Where the living suffer physically from starvation, undead suffer mentally. After long enough without a “meal,” even the most arrogant vampire becomes a bestial creature of instinct. Withdrawal weakens the monster, and as its natural defenses fail, its behavior becomes irrational, particularly when it’s around sources of what it is denied or has denied itself.
A carnivorous or otherwise life-draining undead may safely go a number of days equal to its Hit Dice without a dose of its preferred meal before it starts to feel the effects of hunger. Each additional day after this grace period, the undead must make a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 the undead creature’s Hit Dice, + 1 for each previous check).
If the undead creature fails its save, it enters withdrawal and begins to take penalties according to the Withdrawal Penalties table (see page 23). It must continue to save each day until it feeds again. Additional failed checks increase the penalties as shown on the table. Feats and abilities that affect mortal hunger (such as Endurance or a ring of sustenance) do not apply to vampire hunger.
An undead that is suffering from withdrawal grows increasingly drawn and gaunt (or diaphanous and tattered, for incorporeal undead). Any attempts by the creature to conceal its undead nature with the Disguise skill are penalized as noted on the table.
An undead that suffers withdrawal is acutely aware of its unfulfilled addiction; if presented with the chance to feed, it might be compelled to do so, regardless of the consequences. Anytime it comes within 10 feet of a helpless creature that can sate its desire, it must make another hunger save at the current DC. Failure means it falls upon the helpless creature—whether friend or foe— and attempts to consume or drain it. Until the undead has fed, it can take no action other than to feed from this helpless creature or to enable itself to feed (such as a moroi grappling a creature so it can use its blood drain). During this feeding frenzy, the undead creature takes a –2 penalty to its AC.
Withdrawal Effects
An undead that hasn’t fed recently suffers from withdrawal, depending on the number of hunger saves it has failed.
As shown on the Withdrawal Penalties table on the facing page, an undead creature suffering from withdrawal takes penalties to channel resistance, on Will saves, to Strength and Charisma scores, to damage reduction, to fast healing, and on Disguise checks. The withdrawal penalties apply only if the creature has the ability in question. For example, a hungry moroi’s damage reduction decreases, but a hungry ghoul ignores that column because it doesn’t have damage reduction. All penalties are removed when the creature completes a single feeding. This only ends the withdrawal penalties, and does not grant the creature any feeding bonuses beyond those granted by the creature’s ability associated with feeding.
If the undead’s Strength or Charisma penalties equal its Strength or Charisma, it becomes inert, helpless, and wracked by nightmares of hunger; it only revives if fed by another. An undead creature’s channel resistance, damage reduction, and fast healing cannot fall below 0.
For those of you curious, yes, Muza hates her unlife. I'm going for the opposite of what is normally the case: Humans seeking to get rid of the bonds of life and have eternal youth, and turning it on it's head and playing a vampire who struggles with her eternal youth, wishing to be alive again so that she can learn what life is, however I'm sure she'll turn back to the darkness once she has had time to mature.
Don't worry about power levels, I have a city full of high level Clerics who can cast Sunlight and Command Undead, besides, this is the diplomacy group. Who needs to fight when you're a smooth talker? :-)
Don't worry about power levels, I have a city full of high level Clerics who can cast Sunlight and Command Undead, besides, this is the diplomacy group. Who needs to fight when you're a smooth talker? :-)
No hidden context, sarcasm or anything here. Move along everyone.
New mission - talk our way through every encounter. We might need a way to cast awaken on a hostile animal though.
We return to the council with our part of the puzzle in hand having been elected high muckety muck of the drow, the council is still talking about which group to smite with space rocks, then the other group walks in covered in blood from slogging through everything.
Wait- why would the Drow prepare any light spells? They'd just blind themselves, while we laugh behind our protective penumbras.
I do like this idea, though, but you're forgetting the value of Dominate. Just leave a single spawn behind, and have it keep all the officials mind controlled while we go on our merry way.
Wait if they dominate one of us via control undead, and we in turn dominate them, does that vampire that dominates the cleric gets control of the dominated vampire?
Hmmm... Personally, I feel like it's most likely the vampire would simply have the cleric release control of the controlled vampire, thus preventing any annoying possibilities of the cleric escaping control and still commanding the vampire.
By the way, what were the original party layouts? You never did say.
Hmmm... Personally, I feel like it's most likely the vampire would simply have the cleric release control of the controlled vampire, thus preventing any annoying possibilities of the cleric escaping control and still commanding the vampire.
By the way, what were the original party layouts? You never did say.
