Are Undead Scary?

[Crothian]

Rats! I had hoped you quit reading this thread! Called out by the DM!

And coming from the player of the cleric with no ability to turn them, too......

 

[Kahuna Burger]

*Ahem*

As supporter of the Campaign For Equal Rites, I politely suggest that the crude term "undead" be abandoned in favor of the more politically correct "differently alive". The Silent Majority of the vitally challenged can't tolerate these slurs any more.

Un-Dead, yes! Un-Person, no!

edit- and to answer the question... hmmmmm.... Spike........ "They thrill me"

 

[Land Outcast]

Just the right description can freak the players out of their skulls.
Specially if you are playing at night, when all is silent... discovering the room of the king's son, a "thick red liquid oozing from under the door", it's closed... the rogue opens it... they start hearing a bird's tweeting...
the floor is bathed in red, your feet stick to the substance, and you can see entrails lying around, flesh lumps and splinters of bone under your feet...
the liquid starts to dampen your boots, its warm...
but, luckily, the bed is clean, and you can see the king's son sleeping peacefully, the tweeting sounds again...
it comes from the bed...
as you get near, the boy wakes and staring at you with his empty eye sockets, scratching his opened toraxic cavity asks you: is it time for the classess?
The tweeting came from the canary, pecking at the lips of the boy.

 

[Mercule]

I've had something of a fetish/fascination with vampires since I was a little kid. So, more "thrill" than "chill".

 

[Land Outcast]

And, also, at this times with Buffy, Blade, Van Helsing, or whoever else, I've seen vampires diminished from what I considered them to be... (no, I correct myself, in Blade(I) there is a quite good approach at them in my opinion)

 

[JRRNeiklot]

OK, now that's just hateful, and makes no sense whatsoever. When there's a threat like that out there, someone's gonna develop a way to undo it. As it stands, there's still no save, but at least you've got that buffer period before it becomes permanent. And the fact that energy drain reduces your ability to stand up to further attempts means its still scary.

Actually, a restoration spell still worked. But it set you at the minimum exp for your level. And with AD&Ds slow advancement, that could mean a million exp at high levels. Hmmm. I may house rule this in my next campaign, It's time to put the dead back in undead.

 

[Land Outcast]

What I belive took out undead's "magic", is the ability to roll Knowledge(religion) and know even which wisdom score had to have (at least) the Necromancer.
The unknown is what brings fear into the players, even a zombie springing out of its grave can be scary.

 

[Gothmog]

I choose option E- they are pathetic. Very unfortunate actually. Undead in 1E were somewhat scary, and in 2E slightly less so. 3E completely neutered undead though- they are now no more than monsters of a given CR to beat up and take their stuff. I'm sorry, but even in a world rife with magic and the surpernatural, undead are UNNATURAL and counter to life, sanity, and the natural order. Because they are really no more than hunks of meat with no vitals (if corporeal) or ectoplasm (if incorporeal), undead should be EXTREMELY resistant to damage or destruction. Yet in D&D they have none of these characteristics. Granted, a lot of the scariness of undead hinges on a good GM and description, but its really anti-climactic when you've spent all this time working up a mood, then the PCs just wade in and whack undead like they were cannon-fodder. I know this was a common occurrance when we started playing 3E and the PCs realized undead were no more dangerous (and sometimes much less dangerous) than other critters of the same CR.

Actually, in most games undead are pretty laughable. The only game I've ever seen them really be scary in was Kult, but that game is just twisted and weird (in a mostly good way) on a lot of levels. I've house ruled that ALL undead cause fear within a radius of 10' x HD (Will save 10 + 1/2 HD + Cha mod DC, and badly failing the fear check can result in temporary or permanent insanity), they always have max hp, they have at least DR 5/- (10/- if more than 10 HD) to reflect their unnatural toughness, their BAB is equal to a cleric's, and intelligent undead ALWAYS have at least one other ability appropriate for how they were created that varies between each creature. Doing those things, never giving completely clear descriptions of exactly what kind of undead the PCs face, and playing up the spookiness of an undead encounter has put the fear of undead back in my PCs. The mention of shadows or ghouls will send the 10th-11th level party I run a campaign for right now running for their lives!

 

[Sarellion]

My players don´t like undead guys on the other side. But I think they really hated it when they knew the guy beforehand, like one character´s cousins...

 

[Whimsical]

One fearsome undead is the drowned. Everyone dropping to 0 HP just by having it approach you. I think that they are in the MMII, but I strongly remember fighting one in the Green Regeant campaign. If it wasn't for everyone having a mass lessor vigor that kept healing everyone back up to 0 HP from -1 every round that single undead encounter would have been a TPK.