The Tavern

Yred animated allies shouldn't retain their gear. You have to kill gear-wielding zombies after clearing a level if you want to make sure you aren't missing out on sweet loot, etc.

Zombie-type allies in general shouldn't retain gear, because it makes 'choosing which one to reanimate' way more of a hassle than it ought to be. Likewise, corpses should either be a) more specifically labelled or b) identical within a species (ie orcs shouldn't be different from orc warriors). The broader better solution is to remove corpses and corpse-requiring spells in general, and the even broader even better solution is to remove allies, but... the yred problem is pretty annoying and could be fixed quite easily.

Alternately, yred could just make temporary zombies, but I kind of like that yred zombies are permanent b/c it means i don't need to worry about reanimated ally duration which I don't understand at all.

You could also have "an orc zombie (4HD)". Simplify zombie creation by having all stats of zombies depend on HD of the original creature, with the exception of AC and natural "special" abilities (head chopping for hydras, weapon and armour for humanoids, reach for turtles...).

You could also have an "unbind zombie" ability that allows you to instantly destroy your zombies. After all, why not? They're your mindless undead servants.

>playing yred
>using blade hands, wearing ring mail
>find ozo's armor
>ctrl-f leather
>wait a minute there are probably multiple glowing leather armors/robes worn by zombies scattered across the dungeon
>continue wearing ring mail

the point being that another ok fix would be to make gear worn by reanimated allies searchable

Yred zombies should expire just like other zombies. Until I read this thread I assumed they did.

Maybe Yred should increase their timeout (or some other buff, like making them walk as fast as you do or something, though neither yred nor zombies really need a buff) but there is a good reason why derived undead got an expiration.

Actually, yred zombies shouldn't even exist.