Many DM's like to have low magic world where magic and magic items are rare. ( I generally think this is to keep them out of the hands of the player).
The thing is many of these worlds have shadows. Shadows are just about impossible to damage without magic and whenever they kill some it spawns a new shadow.
So please everyone give me reasons why there has not been a shadow apocalypse?
How can people defend themselves?
The biggest reason is probably "Int 6". Certainly, if you reach a certain threshold of shadows, if they coordinated attacks and swarmed to create more spawn, they could be quite a threat. Might take a crusade to beat them back.
However, with their low intelligence, as well as this:
The shadow is an undead horror, and as such has no goals or outwardly visible motivations other than to sap life and vitality from living beings.
... they simply don't have the motivation or mentality to do so.
For smaller cases, temples, wizards, or monasteries (4th level monks can kill shadows fairly well) keep the population down.
The sinister shadow skirts the border between the gloom of darkness and the harsh truth of light. The shadow prefers to haunt ruins where civilization has moved on, where it hunts living creatures foolish enough to stumble into its territory. The shadow is an undead horror, and as such has no goals or outwardly visible motivations other than to sap life and vitality from living beings.
They only kill those stupid enough to encroach upon their self appointed territories. Territories that are, by their very nature, places people don't usually go to.
There hasn't been a Shapocalypse because the Shadows want to be left alone. If left alone they leave you alone.
-S
Ah so if say some necromancer managed to take control of them and lead them what then?
Then... you have a pretty fun sounding campaign.
Start them off doing their own thing, running missions and kingdom building or whatever. Use the 'time of innocence' to have NPCs give fireside tales of the history. Let them mess about for a while until they get bored or you've decided it's time. Then throw them a plot hook and have them try to stop the necromancer who is raising an army of shadows.
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An unlikely bunch of ragtag adventurers would probably stop him!
If magic is rare wouldn't it stand to reason that the shadow population (even undead population in general) would be proportionally lower ruling out the shadocalypse due to lack of numbers? Sort of how our boring, no magic world hasn't be overrun by magical monsters (unfortunately).
Now lets say we reverse the situation and it's an evil campaign and we are the ones trying to conquer the world.
Now lets say we reverse the situation and it's an evil campaign and we are the ones trying to conquer the world.
Then it would make sense to try to raise an army of shadows but you still run into the low magic problems of raising enough to knock over a town before the good guys with magic show up to stop you.
Maybe a lot of these low-magic worlds are also low on shadows.
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Also, channel positive energy and cure spells. Easiest way to stop an army of shadows is with an army of healbots.
Even in a relatively low magic campaign, I assume there might be some divine influence. If there was a shadow apocalypse, then Good outsiders would show up in a fashion similar to the national guard. This is especially true since there are so few individuals capable of handling such a threat if it grew large.
That leads to the fact that each trained magician and each crafted magic item increases the overall strength of the shadows in a given world.
But as the combined magic force is a fixed number (more or less) a shadow apocalypse is an unlikely thing.
If shadows ever tried to overrun the any world they would in the process create lots of new shadows making every single one of them less dangerous. This process would be increased when those turned into shadows are magicians, because this lowers the collective strength of those shadows.
In the end they would be so weak that even the light of father moon could kill them.
On the other hand this same phenomenon prevents all those adventurers from rooting out the shadows, because the remaining ones get stronger and thus have a higher likelyhood of winning fights and again creating new shadows.
It's a strange balance that can't be broken except by total allihilation of everything magic in a world. That would kill all the shadows. What would remain is a world with nothing magic. Just look out the window and tell me if you like, what you see.
in a low magic world. i wouldn't recommend using magical creatures, incorporeal undead. or most things too far above a construct, animal, or 0HD PC race.
in fact, i wouldn't bring many creatures above CR5-7 unless they were specifically intended as powerful bosses.
The biggest reason is probably "Int 6". Certainly, if you reach a certain threshold of shadows, if they coordinated attacks and swarmed to create more spawn, they could be quite a threat. Might take a crusade to beat them back.
However, with their low intelligence, as well as this:
The shadow is an undead horror, and as such has no goals or outwardly visible motivations other than to sap life and vitality from living beings.... they simply don't have the motivation or mentality to do so.
For smaller cases, temples, wizards, or monasteries (4th level monks can kill shadows fairly well) keep the population down.
Movie zombies = less inteligence, though more hunger. They often spawn apocraphyl worlds of horror. Why not shadows then? Is it b/cause they don't NEED to feed, like movie zombies do?
Most undead are not roaming about freely for some reason or another, they get desperately try to find a way to connect to life and stay in the places they knew in life. Undead tend to be created in places where major traumatic events of death and destruction took place and not usually near to densely populated areas.
A world with many magical creatures roaming freely is not a typical low magic world, creatures like that tend to be relatively rare and contained to special sites.
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@theguynothingrhymeswith: all good points. Assuming the OP agrees, let's try and think of a place that would spawn such undead.
