Undead | Running the Game
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- čas přidán 3. 09. 2017
- Episode 45: RISE!
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Zombies also make for excellent templates that can be effected by their environment. Zombies found in the frigid north? The layers of ice and frost caked on their bodies gives them extra AC. Zombies found in hellish jungles? Monstrous wasps have built nests onto their bodies that explode into stinging swarms as soon as they take damage.
i will totally use this, thank you
^for even higher level, there are blood wasps that turn victims into vampire spawn. hullathoin from FF 3.5
Then there is also what is being made into a Zombie that can mix up what a Zombie can do.... For example Zombie T-Rex and it's disgorge zombies ability... (Which would transfer quite well to other apex predators like giant sharks and crocodiles...)
I also think that Zombie Kobolds would be cool too. (Bonus points if they keep pack tactics on top of being zombies... because lets be honest, swarms of small undead that get advantage on attacks against anything that is being swarmed by them.... well that would feel very much like a zombie thing right?)
I love that.
Planning an adventure in a town known for its bees and honey. The inciting incident is that a zombie wanders into the tavern. The adventure is finding out where it came from, and stopping more from showing up. I’m seeing a few skeletons in the graveyard that have beehives in their rib cages.
Oh, so you are pulling a Minecraft
I ran a game a few weeks ago where the party fought a Vampire. This vampire was the Duke of the province they were in, so one of the ways he concealed his true nature the vampire used a shadow as his shadow. The players had a suspicion that he was a vampire, but a few rounds after the battle started the shadow sprung out and took a fighter from a 15str to a 10str. The party be like...shit!
That’s genius
No. No, Mr. Colville. I'm going to bed. This will wait until tomorrow. It's 3 in morning here and- well, maybe just a few minutes, but that's- ha! Ghostbusters!
17:14 - Spoiler alert to everyone from 2017: it did astronomically well
His hair is so bouncy! It's hypnotic.
Really liked the video. It got me thinking about a villain that has bound a Shadow to himself. That Villain is Peter Pan
I... may have to borrow this
ObsessedGames by all means.
Good idea
pathfinder shadowdancer if you want a template for that
I thought about my bad guy being a Wraith. Cool idea!
17:13 - "Well if that Kickstarter does, like, astronomically well..."
And here we stand, over 1.000.000$ for a 40.000$ Kickstarter after less than a week.
Have I got some interesting news for you!
@@ShepWinsAgain have I got some more interesting news for you.
@@johnmarkarth2249 have I got some even more interesting news for you
Hmm...
...now I'm pondering what would happen if Colville and Mercer collaborated on a Kickstarter project together. I mean, we've seen what's happened each time MCDM's gone to the well.
I really liked 4th Ed's rules for Zombies - that a crit always took them out no matter how many HP it might of had. It gives them a real feel of being taken out with a lucky headshot. (Headshot's the true stopper Barry...)
Team that up with Undead Fortitude, and it makes Zombies a fairly unique and memorable enemy.
John Davis i never paid much attention to the monsters in 4e but zombies (and only zombies) in Shadow of the Demon Lord have the same feature, actually named "Headshot" in their stat block where a roll of 20+ deals damage equal to their health. It really tempts me to throw way too many zombies at a low level party and see if they get lucky with the rolls, or if they turn the scene into a fighting retreat while they seek a haven (like a conveniently isolated prison...)
I really like that one! And as Matt himself has pointed out 4e is a veritable goldmine of ideas that have potential in 5e.
That's a good idea.
I want to find a better solution to the DR vs damage type when it comes to things like undead. It's a ham fisted and feels to arbitrary. By having a critical hit take out a zombie or skeleton it gives piercing and slashing weapons a chance to work.
I take away the slam attack and replace it with a bite with grapple instead. After all the default zombie is the Romero version that is just an animated corps that wants to grab and chew.
Yeah I may bring that back in for 5e and improve their undead fortitude a bit.
