Seeing as it’s Halloween season, I figured I’d post this little project I’ve been working on.
Undead are classic rpg enemies, embodying the innate fear of death shared by all living things. However, despite their supposedly fearsome appearance and nature, undead enemies in ttrpgs are often no scarier than goblins, orcs, or other ordinary enemies.
The way undead were handled in old editions of D&D, such as B/X and AD&D, actually solved this problem quite elegantly. Rather than simply having some sort of fear mechanic to scare the characters, they had abilities that would scare the players. Often, this was in the form of a save-or-die effect or a permanent debility inflicted on the characters. Here I present a few undead monsters, statted for ICRPG, with abilities following this philosophy.
The monsters included are:
- Eternal Skeleton: A skeleton that immediately collapses upon taking damage, but has a chance to reassemble next round — potentially unlimited times.
- Zombie: You know 'em, you love 'em. They’re slow, but a horde can gang up on a PC and drag him down under a mass of limbs. Plus their bite spreads the zombie infection.
- Shadow: Deal no damage but reduce a character’s STRENGTH by 1 each time they hit.
- Ghoul: Their claws can paralyze characters, making them easy pickings.
- Vampire: Everyone knows what these guys do. I gave them the ability to permanently sap a character’s HP with a bite, inspired by their level-draining attack from old-school D&D.