Animate Beast

This spell creates an undead beast to serve you. Choose a pile of bestial remains, bones or a corpse, 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 corpse (some beasts may not have bones, but all beasts leave behind a corpse). Choose one of the following options:

- One beast of challenge rating 1/8 or lower.

- Two beasts of challenge rating 0.

Each undead beast uses the same statistics as a living beast of the same type, except for the following changes:

Beast Skeleton.
>Its creature type becomes undead.
>Its Intelligence score becomes 6 unless its Intelligence is already lower than 6, Its Charisma score becomes 5 unless its Charisma score is already lower than 5.
>It becomes immune to poison damage, the poisoned condition, and exhaustion. It becomes vulnerable to bludgeoning damage.
>It gains darkvision out to a range of 60 feet.
>It understands all languages it knew in life, but loses any ability to speak if it could.

Beast Zombie.
>Its creature type becomes undead.
>Each of its movement speed maximums are reduced by 10 feet (this reduction to its movement speed cannot reduce any of its speed maximums to less than 5 feet).
>Its Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores are all reduced by 4 (this reduction cannot bring any of these ability scores below 1).
>It becomes immune to poison damage and the poisoned condition.
>It understands all languages it knew in life, but loses any ability to speak if it could.
>It gains the Undead Fortitude trait (see Zombie stat block).

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). You decide what action the creature will take and where it will move during its next turn, or you can issue a general command, such as to guard a particular chamber or corridor. 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 obeying any command you’ve given it. To maintain control of the creature for another 24 hours, you must cast this spell on the creature again before the current 24-hour period ends. This use of the spell reasserts your control over creatures you have animated with this spell, rather than animating a new one.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using certain higher-level spell slots, you can reanimate or reassert your control over a beast of a higher challenge rating or reanimate or reassert your control over additional beasts. For a 4th level spell slot, you can raise either one beast of up to challenge rating 1/2, two beasts of up to challenge rating 1/8, or four beasts of challenge rating 0. For a 6th level spell slot, you can raise either one beast of up to challenge rating 1, two beasts of up to challenge rating 1/2, four beasts of challenge rating 1/8, or six beasts of challenge rating 0. For an 8th level spell slot, you can raise either one beast of challenge rating 2, two beasts of challenge rating 1, three beasts of up to challenge rating 1/2, or eight beasts of challenge 1/8 or lower.