Skeletons and Zombies in particular, but also Ghouls and Ghasts.
What do you do to make these encounters more interesting and memorable?
It's tough to make mindless undead who die in 1-2 hits to be interesting, and I'm not seeing the motivation. That said, I did have an encounter where players could pit a batch of skeletons against a batch of zombies, to "see which is better." Maybe you could play "dress up" with them?
Ghouls are a bit easier, as I make them pretty hunger-driven. They'll cheerfully focus on a downed/paralyzed character rather than deal with someone swinging at them, and will take direct paths (like, over a pit or flaming oil) to get to food quicker, even if doing so isn't such a good idea. Ghasts, of course, are a bit smarter, more prone to running away and staging ambushes to give them a better chance against packs of "meat that fights back."
I like my ghouls to look like perfectly normal people (they may be dirty, but many of the commoners in my games are too), at least as long as they are well-fed; their undead natures become more apparent the longer they go without feeding. Ghasts, unfortunately, are too far gone and, while they are the heads of ghoul "families," they keep out of sight (and scent) and let their lesser "cousins" bring the food home to them.
I believe 3.5e had something like this as a "gravetouched ghoul" in the horror supplement.
Remember that if you're playing D&D 3.5 that zombies can use weapons, it's just that they take a non-proficiency penalty. A -4 penalty can be crippling... except for weapons that use touch attacks. If your weapon ignores penalty anyway, than the non-proficiency penalty is no big deal. Zombies then should be equipped with nets and with anything that provides trip attempts, such as: bolas, spiked chains, scythes, or whips.
Better yet, splash weapons are touch attacks that don't require proficiency at all! Your necromancers might equip their zombie minions with flasks of alchemist's ice and the zombies can throw these at no penalty.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1110932Skeletons and Zombies in particular, but also Ghouls and Ghasts.
What do you do to make these encounters more interesting and memorable?
Uniquely Undead by Dyson Logos (https://dysonlogos.blog/2011/01/11/labyrinth-lord-uniquely-undead/) for the Labyrinth Lord system.
Tom Moldvay had an interesting thing in Dragon about gem eyed skeletons, basically have the ability to cast a 1st or 2nd level spell
Quote from: JeremyR;1111010Tom Moldvay had an interesting thing in Dragon about gem eyed skeletons, basically have the ability to cast a 1st or 2nd level spell
Are the gems recoverable as loot?
Most of my skeletons and zombies are their usual mindless, uninteresting selves. It's the situation and other creatures around them that needs to supply the interest. Occasionally, I have skeletons and zombies that aren't mindless. They are NPCs just like anyone else. For example, make a former low-powered wizard into a skeleton that can still cast spells and act as any other NPC, you've got a very weak lich, perhaps without the drive for immortality.
My favorite so far was such a spell casting skeleton that was guarding a tomb, because to leave was to have its remaining skeletal body crumble into dust. Alleviating boredom was its main motivation. It ended up negotiating with the players. They agreed to keep it supplied with a few cats for company in return for the particular item that they needed. They also promised to visit from time to time and bring news of the outside world. In the process of one of their later adventures, they found a cat that had gone through a similar process, but without being tied to a location. They went out of their way to move the cat to the tomb, and made a permanent friend.
For ghouls and the like, I'm less interested in varied personalities. Instead, I'll usually go with particularly driven pursuit, speech, and the like to show how twisted they are.
Quote from: JeremyR;1111010Tom Moldvay had an interesting thing in Dragon about gem eyed skeletons, basically have the ability to cast a 1st or 2nd level spell
Dragon #138, "The Ungrateful Dead," part of a series Moldvay did on the various AD&D undead full of folklore and variants. That article covered skeletons, zombies, ghouls and ghasts. #126 had "Hearts of Darkness," the vampires article (with AD&D stats for Dracula), #162 dealt with shadows in "Out of the Shadows, #198 covered wights, wraiths and mummies in "Beyond the Grave", and #210 closed out the series with "Too Evil to Die" on spectres, ghosts and liches.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1111052#126 had "Hearts of Darkness," the vampires article (with AD&D stats for Dracula)
FREQUENCY: Unique
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Really good information, though. Saw your post and read the article, gives a good synopsis of Dracula.
My undead are all literally necromancers. Necromancers don't 'raise the dead', they study ways of getting out of the lands of the dead (prison escapees). The lesser undead are just those that did a shit job of it and came out 'feral'.
Skeletons, and possibly zombies, on the other hand, are constructs, not Undead in the classic sense, and thus are immune to typical 'anti-undead' measures. You might say a Skeleton is a sort of 'bone golem', and a zombie is a form of 'flesh golem', though without the D&D specific baggage of those terms/monster entries.
