Undead PC's

[M Placeholder]

When I was starting a campaign as the DM, I was sitting with the players and creating characters when one of the players mentioned that he had became a Vampire in another game. I told him that if his character died in my campaign, then he would have to create a new one, unless it was raised and was actually alive, not as a grotesque mockery of the natural order. Not to mention that the other PC's could go Van Richten on his ass.

Personally, I disallow undead PC's, as they are more often than not, 1 - Evil and 2 - Overpowered.

What are your rules on Undead PC's

[Satinavian]

Obviously depends on the game. We are in the general roleplaying section, so both games like WoD:tM where undead PCs are the default mode and games like SIFRP, where they really aren't, have to be considered.


For various D&D variants i allow and even encourage undead PCs. They are different enough to remain interesting but still have a good grasp on the default culture and the needs of their fellow PCs.

Have no problem with evil PCs, as long as they are reasonable. Not that sentient undead always have to be evil. As with every other being behavior determines alignment in my games. And undead are usually pretty far from overpowered considering other monster-race options.

[Kid Jake]

I personally have no problem with them; in fact I had one in my Pathfinder campaign recently. Oftentimes the drawbacks (crazy dietary restrictions, LA, inherited weaknesses) offset the gains enough to keep them from being unbalanced and evil doesn't have to equal stupid, assuming you force the alignment change at all. I enjoy the roleplay opportunities that can come from watching a once noble character transform into a monster and try to retain that little spark that made him him.

But then my motto is 'Anything goes, so long as it's cool.'

[Brookshw]

I find them anachronistic in most games or at least unsuitable. Sometimes though they're fine.

[Beta Centauri]

Personally, I disallow undead PC's, as they are more often than not, 1 - Evil and 2 - Overpowered.

What are your rules on Undead PC's

I allow undead PCs, because in 4th Edition they're balanced* and not required to be evil. Even if they were evil, I'll allow them, as long as no one (that player or the other players) will use it as an excuse to be disruptive.

* The revenant is the only undead race, and I think the vampire (or hybrid vampire) - which is considered weak - is the only class that makes a character undead. Even the archlich isn't technically undead as far as I can see. The Vampiric Heritage feat makes someone a vampire for the purposes of effects that relate to vampires, but also doesn't make someone undead.

[sakuuya]

I find them anachronistic in most games or at least unsuitable. Sometimes though they're fine.

What do you mean by anachronistic? I get why they would be unsuitable, but it's not like vampires are a modern invention.

[Ashtagon]

My rule of thumb is that if a king from a mix of high fantasy Arthurian legend and Beowulf were to meet the character, would that king regard the character as a monster? If so, then the character is no longer PC material.

[Tarlek Flamehai]

Meh, undead doesn't bother at me all. They have so many drawbacks in most systems that they don't pose a problem. Evil PCs on the other hand.... If I am running a heroic campaign, and I usually am, I ban evil PCs. Unless it's a system lacking alignment, in which I case I simply allow the PCs enough rope to hang themselves.

[Urpriest]

My rule of thumb is that if a king from a mix of high fantasy Arthurian legend and Beowulf were to meet the character, would that king regard the character as a monster? If so, then the character is no longer PC material.

...so no Elves in your campaigns, I take it?

Anyway, if the game allows PCs to play undead then either they're not overpowered or the game itself is unbalanced and that lack of balance probably manifests in other areas as well. Evil isn't necessarily a problem either depending on the plot you're running.

In general, everything depends on the story. If you're running a story where undead PCs don't make sense, then yeah, you shouldn't allow them...but in that case, if you've communicated your plans well enough to your players, they won't want to play undead in the first place.

[dream]

Like most of the posters are commenting, it depends. On the group and system mainly. I think a fun idea would be if there was a TPK, the party is revived as undead somehow & must quest to regain their normal lives.

[TheCountAlucard]

If I am running a heroic campaign, and I usually am, I ban evil PCs.

Guess it really depends on what you mean by "heroic."

"Hero," in the traditional sense, meant a person who did big important things, and usually of divine descent.

