D&D 5E The somewhat lost thrill about undead

[Agamon]

Sure, but sometimes those adults still want to be thrilled... otherwise why would they also enjoy scary movies and rollercoaster rides?

Just saying that the players need to be conducive to it. You can't frighten players that don't want to be.

 

[Remathilis]

Undead were terrifying to players because they could do something much worse than kill you and leave you to make another character (potentially one better equipped to deal with the campaign's challenges since you had the time to figure out what those challenges are): they would take your XP. And not just a little bit. If you were very nearly 16th level and you got level drained, you were back to being in the middle of 14th. And restoration wasn't common or easy to come by. If you adventured and hit 15 on your own in the interim, even if you find a high priest, that's still potentially a million XP (or more!) you're never going to see again. They can decimate a party by taking away your competence. It was even worse when you got level drained but everyone else cowered behind you and now they're all 4 levels above you. Dragons may kill you, but undead could make you suck--a far more terrifying thought to a player.

Which was a horrible metagame way to instill fear in a player.

"Remember those three months of solid adventuring we did? Well, one botched turn undead roll vs a specter later and we're back to grinding out hobgoblin warrens until we're back to 7th level and can continue exploring Falcon Keep. But look at it this way; we could be a bunch of first level toons back clearing out kobold caves again!"

 

[Celebrim]

How would you manage to bring back some scary or disturbing feeling when using undead in your game of D&D?

I play a 3.X derivative, but the larger advice would also apply to 1e/OSRIC type games.

Regardless of the setting, I largely borrow gothic horror from Ravenloft. This is true mechanically, but also true because I'm coming at the game from the same direction. The fairy tales monsters, the things that go bump in the night - whether undead, lycanthropes, witches, monsters under the bed, evil fairies, or boogey men - are far more important to my game than the more usual D&D fantasy tropes.

So, for example, all undead have a supernatural aura of fear about them. With Ravenloft style Fear/Horror/Madness rules, this means that a ghost (for example) can literally scare the weak willed to death and drive the survivors insane. So even when the direct effects of undead are ignorable by the PCs, what they do to the surrounding 'innocent' population is horrific. The PC's may be fearsome slayers, but they are usually picking things up in the wake of the terrible mental and physical destruction evil has wrought.

Secondly, I treat necromancy as being very much like radioactivity. Sure, you can use undead as technology, and many societies have done exactly that, but even disregarding other ethical concerns (which are many), inappropriate and indiscriminate use of the technology leads to very bad things. Much like the radioactive plates of the 1940's where the plates had been painted with Uranium based paints because it produced a nice color, trivial use of necromancy typically has less than obvious but very terrible long term effects on the world. In many cases, this is mechanically represented in my games by representing the areas where necromancy has been misused as being desecrated, unhallowed, death aligned, evil aligned, and otherwise cursed. This renders undead that might otherwise be trivial into much more terrible foes, and makes the realms where undead are common a 'badland' greatly to be feared.

Thirdly, my undead typically have the legacy style powers of making you suck. While its true that PC's typically can invest in recovering from suck, there is still a level of fear/respect engendered here. The PC that treats undead lightly gets punished for it.

Lastly, engendering fear in the players is almost never a matter of mere mechanics, but depends on the presentation, immersion, and particulars of the player. Your mechanics might help push the game in that direction, but you are never going to get there with that alone.

 

[Li Shenron]

(snip)

Amazing!!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In Harry Turtledove's Darkness novels, he takes an approach to necromancy that echoes Celebrim's in a sense. In those novels, HT is retelling the story of WW2 as it might happen in a fantasy (not Earth) world.

And necromancy shows up as both a minor evil and as something analogous to the a-bomb (I won't say how, because it's a nasty revelation in the series). In each case, though, necromantic magic requires the transfer of energy from the living, the dying, or very recently dead to power anything.

Keeping HT's stories and Celebrim's & my ideas in mind, some low-level undead like skeletons might be recast...

To create them, the Necromancer must perform a ritual. Once activated, said ritual imbues an area or object with an aura that sucks life energy from those nearby- making them Fatigued- and animates the bones & bodies of the fallen nearby. And as long as there is life within the aura, the skeletons will rise up and try to destroy it. Even a Turn Undead type effect provides at best a temporary respite: it destroys those skeletons already risen, but does not destroy the evil aura.

 

[Dausuul]

Others have pointed out the potency of energy drain in making early-edition undead absolutely terrifying. I'm not saying D&D should go back to that, but I do like the idea that undead have attacks that rock players back on their heels.

PCs are used to being able to trust that their hit points buffer them from serious harm, and if something bypasses hit points, at least you get a save, and in the worst case a few nights' rest and a little cleric love will put you right. Powerful undead should have abilities that screw you over but good, and your hit points don't protect you, and you don't get a saving throw, and the effect sticks for a good long time--say till the next time you level up. That will make them stand out in players' minds. A little terror goes a long way.

 

[Mercurius]

I only skimmed the thread after reading the OP, so forgive me if I'm repeating something already said.

I think it is a combination of all the factors you mention, [MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION]--perhaps especially less dire consequences (e.g. turning into a ghoul) than in earlier editions. That said, there's another factor: age. We're older. Those of us who played AD&D are almost all in our 30s, 40s, even 50s+. Undead usually are scarier to 14-year old than they are to a 40-year old.

 

[Bawylie]

What's frightening about the undead is what they share with us. They're deep in the uncanny valley. In order to evoke the fear, you have to show your players that valley. The undead behaviors are like our behaviors, or they should at least rhyme. But they're also different in a way that isn't right. When you describe them, highlight both the similarities and differences. When they move, those motions should be wrong. Similarly, their motivations are less complex but more direct. The hunger of a ghoul is what makes it a ghoul. The sorrow of a banshee. The mania of a lich. The horror we experience with the undead is implied by the contrast that defines them - un.dead. Use that contrast. Evoke that horror.

 

[Rygar]

What's frightening about the undead is what they share with us. They're deep in the uncanny valley. In order to evoke the fear, you have to show your players that valley. The undead behaviors are like our behaviors, or they should at least rhyme. But they're also different in a way that isn't right. When you describe them, highlight both the similarities and differences. When they move, those motions should be wrong. Similarly, their motivations are less complex but more direct. The hunger of a ghoul is what makes it a ghoul. The sorrow of a banshee. The mania of a lich. The horror we experience with the undead is implied by the contrast that defines them - un.dead. Use that contrast. Evoke that horror.

This.

Play up the horror. A Zombie isn't a Zombie, it's a woman wearing the tattered remains of her bridal gown, still showing the dried blood where she was stabbed on her wedding night. Throw a kid in there. Think Walking Dead. A child ghoul is pretty disturbing. Don't just have a room with a lich in it, have remenants of horrific experiments.

If you want the players to be worried about the undead, think outside the box. Have the zombies/skeletons/ghouls carry disease. Have the erupt on death. Have one of them keep turning up, following the party, attacking when they're sleeping, seemingly indestructible.

The undead were people at one point, don't let the players forget that, the undead are dead and putrescent, and the undead are the epitome of relentless as they have nothing but time and feel no pain or fear.

You don't have to take away their levels to make them scared, you can have them chip away at their resources, weakening them. Weakened parties have a progressively harder time advancing, make the low end undead a curse. Make the high end undead use them to pick away at the party. Resource denial is at least as effective as level drain, and likely more fun because at least the party can try to do something about it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They're deep in the uncanny valley.

Well put.