Classic 'bind the souls of hte dead as your servants' Necromancers aren't really a thing because of how the metaphysics work, and having a very active Death god and all that. Binding and enslaving the Undead is no simpler than binding the souls of the living, and has all sorts of associated risks (Personal visits from Death to talk about your hobbies, briefly. Rampaging flesh eating feral undead, etc...) that enslaving the living just doesn't have.
Quote from: Brad;1111059FREQUENCY: Unique
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Lugosi
and Lee? Actor and stunt double? :)
QuoteReally good information, though. Saw your post and read the article, gives a good synopsis of Dracula.
It comes from the height of the 'Dracula = Vlad Tepes' era, which has since ebbed (closer research suggests that Stoker only had the vaguest knowledge of the historical Vlad, and the novel's details of the character don't mesh well), but it's still a good writeup. And that whole Moldvay series is one of my favorites in Dragon's history.
Have your game group play The Skeletons. That should make them stop and think for a moment the next time they run into a group of lowly undead.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/177596/The-Skeletons
(warning, artsy RPG incoming, grognards beware)
Quote from: Spike;1111377My undead are all literally necromancers. Necromancers don't 'raise the dead', they study ways of getting out of the lands of the dead (prison escapees). The lesser undead are just those that did a shit job of it and came out 'feral'.
Oh interesting, sounds a tad like Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series.
I thought about this a lot when writing "The Sunken Temple of Chloren-Var". The module is geared towards levels 1-4 with Skeletons being the primary enemy in the temple. With that in mind, I wanted to make sure that every encounter was different in some way. Toxic vines growing though their bones, the ability to use low level magic in an interactive chamber, different armour/weapons forcing ranged or melee combat, combining into a massive bone golem, etc. Let your imagination run wild!
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They are marginally better in RQ, as they at least have a chance of killing you before you kill them.
How do I make them interesting? Perhaps give them a connection to the PCs. One of the zombies looks like their uncle; The skeletons wear the crest of one of the PCs' family; that kind of thing.
Control the battlefield. If the PCs can easily retreat or have a lot of room to maneuver, the threat is minimized. Take that away, and it's a lot harder.
Quote from: jeff37923;1111003Uniquely Undead by Dyson Logos (https://dysonlogos.blog/2011/01/11/labyrinth-lord-uniquely-undead/) for the Labyrinth Lord system.
Ooo good one Jeff! Thanks for that link.
Quote from: Doom;1110950It's tough to make mindless undead who die in 1-2 hits to be interesting, and I'm not seeing the motivation. That said, I did have an encounter where players could pit a batch of skeletons against a batch of zombies, to "see which is better." Maybe you could play "dress up" with them?
Ghouls are a bit easier, as I make them pretty hunger-driven. They'll cheerfully focus on a downed/paralyzed character rather than deal with someone swinging at them, and will take direct paths (like, over a pit or flaming oil) to get to food quicker, even if doing so isn't such a good idea. Ghasts, of course, are a bit smarter, more prone to running away and staging ambushes to give them a better chance against packs of "meat that fights back."
I do something similar, my ghouls don't like to admit to each other they are undead. They speak & prattle about all manner of inanities. It may become apparent if one listens for a while that some lived in different eras. When it comes to eating, they have individual or group reactions which differ depending how far gone they are- from horrid discussions about taste & texture as if they were simply eating chicken, to weeping at the horror of what they are doing but unable to stop etc. Somewhere between Gaimann's ghouls in
The Graveyard Book & a horror film.
Skeletons which rip one of their own arms off & try to beat you to death with it... or attack by trying to stab their fingers through your chest Mola Ram style & steal your heart to replace their own- dmg as normal but if you die, that's what they have managed to do. Then they vanish with it... Or begin running back to XYZ with it.
Zombies can be made interesting in how they died or where they have been lurking since- are they waterlogged & heavy, immune to fire but actually softened & extra prone to being dismembered by slashes... did they crawl out of a tar pit... perhaps they are rife with insects now & hitting them releases a spray/swarm...
I also intend to steal the idea from
The Dead Don't Die of having zombies with just a single, vestigial urge leftover from whatever they enjoyed/desired in life (+ brain eating). It actually open up a lot of possibilities & flavour & links them more strongly as "once people".
My response is that you make skeletons scary by having normal people around who are actually threatened by them. A large band of skeletons surrounds your beloved peasant village. Or you have to shepherd some civilians through skeleton territory. Or the call goes out to rescue a small village and you get there and the survivors are barricaded inside the church.
Or, you treat them like a preliminary encounter, waste them, and move on to bigger things.
5e zombies are pretty scary to low level characters, without any special details: they fall down, then they get up again, and they keep coming. And again. And again.
(They get a CON save at DC 5+damage inflicted to avoid dying when reduced to 0 hp, and their CON bonus is +3; for my players who weren't wielding great weapons, even doing 8 points of damage to drop a Zombie only had a 50% chance of putting it down for good. And they start with 22hp, so it takes a while to get them there.)