I was thinking the same. As my party increases in level, and their damage output increases, Undead Fortitude becomes less relevant. A higher DC on the save makes for very tough Zombies. The other option is to borrow from another 4E source - one of the Essentials versions of Zombies, where they stand back up at the start of each of their turns, it they aren't taken out while down or by a crit or by Radiant damage. In 5E, that could simply be only a Crit takes them out, given the rules for Crits on downed opponents. I'm sure my players will love facing something like that. :-)
Honestly the most helpful part of the video for me was the idea of introducing shadows as silhouettes on the walls. Unlike bones animating into skeletons, it's not part of a long gaming tradition so it could therefore both spook the players and catch them by surprise. I LOVE the idea and I'm definitely going to steal it for my game.
Yeah! That is a fresh idea in a genre that is quite literally done to death. I mean undead are cliché, everyone knows how they work or assumes to. I would really like to hear some more original concepts of undead creation in part 2!
Yeah, I'm also stealing that one. Super memorable.
I thought that was the whole point of Shadows? They are literally shadows that can reach up from the ground or walls .
Could have the shadows "hiding" by making themselves just darken portraits on the wall, not quite perfectly matching the picture's outline. (making them detectable as... "something looks a bit off about the portrait"
Like a green screen with the weatherman wearing a green tie and the map showing through.
(There was a long running commercial for a car dealer that did exactly that)
I'm picturing a bluff situation where you have skeletal corpses in the room with blurred silhouettes on the walls.
Trick your players into expecting skeletons, then surprise them with shadows.
Maybe make it a passive perception check to notice that the silhouettes are all above a corpse but don't otherwise remark on it.
E.g. "as you enter the room you see signs that a battle must have been fought here long ago, as the floor is littered with bones bleached yellow by age.
The walls are littered with black smudges, remains of spellfire perhaps?
I'm sure there's a way to phrase it a little more misleadingly but this'll do for a youtube comment
At long last, the fated video arrives.
It has been foretold
Koil Colville is a river to his people.
Some thoughts:
Skeletons: they can use weapons and items, that's interesting enough really. Just give them a bomb, or have them man siege engines.
Zombies: They are dumb, but are a deceptively dangerous enemy to use against low level players due to the fact they can ignore killing blows that do not come from critical hits or radiant damage. I can remember one encounter that lasted well past the point we had "solved" it (the zombies were no longer in any position to threaten anyone), and the dice wouldn't let the zombies die. It was just unfun after such tedium.
Varatho should've just let them die after a time
I had a similar situation and I basically had to make it so that zombie ability only worked once, or it would've resulted in a TPK.
Matt Colville's vocabulary makes me smarter every-time I watch his videos.
I'm just here for the Doobly-Do.
Oh man speaking about undead reminded me of two of my favorite D&D stories: i.imgur.com/iUroaPj.png
i.imgur.com/mBDtmQm.png
Doesn't it sound super fun? A culture in D&D that denounces and reject the gods; instead they use necromancy on their dead aswell as those about to die, so they work for them and protect them? Imagine the peasants having the security that when they die, they will become part of the town and provide for their families when their bodies stop them from doing so.
Just picture the culture shock. The party finds a couple undead on a field with sickles just hitting the hay. They would, of course, attack them since that's what adventurers do right? After the skeletons lay crumbled on the ground, a group of villagers come running with tears in their eyes accusing them of killing their family.
Would they purge that culture? Would the gods even label that purge as "evil"? Would they accept or atleast ignore the towns culture as long as they don't expand? If they accept them, what would happen if the nearest kingdom gets the news?
D&D is just so much fun.
Undead are great. You can weave any kind of campaign around them. Large war like campaigns (just give them shields, weapons, and armor and put them into organized formations), Bram Stroker like chases across the continent (pick an intelligent undead with good spellcasting), creepy horror where your pcs are just trying to survive or solve a major mystery. You can do anything with undead.
Lady Sariel waves her hand over the field around you all and, as the ground begins to rumble and roil, the grass giving way to freshly turned earth, a few of you recall something of import: back when your stronghold was used actively, by some lord whose name you cannot recall at the moment, there was a battle that raged here. The Battle of Castle Ironvein led to the deaths of nearly two thousand souls, you recall... and as you look around the field, you can't help but feel like that estimate was.. probably about right.
A wright is a master craftsperson, so someone named cartwright would be descended from a person who built carts. I know it's totally inconsequential to the video since wight DOES mean 'person' or 'man' but apparently this is exactly how pedantic I am as a human being.
