Being creative with my undead

[Matuka]

In my campaign, the BBEG is a powerful and creative necromancer. He likes testing out new and terrifying monstrosities. So far, he has made skeleton air ships, using the sewn together skin of dozens of creatures as the air bladder, several smaller undead that can disassemble and then reassemble into a larger undead, a spirit who's senses have been linked to the BBEG, inserted into there now dead body (the linking process kills its victims automatically), has had a mesh of spells cast on them to allow them to appear exactly like a normal humanoid and there memories are wiped of the transformation, undead with mechanical or demonic parts, and even with all that, he has entire locations dedicated to discovering even more. As you can see, I've put a lot of effort into trying to make undead a fun and variable enemy. What I need now, is ideas. Not necessarily whole monsters, just ideas I can work off of. And if you find everything you just read to be an enormous waste of time and are going to click away the moment your done read, then all I can say to you is have a good day.

[Sparky McDibben]

Check out the old Exalted books. The Abyssal exalts have some good ideas.

Also, consider base improvements to standard monsters. For example, skeletons with flaming arrows, or zombies that explode after they grapple you. Putting these on standard monsters can help subvert player expectations.

What about giving your undead a burrowing speed and the ability to drag people underground? That will help split the party, increasing the difficulty. What about a capture crew who uses a giant undead skeletal cage that makes an attack but doesn't do any damage. Instead, it grapples and restrains characters like a morbid deranged Pokeball.

[Particle_Man]

Iron Heroes has some ideas in their bestiary:

A giant bone machine that puts bones together to create skeletons that it spits out.

Skulls that send out death waves when someone dies near them (this can have a recurring effect if someone dies from the death wave).

My personal favourite is to have the undead arise from water (or just stay there, scuttling a ship from underneath for instance), or green slime/black ooze (can't remember if undead are immune in 5e though, this might just be a 3.5 thing) or other things undead are immune to. I mean, even a 5e skeleton could be swimming in a vat of poison and not have a problem with it.

Or a short but sweet one: Undead Barbarian Berserkers are immune to exhaustion, so can Frenzy whenever they rage.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Do the zombie dance

I will look at the undead crafting feats from 3.5e for ideas.

Make a big poison gas lab inside a big skeletons, make it leak and have him run around.

[Vogie]

I'd take a look at the Zerg from the StarCraft franchise - Instead of a hive-mind-based, infestation-oriented biological collection of aliens, the units are instead Necromancy-powered, skeleton-built collection of undead abominations.

You could generate:

Creep-like Defilement zones that buff the speed or other stats of undead
Skeleton airships with tentacles that transport undead, dump defilement, or drift around catching living things like a flying jellyfish
Hydralisk-style undead that sharpen bones into javelins that they launch at high speeds.
Lurker-style abominations that burrow into the ground like Trap Door Spiders.

[Arcangel4774]

Failed experiment to create intelligent undead that actively fight against the bbeg. Doubly good if the party begins to like them, and later have the friendly undead struggle against some sort of controlling method

[Nhorianscum]

Animating skeletons inside entire towns while the "hosts" are still alive, capable of speach, aware of pain, and fully aware of their situation can lead to fun and will lead to mass paranoia and chaos.

Bonus points if the BBEG brings the victims of this back as revanents who exist to take revenge on those who lead to their death (the party, the country/king/lord, the local militia/army/etc).

We can do a lot of things with partial animation. My favorite being animating only the skin of a big ole pile of bloated cattle corpses and filling em up with nasty wormy thingies.

[Matuka]

Sometimes I wonder why I come on this site. Right now is definitely not one of those times.

[Matuka]

We can do a lot of things with partial animation. My favorite being animating only the skin of a big ole pile of bloated cattle corpses and filling em up with nasty wormy thingies.

Or fill them with some sort of liquid poison and then put several skeletons inside. When it dies, it explodes sending poison everywhere and releasing several skeletons, who are unaffected by the poison.

[Phhase]

You need to Google Libris Mortis. It's a splatbook with TONS of strange and esoteric undead you can use.

[Lvl45DM!]

They fight a strong humanoid Fighter, who when it dies turns into a zombie wielding necromancy spells, and when that dies its skeleton rips its way out and fights like a rogue and when the skeleton turns to dust, its withered battered soul rides up to use clerical magic.

Hair and nails are dead skin, a spell that takes control of a living beings hair and nails.

A brittle skeleton that explodes into several monsters when struck for even 1 HP, a flying skull shooting eyebeams and breath weapons, crawling hands burrowing into the players flesh, rib bones (sounds like ribbon! wonder if they're etymologically linked) flying forward to stab, an entangling strangling spinal cord and feet that...kick? i guess?

Stone Zombies/skeletons! Petrification kills the person and the remains can be animated, as something even stronger!

Theres a magical land, a genius locii, a stretch of forest or something that is a spirit fey. Like the fey IS the land. Find a way to kill that fey and then animate it. Boom. Deadlands. Where literally everything is animated and wants to kill you.

Let your party develop some! Wait until they kill a living minion and work with the manner of its death to make a unique undead.

[Vogie]

A brittle skeleton that explodes into several monsters when struck for even 1 HP, a flying skull shooting eyebeams and breath weapons, crawling hands burrowing into the players flesh, rib bones (sounds like ribbon! wonder if they're etymologically linked) flying forward to stab, an entangling strangling spinal cord and feet that...kick? i guess?

Oooh, use the Loathsome Limbs Variant from the MM Trolls, and apply it to various undead, with a flameskull or demilich as a head.

Also, There's a T-Rex in ToA that vomits zombies, IIRC

[stoutstien]

I wrote up a death siege npc a while back. Pretty much it was a giant that picked up and shoved corpses into a hole in it's chest until it was full then ran into enemy lines and blew up into a swarm of zombies. It could also pull some out it's chest to use as a ranged attack if needed. Ill see if I can find the stat block.