What do uncontrolled mindless undead do?

[Kae'Yoss]

Well actually farmers WOULD want zombies for the planting stage especially if bits of rotting flesh are falling all over the place. Think of the increased growth of the crops from that kind of fertilizer. Human flesh works just as well for growing things as any other flesh does.

Necromantic fertilizer. Now there's a dreadful image. Imagine the crops rising from the fields, going after the other crops, with their leaves outstreched, moaning "graiiiiiins!" over and over.

Now I would imagine a good polished Skeleton would be doing the harvesting and other tasks where bits of flesh are unwelcome. Imagine a zombie maid making more of a mess than it is cleaning up by leaving pieces of itself everywhere.

Hm... Said Skeleton wouldn't have a dark cloak, a very sharp scythe and a horse named Binky, woudl it? ;-)


Personally, I think those mindless undead would start listening to hip hop, waving their arms around erratically. Wait a minute!

 

[Aesmael]

Excellent (and amusing) points so far. If I did not already houserule skeletons and zombies to a neutral alignment I might well go with The_Fan's suggestion (Kae'Yoss's is still a possibility).

When I started reading the responses I realised how terribly inefficient it would be to craft a new headband for every new undead or even just for the farmers. It would be far cheaper to hire labourers.

So far the options I see are:
a) Drop the idea
b) Mindless undead are actually supremely generous beings who would help anyone with nary a thought for compensation
c) New spell/Modified old one (as suggested by azmodean & LordSkull)
d) Permanent item for the creation of 'special' undead
e) As above, but allowing for control by anyone within a certain radius of the town (d & e, some credit also due LordSkull)

Currently I favour option d. But options c through e (and probably b) are all houserules. Is there anything by the rules I am missing?

Hm... Said Skeleton wouldn't have a dark cloak, a very sharp scythe and a horse named Binky, woudl it? ;-)

What, good old Bill Door? A skeleton? Never!

 

[Nifft]

Necromantic fertilizer. Now there's a dreadful image. Imagine the crops rising from the fields, going after the other crops, with their leaves outstreched, moaning "graiiiiiins!" over and over.

You are a very bad, and yet very funny, person.

Thanks for this gem.

-- N

 

[Celebrim]

I would vote for 'start craving brains'. All that is intended as a joke, it captures what I think actually happens pretty closely.

'Mindless' is a bit of a misnomer. Mindless undead are mindless in the same way that windup toys, cockroaches, and computer programs are mindless. Just because they have no really thinking process doesn't mean that they can't produce complex behavior. When no longer controlled, mindless undead obey a heirarchy of goals.

1) Kill living sentient beings.
2) Move toward places of natural evil, and flee from places of natural good - provided that doing so does not prevent the immediate fulfillment of goal #1.
3) Follow the last order given, provided that doing so does not prevent the immediate fulfillment of goals #1 or #2.

Mindless uncontrolled undead try to fulfill the above goals mindlessly. That is to say they can't plan thier actions. They can only react to immediate stimulus.

Situation #1: A group of zombies are left in a tomb with the instruction 'Guard this place'. Those zombies latter go uncontrolled. So long as no living sentient beings come near, the zombies simply stay in place looking unanimated. The last instruction given them does not require them to violate any of thier higher goals, so anyone that comes near is attacked until dead. Once there are no living sentient beings around, they go back to following thier goal of 'guarding this place'.

Situation #2: A group of zombies are left in an open ordinary meadow with the instruction 'Guard this place'. Those zombies latter go uncontrolled. The moment the sun comes up, the meadow becomes a place of natural goodness and the zombies do thier best to leave it, moving randomly in various directions until they either come across living sentient beings, or they find a place of natural evil (or at least that's out of the sun).

Situation #3: A group of zombies are part of a work gang with the last instruction to move bags of dirt from one location to another as part of a large contruction project (say a levy). Those zombies latter go uncontrolled. The zombies now immediately turn on the human workers in the work gang and try to kill them. When no living sentient beings are left nearby, the zombies then 'notice' that the area that they are in is lit by sunlight. They go stumbling off in random directions trying to find a place of natural evil (or that's at least out of the sun). Eventually, if the sun goes down and some of them are still in the area, they return to trying to fulfill the last instruction given to them. Otherwise, they do nothing except await living sentient beings to come by for them to kill.

Note that this sort of behavior is one reason that the spell 'Animate Dead' qualifies as evil. No matter what the best intentions are of the person animating the undead, the undead themselves remain naturally evil creatures who will - as soon as they are no longer attended - revert to 'craving brains'.

 

[Jack Simth]

So far the options I see are:
a) Drop the idea
b) Mindless undead are actually supremely generous beings who would help anyone with nary a thought for compensation
c) New spell/Modified old one (as suggested by azmodean & LordSkull)
d) Permanent item for the creation of 'special' undead
e) As above, but allowing for control by anyone within a certain radius of the town (d & e, some credit also due LordSkull)

Currently I favour option d. But options c through e (and probably b) are all houserules. Is there anything by the rules I am missing?

Yep. Oil of Animate Dead. Only a Cleric can make it (4th level spell for Sor/Wiz, but only 3rd for Clerics). The undead aren't uncontrolled, but it lets Farmer Bob arrange to have a fair number of skeletons of his own (10 human skeletons with just one batch!). Just make sure that Farmer Bob doesn't die anytime soon. Of course, such an oil would cost .... 50*3*5=750 gp to purchase, and how many farmers can afford that? Why, the horse that they have pulling thier plow costs less (200 gp for a heavy horse, by SRD).

 

[Alzrius]

Yep. Oil of Animate Dead.

I once saw a magic item like this somewhere in a previous edition (maybe OD&D). It was called juju juice, and you fed it to a normal zombie, making them into a juju zombie.

 

[glass]

Zombies I see as wandering around in a mockery of life. The speak with dead spell implies that a corpse still carries some fragments of memory, even if it doesn't have the capacity to understand or act on it. A zombie, however, can act on it. A mother might push around an empty baby carriage, long after the wheels have fallen off and the cloth has rotted to ruin. An artist will paint the walls with whatever filth it can find, producing artwork only a madman or a Karnnathi would appreciate. A baker will place random things in the oven, maybe even other zombies. They don't understand or even wonder what they are doing or why, they are just going through the motions of life at a shuffling pace.

I was going to say something along those lines, but you put it much better than I would have.


glass.

 

[glass]

Undead are a notable exception to the rule that mindless creatures do not have an alignment.

Wow, so they are. That wasn't the case in 3.0, was it?


glass.

 

[diaglo]

they kill things and take their stuff.

stuff in this case being brains or innards.

 

[Rkhet]

Problem with having hiring a spellcaster to come and control the undead is that spellcaster time is expensive: even a level 1 spell by a level 1 caster earns him ten gold for a whole six seconds of work, so any spellcaster who is selling his services would find any wages a farmer is capable of paying to be far, far beneath them.

That is DM tweakable, of course. But it's something to keep in mind.