Make Zombies & Undead Formidable in Your D&D Campaign! | DnD 5e | TTRPG | Grim Hollow | Ben Byrne
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- Zombies and other corporeal undead can be more than fodder in your D&D 5e campaign. Learn to make them formidable and frightening with this GM advice!
Discover the 'Citadel of the Unseen Sun': ghostfiregaming.com/GGYT_FB01...
Topics:
00:00 - Intro
01:00 - STOP using undead!
03:07 - Establish theme and story
04:58 - Craft your descriptions
07:47 - Undead Statblocks
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Edited by @ZsDante
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Quick fix to zombies to make them more frightening: proficient (or expert) in athletics (grapple) change the slam to a bite. Combine groups of them with a shadow (Str drain) or ghouls (paralysis) and describe them eating the PCs alive once they've not just grappled, but shoved prone and are swarming over the PCs.
Can confirm this works. Especially if you fuse hordes of zombies together into Rat King style bosses that create their own reinforcements as a ranged attack (or upon taking certain types of damage).
Agreed, 100%.
Zombies should _always_ (regardless of system or setting) have some kind of grapple as or tied to their main attack.
This makes them a threatening addition to any combat as their primary attack is to the PC's _mobility._
Through numbers, grappling, and resilience, they are tactically _constraining_ and should make the players feel _trapped._
Even if they could defeat the entire swarm in a series of 1v1s, being in a situation where they need to be able to move quickly because of environmental effects (even just murky water), other monsters, or a party member in need of help can make the threat of being swarmed a big problem.
Having the grapple be a necessary setup for the bite (kindof like some creatures' swallow ability) also means you can make the bite nastier (maybe add negative energy damage that lowers max HP or con drain) and forces the players to prioritize breaking grapples over anything else and want to draw the zombies into 1v1 fights...which is in conflict with the mobility restriction.
Also, on hit grapple for opportunity attacks effectively gives them sentinel.
Also, also make them immune to piercing damage.
Shoot 20 arrows into a zombie. It doesn't care.
Now they're immune to the more common ranged weapons.
Put all this together and even slow zombie minions can be something your players take seriously.
As for skeletons, by lore the standard skeleton is supposed to be animated by a shadow.
Give them the shadow's strength drain on death to all adjacent creatures (unless destroyed by positive energy/turning) and cause a shadow to rise seeking vengeance within X hours if they are physically destroyed and no rites performed over them.
Can you destroy them?
Yes.
Should you destroy them right now?
Maybe not.
They use to have Level Drain and paralysis with certain attacks, which was why every group needed a Cleric.
Amazing idea
I like to team zombies with wraiths. After the players take down a few zombies, the wraiths appear and start raising Specters out of the zombie corpses, and hit players with that life drain.
Locked-in syndrome can give inspiration for using undead. If the intelligent mind and the primal mind are separated you get a zombie that lives to ferociously sate its hunger. Yet, with nothing but their eyes to communicate, the person still lives, thinks, feels, fears true death, and hopes for rescue.
oooh! creepy…
i believe the biggest thing people totally dismiss about zombies is the smell. Having grown up in the country, dead animals are a common thing. I can guarantee you that the smell of a rotting body the size of a dog or deer is going to put a serious damper on your day. A rotting cow is as debilitating as dragon fear. You will not get within striking distance downwind of that pile of mucus and maggots. In melee range, even upwind, its an aura that will steal your breath and punch your gag reflex until you can get far away from it. The smell will permeate your clothes and hair. It will coat the inside of your nostrils and you can taste it in your mouth. It always kills me on these zombie shows where people coat themselves in corpse juice or go hand to hand with a green meatpuppet and act like its just another day.
Honestly, I think most undead stat blocks should be templates to apply to other creatures.
That actually makes a lot of sense
Absolutely.
That’s how it works in Starfinder, and I presume in Pathfinder. The different flavours of undead are grafts to apply during NPC creation.
@@lazerninga You're partially right. This is how it works in 3e, 3.5, 4e, Pathfinder, Pathfinder 2e, Starfinder, and a bunch of other d20 OGL systems. 5e was a huge step back when it came to creature creation and encounter building. Other things that used to have templates were were-beasts, elemental infused and alignment infused creatures, a variety of constructs, a lot of half-breed creatures that took features from high BP/CR races (such as half-vampire, half-drow, and half-ogre), and a few others that were more specific to environment or terrain.
Frankly, creature design pre-5e was way better in general. 5e is good about relative power curve, but even 4e beat it in versatility and creativity.
There are so many undead, beyond the Cr 1/8 and 1/4 mindless undead. Facing a death knight is pretty terrifying.
As a player, I'd say one of the best ways to make any monster scarier in d&d is to have friendly NPCs with you when they attack. Starting an encounter when established or even new likeable NPCs (especially when they are tied to a player or plot) are at risk of death, the stakes become much greater as enemies that are a minor threat to players, could be a major threat to our favourite NPCs.
For example, when the undead horde/abomination attacks the party while they are travelling in a caravan with friendly NPCs (who will pay for the escort or put them in contact with their friend in the next town who may have a lead on the plot) they will be more engaged and scared as there are stakes beyond the deaths of their characters.
