undead/evil player charicters.

[Gicko]

Note, that undead use their charisma score in place of constitution for most game purposes.

so they will be playing evil, yet extreamly likealbe, undead? XD

 

[Shemeska]

Do the 'shades' of 1e/2e still exist in 3e/Pathfinder, btw.?

Yep, they were presented in a number of 3.x FR books, and had a major influence in the setting.

 

[Jhaelen]

so they will be playing evil, yet extreamly likealbe, undead? XD

Well, charisma doesn't equate likeability, it's the more general effect of your force of presence/personality. Note, that it's also used to intimidate people which generally doesn't result in people liking you

 

[Gicko]

Well, charisma doesn't equate likeability, it's the more general effect of your force of presence/personality. Note, that it's also used to intimidate people which generally doesn't result in people liking you

ehh, fair enough XD

 

[LowKey]

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1. Don't simply give your character the option to play an undead, rather ask him to choose a normal character and create an adventure around how and why he will become an undead.

its not that the players want to be undead charicters. its that i want the campain to be ABOUT undead charicters. as in starting out as them.

I understand your desire to have the party start off as undead, but trust me, Jevhad is actually giving you a nifty hint here.

Here's why:

1. If its part of an adventure, it will be memorable. It will make the players think about their PCs in a whole new light.
2. If nothing else, starting off the PCs as normal and then having them become undead lets the players develop PC personalities that will be altered when they become undead
3. Whatever power increase comes of their becoming undead will be less noticeable on PCs with a few levels under their belts
4. It buys you, the DM, time.

Trust me, an adventure in which the PCs struggle their best and aaaaaaaaalmost beat a powerful undead and then rise up as its servants- or as spawn about which it cares not a bit- is going to give you a LOT of dramatic potential in your campaign.

And don't underestimate that last bullet point I made- the time bought by delaying the "undeadyness" of the party gives you a chance to come up with a bunch of adventure ideas and so forth that will let you take into account the nature of the PCs. Imagine, for instance, if the PCs rise as Shadows just after one of your players took his first level of Paladin? (Yes, this is perfectly possible- look at the Shadow Dancer PrCl and you can see that Shadows can come in any alignment!)

That Shadow Paladin is going to have interesting issues to contend with.

Do you ever watch "Legend of the Seeker" on TV? A recent episode featured one of the main characters dying and returning as undead. Unfortunately, it only lasted for the single episode, but it did have some nice twists to it.

 

[Gicko]

*headdesk*

I CANT have them start out as living creatures, as it would completely ruin the story!

The point of the story is that an evil necromancer's artefact(s) of power have been stolen from him, leaving him week, and unable to command the massive army’s of undead as he once did. SO, he uses what little power remains in him to raise up some dead adventurers, making them both intelligent, and player characters. These undead PC's must now go out and seek more objects of power for their master before going out and retrieving the one that was stolen from him by paladins. Less they all crumble to dust and cease to exist.


Now, personally, I don’t see any room for the players to make living characters and go on a few dozen adventures together before finally making it to the actual PLOT of the whole thing. You don’t start lord of the rings by telling us about the childhood of Souron’s parents, the audience doesn’t care about them! They care about Sauron! And the Ring! You cant tell a story about a time were they don’t even exist yet and call it the same story!


Now. I would REALLLY appreciate it if someone would actually help me with the questions i have been TRYING to get answered since i started this thread!


Are these templates balanced against normal, non-homebrewed creatures and races such as humans and goblins? yes or no?

if yes, HOW DO I FIX IT!? I.E. "reduce the Int bonus of race X, and maybe add a racial bonus to Z, maybe something like "*insert racial bonus here*". That should even things up"

I need NUMBERS here people! If race X is over powered, TELL ME HOW TO FIX IT! do NOT just say "y3a da7 0n3s B4d, 0ki3 g'b!e Na0" actually help me with the issue!

 

[Jhaelen]

Well, look at what you've written:

SO, he uses what little power remains in him to raise up some dead adventurers, making them both intelligent, and player characters.

So, how did the necromancer happen to have dead adventurers handy?

To me this sounds as if it would be an excellent opportunity to have the pcs start as a regular party trying to defeat the necromancer only to find they're completely overmatched.

