Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 snex Feb 05, 2009 16:04:07	create undead lets you create a ghoul at 11th level. am i the only one who sees something wrong here? what is the point of creating a CR 1 monster at CL 11?
#2 almagest Feb 05, 2009 16:05:33	If you're allowed to use monster advancement rules when creating them, it's pretty useful. Otherwise I don't see the point either.
#3 hogarth Feb 05, 2009 16:08:37	There are some (better) monsters that you can create with Create (Greater) Undead listed in various monster books (e.g. Monsters of Faerun, Friend Folio, Monster Manual II-VI). I agree that the default ones are pretty crappy.
#4 empirate Feb 05, 2009 16:13:00	The point is there, and it's quite simple: Create Spawn. How about getting an army of Ghouls instead of just one, all under the control of the first one you created? Sound better now? Also, don't create Ghouls, but Shadows.
#5 snex Feb 05, 2009 16:16:38	The point is there, and it's quite simple: Create Spawn. How about getting an army of Ghouls instead of just one, all under the control of the first one you created? Sound better now? well, no. an army of CR 1 undead creatures is still pretty useless. Also, don't create Ghouls, but Shadows. a shadow is only slightly less useless than a ghoul at CL 11 (at which point you were already getting them with summon undead spells without the expensive onyx components and the worry that something will do more than 19 damage to them).
#6 snex Feb 05, 2009 17:06:57	If you're allowed to use monster advancement rules when creating them, it's pretty useful. Otherwise I don't see the point either. anybody aware of an official ruling on doing this?
#7 pithica Feb 05, 2009 17:16:50	well, no. an army of CR 1 undead creatures is still pretty useless. a shadow is only slightly less useless than a ghoul at CL 11 (at which point you were already getting them with summon undead spells without the expensive onyx components and the worry that something will do more than 19 damage to them). There are very few 'non-player type' creatures at CR 11 that can even hit a shadow. Just look through the MM, how many of them have Ghost Touch weapons or Deal force damage (I count 2 in the MM)? How many have natural weapons that count as magic (50% miss chance)? (I count only 5). That's 7 out of 18 mobs that even have a chance to do the 18 damage (and many of them are evil and one's an undead). While you can't normally 'chain' control using the spawn rules as a PC, there's nothing that says you can't slaughter all the commoners in a small town with one or two created shadows then use Command Undead or Rebuke or some other mechanism to control the resulting spawn. Even just a half dozen are going to put a serious hurting on about 2/3rds the mobs in that level range. (Admittedly, 11-14 is where they start to fade out in usefulness, depending on your DM. They're a much better option to try and 'capture' earlier in your career with a command undead or something than waiting til now and creating one. Also, if your DM primarily has you fighting 'PC types' (I.E. other Clerics, Pallies, etc), or spellcasters, then it's a lot LESS useful a tactic.)
#8 snex Feb 05, 2009 17:22:14	There are very few 'non-player type' creatures at CR 11 that can even hit a shadow. etc etc... yes but whats the advantage of create undead to get one over summon undead? you have to pay onyx to get it, you have to control it, and you cant spontaneously create more in the middle of a battle if you need to. also, i dont know of too many folks on these boards who only play with core monsters. we certainly dont, and tons of monsters from the other books can put the hurt on incorporeal undead pretty easily.
#9 jameswilliamogle Feb 05, 2009 17:27:57	There isn't much point unless you extend it past core. There's the giant-head undead thing in tome of magic: dominate monster is an awesome ability to have under your control.
#10 phaedrusxy Feb 05, 2009 20:03:15	yes but whats the advantage of create undead to get one over summon undead? you have to pay onyx to get it, you have to control it, and you cant spontaneously create more in the middle of a battle if you need to. also, i dont know of too many folks on these boards who only play with core monsters. we certainly dont, and tons of monsters from the other books can put the hurt on incorporeal undead pretty easily. LOTS of people play core only, or almost core only. That's the advantage over Summon Undead. The latter doesn't even exist in alot of campaigns. But yeah, I agree in general that those spells are mostly useless. Since you can technically use them to bring PCs back as Bone or Corpse creatures, that might be useful in a non-core game, depending on what LA the DM assigns to those.
