I had an idea where the party hears of an animal (maybe a pig, or horse, or cow - not too important which) is found dead, and all the bones seem to have been removed. The general plot of the story is going to be a necromancer perfecting some magic where he takes the bones from living beings magically, while they are alive, as part of some spell. What I need some idea for are some good monsters that get created from the earlier trials of this spell and some that get made later as he perfects it. Not too worried about what CR they are, especially for the earlier ones.
Are the monsters you want made from the bones, or .. all the rest? I always kinda liked how World of Warcraft portrays slimes and jellies - amorphous blobs with a few random bones or maybe a skull floating around in them.
For bones, any sort of undead works of course. Or maybe use a Dust Devil (spell) or small elemental as a template for an Ectoplasmic Vortex. Full of bone shards, obviously.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Ha! I ran a sort of parallel campaign that started exactly like this.
My original idea was to have it be a Green Dracolich waking up and he was trying out his new powers.
It started with cows - the party was investigating and doing other stuff but a little bit later they were attacked by a horde of minotaurs... or that's what it looked like, but it was just a bunch of janky skeletons with cow heads. It was a little attack on there way home from the main plot and they laughed at how easy it was (that actually helped change my story a little).
From then on, they were just occasionally attacked by skeletal versions of any creature I fancied using - built from the bones and skulls of common animals and missing humans - getting bigger and more dangerous. I used stone golem stats for a lot of them (used to be a thing, but not in 5E for some reason) - I promise you can do a quick google for the stats and you will find.
I started using any creature I wanted with less hit points, skeleton vulnerabilities and keeping a few things that made those monsters interesting. Just describing them was fun and was really not a lot of homebrewing.
Anyway, this went on for a while and I started dropping clues to the lair.
A little bit off point though - when they found this guy who had been pestering them for over 5 levels I had slightly changed it. Instead of a dracolich, they found a necromancer gnome. There was a random NPC I had created who just happened to live at the edge of town and they always asked him for directions - literally nothing else. He had heard them laughing about his rubbish skeletons.
Anyway, they took him out in 2 seconds... then the dracolich was released. I reversed Ozzed them and we had a great time.
Anyway - I really recommend just homebrewing or typing skeletal before any monster you want to try and google.
I had an idea where the party hears of an animal (maybe a pig, or horse, or cow - not too important which) is found dead, and all the bones seem to have been removed. The general plot of the story is going to be a necromancer perfecting some magic where he takes the bones from living beings magically, while they are alive, as part of some spell. What I need some idea for are some good monsters that get created from the earlier trials of this spell and some that get made later as he perfects it. Not too worried about what CR they are, especially for the earlier ones.
Suggestions appreciated.
Two options that spring to mind are boneless and gibbering mouther.
Are the monsters you want made from the bones, or .. all the rest? I always kinda liked how World of Warcraft portrays slimes and jellies - amorphous blobs with a few random bones or maybe a skull floating around in them.
For bones, any sort of undead works of course. Or maybe use a Dust Devil (spell) or small elemental as a template for an Ectoplasmic Vortex. Full of bone shards, obviously.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Ha! I ran a sort of parallel campaign that started exactly like this.
My original idea was to have it be a Green Dracolich waking up and he was trying out his new powers.
It started with cows - the party was investigating and doing other stuff but a little bit later they were attacked by a horde of minotaurs... or that's what it looked like, but it was just a bunch of janky skeletons with cow heads. It was a little attack on there way home from the main plot and they laughed at how easy it was (that actually helped change my story a little).
From then on, they were just occasionally attacked by skeletal versions of any creature I fancied using - built from the bones and skulls of common animals and missing humans - getting bigger and more dangerous. I used stone golem stats for a lot of them (used to be a thing, but not in 5E for some reason) - I promise you can do a quick google for the stats and you will find.
I started using any creature I wanted with less hit points, skeleton vulnerabilities and keeping a few things that made those monsters interesting. Just describing them was fun and was really not a lot of homebrewing.
Anyway, this went on for a while and I started dropping clues to the lair.
A little bit off point though - when they found this guy who had been pestering them for over 5 levels I had slightly changed it. Instead of a dracolich, they found a necromancer gnome. There was a random NPC I had created who just happened to live at the edge of town and they always asked him for directions - literally nothing else. He had heard them laughing about his rubbish skeletons.
Anyway, they took him out in 2 seconds... then the dracolich was released. I reversed Ozzed them and we had a great time.
Anyway - I really recommend just homebrewing or typing skeletal before any monster you want to try and google.
These are perfect - thank you! I was thinking of stuff made from the skeletons and did not even think of stuff made from the boneless remains...
I like this - definitely gave me some ideas. Thanks!