Making Undead Better is Easy! Here's How
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- Опубликовано: 4 фев 2025
- So undead have a few problems which I don't think have ever really been questioned. Time to shake up what you know about the undeath menace and make your next zombie something to be truly feared!
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Undead in my world have two categories: Purposeful, which means they exist for a specific purpose; or Spontaneous, they have suddenly risen due to some magical situation that needs to be resolved. Either way, I particularly use the Undead as a Symptom of a Bigger Threat. Finding out why they're here is part of the session itself.
This is pretty close to my take in undead.
Undead in my world are defined by their drive.
Mindless undead are juste telekinetically animated corpses, so they have no hp, you must destroy the enchantment itself.
The other undead are based on their desires. If they are undead because they feared death itself, they striée to survive and only hunger remains of them. They can move up to one turn per hp they had in life (these points regenerate everyday, in effect they are really immortal. If you deplete their hp, they collapse for the day. Usually they keep still in wait for a victim. Feeding means they steal lifeforce from the living wich sustain them for two hours during wich you could bring them to 0 hp wich would indeed collapse them for one day.
Skeletons are zombies that decayed enough, being lighter, they can manage twice as much movement as their fleshy counterparts, but they act exactly the same.
Those that are driven by a desire to fulfill one last task become ghosts, they can spend their hp to manage to interact with the living world for one turn. They cannot be touched, hit unless by magical means. They are not evil, they have their own objectives (could be evil). They are also effectively immortals, bringing them to 0 hp makes them vanish for a day.
Vampires are the ones that are driven by desire, greed or power.
They are refined undead, drinking the blood of a living person allows the vampire to walk without spending their energy for a full day. Though fighting will deplete their life force and they might need some more victims. Preventing a vampire from feeding will not starve it or drive him crazy, everyday he will replenish his life force like all other undead.
Unless fed though, he will have to spend that hp everyturn he moves.
Some wiser Vampires dont feed on humans. They simply waitfor their energy to replenish and instead of walking around like desperate fools, they stay seated all day, not spending any effort except to talk, acting as consellors for the living with their huge life experience they have. They, as the other are very much undestructible, they regenerate every day and they dont really fear the sun.
You want to get rid of undead?
Get a priest exorcist or find what they need to accomplish to find rest.
It's the only two ways.
Covering yourself in zombie guts could be a way of diluting your human aural if the zombies sense the living by their aura.
After watching this, the idea of heat-detecting zombies really appealed to me. That might be a kernel that ends up in some of my games!
I've always just made undead self-aware being. What's more interesting, killing a random skeleton in dungeon and moving on to the next one, or killing a random skeleton in a dungeon and hearing one of his skeleton friends shout out "NO! NOT GEORGE! IT WAS HIS BIRTHDAY TODAY AND WE ALL HAD A BIG SURPRISE PARTY PLANNED BACK AT THE OFFICE!"? Now the undead hordes have names, they have personalities, they have friends, family, dreams and aspirations. I like that and my players always have too.
A lot of the stuff discussed in this video is the reason why I replaced zombies with irrevocably mind-controlled people in the homebrew campaign I'm currently running. It just made everything make sense when I was struggling to explain why they're just lingering around tunnels and such. Also gave me the opportunity to make them more actively antagonistic to the PCs.
I also liked the brief discussion of vampires towards the end. In my homebrew, vampirism is a disease, and if someone afflicted with the disease doesn't consume blood regularly, they'll eventually be driven stark raving mad by the bloodlust. The feral vs. non-feral vampires concept is definitely a fertile ground for storytelling.
I have a set scene in my head where a lich is inside a great cavern. Where a great battle took place. Thousands of ancient corpses lay scattered. The lich want an army and casts a great ritual to reanimated the warriors to do his bidding.
The two armies raise and begin to lumber. But one group stays still. Then turns on the other skeletons... They were holy warriors after all and even in undeath they will fullfill their oaths...
I like zombie like curses/viruses.
Have undead animals that become carnivores, because a graveyard was used for a ritual in the area.
They are behaving relatively normal, but the magic is just keeping them alive enough.
They eat, but their skin is still rotten and blackened.
Makes wood cutting way harder in that village.
I've always played my zombies as living creatures. Slowly disintegrating until they die. Very much like ghouls, they need to eat living flesh to give themselves more time.
As far as vampires, again, they're living creatures.
So... The Evil Dead got it right?
The timing of this video couldn't have been better! The focus of my campaign right now hinges on the players stopping an evil necromancer who has raised an army of the undead to attack the living. I had the idea of having the undead not require food, water, brains, etc. to function - the undead in my game are powered by the magic of the necromancer's ritual.
I haven't done anything *too* exciting with undead yet, although I should. My campaign is a fantasy medieval version of Ancient Egypt. People who die too near the desert and aren't prepared properly for burial or the afterlife rise as a dried husk-type zombie. Also, I did a minor modification to the zombie's power to make a Con save to stay at 1hp into dropping, but getting back up on the next round to continue attacking. Startled the heck out of the players the first time zombies they'd "killed" got back up again. :) And mummies are part of the social fabric, although one that rarely interacts with the living world. Some mummies are Immortal Judges, others are nobility that rest in their tombs until called upon for some reason. The PCs have had to visit one that was the founder of the temple they were staying at. They had to fight past 3 layers of guardians to reach him, and then on the way back out the guardians were all whole again and at their posts, and let them exit peacefully.
