>>51387486
Stop using names. And the usual statblocks.

>Same with liches.
Well, I've heard of players murdering a Jewish merchant not out of antisemitism or greed but purely because GM mentioned phylacteries while describing his household.

You can't make them great again. You failed to introduce them in an interesting way that conveyed just how monstrous these creatures are, and fucked up the first impression. It's also the fault of your players for playing the game like a hack and slash.

>>51387525
> This man is not a living thing - he is a creature of the night, drinking life out of his victims to prolong his exis...
So, a vampire.
> Well, we ain't calling him that.

>>51387525
>Stop using names
>Hurr you're fighting a dude that change sinto a killing machine during full moons and is vulnerable to silver
>It's not a wereolf though it's a wealdhungerer which is totally different

>>51387486
By giving them unique personalities, goals, and MO's. Voldemort wasn't just some random boss fight at the bottom of a dungeon, he was a man with a vision for the future. An evil vision, but a vision nonetheless. And he didn't just go around killing every single person in his way--he preferred to sway his enemies towards his cause if he could. He was like a wizard version of Senator Armstrong, outwardly charismatic and affable but won't hesitate for a second to vaporize you if you commit to being his enemy.

>What are some obscure monsters I can use to make my players fear and respect the unknown?

Check out the SCP Foundation.

>>51387550
>>51387596
Any assumptions the players make are their own fault, and could very well be wrong.

>>51387596
>wealdhungerer
that's an enjoyable name. did you make it up?

>>51387486
>1) Can vampires and liches and the kind be made great again? How?
Easy, make them proportionately powerful and give them quality characterization. The player knows all the regular tropes, and if you create a compelling, layered character who is self-aware of their own tropes, you can spice things up.

For example, your BBEG is a traditional vampire, hates garlic, melts in the sun, needs to drink blood. Well, what advantages do vampires have that can mitigate it? They don't really need to breath, and outside of consuming blood, they're dead for all intents and purposes. Why not make a mecha vampire with syringe fingers and a portable blood container for combat/harvesting prey? That way they could be a shriveled elderly husk who never sees the light of day, but also a fierce combatant. Now, what if your setting is fantasy, and mecha doesn't go over well? Make them some sort of badass knight with fancy armor that leeches life from the wearer, and he mitigates it by sharing the blood harvested. Let's say you really want to do a zombies game, but you want to have a vampire boss monster. Why not encase him in solid stone, then have a giant legion of psychic zombies ritualistically sacrifice humans at his altar to sate his bloodlust? You could even make him some sort of ancient deity that the villagers fear for bonus plot points.

Liches are in the same boat. They've sacrificed their humanity to gain immortality, so why not give them a dead-skin mask that looks human, but isn't? Beef up his powers, make him some sort of abominable amalgamation of various human body parts that can raise the dead, and warp the minds of others, but humanize it somehow. Give it the selective appearance of a human, but actions that are distinctly inhuman, or give it a deep yearning to become human again, but no understanding of what that means. You can even give it the mind of a normal human in the twisted body of some sort of monster, like Emperor Leto.

>>51387596

Hey there, wealdhungerer is better than Lycan.

Vampire = Sanguir, maybe the Lurking Thirst

>>51387525
I used to have a buddy that DM'd games like this. He'd describe these fantastic scenes where you'd get a vague glance at a creature as it slipped through the shadows, you'd have to guess and test to figure out what magic items did, and there was always an investigation phase where we had to piece together what we were going to have to fight or if we could even kill it...

First game I played with him, we ran into some spooky skeletons that were dispatched with haste. We back tracked through a room where we'd battled a lot of them and he described it as clean and quiet. "Except for the skeletons you mean" ... "What skeletons?"... It was super tense leading up to a huge ambush where everything we'd killed came at us at once. We'd had to find out what was animating them to make it stop.

>>51388298
Nothing was ever as simple as just hitting it with a sword or setting it on fire... I mean, if that was all it took why would a village need to hire you when the blacksmith is an ogre of a man?

The solution is to either get players who don't know the monster weaknesses, use obscure ones or just make your own.

>>51387486
Get new players :p

Running curse of strahd and they hurt Tatyana. They fucking PANICKED when strahd showed up in a rage ready to throw the fuck down.

They brought her back to full up as all the healers blew their wad at once, and he withdrew once she began to scream at the sight of him.

He backhanded the warlock leaving him with one hp, and savagely tore the throat out of their NPC
Swordsmen. (Who is coming back as a revenant to haunt their asses)

We've become jaded to these threats because we keep killing them.

That's all.

Like a drug addict who has to keep upping the dose to get the same effect.

>>51387486
Stop playing D&D.

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Start off with the classic tropes. The vampire, the werewolf, the lich, the witch, the necromancer, whatever. Hell, maybe even camp it up a little.

Then, you pull open the stitching and show them a glimpse of the living horrors that live between the stars.

The ageless, formless forms that dwell in the places beyond human perception or understanding.

Beings so alien and unimaginable that rudimentary concepts like good and evil cannot even apply.

For them to turn their gaze upon humanity for even the barest moment would bring terrors undreamed of.

The walking nightmares they've faced so far, the vampire, the lich, they're little more than mindless parasites, fools and madmen who stumbled and floundered onto a grain of truth and were warped by it, turned inside out, their minds and souls flayed raw. They grew fat and mad on the barest sliver of insight, on a scrap of epiphany, and that was all it took to make monsters.

basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body. that’s basically fine.

if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.

unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.

>>51390505
Dude, WTF are you smoking, and were can I get some?

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>>51387550
>...sure, your character would probably draw that conclusion.

You can pull a Conan.

Conan is trying to chase after some evil priests inside a pyramid - and he runs into a vampire. A beautiful young girl from some lost civilization that existed thousands of years before. So Conan does some quick combat math in his head - AND HE RUNS LIKE HELL IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

Sometimes, you just need to make it clear to the players that any combat with a foe automatically leads to total and utter death, and no amount of player character plot armour will save them.
The whole statblock that is described with only one sentence "Cthulhu eats 2D6 player characters a turn, no saves allowed" idea.

