My campaign has always been big on undead. I have this NPC Lich, the Netherarch Anzer, he's a memeber of a cabal of powerful undead known as the Dust Lords. I'm wanting to populate various areas of a mega-dungeon with his compatriots and creations.
I borrowed heavily from my library of 3.5 material, using Liber Mortis and (I think) Fiend Folio to create a Necropolitian Oracle (The Whispering Sage) and a trio of Swordwraiths known as the Sign of Three.
Further down in the complex Anzer has a Vampire he raised from an adventurer. She's dealing with her own busy unlife, and won't be seen by the PCs for a while yet.
The rest of the mega-dungeon is populated with Ooze Whisperers, Cloakers, Homebrew monsters with strong themes of other-worldliness. I'll be using Touchstones from [b]Planar Handbook[b], and various other resources, along with the Faction Guide's rules so that PCs who want the rather shaky social position of allying themselves with this après-vie society have that option.
What undead do you enjoy? I feel like he'd surround himself with interesting free-willed undead, not just a bunch of mindless zombies. (there will be one encounter with dozens of zombies and skeletons, just for fun, I do not suspect the PCs will have any trouble with them) Consider that Anzer is a 17th level necromancer. The world above does not realize his power, and thinks he's just some dead guy.
Feel free to answer using Golarion examples, while this is a homebrew game, I have plenty of Paizo's material and I can convert readily.
Perhaps a tad on the gruesome side, but if I were a lich like that, I would have a room full of the decapitated heads of bards. Each would be on a pedastal with a cover over it. When bored, the lich goes in and demands the bard entertain him, or have his soul tormented. It would also serve the lich well as sort of a fantasy Google. Need answers? Ask a room full of bard heads!
I love both of these... consider them LOOTED!
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Spice up your Zombie Horde for a Classic, yet surpising Encounter
Outflank Teamwork feat,
gives them +4 for flanking, rather than +2
gang up,
Allows you to flank an enemy if 2 or more of your friends are adjancent to the enemy
and team up
Allows you to Aid another as a move action.
Create some Dread Zombies from Green Ronin's Advanced bestiary, Gives the a Bite attack, adn Consume Brains, if they can Grapple, then bite, the PC must make a Fort save or die.
The IDea is that 1 zombie isn't a threat, but get a horde of them, and they become Very Dangerous, Very quickly :-)
And its Either Libris Mortis, or Book of Vile Darkness that has a "undead" elemental thing, made of Grave Stones, grave dirt, etc.
I could see the PC's entering a Graveyard where the Lich is getting "parts" trying to stop him. The lich shrugs, Creates the Elemental OUT OF THE GRAVEYARD to deal with the PC's. then Leaves.
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Ghoul cleric of Urgathoa? always interesting for the macabre.
Alienists? Perhaps a Ghast or Ghost Sorcerer/Alienist? Something about an undead creature summoning aliens from the Great Beyond really appeals.
Having another arcane spellcaster (definitely lower leveled or controllable somehow) who can do spell research or lab assistant duties would free him from scut work and bottle washing.
Dryads. No really. A little cosmetic alteration and just change their treewalk ability to gravewalk and bind them to gravestones. Suddenly they are dark fey who haunt graveyards, it also throws some variety into an undead heavy area.
Along those same lines, constructs are good choices. Especially constructs made of bone that initially fool players into using undead specific class abilities only to find they don't work.
Wandering around could also be the ghost of an adventuring bard who could help the PCs if they play their cards right. Maybe one of the heads is his and he wants it back and can tell the PCs of a room where he and his allies died and their treasure now lies if they can get it back for him.
I have always been a fan of mummies to spice up the difficulty of undead encounters. The trick is to not always go with the whole "wrapped in bandages" schtick. There were mummies from all sorts of cultures that don't necessarily show up looking like the classic idea of the Egyptian mummy. Our own culture does arguably stranger things to our own dead in preparation for burial. My favorite mummies are the ones with priestly powers. This was something they did a bit in 2E but I love the concept. Add some Cleric levels, and you have a pretty potent fella.
The fun thing is to make a mummy with a neutral deity with the ability to channel positive energy. Makes a decent foil for your own baddie, or at least a rival of sorts. If you are making a opportunity for diplomacy, you could do one there.
Another thing I like to play with is a revenant. Again for 2E, but you could watch the movie "Crow" for inspiration or Auron from FFX. Basically a neutral undead that is simply back for revenge for the ones who killed them in the first place. These are fun, because you can basically point them anywhere.
Damn Oterisk!