Some ideas for other things to make formidable:
-Medusas (or gorgons depending)
-Demons
-devils
-gnolls
-humanoid hordes
-sieges
-extraplanar invasions
-celestials
-Elves (just why is it a bad idea to intrude upon their hidden domains)
-Sahuagin
-Kuo-Toa
-Drow and Duergar
-deserts/jungles/frozen wastelands
-Insects, giant and/or swarms
-Plant monsters
Zombies alone are meant to not be scary, its getting swarmed.
If I were to add an extra threat to them, Id just add some kind of magic rot, that is resistant to magical healing. That if you succumb to you turn into a zombie. So you know you probably going to survive the fight, but will you survive the fight without taking a single bite. And if you take a bite, what's your plan of action.
That's a cool idea! For simplicity I'd probably give zombies a claw or bite attack that inflicts the Grim Hollow 'Bleeding' condition (no healing until condition is remove). It's easy and thematic to implement to make zombies far more dangerous. It makes healing in those fights difficult and it becomes costly to get hit.
To make it even more dangerous (in line with your rotting grasp idea) a creature takes 1d4 or 1d6 of necrotic damage at the start of each of their turns until the condition is removed? 🤔 I shall ponder this.
Oh my GOD! You blew my mind with "zombies are more like a mage hand" and using the undead fortitude as more of a creepy storytelling opportunity than simply a frustrating fight mechanic for players. SO deadly and cool!!
Had a party wipeout with 3 skeletal swarm simply because they they were using slashing and piercing weapons. The joke barbarian using his fist did the most damage simply because he was punching.
One thing you can do to make zombies more frightening is to give them resistance to physical damage, just to emphasize their undead fortitude. Could include that if they're hit with radiant damage this stops to work for x amount of rounds.
This harkens back some to the old days. Zombies took normal damage from slashing weapons, half damage from bludgeoning weapons, and only 1 point regardless of roll or crit from piercing weapons. Skeletons flipped it a little taking normal damage from bludgeoning weapons, half from slashing weapons, and still 1 point for piercing weapons.
I would give both damage immunity to piercing weapons to simulate that and damage resistance to bludgeon/ slashing depending on what they were vulnerable to.
To this I would add that zombies are resistant to fire damage. They are not living beings so the fire being breathed in and destroying the lungs would not kill them as quick as it would a living creature. It would make the zombie though start doing plus 1d6 fire damage to those it slam attacked or grappled as the zombie is now on fire.
To counter this you should also make them vulnerable to cold as they are not living they are producing no body heat to keep their flesh from freezing and turning them into a block of ice.
@@davidtherwhanger6795I'd do resist to piercing, not immunity.
Immunity means any rogues or ranged characters have to basically sit in the corner while everyone else gets to enjoy the encounter.
Plus zombies and skellies are common chaff that make up the majority of undead foes in most games.
@@leoblessinger7913 That really looses the horror aspect of the undead to nerf them just because they are treated by many now as cannon fodder.
Back in the day we would get descriptions of zombies tanking a quiver of arrows and still keep coming at you. That gave more to the fight. And having to switch to a back up or side arm weapon isn't that much of a problem.
Another good horrifying undead is the Hollowed, from Privateer Press's Monsternomicon.
Hunger driven zombie with enough cunning to set up ambushes and play dead, it regains hit points by feasting and grows in strength as well.
If you couple it with some of the Undead Gifts they present further in the book, you can craft some truly horrifying undead encounters.
I give zombies the ability to vomit up necrotic gore, allowing them to attack 10 ft away before they get in close. But they can only do it once.
Great stuff, enjoyed the suggested buffs to zombies. I would also suggest causing infected wounds or disesases, or having a zombie swarm (Kobold Press has some decent stuff of this kind), and giving your swarm an engulf attack.
Simple: Undead can't be killed. Like you can knock them prone or unconscious for a time, but eventually they'll get back up. You can run, and most likely outrun them for a while. But more keep coming. And eventually there's too many of them.
And that's the true horror of the undead: the action economy.
It is a good idea, except you get players who start thinking dismemberment and cremation.
@@isaacgraff8288 Go watch Return of the Living Dead. They tried cremation and dismemberment, and look how well it worked out for them.
Dismemberment? Now you have like five smaller things trying to kill you instead of one.
Cremation? Better hope the smoke doesn't mix with the rain and cause all the dead bodied within a mile to become undead.
That movie is not only hilarious, but absolutely horrifying because the situation is so insanely dire and all of the totally reasonable solutions just keep making things worse.
@@alexanderchippel I introduce everyone to the simple Prison Cell
Please continue making amazing videos. Your book is the most amazing dungeons and dragons book I have ever read in my entire life I haven’t been in this business for about 10 years. Keep it up.
I've really been enjoying this series so much! They are super helpful for running really fun encounters and making a creature more than just a stat block. Thank you Ben and the GFG team!