Make up some new monsters, or restyle existing ones.

In a game I ran last year, I reskinned mummies into undead with nooses around their necks and their faces burned off. They wore veils and robes to hide themselves but no shoes, and their eyes could shine like spotlights. Players loved them.

For your vampire, play up the cool stuff about vampires like their immortality and compsure, and give them one or two surprises, like having a decoy coffin or being unperturbed by holy things.

>>51387626
This. Thouthans times this.

The best monster BBEG I ever played against wasn't that powerful statblock wise, bit he was a great character, and he acted smart. We lost our first party to him because he outsmarted us, and our next party had to deal with the first one turned to his undead agents.

Best part the guy had some good reasons behind his actions and had genuinely loyal subordinates that served him because they believed in his reasons rather than "for the evuls" like usual henchmen.

Its relative to the GM.
When I played Rise of the Runelords for first time it felt very generic in Burnt Offerings but the Skimsaw Murders came and everything took a very unexpected turn.
The reason was one of the villains in that second module, Aldern Foxglove. Stat wise is just a ghast with a few rogue levels but my god did the Gm a good job making him a memorable villain. Before his transformation he was played as a very charming guy and when we found him being the Skinsaw man and that he suffered a MPD we couldn't see him just as "another ghoul".
One of the most creepy things that I remember a part of his constant personality shifts which made us doubt if there could be a way to turn him back was that our GM played well the fact he was undead. He disjointed limbs and even his spine for dodge attacks, climbed and crawled around like a spider and his attacks with the razor were described as those as a serial killer would inflict on a victim for toying with him/her.

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>>51387486
Make the Lich cute

>>51387486

You make them great by making them rare and powerful. Even a minor creature can become impressive if you paint it with a new layer of godblood.

>skeleton
>is able to incorporate the bones of the dead into its form
>can jump from corpse to corpse
>has control over gravedirt
>haunts people in their dreams
>induces paranoia in all those who look into his eyes
>can banish light and manipulate shadows
>can make bone-constructs

>>51390492

>Beings so alien and unimaginable that rudimentary concepts like...

Paragraphs. I see you, Cthulu.

>>51390492
I like your wording(maybe you're just quoting Lovecraft wholesale), I'm guessing you make a good DM. Random thought but your description made me think of the heat death of the universe and how it might not be reversible and that though as advanced as we may get we will ultimately just accept our demise because what we have to become and leave behind to tangle with the cosmic forces will mean the destruction of what we are all the same, in the same way that dealing with the old gods is foolish and the best you can hope for is just for them not to care about you in your lifetime or ever

>>51387596
If you can't describe mundane objects in in a way they aren't obvious to the players, you shouldn't be GMing. That's a fact.

>>51387525
This.

Describe what they can see, ear, ect... but don't use names.

"the creature", "the beast", "the monster", "the horror", "the abomination", "the... thing", "whatever it might be"...

>>51391204

Or even do the opposite and really make it clear what it seems to be (with a few subtle hints to the contrary), but then tear it all away when the group tries to fight it in the way they should but find it has no effect.

>try to fight a vampire with silver and stakes
>the vampire's head splits open, tentacles burst out, and it starts spraying acid everywhere

>>51387626
SCP foundation is actually a really good idea for a place to get monster ideas. Thanks man, I'd forgotten about it.

>>51387539
Kek

>>51387486
> Oh, a vampire.
> Oh, a lich.
> Oh, a devil.
Try giving them some class levels, actual intelligence and support services.

Players won't be afraid of something they can take in a fair fight, so you just need to make it a social problem as well as a combat problem.

The vampire gets away because you found him in the middle of the night on a hunt and while you got him into a mist form he escaped. Now you wake up and everyone else in the inn is dead, drained of blood and turned into wights and there's a sign saying "you're next, bucko" stapled to the cute buxom barmaid's forehead. How are you going to stay awake every night? How are you going to deal with the horde of zombies and townsfolk that this vamp has amassed in the next three nights while you were trying to hole up? How are you going to deal with this plague?

>Oh a lich
If you can't make this interesting you're terrible. A lich works or fails through his personality, and the things he can do with a giant bunch of spells.

>>51391204
I've once pulled the old-ass Displaced scenario on my players. But rather than talking about "soldiers in green uniforms pointing their rifles at slightest rustle", it was a story about weird-clothed foreigners, who were carrying some bizzare clubs or maybe spears, speaking a language not even the party's bard heard.

>>51387486
well make them different anon. Dracula and Voldemort are the vampire elite and lich elite. Monsters that have achieved human form.

Once upon a time some /tg/anon came up with the idea of vampires being giant leeches. So go from there.
A bloodless vampire would be small, pale looking, possibly weak. They would have these weird mouths with the razorsharp teeth and anti-coagulating poison.
But once they feed, the bloat up in size. Much more powerful, these big see-through glands on their backs filled with the targets blood etc. Go wild really..
But with the case of ex. Dracula. He might be an anomaly. A mutant. And since he is born as something unnatural (to the vampires) there are two choices: Be killed because you are different or become the biggest and baddest leech and show them all what you can do.
Drac naturally did the last thing. Using his human form he tricked people into his lair, drained them for blood.. He may have some sort of mesmerizing trait in his poison, who knows. The sky is the limit anon.

As for the lich just look at what they originally was/is. Some sort of magician that took his or her soul and locked it away so death wouldn't be an option.
So.. make them magical mummies. Bodies that have been wrapped with arcane energies for centuries. As the centuries go, naturally their bodies will decay (but bones remain) but as a lich awakens they will try to find new bodyparts (naturally the best they can find and preferably magical) and will continue to kill until they have a fully formed body once again.
Now imagine a being with a magical skeleton with bodyparts of the finest monsters and magicians. A lich with the eyes of a basilisk or gorgon, skin of the tarrasque to reflect spells etc.
And if you should manage to kill this being, its skeleton will reform in 1d10 days and it will have a new chance to remake its body by starting to kill once again.
Basically treat this sort of lich as a serial killer a la Freddy or Jason

>>51391249
SCP-140 is a great example of an evil that your party can try to stop. For reference: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-140

Some cult could get their hands on it, and over time you slowly alter known landmarks to make the PCs question what's going on, but have NPCs act as though it's always been that way. Though, because the party may be particularly slow to notice what's going on, or the cult may have a hold of the book for a long time, perhaps the Daevite civilization instead existed several thousands of years ago.

