Turning the PCs into Monsters

[reverendkeith]

I'm looking at starting a Unearthed Arcana-esque campaign where the PCs are transformed into a group of monsters, and need to stick together to survive. I was comtemplating Yuan-ti tainted ones, until I started reading about vampires and the coolness of starting the game off with PCs that are vapiric spawn. Unfortunately, vampires are a tad too powerful for what I'm thinking of. Now I'm pondering turning the PC into some other free-willed undead.

I'm looking through all my D&D books for appropriate templates, but unfortunately most of the template undead are very powerful or are simply in a class by themselves (vampire, wraiths, wights and liches). What I would love is simply a template for something in the neighborhood of a free willed zombie.

Any suggestions on finding a low powered free-willed undead template or other appropriate non-undead humanoid?

 

[Runesong42]

D20 Modern would have several templates that you'd be interested in... they have made Zombie a template, as well as a race called Moreaus which are all animal-human hybrids. Were-beasts are also a good plan.

Also, your d20 DMG should have rules for using monsters as PC's.

Regarding vampires... if you read the description carefully, it says that a vampire loses one ability for every weakness it removes. You can also tweak their damage resistance by reducing it, making the bonus versus a specific attack type, or just drop it altogether.

Finally, as a DM, you get final say in everything.

 

[Von Ether]

To powerful against what? It all depends on the scale of your game.

If all the PC are the same template, then the PC are balanced against each other.

With the leveling advancemet of d20, the PC are going to be fairly competent sooner or later and the minor challenges are going get ... well, minor. If said PC's have hoss templates, then it just means you skip those type of small encouters and give them bigger threats sooner. It's just like starting a game at 5th level as compared to 1st (the ECL a template taking up the extra levels so to speak.)

Essentally you just starting the game at a higher level, which means the only real changes are:

1.) The campaign may have a shorter life span if you insist on retiring characters based on their total ECL as compared to their class levels.

2.) The time the GM got to coast on designing small encouters corresponding shrinks.

If those two things don't bother you, then start off your group as mind flayers and mintours and have fun.