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My next session will feature a lot of Shadows, those horrible undead guardians, but as I looked at their entry in the Bestiary I felt a bit confused. Now, I have always described them (since BD&D) as a lesser version of wraiths, i.e. smoky and black ghost-like beings with glowing eyes, but it seems that these days they are more than that: animate, two-dimensional shadows gliding along surfaces and reaching hungrily towards you. Or maybe they always were like that, and I’ve just managed to ignore their description and focused on the stats? Anyway, I actually like that… except that I don’t understand how they’re supposed to work.
So I took a look at Undead Revisited, but it didn’t help much; cool plot hooks, ideas and variant abilities, but no concrete advice on linking the flavor to mechanics.
Now I have a host of questions about Shadows: for example, should they be impossible to spot without light, even with darkvision? How do you hit them; are you supposed to strike at the floor or wall to hurt them? Or strike at empty air, estimating where their invisible "essence" should be? How do they attack you; do they “rise up” from your own shadow as “concrete” (spectral) and visible creatures, or do you just see their shadowy limbs moving along the floor/wall? And is a flying/levitating character immune to their attacks, if they’re supposed to be two-dimensional? (obviously not per RAW, but my players would ask this if I described them “as written”)
How do you describe and run Shadows in your game?
Well, when there's no light, and you don't have darkvision, you can't spot them.
Incorporeal creatures don't make sounds if they don't want to, you can't spot them via nonvisual senses (such as scent or blindsense), and without light, you're effectively blind.
If you have darkvision, you can try to spot them, but since there is less than dim light, they can use stealth. They get +12 (default shadow, +20 for greater) on their stealth check, and the Perception skill lists a modifier for terrible conditions (+5 on the DC, which I'd rule should apply, even though it is an opposed check, as spotting a black shadowy thing between other black shadows will be hard).
So much to the rules aspect.
How exactly you are able to see them with darkvision (if your perception roll is higher than their stealth) is up to debate, but I'd say it's just because they move slightly (after all, they're not really solid, so maybe they shift and waft in air currents) or not enough (e.g. wind moves leaves and bushes and changes their shadows slightly while the shadow creature remains where it is) compared to their surroundings.
Regarding the description, I took the same road as you. And I still follow it.
In my opinion, they are threedimensional ghost-things, but can seem like they were twodimensional when they use their incorporeality (which allows them to move into and through objects and terrain as long as they stay adjacent to the surface) to shift most of their body inside of something else and glide along the surface to observe and ambush their prey.
On the attack thing... They can in fact do both. Either attack out of a surface, or fly around freely in their gostly form, swirl around their prey and attack it (or fly through it just to really scare them).
Darkvision doesn't quite work like that. The fact that there's less than dim light doesn't matter. The creature with dark vision can still see as clearly as they could in bright light, so a creature can't use stealth to sneak past them, unless they could normally make stealth checks while observed.
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Thanks for the comments, guys!
It's good to hear that I'm not the only one who has described them as three-dimensional, wraithlike beings. But I'm kind of torn; I like the image of PCs searching a room and beginning to relax... and then the shadows start dancing and writhing on the floor and the walls. On the other hand, it'd be easier to keep them as they've been for over 20 years in my games.
Maybe I'll do what you said, Cyberwolf; describe them as written, but let them "manifest" a three-dimensional form when they attack.
Darkvision doesn't quite work like that. The fact that there's less than dim light doesn't matter. The creature with dark vision can still see as clearly as they could in bright light, so a creature can't use stealth to sneak past them, unless they could normally make stealth checks while observed.
Oh. You're right, I mixed some things up there.
But... if they want, shadows can enter objects (to gain cover), or break the line of sight by other means (such as simply moving out of darkvision range), roll stealth, and get back out behind the character. And since he can't hear them, he'd have to look around for them (roll perception, even though there's no real "facing"), right?
And of course, the paragraph about "how" still stands... It's not clear how you can distinguish a black shadow thing from other mundane shadows if you can only see black and white. So I'd still give them +5 situational modifier on stealth.