But I'm certainly yoinking some of these ideas for Barrowmaze mid-levels.
Use their INT WIS CHA. :) They were once sapient. How much of that they have left is dependent on the spell that animates and binds them to service.
Example, 5e Zombies (besides making punchbag Zombies) leaves a functional INT WIS CHA spread and says they know languages they once knew in life -- they just cannot verbalize like before.
Now you can have them draw a response on the dirt. Or you can have them bribe PCs with the loot of previously defeated would be looters. ;) You can have them ambush, parley (through other means), feint retreat (play dead :p), and all the other things a human could do. Their advantages of fearless morale and longevity should be very scary, however any creature played mindlessly and plodding will be boring eventually.
Original zombiis (African curse) are way cooler IMO because they are less a contagious force of nature, but a body under domination. They fulfill their job to the best of their ability, even if it means lying, fleeing, and so on. One of my favorite stories was described by Zora Neale Hurston in "Go Tell My Horse" about two girls dressed in baptismal white praying at a chapel at midnight. When questioned, the girls were obviously zombiis because of the white cowl covering their eyes. They answered they were praying for X guy, their uncle, because he has not finished paying his debt, and then they left. That's it. Two missing nieces conspicuously praying for their indebted uncle in a chapel at midnight. ;)
There is a lot to do once you turn off the John Romero or other Western dead-end tropes. :)
I found this article interesting, if somewhat dramatic in its prose.
http://lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com/2014/07/undead-are-pockets-of-stopped-time.html
There were some interesting flowers amid the purple there. I liked the shifted, such as the unmoored from time, perspective contemplated from being undead. Sort of WoD questions about immortality wearing away the relatability to humanity. :) Thanks for sharing!
Quote from: Opaopajr;1112489There were some interesting flowers amid the purple there. I liked the shifted, such as the unmoored from time, perspective contemplated from being undead. Sort of WoD questions about immortality wearing away the relatability to humanity. :) Thanks for sharing!
Definitely! I like that the "time frozen" explanation lends a sort of eerie, alien-like quality to undead as well as the explanations for how they communicate and why they appear so lethargic in their pursuits. I think if I were to implement some variant of it in one of my campaigns, though, I would likely reserve it as a variant explanation for the particularly important liches or hell knights or whatever; "regular" undead I would leave as semi-autonomous puppets orchestrated by dark magic chaining their semi-aware spirits/souls back to their remains, or bound demons, or whatever; closer to constructs than 'true' undead. If even the average skeleton can perceive across time then it somewhat complicates the mechanics of even rabble undead, there are lots of ripple effects and implications that have to be considered with a mentality/motivational shift that pronounced.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1110932Skeletons and Zombies in particular, but also Ghouls and Ghasts.
What do you do to make these encounters more interesting and memorable?
First, my system is a spiritual successor to 4E so it employs roles to good effect. It also means that different critters that look the same could have a completely different role and abilities.
The basic animated dead include a Scrapper ("heedless attack" lets them make multiple attacks per round), an Opportunist (in this case it deals extra damage to prone targets as it dives down to devour them) and a Blocker (solid defenses, its slam pushes targets back and its "mindless rampage" lets it make free strikes even if its dazed).
Since I'm going non-OGL my Ghoul is actually based on the Middle-Eastern mythology and, as such, has a lot of vampire traits thrown in (indeed, including vampires at all at that point seemed redundant so I just include a note that ghouls can gain sustenance from any body part, including blood). It can take the form and memories of anyone it eats any part of (meaning it will often keep some individuals alive and eats them slowly to use their identities for their own ends) and mesmerize creatures with their gaze (both taken from the legends that they would shape-shift into forms to lure travelers off their path so as to consume them). Neither of these abilities works in direct sunlight though.
The true ghouls can also create mindless lesser ghouls, typically to throw people off their scent while they maintain a false identity. These also sub in well for Vampire Spawn.
Skeletal Hordes are for those times when a Necromancer doesn't even bother to create distinct undead minions and just animates a pile of corpses/skeletons into an force of destruction. They're blasters (meaning they specialize in multi-target attacks) that engulf opponents (basically the Game of Thrones wight overrun tactics) and regenerates or even spawns new skeletal hordes by killing opponents and adding them to the mass.
Wight is my catch-all term for intelligent corporeal undead (technically ghouls are wights with specific abilities, but they're distinct enough to get their own entries), as such they could be Infantry (blockers who use a damaging grab attack to lock down opponents and their gaze instills dread in their target), Maulers (scrappers whose melee attacks knock targets prone and whose gaze inflicts terror so great it can actually kill a target), Stalkers (the scourge opponent type whose "death mark" gives them significant bonuses against their chosen foe including ignoring all movement impairing conditions if moving closer to their target).
