How come anyone dies at all in RPGs?

[notXanathar]

There's a tendency for people who make RPG bestiaries, every time they come across a new word that something akin to ghost or ghoul, to add a creature with that name to their game, with a whole set of stats and reason for being undead. At some point there get to be so many of these that one has to wonder 'how can anyone in this world stay dead'. There are so many circumstances where you can come back that at least one of them fits anyone.
Someone messed up the funeral rituals? Undead. You failed to complete a financial transaction? undead. You shouted at a cat one time? Undead. You really don't want tourists coming and staying in your castle? Probably not undead but you would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids. It's a miracle that anyone at all stays in the ground. Maybe that's why spells like gentle repose exist, because anyone other than a literal saint is only moving on kicking and screaming.

[Vahnavoi]

Are you just observing or are you working up to a point?

You yourself already started pointing out what prevents the zombie apocalypse - spells like gentle repose exist. But that's just a minor piece of a fraction of a slope of an iceberg. There's also all of the clerics going around, turning undead, performing funeral rites etc. Often the defenses against becoming undead are just as triffle as the reasons for becoming one.

But yes, if a setting designer stuffs their world full of monsters, at some point it starts raising questions of how something resembling a mundane world could ever exists alongside the fantastic. Sometimes, a designer follows through and notes that it doesn't. Other times, you just get left with the usual truth about kitchen sink settings: they only make sense if you don't think too hard about them.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I've always assumed that such behaviors have a CHANCE of producing an undead, not a guarantee. The setting gets very different if it's that easy to create undead. (Probably much more horrific-- imagine a nation deliberately starving thousands of peasants to stockpile ghouls for the next war)

[notXanathar]

Are you just observing or are you working up to a point?

You yourself already started pointing out what prevents the zombie apocalypse - spells like gentle repose exist. But that's just a minor piece of a fraction of a slope of an iceberg. There's also all of the clerics going around, turning undead, performing funeral rites etc. Often the defenses against becoming undead are just as triffle as the reasons for becoming one.

But yes, if a setting designer stuffs their world full of monsters, at some point it starts raising questions of how something resembling a mundane world could ever exists alongside the fantastic. Sometimes, a designer follows through and notes that it doesn't. Other times, you just get left with the usual truth about kitchen sink settings: they only make sense if you don't think too hard about them.

I must admit it was mostly a joke. Sorry. That said, building a world with that in mind sounds like quite a fun project. I've had it in the back of my mind for a while, and I decided to post it rather than leaving it there forever.

[Martin Greywolf]

I'm just going to point out that people in Real Life (tm) have often put quite a lot of work into making sure people don't come back as the undead - and that is in our world, where there is no such thing as undead. And the cases we knof of are usually when the method employed was such that we can tell something was going on archaeologically - smashing someone's skull with a rock, post-mortem, putting a sickle across their throat, burying people upside down, creamting people in times and places where that wasn't the norm and so on.

A DnD world? Everyone will be sprinkling some holy water on that grave and pouring concrete into the coffin, just in case.

[Mastikator]

I'm just going to point out that people in Real Life (tm) have often put quite a lot of work into making sure people don't come back as the undead - and that is in our world, where there is no such thing as undead. And the cases we knof of are usually when the method employed was such that we can tell something was going on archaeologically - smashing someone's skull with a rock, post-mortem, putting a sickle across their throat, burying people upside down, creamting people in times and places where that wasn't the norm and so on.

A DnD world? Everyone will be sprinkling some holy water on that grave and pouring concrete into the coffin, just in case.

Yes and that's because we- The Anti-Zombie League, are doing such a good job of making sure there's no undead. You're welcome BTW.

@OP
For an RPG I think you have to apply the anthropogenic principle, which is that the reason you're seeing so many undead- so many monsters, is that that's where the action is, and PC adventurers are narratively transported into the action.

[King of Nowhere]

i see the opposite problem: how do most undead even exhist at all.
the descriptions always mention stuff like people incredibly greedy, or people dead in unspeakable acts of violence, or people single-mindedly consumed by a single drive...
only the most exceptional people would become undead. considering the average adventurer party slays them by the dozen, one wonders how there are undead around in the first place

[oxybe]

Yes and that's because we- The Anti-Zombie League, are doing such a good job of making sure there's no undead. You're welcome BTW.