>>51387486
You wanna GREAT monsters again? stop going full on high fantasy, for real, stop making the world litering with MYTHICAL BESTIAL creatures, go low, make it mundande, make it about the conflict btween humans(or whatever other race, just don't do literal monsters), and then, rarelly get a monster on plot, then it will be THE THING, as its rare and no fucker has ever seen one before, nor is expecting one.

>>51391275
>Now you wake up and everyone else in the inn is dead, drained of blood and turned into wights and there's a sign saying "you're next, bucko" stapled to the cute buxom barmaid's forehead.
Or there's no wight and no note, just an angry mob demanding an answer why the fuck they're the only surviving ones.

>>51387486
>But in DnD, both of them would be just another couple of monsters.
No.

This is what happens when a GM in ANY game gets lazy and throws out a monster for PCs to kill without actually THINKING about what the monster is, why it's there, and what it is doing.

Even a random encounter - such as with a rhemoraz - should take into account the monster's reasons and actions. The rhemoraz in question heard hoofbeats through the snow and earth, and came up under a horse, killing it. It came up out of the snow and found there were a bunch of tiny creatures on top of the horses, armed with swords and strangely dressed. Like tiny front giants except dressed strangely.

All it wanted was it's lunch, so it didn't attack them immediately, and it didn't start heating up. It merely tried to move the horse away from them so it could eat in piece. when they attacked, it killed another horse then backed away, waiting for them to get the hint - it was bigger and more dangerous. NOW it started to heat it's back and rise threateningly. when they made their sense motive checks, I told them: it seems to just want the horses for food.

They pressed the attack and instigated a near total party wipe, but more importantly, the rhemoraz didn't just stand there and take it. It burrowed, and tried to sneak up under them and around them. It used the rocks and terrain as cover to try and surprise them. It avoided the spellcaster who used a ray of enfeeblement, scaring the creature.

The important part of this is that the creature was played as intelligent as it is - a rhemoraz is not a dumb beast, it actually is fairly smart. It used the things around it in it's assault. It would have been amenable to letting the party go. It wasn't just a monster - it was an encounter that the players remember well because the mosnter was a personality and a threat and INTERESTING.

A monster without personality or played as a statblock is ALWAYS the fault of the GM, in any game.

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>>51387486
>a good example of a lich antagonist is Voldemort
I liked Rasputin from 'Anastasia' better, personally.

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>>51390505

Why not use mythology's original lich, Koschei the Deathless?

He wears full plate armour like if it was light as a feather;
He can magically create and spread winter;
He can petrify an entire kingdom at once.

>>51391646
Seems slightly OP

>>51391717
Isn't that exactly what OP was asking for?

>>51391143
Please. Lovecraft would never write something like "formless forms".

>>51387486
Make something new. Convince them they are going against a vampire but it actually turns out to be like a Booodsucker from Stalker or something.

Instead of a standard lich, what about an awoken catacombs? Like the ones in france, just bones everywhere. The walls keep trying to kill you, constantly get lost, ect.

>>51391782

He'd say "unknowable forms of terror". Half his shit was just "I can't describe it, but it's really scary, trust me, like your head would exploderise".

>>51387626
Voldy was actually just a lich. A wizard with 7 phylacteries. People don't normally think of him that way because of the way the author put so much good work into him.

In short, you suck as a DM if your monsters are boring statblocks, and its your own fault.

>>51387486
That's the nature of the game, dude. Firstly stop using trashy monsters and secondly stop describing them to your players as obviously trashy monsters. Vampires are supposed to be deceptive, if your guys are spotting them a mile away then stop that.

That's it. I'm sick of all this "Zombies are low-level trash" bullshit that's going on in the d20 system right now. Zombies deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.

I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine zombie in Japan for 2,400,000 Yen (that's about $20,000) and have been practicing on it for almost 2 years now. I can't even wound it permanently with my katana.

Japanese biotechnicians spend years working on a single zombie and infected up to a million people to produce the finest zombies known to mankind.

Zombies are thrice as resilient as cavalry and thrice as dangerous for that matter too. Anything a werewolf can fight, a zombie can kill better. I'm pretty sure a zombie could easily destroy an entire civilisation with a simple infected bite.

Ever wonder why medieval Europe never bothered staking the corpses of zombies? That's right, they were too scared to fight the shambling hordes and their plagues of destruction. Even in World War II, American soldiers targeted the nazi zombies first because their epidemic potential was feared and respected.

So what am I saying? Zombies are simply the best universal enemy that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in the d20 system. Here is the stat block I propose for undeads:

(Simple undead - zombie template)
1d10 Damage
Regenerates 2d4 hp per round
+2 to hit and damage (magical), transmits a random disease to the target DC=20 Constitution
Counts as "base creature template + magical (negative plane)"

(Complex undead - plague zombie)
2d10 Damage
Regenerates 3d5 hp per round
+5 to hit and damage, transmits a random disease per round to all within 10' DC=30 Constitution
Counts as "base creature template + magical (negative plane)" and raises all slain foes as plague zombies, raises all nearby corpses as zombies.

Now that seems a lot more representative of the Undead horror of Zombies in real life, don't you think?

>>51391967
I for one can never understand why zombies are treated as cannon fodder for low level creatures, by all accounts a zombie would be terrifying. Even your basic level 0 peasant becomes a whole lot more scary when things like pain, fear and inhibitions are stripped away. The fact that humans only consciously use a portion of their strength and that a zombie would more likely swing at you with as much force as their bodies can muster (more than enough to break their own bones and yours) would put them 2 levels above the simple commoner cattle they are bred from. Imagine a zombie level 1 fighter suddenly gaining +4 str and being immune to everything but total bodily destruction in addition to having a fucking 2-hander to swing at you. I'd be scared. I'd be running.

