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Old 01-18-2019, 01:17 PM   #31
larsdangly
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

Honestly, that all sounds kind of fun to me. A zombie with ST 50 or 100 might not seem 'fair' but its an interesting monster you have to deal with some way other than just chopping up with your sword. It's basically a powerful flesh golem that could represent a key monster/NPC in a campaign.
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Old 01-18-2019, 01:42 PM   #32
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

As I pointed out previously, the Zombie ST loss rules imply a limit to zombie starting ST.

For example on page 87:

"If a Zombie is encountered, it probably means that its master is somewhere near (or was just slain), since Zombies lose 1 ST per day unless re-enchanted."

Doesn't really apply if Zombies take years (or decades!) to decay.

I've house ruled that the max is twice the living ST, so feel free to reuse that 14-hex dragon skeleton after you've removed hide and heart for ingredients.

Can't have my Apep skeleton though, as I'm busy stringing that on a torq.
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Old 01-18-2019, 02:16 PM   #33
larsdangly
 
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Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

I don't understand why you think the rules imply a limit to zombie ST. You can create them with any unspecified ST, and then if you put a zombie ring on them they don't decay. So what is to prevent my making a ST 50 zombie, putting a ring on it and letting it wander around forever?
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Old 01-18-2019, 06:04 PM   #34
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

Quote:
Originally Posted by larsdangly View Post
Honestly, that all sounds kind of fun to me. A zombie with ST 50 or 100 might not seem 'fair' but its an interesting monster you have to deal with some way other than just chopping up with your sword. It's basically a powerful flesh golem that could represent a key monster/NPC in a campaign.
It can be kind of fun. In our original TFT campaigns, we had many zombies and skeletons, many of them one-handing battleaxes and greatswords.

Zombie rings tend to be more effort than they are worth except for a few powerful ones.

The problem is only partly the "fair"-ness. The main problem we had with them was our desire for things to make plausible since so we could believe in our campaign world situations and not think they seemed wrong, and our sensitivity to those issues evolved the more we played with them, starting from "hey, there are zombies and skeletons - let's have some of those!" to "wait, there's no limit on the ST you can give them?" to "well, this is kinda dumb - why and how does this work or even mean, exactly, that there is a zombie with ST 100?"

Last edited by Skarg; 01-21-2019 at 10:42 AM. Reason: corrected homonym typo
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Old 01-18-2019, 06:38 PM   #35
JLV
 
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Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

So come up with a different magic item. Maybe a crystal, kept in a dungeon chamber in the Necromancer's dread castle, that can "power" 100 or 1000 zombies just like a zombie ring, within a radius of a hundred miles, for example. Or maybe it's an entire vein of such crystal that occurs "naturally" and each zombie ring simply has a shard of the crystal mounted in it as a stone. You could produce thousands of them without having to enchant anything.
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Old 01-18-2019, 09:02 PM   #36
Shostak
 
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Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

I like the idea (or maybe just my memory of the idea) of the Cauldron Born from The Chronicles of Prydain, which lost strength when straying too far from where they were "born." This way you can have zombies guarding tombs for centuries or a whole division of them protecting a necromancer's stronghold without need for maintaining them with rings. I also like the fact that they were by no means "lesser" undead; to stop them.
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Old 01-19-2019, 04:26 AM   #37
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
I like the idea (or maybe just my memory of the idea) of the Cauldron Born from The Chronicles of Prydain, which lost strength when straying too far from where they were "born." This way you can have zombies guarding tombs for centuries or a whole division of them protecting a necromancer's stronghold without need for maintaining them with rings. I also like the fact that they were by no means "lesser" undead; to stop them.
I like that idea 😊😊
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Old 01-20-2019, 11:15 PM   #38
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

All it takes is someone researching a variant spell and having the GM allow it.

(Even if that someone was an NPC, centuries before play started.)


Or maybe it happens the same day that play starts, the spell is very powerful, and the campaign is about what happens as that spell starts getting used...

(A big part of the "Thail" TFT campaign I played in featured some very strong not-in-Advanced-Wizard necromantic spells.)
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Old 01-21-2019, 04:01 AM   #39
hcobb
 
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Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

Some bright wizard researches a Create Zombie sword, and it's contagious.
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Old 01-22-2019, 08:08 AM   #40
Shadekeep
 
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Default Re: Do Skeletons decay?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Shostak View Post
I like the idea (or maybe just my memory of the idea) of the Cauldron Born from The Chronicles of Prydain, which lost strength when straying too far from where they were "born." This way you can have zombies guarding tombs for centuries or a whole division of them protecting a necromancer's stronghold without need for maintaining them with rings. I also like the fact that they were by no means "lesser" undead; to stop them.
That's an interesting approach. Puts them somewhere between a Zombie and a Wight, which is what the Cauldron Born seemed like to me.

In my Unlife book I'm proposing a second kind of zombie, the Feral Zombie. These are masterless zombies with the following extra abilities:
  • They have Zombie Contagion, which has the potential to resurrect those they infect as new Feral Zombies after death.
  • They can offset the daily ST loss by feeding on the flesh of the living. Each day they feed they don't lose ST.

This essentially allows Romero-type zombies into the game space. Naturally the GM can use or ignore as desired. Or alternately can extend the feeding rule to regular zombies, which means the necromancer lord with a zombie army only has to worry about keeping them fed on hapless locals. ^_^
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