Another one is Champions, especially later editions. One of the bigger threats is a lich.

Index Card RPGs' setting Ghost Mountain let's you play as a Muertos,basically a raised skeleton.

Charisma takes a big hit tho.

One of the player's in my long running Dungeon's Unleashed campaign play(ed) a skeleton.
His backstory was he put on some cursed armor that basically killed him, and brought him back. He can't take it off.

There's no specific rule support or lore for that in the playtest materials I've shared publicly. Mostly you just make up Talents that suit your concept and rate them with an intent. So he just took an 2-undead [Defensive] and we noted there would be some drawbacks to this and we left it at that

There is a lot of Undead stuff that has taken place in that campaign world. The County of Ebilith is "the land of the necromancers." Typically the dead / undead are viewed as a family resource -- so you might be in charge of your dead 3rd cousin who has been helping you in your carpentry shop for the past 8 years.

Of course there is an evil necromancer too, just like there are good ones.

Quote from: Thondor on November 21, 2024, 09:12:06 PMOne of the player's in my long running Dungeon's Unleashed campaign play(ed) a skeleton.
His backstory was he put on some cursed armor that basically killed him, and brought him back. He can't take it off.

There's no specific rule support or lore for that in the playtest materials I've shared publicly. Mostly you just make up Talents that suit your concept and rate them with an intent. So he just took an 2-undead [Defensive] and we noted there would be some drawbacks to this and we left it at that

There is a lot of Undead stuff that has taken place in that campaign world. The County of Ebilith is "the land of the necromancers." Typically the dead / undead are viewed as a family resource -- so you might be in charge of your dead 3rd cousin who has been helping you in your carpentry shop for the past 8 years.

Of course there is an evil necromancer too, just like there are good ones.

That's my thinking too.

I'm basing this whole request on three things.  The video game RPG Divinity Original Sin 2 that has skeleton as a playable race, although you get a magic mask to wear so you can appear human.  The other two are anime.  Skeleton Knight in Another World, and Ainz Ooal Goan from Overlord.   Both are Japanese guys who get transported/Isekai'ed to a real life fantasy world, but as their video game characters.

I also agree that it would be super easy to just home brew your own race.  Like you, just curse a guy to be undead, but with free will and 100% intelligence somehow.  Bonuses of not breathing or affected by extreme temperatures, with the flaw of being monstrous and killed on sight by the majority of people.  Keep your helmet closed, or learn illusion magic. 

As for "good" necromancers, that's another discussion, and made me chuckle.  I'm not so sure, but I will listen to arguments about good guy necromancers. 

Pirate Borg?

Weird Ancestries for Shadow of the Weird Wizard has Revenant. While they are more zombie reanimated because ghost cling to the body too much, flavor text says its flesh can rot and animated bones. And for further grounding the body it even suggests becoming a Tatterdemalion (ghost possessing clothes).

There is also Daeva which is more symbiote (ghost from ancient civilization possesses someone) but it has Spirit description like Tatterdemalion, and Dhampir which is vampire-lite for more undead like character options

Mr. "keeping the order" god Lord Death doesn't like necromancy but necromancy tradition is related to Grandmother Spore who has a kind side to her. So good necromancer is possible in setting. But soul manipulation spells, even a simple speak with dead spell is under Dark Arts tradition which is evil.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on November 22, 2024, 09:46:25 AMI'm basing this whole request on three things.  The video game RPG Divinity Original Sin 2 that has skeleton as a playable race, although you get a magic mask to wear so you can appear human.  The other two are anime.  Skeleton Knight in Another World, and Ainz Ooal Goan from Overlord.   Both are Japanese guys who get transported/Isekai'ed to a real life fantasy world, but as their video game characters.

I also agree that it would be super easy to just home brew your own race.  Like you, just curse a guy to be undead, but with free will and 100% intelligence somehow.  Bonuses of not breathing or affected by extreme temperatures, with the flaw of being monstrous and killed on sight by the majority of people.  Keep your helmet closed, or learn illusion magic. 

