Animation Mastery

When you cast Animate Dead with a 3rd level spell slot, you can target a corpse or pile of bones and choose to animate or reassert control over any of the creatures of animation difficulty 3 in the table below. 

At Higher Levels: Additionally, When you cast Animate Dead with spell slots above 3rd level, you can forgo the additional targets granted by the spell to animate more powerful undead. When you cast Animate Dead using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, you animate or reassert control over two additional Undead creatures for each slot above 3rd. Alternatively, you may increase the difficulty of the animation by one category (as shown in the table below) for each slot above 3rd.

For each additional level of spell slot over 3rd, you can elect to animate or reassert control over two additional Undead creatures of the appropriate difficulty, or increase the difficulty of the creature by one category.

For example, when casting Animate Dead with a 5th level spell slot, you can elect to:

• Animate 5 creatures of Difficulty 3, or reassert control over 8 creatures of Difficulty 3
• Animate 3 creatures of Difficulty 4, or reassert control over 6 creatures of Difficulty 4
• Animate 1 creature of Difficulty 5, or reassert control over 4 creatures of Difficulty 5

Due to the complexity required for higher difficulties of animation, you may only control 4 creatures of difficulty 6 or higher at any one time with this spell.