You call forth an undead spirit of challenge rating 4 or lower to serve you (you can summon only incorporeal undead like ghosts, not corporeal ones like zombies). It appears in an unoccupied space that you can see within range. The undead spirit disappears when it drops to 0 hit points or when the spell ends.

The undead spirit is friendly to you and your companions for the duration. Roll initiative for the spirit, which has its own turns. It obeys any verbal commands that you issue to it (no action required by you), as long as they don't violate its alignment. If you don't issue any commands to the undead spirit, it defends itself from hostile creatures but otherwise takes no actions.

If your concentration is broken, the undead spirit doesn't disappear. Instead, you lose control of the undead spirit, it becomes hostile toward you and your companions, and it might attack. An uncontrolled undead spirit can't be dismissed by you, and it disappears 1 hour after you summoned it.

The GM has the undead spirit's statistics. Some sample creatures are listed below.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 6th level or higher, the challenge rating increases by 1 for each slot level above 5th.

Sample Creatures