Quote Originally Posted by Scizor View Post
While searching for where it says that the HD of the created undead has to be equal to that of the corpse (I haven't found that yet, though I found that yes, the polymorphed corpse has no HD, as long as the thing you are polymorphing from doesn't), I found a dysfunction: Animating Zombies and Skeletons doesn't work. You see, Skeleton and Zombie are templates applied to any corporeal creatures with skeletal systems. If I remember correctly, a corpse is defined as an object (Can someone back me up on/disprove this? SRD does not hold anything for me), not a creature. Thus corpses are ineligble for becoming skeletons and zombies.
The HD thing is in the Hit Dice section of both the zombie and skeleton templates. You take away all class levels to a minimum of one HD. Then turn them all into d12s. The corpse has no class levels to take away and no HD so the undead has 0d12 for HD.