Animate Dead

[Kasa]

So... any reason why the keep nerfing this spell so hard?

A 3rd level spell to create a handful of weak undead for 6 rounds that you need to take a specific subclass if you want to strengthen dealing 4 - 7 damage to themselves in the process.

Mean while you can just take augment summoning and do the same thing but better at the same level.
Sure it frees up the 3 feats you would be using to buff you summons but applies to ALL SUMMON LINE spells while Cruoromancer infused animate dead applies only to the singular spell animate dead.
And Spell focus conjuration also increases the DC of some of the best CC spells there are.

The hell Owlcat?

Edit: Clarifying

[Ulthar]

WHAT IS THE SUBCLASS?

[Kasa]

Cruoromancer

[Mandalore]

the summing feats don't apply to any animate spell, only the lich and cruoromancer abilities do. If it says "summons," it does not apply to animate dead, who are "animated" instead of "summoned."

[phadin]

Animate Dead does have a couple of advantages.
1) you get more then you'd get out of a summon monster 3/summon animal 3 spell unless you went for the equally weak creatures.
2) It's a standard action instead of a full round action to cast, so you can get them out quickly to distract enemies for a bit.

[bumpboy23703]

Originally posted by Mandalore:

the summing feats don't apply to any animate spell, only the lich and cruoromancer abilities do. If it says "summons," it does not apply to animate dead, who are "animated" instead of "summoned."

But it sort of summons them.

So seems to be a bug.
Yes, normal Animate Dead isn't a summon, but this one is.

[Kasa]

Originally posted by Mandalore:

the summing feats don't apply to any animate spell, only the lich and cruoromancer abilities do. If it says "summons," it does not apply to animate dead, who are "animated" instead of "summoned."

I never said anything to the contrary of that.
Augment summon only works on the summon line of spells meanwhile the much less usful Cruoromancer ability costs hp to use and only empowers 1 spell, animate dead.

[Kasa]

Originally posted by phadin:

Animate Dead does have a couple of advantages.
1) you get more then you'd get out of a summon monster 3/summon animal 3 spell unless you went for the equally weak creatures.
2) It's a standard action instead of a full round action to cast, so you can get them out quickly to distract enemies for a bit.

The problem is they are not controllable or perminate and with augment summon and superior summon the wolf and dogs are arguably stronger, have a tripping attack for the wolves AND that feats get better as you get higher level summon spells.

[Gregor Eisenhorn]

It's supposed to be like that.
Animate dead is useful early as a source of damage or later as a walling mob that sets up flanking for sneak attacks from your archers and to make enemies waste attacks. It's also particularly useful against enemies that drain stats (many other undead), while doing relatively low damage.

[Gregor Eisenhorn]

Originally posted by Thelis:

the only "Benefit" i can think of right now. if you are a dhampyr necro and a lich, you can use your 3rd level spell slots, and 4th level spells slots, to learn nothing but animate dead.. not sure if thats ment to be that way.. but yeah. only benefit i cant think of.

Don't need to, if you want to fill your spellbook with animate dead just grab the heightened metamagic feat and go, although it makes no sense to do that.

[The Hat]

In this one there are a lot of things that can buff summons, items, mythic feats, character backgrounds, mythic path, metamagic etc.

[Boozedawg]

I know I'm a little late here but I just went and looked using the "Inspect everything" mod and the tool box mod by leveling up a cleric and taking augment summoning and then toggling the feat on and off.

For the undead the Feat absolutely applied. The con score did not change from a 10 but that is because they are undead. So their Cha was what was affected going from a 12 to 16 Cha in the statistic block and the HP going from an 11 to 15. The undead are listed as a "Summon" I wish I could show screenshots here to demonstrate but if anyone wants to re-perform the steps I've done above feel free.

The Strength score went from 19 to 23 and the damage went from 1d8+4 to 1d8+6 with an increase to a +8 to hit from a +6.

This was in the "Through the Ashes" campaign since I already had a playthrough going. I don't know if this is somehow campaign specific.

Edit:
It's worth noting that this may have not always been the case and this was changed in an update somewhere a long the way. I'm just coming back for the Lord of Nothing DLC.

[Drake]

If undead are affected by summon feats, it's likely a bug or an oversight. In pathfinder rules, undead are not summoned, they are raised from remains of creatures, so they are more like constructs (like golems) infused with negative energy than summoned creatures (with are living creatures coming from other planes).

in pnp feats and abilities working specifically on undead don't work on summons, and feats working specifically on summons don't work on undead creatures.

[Kasa]

it's most likely not so much a bug as a programming shortcut.

Instead of coding a bunch of separate variables for undead summons they just threw them into the summon creature line for convenience.

Generally speaking anything related to creating golems or undead or even summons is always like this.

The fact of the matter is if creating minions was allowed in full there would be no point to having other party member as sufficient quantity does in fact trump quality.

Who cares if the hall way is trapped when instead of a rouge you can just send 40 skeletons bumbling down the hall to clear if of traps.

Who cares if the big bad lich when you have 3 - 4 magic immune adamantium golems to crush it's boney ass.

I love using summons and undead but D&D is obviously poorly equipped to handle swarm tactics.