I'll drop them here when I have a moment, a 14 hour day at work pretty much fouls up posting for anyone including me!
Shadows in the Darklands - Kisara, Zelic, Thulmere, Grym, Rosalind, & Allizsah.
Quest for Eternal Night - Murza, Murnau, Helt, Lener, Veldrin, & Saban.
-------------
Updates for both tables tomorrow. I have two more updates to get to tonight for the 9 games I could not update on Sunday... Still, that means I hit 14 updates on Sunday so not too shabby!
Hopefully by Thursday I'll get back to every second or third day updating games as per my normal rotation.
Huh. Lener and I at the same table. That would have been... interesting. Saban would have been neat, though.
That being said, I do love the current setups. I can only imagine how differently things will turn out with these layouts compared to what we did end up with.
Opps should of skimmed through that last post for spelling mistakes. Serves me right for posting while sick and hungover. Sometimes I really hate that one hour rule.
My emoji list is very limited so I do get that! I have about six in total that I use, so I get that. But we did just have a player kinda... blow up in one of my other games form... well we're not totally sure, but I'm still in a bit of damage control mode.
Male Noble Drow Psychic Vampire Nercomancer Wizard 11(Undead, Undead Master)
Had a very long day, and a very late night, can't really brain enough to get a reply up. Will have one for ya tomorrow, so GM, please hold for me, if possible.
Caligo can do it for free, at range, 6 times/day. Because WoP is really nice to necromancers. I would advise using him instead of burning through onyx like there's no tomorrow (regardless of what our end goal might be). Any undead created can just be released and controlled by everyone else if wanted.
Of course, feel free to animate on your own for a few extra controlled if so desired.
Most of us plan to take leadership, so armies of spawn, undead creatures or submissive orcs aren't out of the quesion.
I can't create undead, I only get an undead version of the anti-paladin's fiendish servant. Mind you by the end it can be a vampire with class levels with the advanced template.
Tried to update this last night and the site was juts not responding for some reason.
Update tonight. A large one, in fact, this group will end up not exactly playing in Second Darkness Book 3, the other group will likely be the one experiencing the events as they unfold as intended :-)
Don't worry, you'll have plenty to do while in the Drow City!
The site was very wonky last night. At one point, it just sat there, a blank screen, trying to load. Very annoying.
Glad it wasn't just me.
Unfortunately, tonight is a bit of a bust as I need to get up early and drive to a client site so no updates till tomorrow night. Good news is I will be away tomorrow night so I should be able to post for damn near 8 hours before going to bed... no distractions as I usually have at home :-)
It can be annoying. Personally, when I'm doing a large post, I'll first write it out in Word, so that if the site crashes or I lose the post, I can just go back and copy/paste it again.
On another note, OOC it would be fun to assault the elven city, but IC it's a bit harder to justify.
That's seems fun. They get bonuses against the powers of undead, but unless their elves I can simply put them asleep. And if they are elves, Fascinate still works on them.
I must agree. As character-appropriate all the talk of 'staying in the shadows' and endless discussions are, I'm looking forward to really unleashing on some poor elves or Pharasmins.
Should we vote OOC on what we're going to do, then just essentially fast-forward to that? We can keep discussing our plans and whatnot IC, but then Shadow can figure out his post, and not have to delay the action longer than is needed.
I could have fun with either, but I'm kind of leaning towards the elves, but the Pharasmins would also be cool. Just less awesome massacre/bloodbath/kill-them-all vampire awesomeness.
No I had it today as well, since 5 this morning. It's 2 pm for me right now To give you context. I thought it might have just been my phone messing up but I was wrong. Good to know.
Male Noble Drow Psychic Vampire Nercomancer Wizard 11(Undead, Undead Master)
They mentioned on FB that they were having problems. I just got on and have been trying for about 3 hours.
As for which attack plan we go with, both make sense to me, for different reasons.
The only real difference I see is that if we go after the Elven city first, we'll have elf captives, but we should still be able to take a few clerics alive, if we opt to go right to the Darklands.
I like darklands more than assaulting random elftowns, but I'd really like to just fastforward to whichever gets us into actual encounters so if elflands is easy for Shadow to run and Darklands takes effort (or vice versa) go with easy.
Just something to keep in mind. So far, it seems like we have two for the elves, two for the darklands, Veldrin is neutral and Allizsah just wants a war.
Eh, whatever. Just to keep things moving, I'll switch to the Darklands route to break the tie (sorry Thulmerë, maybe on the way back), though I still like the idea of a few Embraced elven wizards backing us up.