Doing god's work! The Anti-Zombie Miniature Menhir y'all sold me 7 years ago is still working strong! Ain't been pestered by the undead once in those 7 years!

[Anonymouswizard]

A DnD world? Everyone will be sprinkling some holy water on that grave and pouring concrete into the coffin, just in case.

Honestly, I think Dragon Age had the right idea with cremation being the standard method. Makes any physical undead heavily unlikely.

[TIPOT]

Honestly, I think Dragon Age had the right idea with cremation being the standard method. Makes any physical undead heavily unlikely.

That might just make incorporeal undead more common. Even 1 wraith can be a much bigger problem than 100's of zombies.

[LibraryOgre]

I did some work on this.

This works from the assumption that there's a reason people inhume their dead, rather than cremating them which, I agree, makes a fair bit more sense (most incorporeal undead require some specific circumstances... you don't spontaneously become a wraith because you were a 0 level commoner run over by a manure truck, though you might get raised as a zombie).

Briefly (for those who don't want to give my blog clicks), you inhume the dead, with grave goods, because it lets the dead start their afterlife better. Leave that magic sword with your ancient king, and he arrives in the land of the dead as a warrior, armed, and with the gold you left him (the gold itself stays in the real world; this is metaphysical gold). Cremating the dead gives them less connection to the world, and thus the ability to absorb faster into the deity/plane, but that gives the deity or plane a less full experience. This is part of why it is wrong (I lean towards chaotic, rather than evil, for a variety of reasons) to loot the bodies of the recently dead... they're still absorbing into the plane, and stealing their grave goods robs them in the afterlife.

[Alcore]

To answer the title; because they ran out of HP.


The way they make some creation methods sound only the most evil would ever manage it. We are talking about one in a thousand people of evil alignment being eligible. A lich, for instance, often mentions an “unspeakable evil act”. Something so bad that nothing specific has ever been printed.


Then you have necromancy… plus clerics that can confirm that only the soul moves on. In my settings or settings that fail to specify burial practices I go with cremation. Suddenly most undead can’t exist unless no one was around to burn the body.

[Keltest]

i see the opposite problem: how do most undead even exhist at all.
the descriptions always mention stuff like people incredibly greedy, or people dead in unspeakable acts of violence, or people single-mindedly consumed by a single drive...
only the most exceptional people would become undead. considering the average adventurer party slays them by the dozen, one wonders how there are undead around in the first place

A non-trivial number of undead are basically contagious. Wights create zombies when they drain the life out of you, for example. Ghouls and Ghasts come from cannibals, but also apparently just happen when Orcus feels like it sometimes. Shadows can create other shadows when they kill. Wraiths create Spectres. Its no wonder that there are all sorts of undead running around in that case.

[Telwar]

I've always assumed that such behaviors have a CHANCE of producing an undead, not a guarantee.

Between that, and burial practices *generally* halting spontaneous undead conversion, you really shouldn't have much of an undead problem, unless someone's going out and making them willfully or you get some sort of planar intrusion event.

PF2E's Book of the Dead talks a lot about that, actually.

[Mechalich]

In many systems undead can be created deliberately, either by necromantic magic or simply by mistreating a corpse in a suitably ritual fashion. This means that even if appropriate funeral rites prevent the spontaneous generation of undead, a bad guy can murder a bunch of people to deliberately create undead afterwards.

There's also the fact that undead persist. They are not removed from a setting unless destroyed (some rare exceptions like Vampires, which potentially can starve to death, do exist). This means that so long as the undead destruction rate is below the undead generation rate the number of undead in the setting will continually increase, because "the dead don't die."

[Quertus]

A lich, for instance, often mentions an “unspeakable evil act”. Something so bad that nothing specific has ever been printed.

Sigh. The specifics were printed in earlier editions; it required creating a potion with ingredients like "baby poisoned with arsenic or belladonna".