I was going to suggest revenants :)
I am planning on a simmilar dungeon experince in an upcoming adventure and I plan on stealing heartily from this thread. You could also incorporate some Bodaks. I love the idea of undead touched by pure evil. You could do something really sick like a family of bodaks that just so happened to be transformed by the lich and are in constant agony though they are slaves to his will.
I am planning on a simmilar dungeon experince in an upcoming adventure and I plan on stealing heartily from this thread. You could also incorporate some Bodaks. I love the idea of undead touched by pure evil. You could do something really sick like a family of bodaks that just so happened to be transformed by the lich and are in constant agony though they are slaves to his will.
This makes me think of something that is the lich is hiding. An experiment to summon pure evil, even more malevolent than mere devils and demons. More sucessful than he was expecting, unsure what do to with it and even somewhat frightened of it, he's locked it away. Now if the PCs start to win over the lich, it can release it. Or, the lich warns them if he is destroyed the evil will be released. Might make a good side adventure, finding a divine seal to permanently block the evil so they can deal with the lich permanently.
I ran an campaign that was undead themed for a while and here are two that I had fun with from it:
1) An Angel of Decay (Libris Mortis) armed with a Maul of the Titans. The party had a hard time fighting him. if you want to get real fun give him a couple of fighter levels and some more gear. The party ended up getting spied on because the Angel got away. It had whalloped one of the players pretty hard and I rolled to see if any bit of PC were stuck to the Maul. They were and served as a very good scrying basis.
2) Ever heard of a Grisgol? It's from MM3 (maybe MM2). It's basically a golem made from broken magic items powered by a lich's phylactery. Well the BBEG was a Grisgol where the litch whose phylactery was used to make it had been reawakened and was now incharge of a magic immune body.
There are a few others I might put up later.
Otyughs in a massive cess pool for run off. Maybe water elementals in there as well to clean it up. Necromentals? I remember there being spooky undead water elementals in some book. They could be in the reservoir cleaning it all up.
I rather liked a scene in CoT where the PCs come across a vampiress directing a play starring undead shadows. It would be amusing to have the PCs barge into this lich's personal theatre, where practice is going on for an operatic performance... and queue the zombie ballerinas.
EDIT: The PCs fight the star of the play, the operatic songstress and like two other undead who are fulfilling roles. Gives a good chance to put in a bard fight, and bard fights are always nice.
Can you describe the personality of this guy? I'd like to suggest more, but I'm imagining him as a very powerful and intelligent guy with high class tastes.
Ooh. High class tastes. He should have a kitchen with soul chefs in it-- chefs that rip out a dying creature's soul and spice it up for serving. That'd be ridiculous too.
The fey gravestone idea is also excellent.
EDIT: A living guillotine construct.
Ooo yeah, Jeffery! You're writing the game that I've always wanted to play in!
(I just can't get my group to love and fear undead the way I do... 'sigh'.)
Your mega-dungeon reminds me somewhat of the labrynth from Wraith: The Oblivion from White Wolf, or Hueco Mundo from Bleach.
For Netherarch Anzer I highly recommend giving him the craft construct feat and, due to such, adding a shadesteel golem to his entourage. Shadesteels can be found on page 72 of MM3. They are specifically designed to assist powerful undead and combat positive energy users. Lich with a shadesteel golem? Watch out!
For the Dust Lords (BTW, love the name, love the Sign of Three, love the Whispering Sage) I highly recommend adding a chained spirit from page 78 of PF 11, CotCT - Skeletons of Scarwall. These things are perfect for protecting a large complex. Add a few levels of the Tomb Warden prestige class from Libris Mortis (page 57) and he'll possibly be the second most difficult encounter!
Some other great Dust Lords would be a grimweird (page 75 of MM3) with several levels of cleric or wizard, and a brain in a jar (page 90 of LM) with several levels in psion or wizard (enchanter or illusionist).
For minions, I recommend blasphemes from LM, page 85. They have an unusually high CR for undead minions, can strategize and have a creepy construction method... a "long lost and buried secret"! Although really weak by now for such a high level of play, necrosis carnexes (MM4, page 104) make wonderful additions as "undead healers". Add some hit dice and they're ready to go!
I'll put in some more thought, but for now that's all I've I got. :)
Good luck!
Otyughs in a massive cess pool for run off. Maybe water elementals in there as well to clean it up. Necromentals? I remember there being spooky undead water elementals in some book. They could be in the reservoir cleaning it all up.
I rather liked a scene in CoT where the PCs come across a vampiress directing a play starring undead shadows. It would be amusing to have the PCs barge into this lich's personal theatre, where practice is going on for an operatic performance... and queue the zombie ballerinas.