Thanks so much Andy! Really appreciate your support. 😊
Man your channel is awesome not only for DND content but actual gsme design & dev, im taking a lot of ideas from this videos
All of your videos have been awesome. I have all the Grim Hollow books on my buy list because you are a rare fellow who really seems to get horror. This impression resulted in an unpleasant surprise, kind of how you might feel when someone described torn fingernails, when you started to delve into this modern idea of “safety tools.” Though you didn’t mention the term, that’s what you’re describing and it goes against the spirit of horror. I have trypophobia and arachnophobia, which is why the horror world when someone describes patterns of beehive-like holes on someone’s flesh (eeeeeeeew) or a thousand shiny black spiders racing up my character’s leg.
Eschew this nonsense, Ben! You’re better than it. You get horror and you know, deep inside, that it’s antithetical to the spirit of horror campaigns to ask your players before a campaign what really scares them so that you can avoid that stuff.
“Oh, witches really freak you out? No worries, we’ll leave those out of this horror campaign that’s supposed to scare you. So what scares you, but not enough to really make you scared?”
No way. That’s nonsense, man. For what puts worth, coming from a guy who has been binge-watching your videos and plans to buy up everything you make going forward, keep doing what you’re doing and ignore the sissy stuff. It’s not you, man. At least based on the many hours of video I’ve watched so far. I keep talking to myself as I listen, saying, “This guy gets it.”
Think about it, you’re pretty visceral in your descriptions in many of your videos, but we never had a session zero for this channel where you asked us all what our triggers are. You just do it and if people don’t like it, they don’t have to watch. The same goes for your players. If a grown-ass person can’t endure a make-believe game without whining about your horror being too scary, they need to be at the therapist, not the game table.
I’m done. Lol
Fuck yes. Thank you so much for the amazing video, I’m currently working on a horror campaign that features a number of necromancers undead and with my previous knowledge and was wondering how I was going to make undead more horrifying, this has given me a lot to work off of and improve my dnd game which my players will enjoy all the more. Thank you thank you thank you! You definitely rolled a nat 20 on persuading me to subscribe 😂
Thanks, JeDo! I heartily appreciate your enthusiastic sub. 😁
An evil tactic of a clever necromancer had once been to equip his zombies and skeletons with a simple command: hold them [the heroes] !
He would then summon a poisonous cloud from which the heroes could not simply run out, as they were each grabbed by at least one zombie and more and more undead were attached to them with each passing round. And the heroes who could still move freely were then the necromancer's targets as far as his spells were concerned, always taking time to summon the poison clouds again when the heroes' magic user finally succeeded in banishing them.
It was a nasty fight and did more damage than a single necromancer with a troop of zombies and a few skeleton archers would have done according to the book.
I would also highly recommend the Dreaded Accursed book by Nord Games for interesting stat blocks of classic undead for various tiers of play. I have used many of them to great effect!
I apply Zombie, Skeleton, Wight and Ghoul as templates. To .... whatever I want. Use mobs of basic Zombies and Skeletons from early on in the campaign and they all have the Undead & Fortitude traits. Skeletons can be reformed as long as you have the right and sufficient amount of bones. Both Holy energy and Fire; are about the only things that put down, my Undead for good.
Reminds me of a Pathfinder Tian Xia game (prefer it to 5E, sue me) I ran several years ago in which I had a villain who was an elven samurai in life. He had been forcefully made undead by a master vampire and was essentially the Winter Soldier, operating under his master's will. It took encountering one of the players (a Samsaran) who had been a lover of his in a past life to spark resistance to his master's control and strive to break it. I built sympathy for him and when the master vampire was finally eliminated, the samurai promptly approached the player in question and requested she be his second in his committing seppuku to atone for his horrid actions committed while under control, and the shame of being made undead and committing said gruesome actions in general. She, of course, said yes, and since one of my players' characters was a foreigner I narrated the ritual from his perspective, and it led to a great freak out on his part where he said to the rest of the party "You think I'M weird?! What was THAT all about?!" It ended really well with some really good RP from all party members involved.
The newer generations of players (myself included) have suffered countless DMs that build encounters by statistical balance being the core design aspect rather than the narrative as it relates to the setting. I won’t say a majority of DMs do this but many do. And I believe the reason this occurs is the DMG doesn’t explicitly say for DMs to balance encounters based around themes. They’re more or less encouraged to balance around CR and then they review the MM and find the coolest CR-appropriate monster to throw at the encounter, completely ignoring the reason for that creature existing in that location of that setting.
I get what you mean but you have to understand that not everyones reason for enjoying the game or why they play is for narrative and themes and yeah alot of people care mainly about stats and similar things and that goes for DMs especially since all players will want different things. some players will only care about narrative while others only numbers and killing monsters and infinite shades of grey in between.
The Horror of Zombies comes from the unending, all consuming horde part. That in general doesn't work in fantasy worlds, since zombiism is mostly not a infectuous desease, but the work of a Necromancer. Undead in fantasy settings are more like necromantic golems. The horror isn't the creature in itself, but the mighty creature that created it and controls it.
This harkens back some to the old days. Zombies took normal damage from slashing weapons, half damage from bludgeoning weapons, and only 1 point regardless of roll or crit from piercing weapons. Skeletons flipped it a little taking normal damage from bludgeoning weapons, half from slashing weapons, and still 1 point for piercing weapons.