I found this video at a perfect time. I'm currently planning an adventure that involves two warlocks controlling a horde of undead. I haven't had any undead in the campaign so far, so will absolutely add some of this stuff to it.
A very provocative video, Guy, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts!
"Financial stability before gameing" One of the most important declarations I have heard in a long time.
Sorry Guy, I'm missing today's stream to watch this because it's relevant to my game.
I'm currently running a short zombie game set in a modern setting where a local zombie apocalypse was triggered by the cultist of Tchernobog (yes) who used a copy of Necronomicon Ex Mortis (yes). In other words, the zombies... I mean, deadites (who are corpses possessed by the evil spirits from the book, have no connection to their old human personality - but _pretend_ to have) are more or less sentient, they are driven by their desire to kill the living and spread evil for the evulz, they can speak, and have a dark, wicked sense of humor.
And the main character is Ash Williams?
@@sergeychistov8162 no, but one of the characters is a Hollywood action movie star. 🙃
Excellent video. A great watch!
Hm, I think there is more to unearth (lol) with the idea of undead as guards or sentries, maybe not just for their own graves, but maybe for some sort of artifact in the catacombs or the burial site of the ancestors or whatever. Maybe they magically know who is an intruder vs not. Maybe they do crumble or return to their graves once they have successfully fended off the intruders, but that wouldn't mean their mandate is completed.
Or, some sort of magical effect of the terrain only animates the dead, but without directive/mandate and without the need (or necessarily the desire) to eat/fight/reproduce, they could just sorta be standing there doing nothing until the party's presence triggers the deep-seated fight-or-flight instinct and they attack (handwavy magic BS even without a brain or nerves, whatever).
But I do agree that more thought can and should be put into why undead are present in a specific locale and why they exist at all.
I've been working on my own TTRPG for some time now. Your videos have been interesting to watch, and I plan on binging on a few of them while I putter on my game. I had the idea that zombies can sense heat suggested to me by one of my play-testers (it's a zombie-themed ttrpg) so I found it cool that you also had that idea. I just wanted to say you have cool videos and I look forward to watching more of your content.
Once again some really great observations and toughts.
I have used 3 types of undead in my homebrew so far:
1) The mindless guardian waiting to be triggered by an intruder. Some were living persons willing to die in order to protect the object for eternity.
2) The controlled hordes of raised dead. Skeletons with simple minds, but still an advanced foe, even more when the controller is within range.
3) The servants of the tribe. I had mountain dwarves be raised to protect their tribe as a part of their will. I gave them the same skills in combat etc. as in life, but no ability to learn, so they had to get instructions from a living dwarf.
In my opinion all three have their purpose, depending on the setting.
As type 3.5 do I have a goblin demilich, who is turning lich trying to save his tribe from death (they REALLY don't want to meet their god!) and the countless enemies (including the PC's), thus making him a good guy for the goblins.
I love that Guy doesn't say. "Do what I do." But "Think about what I'm saying and make up your own mind about it."
Ive started a homebrew recently that might be an interesting idea to some. Its founded on a society where the undead are actually revered, and scholors and artisans revive their fallen mentors to allow them to continue their teachings. The undead arent really evil, at least until they have a reason to be or are corrupted by some force, which im planning on elaborating on a bit, but ill have to run it first before saying anything
Nice work, Guy! I appreciate the idea of refuting the well established pseudoscience we've all come to expect from our undead (decapitations, sight based or smell based). They are simply magic and once we have that ground to work with we can start asking why and for what purpose. This thinking really elevates their use in story telling.
I have two different types of undead in my worldspace:
Type 1: Animated Dead. These are basically magic marionettes that function based on how strong the mage who animated it. A more powerful mage can give complicated orders, like a coordinated attack pattern, but a novice... not so much. In world, this isn't Necromancy. People aren't happy about it most of the time, but it's not Necromancy.
Type 2: Necromantic Dead: These utilize someone else's soul in order to animate. As such, they are as functional as any living being in the thinking dept. Someone's soul is literally slaved to the pile of bones, and the keyword is "slaved". They have bindings on what they can do, so they can't re-dead themselves, but they're highly functioning.
Both types require some form of magic battery (or regular infusions of fresh magic) to sustain. The Necromantic Dead will eventually use the soul as the battery, if left untended. Which makes them slowly go "insane", until the soul depletes fully and it collapses to the floor.
But, what if the magic of animation is simply too complex to manage ALL the innumerable actions that the undead can take? What if instead, the easiest thing for the magic is to replicate or mimic the all those bodily activities? So magic replicates the eyes, and thus the eyeless skeleton can see. Or that magic replicates the functionality of the nose, and so the zombie can smell? Etc.