I regret posting this comment coz I hate getting comments like these, but I don't know whether youtube still sends you the notification for it regardless of whether I delete it, so for safety I'm just gonna leave it here with an apology attached and own it. Soz Matt.
Nothing wrong with pointing out mistakes. "Wright" and "wight" have different meanings and etymologies, and nobody's served by perpetuating false ones, especially when they are basically still in use (who associates "wrought iron" with "people iron"?)
I for one am always glad to correct my mistakes, and I'm sure Matt is as well.
Even a year later I was glad to see your comment - because it meant I didn't need to say the same. :-D
Sometimes wright can refer to the act of authoring a book
Don't you mean how pedantic you are as a wight?
I'll see myself out, now...
Made me smile when my party walked into an old abandoned (or so they thought) ruin in the pitch black and discovered the room was full of bones, thinking at first they were going to animate and proclaiming it pretty loudly, only for the bones to be the remnants of the previous meals of the ogre couple that made the room their home.
Damnit, was just about to go to sleep. Thanks for the nice surprise
In my best friend's most recent campaign (he gm-ed, me and some friends at the FLGS played), a deluded necromancer who thought he was a miracle worker for a good god of healing went around patching up the ragged and crippled in the countryside. One of his "blessed" was a NPC brawler Hireling my halfling bard hired on named Bhorm. Bhorm had an unfortunate incident with rabid dogs while working with us, and (in our GM's attempt to branch out and use a new critical injury table) lost both his hands (over a fight, not from the same hit). We barely saved his life, but when we dragged him back to town, the miracle worker was waiting. He regenerated Bhorms hands while we found a new job, but unbeknownst to us, anyone he used his holy touch upon was actually marked by Orcus. After returning from another job, we find the township bedieged by every last person the priest of Orcus touched. The greater the injury healed, the greater the power of the undead.
So things were pure chaos. We needed to find the local high priest who was last seen boarding up in the mayor's house. We had an encounter trying to cross a congested street of CR1/4 zombies. Being only 4th level we didn't have too much to work with in terms of simple solutions, so we had to keep moving or we'd become quickly surrounded. It was here we learned how brutal undead fortitude can be in large packs when you dont have AoE blasters. Finally at the mayors house, we find a dead mayor and a hulked out ghast, with two especially twisted, bloody hands. That was all it took to realize my beloved retired hireling had somehow found a far, far worse fate than double amputation. I tried to use some pacifying magic i'd just learned at lv5, and IT WORKED. Until our meathead fighter took the opportunity to decapitate Bhorm. Rest in peace, brave brawler.
One of the more unique and memorable sounding D&D scenarios I've heard of. Quite interesting.
00:00 Introduction
03:42 General Overview on the Undead
07:46 Skeletons and Zombies
11:35 Shadows, Spectres, and Wraiths
16:45 Conclusion
Hi Matt!
I just wanted to say thank you so so so much for the content you have been creating on CZcams. I've been a subscriber for probably a year? I've lost track. Anyways, that you for inspiring me as both player, and as a dungeon master.
Hey Ethan! Thanks for watching! Keep being awesome!
You are the man. This was an absolutely outstanding summary of the typical undead encounters in D&D. I also appreciate that you were able to capture videographic evidence of the paranormal hairstylist who fixed your bangs at 15:45... ;) Keep up the very fine work.
My group plays 4e and have been on a 2 year (real time) campaign to stop a necromancer who is raising up and controlling many forms of undead. While tracking they stumbled across an ancient battlefield and suddenly both armies began springing from the ground. I used minions only. I had several different kinds and they attacked in waves. At the start the heroes easily defeated most of the undead but then the waves began to add up and characters got separated from the group and eventually they were overwhelmed. One 6th level monk was killed and the heroes were only able to win because they destroyed the ancient magic catapult stone that the necromancer had tapped into to raise the army. In the end they defeated over 60 monsters in one game session. They laughed at how easy it was until those 1 HP monsters ramped up the tension and characters started falling. They took cover in a cave above the battlefield only to find it already occupied by the dracolich that had been causing trouble throughout the land for over 100 years. They were forced to flee but not before seeing the McGuffin they had been questing for during the last year of games sitting in the back of the cave, just out of reach. It has been one of our most memorable games yet. They are now level 8, have killed the necromancer and claimed the dracolich's phylactery and are finally returning to the cave to claim the item and defeat the dracolich. They are bringing an army of minion retainers because they fear the valley of the undead 1 HP army just as much as they do the dracolich.
