D&D General have we had a player race of undead?

[Hriston]

no more like something that is always undead, maybe it once live in it distant past but it became a species of unlife.

A classic choice for D&D that would more or less fit this description would be to play a larva, lemure, or manes from the lower planes who has been selected to form a ghast, imp, quasit, shadow, spectre, or wraith. By the time this happens, their mind and any memory of their past life would have been obliterated by the torment they have suffered.

 

[Mind of tempest]

IIRC, the was also a ghost PC option in late 4e.

elaborate?

A classic choice for D&D that would more or less fit this description would be to play a larva, lemure, or manes from the lower planes who has been selected to form a ghast, imp, quasit, shadow, spectre, or wraith. By the time this happens, their mind and any memory of their past life would have been obliterated by the torment they have suffered.

that is horrific.

 

[Kurotowa]

It's mechanical, the same reason they where reluctant to add construct PCs. The common healing spells don't work on creatures with the undead type, putting them at a significant disadvantage.

Eventually WotC did the autognome as constructs, with a rather clumsy cludge to fix the healing. You could do the same for undead PCs.

Reborn are 80% a PC zombie option, if you choose to flavor them that way. They've just got less decay and the humanoid type because, as you say, the undead creature type has all sorts of mechanical issues. Not just healing and Raise Dead, but being vulnerable to stuff like Smite Evil and Turn Undead. That's why the UA version of reborn of a dual creature type setup didn't make it to release. But what we got is still spot on for doing characters more in the vein of the Crow and such.

ghostwalk?

A 3e one-off setting book that was focused on death and the undead. I barely remember anything about it beyond the fact that it existed, but from the wiki summery there it sounds like it used classes and prestige classes more than race to emulate ghost adventurers.

 

[dave2008]

elaborate?

I wish I could. Maybe I can look through my old 4e Dragon magazines. I think that is where it was. I just remember my player ask to play a ghost and after making a custom "race" for him, there was an official option. I will see what I can find, but a quick google search didn't come up with anything.

EDIT: I searched for a bit and couldn't find anything. My collection isn't complete, but I can find no hint that it ever existed. Maybe I imagined the whole thing!

 

[MGibster]

Though...this is making me wonder why WotC has been so reticent to add a straight-up undead playable species, similar to the Forsaken. It's a pretty popular fantasy archetype.

For as much as we like to say D&D is different things at every table, in a lot of ways it really isn't true. I suspect a Forsaken like race aren't an option for players because of way undead fit into D&D. How do you heal them? In WoW, the healing spells that work on Tauren, Blood Elves, and Trolls work just as well on the Forsaken, but the setting doesn't make the same assumptions about negative, or necromatic, energy that powers the undead. In D&D, at least in some editions, a healing spell like Cure Light Wounds damages the undead.

There are other little things to consider. Are undead characters immune to poison? Do they get tired? Some games handle this in different ways, In Deadlands, the Harrowed (undead) character does have to sleep just as often as the rest of us. But they're immune to poison, suffocation, and the only way they can be killed is to destroy the brain. In WoW, the Forsaken are just as vulnerable to poison as a human, and, for some reason, they can still drown though they can last underwater for quite a while.

those were ex-life, if something animates things to unlife logically it could form something that is its perfect mirror doing all that life does.

Sure, if D&D had set up undead to work like that at the beginning it wouldn't be a problem. But this would represent a fundamental change I think. Which is fine, but there's a good reason not to open up that particular can of worms if you're designing a game.

 

[MGibster]

Would a stillborn creature who, for some reason, still grows and gets older work?

We're living in the era of X-Cards and trying to appeal to the widest possible demographic. I don't see this option flying at all with anyone at WotC.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I wish I could. Maybe I can look through my old 4e Dragon magazines. I think that is where it was. I just remember my player ask to play a ghost and after making a custom "race" for him, there was an official option. I will see what I can find, but a quick google search didn't come up with anything.

EDIT: I searched for a bit and couldn't find anything. My collection isn't complete, but I can find no hint that it ever existed. Maybe I imagined the whole thing!

I know the name in d&d 4e but nothing else

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I know the first is just a stabilised population of half-vampires, what is the other thing?

A living shadow from, IIRC, the ''Heroes of Shadow'' book of late 4e.
Vryloka arent half-vampire, they are a race of humanoid with a taint similar to Vampirism from a pact made long ago with an entity. Much like the Tieflings are with their fiendish ancestry.

EDIT; Shades arent Undead in 4e because ''Shadows'' were their own type. But in 5e I guess that would make then Undeads, since Shadows are Undeads.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

We're living in the era of X-Cards and trying to appeal to the widest possible demographic. I don't see this option flying at all with anyone at WotC.

Nope, even at my table I would not go there, and I'm the Edgelordus Maximus of my group.

 

[dave2008]

I know the name in d&d 4e but nothing else

What was the name?