D&D General Alternatives to lich or vampire?

[Helldritch]

A skull lord?

 

[dave2008]

So, IMC, I want to make a noble lord undead. As in, part of his backstory involves him wanting to become undead, and he pays a sum of money, and then does that.

What are my options? Lich, it seems, is limited to just arcane casters and also WAY too high of a CR to be useful. Vampire could certainly work here, but also comes with a decent amount of baggage and since I'd like to be able to use this guy in the middle of the day, the whole sunlight vulnerability thing is a real bummer.

What else is there?

We are building a better death knight over here, it may be what your looing for.

 

[Mercurius]

Check out Kobold's Empire of the Ghouls. There are a bunch of high level ghoulish and undead nobles, including the CR 20 ghoul emperor.

 

[Voadam]

For a noble who is buying undeath, I would go with mummification to become a greater mummy/mummy lord.

Getting a priest to do mummification for a noble is traditional for Egyptian style D&D greater mummies, and paying a priest to do so seems consonant with that concept. Death knights are generally cursed by the gods or created through a pact with a demon lord, or intense connections with knightly arms and armor, and those are usually for good knights gone bad. It could work for a noble wanting undeath, but might not fit depending on the story and usually gold is not involved beyond affording knightly accoutrements.

 

[Ancalagon]

The easiest is, by far, ghoul.

Skerples has written extensively on ghoulish nobility

OSR: Ghouls of Illiam

Looks like I'm writing an underground hexcrawl now. Here are my ghouls. Some inspiration taken from here and here . Weta Workshop Maj...

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

“No wire hangers! No wire hangers ever!”

Lord Mommy? Does it attack with wire hangers?

From Mordenkainen's, both the Deathlock Mastermind and Sword Wraith Commander might work. Additionally, The Tome of Beasts, Creature Collection, and Dread Accursed third party products have some cool undead options.

 

[Wasteland Knight]

D&D 3.5, Liber Mortis had a a template called Necropolitan "...Necropolitans are humanoids who renounce life and embrace undeath in a special ritual called the Ritual of Crucimigration..."

It was essentially a template to create an undead version of some humanoid with class levels. The template had a couple of minor benefits (beyond becoming undead), but lacked many of the special attacks and abilities so common to undead.

It seemed basically a way to create a +1 LA undead template for people wanting to use this sort of character in a game.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Yeah the only two you've really missed are Mummy Lord and Death Knight.

Other than that, I would take a ghost, wight or ghast and give it some PC levels, make it more dangerous.

 

[Flamestrike]

A skull lord?

 

[Flamestrike]

Yeah the only two you've really missed are Mummy Lord and Death Knight.

Other than that, I would take a ghost, wight or ghast and give it some PC levels, make it more dangerous.

You don't need PC levels as it's not a PC

Just bump its HD and AC and give it what powers you want