>>51391877

>Voldy was actually just a lich.

Except he wasn't undead. His physical forms were living, breathing bodies.

>>51387486
You first have to ask yourself this question:
Why aren't these monsters cool anymore?
In my opinion, the answer is quite obvious: you're playing in a universe with too much surnatural. Since there's magic EVERYWHERE, nothing is exceptional about magic anymore.

Therefore:
You want to make liches and vampires cool?
Then try playing in a universe with no magic. Make the antagonists simple humans. And make these humans monsters in ways they could be IRL too.
Yes, that's difficult. Yes, that requires a lot of imagination. But it definitely is a great exercise, and it will definitevely work in two different simultaneous ways:
1) These bad guys will be very charismatic, as they succeed in being horrible without magic, and in a way closer to the players' real lives (that will therefore impact their feelings more easily).
2) Surnatural monsters will become REALLY surnatural again. If you decide to finally put one in the game, it will really be extraordinary and mark your players.

>>51392082
His bodies were constructed. Not real bodies. And he's never shown any need to eat or sleep after being ressirected.
>back of quirrels head
>a pile of junk in the woods that a spell was cast on
>"Live bodies"
No, I don't think so. Fucks sake, he even has a familiar. Any other minor differences can easily be excused as "well Liches work this way in this setting" since there's always small differences. It's just good writting making up for using a tired monster type. The interesting stuff comes from the DM, not from the monster manual entry.

>>51388419
>He backhanded the warlock leaving him with one hp

And level drained him, I hope. Vampires do that, you know.

>>51392184

But they're still live bodies, regardless of who they were made. His last one was made of the flesh of an ally, the bones of an ancestor, and the blood of an enemy and basically gave his already existing small, frail and deformed body his old form again. Which is why he's not cadaverous, like liches are. "Fucks sake", the word lich means corpse.

>>51391736
Not quite. Making a monster horrendously above a parties capabilities makes them not scary, OOC, either because they're too bullshit to actually care about or too incompetent to actually use their massive capabilities.
He doesn't want to make them have a hard encounter, he wants to make them fear the encounter. Koschei is just a lich. A strong lich, but the players know what a lich is and he'll sound the exact same as all the other push come to shove.

>>51392227
>"Fucks sake", the word lich means corpse.
I never thought about that. Being scandinavian, I never connecte the dots between Lich and our word for a corpse; Lik.

>>51392227
Isn't that basically only in Spanish? In many other languages, Lich just mean the gateway or wall or a graveyard, or the path you carry a coffin on. Any of those seem a fitting metaphor for Voldys position. Face it, your players are bored with you because of your presentation, not because of the monsters.

>>51392227
>Live bodies
I think the point was that that remains to be proven. None of these ingredients together normally make a live body, and could easily be components for a Creat Undead spell.

>>51392275

It's also in Germanic and Nordic languages for corpse, but usually in variations like "leiche" and "lik". That's where the word comes from.

Also, not sure what you're on about with "my players". I'm not a DM, I'm just pointing out that Voldemort isn't a lich.

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>>51392295
Lich means lots of things.
And in saying that because you're awfully defensive about someone else being able to turn a stake creature type into something creative and interesting. Keep denying it, keep only using standard unvaried kinds of monsters, and keep having boring games.

>>51391852
The point is that he paid tremendous attention to quality writing, even if it was extremely melodramatic.

>>51387486
>>But if we remember where the vampires came from, Dracula wasn't just a vampire - he was the vampire, the focus of the plot and the most dangerous thing ever.
Yes because that was a self contained story, Dracula was the main villain of a story but he was often a background character. The Vampire was (and usually still is) more of a symbolism for thing. Greed, anger, disease, thrist for violence etc.

Check Extra Credits' episode on "the monster"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mHCG4zbCPM

>>51392310
Being exterior to your conversation, I believe you are a lot more defensive than him. He's just pointing out flaws in your argument, while you, on the other hand, are constantly adding to your posts useless and emotional phrases such as "you're awfully defensive", "keep denying it", "face it", etc.

I guess I'm lucky enough to have players that don't go full HURR DURR the moment I throw a classic creature at them.
I do think this thread is trying to answer a problem that doesn't exist.
Seriously, how many times have you people posting actually run into a were-creature? How many liches have you fought and truly defeated, without cost?
How many times have you saved a princess from a dragon, despite it being "so stereotypical"?

>>51392310

And in the very specific sense of Lich as a creature, it came from the Germanic and Nordic words for corpse. There's no arguing that.

But no, I'm not defensive, I'm not a DM, and I'm not having boring games (I don't even play tabletop shit, I come here for lore and ideas). I just don't consider Voldemort a Lich and we're having a discussion as to why. I'm sorry it triggered your autism.

>>51391852
>Half his shit was just "I can't describe it, but it's really scary, trust me, like your head would exploderise".
That is a lie, he described many of his creatures in detail from the eyes of the characters in his stories.
You are the same shitter from the last Yog-Sothery thread we had, with the exact same sentences.
>>51392052
You don't do that with your zombies? I always had a mob rules effect, where every zombie within X distance made the other zombies stronger in an order of magnitude.

>>51392310
>>51392339
Also, the word lich never appears in the books OR the movies. I mean, you can INTERPRET Voldemort as some king of unconventional lich, but saying he definitely is one is clearly biased.

>>51390505
You're a beautiful soul.

>>51392352
>You don't do that with your zombies?
I regards them as what they are, the product of hideously evil magic, their motive force drawn from the Negative Plane and as such significantly more powerful than typical videogames and media make them out. Zombies aren't cut down by the thousands in my games, not unless a dragon takes offence and gives the shambling masses a firebath.

>>51392328
Yep, that's exactly what's happening.
>B-but he's living!
>Unproven for these reasons
>B-but lich means corpse!
>It also means all these other things that fit
>Also a long list of similarities that we're never responded to such as phylacteries, a familiar, and wizard status
Yes, I'm just replying with defensive words. I'm not actually directly responding to his arguments with counter arguments at all. You're totally not cherrypicking here.