Thus magic still runs the show, but now the undead creature can behave in a way that is intuitive to player and GM. 🤔
It feels like making them basically machines used by necromancers sets us down on a road of whys and hows... The uncanniness of seeing some restless dead that I felt when first reading about them or seeing them in films sort of disappears when the less willful undead are basically framed as stinky robots. I've thought about this sort of thing probably too much, and I tend to have all undead have some sort of consciousness, and differentiate them by other means, like what the individuals, their deities, and the cultures that prepared them for burial (or not) wanted to happen. It renews the surprise a bit, and makes them creepier or worth investigating, and adds to the setting.
Lots of good thoughts, Guy. Thanks! In my world, I have ghosts and the possibility of zombies, but it is a massive magical expense to help them going. I think I like the Anita Blake series for giving exactly what you want here: purpose and control and limitations.
I think the video is a bit overly pedantic, but I appreciate the message of giving a meaningful reason or context to your undead. I've never had a player question how a skeleton sees, but why they're here; which was the entire point of an adventure I ran a few times.
Idea you can steal: This mini adventure centered on the mystery of travelers on a trade route disappearing and stopping it. Turns out a necromancer is sending her undead to ambush travelers. This necromancer was an apprentice to my BBEG who she betrayed. The apprentice's undead are powered by magical bracelets that turn living humanoids into undead if they die while wearing one. The bracelets have different bright colors signifying different behavior/abilities (e.g. describe the skeletons with the green ones as moving more quickly than the others). This all serviced making combat more interesting, whether by giving players an opportunity to feel smart when they figured out what a color did, make them hesitant when a new color gets introduced, and just having slightly different enemies.
Admittedly, this was a bit of set dressing for introducing the BBEG. His skeletons had zero pizazz but appeared out of thin air and moved with precision and coordination. In contrast to the "flashy" skeletons of the apprentice that moved roboticly, the players knew the BBEG was much more powerful.
Good job! I am a big fan of the concepts of monster ecology, purpose, and design outside of the simple stat blocks. It is basic monster AI. Even for something as simple as orcs. Some orcs work, some guard, some patrol, and some have chill time. An orc standing guard over the chieftains tent will NOT leave their post easily. The DM building in that type of thinking becomes natural for the players to figure out why that orc is not leaving that tent. "It must be guarding something important or valuable!"
My undead in my game are the result of the line between life and death becoming hazy as the god of death themself dies. So Im having their intelligence being tied to when they died in the first place
I’ve used the undead 2 times in my campaign. First time was a wizard had raised them in order to protect an area around his tower, they mostly just shambled around killing anything that enter the protective radius. They could not be killed so players had to chop them down to make them stop chasing them.
2nd time was on a small island that was shrouded in a magical mist that raised the dead, these however were very aggressive and would attack anything, even each other, PC’s had to make it through the mist practically blind while fighting off the undead knights, the undead could not go beyond the reach of the mist and would eventually all kill each other or die as the mist dissipated
I'm creating a dungeon that one of the factions is an Order turned undead to guard the dungeon, to not let the demon imprisioned inside it escape. They rose again after their death due to a pact made with their patron god, so they retain some kind of awareness, but this awareness is divided by rank: higher rank, higher awareness. The dungeon was built to house a settlement in the earlier levels that was populated by the living families of the Order, and they had a system to send the deceased to the Order's necropolis so their corpses would be raised or used to "repair" other undead soldiers
A nearby graveyard is rumored to have undead rise a few days before, during, and after a full moon.
They are fallen paladins, fulfilling their oaths even in death, of keeping a lich that is buried in the same graveyard from rising.
Great video! In my home brew world our vampire undead are not undead but descended from a single source as and offspring from two separate gods. The undead version come via another entity trying to recreate such a thing. Those a abominations that are mindless and purely killing machines.
Hello Guy! I think you might appreciate this. My undead are sentient automatons. I'm running a victorian steampunk campaign inhabited by automatons. Most are just mindless robots performing mundane jobs, but every once in a while one of them will "learn" and jump that sentient threshold. These few sentient automatons have gathered in a remote part of the city and created a colony of "Zombies." They do this as to not get recalled and recycled. The city and it's denizens are terrified of the Zombies, and in turn, the Zombies perpetuate the undead lore. Thanks for the great content.
I like throwing a few wights into the mix with the hoards
I am GMing a Numenéra adventure where my players found a village full of zombies. The zombies are dead people reanimated by a strange device that flies and attach to their head and keep they alive and agressive. And I made a rule for proximity by sensors on the head device.
Thanks for the advice, I will improve the reason zombies are attacking and how my players could find a way other than violence to get rid of the "undead" (which I am calling in this adventure as "ex-humans")
Great questions, made me think more about how the link between necromancer and his minions happens. I'm currently running a game placed within the events of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and my necromancer BBEG is raising an army that doesn't require resources to maintain (food, water, shelter etc).
He uses dragon parts that were stored as relics throughout Skyrim as channelling devices. If the dragons are coming back to life, he can extend that energy to dead people and dead animals, much like a wi-fi repeater, but twisted. He has little control over the undead, but they are just there to cause mayhem and distraction while he works in the political sphere, pulling strings in the Civil War. He thrives on chaos.
The undead themselves have the same mandate as the dragons raised by Alduin: to destroy and destabilize life, so the world will end quicker.
