Undead Campaign

[SeDevri]

So I'm going to be running an undead campaign and I'm looking for advice regarding which Undead Templates would be best to use for the player characters. I'll be using Ghosts, Graveknights, Juju Zombie, Lich, Skeletal Champion, and Vampire. If Juju Zombies or Skeletal Champions get mixed with the more powerful Templates then I would also give them the Advanced Creature Template to compensate for having a weaker Template. The players will probably be have 5 class levels plus the Templates.

Thanks for any advice.

[chillblame]

Cute idea.
The trick will be the reason they are all associating with each other.
May I suggest you use the way world of warcraft made their deathknights associate. A big evil bad creates them and binds them to his will. He attacks a holy site and loses, leaving the party with orders to cover his flight. As the party moves to obey this obviously suicidal action (and he teleports) have his control broken by a cleric/paladin type. To give them a second chance.
This restores control to the party and allows them a choice of actions.
One seek redemption.
Two give in to their undead nature.
Three what ever they think off.
This gives a bad guy, a reason for the party and possible allies or further enemies depending on choice.
Btw if they choose one (the more fun choice I feel) allow them their original alignments.
But audit alignments carefully.
Hope this helps.

[SeDevri]

Yes, I did in fact plan for them to be underlings, but that's not really the part that I'm working on atm. I'm still in the design phase and want to make the players at least partially balanced. I'm trying to decide if i should make them all the same type of undead(was thinking Graveknights) , if I should make it random using all of them, random using the powerful Templates(not Juju or Skele), or JUST Juju or Skele.

This is a rather important point because several of the powerful templates have the ability to come back to unlife after they have been destroyed(though i might remove this ability either way).

[chillblame]

Ok then (thoughtfully frowns)
The simplest way would be to state a certain CR for characters. Say you want 5th level characters. Find the highest CR monster to be used and make it a fifth level, probably the lich. Then make all the other characters the same CR through templates or character levels.

I don't think you could balance it with just templates. (Maybe half dragon, hmmmm. Half dragon, advanced skeletal warrior). :)

You could do as you suggest with making the characters all be the same type of undead. A little bit samey. If you play undead that return after defeat, remember that is not certain, especially if fighting undead experts who know how to make undead stay down. Eg destroying a grave knight's armor.