EDIT: The PCs fight the star of the play, the operatic songstress and like two other undead who are fulfilling roles. Gives a good chance to put in a bard fight, and bard fights are always nice.
Can you describe the personality of this guy? I'd like to suggest more, but I'm imagining him as a very powerful and intelligent guy with high class tastes.
Ooh. High class tastes. He should have a kitchen with soul chefs in it-- chefs that rip out a dying creature's soul and spice it up for serving. That'd be ridiculous too.
The fey gravestone idea is also excellent.
EDIT: A living guillotine construct.
Oh yeah, Necromentals. That was a template from Libris Mortis. I actually have a Fire Necromental set up as the next encounter in the adventure I am running. Trouble is, he is in a room with an anchient, but well-stocked, wet bar. The party had better hope he doesn't realize it... Heheheheh...
Have you considered the Half-Vampire Template? I believe it's in Libris Mortis, and could be used to create the creatures the Vampiress was feeding on before she was fully turned/able to kill when draining. It also gives her day-time body guards that won't be hurt by cure spells(I think).
I can confirm that. (thankfully I have the book on hand) The Half-vampires might also be used in their role as the unholy spawn of the vampiress and mortal lovers.
I also know of a few other half-undead templates which were included in Dragon Magazine 313. Here's a link to an online pdf with said templates and other useful 3.5 templates. Ding!
Have the portrait of a famous wizard down there, haunted by his ghost, at least part of the time. Give the wizard's ghost some reason to stick around that's not easily fulfilled--something like having magic return to the golden age he remembers from his boyhood or somesuch--but more entertainingly, have him not be totally evil, rather some entertaining variety of neutral common among academics. He chats with the lich because the lich has his portrait, but the wizard's ghost argues with him constantly the way only old academics can, and let the wizard's ghost encourage the PCs to steal his portrait so that he can more easily manifest to act as the party's mentor and further his plans of the return of magic's golden age which, frankly, the lich and his band of undead fuddy-duddies don't have the vision to pursue.
Of course, the lich would be desperate to get the portrait back, because the ghost is actually his favorite old rival and possibly mentor who taught him much of the magic he now uses--badly, and not to his full potential, so says the ghost.
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The lich's personal goals, ambitions and personality traits should likely play into what sort of 'BFF' he'd want around him.
Just picking on the one of *dozens* of personality traits that springs to mind, contempt for the mortal existence that predated his new existence as a lich, he could go one of two directions;
One, he holds the entire chewing, breathing, heaving, breathing mass of living existence in utter contempt. He hated it when he was alive, with the eating and the groping and the fatigue and the pain, and he finds it even more repulsive now that he is 'above' that sort of thing. He holds living creatures, and their sloppy wet pulsing biological needs, in utter disdain, and his preferred companions are fellow undead, constructs, elementals and select outsiders. Even then, he's picky. Ghouls and vampires, both remaining slaves to their hungers, he considers to be failures. 'Real undead,' such as mummies, ghosts and, naturally, liches, are beyond such mortal concerns. Taken to an even greater extreme, he might hold corporeal creatures in contempt, and prefer the company of ghosts, spectres, wraiths and shadows, considering even mummies (and other liches) too 'fleshy.'
Two, he still holds mortal creatures and their fleshly concerns in contempt, but is insecure enough that he loves to remind himself of how he has beaten those failings, by surrounding himself with these lesser creatures, that remain enslaved to their fleshly needs. He glides among this retinue, the mere sight of them reminding him of his own superiority, and how he conquered the mortal concerns that rule them. He could go a step further and even select creatures that are defined by hungers or lusts or other physical concerns, considering an ochre jelly or black pudding to be a perfect counterbalance to his own state. Where he has transcended hunger and need, and become cool, dry and quiet, more a creature of mind and spirit and raw arcane power than flesh and bone and blood, these creatures are little more than wet, reeking, gurgling stomachs, crawling around on the floor, mindless subjects to their own hunger. For humanoid servants, he would prefer Ogres, whom he sees as the logical progression of mankind, if they don't join him in shunning and escaping the simple brutish needs of their mortal bodies.
And that's just picking one trait, contempt for his former mortal existence. If his transition to lichdom involved some other motivation, such as faith (in Urgathoa, for instance) or love (to remain with an immortal paramour, such as a fey or outsider) or ambition (to remain ruler for centuries), then his companion creatures could be informed by that motivation.
