Are There Rules For This?

[crunchykoolaid]

Hey all! I wanted to start this thread with a simple question (see below), but then I thought questions such as this may be more prevalent than I realized, so I'm making this thread to house all similar questions.

This thread is for DMs/Players who have an idea of what they want to happen in game, but do not know/cannot find the rules required to make it happen.

For Example (and the original question that prompted this thread): I want to have a recurring enemy in my campaign of an awakened skeleton who, when defeated, his consciousness is transferred to the nearest currently nonliving skeleton.

Now, you may be thinking, "Crunchykoolaid, why can't you just houserule this?" and you would have a point. But for myself and others out there, we may not have the requisite years of experience necessary to build effective houserules, or we may have munchkin-y players that will find some obscure rule that interacts with this in a weird way.

For the above reasons, I would like to ask the simple question to the playground, how can I make the above situation occur in-game, using as few houserules as possible?

If you have any similar questions about fun events, sequences, or character concepts you want to happen in-game, this is also the thread to post them in, in order to group all these questions under one thread.

[PersonMan]

I'd treat it as a variant of the Magic Jar (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Magic_Jar) spell, just give it infinite (or just very long) range and have it return to a new form every time it dies, rather than going back to its original one.

[Inevitability]

It requires a bit of fluff-altering, but perhaps the 'awakened skeleton' is a mindless skeleton possessed by a Fiend of Possession? Skeletons are evil and don't have very high Will saves, so possessing one should be easy.

When its body gets smashed, the fiend simply returns to the ethereal plane and finds a new skeleton to inhabit.

[Zancloufer]

I would second the Fiend of Possession idea. Just make a new Outsider with the Evil and Incorporeal sub-types with 6 Racial HD and all 6 level in Fiend of Possession. It's CR should be >10 and it would pretty much auto-succeed on any attempt to posses skeletons (Bad will wave, no wisdom AND a -2 to avoid possession?). I mean you could say it's the Ghost of some Demon of Devil that goes around acting like a poltergeist.

For a new question: Are there any rules for monsters that have HP pools for separate parts of them? Talking like Colossal + sizes here where the PCs can target and "Kill" different limbs and maybe even give multiple actions to massive creatures.

[Andezzar]

For a new question: Are there any rules for monsters that have HP pools for separate parts of them? Talking like Colossal + sizes here where the PCs can target and "Kill" different limbs and maybe even give multiple actions to massive creatures.Only the Hydra comes to mind. Generally D&D does not have hit locations, so separate HP pools are quite a foreign concept.

[Cerefel]

For the skeleton thing, a Dracolich (Dragon Magic) is almost what you're looking for. It does the same thing you have in mind for the skeleton, except for the fact that its new body slowly transforms into a dragon.

[crunchykoolaid]

Thanks everyone for the ideas! I like the skeleton actually being possessed by an entity that was previously sentient before being raised, that way he can have backstory and purpose for serving the Big Bad besides "he was created for it".

As for separate hp pools and actions, check out this series of articles: http://theangrygm.com/the-dd-boss-fight-part-1/

The examples used are from 4th ed, but the concept is still the same and he tries to keep it as close to official rules as possible. If you wanted to do something else, you could also treat each body part as a separate creature and have its own stats, saves, etc. and just add special abilities like when one leg dies, the DEX and speed of all other parts goes down.

Edit: Since people seem to have a lot of good ideas, I'll also post some other scenarios I had.

1-Bounty Hunter in large enchanted Full-Plate pursuing party ambushes them at several points, what's the best way to enchant the armor so it helps in melee combat while still allowing stealthy ambushes?

2-This one's more general, what are all the ways a Wizard can "corrupt" a subject through experimentation? Think Mad Doctor type stuff, for example, he can create spell-stitched undead, force them to take Willing Deformity, use taint from HoH, etc.

[ATHATH]

You could also just strap a bunch of Animated Objects together with Sovereign Glue. When a couple of them die, the rest will start to get over encumbered.