D&D 5E Accidental Undead

Fauchard1520

Adventurer
Desecrated burial grounds... Echoes of violent emotion... Powerful creatures with unfinished business... It seems like there are a million and one ways for an adventuring party to accidentally create their own undead antagonist.

In that spirit, I turn to the board with this question: What are some unconventional ways to create undead? Has your party ever experienced any?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)
 

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toucanbuzz

No rule is inviolate
Compendium #2 was NPC monsters, several undead with unique stories of how they came to be. If you're looking for some great material, worth getting your hands on. This Ravenloft wiki summarizes those characters.


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Fauchard1520

Adventurer
Back in AD&D 2nd we had a lich who when alive was obsessed with a particular problem and just didn't notice he died while working on it.
Isn't that the history prof from Harry Potter?

...

It totally is!

 

Voadam

Legend
This has been an interest of mine. :)

There are a lot of different causes across various editions and games.

I find it usually comes down to a few categories.

Undead spawn other undead. (vampires make other vampires or vampire spawn).

Specific magic. (Animate Dead, Create Undead).

Type of death. (unresolved issue for a ghost).

Environmental factors going on. (planar conjunction, cursed area).

Type of person who died can be a factor as well (banshees sometimes being only the spirits of evil elves, cannibals sometimes becoming ghouls).
 

Voadam

Legend
In a Pathfinder 1e game I ran, (using house ruled alignment and paladin class rules), a morally lawful good fantasy viking reluctant paladin of a morally lawful evil god of slavery, evil magic, and undeath died. The paladin had defeated an evil cultist, compelled him to give up his evil god, and kept him as a thrall to work on atoning for his evil past ways. When the paladin died in the magical fey touched land of the White Witch and Baba Yaga, the cultist convinced the party that the paladin was very likely to come back as a bad undead but that, with their permission and help, he could try to bring back the paladin as a free-willed undead to continue on the party's quest instead of as a monster that would come after them.

The party, after doing a speak with dead on the paladin, agreed to the plan. The druid used their Cauldron of Summoning to bring in animal sacrifices for the ritual they were attempting. The inquisitor of a good paladin goddess attempted to set up a ritual to mitigate the malign forces at work. The cultist took his old scroll of create undead from the party's treasure hoard and cast the spell.

The scroll worked, the sacrifice's blood flowed, and I called for either a spellcraft or knowledge religion check for the Inquisitor as she set up the impromptu church ritual to try to infuse the paladin with righteousness as he came back. She had some skill but not much and when the die roll came up a 1 . . .

The paladin came back as an undead antipaladin Knight of the Blackest Midnight, convinced of the righteousness of LE and diabolic principles.

The player accepted and embraced this character turn.

This went on for some time with the antipaladin being committed to the quest but also awful in many ways. The party quickly came to the conclusion that the powerhouse paladin abomination had to go. So when the antipaladin smite dueled a bad guy alone in honorable combat they left him to that then turned on him.

Alone he was almost a TPK for the rest of the party, but grease spells to prevent him from charging and most everybody else one shot away from death the inquisitor power attacking hit for 19 damage, enough to get him to zero exactly and finally brought him down. They burned his body in his huge tent along with his pack mule.
 

Bitbrain

Lost in Dark Sun
Well, in the Mystara setting, Prince Brannart McGregor accidentally turned himself into a variant lich (he doesn’t have a phylactery) by supercharging his spells one too many times with this magical radiation called the Radiance.
 

The Glen

Legend
Well, in the Mystara setting, Prince Brannart McGregor accidentally turned himself into a variant lich (he doesn’t have a phylactery) by supercharging his spells one too many times with this magical radiation called the Radiance.
That's what makes Mystara great, name another setting with transdimensional radioactive Scottish necromancers.
 

Yaarel

He Mage
Desecrated burial grounds... Echoes of violent emotion... Powerful creatures with unfinished business... It seems like there are a million and one ways for an adventuring party to accidentally create their own undead antagonist.

In that spirit, I turn to the board with this question: What are some unconventional ways to create undead? Has your party ever experienced any?

(Comic for illustrative purposes.)

Kingfisher is an awesome webcomic.

The premise is that there are different kinds of vampires. The founders of each family are moreorless accidental undead. Each one is unique, emerging from death by different circumstances. The founders are incredibly powerful, totally insane, and less human. The rest of the members of the family got their vampirism from blood transmission from the founder of the family. These other vampires are less powerful, but more sane and can handle human social life.
 

jgsugden

Legend
Walking Dead curse. All humanoids, and a good percentage of dragons, giants, beasts, monstrosities, etc... that dies rises as undead. It was a very different style game.
 

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