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Message: <blockquote data-quote="index" data-source="post: 1650124" data-attributes="member: 21195">do not weaken the PCs, throw several hordes at themJust make sure to bump up the CR of monsters you make more powerful.This is a topic I've had bad experiences with.  Game Iplayed in (until the DM blatantly allowed his friend tocheat to steal from the group, so I quit), the DM wrecked myPower Attack/Cleave/Great Cleave build by doubling the hitpoints of all undead, without increasing CR.That said, here's some tips:Describe ordinary undead in a horrifying manner.  Read someH.P. Lovecraft or, in a pinch, Edgar Alan Poe before runningthe session.  "The skeletal forms lurch about, tiny alienpin-pricks of light in their empty socks, pin-pricks thatfirst seem red, but as you look more closely, you becomenauseous and dizzy.  As the mockeries of life notice you,their empty jaws click and clack and chatter and they swarmlike a colony of insane ants toward you, grasping madly."Give the undead powers that seem logical based on theirdescription.  Skeletons have the typical strength of anadult human but only 1/5 the body weight : they havenegative encumbrance.  As long as they aren't weighed downwith armor, give them a minor climb speed (death fromabove), insane jump bonuses, and either a land speed bonusor a dodge bonus to AC (the reason they move as slowly ashumans is because of their random lurching and twitching).Have them always charge in overwhelming hordes so that itdoesn't matter that the PCs smash the first ten or twenty.Heck, give them the ability to charge without having to movein a straight line.One problem with negative encumbrance is that skeletonsshould be easy to bull rush etc as if they were smallcreatures.  Let the PCs do this.  While they're flingingone or two skeletons out of their way, eight will surroundthem, clutching at them, while a few more climb on top andattack from above.They never get tired.  They always start chattering theirempty jaws when they find prey, attracting more of theirkind.  And their sharpened finger bones are smeared withexcrement.  (Don't tell the PCs what the stuff is that'sgetting in their wounds.  Just describe itchy, puffy redwounds and let them worry.)If the undead have a controller, smear all of them withcheap poison.  Give some of the skeletons heavy crossbowswith poisoned bolts.  They're too stupid to reload them, butthey can use the expended crossbows as clubs, and if thecrossbows are built sturdily enough, their controller canreload them later.Have all the undead created in the area of a Desecrate spellwith an evil altar (bonus hit points).Have an entire city (thanks to an artifact newly empoweredwith the life blood of a hundred innocent people) coveredwith a magical field that causes all destroyed undead (aswell as ordinary dead bodies) to reform into skeletonswithin 24 hours.  Decrease this time if you want, or makesure there's a necromancer to animate dead, and let animatedead work on previously destroyed undead.Let the PCs waste lots of turning attempts and spells andtheir own health on killing undead.In fact, the first few battles, downplay the horror of theskeletons a little, making sure to describe how the turningof the clerics blasts swarms of them into dust.  Describehow spells blast hordes of skeletons into splinters.Describe the crunch as the Great Cleave fighter smashesevery skeleton near them.Then describe the background chatter as other skeletonsapproach, drawn by the sounds of their brethren.If you have enough of them (say, an entire city full), evenordinary skeletons can threaten a powerful group.  Rememberthat a '20' always hits.  Just never give the PCs a chanceto rest, except to draw out the dramatic tension a little.Zombies?  Some quick tips: give them high DR to non-criticalhits.  And if they aren't finished off with a critical hitor a coup de grace (to smash their head), the smashed bodyparts are still twitching, they just have too many brokenbones and torn flesh to fight effectively.  Foolish peoplecan still be bitten.  Zombie parts separated from the headslowly die, quickly if exposed to sunlight, which zombieparts will reflexively twitch away from.Zombies avoid sunlight, even though it won't kill oreven significantly harm any part of them still attached tothe head.Make them infectious.  Force characters to make a low DCFortitude save (DC 11?) after every single combat in whichthey are zombie injured, a little higher DC (DC 15?) if theywere bitten.  Don't tell them what the save is for.Fortunately, eating dead zombie flesh usually kills insteadof infecting.  Animals etc will not willingly eat zombieflesh even if starving.  Vermin might if it's not fresh andthey are starving, and it will kill them.  Only creaturesthat are immune to poison, disease, and negative energy cansafely eat zombie flesh.  Creatures that are immune only topoison and disease will die slowly from eating zombie flesh,almost painlessly losing one CON each day, then turning intoa zombie.  Sun-killed zombie parts are almostsafe to eat after a day in the sun, being only mildlypoisonous, but animals still won't willingly eat them.Moaning.  Minor fear power, growing in power (with no upperbound) as more zombies join in.  Zombies use the moaning tocall other zombies toward food.I agree with lowering their land speed instead ofrestricting their actions, but still limit them to oneattack each round unless you want to make them verypowerful.  If you want to make them that powerful, just useghouls or mummies and describe them as horrible zombies.Use ghasts, replacing their stench with the same effect frommoaning.There are several advantages to using powerful monsters anddescribing them as horrific zombies.  Even if you warn theplayers, they will still be overconfident at first.  Theywon't bust out specialized anti-whatever techniques.  Andsecond hand reports will be unreliable.  When the playershear about the horrible zombie swarm, they'll think thelocals are wimps rather than thinking the undead arepowerful.  Ghouls are a good model for infectious zombies.Finally, merely re-painting existing monsters means that theCR calculations have already been done for you.Another easy way to figure CR increase for pumped up undeadis to give Fighter levels, at +1 CR per level.  It doesn'tchange much to have d12 undead hit dice instead of d10Fighter hit dice, and the mechanics are already all workedout.  If you're worried about balancing the d12 hit diceinstead of the usual d10 for fighters (yeah, right), justconsider that undead usually won't bother with armor.Regeneration is technically a no-no for undead, since itconverts lethal damage into non-lethal, which undead areimmune to, but I say go ahead, just give them avulnerability to the non-lethal damage inflicted by theirregeneration (not to normal sources of non-lethal damage).(I think having undead with regeneration vulnerable to thenon-lethal damage from their regeneration is less clumsythan the fast healing ability of vampires.)Give the undead slow regeneration (1/hr?) so PCs think theundead are destroyed.  Have the regeneration by-passed bycoup de grace (called head shot), critical hit (onlyexpressly called head shot), undead bane weapons, positiveenergy, and holy water.  (Should holy weapons bypassregeneration on evil undead?)  Maybe fire for 'fleshy'undead.  Maybe acid, too.  (Vulnerability to acid is no bigdeal if the PCs have a realistically limited supply andthere are hordes of undead.)Another evil thing to do is make mindless undead neutralinstead of evil.  Suddenly paladins are not automatic undeaddetectors.  This requires violating the D&D assumption thatPositive energy is always good and Negative energy is alwaysevil, but I've never liked that assumption anyway.  Mindlessundead should be as hard to detect as constructs unless youhave an explicit 'detect negative energy' power or spell.--index</blockquote>

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