I would give both damage immunity to piercing weapons to simulate that and damage resistance to bludgeon/ slashing depending on what they were vulnerable to.
To this I would add that zombies are resistant to fire damage. They are not living beings so the fire being breathed in and destroying the lungs would not kill them as quick as it would a living creature. It would make the zombie though start doing plus 1d6 fire damage to those it slam attacked or grappled as the zombie is now on fire.
To counter this you should also make them vulnerable to cold as they are not living they are producing no body heat to keep their flesh from freezing and turning them into a block of ice.
12:07 I give wights magical swords which deal temporary stat damage and can inflict points of exhaustion on players. This, combined with their intelligence, makes a wight a terrifying foe that could be a challenge even for an entire low-mid level party.
And to make ghouls scarier, I've basically stolen them straight from Warhammer Fantasy. They're mutated, horrific creatures who, instead of being the risen dead, are living people who were afflicted with a disease that is contracted by people who eat the flesh of other humanoids. It cannot be cured, except through extraordinarily difficult means. The transformation is long and painful, and drives the victim completely insane.
perfect, I literally am going to use this info in dnd session later tonight
Dude. This channel is exactly what I’ve been missing in my DnD experience.
Loved this one.
Random thought on the zombie statblock to make them a dangerous horde for high level characters. Since you describe them as an extention of the will of the caster, it might be fitting to make them imune to any non-physical attacks. Making them imune to many standard aoe damage and probably forcing the party to change their tactic.
As a thought experiment, one time I had a group of (base) Kobolds encounter a group of (base) undead. It was a 12v12, the fight was brutal and incredibly one sided. Out of the 12 kobolds, 1 died. Yes, I played the kobolds as if they had an semi-intelligent leader but I didn't expect the beat down to be so one sided. These were KOBOLDS too. It really made me wonder why undead were a threat in D&D.
One of the things that old school D&D did with undead that was incredibly effective at terrifying players was level drain. Players hated it which is why it eventually went away, but it did the job of filling them with dread because it attacked what they most cared about directly. Getting hit by an undead creature like a ghost or vampire made characters less effective permanently. To a player, that is terrifying.
I myself don’t use that mechanic in my game. But I do make the game scarier by capping hit points at 25+Con modifier. Zombies can only be killed by critical hit or dealing their total hit points in damage in a round. If they are knocked down to 0hp but not with total hp damage or a critical hit, they get back up next round with half their hp. They are weak and slow but can quickly become overwhelming in large numbers when they keep getting up.
One of the high level encounters that my party dealt with was a very sad and morally challenging puzzle. Dwarven kingdom had mysteriously fallen with an ambassador begging despite his pride for help from your kingdom. When you get there to find most dwarves behaving much like zombies. Called the Hollowed ones. They use tactics and call out to other dwarves to join them. Shadows of their former selves. They respond with apparent desperate intelligence. And use basic tactics. Even as they hold you down. And force you to either make a good will save. Or literally have your soul drained out until your Wiz hits zero.
This was incredibly useful information.
I'm wrapping up writing a homebrew campaign to run for some friends and the opening combat was originally against undead.
Now, after hearing this, I may just rewrite the opening session and save the zombies for another time to make for a slow build to reflect the machinations of the great necromancer moving forward in their plans and as the land is slowly cursed by their presence.
My party was about to walk into a zombie infested town in the style of The Walking Dead. Except they were being dropped off by boat on one of the piers.
For the feeling of having a horde of undead, I highly suggest using Matt Coleville/MCDM's new version of the minion mechanic that they have taken an altered from 4th edition, that they currently have in their playtests of their book "Flee Mortals!". I've run it a few times now, and I love it. It's definitely something you have to get used to, but it allows you to use a swarm of enemies without bogging down combat or initiative.
I’ve used the minion mechanics a few times and enjoy them in certain situations, but haven’t found them to work with ‘zombie hordes’ tbh.
At the point a zombie horde might become relevant, the party can drop bombs (fireballs, sickening radiance, etc) and really circumvent the encounter. I’d rather use more powerful stat blocks that suggest a horde, even using ‘swarm stat blocks’ instead of a swath of individual minions.
@@benbyrne2429 Just out of curiosity, are you using the OG minions from 4th edition/Matt's first video on them, or the ones from Flee Mortals? Because there are some notable differences between them.
Personally I found the Flee Mortals minions to work well as a horde, since they make multiple minions work as a single enemy, basically.
That’s a really fair question. Admittedly I’ve run them mostly from Matt’s OG video on minions. But stopped after a handful of times with it not quite working for me. I may give it another shot if the opportunity arises with the new rules.
@@benbyrne2429 I highly recommend it personally. I know once I swapped from Matts OG minions to FM's minions me, and most importantly my players noticed a positive difference in how they felt. I can't say that it will still work for your table, but I hope it does!