Your comparison to LOTR is a particularly bad example, btw. because the novels were written after a rich world history had already been written. We actually know _a lot_ about the things that happened before LOTR, not the least of which are the events in 'The Hobbit'.

Regarding advice on the numbers: I've already given the best advice I could give. If you choose to ignore it, that's fine, of course.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

*headdesk*

I CANT have them start out as living creatures, as it would completely ruin the story!

The point of the story is that an evil necromancer's artefact(s) of power have been stolen from him, leaving him week, and unable to command the massive army’s of undead as he once did. SO, he uses what little power remains in him to raise up some dead adventurers, making them both intelligent, and player characters. These undead PC's must now go out and seek more objects of power for their master before going out and retrieving the one that was stolen from him by paladins. Less they all crumble to dust and cease to exist.


Now, personally, I don’t see any room for the players to make living characters and go on a few dozen adventures together before finally making it to the actual PLOT of the whole thing. You don’t start lord of the rings by telling us about the childhood of Souron’s parents, the audience doesn’t care about them! They care about Sauron! And the Ring! You cant tell a story about a time were they don’t even exist yet and call it the same story!


Now. I would REALLLY appreciate it if someone would actually help me with the questions i have been TRYING to get answered since i started this thread!


Are these templates balanced against normal, non-homebrewed creatures and races such as humans and goblins? yes or no?

if yes, HOW DO I FIX IT!? I.E. "reduce the Int bonus of race X, and maybe add a racial bonus to Z, maybe something like "*insert racial bonus here*". That should even things up"

I need NUMBERS here people! If race X is over powered, TELL ME HOW TO FIX IT! do NOT just say "y3a da7 0n3s B4d, 0ki3 g'b!e Na0" actually help me with the issue!

Believe it or not, we really are trying to help you.

Just one last attempt here on the "start 'em off living" tack: as pointed out by Jhalen, its unlikely that a "weak" or "weakened" necromancer is going to have some non-rotting corpses of adventurers just lying around. Its even more unlikely that he'll have the ability to raise them all up.

From a storytelling standpoint, it may be disruptive of your players' suspension of disbelief.

It is far more likely that he'd have a metamagic Feat like Fell Animate that would let him instantly raise up foes he's just killed as zombies, ready to do his bidding. Given that feat's existence, its just a HR away to have Fell Animate be but the first part of a Feat Tree, with each successive feat creating more and more powerful undead...no gear needed, just some last few high-level slots filled with metamagically enhanced damage (or otherwise lethal) attack spells- preferably AoE ones, at that.

And it doesn't change your plotline at all from that point on. They're still at his beck and call. They still have to find those goodies he sends them out for...until one or more of them find a way to break their bond to him.

And even if they all slip their supernatural bonds, they're still undead.

To answer your question, though, starting them off as most low-level undead makes for a bad fit- they're usually little better than necromantically animated automatons. Now, its possible that your necromancer has some kind of special spell that can force an intelligent mind back into such a corpse, but it doesn't exist in any product I can name. My guess is that if it did, it would also be beyond the power of a "weakened" spellcaster.

So, corporeal intelligent undead are what you need, Ghouls or Wights probably fit the bill quite well, but are just a bit more powerful than typical starting PCs. Ghouls can paralyze with a touch. Wights do energy drains. A single Ghoul or Wight could easily take a group of 1st level PCs- a party full of them would be a scourge that a small town would be seeking adventurers to take down. Add to that whatever class levels they may have- feats, spells, etc. and it gets ugly.

I'd avoid any of the incorporeal ones for this campaign- the power level of those is just a bit too much if you want to run a "starting level" campaign with incorporeal undead PCs. You won't be able to challenge them at all for a LONG time.

Ghosts, Vampires and Liches are just far too powerful for starting PCs unless you really do go for something like a full-on Ghostwalk campaign. And even then, you have the problem of just how a "weak" spellcaster would raise up such powerful beings without being destroyed shortly thereafter.

Personally, I don't see a way to have a party of low-level intelligent corporeal undead PCs balanced against the typical challenges of a low-level campaign.

 

[Caedwyr]

I'd suggest taking a look at the following Campaign Journal over at the paizo boards

From Onyx Hall

It features an all-undead party created under a very specific set of creation rules and results in some fairly interesting adventures and characters. I believe the campaign started out in 3.5 and converted over to pathfinder RPG rules part of the way through.