Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 4896633" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 138: October 1988part 3/5The ungrateful dead: Tom Moldvay gives us another installment of undead reexaminations. Stepping away from the vampires he covered last time, he goes back to basics, with a whole load of variants for skeletons, zombies and ghouls. They certainly aren't lacking in folklorish antecedents, and you can have considerable amounts of fun varying the powers of familiar looking creatures. Bloody bones are the skeletons of evil people who lurk and engage in sneaky criminal behaviour. This means fighting them is going to be a very different experience to regular skeletons. Skeleros are skeletons who used to be skilled fighters, and have retained a bit of their old skill. Not hugely interesting, as they have exactly the same niche, just to higher level characters. Dry Bones are exactly the same as they appear in the mario games. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> You knock them down, and they keep on getting back up. They might seem weedy at first, but there is a definite creeping horror factor involved here. Like phoenix spiders, these make me go muahaha and itch to use them in my game. Gem Eyes are the generic knockoff versions of eyes of fear and flame. They get different spell-like abilities to unleash on you depending on what specific stones are set in their eyes. One of those monsters you could run an interesting adventure using nothing but different variants of, plus a boss.  Shock Bones are skeletons with a permanent electrical charge. Anyone attacking them with metal weapons automatically gets a nasty shock. How very castlevania. Just another way to screw over unsuspecting players.  Walking dead are zombies that lose limbs as you damage them, becoming less and less effective. Just like in the movies. It amuses me that zombies could wind up suffering more from wound penalties than living creatures in D&D. Hungry dead are of course zombies that eat braaaaiiiiiinssss. If you don't hit the right body part, they just keep coming. You've seen these in tons of movies as well, so I don't need to say any more. Collossi are massive constructs made of tons of dead bodies mulched and pasted together. Just the thing for if you want to get kaijuey. The smell must be terrible. Le Grand Zombie is another name for zombie lords. These have completely different stats to their 2nd ed version, and were probably developed independently. They are probably a bit too scary for most parties, with truly excessive spellcasting abilities, they're more like zombie emperors than lords. Ease up a bit there mate. Ghula are ghouls as drawn from arabian myth. Many of them are capable of passing for human, and have some magical ability. Like zombie lords, although they would appear again in Al-Qadim, the stats are obviously not the same. Baka are an excellent example of cult membership continuing beyond the grave. Eating flesh even before they died, now they're back, and badder than ever. Gelloudes are greek creatures, related to lamias or harpies, who's preferred prey is babies. If they can't get babies, they'll de-age you in the process of draining your life force. Interesting, and ingeniously scary, that puts a different spin on fighting level draining monsters. Spirit-Ghouls are people who've been possessed. Statistically, they're pretty similar to regular ghouls, but of course with these guys there's the possibility of curing them, which adds extra complications and moral dilemmas to fighting them. Damn good idea. Black Annis is of course the inspiration for one of the types of Hag. But D&D has never been shy about having multiple monsters for the same niche so she can be an undead creature that hunts the wilds as well. And since she's pretty scary, it'll take some serious work to put her down. Wendigo, of course is even scarier, with it's near godike powers, and ability to drive you to cannibalism. If it weren't such a short-sighted creature, it could enslave entire civilizations and turn them into monstrous hives of depravity. Hmm. This is definitely worth further consideration.  Callicantzari, on the other hand are almost as limited as vampires by their own stupidity and quirky weaknesses. This means even smart peasants have a chance against them, despite their strength. They seem perfectly designed to make scenarios like an 80's cartoon, with the scheming leader who rages at the comical incompetence of their underlings, and is defeated but not killed regularly, as they retreat whenever their latest scheme is foiled even if they could probably defeat the heroes singlehandedly in a fight. A very entertaining way to finish off what has been an excellent article overall. Methods to your madness: Call of Cthulhu has been fairly popular for a good few years now. It's made having your character gradually go insane be considered a fun playstyle. So lets transfer the idea over to D&D. There are plenty of mad things that happen in the game that it would make sense to have some lasting impact on your mental health. You can play this in a serious, tragic way, or a comical one, and this article touches on both styles. Similarly, it could be fun to play, or it could seriously mess up your game if a player uses it as an excuse to go fishmalky. Still, I think this article handles it decently, if a little shallowly. This could definitely have benefited from being a bit longer, particularly as it advocates making sure that mental illness in D&D isn't too similar to reality. Oh well. They're still maintaining the run of good articles this issue.</blockquote>

Verification