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Tag Archives: Undead

Rethinking Zombies: Skaarsport Zombies

December 5, 2011 4:09 pm / 1 Comment / Chris

Here’s the zombies I used in my minicon a few weeks back. I used LotFP Grindhouse and Vornheim. These undead were loose in a very large city and the players were all returning veterans of overseas wars at about fifth level.

The important bits:

  • As they age, they fall apart. They lose one or more body parts every few days. This sort of calculation is of course impractical when you have 40 of them coming at you, but if it’s just 3-5 it’s just a few quick rolls (table at bottom of post). So I’d run a mb of zombies as half-max HP zombies until one is targeted or steps up to attack on its own. Then I’d do a few rolls.
  • These zombies heads explode if they are ‘headshot.’ I think I allowed head targeting with a -3 penalty to hit per 10 feet away. Natural 20’s were always headshots.
  • At zero HP, these zombies regenerate HP to all damage unless a remove curse has been cast. Only damage caused by healing spells, fire or headshots could not regenerate. Cure disease would turn the zombie into a still corpse.

Fresh human zombie:

Move: normal human but +1 to encumbrance

AC 12 unless armored

(This is LOTFP AC, since I used LOTFP. 12 is normal human. Lower is worse.)

HP 10

Attack as FTR 3

Damage = 1d6 or weapon

Regenerates +1 HP/round unless burned or healed. Even if ‘killed’.

If the head is destroyed, an explosion of brain pressure causes 1d4 to all adjacent creatures.

Might be blind or deaf depending on body condition.

Curing wounds > Max HP points returns them to normal corpse. (no revive)

Cure disease automatically returns them to corpse state.

Remove curse means they do not revive after 0 HP.

Communicates with others via screams, morse code taps. Communication limited to simple information like ‘fresh meat here’ or ‘run! fire!’.

2+ days old

Same as above except:

+1 disability

Melee and Missile AC 9

8 HP

+1 encumbrance

Less rational, less likely to work as team, loses track of what it is doing and wanders off aimlessly (fails on 1d6)

 

4+ days old

+1 disability

Melee and Missile AC 7

Can no longer climb.

6 HP

+2 encumbrance

Less rational (1-2 on d6)

 

Week old +

+1 disability (3 total) at 1 week and +1 per week thereafter

Melee and Missile AC 6

Attack does 1d4

4 HP

Less rational (1-3 on d6)

Adjustments: per 100 lbs of human, age slower by half.

 

Zombie Disability Chart

Roll Disabled
1 Eyes
2 Ears
3 Mouth
4 Nose
5 Left Arm
6 Right Arm
7 Left Leg
8 Right Leg

 

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Posted in: legacy D&D, monsters / Tagged: lotfp wf rpg, rethinking, undead, zombies

The Joys of Sandboxing

October 9, 2011 12:13 am / 3 Comments / Chris

So the idea what simple: a zombie invasion of a city powered by the Vornheim supplement. Today I had four hours for players to be in my sandbox.

There are no specific goals, but a number of options and ways the players could effect things if they chose to and played well. Several escape opportunities. And of course there is always DOOM! I was prepared for a few likely options: a drawn out survival scenario, an investigation into the nature of the undead and even delving into the bowels of a giant.

They went with option D, which was to look to Thor’s cathedral for answers. I had to make up the details for the endgame, which needed some sort of challenge and mystery but which had to play out in about 20 minutes or so. I was lucky that circumstances made it possible to present a mystery ending and leave the party to an uncertain fate in a city clearly burning to ashes.

Luckily, I had quality players who, if they didn’t get on the same page regarding goals, at least were not fools. They soon got the LotFP is a game where combat is to be avoided when not necessary. Some would clearly have wanted to fight more, but in the end, a four hour minicon game is not going to give everyone what they want. At least, not until I am a much better GM.

I’m going to release some of the monsters and set pieces here on the blog over the next week and get things going. In going back and rereading old pieces, I felt proud of a few of them and remembered how much this blog stretches my imagination, muck like GMing ‘on the fly’ did today.

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Posted in: legacy D&D / Tagged: city, GMing, lotfp wf rpg, nerdnyc, recess, Sandboxing, survival, undead, vornheim, zombie

Rethinking Undead 3: Mummies

June 13, 2011 4:56 am / Leave a Comment / Chris

Mummies are preserved corpses found in extreme climates.

While some are not the result of intentional preservation, this post will only discuss mummies that have been preserved on purpose.

When someone dies, a mummy can be preserved by removing the organs, drying the body in Natron and wrapping it. Natron is very rare and its sources are guarded jealously. Moisture and exposure to the air will cause the mummy to decay, but undisturbed they will stay in excellent condition for thousands of years. In cases where Natron is not available, salt can also be used.

Depending on the culture, a priest or mage may attend to this process, chanting, casting spells and/or performing ceremonies. No matter the culture, the purpose of this process is to allow the soul to make a journey to an afterlife (good or bad).