In my world, we had a setting where an emperor became undead after being attacked by his allies while his army was out in the corners of the world fighting against another evil.
They swore by blood to support him and broke this promise, causing him to seek revenge upon the Kingdoms that betrayed him.
The players only knew about him but slowly unravelled the four branches of his generals that were betrayed and resurrected by the blood oath. They all are different types of undead. e.g. One was an ambush hunter, a massive ghul that managed to trap the group in a layer where we had a few sessions of fun while they tried to make a prey of the hunter.
He did hunt the group once he found out about them being supporters of the enemy. They doomed themself by picking sides, if you will. And his main ability was an aura of "Life Sense
" with enhanced range.
I really like thematic videos like that ! Don't fool ourselves, we love to speculate on the small details and the mechanics of our favorite monsters :D
Three types of undead in my campaign: 1) those created for a purpose by necromancers (cheap labor, guards, to make up an army). These are more of the "mindless" variety that follow simple orders by their creators. 2) Necromancers that have become undead purposefully to maintain their existence (these would be the "smart" undead such as Liches and Vampires). This type is also some of my main antagonists. 3) As this is a Norse campaign, the third type is those that become Draugr. Draugr persist after death to serve a certain purpose. Some may be to seek vengeance or finish a vendetta, others to protect and benefit their family/community. I understand that necromancy is not really a Norse thing, but I needed a more ancient and magic race than just the Jotuns.
Most of the undead in an AD&D game I am plaing in belong to my Lawful Evil Cleric. They make up the main force of his army used to protect his domain and kill all beastmen who dont swear allegiance to him. They stay in hundreds of underground sepulchers to protect them from aerial attacks of good aligned flying creatures. When stored they are ordered to attack anyone who disturbs their rest.
When I have used undead, I've used them as minions, that go collapse/vanish when the one keeping them from passing on is defeated.
I have run a very long campaign and undead are a big part throughout its chapters. Basic undead (zombies/skeletons) are magically animated (so they have magical eyes for example... the way that other spells enhance sight but you still need line of sight). The are mindless and their decrepit state is sustained by their same magic that created them. They attack whatever they are meant to, with the most basic option of "the living (with intelligence)". Now those basic undead wear their welcome very fast in a long campaign. Gradually you start using more and more complex and intelligent undead (from ghouls to vampires and liches and many more) which still use the basic and/or lower undead as herders, to whatever their goal is. There are also intelligent undead that might be in a perpetual state of confusion. Usually ghosts/wraith/specters might be tormented lost souls that attack the living for whatever gloomy reason (expression of fear/anger/satisfaction/etc). Having put so much thought in undead I agree that you need to define how necromancy works in your world (in mine its actually banned - or was...) and finding logical reasons why the undead encounters are in that location to begin with, gives a deeper understanding of the world and helps with immersion.
I have been working on an undead system for some time that uses logic from this video actually.
Your typical undead like zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ect. Are puppeteered by necromancers that raise the dead with jars of purple fluid. If the undead are too damaged to contain it they fall apart. Otherwise the necromancer could be targeted then the creature's would frenzy and attack anything on sight.
Vampires and other more sentient undead are a mystery and have unique reasons for their twisted curses. Some sell their soul to Gods of death or blood transfusion with purple fluid turning them undead but with a mind and body that are intact giving them magic abilities and senses
Cool! I'm partial to virus-riddled fast zombs. Always terrifies my players.
I like the idea of multiple kinds of undead. Some are natural (controlled by a fungus, plant or simply 'magic rabies'), 'natural' (something to with the world's religions and 'afterlife went wrong'), created for a purpose (such as for an army, as servants, as librarians, or as guards for a dungeon), or created as an attack (probably some sort of magic plague).
A lot of good room to use them, if you think about "Why are the undead...?"
Darken Wood, the Sla-Mori, and Lord Sotheby's from Dragonlance are great places to look for what makes interesting undead and why they are where they are and why they do what they do.
Never actually used zombies in my work. I have exactly one idea for a scenario with zombies, except it's some kind of weird cosmic horror thing.
About to run a game where the creatures can be mistaken for zombies. They are animated remotely and controlled by a singular person, so by dnd definition they are not technically undead. Instead they are constructs that operate as instructed telepathically, or by magical puppetry. This means they have limited range they can be, sense only what the controller sees, then as a typical construct when out of sight.
"Does the undead smell?" Yes, probably awful. 😂
I like to think of "stupid" undead with actions and motivations along the lines of elementals. They're necrotic elementals intent on spreading death and decay much like a fire elemental wants to spread fire as that is the energy driving them. Sentient undead have more autonomy over their actions so can have more complex agendas.
I totally agree about sensory input. They have more of a "soul sense" or "witch sight" type of detection than from traditional organs.
I was thinking about implementing Dry Bones into my Mario Campaign because they are not actually killable unless if you actually target the magic that is keeping it together so you have to dispel the magic to kill it or have an Antimagic aura to actually keep it at bay.
Undead in my current game follow the systems rules: Casulties are like the weather. If you are prepared you are good, if you are cought out in something bad you are likely to die.
