A player of mine is wanting to stitch some corpses together and throw in a scythe or two to make some undead horrors from MTG. He’s a 5th level necromancer who has never done this before, but found books from a stitcher and thinks that’ll be enough with his proficiency in medicine. He has 5 or 6 corpses, but I’m not certain what kind of check to make or resources/cost for this. Thoughts?
edit: for reference he wants to make the makeshift mauler and stitched mangler
What about a sidequest / longer project involving learning a magical ritual etc? Then allow the thing to be extra tough and magical to reward the player for wanting to play an actual necromancer and invest in it.
For balance purposes you could make it require attunement, so the player sacrifices one attunement slot for this super zombie.
Then once they finished the quest and learned the ritual, they could easily redo the ritual with fresh corpses if the megazombie dies, so they don't feel disappointed if it dies quickly.
I wouldn't have it scale automatically with levels, because that would require a lot of balance work from you. Instead they could maybe boost it with magic items or improved rituals later in the game. So basically treat it like a story-driven magic item.
When a necromancer casts Animate Dead, it can animate a single Zombie (or reassert control over up to 4 zombies). Since these creatures are, in a sense, multiple zombies stitched together, the Necromancer will need to upcast Animate Dead in order to animate them. So if they cast Animate Dead at 4th level, they could normally animate 2 zombies, or they could instead animate a single Makeshift Mauler. Give it Zombie stats, double its HP, increase its AC, and replace the Slam attack with a Slashing attack.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I'll leave the mechanics to others and offer this - what's the story impact? How will the world around this necromancer respond to this? What would other necromancers do if they discover someone else has this new talent? What would holy folk do?
It's cool and interesting, kind of villainish, and should raise eyebrows in fun ways.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
A player of mine is wanting to stitch some corpses together and throw in a scythe or two to make some undead horrors from MTG. He’s a 5th level necromancer who has never done this before, but found books from a stitcher and thinks that’ll be enough with his proficiency in medicine. He has 5 or 6 corpses, but I’m not certain what kind of check to make or resources/cost for this. Thoughts?
edit: for reference he wants to make the makeshift mauler and stitched mangler
What about a sidequest / longer project involving learning a magical ritual etc? Then allow the thing to be extra tough and magical to reward the player for wanting to play an actual necromancer and invest in it.
For balance purposes you could make it require attunement, so the player sacrifices one attunement slot for this super zombie.
Then once they finished the quest and learned the ritual, they could easily redo the ritual with fresh corpses if the megazombie dies, so they don't feel disappointed if it dies quickly.
I wouldn't have it scale automatically with levels, because that would require a lot of balance work from you. Instead they could maybe boost it with magic items or improved rituals later in the game. So basically treat it like a story-driven magic item.
Finland GMT/UTC +2
Here's how I would do it...
When a necromancer casts Animate Dead, it can animate a single Zombie (or reassert control over up to 4 zombies). Since these creatures are, in a sense, multiple zombies stitched together, the Necromancer will need to upcast Animate Dead in order to animate them. So if they cast Animate Dead at 4th level, they could normally animate 2 zombies, or they could instead animate a single Makeshift Mauler. Give it Zombie stats, double its HP, increase its AC, and replace the Slam attack with a Slashing attack.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
You could use Ogre Zombie, Swarm of Zombie Limbs or a Zombie Clot as the creature, and scale the spell slot level required to attain this. You might also look into Summon Undead. Specifically the Putrid variant.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I'll leave the mechanics to others and offer this - what's the story impact? How will the world around this necromancer respond to this? What would other necromancers do if they discover someone else has this new talent? What would holy folk do?
It's cool and interesting, kind of villainish, and should raise eyebrows in fun ways.