[Keltest]

Sigh. The specifics were printed in earlier editions; it required creating a potion with ingredients like "baby poisoned with arsenic or belladonna".

Well i mean, if they could print it, then it wouldnt be unspeakable would it?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sigh. The specifics were printed in earlier editions; it required creating a potion with ingredients like "baby poisoned with arsenic or belladonna".

Well i mean, if they could print it, then it wouldnt be unspeakable would it?

As a note, 5e's lich is quite a different beast than earlier editions in many ways. So I'd be loath to expect that the ritual is the same. And "unprintable", I suspect, really means "so squicky we'd get an M rating (or our retailers/customers would rebel) if we published it."

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As to the main topic, my (homebrew) setting takes inspiration from Dragon Age--undead[1] all arise when entities called jotnar possess the remains of creatures. These are effectively entropy-spirits; beings that exist purely out of hunger. They destroy everything around them, being effectively fragments of a sentient black-hole entity trapped in the heart of the Abyss (which was formed like a cyst around the wound in reality formed by this all-devourer). The bad kind of necromancy summon and manipulate these jotnar; demon summoning[2], the presence of undead, and mass murders/pain/suffering/'evil' action weaken the walls of the universe so that jotnar naturally leak through.

Jotnar, by their very existence, drain the "life force" (anima/aether) out of their environment. So a heavily-undead-infested area presents as entirely sterile, with even the rocks and buildings starting to crumble and "go soft" as their essence is destroyed. Small undead take longer; "free-willed" undead such as liches/vampires need to actively feed to retain their existence/sanity (lest the jotnar in them eat their souls). And all undead desire the end of all existence. Although "desire" is the wrong word--they are the destruction of all existence by their nature.

Spoiler: categories of undead

Show

"Small" undead (skeletons, zombies, other mostly-mindless creatures) are jotnar-puppets. They have very little of the original entity. But they hunger to destroy everything around them, especially anything that lives (that being effectively their only emotion/thought). The incorporeal minor ones are jotnar-infested nimbuses[3] instead of jotnar-infested bodies. But none of the original soul remains, and only tiny fragments of memory or personality.

"Medium" undead (ghasts, ghouls, wights, etc) were either still alive or only newly dead when the jotnar infested them. So much so that their nimbus and body were both taken. This produces a semblance of life and intelligence, driven by the jotnar's destructive essence. The ghoul fever and wight life drain are manifestations of this more than actual diseases. They retain memory and personality to some degree, but heavily warped (and progressively so) toward destruction.

"Large" undead (vampires and liches and assorted similar creatures) are slightly different. Effectively they were people who intentionally summoned (via rituals for the OG vampires and normal liches, via contagion for modern vampires) jotnar into themselves while alive (usually the rituals would kill them, but they start when alive) but shielded their own souls (eg in the phylactery) . They are demons in the flesh, feeding the jotnar on other souls/life and leeching off of its unnatural power. It's a delicate balance--don't feed enough and the jotnar eats you and wears you as a meat puppet, feed too much and you are rejected by the universe and shoved into the Abyss with other demons (which is what you'd become). Modern vampires usually fall prey to the first fate due to the inefficiency of the modern creation ritual, falling into the Hunger. There's just not enough power draw in feeding on blood that way. Liches tend to do better, as the lichification ritual is an evolved version of the OG vampire ritual.

So the big defenses against undeadification are
1) kill undead-creators and demonologists on sight. Don't let them live or work near you. The very act of worshipping demons or creating undead drastically increases the chance of spontaneous undead formation. This takes care of most of the problem for "normal" people (those not unlucky enough to have PCs near by).
2) Have the clerics bless the graves and tend them, dissipating pockets of necromantic energy and strengthening the veil
3) Don't live near battlefields; abandon areas that were home to atrocities until they can be purged.
4) When all else fails, call for adventurer help to root out any established undead. And then pay them to go away quickly, before the narrative laws draw other catastrophes down on your village.

