Undead and taint? Please Help.

[Starchild7309]

After reading Heroes of Horror I see that undead have an automatic effective corruption score of 1/2 their charisma score +1. However, if I have a player who is an undead, using taint, is it possible for him to raise the score more or since undead are immune to the negative effects of taint, is this player now stuck at say 10 for a charisma of 18+1.

I read the book and couldn't find anymore on it, but maybe some one caught something I didn't. Any info would be helpful.

[Segev]

Undead do not suffer the negative effects of taint.

Nothing says they can't get more, nor that they cannot gain positive benefits from it if anything would grant said benefits. Undead Tainted Scholars are hideously overpowering, with effectively gaining +1 to their spell DCs with every 2 spells cast.

[Zanos]

You will get two different responses here.

One viewpoint is that since the taint score of an undead is based on an equation, it must always be that. Therefore, undead have static taint that only changes if their Cha score changes.

Others will say that the book does not explicitly disallow undead from gaining taint, and that the equation only provides that intial or default value of an undeads taint score.

Basically, it's up to you.

[Zweisteine]

It seems to be up to you.

Just be careful about necropolitan tainted scholars.

I want to convince my DM to use taint now, because I'm running a necropolitan in the Tomb of Horrors...

[OldTrees1]

last paragraph on page 62

Creatures with the Evil subtype and undead creatures are immune to the negative effects of taint.
The rest of the paragraph includes the taint equation.

Personally I fall in the "It is an equation and does not increase" camp. However I am firmly in the "Work with the PCs instead of holding to rules" camp.

[TuggyNE]

I don't think there's ever been any solid consensus on whether undead taint score is strictly limited or not. And, unfortunately, I'm not the one to bring balance to the Force in this. Just come up with a ruling one way or another and go with that.

[BWR]

In L5R the Taint usually caps and is static at a given rank (1 step higher than your highest Ring in 3e, 5 in 4e). I can't find anything on the subject of Taint Rank increasing in response to increased Rings in 3e, but 4e allows certain very powerful beings to continue to increase their Taint rank past the point of being Lost. Going by this and the general impression I've gotten from the creatures I've seen I'd say that your average undead, even an intelligent undead that later increases Charisma, has the same Taint score it started with. Unique beings (which might include a PC, and possibly BBEGs) are allowed to have their Taint increase.