I love this! I've never really used skeletons, but I will be on this if I do! Also, my undead typically are less walking meat, leaning more towards the ghouls of early fallout games (it also means I get to make raspy and nasty voices for them, lol).
You know, I never thought about it but all the games Ive ever played/ran for 20 yrs gave all undead the ability Sense Living, and I never once questioned it... Homebrew from the beginning!
Sense Living: Undead are jealous of life, the magics animating them warping the mind of the undead to hate the living and want to destroy that which they no longer have. The dark animating magic resonates discordantly with the energy given off by living souls, thus the undead can "sense" where something living is regardless of objects between them.
-All undead magically know when something living is within 25ft of them, even through walls.
This made the old "Hide from Undead" spell have meaning for us. Also made it very 'exciting' when you came around a corner and found a crowd of undead *Right There* cus they've been following you along a parallel corridor!
I always felt necromancy was a form of convincing the dead person they were still alive and the remnant of the soul applies the constraints of how it sees or smells and somewhat of how it acts.
It literally even states when trying to kill them that you're just *beating the magic out of them* effectively. I like the idea of potentially using anti-magic field to take care of a horde of undead since magic is what's keeping them alive, though if they're undead due to the virus part? Yeah they'd still be alive.
I seriously love this discussion topic. Undead are my all time favorite monster type, and 5e, in my opinion, has not done them justice.
I've been wanting to run the old 3.5e module from Dungeon Magazine "The Age of Worms". In it, Kyuss, god or parasites, the undead and general decay, is the main threat at the end (spoilers for a module there the first piece of art is a giant painting of Kyss). Sadly, Kyuss doesn't have that many monsters to his name in the official material. The module even invents about a dozen new Kyuss goons, but it winds up repeating them pretty often. Rethinking undead in this manner would be something high on Kyuss' priority list
I swear, if anyone but you told me this, I would say they're overthinking it and I'd just say: "If you're that worried about it, don't use zombies."
Zombies are a simple concept. They’re mindless dead people and they eat other people. But that doesn’t mean they have to STAY a simple concept. This is just a series of points as to how zombies could be more interesting and believable as a creature. Acting like Guy is “overthinking” anything is like telling a mathematician that they’ve gone overboard by doing calculus. It’s just what he does
@@GumboGumboGumbo I said "if anyone else" yo.
@@EksaStelmere misreads comment and starts an argument for no reason epic style
Something to consider is that a lot of these questions of, why do they smell, or see, or need their brain, might be down to the skill or process of reanimation. The simplest form of reanimation could be to make use of already existing abilities. It uses the eyes, because its 'easier' or uses less power to perceive the world than using an entirely magical sense. Maybe the brain is important because the brain already has the instructions and ability to control what muscles and body finctions remains, lessening the difficulty or power consuption for the reanimation.
This could then mean that reanimating a skeleton would be more difficult than a zombie because it takes more power and skill to create all of the missing pieces.
A world might have different forms of undead based on the reanimation process. A scorned magical, or someone who was unjustly punished, or whatever, may lay a curse upon a village to cause the dead to rise. But the curse is simple so it just reanimates recently dead that still have most of the body functions. Maybe reanimating bodies with missing pieces causes them to be janky, and clumsy, because it can't see or it can't control muscles well until the magic "learns" how to do it.
But it still vomes back to the premise: have a reason for why they exist.
Guy, I have issues with "the undead" for a different reason. The whole undead thing is played out and "done to death" thanks to a combination of Hollywood and YA writers with predictable tropes. FOR THE LAST THIRTY YEARS, IF IT WASN'T ZOMBIES, IT WAS VAMPIRES. IF IT WASN'T VAMPIRES, IT WAS ZOMBIES! Can't we get a new undead horror to terrorize us? I mean, I'd like to see a decent lich or banshee or SOMETHING? Are Gibbering Mouthers copyrighted? Hell, Mummies were briefly a thing... if they weren't so F---ed up in how they were done.
Ooh this video has a lot of good points! I've improved the flavour of undead (in my eyes at least) by having them be passively following a sad copy of what they did while alive until provoked or magically controlled (by, hypothetically, a cursed item carried by the party). However currently the way to kill them is to destroy their body entirely, or the head. But why the head?? Perhaps I'll make it more difficult with stronger creatures less easily immobilised by destroying the head, it certainly wouldn't have worked on the undead hydra whose body they burnt before it could come back.
Also I will definitely be taking the comment about magical senses into consideration; it has given me the idea that perhaps your average undead is limited by a mental block of sorts allowing them only the senses they had in life if not worse, but more powerful/magically affected ones can sense magically.
I think in 3.5 ed they had something called "Life sense" where they could magically detect living entities...
In my campaign two kinds of undead exist, those animated for use as servants (similar to a robot) and those created by other monsters that have free will. Most of the undead with free will live underground and fight in undead armys. The undead armys are commanded by stronger undead (typically Lichs although other types of undead also serve as commanders) and some other creatures (fiends, necromancers, etc). The undead armys hope to conquer the surface and are opposed by most living people (including the main villain).
There is a way I set up undead is under a hierarchy for a campaign and it worked so well I adapt it for other systems.