[1] except ghosts and a few others that are basically created by an excessive attachment or a dire need/Oath. But those tend to be bound to a place or a cause. And even some of those oath-bound ones voluntarily accept a jotnar and imprison it so they can "live" forever for their cause, knowing that their own souls are the price for that.
[2] demons are the end-case of this--skip the whole "living while dead" thing and go straight to the Abyss and manipulate jotnar for power, at the cost of needing to consume souls to do so. So summoning demons brings a swarm of jotnar along with them, like fleas. One reason why summoning demons is not considered a friendly act.
[3] Living creatures have 3 parts: body, "soul", and nimbus; the last is the interface between the soul and the immaterial world (including magic). Both the body and the nimbus contain "echoed" memories and personality. In most cases, the nimbus ~ mind/spirit; effects that attack the mind really attack the nimbus.

[KorvinStarmast]

And then pay them to go away quickly, before the narrative laws draw other catastrophes down on your village.

Or the bard will seduce ... pretty much everyone ... which will cause a manifestation marital strife throughout the town once everyone sobers up ...

Full Disclosure: my bard never actually did this, but the temptation was there.

[Vahnavoi]

One important thing to remember of real life is that a lot of undead myths are founded in real fear of disease. A second is that natural evils such as diseases and moral evils are not intuitively distinct. Humans have assumed both obey the law of contagion: death and evil are tangible, physical forces which in the long term cause tangible, physical decay, and they can contaminate you through touch or even mere presence through unseen causation. Correct ritual steps have to be observed to be safe from or cleanse the contagion.

Once you understand this, it should become obvious the title question is wrong way around. Many undead are manifestations of moral and physical rot, the real question is how does anyone stay sane, healthy and alive in settings with such creatures? Real world provides the depressing answer: a lot of people won't. A lot of time, the steps taken to ward off curse of undead ought to be ineffectual at best and fatal at worst.

This relates to the concept of "unspeakability" as well. Saying something is unspeakable, unthinkable, unmentionable etc. is a moral condemnation, not a statement of something being literally unable to be said, thought, mentioned etc.. You should not speak, think or mention these things because they are a vector for spreading the contagion: call evil by its name and it will come. Entertaining such ideas at all is unclean. It's a sign there's something wrong with you.

How well you understand and agree with concept of unspeakability on an intuitive level is a good litmus test for how well you'd do in a world where world obeys magical thinking.

[DigoDragon]

To paraphrase The Amazing Screw-on Head:
"Everyone of reasonably high intelligence should be cremated in the interest of national security."

More simply, if the undead are a common problem in a society, then the society would adapt by destroying the bodies of their dead to prevent them from rising.

[oxybe]

To paraphrase The Amazing Screw-on Head:
"Everyone of reasonably high intelligence should be cremated in the interest of national security."

To put it simply, if the undead are a common problem in a society, then the society would adapt by destroying the bodies of their dead to prevent them from rising.

That's how you get Furnace Wraiths.

Y'all just burn the body with the soul still in it and didn't give it the proper funeral rites to sever the connection and lead the soul to the otherworld, condemning the soul to forever burn and tied to a body that no longer exists.

I know it's hard to find Lichglove root to burn as incense while reading the liturgy but we need to be on the ball here, as we now have a ghost who hates all living creatures that lobs burning ectoplasm the fire extinguisher doesn't work on, and Calvin likely won't be back with one of them fancy Church Exorcists for the next two weeks, because the ghost lit the barn on fire and the horses ran off!

[Easy e]

People die in RPGs for the same reasons they die in comic books, obviously!

[Lord Torath]

I would also add that just because a type of undead appears in the Monstrous Manual doesn't mean it must appear in your world. There is absolutely nothing requiring you to include every (or even any!) monster in the book in your campaign. Feel free to have no ghouls and ghasts in your next world.

[DigoDragon]

That's how you get Furnace Wraiths.

Y'all just burn the body with the soul still in it and didn't give it the proper funeral rites to sever the connection and lead the soul to the otherworld, condemning the soul to forever burn and tied to a body that no longer exists.

No, no, see, we can profit from this. What we do is build a sanctified boiler and cremate the body in there. Now we have a train engine that runs on the burning souls of the damned.

[LibraryOgre]

No, no, see, we can profit from this. What we do is build a sanctified boiler and cremate the body in there. Now we have a train engine that runs on the burning souls of the damned.

