So, Rules as Written, spells such as Animate dead let you "Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range." I Dislike these restrictions, but that's not why i'm making this.
For that pile of bones, it says nothing about the source of the bones, so, theoretically, could l skin a Bear and have a Skeletal Bear minion? It also doesn't mention a size limit, or maximum number of bones, so could l combine several skeletons worth of bones into a Giant Skeleton, or a Skeletal Carrage? If l combine several skeletons together into a, for lack of a better term, "Human Centipede", would that count as one undead, or several tied together?
Are these questions that should be asked to the DM instead of this forum? Yes. But l want to know the opinions of the masses.
So the third line it tells you what they will be. note if the DM wants to flavor them that is there call
This spell creates an undead servant. Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the GM has the creature's game statistics)
There is a bit of ambiguity in the sentence "Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range."
Is it "Choose: [(a pile of bones) or (a corpse)] of a Medium or Small humanoid within range," or "Choose: [(a pile of bones) or (a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid)] within range," or for that matter "Choose: (a pile of bones) or (a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range)"?
Regardless, Drakkon is still right. The properties of the targeted object only determines which of the 2 predetermined stat blocks you use, it doesn't modify the stat blocks.
If you want to work with your DM to make homebrew stat blocks, that is up to them, but don't be surprised if it requires different costly components or casting the spell at a different level.
You choose “a” pile of bones. Meaning one, so you can’t combine them. And a bear is not a humanoid, so that wouldn’t work. That said, if you really wanted a bear skeleton and I was your DM, I’d probably allow it. You’d still have to use the stats for a regular skeleton as described by the spell, but if you want to flavor it looking like a bear, I’d be ok with that.
So, Rules as Written, spells such as Animate dead let you "Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range." I Dislike these restrictions, but that's not why i'm making this.
For that pile of bones, it says nothing about the source of the bones, so, theoretically, could l skin a Bear and have a Skeletal Bear minion? It also doesn't mention a size limit, or maximum number of bones, so could l combine several skeletons worth of bones into a Giant Skeleton, or a Skeletal Carrage? If l combine several skeletons together into a, for lack of a better term, "Human Centipede", would that count as one undead, or several tied together?
Are these questions that should be asked to the DM instead of this forum? Yes. But l want to know the opinions of the masses.
Drakkon and DJC gave you the correct answers already, but I just want to add that Animate Dead targets a pile of bones but it's deeply weird if your DM demands you ensure every single bone doesn't have total cover from you - the rules on objects are very bare-bones, pun intended, but most DMs treat this spell as if the pile is intended to be 1 gestalt target, i.e. it's ok for some of the bones to provide total cover to some of the other bones, you don't have to splay the whole thing out. That means you don't need to skin the whole bear, just dig through part of it until you can reach a bone.
Even then, that's assuming your DM is very strict about RAW, i.e. doesn't allow the spell to target teeth. Since the spell can explicitly target antlers (as DJC correctly pointed out, the ambiguous grammar might mean they have to be a humanoid's antlers, which still means the spell can target antlers), I simply would not be shocked at any DM allowing it to target teeth; both antlers and teeth as targets will generally mean you don't need to do any skinning.
The key point is that no matter what you target you get the standard skeleton or zombie. I might let you flavor something differnetly, i.e. it looks like a bear skeleton, but the stats are the same.
As for targeting things like teeth or antlers, I could see letting someone do that, but again, you still get the same stats.
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So, Rules as Written, spells such as Animate dead let you "Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range." I Dislike these restrictions, but that's not why i'm making this.
For that pile of bones, it says nothing about the source of the bones, so, theoretically, could l skin a Bear and have a Skeletal Bear minion? It also doesn't mention a size limit, or maximum number of bones, so could l combine several skeletons worth of bones into a Giant Skeleton, or a Skeletal Carrage? If l combine several skeletons together into a, for lack of a better term, "Human Centipede", would that count as one undead, or several tied together?
Are these questions that should be asked to the DM instead of this forum? Yes. But l want to know the opinions of the masses.
So the third line it tells you what they will be. note if the DM wants to flavor them that is there call
This spell creates an undead servant. Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range. Your spell imbues the target with a foul mimicry of life, raising it as an undead creature. The target becomes a skeleton if you chose bones or a zombie if you chose a corpse (the GM has the creature's game statistics)
There is a bit of ambiguity in the sentence "Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range."
Is it "Choose: [(a pile of bones) or (a corpse)] of a Medium or Small humanoid within range," or "Choose: [(a pile of bones) or (a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid)] within range," or for that matter "Choose: (a pile of bones) or (a corpse of a Medium or Small humanoid within range)"?
Regardless, Drakkon is still right. The properties of the targeted object only determines which of the 2 predetermined stat blocks you use, it doesn't modify the stat blocks.
If you want to work with your DM to make homebrew stat blocks, that is up to them, but don't be surprised if it requires different costly components or casting the spell at a different level.
You choose “a” pile of bones. Meaning one, so you can’t combine them. And a bear is not a humanoid, so that wouldn’t work.
That said, if you really wanted a bear skeleton and I was your DM, I’d probably allow it. You’d still have to use the stats for a regular skeleton as described by the spell, but if you want to flavor it looking like a bear, I’d be ok with that.
Drakkon and DJC gave you the correct answers already, but I just want to add that Animate Dead targets a pile of bones but it's deeply weird if your DM demands you ensure every single bone doesn't have total cover from you - the rules on objects are very bare-bones, pun intended, but most DMs treat this spell as if the pile is intended to be 1 gestalt target, i.e. it's ok for some of the bones to provide total cover to some of the other bones, you don't have to splay the whole thing out. That means you don't need to skin the whole bear, just dig through part of it until you can reach a bone.
Even then, that's assuming your DM is very strict about RAW, i.e. doesn't allow the spell to target teeth. Since the spell can explicitly target antlers (as DJC correctly pointed out, the ambiguous grammar might mean they have to be a humanoid's antlers, which still means the spell can target antlers), I simply would not be shocked at any DM allowing it to target teeth; both antlers and teeth as targets will generally mean you don't need to do any skinning.
The key point is that no matter what you target you get the standard skeleton or zombie. I might let you flavor something differnetly, i.e. it looks like a bear skeleton, but the stats are the same.
As for targeting things like teeth or antlers, I could see letting someone do that, but again, you still get the same stats.