More potent versions Liches (controllers who command lesser undead spirits) and death knights (elites that work like a combination of the infantry, mauler and stalker and whose death glare can kill entire armies of non-heroic opponents when it takes the field (in D&D terms it can auto-kill all 1-2 HD opponents with line of sight to it with an attack it can recharge after one minute of rest).
Wraith is my collective term for intelligent incorporeal undead and they range from mere Echos (grunts that weaken nearby foes with an icy touch and fearsome glare) to the Wraith Lord that can drown their foes in icy blackness and kill them with a glare (and typically both in the same turn).
Then there's the 'undead adjacent'... Shades, when someone dies before their natural time their shadow is decoupled from them and becomes a malevolent echo of them in the Shadow World, necromancers commonly open portals to recruit the shades of dead warriors to use as armies.
Dybbuks are malevolent spirits that act more like a disease than a monster, driving those afflicted with it to homicidal paranoia and infecting those who actually survive on of their host's attacks.
Also, just in setting there's the fact that the undead are actually considered an even greater evil than even demons. Demons just want to reconquer the world and enslave people, the undead are driven by the lingering echoes of pure malice within The Shadow that empowers them to unmake the world and extinguish all life.
Quote from: Opaopajr;1112398Original zombiis (African curse) are way cooler IMO because they are less a contagious force of nature, but a body under domination.
Yes, absolutely. That sort of thing, magic of enchantment that alters the will or memory of a person, while mechanically could be very similar to "charm person" is way more interesting in terms of roleplay connotations.
It's not voodoo, but my RPGpundit Presents: Medieval Enchantment Magic (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/262600/RPGPundit-Presents-60-MedievalAuthentic-Enchantment-Magic) has elements of those sorts of connotations; the sorcery of elves and druids to dominate or alter men's minds.
If you're running a version of D&D with morale checks, it's good to remember that even the lowest zombie or skeleton never has to make one. Ever.
Orcs get tired. Goblins get scared. A dragon might get bored and fly away. But the dead never, ever stop.
To put it another way: It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear...and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.
Running Ghosts of Saltmarsh and the simple alchemical treatment on the skeletons that gives them Resistance to the first attack is a pretty nice simple trick for making the players go WTF.
Quote from: ZeroSum;1113314If you're running a version of D&D with morale checks, it's good to remember that even the lowest zombie or skeleton never has to make one. Ever.
Orcs get tired. Goblins get scared. A dragon might get bored and fly away. But the dead never, ever stop.
To put it another way: It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear...and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.
Exactly. That's something that makes OSR undead a lot more dangerous at lower levels than other monsters.
One DM I played for had a bunch of skeletons dressed in expensive clothes and armor, others wrapped like mummies and the "leader" decked out in fine robes covered in runes. They were all normal skeletons, but they had spells cast on them, making them radiate magic and evil all the way up to 11.
Our party thought the tomb was full of mummies, death knights and a lich, so we ran like hell to get out of there.
We just did a Twitch session on Undead in AD&D and Greyhawk last night: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/507990579
Might find some interesting ideas in there!
Allan.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1113278Yes, absolutely. That sort of thing, magic of enchantment that alters the will or memory of a person, while mechanically could be very similar to "charm person" is way more interesting in terms of roleplay connotations.
It's not voodoo, but my RPGpundit Presents: Medieval Enchantment Magic (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/262600/RPGPundit-Presents-60-MedievalAuthentic-Enchantment-Magic) has elements of those sorts of connotations; the sorcery of elves and druids to dominate or alter men's minds.
Indeed! The stakes in typical "Zombie Romero" scenario is Apocalyptic Plague with futile scrambling. (And how much of this is a cultural scar upon the West from the Black Plague is something I cannot say.) With lowered stakes such classic zombii as domination becomes frighteningly reliable power projection. :)
Quote from: ZeroSum;1113314If you're running a version of D&D with morale checks, it's good to remember that even the lowest zombie or skeleton never has to make one. Ever.
Orcs get tired. Goblins get scared. A dragon might get bored and fly away. But the dead never, ever stop.
To put it another way: It can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...it doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear...and it absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until you are dead.
Yes! Undead as Terminators! :D And yes, ignored morale checks is a massive power projection.
Keep this thread going! :)
I have used voodoo-esque zombies in my campaigns before.
In one instance there was a bit of a "twist" with an ongoing, seemingly mental affliction spreading (sometimes one person, sometimes an entire village at a time) in which the person would become more or less catatonic, before one night mysteriously walking off into the darkness, taking nothing with them and disappearing with little trace, and no one knowing where they went. Occasionally resulting in eerie ghost towns.
