Creating a "Dark Rider" from LOTR

Theone0581

First Post
I am really interested in creating one. Any idea on how do to so.

I was thinking that they use Full plate w/ spikes, or maybe even demon armor.

A long sword or maybe a Bastard sword, that obviously does con damage.

Profession ride.

As for the class, maybe a fighter, I am not sure.

What do you guys think, and how would you make this NPC.

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3.5 rules
 

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They are a kind of undead, the nine mortals cursed to obey Sauron.
"Three rings for the Elven-Kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for mortal men doomed to die....."
 

Using the ghost template would add flavour especially some of the ghost's abilities such as Corrupting Gaze, Frightful Moan and Horrific Appearance as these mirror nicely the effects the Ring Wraiths had in the books/films. Plus a ghost's rejuvenation makes them very difficult to utterly destroy unless someone ends their curse by chucking The Ring in a pit of lava ;)
 

Vampire, simply a vampire, if you have Expedition to Ravenloft make it so they have a day heart, if not, add a few more to the CR and make them immune to sunlight damage (or make it "uncomfortable" for them as in daylight sensitivity). They should use bastardswords, as a rule for my group (we use LOTR miniatures all the time) Gandalf and Aragorn have bastard swords, so use bastardswords, as for the Con. damage, the wounding property works great, but it isnt requiured. If you want to be even better say the blade is always poisined with (most likely but not limited too) Dark reaver poison, wyvern posion OR LASTLY Deathblade posion. The wyvern poison is, to me, a good idea since it isnt to hard to resist but can still do ALOT of damage. Now what you need to worry about is the dagger, have it keen (because technically he "crited" frodo) and deliver a disease (dark rider's disease for example) that slowly kills you if you contract it because after all, it needs to be evil. Now the mount could be just a heavy war horse or to step it up a fiendish horse, but even a nightmare or black (or is it dark?) unicorn can do, but whatever you choose needs to be just as deadly as the rider (coming from a player who's goblin had to take on a triceratops riding eldritch giant, its true, the mount shouldnt just run off, nor should it not have the mounted feats to operate ruthlessly and effectivly, make them deadly!) and lastly, have fun with them, the armor is a great idea, but it slows them down when unmounted, nothing is so unterrifying as the monster you can walk away from (that means you zombies!), maybe give it the speed property or make it mithril, also (because nothing pissed the players off more than this), give them some deathroes, nothing makes an evil badguy like fighting desperatly to finish him then having all his cool stuff ripped to pieces.
 

1) Decide on CR. When you want to use him in campaign, how scary you want him to be, and so forth. Use this as a benchmark for assigning other abilties. (If I was running a Fellowship campaign then I'd probably use CR 3, transitioning to a 6 for Return.)

2) Assign feats and skills to do the minimum actions of a Ring Wraith. Tracking, riding, fear aura, and a couple of combat feats.

3) Fill in other mechanics that enhance what it does. A couple of semi-unique magic items (i.e. minor relics), maybe some armor, etc.

4) Have fun.

Good luck.
 

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