Now what spawns shadows? Other shadows of course. But besides that, they are creatures of the negative plane, but I don't think a low-magic game would mean planehopping. So what does that leave us with? As you put it:
places where major traumatic events of death and destruction took place and not usually near to densely populated areas
So by that logic, how about a place that not only meets these requirements but caters to the qualities of the creature as well. So shadows are made of pure shadow and sap the strength of the living. This to me suggests an environment of hoplessness and despair, but also long-term suffering. Perhaps an infirmary of some kind, but one where the infirmed are denied access to proper light and the rejuvenation of sunshine.
Also these are incorporeal creatures so either they were left to wander aimlessly or on the converse were constantly confined. I'm taking the latter.
Ilventhane Sanitarium
Originally created as a prison, the Hexing Plague of 4789 left so many of the mad in its wake that they were remanded to a lower wing of the place. Soon the insane outnumbered the common inmates and so the place was re-purposed as a sanitarium.
Ilventhane is mostly underground with only a small keep above for administrative housing and offices. It was crafted on a cliff side outside the walls of the city to further isolate the infirmed from anything that would upset them.
The staff here were originally culled from the clergy of Saranrae and there was a genuine desire and will to cure the madness of the infirmed. Some successes were confirmed and a handful of patients were released, but only after expensive and exhausting clerical magics were utilized. The processes used at Ilventhane were deemed slow and costly, and the city's government ceased subsidizing the place.
That was when Dr Heidrik Ulevosc, a master alchemist, came to be the director and major benefactor of the facility. Already in decline, Ilventhane could not refuse his generosity despite his radical ideas and dubious reputation. Dr Ulevosc employed extracts meant to do the work of the clerical curatives, but unfortunately their application required ghastly surgeries and direct electrical current.
Most of the staff complained and were replaced by more compliant personell. Though there was initial improvement many of the patients relapsed. Unfortunately this was often only after they'd been released as cured. Dr Ulevosc swore his treatment was not to blame and vowed to achieve even greater results. He disappeared then, both literally and figuratively, into his work and soon the corpses of those sacrificed at the altar of his science began to surface in the bay.
It wasn't until months later when the city granted a Saranite inquisition the right to inspect the place. When they arrived in the keep they were physically assaulted. Melee ensued and this skirmish quickly became a full on siege with the staff barring any entry to the lower levels for fear of upsetting the delicate work of the good doctor.
The city sent the guard and the clergy summoned powerful clerics. During the siege major sections of the keep were consumed by holy fire. But when the place was finally breached the righteous host were themselves either slain or repelled in total. Dr Ulevosc, in the end, sacrificed himself AND his patients in a massive release of toxic gas flooding the lower halls.
In the aftermath of it all the place was finally inspected. Several more died or were horribly wounded by preternatural energies. The city claimed the gas was still present and ordered the place condemned. However the survivors of this reconnaisance reported nightmarish horrors; surgical theaters that resembled the darkest bugbear torture vault; foul experimentations and lobotomies; the preservation of varrying amounts of human remains, from organs to whole corpses, in noxious chemical baths for unknown purpose.
It has been 10 years since the Doom at Ilventhane. Yet still the place is under quarantine. The brave or foolish have broken this order and invaded it from time to time; many do not return and those that do have their strength and spirit eroded away by whatever still haunts the sanitarium. Some say the doctor still exists there somehow, working eternally on whatever infernal cure he intended. Others among the erudite clergies of Saranrae and Pharasma point to the taint of undeath and demand the place be purged with fire and righteousness. Yet for some reason the city refuses to hear any dispute against their current policy. So for now the blight of the Ilventhane Sanitarium remains; a skeletal ruin looming over the sea, concealing levels of horror and degredation no mortal mind should ever witness.
I think in a low magic world, the chance of a undead spawning another of it's kind is also much reduced. Normally, except for maybe those people who are evil or greedy, a person that is killed by a shadow just dies, and doesn't create a shadow.
Not RAW but that is probably how I would deal with those sorts of problems. That and make them naturally rare and limited to very specific locations.
Mark Hoover.
Epic.
That is all.
Movie zombies = less inteligence, though more hunger. They often spawn apocraphyl worlds of horror. Why not shadows then? Is it b/cause they don't NEED to feed, like movie zombies do?The biggest reason is probably "Int 6". Certainly, if you reach a certain threshold of shadows, if they coordinated attacks and swarmed to create more spawn, they could be quite a threat. Might take a crusade to beat them back.
However, with their low intelligence, as well as this:
The shadow is an undead horror, and as such has no goals or outwardly visible motivations other than to sap life and vitality from living beings.... they simply don't have the motivation or mentality to do so.
For smaller cases, temples, wizards, or monasteries (4th level monks can kill shadows fairly well) keep the population down.
Movie Zombies are known as Ghouls, notice they paralyze and make more.
Why don't ghouls make more of themselves like the movies?
I'd have said that movie zombies have something like DR 10/slashing, and Regeneration 1/vorpal or fire, and are not destroyed at 0 hp. Also about the Int of a Shadow, maybe a bit less. Not nearly as mindless as PF zombies (or at least more motivated). Apocalyptic results are thus less surprising.