Funny, my mind immediately went to DOS2 as well. Speaking of videogames, another potential justification for having free-willed skeletons would be the one which appears in World of Warcraft, that they were originally created with the intent of being mindless servants but due to some kind of magical event they were able to free themselves.

Really the only reason everyone assumes that skeletons have to be mindless is because D&D established a hierarchy of undead with skeletons generally at the bottom, ascending up through zombies, ghouls, wights, mummies, vampires, liches, etc. Most games pick that up and run with it, but there's no law that says it has to be that way. All undead could be intelligent and free willed, or their could be a progression between them. Say, a person rises from the grave as an intelligent undead with sorcerous powers, akin to a D&D wight or lich, and then the longer they stay undead, their body and mind both decay and they pass down the D&D hierarchy until the final state is the mindless skeleton. You can do it any way. In myth and literature there's a pretty much infinite variety of revenants with different powers and reasons for existing.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on November 22, 2024, 09:46:25 AMAs for "good" necromancers, that's another discussion, and made me chuckle.  I'm not so sure, but I will listen to arguments about good guy necromancers. 

Whether or not necromancy is inherently evil depends on the cosmology and metaphysics of a given setting. Is there an immortal soul? Does that soul have to be bound in some way to raise a corpse? Is a dead body in some way sacred? If you have a campaign world where there is no afterlife or immortal soul, raising an intelligent undead could be argued to be doing them a favor. You are effectively granting them immortality.  Even mindless undead are potentially morally neutral if you're just mechanistically animating the remains of people who've been dead for centuries and have no living relatives to be insulted by the appropriation.

I've seen the opposite in some East Asian media. The different types of undead are different ranks in a pseudo-evolutionary tree, like Pokemon. This structure is applied to all monsters in such stories.

Semi-related question... how does one "heal" an Undead?  Cure Wounds wouldn't work, and do they heal "normally"?

Quote from: Brigman on November 25, 2024, 10:48:34 PMSemi-related question... how does one "heal" an Undead?  Cure Wounds wouldn't work, and do they heal "normally"?

Their animating Necrotic/Negative energy can heal most types. Inflict Wounds type spells that use Necrotic/Negative energy can potentially heal them too.

Quote from: Brigman on November 25, 2024, 10:48:34 PMSemi-related question... how does one "heal" an Undead?  Cure Wounds wouldn't work, and do they heal "normally"?

Milk.

It's full of calcium!

What?   It could work.

Quote from: Brigman on November 25, 2024, 10:48:34 PMSemi-related question... how does one "heal" an Undead?  Cure Wounds wouldn't work, and do they heal "normally"?

Quote from: S'mon on November 26, 2024, 04:34:41 AM

Quote from: Brigman on November 25, 2024, 10:48:34 PMSemi-related question... how does one "heal" an Undead?  Cure Wounds wouldn't work, and do they heal "normally"?

Their animating Necrotic/Negative energy can heal most types. Inflict Wounds type spells that use Necrotic/Negative energy can potentially heal them too.

It varies depending on the game and edition. Some games have regular healing magic work. Some games require you to, bizarrely, inflict evil energy damage on undead to heal them (the logic behind this is questionable at best). Some games have special healing magic for undead specifically. Some don't have spells to heal undead at all.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on November 22, 2024, 09:46:25 AM

Quote from: Thondor on November 21, 2024, 09:12:06 PMOne of the player's in my long running Dungeon's Unleashed campaign play(ed) a skeleton.
His backstory was he put on some cursed armor that basically killed him, and brought him back. He can't take it off.

There's no specific rule support or lore for that in the playtest materials I've shared publicly. Mostly you just make up Talents that suit your concept and rate them with an intent. So he just took an 2-undead [Defensive] and we noted there would be some drawbacks to this and we left it at that

There is a lot of Undead stuff that has taken place in that campaign world. The County of Ebilith is "the land of the necromancers." Typically the dead / undead are viewed as a family resource -- so you might be in charge of your dead 3rd cousin who has been helping you in your carpentry shop for the past 8 years.