This eventually culminated in a huge mass of these zombies (still living) showing up at the PC's doorstep, seemingly all enslaved and interlinked by a single intelligent hive mind and moving all of the zombies as a single amorphous "body" of sorts. Turns out it was a way for the Sleeping King under the Black Ziggurat to manifest himself into the world again, and exact his vengeance as a side dish (the PC's having earlier broken into his temple with high explosives and ransacking it, ignoring all the written and physical warnings/dangers and reawakening him in the process).
It was a lot of fun, and slightly more complex than dealing with "regular" undead in that these people were still alive and could perhaps be saved... but at a certain point, it becomes "us or them" especially when you have 200+ literally shaking down the rickety structure you're standing on top of. Then again around 3/4 of the zombies they encountered then were cannibalistic tribesmen from the nearby jungles, so the PC's may not have been quite as conflicted at that particular moment...
I don't use these often enough and haven't done an undead focused adventure in a while, but some of the stuff I do (with undead and encounters in general) include the following:
1) I give my "monsters" class levels--specially if they're some type of humanoid being. In the case of zombies and skeletons I might give them fighter or some other class levels, or I might even make them spellcasters. I do this with ALL monsters ALL the time. If you play in my campaign, get ready for multi-Hit Dice goblins from every class in the book (no wimpy 1 HD goblins in my games--EVER!).
2) Intelligence: I would consider giving zombies and specially skeletons full or at least some measure of intelligence. I would also consider making a few of them spellcasters (skeleton wizards FTW!). Similar to Liches, there might be some undead beings that come back as essentially zombies or skeletons, but with full use of their faculties. Either as the result of some special ritual, or because undead in that area come back that way (why? Could be a motive for adventure).
3) Grafted weapons: Something I've done in the past (particularly with zombies) is give them grafted weapons, like swords or long metal skewers stuck to their wrists. They're walking corpses after all--it's not like they're gonna feel a thing, specially if they're mindless.
4) Magic Auras: Undead creatures could have some type of magic aura as well. This could be a damage aura (flaming aura, freezing aura, etc.), penalizing aura (roll penalties, obscuring auras, slow aura, etc.) or some type of save-effect (fear, etc.). This could be a inborn effect (maybe this is a special sub-type of skeleton/zombie that's just built that way), or maybe it's something about the location where they were raised, or maybe the necromancer who created them imbued them with temporary spell effects.
Welcome to therpgsite, VisionStorm!
Related to your point #2, I've always liked including "animus storms" whether they be blizzards, sandstorms, etc. where, if someone dies of exposure or what have you while inside one, they are animated as free-roaming undead. Desecrated battlefields and things like that are always fun too.
Quote from: Antiquation!;1114021Welcome to therpgsite, VisionStorm!
Related to your point #2, I've always liked including "animus storms" whether they be blizzards, sandstorms, etc. where, if someone dies of exposure or what have you while inside one, they are animated as free-roaming undead. Desecrated battlefields and things like that are always be fun too.
Thanks!
I like that. I've thought about adding similar things as well. One thing I considered doing for an unfinished setting idea I had a while ago was the notion of including one patch of land called "The Undying Fields". The concept of the setting was based around the idea of a Ragnarok-style "War of the Gods" where a new breed of gods fought to usurp the old, and many gods died in the ensuing battle (which was fought simultaneously in both, the world of the gods, as well as the mortal realm). One of them was the old God of the Dead--who was tasked with carrying the souls of the dead to the Underworld to await judgement. When that god died his essence fell upon the earth near a massive battle field where one of the earthly battles had been fought and all the soldiers rouse again--unable the find rest. From that point on, the soul of anyone who died in the entire region would be unable to travel to the Underworld and would come back as a conscious undead (skeleton or zombie).
Quote from: VisionStorm;1114023Thanks!
I like that. I've thought about adding similar things as well. One thing I considered doing for an unfinished setting idea I had a while ago was the notion of including one patch of land called "The Undying Fields". The concept of the setting was based around the idea of a Ragnarok-style "War of the Gods" where a new breed of gods fought to usurp the old, and many gods died in the ensuing battle (which was fought simultaneously in both, the world of the gods, as well as the mortal realm). One of them was the old God of the Dead--who was tasked with carrying the souls of the dead to the Underworld to await judgement. When that god died his essence fell upon the earth near a massive battle field where one of the earthly battles had been fought and all the soldiers rouse again--unable the find rest. From that point on, the soul of anyone who died in the entire region would be unable to travel to the Underworld and would come back as a conscious undead (skeleton or zombie).
Very cool! That seems like a great explanation / excuse for potential undead PC's, too, which I've found very fun to invite the possibility for in the past.
Quote from: Antiquation!;1114024Very cool! That seems like a great explanation / excuse for potential undead PC's, too, which I've found very fun to invite the possibility for in the past.