"Woo-hoo! We're riding this rail all the way to INTERPLANAR WAR CRIMES! YA-HOO!"

[Stonehead]

Someone messed up the funeral rituals? Undead.

... You yourself already started pointing out what prevents the zombie apocalypse - spells like gentle repose exist. ...

What makes the funeral rites bit particularly funny to me, is that it kind of implies that the default state after dying is to become undead, and we need active conscious effort to actually stay dead. Like, if a human dies, it will become undead, unless acted upon by an opposing force.

A rabbit gets eaten by a wolf and left to rot? Bones. A human gets eaten by a wolf and left to rot? Zombie.

[Vahnavoi]

You're only going halfway. It's not given at all that animals are exempt of the spiritual struggle. To use classic AD&D Great Wheel as an example, there's a host of nature spirits and an entire secret society of humans, the druidic circle, actively and consciously acting to preserve the status quo of the natural world. The prime material plane is the central knot for a tug of war between three opposed pairs (neutral good versus neutral evil, lawful neutral versus chaotic neutral, lawful good versus chaotic evil) each pulling their way and one party in the middle (true neutral) trying to drag everyone closer to the center. It may very well be that if the holy/good/lawful party falters, the unholy/evil/chaotic party will gain ground and suddenly bunny skeletons will rise up and eat the wolves in upheaval of natural order.

[Mechalich]

What makes the funeral rites bit particularly funny to me, is that it kind of implies that the default state after dying is to become undead, and we need active conscious effort to actually stay dead. Like, if a human dies, it will become undead, unless acted upon by an opposing force.

This is not an unknown possibility in some fantasy settings. In Exalted, this was more or less the case, a person who died and who was not given proper funeral rites would leave a Hungry Ghost behind (whether or not they left a reasoning-capable ghost behind as well was more nebulous). That was just what happened to that part of the soul. This sort of setup is also common in various zombie apocalypse scenarios where anyone who dies for any reason will rise as a zombie.

Now its important that, if a setting functions in this way, the world-building reflects that. If the world operates where anyone who dies and isn't properly buried becomes a rampaging killing machine, societies are going to take extremely strong steps to minimize the number of cases where this occurs and, for the small fraction that is impossible to prevent (some people will always end up dying alone in difficult to find locations, like by falling into caves) there will be ready and capable forces to counter this problem. If there are ghosts, there is a market for ghostbusters.

[Lord Raziere]

This is not an unknown possibility in some fantasy settings. In Exalted, this was more or less the case, a person who died and who was not given proper funeral rites would leave a Hungry Ghost behind (whether or not they left a reasoning-capable ghost behind as well was more nebulous). That was just what happened to that part of the soul. This sort of setup is also common in various zombie apocalypse scenarios where anyone who dies for any reason will rise as a zombie.

Now its important that, if a setting functions in this way, the world-building reflects that. If the world operates where anyone who dies and isn't properly buried becomes a rampaging killing machine, societies are going to take extremely strong steps to minimize the number of cases where this occurs and, for the small fraction that is impossible to prevent (some people will always end up dying alone in difficult to find locations, like by falling into caves) there will be ready and capable forces to counter this problem. If there are ghosts, there is a market for ghostbusters.

Technically not actually "default". Technically, in Exalted undead and underworld didn't exist until the Exalted killed a few primordials and because their souls can't reincarnate, they became Neverborn. this kind of....broke the intended cycle of reincarnation a bit. But not entirely. See, its perfectly possible for the cycle of reincarnation to work by default in Exalted. its not just not completely clear about the specifics for the sake of plot hooks. its a sometimes thing. the whole undead thing matters more if your in a shadowland, if there is a major unresolved passion, near a shadowland things like that. the Exalted 3e corebook is explicit that some souls refuse to pass on, not all. sure such rites are important throughout all Creation and funerists accompany armies on the march, but there is enough wiggle room for undead to simply not happen sometimes especially in lands in Immaculate lands and its possible to purify shadowlands with salt, its just that well for the truly big shadowlands that matter this is expensive.

its known problem and dealt with, its just not a 100% of the time thing.