Mummies need not be wrapped.

Mummy corpses are valued for their healing properties. An ounce of ground mummy corpse in water is the equivalent of a potion of extra healing. Mummy corpses weigh about 40 pounds, which make them incredibly valuable.

Mummies are often buried with pickled or dried organs hidden nearby. These were meant to serve the spirit in the afterlife. A pickled mummy liver can cure the most deadly poisons if eaten. The brain will either impart knowledge of the past or create a temporary connection to the mummy’s spirit in the afterlife (whichever serves the DM’s purposes). Other body parts are rumored imbue various benefits such as fertility, vigor (+1 CON) and charisma (+1 for eating the tongue of a chief or king).

Most of the remaining unplundered mummies (in my world at least) are of the undead sort. These souls did not make it to their destination for some reason. Perhaps the stars were not favorable at the time of death, the gods deemed the deceased unworthy or perhaps a priest sabotaged the process. Often such souls or spirits are not aware that they were rejected at the gates, or even that they are dead. The body has taken to wandering the gravesite or nearby environs.

The undead mummy’s soul might be trapped in a nearby object. In some cultures, the soul is placed via clerical spell in a piece of jewelry, a weapon or a mummified slave’s body or pet. In cases like this, the mummy is not dead until the soul’s container is destroyed. These containers can be dangerous—destroying an undead mummy’s body then wearing its soul amulet out of ignorance will lead to possession, for example.

Mummies have the same intelligence and personality they had in life, although the centuries in between may drive the soul mad if the tomb has been disrupted often. Activity awakens a mummy and that makes them angry and prone to attack. Whether their motives are malevolent, misunderstood or unknowable is up to the DM.

Mummies bodies have HD appropriate to their station in life and the magical/clerical capabilities of their culture. The more magic or prayers involved, or the more sacrificed slaves and animals buried with the mummy will raise its HD. An honored pharaoh’s mummy will have 10 HD or more, while the mummy of a northern barbarian chief might have 2 HD.

While the physical damage dealt by an undead mummy is not that great, its touch drains a level (a saving throw might be allowed to instead lose 1 point of CON for a year). Some mummies have other powers sometimes including: spell casting, weapon use, cause disease, cause blindness/deadness or teleporting others to afterlife plane.

If the mummy’s soul is in its body, destroying the body will destroy the soul and the mummy is gone forever. The remaining corpse might not heal the same as a regular mummy corpse. There may be strange side effects.

If the mummy’s soul is housed outside the body, the body cannot be destroyed. It might retreat or temporarily turn to dust, but it will reassembled within a day if the soul’s container is not found and destroyed via blessing, dispelling or other means.

When using a mummy in your campaign, consider removing some of the cliche trappings such as the wrappings or the Egyptian trappings (unless they are appropriate). You certainly never need to use the word ‘mummy’. It’s entirely possible that without the wrappings, they’ll think it some other generic brand of undead.

The idea of mummies bodies having curative powers is based on history. People actually believed this.

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Posted in: content, monsters / Tagged: monsters, mummies, rethinking, undead

Rethinking Undead 2: Skeletons

May 31, 2011 5:18 pm / 6 Comments / Chris

Skeletons start as a bone and a drive to rebuild. One bone pulls another to it and if they are close to a fit, the first bone looks for a third, then a fourth… The first bone prefers the bones it knows when it can get them. But sometimes it has to improvise. In that case, bones from other being (or even other species) are brought together, but always in an attempt to recreate a creature that matches the ones that first bone came from. The bones retain the memories and skills of the creature they were in life.

All a skeleton needs to take advantage of any skills it might have is the meat to make it happen.

Most skeleton’s first priority is to get some eyes. Without eyes, a skeleton can sort of tell where a person is and what motions and postures they are making, but they cannot see.Next is a tongue, which gives it speech (it will need lips to make some sounds like p, b, and m). A brain will make it smarter. Skeletons are drawn to good-looking and/or unusual parts.

These flashy body parts tend to rot quickly. Skeletons who have found brains will try to preserve these parts by sun-drying tongue and lips, and pickling eyes, inner ears and brains. These parts are saved for when they are needed.

Der geigende Tod by Frans Francken (1581– 1642)

This skeleton must have been a bard.

So you will need to stat up a skeleton that gets ahold of bones or parts that had a class when they are alive because now the skeleton has that ability too. Without a spellbook (and eyes), magic user spells can be cast only once each (if they were memorized and unused when the original owner of the part died). Skeletons made with cleric bones might be able to pass for the cleric once or twice, unless that god knows for sure of the cleric’s passing.

If a skeleton is very successful at rebuilding a body, it might pass for the living to the careless observer.  This is what they want to do, because if they are taken in to society, they can kill covertly and effectively, thus getting them more parts they want.

