Determine HD of a dead creature to calculate create undead cost

As per the title, we killed an caster in our campaign and we want to raise him as a bone creature using create undead. We don't know exactely how many HD he has and we're trying to understand it before casting create undead to avoid wasting money. Is there anything that can help us? We use everything 3.5 (including dragon magazine) and pathfinder (non 3rd party) and given I play an artificer I can craft pretty much anything and have access to basically any spell if needed.

Thanks for the help!

What you're looking for is here. The best of the lot is probably the Power Sight spell from Masters of the Wild. That said, it probably will not work on a creature after it already died. I don't know of any surefire RAW way to assess that for something that is now, for all intents and purposes, just an object. If you fought them, there is a good chance they cast some of their strongest spells. Take the highest level spell they cast, multiply the level by 2 and add 2 for good measure and it should give you a good estimation of their caster level (add their racial hit dice for total HD).

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Originally Posted by Beni-Kujaku

What you're looking for is here. The best of the lot is probably the Power Sight spell from Masters of the Wild. That said, it probably will not work on a creature after it already died. I don't know of any surefire RAW way to assess that for something that is now, for all intents and purposes, just an object. If you fought them, there is a good chance they cast some of their strongest spells. Take the highest level spell they cast, multiply the level by 2 and add 2 for good measure and it should give you a good estimation of their caster level (add their racial hit dice for total HD).

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We know the level is 15+ given he could cast 8th level spells for sure, but we were looking for a way to know for sure.

Pathfinder occult skill unlock allows to use Knowledge Arcana to use Phrenology and determine a body's original HD (DC 25+HD). However, you must be a psychic caster (or deemed equivalent) to use them. That was pretty useful for my psychic necromancer ^^

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Originally Posted by Melnir

As per the title, we killed an caster in our campaign and we want to raise him as a bone creature using create undead. We don't know exactely how many HD he has and we're trying to understand it before casting create undead to avoid wasting money. Is there anything that can help us? We use everything 3.5 (including dragon magazine) and pathfinder (non 3rd party) and given I play an artificer I can craft pretty much anything and have access to basically any spell if needed.

Thanks for the help!

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I mean, what happens if you put too much money into the spell?

Like, imagining you need 3000gp of spell component, what happens if you put 5000gp on the scale?

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Originally Posted by Unoriginal

I mean, what happens if you put too much money into the spell?

Like, imagining you need 3000gp of spell component, what happens if you put 5000gp on the scale?

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I burn 2k gp for no reason

Did the Gm tell you that the extra gems would be consumed, or was that your assumption?

Because, going into it blind, considering that material components are mostly an abstraction anyway, I'd deal with your scenario ooc by the simple expedient of stating "I cast create undead on the corpse of that defeated caster, how much gp do I have to deduct for the material components? It's 50gp per HD"


Anyway, failing that, I'll also assume you can't or won't blood money it away, so I guess the meticolous way would be to caste prognostication over and over, spying "a future where I use 1600gp" "a future where I use 1800gp" and so on until you've narrowed down the optimal amount of money it'd cost

I guess a somewhat cheeky answer could also be a speak with dead, and asking the spirit of the dude how many HD it had, coached in whatever language woukd be appropriate in universe, such as "if you were to create an undead exactly as powerful as you, how much would be the least you'd spend in material components?"

Or a divination/commune/whatever that boils down to dressing up the real answer: "ask your gm"

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Originally Posted by ciopo

Did the Gm tell you that the extra gems would be consumed, or was that your assumption?

Because, going into it blind, considering that material components are mostly an abstraction anyway, I'd deal with your scenario ooc by the simple expedient of stating "I cast create undead on the corpse of that defeated caster, how much gp do I have to deduct for the material components? It's 50gp per HD"


Anyway, failing that, I'll also assume you can't or won't blood money it away, so I guess the meticolous way would be to caste prognostication over and over, spying "a future where I use 1600gp" "a future where I use 1800gp" and so on until you've narrowed down the optimal amount of money it'd cost

I guess a somewhat cheeky answer could also be a speak with dead, and asking the spirit of the dude how many HD it had, coached in whatever language woukd be appropriate in universe, such as "if you were to create an undead exactly as powerful as you, how much would be the least you'd spend in material components?"

Or a divination/commune/whatever that boils down to dressing up the real answer: "ask your gm"

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We were told that we need to commit an amount of onix at the moment of casting and any eccess would be consumed and consumption happens even if the spell fails to raise the dead creature, otherwise we would not be facing any sort of problem.
The speak with dead route is pretty interesting, but we have to hope he fails the save and he should have pretty good saves.
I avoid blood money simply because we are allowed basically anything and that would be literally an infinite amount of free money since we have a command word item of restoration (same goes for infinite craft exp from thought bottle and similar things), more or less I play with the "discounts are ok, resource generation is not" dogma.

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Originally Posted by Melnir

We were told that we need to commit an amount of onix at the moment of casting and any eccess would be consumed and consumption happens even if the spell fails to raise the dead creature, otherwise we would not be facing any sort of problem.
The speak with dead route is pretty interesting, but we have to hope he fails the save and he should have pretty good saves.
I avoid blood money simply because we are allowed basically anything and that would be literally an infinite amount of free money since we have a command word item of restoration (same goes for infinite craft exp from thought bottle and similar things), more or less I play with the "discounts are ok, resource generation is not" dogma.

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Only the material components are supposed to be annihilated by casting the spell. Extra gems are not components by virtue of not being mentioned in the spell description. Even then, while the player may not know how many gems to place, your character would be able to know. HD are an abstract concept that a character cannot know and yet it's the character that must know how many gems to place, not the player, but it's the metric by which it costs. The DM making you go to such lengths is a failing on their part. It'd be like saying using simulacrum on a 5 HD creature that you assume to be 10 HD and you lose the extra 500 xp and gp just because you put that much extra into the spell to ensure it's success.

Or you could look into other ways to create undead. Look into the necrocarne in magic of incarnum, for an example.

Manipulate yours and your fellow players bonus to knowledge local checks, such that when taking 10 you obtain a result of 25,26,27 and so on.

The dc is 10+HD, so by increasing your result by one until your first success you can reverse engineer the HD.

The silly in universe "question" you're trying to make a knowledge check on is, of course, "how much onix do we need to create undead on this well known mage we've defeated"

The Sense Motive skill might be able to do what you want (as long as the target is still alive when you use it)
The Iaijutsu focus rule allows the user to determine the opponent's level with a DC 15.
I agree, "level" can mean several things "HD + LA" or CR or whatever else but it might give you a ballpark with little to no extra investment