Awesome work!
If you're a rules stickler who wants the dramatic "RISE!" thing, consider a spellcaster who unburies the bodies, turns them undead, then *reburies* them to catch adventurers off-guard. This is made even easier by the mold earth cantrip in xanathar's
14:30 I was running the Death House as a one shot for some friends. We had an air genasi monk that floated up to the second floor with their racial ability and walked into the room with the nurse spectre. She was attacked and it lowered her max HP to 1. The group managed to scramble and get the spectre killed before it could finish the monk. However, when they triggered the fight with the animated broom, it randomly selected the monk, and then whacked her for more than 2 damage. Since it went past her negative max HP, she died instantly - neck broken by a broom. I felt so cruel with that one but it's been a funny memory for the players.
I love the bones in the floor cus it makes my players all nervous and hesitant and I usually don't even animate them it just gives me a little chuckle
Your hair floomphs about with the utmost magnificence
As someone who has a few scattered years of D&D and many years in rpg's in general, it was very nice to see different undead described concisely.
Heh. My players first encounter with a spectre resulted in a paladin with -2d10 hit dice.
He’s fine now.
Shadows are one if the few that are actually vulnerable to radiant. So they are at once a terror for a low level party, and a chance for your level 3 light cleric to go "Watch this, fellas"
"That's a Matt Colville encounter!" - Love it!
15:10 I really like that mnemonic for remembering the difference. Nice!
My nearly year-long campaign just finished running Keep on the Borderlands. My DM had the 5e version and scaled it accordingly for our group through most of the Caves of Chaos. However, he warned us before we went into the last of the caves that he did not scale down the monster count - he wanted to have more of the original Gary Gygax feel and thus kept the count pretty high. There were SOOOOOO Many Zombies and Skeletons!! I think by the time we finished, after a few retreats (and chances for the cultists to raise some new undead from the gnoll cave they connected to), we ended up killing a total of maybe 60 or so zombies and skeletons! It was nuts, but tons of fun at the same time. It took awhile to get our groove in place. And since I was new, it took awhile to discover why the dang zombies just wouldn't die as my group tried to whittle them down. My DM helped us out a bit by letting us talk to a local priest who cleared up the mechanics, and then I just needed the stupid zombies to stop saving against my Sacred Flame. I didn't know how they worked before I started fighting them, but I definitely do now! And I look forward to having some of them come up when I DM my very first time for my family in the upcoming weeks :) Thanks for all the inspiration! You've really given me some confidence to try DM'ing myself!
"Zombies grabbing you while skeletal archers shoot at you - now you're having a bad day.
Skeletal archers with flaming arrows that do an extra d4 damage - that's a Matt Colville encounter." *smirk*
Thanks for making me inhale my coffee, Matt lol.
Amazing! Once again you deliver exactly what I need when I need it. Thanks Matt! ❤
It's 11:56pm, I have work in the morning... Of course I'm going to watch this.
awesome thanks!!!
This might very well be the beginning of the best definitive guide to undead on the internet! Concise, entertaining and full of inspiration! Thank you!
Such a great video! Honestly thank you so much for your help, it makes the DMing process so much easier and I feel so much more accomplished!
As a recently new DM these videos are gold!! Thank you so much Matt!
Super nice to have you break it down. Thanks!
This was a great video, thanks for doing it. It really helps to have this material explained, and also to hear about your experience DM-ing and explaining what happens when you throw these monsters at a party. Cheers!
INCREDIBLY useful video! Please keep up with this style, it's so helpful to hear descriptions and scenarios of monsters discussed!
This was really helpful and I'm looking forward to part two. Thanks Matt!
I love listening to Matt while I clean the house on speaker and my mom often hears. It was awesome that this video started a whole discussion on types on undead in popular media when she heard it :)
Just stumbled across this channel, instantly hooked! Great video, nice balance on education and fun. Time to go on an archive binge through the entire series!
Great video, as always. Definitely feel that this style of video is useful, especially how you tie the ideas behind why you're doing it back into other discussions/videos.
