1.) Do necromancers on Amia most commonly summon their undead, or animate them? I assume they make their own corpses using spells like Animate Dead, because of the name, but what about... EMD? If the undead is summoned from somewhere, is it summoned from a random place or something like a specific plane? (viewtopic.php?f=103&t=72545&p=1197162&hilit=undead#p1197162) Here it is!

2a.) Can anything that was once alive become reanimated? Most commonly we see zombified or skelefied humans, for some reason, but we also see animals, strange abominations, and rarely even deities become undead (such as Orcus after he was raised by his High Priest.)

2b.) If something strange was re-animated, say a demon, elemental (if this is even possible), or a dragon, how much of their previous powers do they keep? Is it based on HOW they attained undeath? If they were to gain undead properties in their new state, do they lose any of their previous racial properties?

3.) If a Planar creature was risen from the dead as someone's minion and slain, would it still go back to its home plane on death?


I'm thumbing through Libris Mortis for the sixth time and nadda.

2a) With a few choice exceptions to the rule here and there, anything that has a Hit Die can be reanimated as undead.

2b) Most Outsiders can't effectively be made into undead (at least on the Material Plane), because most Outsiders (demons, devils, elementals, etc.) vanish back to their home plane upon being slain in the Material Plane. Thereby leaving no material behind to be infused with negative energy. What powers an undead retains depends upon the specific undead template used on the creature. By and large, animated undead don't keep much of anything in the way of former "powers", but the undead template often grants them new ones. Or doesn't. Zombies and skeletons are simple, but there are variant zombies and skeletons that stack some powers on. There may be some instances where racial features remain on the undead, but it all kinda boils down to the templates used and the rules around them. And the templates imposed onto the undead boil down to what "Animate/Create Undead" spell is used.

3) Yes, but the problem with that scenario is that they are very unlikely to be risen from the dead in the first place:

In reply to answer 3:

How is it that some Demon/Devil Lords have minions that were once fiendish, and are now undead? Orcus comes to mind because it is a large part of his army in the blood war, and many of his minions possess features from both sets. I haven't come across an undead elemental or celestial, yet, but the former seem pretty common on some planes. Are they simply reanimated ON their home plane?

In addition: How do Dracoliches fall into this? I know they are typically corrupted/tempted into seeking it out with the aid of evil spellcasters, but I am to assume they keep a lot of their draconic traits in death (another reason they are so feared.)

Unlike on the prime material, outsiders die when they are slain on the other planes. A demon that is slain in the Abyss, Baator, Celestia, etc remains dead. So that is when animating their remains works. So if you wanted to make a demon flesh golemn or reanimate a succubus, you could visit the outskirts of the wastes of Zanshibon to get your 'resources' there.

Following the way the rules and lore work, they were animated as undead on their home plane or other planes where some material remains.

The dracolich is a special template. It keeps all of the dragon's original abilities and traits and adds some more while also improving others. What is the downside, you ask? Any downsides inherent to the undead type. Even though dracolich are immune to turning.

Do vampires have a blood type?

_________________

AB negative.

_________________
@Thanatopsis#6293

Don't be negative, be positive.
Joke aside bloodtypes is not something commonly accessible nor would a vampire need to know.

_________________

Life should be prolonged only when it serves the greater cause of the death of the world.

1) Answered?

2a) Pretty much anything can turn undead. Even small creatures such as mosquitoes and flies can become undead (see Blood Mote). Even things that are not alive per se such as Tomb Mote can rise.

2b) Outsiders seldom leave a corpse behind but there are cases when they do, and that is when they can be risen as undead. Elemental undead also exist. HD of a skeleton and a zombie depends on the size of the creature, and the method. Regular animate dead will create a generic creature, but there are methods to create more powerful ones.

3) I think not, because if you rise a planar creature as undead, it means that you've killed the creature on its home plane and created an undead.

_________________

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Login: Narkudauman

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ╬ Join the Magisterium Mortis ╬

There are undead elementals called Necromentals (pg. 112-113 Libris Mortis). However, as noted above, you'd need to travel to the plane of the respective elemental you would animate, unless you find a creative way to prevent your elemental from unsummoning on 'death' on the material plane.

It is way back in my foggy memory, but I recall a d20 splatbook titled something like Fangs & Fury that had some non-canon rules about vampires. It had a rule that they lost 1d8+1 hit points per HD every day at highsun (noon), and this loss of HP could only be restored by regenerative hit points gained by their Blood Drain ability. Meaning the higher HD the vampire, the more debilitating their appetite and seemingly unquenchable their appetite. I recall it supposed that vampires, if they had a blood type, would be O- to prevent clotting. I'm no hemotologist and I don't want to bother researching the veracity of that claim.

My personal opinion for the DnD style vampire is that it doesn't matter what blood type they are. They are undead bloodbags that suck out a variety of conflicting types of blood, not merely blood types but even strange and foreign blood types we don't even know of in our world that belong to magical creatures and strange races. The downside of conflicting blood types is clotting, which would be terribly fatal to a mortal creature, but a minor inconvenience to a vampire. Somewhat like a mortal chasing half a bottle of bad tequila with 9 items off the local Taco Bell menu. Just like the mortal who will suffer in the aftermath, the vampire will realize after some aches and pains that they could do with a better diet.

But it's all just an intellectual and creative exercise. I think it is a field open to interpretation.