Conan was a hero who saved some kingdoms, toppled others, betrayed allies, strangled a king on his throne, and chased a woman across miles of tundra after killing her brothers with the intent of having his way with her; Sun Wukong was a hero who led Sanzang to the Western Heaven, killed demons, beat up gods, ate the peaches of immortality, antagonized dragons, and ate "fruit" that looked suspiciously like human babies; Heracles was a hero who slew monsters to atone for having murdered his family, got the Queen of the Amazons killed, killed his music teacher, and got Pholus the centaur killed (and dealt Chiron the centaur a wound that never healed); Odysseus spent more than half of his titular Odyssey cheating on his wife (yet opined that if his wife wasn't faithful to him, he'd kill her), blinded a cyclops and then taunted him about it once he thought himself safe, and murdered over a hundred men upon his arrival at home; Elric of Melniboné was a hero who saved and remade the entire world, but killed everyone he knew and loved with a cursed, soul-drinking blade.

Heroes are great people, but they're hardly required to be good people.

[Tragak]

Personally, I disallow undead PC's, as they are more often than not, 1 - Evil and 2 - Overpowered.

What are your rules on Undead PC's

1) If one of my players want to create a Good character, s/he has to promise not to use it in a way that makes the game frustrating for everybody else. The same rule applies to Neutral and Evil characters.

2) If a player wants to play a race/class that's "overpowered" at some task (dealing HP damage, gathering information, sneaking into an area, socially manipulating people who can do any of the previous, resisting others' attempts to do any of the previous to them), then I ask if the person finds the task boring and/or frustrating.

If the person does not enjoy said task, and the "overpowered" race/class is protection from boredom/frustration, then I ask what challenges the person would enjoy more so that I can give him/her fun challenges instead of frustrating ones. Furthermore, if the person didn't even like the "overpowered" race/class in the first place (only taking it because s/he thought being being exposed to the boring/frustrating scenario would be even worse), then s/he now knows that s/he can take a more fun race/class and not be punished.

If the person enjoys the task, and the "overpowered" race/class features would make the challenge less exciting, then I would ask if the player had ideas for how NPCs might take said features into account when making plans that the PCs will need to foil (making the scenarios challenging/fun again).

It's surprising how many so-called "mechanical" problems go away when gamers agree to talk to each other like grown-ups.

[Brookshw]

What do you mean by anachronistic? I get why they would be unsuitable, but it's not like vampires are a modern invention.

Heavily dependant upon setting I suppose and there's probably overlap. A mech BESM game could conceivably have a Victorian era vampire running about it it would be very removed from an expected tone for such games. Or a necropolitan in Dark Sun feels quite out of place (though admittedly could be interesting).

[Karl Aegis]

Your character already had a chance at life and failed at it. If you want to be an embodiment of failure, that's your choice, but it's ironic that you want another chance to fail. At least it's better than playing some sort of Mary Sue archetype race, like elves.

[BWR]

Depends on the game. In Vampire: the Masquerade I'd certainly allow undead PCs. most D&D variants, probably not unless the setting explicitly allows undead PCs or I'm running a game where it doesn't matter. For the most part, my D&D games are rather traditional in that undead are foul mockeries of life and need to be put down.

[Ashtagon]

...so no Elves in your campaigns, I take it?

Yes elves. That king's first reaction wouldn't be "kill it with fire" after all.

[Karl Aegis]

Yes elves. That king's first reaction wouldn't be "kill it with fire" after all.

Oh, so your king is more of the "enslave them all" type rather than the "kill them all with fire" type? Good business sense that one.

[Ashtagon]

Oh, so your king is more of the "enslave them all" type rather than the "kill them all with fire" type? Good business sense that one.

Ok, fine, let's be silly. This king came from Talislanta. NO ELVES!

[Flashy]

My rule of thumb is that if a king from a mix of high fantasy Arthurian legend and Beowulf were to meet the character, would that king regard the character as a monster? If so, then the character is no longer PC material.

