Advice on an undead pc race...sorta.

[Sejs]

At the moment I've been working on filing the serial numbers off of the Warforged race in order to use it as the basis for a type of pseudo-undead that'll become pertinent in the next few gaming sessions. Most of it was pretty straight forward; the only real snag I've run into so far is in deciding on how to deal with the positive/negative energy interaction angle. With Warforged it was more simple - half benefit from (Healing) spells, full benefit from Repair X spells.

With this sorta-undead, though I'm not as sure in which way to go. The ideas I've got rattling around at the moment are:

- Half benefit from (Healing) spells, +2 on saves vs hp damage from negative energy (eg, Inflict Wounds type spells) if a save is normally allowed.

- Half benefit from (Healing) spells, half damage from Inflict spells.

- Take damage from positive energy, and are healed by negative energy as a standard undead creature.


Any feedback or oppinions are greatly appreciated. Thanks much.

 

[JDowling]

if they are half-undead and half-alive then perhaps Cure and Cause Wound spells just don't work...

say they are hit with an 8 point Cure Light Wounds -
4 points healed, 4 points damage = total change 0

if they need to be able to be healed or injured by those spells for some reason then this is obviously not a very good solution

it seems to make sense to me though.

 

[Tonguez]

If the race is animated by positive energy rather than negative then treat as normal for the purposes of heal, if animated by negative you have a problem (since making negative energy heal them) might be either under or overpowering (depending on the types of enemy and spells in use).

I might allow heal to convert real damage into subdual and then have them heal from their (1 hr per instead of 1 day)...

 

[Aaron2]

At the moment I've been working on filing the serial numbers off of the Warforged race in order to use it as the basis for a type of pseudo-undead that'll become pertinent in the next few gaming sessions. Most of it was pretty straight forward; the only real snag I've run into so far is in deciding on how to deal with the positive/negative energy interaction angle. With Warforged it was more simple - half benefit from (Healing) spells, full benefit from Repair X spells.

You talk about them being undead, but are they also part construct? I think it would be very interesting for them to be powered by negative energy. I've used similar NPCs in the past but don't know how well that would work with a normal PC party. If they are negative-powered, I would have them healed by Inflicts, damaged by healing and give them no ability to heal hps on their own.

In the book of Iron Might is a OGL construct-type race called "Ironborn". They aren't undead but living creatures encased in metal, however, the racial write-up gives them some neat options.


Aaron

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Do you have Eberron? They could be Undead [Living]...