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foes:creating:ancestry:undead

Undead

Unclean spirits have been known to infest bodies, causing them to rise from the grave. Sometimes, these are spirits of the dead, animating their own or some other body. Other times, they are malevolent spirits from other realms, possessing corpses for their own vile purposes.

All Undead have the Unliving property, and most will also have the Mindless property.

Attributes

As a rule of thumb, the Undead are physically resilient, and frequently quite powerful as well. Increase their Body by +1.

Statistics

Their physical resilience tends to allow the Undead to soak up quite a bit of damage. Increase their starting stamina by fifteen. However, the undead do not cling to life as tenaciously as the living. The Undead never suffer hit points of damage, and if reduced to zero stamina, they are instantly destroyed.

The Undead are not noted for their speed, often being somewhat slower than in their mortal life. They start with a speed of five.

Already Dead

The fact that the Undead inhabit the bodies of corpses renders them immune to many damage types. They are immune to the Bleeding and Poisoned conditions, and take no damage from Mental or Poison damage. However, they are universally weak to fire, and take one additional point of damage per die from the Burning condition.

Unhealing

As a rule of thumb, the Undead lack the ability to heal their bodies naturally. Healing magic has no effect on them whatsoever. However, many of the Undead can repair their bodies through specific means—Ghouls consume the flesh of corpses in order to repair their bodies, and Vampires use fresh blood for the same purpose.

In general, however, assume that any normal means of healing will not work on the Undead.

Kindred

The nature of the spirit possessing the corpse tends to determine its kindred, as well as its motivation.

Ghoul

Inhabited by a spirit of hunger, the Ghoul is an extremely powerful form of undead that consumes other corpses in order to regenerate itself. The weakest of Ghouls is still a terrifying threat to most commoners, but the most powerful are considered avatars of death and disease. While they do have functioning minds, their thought processes are sufficiently warped and alien that they cannot be affected by mind control powers; they gain the Alien property.

When you select Ghoul as your foe's Kindred, increase their Agility by +1. Ghouls can inflict d4 damage with their claws, and d6 damage with their bite. They receive a +1 bonus to attack rolls when using their claws. If they consume a corpse—a process that takes at least an hour–they recover all their stamina. When at full stamina, only the fact that their skin still appears mottled and corpselike makes them easy to spot as Undead.

Mummy

Found primarily in the Southern Expanse, these creatures have had their bodies preserved through a variety of esoteric means, and their animating spirit placed in a phylactery on their body. The phylactery is set to release the spirit only when certain conditions are met. As mummies were often placed as guardians of tombs, the typical condition to release their spirits is the defilement of their crypts.

When you select Mummy as your foe's Kindred, increase their Foresight by +1. The Mummy can repair its own body; directly exposing their phylactery to sunlight, while they wear it, will repair their body. Every day it spends unmoving in the sunlight will restore 1d8 stamina. When at full stamina, the Mummy could pass as human at a brief glance, though they still give off no body heat and are still emaciated.

With their animating spirit contained within their phylactery, the Mummy is effectively Mindless, despite its ability to think and plan rationally.

Vampire

A fusing of the living spirit of the original body with a spirit of hunger results in a Vampire. Because the Vampire's body does not die until they become a Vampire, and is preserved thereafter, it does not show the sorts of decay and corruption commonly seen among the Undead.

When you select the Vampire as your foe's Kindred, increase their Charisma by +1. Vampires are able to heal rapidly; they can have Blood points equal to their level, and can spend one point of Blood as a simple action to heal themselves for 2d8 stamina damage. Replacing one point of Blood requires that they hunt for human blood, a process that takes two hours per point of Blood. So long as they still have Blood in their system, their body carries some heat, and they can pass for living, provided they are not examined in too great of detail.

The fact that the Vampire's original spirit remains in its body means that this is one of the few Undead that is neither Mindless nor Alien.

Zombie

A zombie is a spirit of the dead animating its own body. Though widely viewed as weak and low-rank monsters, many very powerful zombies are known to exist, such as the Draugr of the Northern Reaches. Even those capable of independant thought and action, however, have such a divorce between their body and spirit that they are considered Mindless.

Zombies are known for being particularly slow, both physically and mentally. They receive only four seconds per turn to take actions. When you select Zombie as your foe's Kindred, increase their Body by a further +1.

Zombies are completely unhealing; once their body is destroyed, their spirit must finally move on to the Echoing Lands. However, they are very difficult to damage in the first place. All Zombies have Resistance 1 to all forms of damage (except Vital).

Features

Choose a feature for each level of your foe. You may choose a lower-level feature to fill a higher-level slot, if you feel it is appropriate.

Negative Features

A creature may gain one negative feature, or two if it is a Boss or a Solo. For each negative feature added to a foe, that foe may select one additional (positive) feature of their level or lower (or a level 1 feature if the creature is level 0).

Burns Brightly

Level 1 Features

Level 2 Features

Level 3 Features

foes/creating/ancestry/undead.txt · Last modified: by 127.0.0.1