>>51392339
>in the very specific example
So you're getting tunnel vision over one thing to ignore obvious multiple connections and avoid the clear answer of the whole? OK.
You originally brought it up to say that Voldy cant be a lich because he's not decomposing and Liches have to look like that because lich means corpse. I'm pointing out to you that Liches don't have to look like that because lich doesn't have to mean corpse. Again, the I retesting features come from the DM, not from the stat block.

>>51392353
Wow, great job, you discovered the whole point. The point being to present an overused monster type in a new and interesting way that keeps the players from recognizing it as that creature. Great job.

>>51392381
Alright, then what do you do to reflect their relative weakness in smaller numbers, and their strength in larger groups?
Or do you redo them from the ground up?

>>51392408
Just a suggestion, if you wanted to add something new and interesting to them;
>Zombies will tend to stick together when they meet another zombie, mindlessly shambling alongside each other. When 3 or more have gathered, the evil energies that sustain them manifest in an aura that makes living creatures physically ill to be near. More zombies multiply this effect.
>They are not the masters of their own forms, and as such are unable to contain this outflow of energy in the same way that intelligent undead can. This is why a caster can only sustain a certain number of zombies at a time, instead of a "fire and forget" method of raising dead, they require a constant refilling of the energy they radiate away.
Make multiple zombies fatigue or maybe even disease living creatures, large groups of zombies give temp negative levels to living.

>>51392389
Silly anon, he has horcruxes, not phylacteries! They're completely different! Don't you know only superficial things matter? If it's on the surface, it's all that counts!

>>51392443
I don't play 3.pf, so neg levels aren't a thing.
What I often do is create bonuses for working in groups.
1 zombie grapples, others gain bonus damage+chance for disease.
With CA, zombies knock prone on hit, leads to grapple -> penalties to escape from grapple, Om Nom special attack, etc.

>>51392389

>So you're getting tunnel vision over one thing to ignore obvious multiple connections and avoid the clear answer of the whole? OK.

No, you just seem set on adding other meanings to the inspiration of the Lich. I'm not sure why, though. Lich was inspired by Germanic and Nordic words for corpse. That isn't the first time I've made this clear, and it seems it won't be the last at this rate.

>You originally brought it up to say that Voldy cant be a lich because he's not decomposing and Liches have to look like that because lich means corpse.

Which is true. Lich means corpse.

>I'm pointing out to you that Liches don't have to look like that because lich doesn't have to mean corpse.

But that's where the name lich comes from. It doesn't matter what you try to argue afterwards, because a lich is a name for a corpse, used to describe a cadaverous being.

>Again, the I retesting features come from the DM, not from the stat block.

But enough of your weird tangent, we're talking Voldemort, but here's a few examples as to why Voldemort is still alive and not a Lich:

>no other examples of Wizards brought back as corpses
>Voldemort needed flesh, blood, and bone to rebuild a new living body
>Voldemort always has a piece of his soul inside him, unlike Liches who are always separate
>Voldemort has multiple horcruxes with fragments of his soul, unlike Liches who only have one
>he wasn't cadaverous

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>>51387486
>>You know, it's might seem like a minor thing to you, but I'm really annoyed how my players keep looking at monsters as statblocks. Not only statblocks, but known statblocks - when they see a nocturnal nobleman, who seems to frequent young ladies, they know it's time to bring out stakes and holy water. It's just another vampire.
Same with liches.

If the players treat monsters as statlocks then you need to use that against them. The key word is dismepowerment. One would say "just change the statblock" which can work but that is way too easy. A good way is surprise them by throwing enemies against them that they are not prepared for.

A simple example

They will fight a vampire with all the stakes, holy water and garlic ready? Have the vampire own a small crowd of innocent and completely normal women he charmed, enslaved or are legitimately in love with him because Stockholme syndrome or whatever. Once your characters get in for the final fight ready to break open the coffin and slay the vampire have the coffin guarded by these women. They are not vampires or ghouls or anykind of monster, they are just normal people that want to protect the vampire. You could even put in NPC the characters met, know or befriended into the crowd. There you have achieved the disempowerment of the characters because 1) the things they prepared are useless 2) they have met an enemy they can fight but actually want to save so it completely messed up their objectives.

And if your players are absolutely autistic murderhobos on a level that they only see XP and loot in everything no matter if it is a bunch of innocent bystanders manipulated by a mistake, then let them kill all the innocent women and then find that the vampire is already long gone while they were busy so all their actions was for naught. Then have them answer for these crimes of murder later.

>>51392486
Negative levels are a thing as long as you use levels. And your way of making them different is just more stats. You could apply that to any creature. After two sessions I would be equally bored with this as I would be with an unchanged zombie. It's just a stat block still.

>>51392491
Saying it doesn't make it true, anon. You can repeat "lich mean corpse" as much as you want, that doesn't erase the other meanings is has. If you're just going to blatantly ignore my counterpoints with "nope, I'm right because I said so" then don't bother responding at all.

>No examples of wizards brought back as corpses
Except Voldemort. And ghosts, in a way. You know what there defenitely isn't? Any example of a wizard being brought back as a living being.
>Voldemort needed flesh, blood, and bone to rebuild a new living body
What exactly do you think Liches are physically made of? If it isn't the same things a living body is made of, you're wrong.
>Voldemort always has a piece of his soul inside him, unlike Liches who are always seperate
>always seperate
>always
Well that's just patently false. On top of that being objectively untrue, this can easily be excused as stylistic differences you'd expect from a different setting.
>Voldemort has multiple horcruxes with fragments of his soul, unlike Liches who only have one
He was the first one to ever do more than one, there had been others before him who only did once. And again, stylistic differences. There's no reason a Lich couldn't have more that one phylactery.
>He wasn't cadaverous
So if a Lich casts Gentle Repose or Restore Corpse, is it not a lich anymore? You're still completely missing the point, only looking at surface details and ignoring all else.