I love this series! I have been playing D&D for a couple of years now, and have recently started running my own game. This series has helped me so much in making my game enjoyable, so, Thank You!!
Great video Matt!
Love all your videos Matt. Its a big highlight to my week when i see you created another video because you always have great ideas and advice, and easy ways to implement them in to any game.
Great video - I especially loved some of the flavor ideas (like the runes on the skellies). Thanks as always, you continue to help make my games better.
Whenever I'm having trouble working on a home brew story, I watch these videos and go back to my word doc feeling creative and inspired. Thanks for the great content, keep it up!
Been waiting for this video for such a long time! Been running an undead campaign for my group for the past 6 months and just about to start the end game. Thanks for such a great video!
This has actually been incredibly helpful - I would love to see the second half of this plus the same sort of thing for other types of monsters! :)
Some solid advice. Thank you Matthew.
Loved this video! Thanks, Matt. Looking forward to the next one(s)!
Wow! I just binged all your videos Matt!! And doing so has inspired me to see about starting my own games! Thank you for putting out these tips and tricks, I hope to see more!
I know I’m 2 years late to the party but I appreciate this video so much! I’ve just started playing D&D as a DM and I’m making my way through your videos. I’m about half way through and I am grateful to you Matt for being a river 😁
Love the clarity of the camera! Your content was great, but I also appreciate your tech!
This was great, thank you :D really looking forward to the next part
Perfect timing. I'm running my first proper campaign and two games in I was worrying that I was running out of interesting undead encounters.
Wohooo finally caught up with ALL of Matt's videos! THANK YOU Matt Collville, you've inspired me to reconnect with some old friends and DM a 5E campaign for them. It's been a blast so far! It's doing wonders for my depression. You have no idea.
Now, what to watch/listen to on my 1.5-hour commute...
Great video! Each time I watch one of your videos the wheels start turning in my mind. I'm feeling less bummed about our group postponing the campaign for a week or two because I get to draw inspiration from your channel to prepare a better adventure. Keep up the awesome videos!
Really enjoy these videos! Thanks
I have a similar style of creative uses of undead as Matt has. I had exploding zombies that had explosives or bags of poison or sleep gas sewn into them. I think I described them as somewhat different from zombies they fought in the past. Also I think I had this land effect of undeath across the world. Creatures that die a violent death come back in a little while. The players came across this after clearing a dungeon and coming back out they come across risen undead kobolds and such.
You can still surprise your players by describing human bones scattered across the room. Your players' first thought will be to attack the skeletons, which never animate. Instead, their spirits rise from the shadows and start attacking.
I have my first time Dungeon Master'ing next monday and finally caught up to the bottom of your advice playlist! Thank you so much for enlightening and empowering me, I hope that one day I'll have a party ask where I attained such knowledge so that I may look at each of them and whisper "Colville, speaker of truth, stirrer of imagination, and brother to us all"
I found your channel while getting ready for my first DMing experience, and your advice has been unimaginably helpful.
I ran my first session last week to great success! I chose undead as the main enemies because they're simple for first-time players to wrap their heads around, and there's so many well-explored tropes you can play with. I'm glad you dropped this video before I jump into planning my next session! Thank.you Matt!
I love that lovely creature on your head. He has his own charm. :)
Waitin' for the kickstarter, also you rock!
A DM I played with once described a mage's workroom and laboratory as "Havig a pile of bones in the corner" Sooo we promptly burnt it down. Along with the mission clues. aaand our way back down from the tower.
I already knew the different kinds of undead but I always enjoy how you explain things. Strangely enough I was building a few missions in my campaign around a serial killer that is only known by his MO: the victims' shadow stays on a wall near where the murder was committed, pretty much like the nuke thing you talked about.
Thank god for this video! I prepared a 4 shadow encounter for a 2nd level party some of them their second time playing. Dodged a TPK!
I love this. So good. 10/10 would watch again.
Yes, please keep making these kinds of videos! I enjoy your tips and warnings on how to use them in encounters. My biggest issue is creating encounters that won't kill off my players or become a slog fest every time.
I need to thank you and tell you that you were one of the reasons why I started playing D&D thank you very much
You are a river to your people I just finished reading both your books and loved them. I found this video very useful as I do with all your videos. Thank you Matt for giving me the knowledge to be better DM for my players.
