do not weaken the PCs, throw several hordes at them
Just make sure to bump up the CR of monsters you make more
powerful.
This is a topic I've had bad experiences with. Game I
played in (until the DM blatantly allowed his friend to
cheat to steal from the group, so I quit), the DM wrecked my
Power Attack/Cleave/Great Cleave build by doubling the hit
points of all undead, without increasing CR.
That said, here's some tips:
Describe ordinary undead in a horrifying manner. Read some
H.P. Lovecraft or, in a pinch, Edgar Alan Poe before running
the session. "The skeletal forms lurch about, tiny alien
pin-pricks of light in their empty socks, pin-pricks that
first seem red, but as you look more closely, you become
nauseous and dizzy. As the mockeries of life notice you,
their empty jaws click and clack and chatter and they swarm
like a colony of insane ants toward you, grasping madly."
Give the undead powers that seem logical based on their
description. Skeletons have the typical strength of an
adult human but only 1/5 the body weight : they have
negative encumbrance. As long as they aren't weighed down
with armor, give them a minor climb speed (death from
above), insane jump bonuses, and either a land speed bonus
or a dodge bonus to AC (the reason they move as slowly as
humans is because of their random lurching and twitching).
Have them always charge in overwhelming hordes so that it
doesn't matter that the PCs smash the first ten or twenty.
Heck, give them the ability to charge without having to move
in a straight line.
One problem with negative encumbrance is that skeletons
should be easy to bull rush etc as if they were small
creatures. Let the PCs do this. While they're flinging
one or two skeletons out of their way, eight will surround
them, clutching at them, while a few more climb on top and
attack from above.
They never get tired. They always start chattering their
empty jaws when they find prey, attracting more of their
kind. And their sharpened finger bones are smeared with
excrement. (Don't tell the PCs what the stuff is that's
getting in their wounds. Just describe itchy, puffy red
wounds and let them worry.)
If the undead have a controller, smear all of them with
cheap poison. Give some of the skeletons heavy crossbows
with poisoned bolts. They're too stupid to reload them, but
they can use the expended crossbows as clubs, and if the
crossbows are built sturdily enough, their controller can
reload them later.
Have all the undead created in the area of a Desecrate spell
with an evil altar (bonus hit points).
Have an entire city (thanks to an artifact newly empowered
with the life blood of a hundred innocent people) covered
with a magical field that causes all destroyed undead (as
well as ordinary dead bodies) to reform into skeletons
within 24 hours. Decrease this time if you want, or make
sure there's a necromancer to animate dead, and let animate
dead work on previously destroyed undead.
Let the PCs waste lots of turning attempts and spells and
their own health on killing undead.
In fact, the first few battles, downplay the horror of the
skeletons a little, making sure to describe how the turning
of the clerics blasts swarms of them into dust. Describe
how spells blast hordes of skeletons into splinters.
Describe the crunch as the Great Cleave fighter smashes
every skeleton near them.
Then describe the background chatter as other skeletons
approach, drawn by the sounds of their brethren.
If you have enough of them (say, an entire city full), even
ordinary skeletons can threaten a powerful group. Remember
that a '20' always hits. Just never give the PCs a chance
to rest, except to draw out the dramatic tension a little.
Zombies? Some quick tips: give them high DR to non-critical
hits. And if they aren't finished off with a critical hit
or a coup de grace (to smash their head), the smashed body
parts are still twitching, they just have too many broken
bones and torn flesh to fight effectively. Foolish people
can still be bitten. Zombie parts separated from the head
slowly die, quickly if exposed to sunlight, which zombie
parts will reflexively twitch away from.
Zombies avoid sunlight, even though it won't kill or
even significantly harm any part of them still attached to
the head.
Make them infectious. Force characters to make a low DC
Fortitude save (DC 11?) after every single combat in which
they are zombie injured, a little higher DC (DC 15?) if they
were bitten. Don't tell them what the save is for.
Fortunately, eating dead zombie flesh usually kills instead
of infecting. Animals etc will not willingly eat zombie
flesh even if starving. Vermin might if it's not fresh and
they are starving, and it will kill them. Only creatures
that are immune to poison, disease, and negative energy can
safely eat zombie flesh. Creatures that are immune only to
poison and disease will die slowly from eating zombie flesh,
almost painlessly losing one CON each day, then turning into
a zombie. Sun-killed zombie parts are almost
safe to eat after a day in the sun, being only mildly
poisonous, but animals still won't willingly eat them.
Moaning. Minor fear power, growing in power (with no upper
bound) as more zombies join in. Zombies use the moaning to
call other zombies toward food.
I agree with lowering their land speed instead of
restricting their actions, but still limit them to one
attack each round unless you want to make them very
powerful. If you want to make them that powerful, just use
ghouls or mummies and describe them as horrible zombies.
Use ghasts, replacing their stench with the same effect from
moaning.
There are several advantages to using powerful monsters and
describing them as horrific zombies. Even if you warn the
players, they will still be overconfident at first. They
won't bust out specialized anti-whatever techniques. And
second hand reports will be unreliable. When the players
hear about the horrible zombie swarm, they'll think the
locals are wimps rather than thinking the undead are
powerful. Ghouls are a good model for infectious zombies.
Finally, merely re-painting existing monsters means that the
CR calculations have already been done for you.
Another easy way to figure CR increase for pumped up undead
is to give Fighter levels, at +1 CR per level. It doesn't
change much to have d12 undead hit dice instead of d10
Fighter hit dice, and the mechanics are already all worked
out. If you're worried about balancing the d12 hit dice
instead of the usual d10 for fighters (yeah, right), just
consider that undead usually won't bother with armor.
Regeneration is technically a no-no for undead, since it
converts lethal damage into non-lethal, which undead are
immune to, but I say go ahead, just give them a
vulnerability to the non-lethal damage inflicted by their
regeneration (not to normal sources of non-lethal damage).
(I think having undead with regeneration vulnerable to the
non-lethal damage from their regeneration is less clumsy
than the fast healing ability of vampires.)
Give the undead slow regeneration (1/hr?) so PCs think the
undead are destroyed. Have the regeneration by-passed by
coup de grace (called head shot), critical hit (only
expressly called head shot), undead bane weapons, positive
energy, and holy water. (Should holy weapons bypass
regeneration on evil undead?) Maybe fire for 'fleshy'
undead. Maybe acid, too. (Vulnerability to acid is no big
deal if the PCs have a realistically limited supply and
there are hordes of undead.)
Another evil thing to do is make mindless undead neutral
instead of evil. Suddenly paladins are not automatic undead
detectors. This requires violating the D&D assumption that
Positive energy is always good and Negative energy is always
evil, but I've never liked that assumption anyway. Mindless
undead should be as hard to detect as constructs unless you
have an explicit 'detect negative energy' power or spell.
--index
