Adding hit dice to skeletons and zombies

[Talok55]

My girlfriend has a PFS bone oracle with the raise the dead mystery that lets her summon zombies and skeletons with hit dice equal to her oracle level. How do I do this? Do I need to use different base creatures than a human?

 

[Minous]

My girlfriend has a PFS bone oracle with the raise the dead mystery that lets her summon zombies and skeletons with hit dice equal to her oracle level. How do I do this? Do I need to use different base creatures than a human?

Can you provide the full text of the boon?

 

[Mathias]

Make sure the minion is set as an NPC, and then use the "Additional HD" option, which will be the very first thing on the Classes tab in the list of classes/templates.

 

[Talok55]

Raise the Dead (Su): As a standard action, you can summon a single skeleton or zombie to serve you. The undead creature has a number of Hit Dice equal to your oracle level. It remains for a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier. At 7th level, you can summon a bloody skeleton or fast zombie. At 15th level, you can summon an advanced skeleton or zombie. You can use this ability once per day plus one additional time per day at 10th level.


The problem is it won't let me make an appropriate level human warrior and give them the zombie or skeleton template, so I have to find a humanoid race with the appropriate hit dice to turn into a zombie or skeleton. This is a major headache, plus it gives them unwanted racial abilities. It's not a minion. It's something you summon once a day for rounds equal to your charisma modifier.

 

[charlieluce]

I couldn't get it to let me build a Skeleton or Zombie with additional Hit Dice from scratch, but I found that if I loaded the basic Skeleton or Zombie from the Encounter Builder, it did let me add additional Hit Dice.

 

[Mathias]

Talok55 - you say "it won't let me make an appropriate level human warrior and give them the zombie or skeleton template", but you don't say how Hero Lab stops you from doing that. Without knowing what's wrong, I can't figure out a way around that.

clarlieluce - in the configure hero settings, either make this a Non-Player Character, or in the House Rules section near the bottom, turn on "Allow PCs to add Bonus HD".

 

[Silveras]

The basic Skeleton and Zombie templates ignore Class levels.. that's how their rules work; only racial HD are converted, and Humans (as well as other Humanoids) don't have racial HD. So the templates specifically give 1 HD for Skeletons and 2 HD for Zombies as a base. That's all exactly as they're supposed to work.

There are separate templates (Skeletal Champion and Zombie Lord) that retain the Class Levels as well as adding the "Racial" HD. The Skeletal Champion is in the Bestiary 1, while the Zombie Lord was added later (originally in Carrion Crown).

The wording of the FAQ for this supports the method charlieluce mentioned -- start with the basic human Skeleton or Zombie and add HD.

Oracle Bones Mystery: What exactly does the raise the dead revelation mean when it says you can summon a skeleton or zombie to serve you? Do I need a corpse? If not, can I just summon whatever I want, like a tarrasque fast zombie?
The raise the dead doesn’t require a corpse; you summon the creature (rising up out of the earth is a potential visual for this effect). You summon the base creature from the Bestiary in either case (human skeleton or human zombie) aside from the modifications from the revelation (adding extra HD, fast or bloody, and the advanced template). At the GM’s discretion, an oracle with a noticeably different body or bone structure might summon skeletons and zombies with this ability that look cosmetically more similar to the oracle than to a human, but this doesn’t affect their game mechanics.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

The problem is it won't let me make an appropriate level human warrior and give them the zombie or skeleton template, so I have to find a humanoid race with the appropriate hit dice to turn into a zombie or skeleton. This is a major headache, plus it gives them unwanted racial abilities. It's not a minion. It's something you summon once a day for rounds equal to your charisma modifier.

I think the whole confusion here is that the ability to add "Additional Hit Dice" to your skeleton has been fixed. Fixed after you mentioned it in this thread actually.

To build onto what Silveras & Mathias are saying. Take a Human. Add skeleton template. Turn it into a NPC on the Configure Your Hero window or at the bottom of the Configure Your Hero window select "Allow PCs to add Bonus HD". Now go to the "Classes" tab and you will find you can add "Additional Hit Dice" to your Skeleton Human.

Ummm... Actually just tried this on my iPad and I can't find the Additional Hit Dice on the class tab. I thought this just got fixed? Is owning "one" of the Bestiary Licenses required to have this feature? I ask because I have a totally independent License for my iPad with only specific books which does not include Bestiaries.

Can anyone else see the ability to Add Additional Hit Dice on the Classes tab if you turn your character into a NPC?

 

[Silveras]

Actually, I am not seeing the ability on Player Character or Non-Player Character creatures on my PC at this time.

 

[charlieluce]

That was the first thing I tried, Shadow. Didn't work. I didn't try the "Allow PCs to add Bonus HD" setting, but now doing so I see that it doesn't work for a character created as an NPC, but does work for a character created as a PC, even if it is then converted to an NPC.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

That was the first thing I tried, Shadow. Didn't work. I didn't try the "Allow PCs to add Bonus HD" setting, but now doing so I see that it doesn't work for a character created as an NPC, but does work for a character created as a PC, even if it is then converted to an NPC.

So you did get this to work? I just tried everything I can think of for getting the Additional Hit Dice to show up and "nothing" works.

The only way I can get this to work is to make the character a NPC. Then go to the "Background" tab and click "Customize" and check mark "Customize Racial Special Abilities". Then under the "Custom Monster Details" section to increase the "Hit Dice" counter.

That does work but it seems based on what Mathias is saying that the old way of just adding "HD" under the "Classes" tab should work....

 

[Mathias]

From the FAQ for the last update:

• The option to allow a player character to add racial HD was not working. If the option is still not appearing, please save and re-load the file.

Apparently, that save/re-load issue is not just applying to characters created before the change - I'll put that on the bug list, because apparently, the list of what should be shown on that table is not getting updated when you add the skeleton template and make the human eligible for additional hd. I thought that caveat on the fix only applied to characters created before that bug fix, and when I listed the process earlier, I thought it was still working the way it did a while ago, the last time I needed to work on a character with additional HD.

 

[ShadowChemosh]

From the FAQ for the last update:

• The option to allow a player character to add racial HD was not working. If the option is still not appearing, please save and re-load the file.

Apparently, that save/re-load issue is not just applying to characters created before the change - I'll put that on the bug list, because apparently, the list of what should be shown on that table is not getting updated when you add the skeleton template and make the human eligible for additional hd. I thought that caveat on the fix only applied to characters created before that bug fix, and when I listed the process earlier, I thought it was still working the way it did a while ago, the last time I needed to work on a character with additional HD.

I am glad I am not going crazy!

The 'Customize' option I listed above works. So at least there is a work around.

 

[Talok55]

Checking the allow pc's to add hit dice option in the house rules section seems to work,