(Examples:
A devotee of Urgathoa, who considers his transition to lichdom a holy state, bringing him closer to the Dark Lady, and honoring her own transformation through imitation-as-flattery, might surround himself with Ghoul-Clerics of the Pallid Princess, and make use of Cavorite to make ghouls of various other creatures, such as giant vermin, under his command. Ghoul-template Monstrous Spiders might make suitable dungeon-fodder, for instance.
Someone who became a lich out of the desire to remain eternally with an unaging paramour might have become a lich to remain with his ageless dryad love, only to find her repulsed and rebuking him. Filled with the rage of a lover spurned, he razed her forest, and used some unspeakable necromantic ritual to animate the entire dying forest as 'zombies,' creating an unwholesome 'necrosystem' of skeletal trees, reaching out with pale denuded leafless and barkless brances to snatch at living tresspassers, while regenerating zombie prey animals are dragged down by carnivorous zombie predators, only to have their cracked bones join back together and regrow flesh over the next 24 hours, so that the grotesque parody of a living forest can re-enact this tableau night after night. The dryad herself would be augmented by the vampire template, and her tree share it's traits, functioning as a vampiric treant, remaining his 'eternal love.'
A would-be eternal ruler could have a 'court' of nobles, with different titles and responsibilities, each brought into undeath when their worth was proven to his satisfaction. He might rule semi-openly (with few, if any, knowing that the king and half of his court are undead), from the shadows (manipulating the publically-recognized king and his court from a Shadow Court under the palace, where the Shadow King sits on his Shadow Throne, dominating the 'King' above magically, or perhaps even having a Simulacrum of his mortal self sitting the throne!), or 'in exile,' ruling over a court that is a pale and meaningless historical irrelevancy, from a crumbling manor house, either unaware or uncaring that his family and their power has long been forgotten, and that the 'nation' he rules is remembered only in history books.)
From a purely mechanical standpoint, a lich would probably be well-suited to having minions with effects that can impose penalties on his foes ability to resist his own attacks. Allips (Wis drain, lowering Will saves), various venomous creatures (Dex and Con drain, reducing Ref and Fort saves) and level-draining undead seem like useful critters to have around, to soften up living threats and make it harder for them to resist the lich's spells and effects, when he chooses to make his appearance.
Creatures that can survive an environment lethal to living foes, such as aquatic creatures in an undersea lair (or sunken castle ruin at the bottom of a lake or something), airless environments (or areas with toxic / befouled air), intensely cold areas, suffocatingly hot areas, etc. would be useful if the lich wants to take advantage of his many immunities to lair in a place where living foes will have to rely on precarious magic just to survive. This fits well with the first idea mentioned, of a lich that surrounds himself only with constructs, undead and some elementals and outsiders, allowing him to benefit mechanically from his own derision for 'fleshly weakness,' by lairing somewhere that living creatures can't naturally survive (too cold, no air, toxic environment, etc.), and surrounding himself with creatures that can survive such an environment. Dispel Magic or Antimagic Shell suddenly becomes a deadly threat to invaders, as they may be dependent upon Water Breathing or Resist Energy spells to get to him, and if all of his servant creatures do not need to breath (or are aquatic) or aren't affected by extremes of cold (or have the Cold subtype), he's got a powerful advantage.
Bear in mind that making a mundane creature into a Ghoul or Wight could be a great way of making otherwise unusable creatures usable in an underwater / toxic / super-cold environment, so that, if you really wanted that Gargantuan Monstrous Centipede to lower some Reflex saves for the lich's Chain Lightning-palooza, you can just slap a Ghoul template on it and it no longer needs to breath and becomes immune to environmental cold and toxic air. Plan on using a lot of Fort-save spells? A couple of Wyverns with the Wight template would probably get the job done, combining Con loss with negative levels. Advance as necessary (and / or add a Half-White Dragon template), and they'll make a respectable encounter, forcing the party to burn up some Restoration spells, at the minimum.
Awesome ideas everyone!
every necromancer's BFF's are the Ostiomancer, slay mate, and the staff of create undead. courpse crafter feat rods are nice as well.
I like the boneyard from libris mortis, I have used an advanced one which I had just laying around on the floor as a mass of bones. Scared the hell outta the party when it formed. then it proceded to rip the skeleton from one of them, could possibly be the scariest scene i have given them. LOL
Ah yes, the boneyard, now that was a nasty piece of work. Its hard not to include them in any undead-themed dungeon, although a thought just occurred to me, what purpose would it serve to a lich? Would he just use as an oversized guard dog? Looking at its abilities gives one the impression that it was built to take out creatures one by one, so I'm not sure how well it would hold up as a siege beast, though it definitely has psychological warfare down pat.