How do I be a RAW Necromancer? A little confused about building my army on HL

[ljcollective]

Hey guys,

I'm currently playing an Oracle Necromancer (so fricken fun, your undead get max hitpoints and aren't evil so you can convince your party [or have fun trying] that you're not the classic evil necromancer from the tales), but I have some questions about how to create my undead in HL?

Can I just add whatever character I want to rez in hero lab and then add a skeleton or zombie template to them? Is it that simple? It reds out the levels and says it can't have class levels.. am I making them wrong? Am I supposed to build them from the ground up just adding monster HD and then add in the feats and whatever else individually?

Does anyone have any experience being a Hero Lab Necromancer?

[Aaron]

Skeleton and zombie templates erase who the corpse used to be, pretty much all they care about is the size of the base human. The random 1st level peasant Bob, and the 20th level barbarian Hrothgar Gods-killer make an equally crappy zombie.

You'll probably have better luck applying the template to big dumb monsters. A Zombie Hydra would still have a bajillion bite attacks, but it would presumably lose the ability to have its heads sundered (and the regen to grow them back). Either way, much better than a zombified human.

[Aaron]

Then again, if you need someone to carry around your bags or walk mindlessly into the trap filled hallway, a random zombie works just fine.

A little expensive, because of the gems needed as spell components though.