of natural attacks with throwing and flying, because why bother with throwing if the thing (should I have capitalized that?) can fly?