Your discussing difficulty beyond CR is incredibly helpful! I know it will serve me well when I finally roll out my campaign.
Your videos always come up around 4 am where I live... And I still manage to always be online when they show up... Something's wrong with my life...
Andre Campos 3 am for me. But likewise. Why do I subject myself to graveyard shifts?
You too lol
Andre Campos He's the only CZcamsr who releases at a normal time for me :)
Brasilzão?
No, if you're listening to Matt Colville, something is definitely right with your life :P
After all this time, not enough love in the comments for the sudden appearance of Ruby Rhod! Great reference :)
Very useful and informative video. I appreciate the time you take to make these.
Thanks Matt! Please keep up the great videos! I love using undead and this was very helpful! Looking forward to part 2!
Of course, the Undead are interesting to use in other forms of fiction, or if you somehow make them friendly/neutral NPC.
As it is, I'm working on writing a Magnificent Seven Samurai type of story which involves at least a few undead (a female lich, a skeletal archer, and a reverant knight) who are part of a party that is trying to help defend a group of farmers from a guy who was once a Captain in the Dark Lord's forces. One of the issues that the lich and skeletal archer, among certain other forms of undead, have is the fact that the Living can't hear them when they try to speak, (presumably due to the lack of functioning vocal cords and such) and thus have to use gestures, sign language, body language, or writing, to communicate with the living. As it is, I have a draconian Priest of the Light working with a vampire Necromancer in an attempt to combine Light and Dark Magic in order to enchant amulets that should allow those "lesser" undead to communicate with the Living more effectively.
I've been awaiting the undead series for a while as I'm in the process of writing a dying world in which undead are prevalent. Thankyou Matt, keep the great videos coming.
Matt!
1/ 5e D&D has 'swarms'. If you really like minions, you could construct a 'skeleton swarm' or 'zombie swarm' which appears to be group of quasi-intact bodies that function as a (surprisingly stupid) team. Each minion requires a dedicated attack to bring them down, swarms can die 'en masse'. If you want you can give the number of body part 'clumps' (and how they look / are dressed / with armour / jewellery-treasure / carry diseases / have parts of broken weapons / etc.).
Would this assuage your deep and seething minion-needs?
2/ Someone MUST have told you even a 1 h.p. zombie has 'Undead Fortitude' (which is not for ANY other undead - silly nomenclature!) - this means they bounce back for many attacks. Hence a second reason to put them into an Undead Swarm, you only have to kill the FleshSwarm® ONCE, and that is a bargain.
3/ Minions would have the same stats, thus, the nifty suits of armour (and A.C.) that goes with that base stat-bloc original has. This makes hitting every.. single... minion quite HARD! Hence a third reason why i strongly recommend an undead swarm for your 'minions'!
4/ No one else has thought of this before. And i do not have 400k subscribers yet! Actually, i have... um... zero. So YOU, yes YOU can be the one to think of this! A fourth reason! You will be known for the Matt Colville BoneSwarm® - and the FleshSwarm® too? This could be YOURS! Imagine the prestige... the profits... the power! Or just imagine a rotting flesh swarm. Or both. Look, it is your imagination here. You're the DM. Do what works?
5/ I have no fifth reason for an undead swarm. Sorry.
6/ A sixth reason - you could show your readers (like myself) that you check the comments on videos you made many, many, many years ago. This would cause genuine genuflection on the part of partial perusers such as myself.
7/ We could form a conspiracy and get Lord & Master Crawford (& Bros) to make this Official D&D content! Imagine the fun-crazy girls, the swift sports cars and waterfront mansions! We won't see any of these things / people in person... so please... just imagine them. Also, send this idea to your D&D contacts and get them to print. Or Tweet. Or E mail. Something.
This is all. If you read this, i would be durn impressed.
Yeah, that part around 7:30 reminded me about how a party of four (one Ranger, a Paladin, a Bard, and a custom class called an "Inventor" or something. I was the Paladin) almost died from like 3 or 4 incorporeal undead and this being, I never asked what it was but we know that the thing was the reason the incorporeal undead were there because as soon as that thing died, the incorporeals disappeared.