So at the top you have big bads. These are your liches and other powerful undead. No real restrictions.
Then below them are 3 kinds of undead. Each with some type of limitations to prevent
Uprising.
The first are the intelligent. They are usually hindered physically to prevent them from potentially overthrowing the big bads.
The shock troopers: these are not mindless but prefer bruting their way through problems. (Think wrights)
The horde: this is the typical undead when you need quantity these are the mindless ones with no real power
But the intelligent undead who failed in their plans are disformed even more but not destroyed to leave a message of f about and find out
So I found the notes so I had the undead system be.
Tied to a place/object
forming a body with your essence
Runes on head or chest (disrupt the runes disrupt the animation)
Magical channeling
They just exist because a diety willed it
My in world explanation for undead runs off of a theory that animate dead (d&d dm) creates a stand in soul (of far lesser quality depending on the animation type) that interfaces with the bodies' left over soul interface, the part that contains memories and interfaces with the rest of the body. Imo animate dead also has a gentle repose element to it preventing decay and the animating magic itself feeds upon latent magic in the world. Only way a zombies' life essance would run out would be for magic to turn off until it ran out of "gas". As for its peceptive abilities and locomotive capabilities it's also supplementally part of the animate dead spell, zombies are hardier because it takes less to keep them moving due to still having half working innards. Skeletons push the magic to its limits and thus it takes less to be rid of them.
Using this theory I also came up with a concept I will likely expand upon. Should a 9th level spell be used to create a soul stand in using a far more powerful spell than animate dead or create undead and used in conjunction with a spell to revive a dead person's body. You get an Imposter. Someone who is for all intents and purposes is that person but also isn't. They have all their memories but none of their morality, every imposter is evil. No matter what their original soul was. This also prevents any form of resurrection short of wish. It also creates perfect spies, if you can control them.
I like your aproach to the topic. Often, delving into minutia opens up new opportunities for unique game experiences. One infection mode that you did not mention is parasites. There are several examples of parasites that alter the behavior of their host in order to further their reproductive imperative. These often transfer through water ingestion.
A note about infections... definite minutia:
Viruses require living organisms to grow. They cannot replicate themselves. Instead, they take over the duplication mechanisms of their host. Thus, a virus in a zombie would not be further duplicating itself.
Viruses are not really alive. Thus, "killing" them is a misnomer. They can be damaged--usually in several possible ways--to prevent them from successfully infecting a living organsim. They can be "parted out"--by a macrophage perhaps--into their component molecules, thereby rendering them impotent.
Fungi--mycotics in general--are "reducers." They love dead tissue. They are spore producers. Thus, they could be highly infectious and readily distributed by an infected undead.
Bacteria can also be quite at home munching on dead tissues. Bacteria are a bit easier to destroy, but bacteria make spores to survive. A bacterial spore can survive the vacuum of space, the complete absence of water, and high radiation levels for extended periods.
If the undead state is due to an infection,..
and
If the infectious agent is a spore producer, be it fungal or bacterial...
then
There is a significant risk that the dust of the undead is, itself, infectious.
This could be a contact infection--hands to mucus membranes (don't pick your nose, rub your eyes, or lick your fingers), or an airborne infection--dust stirred up while looting skeletal remains or walking over a dusty dungeon floor.
The minutia open up so many options for the evil GM.
The undead are my absolute favorite. And I going to great depths when I comes to undead world building in my games. But to keep it short, I categorize basic undead as either unthinking. Or with the very basic analystic instincts. Type one are basically undead constructs, zombie skeletons, and lie inert for long periods of time. Unless given a directive. When a Inert
They have The detect life ability up to 10 feet. And will mindlessly attack the closest source of life detected.
So The way i play the undead is, if you magically reanimate the dead if that are not too far decomposed, they will breath, if we are magically reanimating the body, that means the brain is somewhat functional even if it is its most basic instincts like a zombie would be. So yes it breaths but not because it has to breathe but only because of its brain knowing that it is supposed to do that. I agree with everything else but sight, because if it has eyes it has sight. Also depending on how old the zombie is could mean a lot of things. Also take into consideration how the person or thing died. Where they killed by a spell, if so does that spell leave traces of its arcane power on them? If they were rowed do they have a natural or in-natural desire to drown their victims or stay around or in water?
There is so much you can do with zombies or the undead that i feel like giving the undead restraints in someways gets rid of the appeal.
I would like to think that skeletons are a result of creatures that had a reaction to some kind of disease that got brought back as a result of a catastrophic thing happening within their area that happened to be magical in nature and their flesh happened to rot off the body until there was no actual flesh persisting on them. That is to say them retaining certain lingering personality traits is one thing. It's another if they can actually act on them or not.
So categorically it is a very staunch point of concession I would say.
It was nice to hear that someone else aslo think that undead should have some other sence.
For long time my zombies have life-sense for medium distance and shape-sense for short - that is why they try to go against walls if target is behind them and then try to break them if no obvious way is close. So far only one group was playing tactically on the level that it was used against the,
Irony of the life-sense is that smearing killed undead fluids on you will help you to hide - it partially disrupts life sence, but more than being invisible it reduce effective range.
