which undead am i missing

[GreyICE]

So an example I though up is:before the undead showed up there was a cave bear that would kill the sheep of local farmers. The farmers where never able to find his cave so he kept killing their livestock. After the undead showed up he was killed by them. Of course the farmers only know he stopped showing up, until about a week ago. When the players meet him he is nothing more than a undead. Give him 10 Nero resist and 5 radiant vulnerability? Maybe his bite does ongoing Nero damage aswell?

Sure! That's a good reflavor.

Another solid one is to just completely patch over the old monster. Like just take the base template for an ogre, and call it an "undead abomination" stitched together out of multiple corpses. The necrotic/radiant thing is probably good, although it may be worth saying that in your world recent undead don't have those protections/vulnerabilities (otherwise Radiant Mafia is going to start an entire tier early).

I also agree the plot needs some sentient villains, otherwise the PCs are just going to get very bored of hack-and-slash. Undead are good villains for a bit, but they should never be the final villain of the setpiece (unless it's a vampire, lich, or some other sentient undead) since they're just not a very meaty villain.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Enemies & Allies was an old D&D 3.0 product with groups of villain antagonists, some of which were literal adventuring parties. One group consisted of two humans (a necromancer, the leader, and an evil cleric) along with some other "minions"; an advanced flesh golem built by the necromancer, a wight assassin who soaked her hand in poison, and a mummy monk.

 

[Grimmjow]

...the plot needs some sentient villains, otherwise the PCs are just going to get very bored of hack-and-slash. Undead are good villains for a bit, but they should never be the final villain of the setpiece (unless it's a vampire, lich, or some other sentient undead) since they're just not a very meaty villain.

I have sadarkai, vecna cultists, and orcus cultists for that, bit i do get what you mean

 

[fba827]

make up a very basic zombie template and apply it to different things...
(something as simple as immune to poison and disease, resist 5 necrotic, speed reduced by 2 -- these are things that you can easily and effortlessly apply to an existing stat block without changing up their difficulty)
zombie ogre! or zombie cave bear! etc.
you get the variety of the many more monsters but with the theme/flavor of a zombie

as for skeleton - that is generally not as 'fast' as zombie and instead requires corpses that have been dead for a while to have decomposed to that level. so instead of just skeletons, think of them as what they could be skeletons from -- maybe there is a batch of skeletons that all rose from the site of a famous battle?
Maybe they are skeletons that rose from a sunken pirate ship?
Maybe they are skeletons that rose from a cemetery?

What do the PCs do if one of the skeletons is wearing adornments/jewels/armor that denote is a member of a royal house? what about if the adornments denote it as an ancestor to one of the PCs himself/herself?

 

[S'mon]

I like and am using the MM3 Dread Warriors. There are a bunch of undead warriors for levels 7-9 in Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan from Goodman Games. I also have a bunch I've done/adapted for my high-Heroic campaign. You've used burning skeletons, chillborn zombies, hulking zombies etc? There's a huge amount of variety now just with skeletons & zombies.

 

[Grimmjow]

I like and am using the MM3 Dread Warriors. There are a bunch of undead warriors for levels 7-9 in Death Dealer: Shadows of Mirahan from Goodman Games. I also have a bunch I've done/adapted for my high-Heroic campaign. You've used burning skeletons, chillborn zombies, hulking zombies etc? There's a huge amount of variety now just with skeletons & zombies.

i haunt used the chillborn zombie the rotwing or the corruption, not yet at least. We played last night and the group ended one encounter awey from some chillborn. As for hulks, i love them. As for blazing skeletons, i LOVE them even more. As i said on a different post i have two villains that grafted blazing skeleton claws to there hands.

 

[Arctic Wolf]

You could have some brains in a jar and crawling claws. I'm sure those would spook the PCs a bit

 

[Grimmjow]

You could have some brains in a jar and crawling claws. I'm sure those would spook the PCs a bit

haha i used a crawling hand when one of my players got killed and his hand cut off. came back to life and attacked his second character

 

[Arctic Wolf]

haha i used a crawling hand when one of my players got killed and his hand cut off. came back to life and attacked his second character

lol that sounds like a fun running gag to have happen everytime a character dies . So how is the campaign going?

 

[Grimmjow]

lol that sounds like a fun running gag to have happen everytime a character dies . So how is the campaign going?

Its going good I'm going to try and talk my friend to use this for his journal so that you guys could read it and then i could look at it whenever. BUt ya its fun and doing great.

The group is level 6, and inside a temple devoted to Vecna. They are pursuing the assassin who killed the hold's general (lo-kag) and kidnapped his daughter.
The sad thing is i really liked Lo-Kag but the group wanted to take control of the hold and the wizard (who started the idea of controlling the hold) wants to have a son so this provides him with both.

The campaign is doing great, thanks for help everyone on all the forums I've been posting they've been the seeds, or the straight up theme, of a lot of things to happen in my game.