Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 pyre_kross Jun 15, 2012 21:28:07	I love making necromancers for D&D but a newish DM is now saying that the Animate Dead spell only lets you use the stats of the skeletons that are in the Monster Manual (3.5, BTW). He is basing this on the spell discription for Animate Dead, under skeletons, which states, "The statistics for a skeleton depend on it's size; they do not depend on what abilities the creature may have had while alive." I am maintaining that WotC has made a president to the contrary, by stating in the Complete Mage, page 21, lower left under Animate Dead, which says, "Animating the dead costs gold, but at the earliest level you can cast this spell, you pay a mere 300 gp to animate a twelve-headed hydra's body. That's a skeleton that makes twelve attacks at +11, each dealing 2d8+6 points of damage".  What I am trying to do here is counter HIS interperatation of the rules with an UPDATED set of rules. Or, failing that, get a ruling straight from WotC itself. I will admit that the rules are showing a bit of a contradiction, so some clarification would seem to be in order.
#2 Krusk Jun 16, 2012 12:51:25	Many DMs don't (and rightly shouldn't) care what WoTC says. You might have an uphill battle to go through. For reference, the animate dead creates a skeleton. To create a skeleton you take a base creature, and apply the skeleton template to it. Here is what that says about abilities like they hydras attack pattern. Special Attacks A skeleton retains none of the base creature’s special attacks. Special Qualities A skeleton loses most special qualities of the base creature. It retains any extraordinary special qualities that improve its melee or ranged attacks. qualities. d20srd.org This doesn't get more clearly defined, but I would think it reasonable to apply to a hydras attack power. That said, you basically have to convince the DM for each and every ability like this you want to have. Complete Mage gives you some backup in that its clearly designer intent. (although I think different designers wrote those books)
#3 cougon Jun 19, 2012 6:01:18	This may or may not help you, but the Spell Compendium, IIRC, has a series of undead summoning spells that lets you summon stronger and better undead (like skeletons).  Perhaps you should try to take a look for those spells as a possible compromise.