>>51392511
>Negative levels are a thing as long as you use levels
I always found it a stupid mechanic that slows down play, and I play 2e+4e on top of a host of not D&D systems.
As for the rest, what exactly are you looking for, considering what you said yourself is "stat block" as well? What I am doing is playing to a theme, and reinforcing that theme via mechanics. Zombies are the least amount of effort you can put in to creating functioning unliving creatures, but their threat is in their herd mentality and their very mindlessness. They are fearless, relentless, and do not judge "threats"; something that lives is something to consume, and my players mightily dislike my zombies because they will drag a pc down and put them down. You do not need to reinvent the wheel, you need to make the wheel effective for what it is.
It's like how my group rarely kills dragons because they are neither stupid nor suicidal, and are aware that if a battle turns against it, it CAN simply pick up and flee unless it is on it's home turf.

>>51392408
>>51392443
>>51392486
I would simply up the +effective levels gained from being infused by so much energy. Let's go back to my level 1 zombie fighter example. On his own he's a level 1 fighter (zombie) with +4str and like... +30hp, with a racial weakness to Fire. Maybe deduct some dexterity to reflect rigor mortis being in effect (despite being a magical creature it still has a physical body).

Now mr undead fighter is found in a pack of 10, say mr fighter + 9 zombie thugs. He gains +1 level effectively the result of his being surrounded by other beings from the negative plane.

This scales infinitely. A group of 1000 zombies, no matter what their base class will gain +10 effective levels from the raw negative planar energy pulsing from their corpses. If you're fighting a truly monstrous horde of zombies e.g. the consequence of a zombie apocalypse within a major city, where you might be fighting 100,000 zombies or more, the group gestalt gets +20 levels effectively to their base class type.

It would probably be worth it here to make a few other adjustments, say, intelligence set to 2, class becomes "fighter" by default, the only skills they have are ones they possessed in life + grapple + trip. If their intelligence score falls below the score required for any skills they lose those skills permanently. For each level gained they gain 30hp.

So we see that a basic humanoid zombie commoner in a horde of 100k zombies would be a level 1 "+ 19 fighter" with 600hp, he's clumsy but otherwise moves at normal speed and can punch really fucking hard. If he has a steel weapon, chances are he will hit you so hard the weapon would snap or shatter.

A regular pack of zombies raised by a necromancer by comparison, where they are say 10 of them, they are Base creature type and level + 1 fighter level, gain +4 str and gain 60hp.

>>51392579
I mean, did you read my post at all? In-fiction reasoning, behavioral tendencies, metaphysical effects, these are all things that keep a monster interesting. Giving then sneak attack for no real reason other than to make them stronger, and your players only recognizing their threat potential and nothing else, means you could swap out the name zombie for any other name and they'd feel equally about it. It's not making it interesting, it's just making it threatening.

>>51392569

>Saying it doesn't make it true, anon. You can repeat "lich mean corpse" as much as you want, that doesn't erase the other meanings is has.

How are you not getting this? The creature lich was named after the word for corpse. That's why Gygax, Fox, Bierce, and even Lovecraft all use the word to refer to cadaverous beings. It doesn't matter what other words are similar to it, because they weren't the source of the name.

>If you're just going to blatantly ignore my counterpoints with "nope, I'm right because I said so" then don't bother responding at all.

Feel free to point them out so I can refute those too. It probably won't take me long.

>Except Voldemort. And ghosts, in a way. You know what there defenitely isn't? Any example of a wizard being brought back as a living being.

Except Voldemort. He was never brought back as a corpse.

>What exactly do you think Liches are physically made of? If it isn't the same things a living body is made of, you're wrong.

Cadavers. The difference between the two? One's living (like Voldemort) and one's dead (like Liches).

>Well that's just patently false. On top of that being objectively untrue, this can easily be excused as stylistic differences you'd expect from a different setting.

But it's entirely true. All the pieces of his soul are accounted for in his horcruxes and in his own body. How else do you think he existed?

Stylistic differences make him a Vampire, then.

>He was the first one to ever do more than one, there had been others before him who only did once. And again, stylistic differences. There's no reason a Lich couldn't have more that one phylactery.

Even those who did only one still split their soul in two: one for their body, one for their horcrux. Liches never do this.

And yes, Liches can't have more than one, because they can't split their soul.

>So if a Lich casts...

It still has no soul in it, though. Unlike Voldemort, who does.

>>51392611
Except like you, I am putting mechanical effects to their thematics.
The difference is you are using mechanics that do not meh well in the games that I play compared to yours.
Or do you think -1 to defenses, saves, attack rolls, -5 hitpoints, or -2 to attack rolls, can't run or charge is "interesting"?
In 2e, the fact that they will not break due to morale makes them terrifying opponents outright. In 4e, doing what you are talking about boils down to Aura 1/2, -2 to attack/damage rolls/defenses so long as you are in the aura. It is almost exactly the same as what you said you do, except from the GM side of the screen.
I honestly do not know what you are arguing about, because you aren't doing anything really new with your zombie idea, jut reinforcing one of their themes (unnatural creature), and I am reinforcing a different them (unstoppable horde).
In your own words, you could apply your design plan to any undead creature in the game, because all are animated by negative energy, save a sparse few.

>>51392671
Every single one of these points is cyclical logic.
>Voldemort is living because there's example of living reanimations which is Voldemort who is living because there's examples of living reanimations because...
You realize that isn't a real point, right? Every single point you make in this post is cyclical like that. At least I backed up my points with evidence. I'm done with you if you're only going to give me back this crap.

>>51387486
Come up with an interesting monster of your own or adapt one from folklore?
Neither Vampire nor Liches are original, both have their analogues in mythology.

>>51392682
>Except like you, I am putting mechanical effects to their thematics.
Already stopped reading. You really didn't read my post at all. I listed specific circumstances that being about specific status conditions to specific creatures. This is a mechanical effect. The real difference is I have a reason and storytelling elements behind my effects, and yours are just stats.

