My GM insists that animate dead can only create the skeleton or zombie listed in the bestiary, namely the 1HD human skeleton/zombie. I had always read it can zombify any creature, as long as you have the caster level requirement met.
Specifically we encountered an adolescent green dragon, and killed it. It has 9HD as far as I know, and so even variant undead would be possible in areas of desecrate. He says I can make 9 1HD human zombies from it. I want a 9HD dragon zombie.
Could anyone give specific, cited, official sources for which of us is correct?
Best Answer
The spell animate dead usually applies to the targeted corpse the template skeleton or the template zombie
There's probably not going to be any direct developer support for or against your GM's ruling, likely because the developers considered the actual rules so obvious there was no reason to make such a ruling.
The spell animate dead targets one or more corpses, not specifically humanoid corpses and not mandating the resultant creatures be, for example, humanoid skeletons. Further,
The spell says nothing about transforming a corpse from the corpse of the original creature into the corpse of a humanoid. The template skeleton provides several examples of nonhuman skeletons, and the template zombie does the same. Seriously, all evidence points to, for example, a mostly intact 9 Hit Die green dragon corpse becoming either a 9 Hit Die green dragon skeleton or a 9 Hit Die green dragon zombie when such a corpse is the target of the spell animate dead (and requiring the expenditure of 225 gp of onyx as material components).
So, while it's hilarious to imagine, for example, a wizard casting the spell animate dead on the mostly intact skeleton of a vicious advanced megaraptor and ending up not with an advanced megaraptor skeleton but a 1 Hit Die humanoid skeleton, or a wizard casting the spell animate dead on the mostly intact corpse of a crocodile and ending up not with a zombie crocodile but a generic humanoid zombie, that's also deeply weird.
By the way, prior to this question, I'd never considered any other way of interpreting the spell animate dead except to animate monster corpses as monster corpses, but, as evidenced by this 2010 EN World thread, at least one other GM uses a similar house rule to your GM's house rule. (Or maybe that question's also about your GM's animate dead house rule? [Cue dramatic music.])
Working around these limits anyway
However, even if the GM insists that the spell animate dead when used to make skeletons or zombies only creates 1 Hit Die humanoid skeletons or zombies, options remain. The spell animate dead can turn a big ol' pile of those 1 Hit Die humanoid skeletons or zombies into a necrocraft, or the spell can make an isitoq or a beheaded. It will be difficult for the GM to argue against these alternatives given such creatures' descriptions' increased specificity.
These alternatives are just samples. The more bestiaries available, the more options multiply.