Yeah, that was partly how I came up with that idea. Initially the whole thing behind the setting was about coming up with a scenario that would allow/explain Tieflings/Demon-human hybrids (which I normally HATE as a D&D character race) as a proper PC race I would find acceptable for a setting. I eventually came up with the idea of a War of the Gods, where new gods usurped the old, and "angelic" beings who joined the side of the New Gods were turned into demons and cast out by the Old Gods into the land of the mortals, where they became known as the "Fallen". But when the New Gods won the war the demons/"Fallen" (who were loyal to the Usurper King of the New Gods) were given control of human lands, where they built an empire. But the demons couldn't reproduce on their own, so they used humans as breeding stock, and took human nobility to breed their own Demon-human noble bloodlines to rule the empire. And eventually they began to expand and conquer human lands.
But then I started thinking to myself "Since I already have Demon-human hybrids as a potential PC race and went full dark fantasy with this world...What IF there's a "race" of undead too?" *big think emoji*
And since I already had the idea of a "War of the Gods" going on, where multiple gods died, I figured if the god of the dead died in the mortal world that could serve as a trigger event to how a race of undead creatures was born. I was still on the fence about whether to actually allow them as PCs, but I still liked the idea of a field of land where the dead couldn't rest, and would come back as undead.
I'm not sure why skeletons have become wimpy low level encounters. My first exposure to animated skeletons came from Ray Harryhausen in 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. They were major encounters that threatened heroic level characters. The skeletons also managed to display some personality and menace.
Quote from: Toadmaster;1114027I'm not sure why skeletons have become wimpy low level encounters. My first exposure to animated skeletons came from Ray Harryhausen in 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. They were major encounters that threatened heroic level characters. The skeletons also managed to display some personality and menace.
Agreed! In my games, I flip skeletons and zombies, so that skeletons are the 2HD (or 2+3 HD in my case) undead, with zombies being the bottom of the heap 1+3 HD undead. Skeletons are also fast (+1 to initiative), in addition to their standard special defenses. All undead in my games also cause fear in their HD or less, without a successful save vs. spells.
Allan.
Quote from: Antiquation!;1114021Welcome to therpgsite, VisionStorm!
Related to your point #2, I've always liked including "animus storms" whether they be blizzards, sandstorms, etc. where, if someone dies of exposure or what have you while inside one, they are animated as free-roaming undead. Desecrated battlefields and things like that are always fun too.
That reminds me, I used that "natural disaster spawning some undead" concept for my description of the NPC/Location Magic the Gathering Ice Age "Drift of the Dead" card in my "MtG cards for PC v. Hegemony" topic example.
Basically the snow drift is a natural wind break comprised of dead plants and animals... that has dripping icicles from the composting warmth on its lee. It is like a frozen wave of corpses breaking upon the snowy land, and if you stay too close to its lee/curl you will find out it moves from the warmth and refreezing faster than you expect. Reminds me, I need to upload the last of the 3rd Location NPCs... :) Let me finish that and throw it up there.
Quote from: Antiquation!;1114008I have used voodoo-esque zombies in my campaigns before.
In one instance there was a bit of a "twist" with an ongoing, seemingly mental affliction spreading (sometimes one person, sometimes an entire village at a time) in which the person would become more or less catatonic, before one night mysteriously walking off into the darkness, taking nothing with them and disappearing with little trace, and no one knowing where they went. Occasionally resulting in eerie ghost towns.
This eventually culminated in a huge mass of these zombies (still living) showing up at the PC's doorstep, seemingly all enslaved and interlinked by a single intelligent hive mind and moving all of the zombies as a single amorphous "body" of sorts. Turns out it was a way for the Sleeping King under the Black Ziggurat to manifest himself into the world again, and exact his vengeance as a side dish (the PC's having earlier broken into his temple with high explosives and ransacking it, ignoring all the written and physical warnings/dangers and reawakening him in the process).
It was a lot of fun, and slightly more complex than dealing with "regular" undead in that these people were still alive and could perhaps be saved... but at a certain point, it becomes "us or them" especially when you have 200+ literally shaking down the rickety structure you're standing on top of. Then again around 3/4 of the zombies they encountered then were cannibalistic tribesmen from the nearby jungles, so the PC's may not have been quite as conflicted at that particular moment...
Consider this idea stolen! My PCs won't know what hit them (until it's too late)!
Quote from: Opaopajr;1114046That reminds me, I used that "natural disaster spawning some undead" concept for my description of the NPC/Location Magic the Gathering Ice Age "Drift of the Dead" card in my "MtG cards for PC v. Hegemony" topic example.
Basically the snow drift is a natural wind break comprised of dead plants and animals... that has dripping icicles from the composting warmth on its lee. It is like a frozen wave of corpses breaking upon the snowy land, and if you stay too close to its lee/curl you will find out it moves from the warmth and refreezing faster than you expect. Reminds me, I need to upload the last of the 3rd Location NPCs... :) Let me finish that and throw it up there.
