Need help with Summon Undead

[Crisis from the Sky]

Hey guys

I just picked up Libris Mortis a few weeks ago and I'm really eager to try out Summon Undead. Unfortuanately this great spell was a copy/paste over from 3.0 Magic to Faerun, which I guess happened to Player's Guide to Faerun, a 3.5 book. Anyways, I really don't know how to handle this spell, the errata doesn't seem to really help with any balance issue at all. There were a few things I was considering when I tried to grapple this spell myself...

They did errata the Summon Undead I, saying to add ""No undead creature you summon can have more Hit Dice than your caster level +1.". Unfortuantely this still raises other problems, as this only deals with Summon Undead I. For example...
A 9th level Cleric uses Summon Undead V to summon 4 Skeleton, Huge undead creatures of the type from the 2nd level list. This is perfectly within the rules, but here the decision becomes unclear.
9th Caster Level + 1 for HD = 10HD of Undead. Obviously summoning 4 10HD Skeleton Large seems waaay overpowered. The alternative route would be that the creators meant it to be taken as a TOTAL of 8HD Undead per Summon Undead Spell, but if you look it at the comparable Summon Monster V, it is far underpowered to that... also, think of just summoning 4 2HD HUGE skeletons, or even 3 3HD HUGE skeletons, those are some weak skeletons -- none of which I could find either.

Summon Undead:
1st Level -- Skeleton, Medium OR Zombie, Small: No Undead may exceed +1 Caster Level up to 3HD (4HD if Summoning Zombie)
2nd Level -- Skeleton, Large OR Zombie, Medium: No Undead may exceed +1 Caster Level up to 5HD (6HD if Summoning Zombie)
3rd Level -- Skeleton, Huge OR Zombie, Large OR Ghoul:No Undead may exceed +1 Caster Level up to 7HD (8HD if Summoning Zombie)
4th Level -- Zombie, Huge:No Undead may exceed +1 Caster Level up to 9HD (10HD if Summoning Zombie)
5th Level -- ... this list needs to be sourly rethought altogether *le sigh* lazy writers. I may come up with an alternative later and would be happy to take suggestions.

In the above, that means when casting Summon Undead I to poof out a Skeleton, Medium or a Zombie, Small -- that creature may not exceed 3HD. Becareful when applying the Zombie Template if not using those directly from the MM. You must realize that the creature this is applied to DOUBLES its HD. For instance...
Minor Xorn is a Small Outsider. A perfect canidate for Zombie-fication since you can approve its NA by +1 and it gains strength and other schtuff. Unfortuantly, when applying the Zombie Template to it, it will go from 3d8 + 9 ---> 6d12 + 3when applying Zombie Template (the +3 comes from the Zombie's Toughness Feat). This puts it out of the range of Summon Undead I. Also a PC who, lets say, casts Summon Undead V to try and summon 4 Medium, Skeletons (via the 1st Level List) can still only have them be at max 3HD. You for instance could not use Summon Undead V and try to justify that you could use the 2nd Level List to summon 4 Skeleton, Medium with max 5HD instead of 4 Skeleton, Large of max 5HD. At this point that is what how I will rule those two things. Hope that makes sense for you guys.

But ya... this may be a lot, but this is what I've been rolling around in my head. I'd appreciate if you guys could throw your ideas in the pot on how I should be ruling/using the spell.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

My quick-and-dirty fix for this is to allow the caster to apply the skeleton or zombie template to a creature from the Summon Monster lists, and add in the special undead wherever they approximately match the average challenge rating on a Summon Monster list. So a wight would go on Summon Undead III.

The caster can either apply the Skeleton template to a Summon Monster list of equivalent level, or can apply the Zombie template to 1d3 creatures of the same type from that list. He can also summon 1d3 skeletons from the next lower list, 1d4+1 zombies from that same lower list, or 1d4+1 skeletons from the list below that. This assumes that the creature summoned is a legal subject for the appropriate template. Any previously applied templates are removed.

So a Summon Undead I spell could, instead of summoning a fiendish dire rat, would summon a skeletal dire rat, or 1d3 zombie dire rats. A Summon Undead V could summon a skeletal Hound Archon, which would lose pretty much all its powers (as per the Skeleton template description), or a 1d3 zombie Griffons, which would fly with a rating of "clumsy" (as per the Zombie template description), or 1d4+1 zombie lions, or 1d4+1 skeletal boars, for example.

Perhaps the Summon Nature's Ally lists could be treated in the same way, although I think most of the stuff that doesn't overlap has anatomy that doesn't lend itself to animation...treants, for example.