D&D 5E (2014) About the undead

[Shades of Eternity]

The Lore of the Angryverse: Undead | The Angry GM

The Angry GM delivers advice to players and dungeon masters of fantasy role-playing games with humor, snark, and attitude. Game masters and players are sure to find something of use, whether they are playing AD&D, D&D 3.5, D&D 4E, 5E, Pathfinder, D&D Next, or any other role-playing game.

theangrygm.com

I'm a fan and he does describe his parameters about how undead are used in his game.

How do you prefer to use undead in your game?

 

[Bawylie]

Something similar to that. Not the shades thing though.

 

[aco175]

Wow, if that is not a lot or reading. I admit I just skimmed most of it. It looks like it has a lot of good ideas about souls and true undead. I admit I do not really have any special reason why I use undead other then they make good bad guys and everyone knows they are evil and ok to destroy. They make good monsters to place in tombs and placed long locked up where monsters that are alive could not live.

I also like to use them enough to give the cleric a chance to use his turn power.

 

[Dausuul]

That is... a lot of text. Dude is in dire need of an editor. Here's my attempt to sum up:

• When a creature dies, its soul spends a while in the Shadowfell Plane of Long Shadows before passing on to the outer planes.
• Part of the process of passing on is shedding the dark emotions and impulses that burden the soul.
• The cast-off dark impulses form an entity known as a shade, which can find its way back into the material plane. There, it possesses either a corpse or an animus (the animating force of a living creature), creating a corporeal or incorporeal undead respectively.
• This being the case, undead are inherently evil. Creating undead is bringing evil things into the world. Trying to use undead for good purposes is playing with fire at best.
• "True undead" are created when some force anchors the original soul to the undead being, either within the same body (e.g., a vampire) or within a separate object (a lich). Such souls are relentlessly corrupted and twisted, sinking into horrific evil.
• When a lot of creatures die in one place, or a creature dies in a way that evokes powerful negative emotions, the veil is thinned and shades can more easily find their way back there.
• Properly disposing of the bodies of the dead can reduce the chance of an undead arising.

I feel like he started with the 4E view of undead and fleshed it out into something more coherent and well defined. The results are pretty neat once you pare away the excess verbiage. Though I'm not sure why it is necessary to distinguish "animus" from "shade" - seems like it would work fine to have incorporeal undead be simply "naked shades" that have slipped back into the material plane.

 

[Celebrim]

While I do assume that magic is the physics of the game universe, I don't presume to try to write the physics text book of the imagined universe. I couldn't even write a physics text book of this one (despite lots of college level physics, I'm just an amateur).

Besides, it would be boring.

Instead of working out every detail of the magic behind undead, I tend to define undead narratively as, "All the spooky stuff from folk lore about the restless dead.", and then make up the "physics" as needed to justify it.

But honestly, even something like a "Zombie", is not something that I've fully worked out all the magical physics behind to have some idea how exactly they work. I do some hand waving about being "powered by anti-life" and being "unsouled automatons" and usually that's enough to get players to stop asking questions, but exactly how something can be "powered by anti-life" and exactly how that works isn't something I try to reconcile in great detail. It's "bad" and "not good" and "dangerous" and that's good enough to run with.

I do applaud his attempt to root everything in a cosmology and have an origin story that explains, as it were, "How did the camel get it's hump?", or whatever it is that might need to be explained. But his origin story isn't very generic, conflicts in various minor details with mine (for example, animals and plants preexist the gods in my campaign world), and probably conflicts most D&D settings. As such, it's particular to his table and isn't really portable.

However, I suspect at the level of the stories he's trying to create, there is a lot of compatibility. For all the backstory he gives, none of it seems to alter how we'd expect undead to behave or how you might interact with them. He gives a very strong reason why all undead are evil (that neatly eliminates all need to worry about how you treat someone's dead mom), but we probably already expect that and in most games I'd guess "this is someone's dead mom" doesn't come up nearly as much as "roll for initiative".

 

[generic]

I have my own complicated an egregiously long (and I mean long) explanations for Undead in my worlds, but, generally, it all boils down to the essential elements of Undead when they actually come into play.

It's more important, in my eyes, for Undead to make an impression at the table than in your campaign bible.

 

[dave2008]

That is... a lot of text. Dude is in dire need of an editor. Here's my attempt to sum up:

• When a creature dies, its soul spends a while in the Shadowfell Plane of Long Shadows before passing on to the outer planes.
• Part of the process of passing on is shedding the dark emotions and impulses that burden the soul.
• The cast-off dark impulses form an entity known as a shade, which can find its way back into the material plane. There, it possesses either a corpse or an animus (the animating force of a living creature), creating a corporeal or incorporeal undead respectively.
• This being the case, undead are inherently evil. Creating undead is bringing evil things into the world. Trying to use undead for good purposes is playing with fire at best.
• "True undead" are created when some force anchors the original soul to the undead being, either within the same body (e.g., a vampire) or within a separate object (a lich). Such souls are relentlessly corrupted and twisted, sinking into horrific evil.
• When a lot of creatures die in one place, or a creature dies in a way that evokes powerful negative emotions, the veil is thinned and shades can more easily find their way back there.
• Properly disposing of the bodies of the dead can reduce the chance of an undead arising.

I feel like he started with the 4E view of undead and fleshed it out into something more coherent and well defined. The results are pretty neat once you pare away the excess verbiage. Though I'm not sure why it is necessary to distinguish "animus" from "shade" - seems like it would work fine to have incorporeal undead be simply "naked shades" that have slipped back into the material plane.

Good summary, I also prefer your take on the shades, I see no need for the "animus"

 

[Charlaquin]

That is... a lot of text. Dude is in dire need of an editor.

It’s part of his gimmick. Folks who read him regularly appreciate the depth he goes into.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I see three types of undead:

- Souless-mindless reanimated. Skeletors and zombies created by necromancy.

- Returned from beyond: ghosts, wraiths..

- Infected(/altered): vampires, ghouls...

And I use the deathless monster subtype: Undead healed by positive energy and hurt by necrotic damage, turned by evil clerics and rebuked by good ones. Usually the deathless are in the side of the good guys. Even the deathless as be summoned as pet monster by spirit shamans.

Undeads are dreadful monsters but if you abuse the PC will get ready against theses with the right weapons and item, and you have to use a more variety of creatures, as constructs, abominations or dark feys. Players shouldn't know what are they going to face.

And I also allow undead type with other, or we could say adding "necrotouched" monster subtype, for example fae-undead (for example: sluaghs or banshees), construct-undead (flesh or bone golems), outsider-undead or abomination-undead.

 

[Dausuul]

Souless-mindless reanimated. Skeletors and zombies created by necromancy.