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

[MGibster]

I'd just go the World of Warcraft route. The Forsaken are former humans taken from their graves and made into more undead. Something like that should work just fine for D&D. You could have a whole nation of these undead people.

 

[Clint_L]

I'd just go the World of Warcraft route. The Forsaken are former humans taken from their graves and made into more undead. Something like that should work just fine for D&D. You could have a whole nation of these undead people.

That's basically Laudna's backstory in Critical Role.

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.

 

[Mind of tempest]

There was an Unearth Arcana with a Revenant type. Reborn?

And 4e had a feat that let you be a Revenant and like four ways to be a Vampire.

I'm not sure how a life form could be undead from birth to death - isn't that contradictory?

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount added Hollow Ones as an official D&D race. They are people who have been killed and subsequently become "beings whose souls have left for the afterlife, yet whose bodies still retain a fragment of their former selves." Marisha Rey's current character on Critical Role, Laudna, is a Hollow One. I like the concept a lot, especially the Unsettling Presence ability: "As an action, you can unsettle a creature you can see within 15 feet of you. The target has disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes within the next minute. Constructs, undead, and creatures that can’t be frightened are immune to this feature. Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest."

I don't know how you would have undead that is not derived from a formerly living being. Isn't the whole concept of undeath something that lived, died, and then came back but without all of its previous biological functions intact? If something was born, grew up, etc. how would it differ from a living being?

the nightwalker was always undead so a lesser one of them?

Wouldn't that just be Negative Energy Elementals?

would that not be an element rather than undead?

There is the Dhampier from Van Richten's Guide, but they might be listed as humanoid and not undead.

that comes under the human mutant category and I got bored of them a long time ago

Did you ever see the Ghostwalk setting?

ghostwalk?

Undead from birth is a contradiction. Two of the fundamental traits of the undead is that they are the remnants of formerly living creatures, reanimated by negative energy, and that they don't produce new life. It's fairly definitional.

That being the case, rather than a creature that's born undead, would you accept a species with an innate affinity for negative energy and the Shadowfell? Because from a character flavor perspective, the shadar-kai may be your closest hit. They're your gothiest of goths when it comes to PC species aesthetic.

to elf, elves eat everything it is unpleasant

I'd just go the World of Warcraft route. The Forsaken are former humans taken from their graves and made into more undead. Something like that should work just fine for D&D. You could have a whole nation of these undead people.

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.

That's basically Laudna's backstory in Critical Role.

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.

undeath has to be evil for some reason, I do not know why but it has to be evil rather than dangerous.



would it help if I tried to reverse engineer where I got the idea from?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

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.

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.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

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

 

[Mind of tempest]

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.

clumsy is as good compared to none, also why does magical healing, often from the gods you would think it would not care given how nebulous healing is as a term.

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

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

 

[Paul Farquhar]

why does magical healing, often from the gods you would think it would not care given how nebulous healing is as a term.

RAW: That's what the spell description says.

Lore: Going back to 3rd edition (at least), healing is the application of "positive energy" which is harmful to undead. In 3rd edition undead can be healed with "negative energy" which is harmful to the living.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

clumsy is as good compared to none, also why does magical healing, often from the gods you would think it would not care given how nebulous healing is as a term.

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

Then Vryloka and Shades from 4e would fit the bil.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Then Vryloka and Shades from 4e would fit the bil.

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

 

[dave2008]

Then Vryloka and Shades from 4e would fit the bil.

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

 

[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?