Zombies are moved and held together by their flesh and muscles. If there aren't enough muscles remaining for it to qualify for zombie-hood, it becomes a skeleton, and I imagine the remaining tissue would just rot off (as the magic isn't preserving it, instead focused on keeping the skeleton together).
In game terms, there is zombie:mindless, crude, slow, decayed. Then there is ju-ju zombie:still mindless in that it can not make choices on its own, but has some of the skills he had in life. There is zombie lord but it is considered a living creature (a raise dead spell gone awry)
A half way rotten corpse will become a particularly horrific and disgusting zombie, IMHO. Imagine the most rotten and ugly zombie you ever saw in movies or games. Worms wriggling in its eye sockets and mouth, bloated belly that is heavily marbled with greenish veins, skin basically in-patches, bursting with pus and putrid gases, which release a horrible odor and it drops worms, bugs and pus everywhere as it lurches ever forward. Colorful stuff like that. There are no official rules for the condition of the corpse to be zombified, in game terms it will still be a 'zombie'. A particularly sadistic dungeon master may want the player characters roll fear and horror checks when they see such a horrible zombie, but it is still a zombie.
You can design house rules on that, like what percent zombie or skeleton a corpse is, but that would be detailed and rather time-consuming.
The muscles wouldn't really do anything for the skeleton, though. I suppose it is possible to create a zombie-skeleton hybrid, where the skeletal parts are kept together by the magic, and the muscles are reanimated... but that seems altogether too complicated for a simple minion that is struck down in a single blow anyway.
I imagine a necromancer can choose whether he wants a corpse that qualifies for a zombie to be a zombie or a skeleton. In the latter case, the tissue could hinder the motions of the skeleton, though, so it's probably better to just turn it into a zombie.
That's part of what makes it a zombie, though--preserving the tissue and making it animate the corpse. If it didn't preserve it, the zombie would eventually collapse, not turn into a skeleton (and it would grow progressively weaker as tissue decayed), unless the magic was specifically designed for that (so that as tissue decays, the magic animating the muscles instead start animating the bones), but again... that's really complicated for a simple undead minion. Simpler to simply preserve and animate the muscles and leave it at that.
let#s start get philosophical the word zombie came out of the voodoo-religion from africa. they made it into the movies 1932 with bela lugosi in white zombie. the human-flesh-and-brain-eating dumb monsters were created by the great george a. romero with the night of the living dead.
i guess our hero and imoen do not have something in common with these guys
This is how Animate Dead works in D&D 3.5. Basically, when you animate a corpse with flesh on it, you can choose for it to become a zombie or a skeleton. In the latter case, the flesh sloughs off and you're left with bare bones.
When they lose over 60% of their flesh. Zombies are more resistant to crushing damage then skeletons due to their flesh giving their remains some protection and need to be hacked apart, rather then smashed (though smashing the head never hurts). But yes, the rotted flesh also makes it harder for them to move.
Zombies are pretty low on the totem pole. I actually don't know of a particular situation where anyone would make zombies over skeletons, unless they were just wanting some variety in their rotting mass of Doom.
And from the looks of it, zombie's require more effort to create and control then skeletons. A caster can control 2 skeletons per level, but only 1 zombie per level.
Here's some more mood music for the thread. When the contrabassoon comes in at :25, it just makes you want to start going "mwahhahahaha" and rub your palms together in anticipation of all the skellies, zombies, mummies, vampires, liches, and bone dragons (I like to call them "boners") about to come marching out of there!
EDIT: When I image source it, it's too small to read, because it's somewhat long, so I'll have to direct link it. Believe me, it's worth the time it takes to read.
EDIT #2: If it's too long for you, the pertinent bit is five rows up from the bottom.
@Shandyr, well, Xykon trusts his dark priest hobgoblin chief to carry it in a locket. Which, as you saw from the linked comic, was a huge mistake on his part. The phylactery got lost in the sewers when a captured pally grabbed it and threw it, and Xykon took his priest's right eye out in punishment. (Or, at least, won't let him regenerate it.)
Here's what Xykon did when he got it back, and I recommend that you do the same. See three rows up from the bottom. I don't think there's any conceivable better thing to do, and Xykon should have done it in the first place:
But, gods, man, if you insist on doing this undead thing, wouldn't you rather be a vamp? So you could stay sexy, and have Superman running, speed, strength, and jumping or flying (if you survived long enough). I know that there's all that annoying avoiding the sun (unless you get the coveted Stephanie Meyers diamond-skin treatment), and having to constantly jockey for power among the other vamps, which are admittedly much more common and less powerful than the pinnacle of humanoid undead, the lich. But still.
If I were forced to become undead, I'd take the sexy vampire route over the hideous lich route.
The official AMA guidelines which are adhered to by all accredited priestly and clerical organizations state that "Once the the percentage of soft or putrid organic matter drops below 7.59% of biomass the diagnosis of skeleton can be made."
Comments
A half way rotten corpse will become a particularly horrific and disgusting zombie, IMHO. Imagine the most rotten and ugly zombie you ever saw in movies or games. Worms wriggling in its eye sockets and mouth, bloated belly that is heavily marbled with greenish veins, skin basically in-patches, bursting with pus and putrid gases, which release a horrible odor and it drops worms, bugs and pus everywhere as it lurches ever forward. Colorful stuff like that. There are no official rules for the condition of the corpse to be zombified, in game terms it will still be a 'zombie'. A particularly sadistic dungeon master may want the player characters roll fear and horror checks when they see such a horrible zombie, but it is still a zombie.
You can design house rules on that, like what percent zombie or skeleton a corpse is, but that would be detailed and rather time-consuming.
I imagine a necromancer can choose whether he wants a corpse that qualifies for a zombie to be a zombie or a skeleton. In the latter case, the tissue could hinder the motions of the skeleton, though, so it's probably better to just turn it into a zombie.
i guess our hero and imoen do not have something in common with these guys
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/animateDead.htm
Zombies are pretty low on the totem pole. I actually don't know of a particular situation where anyone would make zombies over skeletons, unless they were just wanting some variety in their rotting mass of Doom.
And from the looks of it, zombie's require more effort to create and control then skeletons. A caster can control 2 skeletons per level, but only 1 zombie per level.
Here's some more mood music for the thread. When the contrabassoon comes in at :25, it just makes you want to start going "mwahhahahaha" and rub your palms together in anticipation of all the skellies, zombies, mummies, vampires, liches, and bone dragons (I like to call them "boners") about to come marching out of there!
EDIT: Also, talk about Jungian synchronicity! This comic strip appeared in this morning's paper:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0830.html
EDIT: When I image source it, it's too small to read, because it's somewhat long, so I'll have to direct link it. Believe me, it's worth the time it takes to read.
EDIT #2: If it's too long for you, the pertinent bit is five rows up from the bottom.
Here's what Xykon did when he got it back, and I recommend that you do the same. See three rows up from the bottom. I don't think there's any conceivable better thing to do, and Xykon should have done it in the first place:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0833.html
But, gods, man, if you insist on doing this undead thing, wouldn't you rather be a vamp? So you could stay sexy, and have Superman running, speed, strength, and jumping or flying (if you survived long enough). I know that there's all that annoying avoiding the sun (unless you get the coveted Stephanie Meyers diamond-skin treatment), and having to constantly jockey for power among the other vamps, which are admittedly much more common and less powerful than the pinnacle of humanoid undead, the lich. But still.
If I were forced to become undead, I'd take the sexy vampire route over the hideous lich route.