I also think this is a sort of overbearing rule, particularly if you were playing 5e D&D. No warlocks with a Faustian bargain? No dragon ancestry sorcerers? No half orcs?

I get that what you're saying is that you don't allow anything axiomatically evil, that just seems a poor way of stating it.

[Urpriest]

Yes elves. That king's first reaction wouldn't be "kill it with fire" after all.

Well no, everyone knows you use Cold Iron for that sort of thing.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Your character already had a chance at life and failed at it. If you want to be an embodiment of failure, that's your choice, but it's ironic that you want another chance to fail. At least it's better than playing some sort of Mary Sue archetype race, like elves.

Except that a lot of people are deliberately undead. Necropolitans and liches, mainly. And if you're allowing 'creator with corpsecrafter feats' cheese - which is pretty much RAW legal, though DM dependant, given that necropolitans are always made - it pays to be extremely careful about how and when you become undead. Undeath is not a second chance, it's an upgrade. If you want second chances, though, undead do it better as well: liches have plenty of second (or third) chances as a racial (templatial?) ability.

[Solaris]

When I was starting a campaign as the DM, I was sitting with the players and creating characters when one of the players mentioned that he had became a Vampire in another game. I told him that if his character died in my campaign, then he would have to create a new one, unless it was raised and was actually alive, not as a grotesque mockery of the natural order. Not to mention that the other PC's could go Van Richten on his ass.

Personally, I disallow undead PC's, as they are more often than not, 1 - Evil and 2 - Overpowered.

What are your rules on Undead PC's

While I can definitely dig your Rule 1, why Rule 2?

For my part, if a player wants to run a vampire-with-a-soul or something similar to get a non-evil undead character, I'd let them. I'd also reduce the vampire template to something far more manageable, with the option of taking a prestige class (call it the Disciple of Drakul or something of the like) for getting him the fancier vampire powers without utterly killing his ability to do something useful in a fight.

[Gritmonger]

I'd ask why they wanted to play undead. Was it vampires in particular, or would a zombie or a mummy or even a sentient skeleton do just as well? Perhaps another kind of undead that wasn't evil or cursed?

If it's just for mechanical reasons, there are other races and custom races they could take that might fit in better with the campaign.

Or if that was the flavor of the campaign, fallen trying for redemption, it might be entirely appropriate - it would depend on the group, as I end up getting character concepts after a loose sketch of the scenario and tailoring the world to that.

Maybe they like playing outcasts or shunned folk, which can be worked in without invoking undeath.

I still might end up tempering it so that it was more akin to a race or subrace than a full fledged thing from the Monster Manual.

Currently I have a pretty good feel for my players, and none of them are metagamers or griefers looking to ruin everyone else's fun with broken characters. I'd look first at that aspect, and decide based on conversations with the player, before invoking an ironclad rule.

[M Placeholder]

1) If one of my players want to create a Good character, s/he has to promise not to use it in a way that makes the game frustrating for everybody else. The same rule applies to Neutral and Evil characters.

2) If a player wants to play a race/class that's "overpowered" at some task (dealing HP damage, gathering information, sneaking into an area, socially manipulating people who can do any of the previous, resisting others' attempts to do any of the previous to them), then I ask if the person finds the task boring and/or frustrating.

Thats part of the problem with the evil character. Having them promise not to use the evil character in a way that makes the game frustrating for everyone else is a promise that is very hard to keep for Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil characters, and impossible for a Chaotic Evil character, as promises are there to be broken for the Neutral and Chaotic Evil characters. For the Lawful Evil character, finding loopholes should be an art form, and they should live for abusing them at all times.

Not to mention that the process of becoming undead is pretty frustrating for everyone else. Finding a vampire so you can get turned, creating a phylactery, filling a pit full of good alligned NPC's and pouring acid into it are all pretty frustrating for good alligned and neutral PC's. Not to mention that many undead are by their very nature, evil (Feeding on the blood and souls of the living, sacrifices to Orcus etc).

I run games where the PC's are expected to be good, or at least anti heroes, and in pretty much all of those cases, undead PC's spoil it.