If you need the rules for it let me know, and I can copy the basic rules into a comment (won't post anything much beyond that in order to not take too much away from the book). I can't do it right now as I am at work, but can do it in a few hours if need be
@@TheElectrikCow I appreciate the offer, but no need. There's so much amazing 5e content coming so fast it can be hard to keep up with it all. 😅
i had wine zombies in my adventure, fermented in barrels with magically enchanted grape juice) when the players were coming by, barrels would pop, showering them with splinters for minor damage and making them a bit dizzy from the wine fumes in the air (any minor debuff at the master's discretion, like -1 to some rolls). They were also deformed, with extra long legs or arms grafted upon them by a necromancer for more danger and sheer size (barrels are quite big). It was more about making zombies fun, unusual and authentic to the setting than gruesome or frigtening
So one of my favorite things about 3.5 was the way it's design let you add templates to existing creature types fairly easily. And while I'm not sure if there was a zombie template that could be added to other creatures I know there were demonic and extra plainer templates that could in theory be added to zombies forged by some eldritch form of the relevant magics.
God damn that undead kid was some good adventure design.. VERY well done
ive had fun with zombies undead fortitude. my party was fighting a small group of zombies and this thing just would not go down so every time id describe the thing being mutilated more and more and even once it finally fell the party were paranoid and made sure it was no longer a threat destroying the body completely. or as well as a group of martials could
I think Battle Brothers does something interesting with undead, if there is a necromancer present he can puppeteer individual zombies and whilst doing so they become incredibly dangerous and powerful.
This can make what seems like an easy fight go real bad when random zombies just start dishing out hard damage, defend themselves and run faster(Worth mentioning is they also use weapons).
In a DnD session that could be a nasty surprise like your holding down the horde and all of a sudden one of them jerks out of formation and flanks the group and just beelines it for the groups squishies.
This puts alot of stress on taking out the necromancer that is likely hiding somewhere faaar in the back.
Great video. In my Domain of Dread campaigns zombies are fast, triple their movement speed and they can dash as a bonus action and are also resistant to bludgeoning damage. Skeletons aren't vulnerable to bludgeoning but rather resistant to slashing and immune to piercing. Having them wear armor is also fun unless one or more of the players has heat metal.
When I was a little kid, there was this game I loved. Tactics Ogre, it was much like Final Fantasy Tactics but harder.
In it, mortality was a very fragile thing as when a characters HP hit 0, he died and was forever lost. This went both ways, and your main goal in most battles was to kill the Enemy Leader while yours dying was an instant lose. The game had a war report to reference and told you how many men you've lost in battle, the enemy leaders had their own stories added to the report. A pregnant sorceress that needed your bounty to care for her child, a proud soldier with no hate in his heart, only love of country, you get the idea.
But then you faced Nybass/Nybeth, a Necromancer who creates an army of undead. Oh? Simply kill them, that won't work. The undead simply get back up after a time. You can't just grind EXP and work your way to the leader, instead you had to act fast and take him out before the relentless undead overwhelm you. Some missions had no leader and you had to slay all the undead in a narrow time gap. The Undead always presented urgency as it was harder to systematically take them out, 1 by 1. Exorcism was an option but your Exorcists could only use 3 spells so you had to choose wisely. The OST dedicated to them only added to the dread and urgency. "Blasphemous Experiment" indeed!
The undead later would appear more and far more personal. Dead soldiers you killed reanimate to haunt you. A friend who sacrificed his life to protect you becomes a mindless death knight. Your most bitter of enemies are brought back by this one man to haunt you. The madness doesn't end until you chase hin to the literal gates of hell and end him once and for all. By the time you could permanently kill the Necromancer in his Lich form, you obtain the magic of Resurrection.
The undead became a representation of the Past to me, a distorted visage of it, but potentially a manifestation born from your triumphs and failures.
The remake had less of an impact as reduced to 0 left you "dying" not gone just yet.
But damn that left such an impression in me that it made Undead my favorite monsters.
I like making zombies into a swarm and as such take half damage on a whole, restrain players that are in the swarm, and allow a bonus action for the swarm to attack anyone restrained by the swarm. This all adds to the danger and desperation of not getting caught in the swarm or trying to save your companions unfortunate enough to get caught in said swarm.
I ran a campaign, where the skeletons and zombies' death caused blood to spray in the area. The blood turning to puddles, and new undead crawling from those puddles. The bigger the puddles, the bigger the undead that crawled from those puddles. Eventually, despite the party to being fairly high level, they found themselves outnumbered quickly. They didn't hit much, but enough undead, the chances no longer mattered because eventually they would hit numerous times during turns.
Why not make your zombies 100% contagious like in the movies? Get hit, incapacitated in d6 rounds, die and turn in 3d6 rounds.
Players will actually run for the first time ever once they realize how dire getting hit is, even if the chances of it are quite low. Add in the grab & overrun concepts to this? TPK level encounter.
Maybe the necromancer who developed this curse was himself consumed by it and so there's no master to these contagious dead.