Excellent, very cool! Please do throw that up here somewhere when it's convenient!
Quote from: Eirikrautha;1114119Consider this idea stolen! My PCs won't know what hit them (until it's too late)!
Please do, use it and abuse it! My group had a lot of fun with it. Lots of surprises, ingenuity and opportunities for heroics. :D
I have skeletons immune to piercing weapons and auto detect the living within 60 ft; once they detect you, they know where you are. For zombies, I have them mindlessly keep attacking downed foes until they are torn to pieces (if a zero hp PC isnt recovered in one round from a zombie, they are torn apart/auto dead. I dont use dead at zero hp normally, so this makes zombies quite scary). Ghouls and ghasts are already interesting I think due to paralysis and foul stench effects - indeed they are SUPER BAD ASS when it's the old school 1 save or you're fucked variety (as opposed to 5e's weaksauce save or die BS where you save every round uughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh).
Quote from: Antiquation!;1114128Excellent, very cool! Please do throw that up here somewhere when it's convenient!
It's been put up already. :) Just the forum churn has it already halfway down the first page by now. :o (But that churn is good for conversations on this site.)
I have been looking at my other MtG deck 'Duel' spreads, both past and today, and I am contemplating different hegemons and adventures. Having now the Region and NPCs done saves a lot of adventure prep time. And some cards drawn brought up interesting options for undead, too!
Things like, "Lim Dûl's Cohort," which are zombies that prevent creatures it blocks (or is blocked by) from regenerating. Which would be neat as a specific type of zombie reputation, "
Oh those zombies... healing and resurrection upon the dying is useless when they are around." :( Have their mere presence null healing during Death Saves in 5e, and outright prevent things meatball surgery resurrection, like Revivify.
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I am currently contemplating a nifty spread that I might attach to a typical Bokor (Voudoun sorceror) as Hegemon antagonist. It has elements of cursed withering, enchanted mental torment, enchanted empowerment, and skeletons. I'll just reskin the Bokor into an Ice Age 'Northern European' sorceror... maybe something shamanic out of Finnish folklore?
Loc 1: Weakness.
Loc 2: Seizures, Seizures.
Loc 3: Soul Kiss, Kjeldoran Dead, Kjeldoran Dead.
Use the same Region and its NPCs, write a few basic adventure hooks, and let the sandbox work its magic. ;)
Quote from: A.E. HousmanThe Immortal Part
When I meet the morning beam,
Or lay me down at night to dream,
I hear my bones within me say,
"Another night, another day."
"When shall this slough of sense be cast,
This dust of thoughts be laid at last,
The man of flesh and soul be slain
And the man of bone remain?"
"This tongue that talks, these lungs that shout,
These thews that hustle us about,
This brain that fills the skull with schemes,
And its humming hive of dreams,--"
"These to-day are proud in power
And lord it in their little hour:
The immortal bones obey control
Of dying flesh and dying soul."
" 'Tis long till eve and morn are gone:
Slow the endless night comes on,
And late to fulness grows the birth
That shall last as long as earth."
"Wanderers eastward, wanderers west,
Know you why you cannot rest?
'Tis that every mother's son
Travails with a skeleton."
"Lie down in the bed of dust;
Bear the fruit that bear you must;
Bring the eternal seed to light,
And morn is all the same as night."
"Rest you so from trouble sore,
Fear the heat o' the sun no more,
Nor the snowing winter wild,
Now you labour not with child."
"Empty vessel, garment cast,
We that wore you long shall last.
--Another night, another day."
So my bones within me say.
Therefore they shall do my will
To-day while I am master still,
And flesh and soul, now both are strong,
Shall hale the sullen slaves along,
Before this fire of sense decay,
This smoke of thought blow clean away,
And leave with ancient night alone
The stedfast and enduring bone.
Do you ever sleepwalk? Catch yourself doing something automatic, without thinking about it? Sometimes those are the bones within you, moving on their own.
And when you become ill, or frail, or old, the bones become stronger. That's why the sick sometimes shake and jerk, and the elderly tremble. As the flesh fails, the skeleton within wakes.
And when someone passes away, the bones take control. They may burst free of the flesh, in a bloody shower. Or scrape it off, with fastidious care. Or continue, half- or fully wrapped in decaying meat, until it finally sloughs off. Reactions vary, and often form strange ritual patterns, a morbid mimicry of life, after a mass death. But your former friend, acquaintance, or loved one is gone, and has been replaced by... something alien.
Intelligent? Maybe. They can act in ways that are too complex for automatons, and they're aren't following animal instincts. But they do not speak, or communicate in any way, though they may stare with a kind of blank attention while someone tries to arouse a response. They cannot be compelled by threats against their existence, like mortal beings. They can be intensely violent, but they don't seem to actively hate the living, at least not most of the time. They congregate in certain places, and can be controlled by certain priests. They may free other skeletons who have been restrained, often by misguided family members. They're curiously dispassionate, endlessly patient, and perform certain actions repetitively, but ultimately their motives are mysteries.
