Hi everyone. I have the following main creatures as monsters in my campaign right now:
1. wererats (plus their dire rat pets)
2. minor undead (zombies, skeletons, ghouls, ghasts, wights, monster zombies and swarm creature zombies)
3. major undead (liches, vampires, wraiths)
(this is leaving out various summoned outsiders and pc type creatures and so on)
My questions are these:
1. Can lycanthropes catch undead diseases, or can undead be affected by the bite or scratch of a lycanthrope?
2. how are outsiders like devils or demons affected by undead infection or lycanthrope infection?
1. Lycanthropes can be affected by the powers of the undead. Undead are immune to effects that require a Fortitude save (unless it affects objects), so a zombie can't become a lycanthrope. A wererat CAN become a zombie, however.
2. Outsiders are living creatures, and can be affected by all effects that affect living creatures, unless they have a specific immunity or resistance listed in their description.
1. Can lycanthropes catch undead diseases, or can undead be affected by the bite or scratch of a lycanthrope?
2. how are outsiders like devils or demons affected by undead infection or lycanthrope infection?
From the SRD:""Lycanthrope" is a template that can be added to any humanoid or giant (referred to hereafter as the base creature). "
Therefore, any creature of a type other than giant or humanoid (including undead, outsider, monstrous humanoid,etc.) cannot acquire lycanthropy.
Lycanthropes are as vulnerable to infection by undead diseases as any other creature of the humanoid or giant type. If the text of an undead's create spawn ability (or disease etc.) specifies "humanoid" then, a giant lycanthrope cannot become spawn, but a humanoid one could.
Generally, however, spawn do not retain any class levels they had in life, and creatures with the Undead type are immune to lycanthropy, so I would say that any lycanthrope that dies and later becomes undead loses its lycanthropy.
As to whether an outsider can become undead, the rules are somewhat less clear on this note. What the rules do say is that an outsider's body and soul form a single indivisible unit, which would seem to imply that you cannot animate the physical remains to create mindless undead, which are essentially, bodies without souls. This is unfortunately purely conjecture on my part.
However, the rules are much clearer on whether an outsider can acquire most of the intelligent undead templates. While an outsider could be slain by a wraith's con drain, ghoul fever, or the energy drain of a wight or vampire, the individual monster entries specify that only humanoids (and in the case of vampires, monstrous humanoids) are effected by the create spawn effect, and therefore cannot become these sorts of undead. Likewise, a Lich must be humanoid in type in order to undergo the transformation.
If however, you would like to apply undead features to outsiders and other creatures, I might suggest you pick up The Advanced Bestiary put out by Green Ronin Publishing, as it includes "Dread" versions of all the "core" undead types that explicitly allow you to create Pit Fiend Skeletons, Titan Liches, and Frost Giant Ghouls, etc.
C. Robert Brown
Thanks very much for the replies guys. I'm trying to do an 'evil fights evil' part of my campaign, and I was wondering if the summoned devils that one faction has along with lycanthropes would be affected by the undead. If they wouldn't be affected then that's cool, if they would I just want the rules to be clear.
So it for example a cornugon is killed by a wraith or wight would it work this way--it should go to say Avernus and be reformed as a nupperibo or something right?