Of course there is an evil necromancer too, just like there are good ones.

That's my thinking too.

I'm basing this whole request on three things.  The video game RPG Divinity Original Sin 2 that has skeleton as a playable race, although you get a magic mask to wear so you can appear human.  The other two are anime.  Skeleton Knight in Another World, and Ainz Ooal Goan from Overlord.   Both are Japanese guys who get transported/Isekai'ed to a real life fantasy world, but as their video game characters.

I also agree that it would be super easy to just home brew your own race.  Like you, just curse a guy to be undead, but with free will and 100% intelligence somehow.  Bonuses of not breathing or affected by extreme temperatures, with the flaw of being monstrous and killed on sight by the majority of people.  Keep your helmet closed, or learn illusion magic. 

As for "good" necromancers, that's another discussion, and made me chuckle.  I'm not so sure, but I will listen to arguments about good guy necromancers. 

YEP, that was most of it.

Good is debatable for sure. There are definetly folks who find it abomitable in that world.
In Ebilith though they just see it as a tool. Could be bad, could be used to benefit society. Undead are always paired with a relative because they do tend to go... Evil if they are left alone for a while or with someone without a family connection.
Part of the campaign had this culture being exported from Ebilith to the borderland of a nearby barony. Players could have sided with any faction but ended up supporting the "good" necromancer Lorent and his settlers.

Quote from: Brigman on November 25, 2024, 10:48:34 PMSemi-related question... how does one "heal" an Undead?  Cure Wounds wouldn't work, and do they heal "normally"?

In the case of my Darsivia campaign, the first time the cleric of life tried to heal his cursed undead knight colleague he hurt him by accident.
After that though he figured it out and was able to pray appropriately. (I think we had it cost an extra success a few times.)
Some clerics in the setting argue over wwhether the god of life and death are separate or just two faces of the same deity.

Quote from: ForgottenF on November 24, 2024, 12:13:32 AM

Quote from: weirdguy564 on November 22, 2024, 09:46:25 AMAs for "good" necromancers, that's another discussion, and made me chuckle.  I'm not so sure, but I will listen to arguments about good guy necromancers.

Whether or not necromancy is inherently evil depends on the cosmology and metaphysics of a given setting. Is there an immortal soul? Does that soul have to be bound in some way to raise a corpse? Is a dead body in some way sacred? If you have a campaign world where there is no afterlife or immortal soul, raising an intelligent undead could be argued to be doing them a favor. You are effectively granting them immortality.  Even mindless undead are potentially morally neutral if you're just mechanistically animating the remains of people who've been dead for centuries and have no living relatives to be insulted by the appropriation.

Raising the dead could also be sacred task that is viewed as a blessing rather than an insult, if it is done in keeping with the religious traditions. Many cultures are (or were) more sanguine about uses for dead bodies. One sign of this is if the god of death is more of a positive figure in the mythology. This was very important in my recent Incan fantasy campaign, because of the Incan tradition of mummies:

QuoteThe Inca civilization, like other ancient Andean groups, practiced artificial mummification as a way of honoring their ancestors and preserving the connection between present and past. The most important Inca mummies, including those of their emperors, were treated as still-living beings—draped in fine textiles and jewelry, served food and drink and carefully tended by their living descendants.

Source: https://www.history.com/news/inca-mummies-afterlife

I think some Mesoamerican cultures might also fit this, as would ancient Egyptian.

Even if a culture isn't sanguine about mummies or skeletons, a necromancer who deals with ghosts and spirits might still be a positive figure -- especially if they have a tradition of ancestor worship, which is extremely common. I'm familiar with it most often in East Asia, but there are variations of this in ancient Rome and many others.