Quote from: Toadmaster;1114027I'm not sure why skeletons have become wimpy low level encounters. My first exposure to animated skeletons came from Ray Harryhausen in 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. They were major encounters that threatened heroic level characters. The skeletons also managed to display some personality and menace.
I would not model every NPC or creature after what one sees in movies or other forms of media. When the Sarah Conner Chronicles was cancelled we actual get to see what truly happens to human vs machine fight. One of the characters Derek who survives fighting Terminators dies in seconds after going up against a Terminator. Where before he managed to survive most encounters happens at 1:13 in the video.
Warning Spolier Ahead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0iNpSpW21Y . The only reason humanity is written as having a fighting chance vs not only losing and very badly to the machines is because the script says they do. Otherwise imo 99% of the time Terminator vs humans is pretty much insta-kill. While also not making a depressing movie franchise. Borrow inspiration from movie yet one also has to use a healthy does of common sense that what we see is planned by the script and the desires of the writers and producers.
I don't know what campaigns posters here are playing in 5E or any more recent version of D&D Undead are sill deadly. Skeletons in Pathfinder have DR 5/Bludgeoning. Zombies have Dr 5/Slashing and if played properly should tear an unconscious party member to shreds to feed unless controlled to do otherwise.
A way I thought to make undead in general more interesting, with ramifications especially for the mooks, was to adopt a more coherent cosmology based on real world beliefs about death and the afterlife.
Rather than souls leaving the body after death, a person's soul is remains linked to their body. That's why societies respect bodies rather than discarding them as empty shells. Burying stuff with bodies in graves allows the soul to use that stuff in the afterlife. Visiting graves and paying respects makes the dead feel better.
Undeath isn't an inherently good or evil concept, because the dead may rise for a variety of reasons (and because I don't have good/evil alignment in my settings). A white necromancer bargains with the dead for their services, whereas a dark necromancer interrogates or controls the corpse without the deceased's consent. Even then dark necromancers aren't necessary doing this on their own: they may be bribed by a hated person's family to make them a zombie (yes, this is cited as actual belief in the voodoo religion). The undead in a tomb may be innocent guardians and the party are looters in the wrong.
The predatory undead are animated by demons, either from elsewhere or the transmuted soul if the person was wicked in life. For a possessed corpse, the owner is still watching; giving them power over their body may either force the demon out or suppress it.
In this case, any lesser undead is still connected to their past life and by fighting them you are either defying the deceased's wishes or releasing them from slavery.
In Lion & Dragon all non-magical weapons do only half-damage to skeletons.
These are meant for all undead; from an upcoming book of mine, TERATOGENICON (https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2019/09/teratogenicon-monster-generator-looking.html):
d6 Clothing
1 Naked
2 Robed
3 Ragged
4 Armored
5 Old fashioned
6 Roll twice
d20 Body
1 Burning
2 Flayed
3 Desiccated
4 Bloated
5 Poisoned
6 Frozen
7 Impaled
8 Beheaded
9 Dismembered
10 Disemboweled
11 Hanged
12 Filled with worms
13 Boneless
14 Skeletal
15 Trespassed by arrows (etc.)
16 Broken spine
17 Covered by flies
18 Chained
19 Twisted limbs
20 Roll twice
d20 Additional features
1 Child features
2 Beast features
3 Crawling
4 Long claws
5 Scythes for hands
6 Carries a lantern
7 Covered in blood
8 Severed head (no body)
9 Tentacle arms
10 Bat wings
11 Elongated limbs
12 Walks on all fours
13 Very long hair
14 Completely hairless
15 Jumping
16 Horns
17 Levitating
18 Hunched
19 Long neck
20 Roll twice
d20 Head
1 Grinning
2 Glowing red eyes
3 Bulging eyes
4 No jaw
5 Tilted head
6 Skull with eyes
7 Long tongue
8 Sharp teeth
9 Featureless
10 Fangs
11 Black hole face
12 Cut in half
13 Toothless
14 Animal features
15 Mask or helmet
16 Sewed mouth or eyes
17 Long (horse, bull, or bird)
18 Noseless
19 Eyes without a face
20 Roll twice
d6 Goals
1 Pain. I am in constant pain, and I need to bring others with me.
2 Vengeance. I cannot rest until I make them pay.
3 Guilt. I am trapped in this world until I atone for my sins.
4 Obsession. My obsessions with a person or place prevents me from moving on.
5 Protection. Death will not keep me from my duty to protect this place.
6 Order. Only Death brings peace. I'll give you her sweet embrace.
@eric melikey!