About purpose - well, it stringly depends. Was it raised by necromancer? Was it raised by surge of wild dark magic? Is it part of sacred duty of guard to keep living and protect lord's tomb? There are too many possible reasons and each is very different and hase a lot of consequences.
Merging the concepts from both Horizon Zero Dawn and Dead Space, you can make very unique undead that would be a great challenge for your players.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Each Undead has a "Power Source" where their "Magic" resides and feeds the undead creature. In Zombies this would be the brain, in Skeletons it would be the spine, in Vampires this would be the heart. Destroying the "Power Source" "kills" the undead creature by releasing the stored "Magic"
Dead Space: The Necrophages are "unkillable" and stay alive. By dismembering the necrophage you make them harmless. This would be very good for Skeletons where you could say the magic is in the bones. By breaking the Skeleton down, the Skeleton is still "alive" but can't effectively function (ie dead).
Great video, it will greatly help to improve a campaign im guiding in a sword&sorcery kind of world where I have two types of undead, the typical "zombie" created by magic, those are mindless, attack nearest target, can't coordinate strategies, "feel" the living, are active just for as long as the amount of "magic" sustaining them takes to run out, and their only porpouse is complete a single task ordered my the summoner... And! I also have this undead who are basically part of a hive mind controlled by a extradimensional cosmic god, this are extremely dangerous can coordinate strategies, use weapons and their porpouse is the god's porpuse... I think its pretty cool,
My setting all undead intelligent or non are all based on gluttony. Vampires drink blood, ghouls eat flesh, ghosts feed on negative emotions, and skeletons have to replace their bones. The "mindless" undead I have them able to communicate with each other but not anything else unless they retain their intelligence scores (Skeletal champions & Zombie lords come to mind) so they can use tactics but are seen as lesser to other undead and obviously the living. But it's the need to hunt for food that makes them move into areas. Skeletons last hundreds of years before breaking down so they can linger in spots for quite some time before the "hunger" takes them and motivates them.
It's what makes the most sense to me anyway haha
daaammmnnnn those mats are amazing!!!
Czepeku also has a fantastic sci-fi patreon!
The way I'm doing undead in my campaign, is that they weren't dead in the first place, but turned undead by a wizard, and are not mindless drones. They keep their intelligence, the ability to speak, and they keep their class abilities. For example, if the wizard turns a Druid undead, and it uses wild shape, it turns into an undead variant of whatever beast was chosen to wild shape into. The first Vampires we're an accident.
The Undead don't require food, drink, or air, nor can they taste, but they remember what it was like to have good food and drink, and some wish that they could enjoy one last meal before they truly die, and others miss their families that they cannot return to, others their jobs, or their friends. A couple of my players actually felt bad for a couple of the undead they cut to pieces because of the dialogue before the fight, and refused to attack until it looked like other members of the party would be killed.
The only way to truly kill them is by with fire, but only if they are completely reduced to ash, or are dismembered into 9 pieces (dont know why, just picked it randomly). If beheaded, the body stays upright, attacking wildly with disadvantage for 1d6 rounds.
The ultimate goal is to build an army of undead to attack the city that safegaurds the Book of Vile Darkness, Summon Ertu, add demons and other hellish beasts to my army, find Crenshinibon, and begin taking control city by city, commiting as many evil acts as possible, with the hope of performing the ritual to become immortal. Basically just using undead as the beginning of something much larger. I didn't even introduce the undead until level 5.
zombies are fun, simple as.
_I say, I say, I say, my zombie's got no nose..._
I love the undead, they always seem to have that uncanny valley about them - you're fighting a dead person against their will, plus there it is right in front of you, proof of something worse than death! And who knows if your mind is still trapped in a shambling zombie, a parasite in your own body!
But my skeletons are magic and mine are a little smarter but like on the order of Army of Darlness
"Why would (the undead) have a sight line?" Um... balance, probably? If the horde of zombies have a radius of detection, suddenly they can't be flanked since the whole concept of flanking is to catch the flanked creature unaware while its trying to deal with two attacks at the same time. Same with sneak attack or stealth in general. If they just have an aura of Detect Whatever, rogues go back to not having like 80% of their class features for entire dungeons because the undead just know they're close at all times. I dislike 5e but that's one change that I did like: rogues don't get sidelined during combat in "slay undead" campaigns.
One game I have three types of undead, one is basically the classic undead but programable, one is intelligent vampires, and the third category, is basically the characters normal intelligence and functioning but.... dead and no longer properly heal so start falling apart and losing intelligence ect. Unfortunately other races tend to abduct them for slaves/servents... ect.
Definitively, we are lacking a link to a Monster Book where Guy details the mechanics of How to be a Great Undead.
i watched this today because my party is about to fight Skeletons(they made some of them due to a magic item(i mean some with classes)). so it helps. its one of the reasons i dont use undead the often id the Why are they there.
I like to use a variety of undead, in my campaign I have undead that are mindless and roam, but those are few in number because they roan, they get cut down, by virtually everything. Then I have commanded undead who have a purpose and mission from the necromancer controlling them. Lastly I have cognitive undead know who they are and formulate thoughts, plans etc.