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Posted in: content, legacy D&D, monsters / Tagged: monsters, rethinking, skeletons, undead

Rethinking Undead 1

May 27, 2011 10:54 am / 2 Comments / Chris

There was once a city ruled by by a council of necromancers. Citizens were obliged to serve the city for a period of five years to begin one week after death. Families were given a week to mourn, after which the city watch would come around to collect the corpse.

Corpses were animated and assigned to the guard the walls, dig ditches, sweep the filth off streets and (once they had dug one) maintain the sewer system. Although assignments were officially determined by a roll of dice, the Department of Service was allowed to assign the reanimated according to its capabilities and physical condition. Smarter zombies were put in charge of teams, while badly damaged corpses might have some very menial function such as washing windows. Different parts of badly damaged bodies could be scattered about the city performing different duties. A severed head might be assigned the task of biting any unauthorized hand opening a drawer, while the body was a temporary support for a wall under repair, for example. Severed hands scampered up lamposts with lit wicks attached to the wrist.

Of course bribery was common and a modest donation to the right coffers could get a corpse assigned to lighter duties, far out of sight of the zombie’s family. The wealthiest families were allowed to donate to the city treasury in lieu of service altogether. This was considered a sign of status.

After a period of five years, the deceased was usually released from duty. The family would gather at the Department of Service’s Release Garden for a short ceremony where the zombie was thanked for its service and the soul was released to its destination. The family could then bury the corpse honorably.

Unclaimed bodies were often held for longer service, but after ten years the stench of reanimated corpse would repel even the undead. A field outside the city walls served as a potter’s field for the unclaimed dead. On two occasions the potter’s field was reanimated to serve as a first line of defense for the city.

Attitudes toward this service varied over time. In the early days, all families took pride in the service they provided. A staunchly patriotic family might ask for the most challenging and degrading work and even clothe the corpse in family livery. Later generations were not so noble and it was traumatic and an ill omen to see grandma guarding the main gate.

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Posted in: campaign window dressing, legacy D&D, monsters / Tagged: cities, undead, zombies

Healing the Undead : Post 100

March 11, 2011 11:19 pm / 1 Comment / Chris

Clerical healing should recompose the body of the decayed undead. Skeletons, zombies, ghouls, wights, mummies, liches all take damage from cure light wounds, cure serious wounds and heal.  Higher-level undead such as liches would get a saving throw against healing. Mummies too, if you think that’s reasonable. I don’t count vampires in this at all, but you can if you want.

If an undead is healed an amount equal to its HP, the body is completely recomposed and the spirit is briefly recalled to the body in order to die again. If it helps the adventure or mood, the dearly unparted might have time to say something brief on the way back out.

I can think of one way this might be useful. One of my favorite deities posted here is Owrox, who abducts souls for ransom. If a magic user were to animate a body, then a cleric heal it back, the soul would be recalled briefly. If if could be directed to its proper destination somehow, that would allow escape from Owrox or some similar demon. And it just might work. Once.

The enmity of a soul-stealer would be a tremendous burden for anyone who tried such a thing. And of course how would you ever find a cleric and a mage in the same party of people? Someone would have to be awfully rich to do such a thing…

Note: I have no idea if this is already in place in more recent editions. If so, well it wouldn’t be the first time. I’m playing in my first game of post 1e D&D in a few weeks, in a Pathfinder mini-campaign.

Also, this is post 100.

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Posted in: house rules, legacy D&D, monsters / Tagged: gods, magic, spells, undead

The Power of Thor Compels You!

August 2, 2010 11:16 pm / 2 Comments / Chris

To continue the mashup of ancient Norse mythology and the medieval Christian church, let’s talk about turning the undead.

I just ran an adventure in a setting where the undead were unknown. As far as I know, this is consistent with Norse mythology in the real world.

In the setting, there are vampire stories, but they’re just stories. Then a cleric of the Aesir met some walking corpses. The player of course moved to turn the undead, but the character would be pointing his silver Yggdrasil at the zombies as a measure of desperation, commanding the souls to leave the bodies (“The power of Thor compels you!”). And the undead halted, however temporarily. A crude attempt that was effective at that moment when emotions were high.

The undead in this temple long before the characters were born, long before Thor built a temple to Odin. So there would be no existing tradition of repelling the undead. Where might the cleric turn to improve his results? I think it likely that the cleric and party, should we continue this as a campaign, need to consult a shaman, who would be more attuned to using spiritual powers to ward off threats that are older.

Many times religious traditions have absorbed older ideas and characters. Perhaps a shaman’s god would be considered an aspect of an existing saint or being in the established church. Perhaps this would become a wrathful version of a saint or demigod, much as wrathful demons were held by Buddhists in Tibet to be wrathful forms of bodhisattvas.

This of course might be seen as heresy by the established church, putting the cleric at odds with his order…

Lot’s to work with there.

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Posted in: content / Tagged: clerics, content, exorcism, Norse, undead
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