#11 vrischika111 Feb 06, 2009 3:13:12	summon undead V... ok, let me use a protection from evil (spell level 1) and let me look at your mob crying ... now your costly, created undead will at least have fun. same for AMF, dispel, ... Summon = 20 R, created = permanent (can wash your clothes, prepare your bed, slay 1000 commoners. Create also allows you to "steal" a body of a foe and make fun of it. I agree it's not the over-power spell of the year, but still fun.
#12 emy Feb 06, 2009 3:28:38	There are some (better) monsters that you can create with Create (Greater) Undead listed in various monster books (e.g. Monsters of Faerun, Friend Folio, Monster Manual II-VI). I agree that the default ones are pretty crappy. For example, the Bone Creature and Corpse Creature templates from BoVD can be created with Create (Greater) Undead, and they keep all of their abilities. (Except some movement modes, if they're a bone creature.)
#13 pithica Feb 06, 2009 8:02:58	yes but whats the advantage of create undead to get one over summon undead? you have to pay onyx to get it, you have to control it, and you cant spontaneously create more in the middle of a battle if you need to. You're really hung up on the 150gp? Anywho, the advantage is spawn. I only ever need to create ONE shadow, so I only ever need to spend 150gp. I then just take my pet to the nearest small town and start systematically killing commoners with it. From then on, every one of them after the first is free, assuming I use one of the many methods of control available. Heck, I can leave my original in the town when we're done killing everyone with standing orders to kill anything that enters, and just take the 4-10 I want to have on me with me. A scroll of create greater undead can be bought for 3000gp. I can usually afford that by level 5ish if I save up. Minion mastery isn't about what you can do during a battle. It's about preparation. Noone memorizes Animate Dead with the intention to stop in the middle of the battle and raise a few zombies to fight. Create is no different. also, i dont know of too many folks on these boards who only play with core monsters. we certainly dont, and tons of monsters from the other books can put the hurt on incorporeal undead pretty easily. Looking at the other books, my count (and this is just going through the lists in the back from memory, so don't quote me)... FF: 10 CR 11s, 6 have a chance to hit it. MM2: 7 CR 11s, 2 have a chance to hit it, both are undead MM3: 9 CR 11s, 6 or 7 have a chance to hit it. MM4: 5 CR 11s, 5 have a chance to hit it, one is named (unique) and all are evil MM5: 0 CR 11s MF: 4 CR 11s, 4 have a chance to hit it, all are evil. Now, again, I agree that at 11, you are starting to stretch it on it's usefulness. But note that none of the above (except for the couple that have spellcasting and force spells) have better than a 50% *chance* to ever hit your shadows with anything (and most of them are evil). The rest CAN'T hit it at all. If you're creative with your BFC spells, and your DM isn't the type to specifically tailor encounters to your abilities, there's no reason a small troup of shadows still can't be quite useful at this level. Certainly not as useful as they were at level 5 or 6 when you started creating them, but still, strength damage is strength damage, and spawn are spawn. A group of 6 shadows almost wiped my entire party the other night at level 9 because: A-noone played a cleric, B-noone was geared/built/memmed spells vs undead, and C-none of us were expecting them and we were already down by half our spells from two previous fights. We killed all of them in 3 rounds, sure, but everyone was down at least 6 strength and 2 of the players were left with less than 3 strength left. Really sucked when the vampire shadow stepped into the room.
#14 snex Feb 06, 2009 9:42:54	unfortunately, my true neutral dread necromancer cant get away with randomly slaughtering towns. (even if he could, we are currently stuck in an area where the only town is inhabited by epic spellcasters). the advancement idea is somewhat intriguing though.. according to the SRD, a mummy can advance to 24HD. a 24HD mummy would make a pretty decent tank. even better, a mohrg can advance to 28HD, and anything it kills becomes a zombie under its control. does anybody have any comment on this? is it doable RAW?