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>>51387486
>>51391556
>Voldemort
>or Cartoon Rasputin
>a lich exemplar
You both disgust me.

>>51392697

>Every single one of these points is cyclical logic.

That is the weakest refutation I've seen for a while. Either try, or just admit you're wrong. Playing the stubborn child is just pitiful.

>You realize that isn't a real point, right?

What, you mean like "Voldemort is dead because there's examples etc."? The only time undead are mentioned are the inferi. There is never a time anyone mentions a corpse being able to retain a soul. They even made the damn Resurrection Stone just bring back visions of the dead instead of bringing them back to life.

>Every single point you make in this post is cyclical like that.

Claiming it doesn't make it so. Try harder.

>At least I backed up my points with evidence.

Same as above, really.

>I'm done with you if you're only going to give me back this crap.

Really? Are you this deluded? I'm trying to have a discussion and you're acting like a petulant child, but you think it's me with the issue. Grow the fuck up.

>>51392082

The difference is quite slim.

The main difference is that he anchored his soul to the material plane while being still alive

>>51392723
> Slavic fairy tales
> Relevant
Pick one

>>51392731
Holy shit I've never seen such a lack of self awareness.

>>51392734

I suppose it's like the difference between a skeleton and a zombie, in that one just happens to have no flesh.

>>51390966
fuck off and take your junkosuba with you

>>51392713
>The real difference is I have a reason and storytelling elements behind my effects
>Using thematics and characterization to inform on what they do and the nature of their threat
>just stats
Anon, you sound like you have a very high opinion of yourself where it really isn't warranted.
You are the GM, you don't need to act like you need to hide everything behind symbolism that only you will really know.
If the creatures are a threat, why are they a threat? What makes them dangerous? This is what your players are going to be directly dealing with, and you can write pages of fluff about whatever, but what matters is what the players will be confronting.
Further, what do you do when the lore does not match your specific 3.PF version of the planescape? I can't use your reasoning in 4e, or GURPS, or WoD, so then what?

>>51392731
You can reply to me instead, you're giving me a good laugh.

Is Voldemort not actually a wizard since he doesn't use material components for spells?

Tell me again how your points prove themselves, I really liked it when you completely ignored being called out for that and just called him a petulent child when he brought it up!

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>>51390505
>a really frog is not made for removing blood

you sure bout dat?

>>51392749
>proto lich
>not always relevant

>>51392731
>They even made the damn Resurrection Stone just bring back visions of the dead instead of bringing them back to life.
I don't get it. I thought you were saying Voldemort was living, but here you're clearly saying it's nigh impossible to return something to life.

>>51392787

No, that's exactly my point. The dead can't return to life, whereas Liches are the dead that are now anchored to life. Which means Voldemort can't be dead, so must have a living body, and therefore can't be a Lich.

>>51392757

It kinda is, voldemort is stuck in a semi-life, not decaying but still visibly corrupted, however as a trade-off for keeping his vitality, coming back to existence is much more difficult for him

>>51392794
Voldemort can't be a Lich because he's a Lich? What?
He died. He defenitely completely died at least twice, arguably three times. He was either fully ressirected to life, something even the Resurrection Stone couldn't do, or he's undead of some kind, most likely a Lich.

>>51392794
Well, regardless of what he was the threat he presented was due to the writing and his personality not his stats, which was the original point.

>>51392810

Oh, very true and I'm in full agreement. Give any creature a decent presence and you're going have a good villain.

>>51392810
Agreed. Taking old ideas and making them interesting was the point. Arguing that it must be identical in all ways to the original defeats the purpose.

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>>51387486
Make them nearly impossible to deal with by whatever means the party thinks they have on hand. The undead cannot be hack and slashed back into the grave. Perhaps zombies, but vampires and liches, ghosts and wraiths are beyond mundane methods. Even their weaknesses should be difficult to acquire. In the Vampire Hunter D movies, the arrival of one such lord of darkness caused every holy symbol in town to bend and decay, silver tarnished and you can bet every clove of garlic in the place withered to mold somewhere. Minions can be closer to mortals, but keep them strange and monstrous, with methods of attack that take some thinking to counter. Stabbing your shadow, etherealness that only becomes flesh in the moment they strike, creatures that pull the heat from the air by merely existing or a swarm of chittering mutant rats that keep their distance but every one of them is slowly driving you insane.

>>51392794
>The dead can't return to life
>But I'm still arguing that Voldemort is alive
Literally what.

>>51392787

The other anon point, although a bit confused, is on how souls work in HP.

Vodlemort's soul never truly died, thanks to the horcruxes. So, even though it has been extremely difficult to do, he was able to forge a new body for himself. The various books show us that he could be sustained by anything granting immortality, which, in fact, supports the point that he wasn't really dead (the Philosopher stone, unicorn's blood, etc.)

It is also shown to us that the souls of the departed are in another place (except for the ghosts)

>>51392803

Yeah, he's a special case, really. However, he's fairly similar to how Sauron was connected to the Ring, and when it was destroyed he became just a spirit. When Voldemort's killing curse backfired, it unintentionally split his soul again, putting part in Harry and sending the other off like a spirit.

>>51392831


That is because his soul is so frayed and brittle (an aftereffect of the horcruxes)

>>51392827
Is it not the same with Liches? That their souls doesn't truly die when they're killed, but it goes to their phylactery?

>>51392821

Voldemort never died. When people die, they pass on beyond the veil (literally, in Sirius' case). But with Voldemort, his soul was split, with one bit in Harry and the other as a spirit. He never passed on and returned, he remained as a weird vampiric being.

>>51392846

A Lich dies WHEN he stores the soul in the phylactery.

Then, if he is destroyed (note the "destroyed", not killed), he reforms near the phylactery


Voldy instead remained alive when he made the horcruxes, and, when killed, he just was....stuck, as a minor spirit

>>51392671
>The creature lich was named after the word for corpse. That's why Gygax, Fox, Bierce, and even Lovecraft all use the word to refer to cadaverous beings. It doesn't matter what other words are similar to it, because they weren't the source of the name.
Actually, given that "phylactery" is a Hebrew word, it's given that "Lich" was originally conceived with Hebrew roots, making "Lich" refer to the pathway towards a grave, not a corpse.

