this is for those of us who know and love the undead

[Sanackranib]

ghouls

Ghouls and Ghasts.

Love these bad boys. I like the flavor a lot (cannibals who die come back as ghouls, as do the truly depraved) and their powers are scary... I've seen several characters die because they were paralyzed and then coup-de-graced by a ghoul or ghast.

coup de graced while paralized . . . thats just . . . EVIL . . . I LIKE it. But, I probably would't use it unless I felt that the party had the means to raise the character.

 

[Wicht]

ghouls here as well

 

[Zappo]

Re: ghouls

coup de graced while paralized . . . thats just . . . EVIL . . . I LIKE it.

Nope, EVIL is paralyzing and then eating him alive. I did that once.

 

[Ravellion]

Advanced wraiths with flyby attack... The players just have their readied actions to attack the wraiths, as they come out of a wall, attack a PC and fly into a wall again.
Evewn the readied attacks still have a 50% chance of failure to hit even with Magical weapons beacuse of their incorporeality. Gotta love em.

Rav

 

[Greybar]

Definitely Ghouls and Ghasts.
A while ago I had a party of 4 10th level characters encounter about two dozen ghouls and a dozen ghasts as the "distraction" for the main bad guy. The mage-type tried to flank past them quickly to cut off the bad guy and got mobbed (all adjacent squares filled) by ghouls and couple ghasts. With three attacks apiece, some were bound to land.

It is fun when you roll a buncha buncha dice and look up to your player:
"Tyrell takes 23 pts of damage, yeah I rolled bad. Oh, please make six Fortitude rolls while you're at it."

...

"Okay, so you hear Tyrell start to scream and then suddenly goes silent as his body disappears under the leprous looking bodies."

Fortunately the rogue was brave and tumbled through the mess and dragged him out before he was eaten...

John

 

[arwink]

Vampires. Not only did the head vamp cause problems, but they actively turned PC's family members into fellow creatures of the night, used an allied necromancer to raise formerly slain enemies of the party as allies, and then proceeded to eliminate trusted servants and hirelings as assasins.

I got some real good milage out of a single vampire lair.

The next undead game I run will definately involve a lot of ghouls though.

 

[Tolen Mar]

For me, it was a ghost. the PC's were haunted. You see they were playing a band of thieves, and I let them meet the 'sherrif', a member of the lawbringers who are a knightly order that act as a police force. It was one of those scenes where the sherriff meets them to brag about how he would find the evidence he needed and he would bring them to justice. He was sure he was safe in doing this, because he met them at a big festival, and there were people all around him.

I made this guy twice their levels just to make him tougher to fight him. The problem is, the crowd surged against the characters, and they took advantage of the moment. 4 backstabs later, and my sherriff was dead. He managed a surprised gurgle before he fell to the ground.

My perfectly handcrafted villain dead. In one round. Dang!

So he became a ghost and haunted them the rest of the campaign. Imagine it, a handful of thieves who every time they picked a locked, the lock would mysteriously relock apparently on its own...Anytime they tried to sneak, something would fall off the shelves...

My players were getting angry with me for that one. Im a Baaad, Baad, evil GM

 

[zouron]

for me it is skeletons... (sometimes with minor modfications)... but my uses good or bad outweights any other appearance of any other monster (with the possible exception of humans...) several times over, I just love bone bags ;-)

 

[Sanackranib]

undead

my necromancer was gonna use the 2e spell bone knit followed by permenancy to make regenerating undead. he also had a feat that would have made a mansized skeleton have 2 HD but I don't remember what it was exactly now and don't have my books in front of me to look it up. I know it came out of dragon mag. but it doesn't matter right now.

the "wall wraiths" sound pretty hairy.

 

[Voadam]

Wights (which did not make the poll)

lowest powered energy drainer so it can come into a low-level game. My PCs really fear energy drain. (They did a bit moreso in first and second editions though).

I made a template out of wights and you can see it in January in the Penumbra Bestiary. (as well as my ghoul template and ghast prestige class).