#15 empirate Feb 06, 2009 10:03:43	Your true neutral necromancer is probably OK with buying a herd of cattle and feeding that to his pet shadow, though, right? Or roam an Orc village that the group's Paladin and Cleric of Kord were going to put to the torch anyway?
#16 pithica Feb 06, 2009 10:09:48	unfortunately, my true neutral dread necromancer cant get away with randomly slaughtering towns. (even if he could, we are currently stuck in an area where the only town is inhabited by epic spellcasters). I think these things that are specific to you and your game are coloring your feelings about the spell in general. Not everyone has the problem of playing at level 11 against 'epic spellcasters', in fact, I would hope that most do not. A true neutral necromancer could still go slaughter a town full of orcs or something and be within the bounds of his alignment. Hell, he could even do humans or the like if he could justify it (Like going into an enemy village of your king, or something). the advancement idea is somewhat intriguing though.. according to the SRD, a mummy can advance to 24HD. a 24HD mummy would make a pretty decent tank. even better, a mohrg can advance to 28HD, and anything it kills becomes a zombie under its control. does anybody have any comment on this? is it doable RAW? I'm honestly not sure how all that stuff works by RAW as someone in my group houseruled the hell out of it early on and I never bothered to go back and figure out why. I thought, that to create the 'advanced' versions of both morghs and mummies, the original creature you're creating had to have that many hit dice, like with skeletons. Now that I think about it, this assumption is probably at least partially wrong, though, since creating a mummy from a 1hd human always produces the 8hd version. Looking at the spell itself, it just says you need 50gp onyx per hitdice, so I don't see any limitations are actually there, unless they're listed somewhere else. So there isn't any reason that I can see from the spell itself that you couldn't spend the gold and create the mummy from the start with 24hd (though your DM may rule you need a large creature as the subject). That's 1200gp, though, which isn't much at 15th level, but I'd still rather have a shadow. The greater is only 450gp. Mohrgs are pretty evil creatures...if you're worrying about getting away with slaughtering a town full of commoners, I wouldn't recommend letting your DM read their description.
#17 snex Feb 06, 2009 10:30:09	Mohrgs are pretty evil creatures...if you're worrying about getting away with slaughtering a town full of commoners, I wouldn't recommend letting your DM read their description. well the idea is to create it inside of some kind of secure trap and then cast command undead on it until it fails a save. even with its will save of +16 i will have a pretty decent shot at it by the time i am high enough level to create one with heighten spell. another thing i am wondering.. to create a mohrg, do i need the body of a mass murderer, or will any old body do?
#18 pithica Feb 06, 2009 10:58:33	That depends on if you read the first sentence in their description as flavor text or as rules. I personally think it's RAI, but you and your DM are going to have to figure it out yourselves I think. In some campaigns I've DM'd, I've ignored it or forgotten about it (mostly forgotten), in others, I haven't. No DM I've ever played under has let me get away with it, though. EDIT: Oh, and I wasn't mentioning their 'evilness' in regards to worrying about your health. I was simply pointing out that if your character had an ethics problem with slaughtering a bunch of 'innocent's to make a pet, he'd probably be just as likely to have the same problem with bringing back to 'life' and vastly empowering (basically rewarding) someone who did the same thing.
#19 jameswilliamogle Feb 06, 2009 14:23:44	Even "mass murderer" can be bent. All creatures, even vegetarians, murder trillions of microbes every year.
#20 pithica Feb 06, 2009 15:37:55	That takes a pretty broad definition of murder (which is usually limited to illegality and 'sentient' creatures, by definition). But, even if you wanted to limit it to 'sentient' creatures, by definition, that's what most adventurers do on a daily basis. In all fairness though, if your DM is the type to want to read that text as rules, I doubt he's going to put up with any shenanigans regarding a definition of mass-murderer.
#21 jameswilliamogle Feb 06, 2009 15:54:41	Ask a vegan what they consider murder :D. Just wanted to point out how variable it is, is all.