Thanks for this! I'm prepping an adventure for my players for our Monday game and needed a bunch of undead to throw at them. Looking forward to the next vid in this series!
This reminds me of a time in AL where we were underwater i can't remember the party exactly but there was me and my dad's characters, 3rd level moon druid and divine sorcerer respectively, as well as a 2nd level paladin. We encountered a ghost. I ran up as a wolf and missed both up my attacks, the paladin swam up and smacked it with divine smite, and the sorcerer had a wand of magic missile, so he burnt 6 charges of the 7 finishing of the ghost before it had a chance to do anything.
I like that you give us a critical look at the application of the creatures, and not just aggregating information about them.
As an old-time player/DM returning to the game after about 25 years, I really appreciated this! The middling level undead were confusing back then as well and your tricks for remembering the names/abilities are great :-) Been going through your older videos as I can and they have been terrific, thank you!
It is a lovely Suprise, Thank MR Colville :) Awesome video
A counterpoint to the concept of Villainous Class Options that players can't have (other than the ones in the DMG): I believe it makes more sense to think of it in a similar way to the Circle of Eight named spells: there are spells which don't have names attached because they were discovered long ago, while the named ones were discovered by spellcasters whose names the people of the setting remember. Given that WotC's standard setting for D&D is very ancient, there's no reason not to assume that there aren't spells that were forgotten due to lack of use, which makes sense for the creation of certain undead as it's not exactly a common practice. Therefore it makes sense for undead that cannot be summoned with PC accessible spells are associated with ancient civilizations.
i love levelling up my zombie minions with the players.
i give them 3HP x the players proficiency bonus, or 2 hits, whichever happens first. it means that usually they are killed in 1 regular hit, but survive if the dice really turn against a player, and if the players expend a resource its almost guaranteed they are 1 hit minions.
ive had players make the assumption that my zombies were 1 hit minions, then panic at a higher level when a massive horde attacked and the first zombie hit survived
Great job!
A simple enough topic but a surprising amount of insights.
The third enemy I made my players fight was a specter. I had populated an ancient, forgotten keep carved into the side of a mountain with what I unofficially call memories or echoes of the original inhabitants quietly living out their days at the time, like a holographic playback (maybe a little bit inspired by System Shock 2) and the specter fit ideally into that setup. As you say, the players never questioned these transparent ghost things being there or the fact that one of them got angry and attacked. They also dealt with the ghosts beautifully, gathering the long-withered corpses together and having the bard say some prayers over them, something I simply hadn't considered. Low level incorporeal undead are a good challenge for people with no magic.
Later I built the City of the Dead into a desert. The threatening name and ominous dark cloud turned out to be nothing more than an Ever-smoking bottle accidentally left uncorked during some cataclysm which left the inhabitants endlessly repeating their daily lives as unaware zombies in a town that would resemble Pleasantville if it wasn't for the whole long-ruined buildings and walking corpses. Protip: if they have a cleric with Call Lightning it doesn't really matter if they make it into the center of town and are surrounded before threatening behaviour turns them all hostile at once. Those poor zombies. My players didn't question that, either; clearly something had happened and somehow all those people were zombified, including the priest who got trapped under a chunk of his church.
Undead are great. I'm trying to come up with a good reason to use more later on. I'm thinking I might go for the standard 'village ruled by a benevolent-ish vampire who only asks for willing blood donations in exchange' type of deal next. Thanks for the idea with the Shadows, though. That's... such a great idea! My players are still reeling from the time I threw a blood ooze and forsaken shells at them and I've been wanting to up that particular ante.
Oh, and in case you read these, thank you for convincing me to use the Deck of Many Things, Mr. Colville. My players just used it to murder my favorite NPC. Skull card is a bitch to failed wizard NPCs with no attack spells but _Heat Metal._
So excited for this video!
Another excellent video, Matt. And yes, I am definitely wanting and waiting for a part 2.
This was super useful! I love the ideas like the exploding skeletons and such.
Extremely helpful!
I remember back in AD&D land where my 6th level fighter would end up at 2nd level because Wights would cause -1 level per hit, Spectres were -2 levels per hit, which was permanent (no save, no way to return the levels according to the rules). The death spiral was real back in AD&D.
The way your hair moves Matt. Just awesome! No joke, it's so cool!