Was thinking of character concepts and the idea of a necromancer blacksmith or crafter stuck with me.  I was thinking it would be cool to convert a creatures skills, abilities, powers, knowledge, racial abilities..etc from a creatures corpse into equipment you could equip and use.  Like if you convert the skin of an oni into leather Armour, you could use its shape change ability, or regeneration.  Or get the eyes of a medusa to petrify targets.  Or if it is a spell knowledge like ability, bind a creature or wizards soul to an item to use that spell or ability.  I mean, necromancers have all these bodies lying around, figured some might come up with alternative uses for their parts than simply reanimating them.  Just wondered if something like that was already out there in one of countless books, before trying to reinvent the wheel.

Quote from: Badmojo7;1042699Was thinking of character concepts and the idea of a necromancer blacksmith or crafter stuck with me.  I was thinking it would be cool to convert a creatures skills, abilities, powers, knowledge, racial abilities..etc from a creatures corpse into equipment you could equip and use.  Like if you convert the skin of an oni into leather Armour, you could use its shape change ability, or regeneration.  Or get the eyes of a medusa to petrify targets.  Or if it is a spell knowledge like ability, bind a creature or wizards soul to an item to use that spell or ability.  I mean, necromancers have all these bodies lying around, figured some might come up with alternative uses for their parts than simply reanimating them.  Just wondered if something like that was already out there in one of countless books, before trying to reinvent the wheel.

I seem to recall something like this in Dragon magazine during the time between the printing of D&D 3.0 and D&D 3.5.

My quick google fu says that would be somewhere between issues 274-359.  Do you remember what the concept was in the magazine?

Quote from: Badmojo7;1042712My quick google fu says that would be somewhere between issues 274-359.  Do you remember what the concept was in the magazine?

He may be thinking of material from Dragon #317. Body of Knowledge article

Think theres an older issue of Dragon with a simmilar idea. Either that or it was a necromantic variant on one of the alQuadim classes?

I know its come up in D&D but its been a long long time. Masque of the Red Death would bee a good place to come across this sort of necro-tinkering.