Summon Undead spells from Libris Mortis

[TheEvil]

In a game today, my cleric cast a Summon Undead spell for the first time, and I promptly realized that the spell list makes no real clarification on what you actually get. In this case, with Summon Undead II, I can summon a large skeleton or a medium zombie. Opting for the skeleton and flipping over the the section on the Monster Manual, the large skeleton examples included Owlbear, Troll, Chimera (or something like that) and Ettin. Since the stats for each skeleton vary quite a bit I left it up to the GM what I would get, and he went with troll. I told him I would see if I could find some clarification on the subject before next week.

So what say you guys? Have any of you had experience with these spells yet? What did you use?

 

[winterwolf]

When I am the only DM in my group (which hasn't happened lately) I have a rule pertaining to summoned creatures. What I say is that if you don't have the creature's stats ready for the game, you can't summon that creature. I have found that this saves a lot of time, and actually can make summoning more fun...if you always summon a specific creature (say, a celestial dog) you become attached to that creature...we even had one case where the player ended up asking me to let him summon the same creature every time (as per the optional rules in the 3.0 dmg on page 96). The player became sad when the creature was "killed" and wasn't able to return to him for a certain period of time.
That being said, if the spell does not summon a specific type of skeleton (other than specifying size) I would take the stats from a skeleton from the 3.0 monster manual, and switch out the 3.0 skeleton's 1/2 dmg from piercing/slashing with the 3.5 skeleton's Damage Reduction 5/Bludgeoning. I don't have the Libris Mortis with me ATM, but I know that the summon undead spell from Magic of Faerun just summoned generic skeletons from the MM (granted, that book was 3.0 when skeletons weren't templates).

 

[winterwolf]

Lol just found my Libris Mortis...the spell says it gives a limited amount of choice, which the DM could extend to allowing the character to pick what kind of skeleton he summons.
Another option is to extend the components needed to cast the spell...for example, you could make it so that you could summon the undead corpse of a creature of the appropriate size, as long as you had a bone from such creature. The bone could be a focus or a material component, depending on how tough you wanted the spell to be to cast. Some of the more common creatures (ogres, trolls) would have bones easier to find in a market, whereas good luck in finding the bone of, say, a large white dragon. This also lets the dm charge a cost to summon the more powerful large undead (such as a white dragon) by making you pay for such a bone.
It also gives a necro another reason to chop dead critters up (hey...I need some of that dragon's bones, so I can summon undead dragons) which can lead to interesting encounters.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Those spells were never properly converted from 3.0. Use the stats from the 3.0 SRD, available here: http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html

 

[Silveras]

Actually, the same error was made in "updating" the spells in the Player's Guide to Faerun. The spells, as noted, originated in Magic of Faerun.

The Errata for Player's Guide to Faerun limits the undead you can summon: "No undead creature you summon can have more Hit Dice than your caster level +1."

 

[Cheiromancer]

Actually, the same error was made in "updating" the spells in the Player's Guide to Faerun. The spells, as noted, originated in Magic of Faerun.

The Errata for Player's Guide to Faerun limits the undead you can summon: "No undead creature you summon can have more Hit Dice than your caster level +1."

It really irritates me that WotC flubbed yet another chance to properly update those spells. The erratta doesn't address the wide disparity of creatures with a given size and hit dice.

But again, it shouldn't be too difficult to convert the skeletons and zombies from the 3.0 SRD to generic skeletons and zombies conjured by the spell.

 

[Thanee]

The errata is acceptable, altho the spell is still pretty strong then.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Staffan]

One way of interpreting it would be to have the spell summoning skeletal or zombified versions of the animals on either the Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally list. It would require some playtesting, but at least it's a starting point.

 

[TheEvil]

Thanks for the help eveyone. That gives me a starting point.