How would you implement undead PCs in a game, in a way that feels flavorful and meaningfully different from regular PCs?
I'd play a game where there's rules for undead pcs
>>97255834Forgot to mention, system is D&D 5e, but ideas based on any other system are welcome.
very much depends on the setting this happens is, since you ask flavour and not mechanic. So i guess whatever world this undead PC is in will in some way, shape or form react to his state of undead. What kind of vibe are you looking for? Some undead who needs to hide his undeath from the public because everyone will wants to kill him once they find out?Is this a warcrafts Forsaken/ ebon blade kind of deal, where people dont want to outright kill him on sight, but heavily distrust and resent him, yet have to tolerate him?Tell me more about the setting you have in mind and how the places the party is supposed to adventure in will react towards undead.
necropolitans from 3.5
>>97255834>>97255861The most profoundly important thing you have to do is stop using D&D.In particular, undead have a fuckton of just blanket immunities in D&D and Pathfinder, and that's an extreme threat to the fun of the game if your PCs are supposed to be undead. How? Well, everything that the PCs are immune to now just doesn't even exist as content. No more diseases or poisons, no more exhaustion, no more anything that allows a fortitude save unless it affects objects or is harmless, no more mind-affecting anything (which is fucking HUGE fraction of abilities right there), no more paralysis or stun, the list goes on and on.Basically undead PCs are dealing with hit point damage and nothing else. Which is fucking boring, especially in D&D or PF1e which are actually tactical wargames. Removing all the tactics from a tactical wargame makes it a fucking boring non-game.Instead you should use GURPS design a very basic race template just for the sake of mechanical documentation, and put on it everything that applies to all undead. Then create lenses for specific types of undead (because a vampire is vulnerable to things that a skeleton is not, and skeletons can't drink potions for example). Because the fact of the matter is that undead are very different from each other, and some are just fundamentally more powerful than others. Therefore these forms should cost different pointbuy. Character abilities and customization happens after the players decide what specific type of undead their character is. Unlike normal RPGs, this is a time when your "race" choice really really matters.
>>97255861>5e >"undead" races are still humanoid creature type (so basically just a regular guy with stitches and green skin)change their creature type to Undead. They can't be healed and they'd be vulnerable to certain spells, but they'd also be resistant or completely to a lot of things.A better idea would be finding a system that actually has rules for undead players
wait is this a fucking puckee thread???
>>97255834The changes you want are not in the rule, but in the tableIf all the other players act as if the undead character smells from day one, that's flavourIf you write the rule "the character smells" and nobody cares and only comes to play when they try to sneak past the city guard, that's not a rules problem is a you problem
>>97255979It is formatted thusly. We'll see when the discussion dries up if he comes by to bump it from page 10.
>>97255834Uh-oh, puckee! Poopie! Shitty AI art from the redditor puckee!https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/r9msyt/art_commission_larry_the_lich_art/https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/search/image/0uAsjic8baHEf61Jm2Wu6Q/>94 results holy fucking kek you're proud of this one, huh? Why?
>>97255834I'd answer your question, but I'm too distracted by how this looks like shit.
>>97255944First off, I agree with you.But, what if undead PCs also don't make death saves? Like how in 3.5 they don't go negative, they just die at zero.Ironically makes the undead PC more afraid of violence and its consequences than the living ones.
>puckee thread
>>97255834>in a way that feels flavorful and meaningfully different from regular PCs?I think the trick here is if the whole party is undead and the difference is suppose to be in contrast to other campaigns or if there are only a few undead player characters, and taking into account the length of the campaign you're shooting for. As far as I can tell most 5e stuff like this is gimmick short run campaigns so I'd cheat and find a number of monsters with about the same HD/CR and let the players pick which monster they are as a group and have them do something a bit silly together that's the opposite of usual hero PC quests. >sneak a powerful magical artifact into a metallic dragon's horde without it noticing. something like that. Having mechanical differences is taken care of by having them with actual monster stat blocks, which aren't that different but at least a bit, and the quest being notably different combine enough you can sort the rest through RP. They'll keep trying to do regular adventure stuff that might not work like walking around in the daylight. Have a low threat regular human bash one of the PCs with a silver candlestick for a lot of damage, stuff like that.
>>97255834Hey Puckster. Today I made love to my fiancee, went to the gym, worked on a mod for a vidya I like and later went to a Christmas Market after event and drank some Feuerzangenbowle with my friends.The same guys with whom I'm going to play a session of Midgard the coming tuesday.In between I also spent a few minutes on the shitter dropping a turd in each of your threads.I had a wonderful day, and I hope yours was just as great, when you spent your time hogging ten percent of the catalog across several boards.
