D&D General have we had a player race of undead?
- Thread starter Mind of tempest
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Weiley31
Legend
Honestly, in my opinion, if your "going" to do an undead race for now with regular 5E material, I would say at least jack the Reborn's Deathless Nature feature and slap it on there along with the Hollowed One supernatural gift. You and the DM would have to work the healing out or just jack the Autognome's healing work around.
I am hoping that one of the new pc race types in the upcoming future is either Undead OR an Aberration.
I am hoping that one of the new pc race types in the upcoming future is either Undead OR an Aberration.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Players have always picked races because of the theme rather than mechanical advantages.
That's the reason half the races in the game even exist, in any edition. Because an awful lot have always been underpowered or actively bad, but people want to play them regardless.
The change now is that D&D has decided to get out of the way on stat modifiers specifically. Back in 1E/2E they weren't generally seen as a huge deal as stats were often capped at 18 even where there was a modifier, and +1/-1 often wasn't a huge deal. But as soon as 3E kicked it up +2/-2 and regularized stats so that each +2 stat was a +1 mod on all rolls involving it, they mattered more. Then 5E kicked it up a notch again with Bounded Accuracy, which means that +1 means more than it ever did before, and additionally made it +2/+1 in fixed combos, when most classes have a primary, secondary and tertiary stat (de facto at least). 5E also made it more of an issue by limiting Standard Array and Point Buy to 15, meaning you needed at least a +1 from your race to make it to 16 for that obviously beneficial +3 modifier (something even non-optimizers can see is "a good idea").
At least in my experience, this caused people to actually rather narrow their race selections in 5E as compared to previous editions, especially anyone who optimized at all (not merely "powergamers" or the like), and the narrowing was almost entirely down to stat mods. I think the increasing existence of online guides also contributed, but Bounded Accuracy was the main factor, followed by the prevalence of Standard Array and Point Buy.
Now that we're going with stat mods as being whatever you want, it's easy to see how people are picking more on theme.
reelo
Hero
I don't disagree. But "is harmed by positive energy and healed by negative energy" is a pretty damn big part of the Undead theme. Removing it for the sake of unification would actually make me less eager to play an undead character.
But anyway, I don't see "undead" as a race or a species: it's a state.
It depends on what they gain in return but I agree "we can't heal undead" is a thing that would be a pretty important foundational element even if said undead were created by the Odakry Rites & living as a resident of fort bones or fort zombie & protected by the code of kaius. For 6e to include undead as a playable race I think it would need to include a spell like the repair light/moderate/serious/critical wounds spells warforge had in 3.x or it would feel very off to me.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I'm just not sure it is for most people.
It's a mechanic, more than anything thematic. Further, it's been completely inconsistent across the editions, and there have always been weird things like "Positive Energy Undead" or undead who aren't harmed by CLW or the like knocking around.
I think it's mostly older D&D players who think of it as important or thematic, and with no insult, that's not really the focus of D&D going forwards.
positive energy deathless still require life energy from the living, it's just donated somewhat more freely than what most undead take
Mecheon
Sacabambaspis
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That Sans
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
I think the benefits of being Undead balance with difficulty with healing and it’s not like there arent necromancy work arounds like Vampiric touch or Life transference which are thematic . Spare the dying and good berry might work too.
Voadam
Legend
3e went hard on negative energy heals undead, positive damages them.
In AD&D cure spells just did not work on nonliving beings, among others. "This healing will not affect creatures without corporeal bodies, nor will it cure wounds of creatures not living or those which can be harmed only by iron, silver, and/or magical weapons." Cause wounds spells did not heal them in AD&D.
4e warlords should be able to buck up heal vampire allies with a good speech just as well as gnomes. Given the nature of hp this makes sense to me.
Positive energy mummies was a weird one off in AD&D. Mummy rot tying into actual disease as a living biological agent was the best narrative connection I can think of but it is a weak connection and not worth the contradiction of otherwise tying undead to negative energy.
Trying to make deathless as sort of positive undead sort of not in 3.5 Eberron I did not really care for. I think just not always evil undead would have worked better unless you wanted them as a PC race for 3.5 healing considerations.
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