Whooo whee that's a Halloween episode right there! 😁
8:04 Undead Party ? Now I just imagine a campaign where everyone in the party is some sort of undead
Sometimes you learn stuff from DnD UA-camrs. Sometimes the lesson is “keep going, you’re on the right track.” 👍
I decided to just do away with undead as enemies for the most part in my setting in general. The city the campaign is set in was the last refuge for the people of an old kingdom when a cataclysm befell it. Because of all the pain and death, many families sought necromancers to revive loved ones with mixed effects as many were amateurs or charlatans. Because of this necromancy was outlawed shortly after but those revived individuals, no matter what their state of decay or whether souled or unsouled were considered victims of a great crime as they were now denied their place of eternal rest. Zombies and other undead are therefore cared for as best as possible in care homes. Though to have one within your family as a relative is considered to be a shameful mark upon your house as it demonstrates that perhaps an ancestor once desired to selfishly pull back a loved one from the afterlife and lock them into an undead hell. Some families hide their undead relatives away, while others seek to fight for further undead rights and status in society.
The rime hunger is definitely inspired by the feeders from dead space 3 cold environment check skeletal appearance check note about eating each other check
I like to take an opposite tactic with my ghouls. Ghouls have an intelligence of 7, ghasts have 11, they're sentient creatures, they can even talk. The way I run it, ghouls and ghasts are sentient humanoid creatures that don't want to hurt people but they're overwhelmed by their instincts. They can't hurt themselves because their self preservation instinct is too strong and, whenever they see living flesh, they're completely overwhelmed by their need to feed. They don't want to hurt you but they can't stop themselves. I like to describe them screaming bloody murder, barely comprehensible, but if you listen closely enough they're begging for you to flee or to kill them.
Will be employing in my campaign! (And sharing the video)
Thanks so much for the support! Sharing's about the best thing you could do to help us out, so it's really appreciated.
One of the difficulties with making low-level undead like zombies and skeletons frightening in 5e is that the cleric and paladin classes can force large mobs of them to flee with Turn Undead and from level 5 onward, Clerics can just obliterate a crowd with Destroy Undead.
If your party contains a cleric, you're going to have to either get creative with the kinds of undead you use and the situations you put the party in, or simply use overwhelming numbers to burn through the party's Channel Divinities and give them that despair-inducing ALIENS-style "the guns are dry, they're still comin' man!" feeling.
but aren't paladins and clerics SUPPOSED to be good at that?
I feel like at a certain point you gotta step back and ask yourself why you're even trying to frighten your group lol
@@joedatius this video is specifically talking about using undead to frighten your party, so it's worth mentioning that the presence of a cleric or paladin is going to make that a lot more difficult, by design or no.
@@WandersNowherre D&D isn't about frightening your players though, this is about making them formidable not spooky
@@joedatius Depends on the table :)
I find that upping the number helps; making them unkillable through regular damage (i.e. requiring silver weapons, magic, or fire) otherwise they just soak the physical damage. THere are plenty of more ways to make them scarier. Plus infecteous bite is a fear generator! In my upcoming campaign those who are killed 'Fade' away (the body vanishes in several different ways depending the person and circumstances)(This is from a millineum ago edict by the Gods of Death- reasons available later)
There's always numbers. Lets say a necromancer has been distracting the party and teleports away when he is beaten, and now they all realize that hordes of zombies are closing in on the ruined village they are in, and they now need to find a way to escape.
Not a huge fan of 5e but have them in other systems. I think some of the things that can make undead terrifying but is rarely used is numbers, their lack of need for rest and disease.
A nat 20 is bound to be hit if enough are trying to bite you. Give negatives if tons pile on you, sure you’re cutting through them as an experienced hero but the overwhelming mass of a hoard that’s turned a populace is going to quickly make that sword hard to swing etc. Lastly rotting flesh is BRIMMING with disease, even a small scrap, getting viscera in your mouth or eyes can wreak havoc on someone’s health and given that the hoards never tire good luck finding a safe place to rest and recover.
One way you can make the regular zombie stat block usable at higher levels is to give them one hit point and a 50% undead fortitude, then bump their to hit bonus by a reasonable amount. Then just use an ungodly amount of them.
One way I use the base zombie stats (mostly, I added "anyone killed by this monster rises as an identical zombie in 1 hour") to invoke terror is not to use them as monsters to be defeated but as a natural disaster to be fled, Huge hordes move together through the country as a wave of death leaving only destruction in their wake. while individuals are easy to kill or overpower, the horde itself is an unstoppable mass of the dead "nice, you killed 20, there's 100,000 more on the way"
armies and caravans have to maneuver around them to avoid the wave, and when it comes into a settlement, the city is locked down while the horde filters out, civilians who didn't prepare starve in the dark as the horde waits outside their homes walls,
occasionally the dead stumble into a weakened door or smash through a window. the neighbors hear the family inside being eaten alive with the knowledge any attempt to help them would just lead the their own demise.
Imagine an NPC; once trapped in the miserable existence of a Ghoul, returned to life by powerful magics and the actions of benevolent heroes years ago..
Gifted with a second chance at life, yet the memories of its undead torment remain. Traumatized by their own monstrous actions, the desperation of that -drowning feeling; for how many years or perhaps decades even.
