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In the last issue of Dragon there is an article on the half-undead and it states that most half-undead are caused by a pregnant female being turned into an undead and that they are very rare.
I was wondering though, in a medieval times, I would assume the odds of a female over the age of 15 being pregnant as being pretty good, so you would think that it would not be THAT rare to find half-undead.
So, does anyone have a guess what are the odds that a random woman over the age of 15 in the middle ages would be pregnant? Should this affect the rarily of half-undead?
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According to some sources I've read, medieval women were pregnant a good proportion of the time as a result of high child mortality rates and no effective birth control.
Two things to remember, though; default D&D is not medieval, and it's really the prevalence of undead that would affect the number of half-undead.
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In the last issue of Dragon there is an article on the half-undead and it states that most half-undead are caused by a pregnant female being turned into an undead and that they are very rare.
I was wondering though, in a medieval times, I would assume the odds of a female over the age of 15 being pregnant as being pretty good, so you would think that it would not be THAT rare to find half-undead.
So, does anyone have a guess what are the odds that a random woman over the age of 15 in the middle ages would be pregnant? Should this affect the rarily of half-undead?
What Piratecat said was true DnD has several items that prevent pregnancy. I have a hard time with this whole concept wouldn't the undead mother eat her child when it was born?
I think it's implied in the article that some half undead are the result of... experimentation. Anyways, I can see intelligent undead either raising or passing off the kid, and since half-undead detect as undead it's possible that a few slip through.
But yup, it would be quite rare.
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In the last issue of Dragon there is an article on the half-undead and it states that most half-undead are caused by a pregnant female being turned into an undead and that they are very rare.
I was wondering though, in a medieval times, I would assume the odds of a female over the age of 15 being pregnant as being pretty good, so you would think that it would not be THAT rare to find half-undead.
So, does anyone have a guess what are the odds that a random woman over the age of 15 in the middle ages would be pregnant? Should this affect the rarily of half-undead?
In a word, no.
The article doesn't explicitly say so, but I was under the impression that a pregnant mother becoming undead does not always equate a half-undead child. It's quite possible (and, in my mind, likely) that a pregnant mother who becomes undead just loses the child. The few who actually birth a half-undead creature are aberrations.
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Half undead. Like Blade. It's an odd sort of idea. I guess you and I are 100% alive, a ghoul is 100% undead. Half undead are 50/50. Still doesn't make much sense, though.
And I think the majority of your "typical D&D world" functions very similarly to medieval european times. Sure, you got your local cleric/adept/bard to do some curing and reduce infant mortality, but you also got dozens of ways to die that medieval peseants only thought they had to deal with. In my mind it would be vital to have your fertile female segment of the population producing children as quickly as possible. Overpopulation just isn't a problem in such a setting, and there are always lots of benefits to children, especially in a rural setting. I don't know how rare pregnant women being turned into undead would be, but it would be at least a few since, well, to put it bluntly, when the undead overrun a town and the villagers flee, the more pregnant you are the slower you run.
The thing is, even if 90% of the fertile female population is pregnant at any given time, that's generally not the "traditional" point of D&D. Emerald here works as a doula, and so these questions are always in the forfront of her mind. The traditional male D&D demographic just doesn't want to think about pregancy and birth and all that women-stuff when they're playing. They want to give the barmaid a friendly slap on the behind and give 'er a little wink, but they don't want her to be seven months pregnant from the last adventuring group that wandered through the village.
edited 'cause I always gotta do it.
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Last edited by MerakSpielman; 24th November 2003 at 06:29 AM..
I am boggled by the idea of half undead. How can you be half undead? I read the article and thought myself in circles trying to figure it out.
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Half-vampires is a common theme in anime, from what I've heard (and extrapolated from the presence of half-vampires in Kindreds of the East).
In a D&D world, thanks to magic, the medical level is actually higher than in the modern real world. Instant generic disease removal, instant wound healing.
So, child mortality is likely to be very low compared to historical medieval times.
