Animate Dead

This spell creates the lowest of the undead monsters, skeletons or zombies, from the bones or bodies of dead humans.

The effect is to cause these remains to become animated and obey the commands of the cleric casting the spell. The skeletons or zombies will follow, remain in an area and attack any creature (or just a specific type of creature) entering the place, etc. 

The spell will animate the monsters until they are destroyed or until the magic is dispelled. (See dispel magic spell).

The cleric is able to animate 1 skeleton or 1 zombie for each level of experience he or she has attained. Thus, a 2nd level cleric can animate 2 of these monsters, a 3rd level 3, etc. The act of animating dead is not basically a good one, and it must be used with careful consideration and good reason by clerics of Good alignment. 

It requires a drop of blood, a piece of human flesh, and a pinch of bone powder or a bone shard to complete the spell.

It is, of course, possible to animate the skeletons or corpses of demi-human and humanoid, as well as human, sort. If creatures with more than a basic 1 hit die (or 1 + hit die) are so animated, the number of such skeletons or zombies will be determined in hit dice rather than total numbers. 

Thus, a cleric of 6th level could animate 6 skeletons of human or humanoid sort which in life had less than 2 hit dice, 3 such undead which in life had less than 3, but 2 or more hit dice, or a single undead creature which had 6, but less than 7, hit dice. For each such additional hit die, the skeleton or zombie will gain another die. Thus, the animated skeleton of a fire giant, an 11 hit die monster, is 10 over the norm for a skeleton normally animated, so it would have 1 + 10 hit dice (11d8). Likewise, a fire giant zombie would have 10 dice over and above the sort of creature typically made into a zombie, so it would have 2 + 10 hit dice (12d8). 

N.B.: This does not enable a cleric to make skeletons or zombies of characters of 2nd or higher level have more hit dice; such undead are simply human skeletons or zombies with 1 or 2 hit dice, nothing more.

Except as noted above, this spell is the same as the third level cleric spell animate dead (q.v.).