How valuable is such an npc, someone that can tell you the deepest truths about a horrific and very real nightmare, but to do so invites back those same terrors of the mind to risk breaking it for the final time.
Still may use zombies as sort of common enemies.
But there is gonna be a twist.
Ya know how in real life occult circles magic is believed to come from divine source? Well the world I made, magic is enacted by requesting the world's equivalent of angels to do something. This comes with two problems, because not only do you have to be very specific because otherwise the angel may send a fire ball that consumes the entire damn town, but there's that ugly little question of what happens when angel-granted magic is used for evil.
Another thing you can do to make zombies more psychologically effective is to threaten, not the PCs, but NPCs or locations that they care about. Maybe the zombies aren't a threat to your PCs, but if you're in the middle of town, even one slipping away means people are gonna die. Children are in danger. Maybe "the zombie" is contagious. Maybe one or more of your PCs have family in the area. There's a lot you can do to increase the tension without increasing the stats or gore. Also, in my experience, repeatedly threatening parts of your world that the players care about makes them care more, not less, so you can do the same later with increasing return
What would your thoughts be about these undead reknitting themselves mid combat? Green light/icor repairing destroyed parts. Could be due to a place or something, giving the players a chance to escape
The players in my campaign are fighting a resurrected Orcus. They're getting ready to go after him after hearing about dedicated undead hunters (including an entire division of paladins) the players are a bit overconfident. I think they're in for a surprise. These are creations of the demon lord of undeath, not your average skeletons.
I'm not planning to kill them, but if they run in headfirst I'm prepared for it to happen, but they're extremely high level so I think they'll be fine.... For the first two encounters.... They definitely have the tools in their toolbox to deal with it. It's going to be a matter of how they use them I think
You've got what it takes to be a big youtuber.
Just look at stat blocks from basic or 1e… losing a level or two of xp after getting touched by certain undead or a permanently withered limb will keep your players fearful of fighting them and be pushing the cleric to the front of the party, or just giving the encounter a big old NOPE, and heading off back where they came from
What about zombies that cry constantly and flinch, just a little, right before you strike them? Zombies with pleading, all too human eyes? Does that make them more horrific (especially of the pcs knew them when they were alive?)
Just fought Preya and I think ghosts. Our Paladin fell 3 times my cleric killed one, made 3 run away, our MVP blood hunter killed the last two. Wee almost died.
Nah I'm making a whole ass campaign with undead as a main enemy category. The play with horror movies is the overwhelming numbers and the idea of holding a mirror to the viewer accusing them of being a member of the mindless hoard. Also the boss they'll hit at lvl 5 is an undead giant like a hill giant with an undead template applied to it. I hope they don't see this
For ghouls, I always liked the idea of having the ghouls beg the players for their flesh while they swarm the PCs.
That is unfailingly creepy during combat. 😄
One thing to add to undead to terrify the players is this: they finish the dropped PC. A unconscious PC is easy prey for a horde and they will not ignore it to fight the other.
The rime humgers could be great to highlight a region in Curse of Strahd.
Zombies have to be changed to become interesting. Hundreds of ideas I used and I've seen to lower or empower zombies. At the first level in a prison a blind zombie can crawls without leg on the ground trying to find you and push you down to eat you. At the top: give them special powers, necromantic or elemental. I like playing them beeing able to spread illness, or to gaze and hold for a round a player in terror, or I've experimented zombies attracted by the healing potions of the players, funny if they can just drink useless potion wasting them, or powerful if they can absorb the magic inside the healing potions and regenerate even without touching them. My players become hysteric if I touch their healing potions!
Or put the zombies in the right context.
Basically, they just slow the party, holding the players, or interfering with their movement while a powerful sorcerer heal them and cast evil spells, anatema and curses above them, or a huge boulder is rolling in the corridor to strike down the players! That's the right way to use them at intemediate levels!
Okay so, in my games a called shot adds a +5 to AC for all. So all I do is undead can only be hurt by head shots. So you can hit a zombie but it’s gonna keep coming at you until you hit its head which is an AC 13
I'm very curious about the basic story premise behind blood in woodhaven... though... i already started my dark fantasy campaign, I think it's too late
At higher levels i just use a zombie hoard stat block, it simplifies the surrounding the players, grappling them and also seems like an endless stream of undead
Add a couple of Roper zombies to the mix!
My Necromancer will be eagerly waiting...
At the risk of sounding old: Undead were scarier in 3.5e when they did stat, level, and age damage instead of just Necrotic damage.
A good inspiration for the Rime Zombie could be the real-life Donar Party.
Then you’ll love Mystic Days!
I'm way behind on Grim Hollow books, can I still buy them after the kickstarter has long passed?
Absolutely! 🙂 You can order the three Grim Hollow core books right now through our web store.
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Adventure modules set in Grim Hollow, in the gothic realm of Ostoya or the viking inspired Valika, can also be preordered.
@@GhostfireGaming Wonderful, thank you! Love the Grim Hollow setting much!