[Ehcks]

Thats part of the problem with the evil character. Having them promise not to use the evil character in a way that makes the game frustrating for everyone else is a promise that is very hard to keep for Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil characters, and impossible for a Chaotic Evil character, as promises are there to be broken for the Neutral and Chaotic Evil characters. For the Lawful Evil character, finding loopholes should be an art form, and they should live for abusing them at all times.

An intelligent evil character should know that, while they don't like it very much, working with their non-evil party has a better return on investment than betraying them for someone even more evil.

Especially since that without their party to back them up, this evil boss character is going to just kill them and steal their stuff. Everyone should know that much, since that's what they were planning to do anyway.

[Brookshw]

Hmmm, I just noticed something. Our OP is named Dark Sun Gnome. But the gnomes in Dark Sun are all dead.......

Is he, possibly, undead himself?

Dun dun dun!

[Necroticplague]

I've never found undead PCs to be problem, regardless of system. The closest thing I've ever seen was a Harrowed in a game of deadlands d20, but he was actually a pretty good guy when the demon in his head wasn't in charge.

[Komatik]

I'd ask why they wanted to play undead. Was it vampires in particular, or would a zombie or a mummy or even a sentient skeleton do just as well? Perhaps another kind of undead that wasn't evil or cursed?

If it's just for mechanical reasons, there are other races and custom races they could take that might fit in better with the campaign.

Or if that was the flavor of the campaign, fallen trying for redemption, it might be entirely appropriate - it would depend on the group, as I end up getting character concepts after a loose sketch of the scenario and tailoring the world to that.

Maybe they like playing outcasts or shunned folk, which can be worked in without invoking undeath.

I still might end up tempering it so that it was more akin to a race or subrace than a full fledged thing from the Monster Manual.

Currently I have a pretty good feel for my players, and none of them are metagamers or griefers looking to ruin everyone else's fun with broken characters. I'd look first at that aspect, and decide based on conversations with the player, before invoking an ironclad rule.

This is one of the worst things ever. If I can't have fun with the real thing, why bother? It's like getting to play an actual ogre, but it being some medium-size character with powerful build and +2 Str -2 Int. It doesn't feel like an ogre at all.

Same kind of thing as when people decry optimizing and say you should just pretend to be a good swordsman with Fighter X and Weapon Focus feats instead of the character being one.

I don't want to ruin campaigns, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't attracted to character concepts with a high amount of personal power in addition to the flavor. Diluting that too much just ruins a good part of the feel of whatever the thing I was wanting to play was.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm not in it for the flavour - I'm very much a flavour nut, but the power is part of the feel I'm going for usually. If I am not, I probably would make a human or something else. But if I'm going for a vampire or the like, you can bet your ass the power is a key part of the concept.

[Tragak]

Thats part of the problem with the evil character. Having them promise not to use the evil character in a way that makes the game frustrating for everyone else is a promise that is very hard to keep for Neutral Evil and Lawful Evil characters, and impossible for a Chaotic Evil character, as promises are there to be broken for the Neutral and Chaotic Evil characters. For the Lawful Evil character, finding loopholes should be an art form, and they should live for abusing them at all times.

Good characters can be used in the same ways to cause the same problems.

Not to mention that the process of becoming undead is pretty frustrating for everyone else. Finding a vampire so you can get turned, creating a phylactery, filling a pit full of good alligned NPC's and pouring acid into it are all pretty frustrating for good alligned and neutral PC's. Not to mention that many undead are by their very nature, evil (Feeding on the blood and souls of the living, sacrifices to Orcus etc).

By "is" I presume you mean "can be"?

I run games where the PC's are expected to be good, or at least anti heroes, and in pretty much all of those cases, undead PC's spoil it.

That doesn't mean that everybody has to. Tons of people enjoy Villain Protagonists like Michael Corleone, Jayne Cobb, Tony Soprano, Dexter Morgan, Walter White, Belkar Bitterleaf

[Ashtagon]

Belker actually illustrates my original point well. I do allow evil pcs. But they must be able to blend into a major cinventional human city without arousing a mass panic reaction.