I do this because one of my players is undead, it helps them establish their background and they get interested when they find other cognitive undead like ooooo is this related to me??!
Generally I completely agree with the video, the undead shouldn't be used as a catch all bag guy. There are too many variables and opportunities for people to drop immersion.
The answer to all this... Necromancer!
I really like your idea of zombie vision aura thing. But you only touched on the surface of undead. I'd like to see you take a deeper dive into specific undead like the devourer or vamps
What if when a zombie grapples a PC it absorbs a hit die or some amount of hit points and adds it to itself on the next turn.
Most players do not seem that interested in some in depth background knowledge of how a monster does this or that or came to be etc... That usually results in a player saying "What? Oh okay where is the loot? Do I level up now?"
And that is absolutely fine. Most players don't expect a major rationale for why skeletons are guarding a crypt or a wizard's tower, or whether a zombie is homing in on their smell or their soul.
Most don't even give a damn about why Orcs or Goblins are raiding merchant caravans. Some will, and as a DM, you'll know the sort of players at your table.
My advice is that if they don't ask the question about stuff that mundane, don't worry about the answer. Save your time and creative efforts for the sort of things YOUR players WILL focus on.
I like zombie games from childhood, and think Dying Light have a very interesting concept. That it's a biological weapon and zombie need flesh not for survival. but for mutating to other kinds of monsters.
Zombies are all good fun, but if you look at them too closely, they kinda fall apart.
Vampires keep their personhood and intelligence despite being undead because vampirism probably originates with the first of them making a blood pact with some nocturnal power, not from someone going "riiiiiise from your graaaaaaave" with magic. They have agency in their own undeath instead of being mere animated corpses.
If my players thought they would have to cut off testicles to kill the undead. One of them would eventually try to make a neckless of them. lol
I consider undead more as being Anti-life. They are animated by negative energy (which is mutually annihilated when it comes into contact with positive energy, like matter and antimatter.) There is a natural antithesis between the undead and the living for this reason, they are instinctively hostile to each other because their animating energies are opposed on a cosmological basis. Mortal souls are basically a framework of soulstuff infused with positive energy, and when the positive energy is annihilated and negative energy takes its place, you get an undead soul (or vice-versa).
When it comes to unintelligent undead composed of decaying flesh, they're basically just constructs given specific orders, but they are still animated by soulstuff infused with negative energy. Souls, spirits, ghosts, etc. still have the ability to perceive in absence of actual organs (i.e. out-of-body experiences, the mind's eye), so corporeal undead with decaying bodies are more like undead spirits bound to a meat puppet, which is the only way they are able to physically interact with the material world, albeit seeing through the lens of the Ethereal Plane, hence their limits on perception.
Couldn't. Agree. More.
My undeads are robots under the command of the BBG to get to his goal. They are obedients, easy to rise, never tire, never rest, don't eat. And don't fear. That's the best army you can ever command. However, I have decided that in my world, only the most powerful necromancer can command undreds of undead. My BBG being close to a god, that's not a problem for him to command entire armies of it. But it still not enough, so he needs to rely on other necromancers, that he commands and control over a feudal like system. He himself is totally unkillable by any of his minions. But he is powerful enough so he doesn't have to bother with that kind of stuff. His henchemens however spend their entire free time scheming against each other to get into his favors. Pretty classic, but I also decided that any undead is an extension of the will of the necromancer that awoke it. So the undead move and fight because he is kinda "radio guided" by the necromancer. He sees through the eyes of his minions ears through their ears ... etc ... And that's also why only the most powerful spirits can command entire armies of undead. For any normal being, commanding more than a dozen undeads would just kill the person through the massive input of information reaching his brain. And even through hard training, practice, and reinforcement of their will can the most powerful mages command hundreds of them. And still, if they want to face kingdoms or lords, they need to form covens of necromancers ...
I don't use modern day undead. I use the actual term which means. Something that is un-dead still alive
I do hate how skeletons and zombies are usually cannon fodder despite being animated with magic, dark powers etc., so I do prefer them being hard to take down: burned, blown to bits or something like that. (Especially with skeletons I like go all the way to Harryhausen.😅)
depends on the context. if the lore about the setting doesn't matter, then the undead don't need to make sense. consider the old school concept of a "dungeon" as land/water formations that just supernaturally come to exist with no purpose other than to spawn monsters, treasure, traps, etc. into the world. such a dungeon needs no explanation for anything within.
I accidentally triggered the zombie apocalypse while trying to invent Resurrection magic.
FUNNY YOU SHOULD MENTION A HEADLESS UNDEAD!!! There's a story about a horseman that rides at night without a head. It's a specter of sorts with the stories varying in the telling. In the Northeast parts of the US, it's the Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, where the undead is one of the British soldiers from the US War of Independence who died after a cannonball took the poor soul's head and he was buried without it. So he rises at night in the area of the battle looking for unwitting victims to take their heads for his. (See? Got your mandate right there.) If you're on a specific road and you're being chased, there are boundary lines you can cross that prevent the horseman from chasing you.
Wikipedia says this legend dates back to the Middle Ages, so there are other tellings.