Animate Lesser Beast

Choose a pile of bones or a corpse of a Small or Tiny beast within range. The corpse or pile of bones must come from a beast that is challenge 1/2 or lower. Your spell imbues the target with negative energy, reanimating it into an undead creature. The creature's appearance is skeletal if you chose a pile of bones, and putrid and decayed if you chose a corpse.

The creature uses the same statistics as the base creature it was in life, with the following changes:

• The target's creature type is undead, rather than beast.
• The target has only half of the hit dice and hit points that it had in life, rounded down.
• The target's Intelligence drops to 2 if it isn't already 2 or lower.
• If you chose a corpse, the creature must make a Constitution saving throw if damage reduces it to 0 hit points, with a DC of 5+ the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the creature drops to 1 hit point instead.
• If you chose a pile of bones, the creature's AC is increased by 2, but it has vulnerability to bludgeoning damage.

On each of your turns, you can use a bonus action to mentally command any creature you made with this spell if the creature is within 60 feet of you (if you control multiple creatures, you can command any or all of them at the same time, issuing the same command to each one.) The creature follows your commands to the best of its ability. If you issue no commands, the creature only defends itself against hostile creatures. Once given an order, the creature continues to follow it until its task is complete.

The creature is under your control for 24 hours, after which it stops being animated and becomes an ordinary corpse or pile of bones.

At Higher Levels: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 3rd level or higher, you animate two additional undead creatures for each slot level above 2nd. Each of the creatures must come from a different corpse or pile of bones.