In a world with magic premises, one has to take into account magic. IMC, the creation of a new life evokes positive energy. While a woman is pregnant, she's overloaded with positive energy (heh, I should probably give a bonus to turn undead checks for pregnant clerics, but I don't think the situation is likely to happen in game).
This can result in, erm, interesting things when undead are involved. Without a demented experimenting necromancer behind, it's likely to cause the (normal, final) death of mother, child, and undead.
Vampyrs are half undead? I know there is a tradition of male vampires being able to sire children, and that they are good at hunting true undead, where all the Vampre Hunter D stories and such come from, but they are half undead? I never would have applied the term to them.
But now I know what it means and I can live with it
Last edited by Aaron L; 24th November 2003 at 07:06 AM..
Vampyres and dhampyres are the only "half" undead I can think of, based on vampiric mythology, usually resulting in pregnant women giving birth to not quite human children.
The only other half undead I could see would be like a golem, aka Frankensteinish, who's not quite alive, and created via necromantic energy.
No, no. When they become undead, it supercedes their previous type. They're not aberrations any more
You know I didn't mean "aberrations" in the D&D sense of the word. :rolleyes:
That said, the idea of half-undead seems pretty simple to me. Half-undead have partial negative energy, but not enough to truly kill them. Instead, they're partially dead, with one metaphysical foot in the realm of undeath, and the other still firmly in the living world.
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Ok, what the heck is a vampyre, why do people keep talking about it as though it were something different. I keep looking, but the best I can come up with is it's just a kewl spelling of vampire.
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I am boggled by the idea of half undead. How can you be half undead? I read the article and thought myself in circles trying to figure it out.
I always have been confused by the notion, myself. The Blade factor is about the only way I can think of it that doesn't bug me. Of course, my definition of undead is extremely Western that my frame of reference is probably a bit narrow. For the record, if it wasn't once a living human that died, it's not undead in my book -- negative energy is irrelivant (and kinda lame to include in the definition); mummies are/were listed as being undead infused with positive energy.
Eastern mythologies are a completely different ball of wax. I'm not so sure that their "undead" are even remotely similar to the European variety. In some ways, the East might as well be a completely different planet. If you want to accomodate Eastern lore, you're going to have to accept some things that are a bit odd from a Western view. I don't mind expanding my list of critters in the game, but I'm more attached to my concept of undead than I am interested in new toys.
Still, Vampire Hunter D isn't a bad movie. Right up to the point his hand starts talking to him . That little addendum drops the movie down to the MST3K level by itself, IMO. My brain just won't process anime -- there's always something that's like gravel in my yogurt.
I don't know. As far as my experience goes, I've seen Vampires and Dhampires (the Dh being in the aforementionned KotE, the V being in about all the rest of the litterature, gaming or not, involving supernatural blood-suckers I've read).
But I've seen Wampyre or Vhampyre once, flipping through a book in a game shop. I don't remember for the life of me what game it could have been, though. I believe it was contemporary, since there was a pic of a person with modern clothes near a skeleton with a stake in the ribs. IIRC, there was several other small pics showing his hand removing the stake, and the flesh regrowing fast after.
I think the "kewl spelling" explanation is the good one. As well as, probably, the classic undead name syndrom. You want to do a variant monster, so you dig up another name (nosferatu, vrykolaka, striga...) or a variant name (v'ahm-pyre). Or you do as everyone do and say it's a new elf subrace.
I am boggled by the idea of half undead. How can you be half undead?
Sometimes you're just mostly dead. Which means you're also partly alive. So you're not dead - you're a little un-dead. And a little un-alive too, come to think of it. So you're not all undead. You're half undead. See?
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Sometimes you're just mostly dead. Which means you're also partly alive. So you're not dead - you're a little un-dead. And a little un-alive too, come to think of it. So you're not all undead. You're half undead. See?
What?
Does a half-undead heart beat? Or only the left ventriculos? Maybe he has some rotting limbs but not the whole body... And what is his constitution score?
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