How many of you have used these rules for Undead Lieges and Pawns from the Rules Cyclopedia? What were your results, good or bad?

Who out there has used undead spellcasters in their games and not just liches? How effective were they? What advantages and disadvantages did you find with them?

Quote from: jeff37923;1111493How many of you have used these rules for Undead Lieges and Pawns from the Rules Cyclopedia? What were your results, good or bad?

Who out there has used undead spellcasters in their games and not just liches? How effective were they? What advantages and disadvantages did you find with them?

I don't remember those rules...

Page 217

QuoteUnder certain conditions. intelligent undead can try to control other undead. The undead need not be a spellcaster to control other undead creatures.

QuoteA liege may control a number of undead whose total Hit Dice are less than or equal to twice the liege's Hit Dice.

And there is more along with a table.

Seem too specific as different settings and referees may not view undead in the same way as these rules. But it is a workable system as good as any other that details the undead.

Quote from: jeff37923;1111493How many of you have used these rules for Undead Lieges and Pawns from the Rules Cyclopedia? What were your results, good or bad?

Unless you have a specific opinion or setting detail I say go ahead and use it. It makes groups of organized undead more powerful but not overly so.

Quote from: jeff37923;1111493Who out there has used undead spellcasters in their games and not just liches? How effective were they? What advantages and disadvantages did you find with them?

Vampire can be leveled characters in my Majestic Wilderlands. There no particular issue beyond the usual does this make sense for the circumstance. Which it did in the most recent encounter the PCs had with undead.

Also keep in mind that wherever a undead overlord lairs like a lich. It is a viable last ditch tactic use rock to mud and bring down the entire dungeon on the party. The undead immortality and immunity to suffocation means that given time the undead lord can recover everything.

I tend to give monsters class abilities in my games--specially if they're humanoid (or formerly humanoid, in the case of undead)--and they tend to work pretty well, specially since I tend to allow a lot of character building options in my campaigns that toughen up PCs. My thinking is that "monsters" should have access to any benefits that PCs have available, and I've found that this might be a requirement in order to give PCs a decent challenge in games using a lot of customization options, like weapon specialization/mastery, 2e "Player's Options" rules, feats in later edition of D&D (I've played mostly 2e and 3e), etc.

In regards to undead specifically, I've used spell casting skeletons and vampires, treating their undead templates as their "race", much the same way you could make halfling, dwarf or elven bandits as adversaries by making fighters, rogues or even spell casters from those races and treating them as pillaging marauders. Granted, undead tend to be more powerful than PC races, but I account for that by treating them as being a few levels higher for purposes of setting up encounters and handing XP rewards--specially in the case of vampires (skeletons are more on par with PC races).