Personally, I feel like the problem with zombies is that they're *too* beefy. The horror of the zombie is in one part the individual warped into a repulsive mockery of themselves, and in another the horror of the swarm, the deathtide that slowly encroaches and drags you down. And individual zombies are just too fat and unkillable for you to effectively send them in great numbers. So you have to be very mindful of how you use them in a way you wouldn't really expect to. They're very basic minion type monsters, but tank blows so well that they end up bogging down combat.
I feel like the 'undead fortitude' could be used to great effect to make them feel like zombies from horror flicks.
Making them roll a undead fortitude check every single time they're hit. Say if they're above 50% hp, it's a DC(5) and they're enraged giving them resistance like a barbarian for 1d4 rounds.
IF they're below 50% hp DC(10) lose a random limb. (1d4) and 1 and 2, is leg, 3 , 4 arms.
Then like regular for the 0 hp. It'd act more like a 'still coming at you even if it has to crawl' kind of zombie.
but also significantly harder to kill because rage is not a laughing matter.
To be fair... zombies on their own are never truly the biggest threat... complacency is. The moment you think you're safe, you stop being vigilant and that's when the horde has managed to build up so much that your defenses are broken and overrun and now you're in a ton of danger.
The same goes with the d&d zombie stat block... imagine the players being in an area gives the zombies advantage on their saving throw to remain at 1hp... A player who drives their weapon into the monster... only to see it continuing to lunge towards them.
And they make that save unless they specifically take radiant damage that turn.
It doesn't help that 5e undead are pathetic compared to the undead of 3.5e. In that edition, undead didn't have a Constitution score (why would they, they're dead) and thus were immune to anything requiring Fortitude save or Constitution check. They were immune to ability score damage, mind effects, polymorph, critical hits and precision based damage such as the Rogue's sneak attack. They often had a lot of resistances and damage immunities, as well as damage reduction, a set number subtracted from physical damage dealt by weapons, and energy resistance worked the same way back then. This damage reduction typically ranged from 5 to 15 but occasionally went higher for epic creatures. On top of all those immunities, undead often had some pretty nasty abilities, such as level drain, ability score damage, permanent paralysis, among other things. Ultimately, undead could be pretty terrifying in 3.5e.
Make zombies fast, relentless and infectious. Like modern movie zombies.
Damnit, I was gonna go back the Unseen Sun but of course it has already ended
the only time I use zombies is when it's an NPC the players know
even an undead dragon is undone by one command undead spell
undead are pathetic and if you use them you're just giving the players free exp
if you want fear use the dark naga from 3.5
has invisibility and detect thoughts
so before you even start the encounter all players are going to be making multiple wisdom saves listen and search checks
3 rounds of mind probing for each player
this continues even during the fight and makes players question "why are we rolling so many dice what is happening"
dark naga even have a nightmare poison (can be used to coat the blades of her minions)
her mage hand and silent image add to the confusion wile she is invisible
she can cast light on the players with her mage hand so even players with dark vision feel fully illuminated after feeling touched
make sure they know something touched them
revel her just barley out of vision from the light and you will get the opportunity to describe her as a floating disembodied head
keeping the girth of her body extending far behind her out of vision
with her 24d8 HD and huge body this will be an incredibly intimidating fight
have her speak infernal and they may believe this to be some kind of demon
she is immune to mind reading so tie her in to your game by making her the key to the destruction of mind flayers
now she is not just a monster to kill but a key NPC who needs to be convinced to help the players at a price they may not wish to pay
so in comparison undead are a big nothing enemy to me
Must be that time of month, but I must ask: How often did you hear the „wood in bloodhaven“ joke, or are your friends and players more mature than I am?
Great video unfortunately for me it’s too late to wait to reveal undead
Hehe, you don't gave boundaries if you don't have session zero...
I turned Frigid Woe into a liches zombie curse
I maintain you can't do Gothic Horror when you have Paladins with Sunblades, and Clerics with Turn Undead. Characters in 5E D&D are super heroes. PC should be ordinary people who are victims of circumstances.
You can get around that issue by using an in-universe explanation for why such powers are at a premium or unavailable, such as a world here the gods are dead and their gifts to their followers died with them. It would be a real shame if all that divine power those clerics and paladins rely on were to fail all of a sudden - your sunblade becomes merely a hilt, your Turn Undead incantations so much ineffective mumbled nonsense - and then they have to face such creatures without the advantage of such handy superpowers, or perhaps they have to appeal to darker potential patrons to get a fraction of such aid at a terrible cost. Maybe magic is also less readily available or reliable in this world. You could use the very over confidence of characters that, as you say, are pretty much superheroes in D&D against them by pulling the rug out from under their expectations in a way that heightens the horror of their situation.
i just made them faster and able to give a
poison effect and able to grapple
I just had a sad and gory thought: a very pregnant female zombie with the fetus’ arm sticking out her abdomen clutching at the air in vain!
Stop using undead.
Start abusing them.
With rotting stinking gore-ridden zombies, have the PCs make a constitution save or spend that round vomiting.
there needs to be a difference between necromantically created undead, and the supernaturally occurring undead. created undead need to be fodder enemies. supernatural undead should need to be killed folklorically.
Yeah, no. Whatever is in my imagination is way more twisted than anything my players will come up with in theirs.