Interestingly, this also probably means you're supposed to say Lich with that phlegmy, throat sound in Hebrew words.

>>51392852
Voldemort defenitely died a few times. We even get to see a piece of his soul pass on in the 7th book, as Harry speaks with dead Dumbledore.

>>51390492
So you're saying that they were granted eyes?

>>51392871

No, Lich wasn't conceived with Hebrew roots.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lich

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Talk about making liches interesting, I'm thinking of making a purely physical lich/necromancer. Think of an undead Gilgamesh/Hercules who is rising an undead army to retake his old empire. He has innate magical properties like raising the dead but he fights by hitting things really hard. He's also quite friendly to the adventurers since he wants them to join his army willingly, but their corpse will suffice otherwise.
He's basically a huge, charismatic and chummy guy, if he's not trying to conquer the world with an army of undead (made from the corpses of the enemies the adventurers slain, among others).

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>>51391877
How the fuck did you bite it?

>>51392900
>It was a lich’s face – desiccated flesh tight over its skull.
I don't see what this proves. This could mean "it was a corpse's face" or "it was the face of this special kind of undead, I am now descriping it to you" this isn't a point for either side.

And there's still the whole phylactery defenition thing.

>>51387486
Darkest Dungeon is shit

>>51392884

Voldemort never actually dies himself.

>pre-book Voldemort is separated from his body as a malicious spirit but not killed
>book 1 - Voldemort abandons Quirrell's body and flees as a malicious spirit again
>book 2 - a piece of Voldemort's soul is destroyed when the diary is stabbed, but Voldemort is still alive and in hiding at the time
>book 4 - Voldemort is now surviving on Nagini's poison and in a weirdly deformed body, then gets given a better body at the end
>books 5 - 6 - Voldemort's horcruxes slowly get destroyed
>book 7 - Voldemort's soul in Harry and Nagini are destroyed, but Voldemort outside is still alive, before he's finally killed himself

The most interesting thing is what would have happened if each of these pieces were given full form at the same time? Would there have been multiple Voldemorts?

>>51390712
Except Conan has faced the likes of Cthulhu

>>51392884
Bits of him died, in the same way a limb dies if you cut it off, but Voldemort as a person stuck around until the last bit got killed - he went out like a spectral version of Monty Python's Black Knight.

>>51392939
There is a larger portion of Voldemorts soul inside Harry in the 7th book than there is inside the body of Voldemort. You can say that he died there. Even if you don't, he defenitely died a few more times. Quirrel didn't grab his misty ethereal form out of thing air, he was a rushed and failed attempt to offer a body for Voldemort to reform into at the cost of a Horcrux. There are two missing Horcruxes that never appear in the books, that was one of them. The point is, the piece of Voldemort that made Quirrel came from a Horcrux, when Voldemort was bodily killed the last time before that, the piece of his soul that was in his body at the time passed on. We see the same passing on of the piece that was inside Harry directly in the 7th book.

>>51388093
>Sanguir
Gay and terrible

>>51387626
>>51391249
>>51391422
But d everything you can to avoid the community.
Cringy bullshit.

>>51392929

In that story, he's just describing a corpse possessed by a sorcerer. So a lich is connected to the idea of magical walking corpses.

In regards to a separation of the two objects, a phylactery is reusable. A horcrux is a one-time deal.

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>>51387486

Think about it like sex. If you present that as a one night stand thing that lasts 15 mins it wont have the desired excitement or the effect .
But if you make the process to reach the sex a long journey full of troubles, excitements, failiures and suspense with a long foreplay and a satisfying climax it will be totally another thing. In the end what you have done would be more or less the same thing. But it is one thing to serve a well done meal in a mess kit on the march and another thing to serve it on a high class restaurant with appetizers beforehand and music to accompany.

>>51392953
Now we're just getting into the deep nitty gritty of "what does it mean to die", and that's not something I care to debate. The point is that he used a piece of his soul, and a constructed body, to return after being (at least bodily) killed. Whether he returned as a living being or as an undead, I have to side with him returning as a specialized undead.

>>51392997
So in that story the word lich isn't being used to describe a lich as we know it? That seems like you're arguing against yourself.

Better example to stop you nerds arguing.

Frankenstein was just a flesh golem, but with a wonderful story and bits of personality, and a reason for being created that makes him fit into the world and be interesting enough to distract from his statblock. He even has vulnerability to fire damage that fits so well into the world that nobody really questions it.

>>51392975

>There is a larger portion of Voldemorts soul inside Harry in the 7th book than there is inside the body of Voldemort. You can say that he died there.

Where is this information from? I've always wondered how equally his soul split apart.

But even if there is a larger part, his embodied soul was still alive. Pieces may have died, but the whole did not move on.

>Quirrel didn't grab his misty ethereal form out of thing air, he was a rushed and failed attempt to offer a body for Voldemort to reform into at the cost of a Horcrux.

This didn't actually cost a horcrux. This was the left-over piece that survived the night at Godric's Hollow and became a spirit.

>There are two missing Horcruxes that never appear in the books, that was one of them.

No, all horcruxes are accounted for. I think the two you're referring to are the fake horcruxes in the form of Harry and Quirrell (though Quirrell was basically just possessed).

>The point is, the piece of Voldemort that made Quirrel came from a Horcrux, when Voldemort was bodily killed the last time before that, the piece of his soul that was in his body at the time passed on. We see the same passing on of the piece that was inside Harry directly in the 7th book.

Quirrell's "piece" never passed on. It was that spirit that survived and got given a new body in the 4th book. In essence, Voldemort had never used any other piece of soul but the one he had before his initial defeat.

>>51393030

It's being used to describe a corpse possessed by a magic user. The main point being that it's inherently tied up with a corpse.

>>51392998
This is bullshit. Sex is sex, food is food. They are animal comforts and putting bells and whistles all over them doesn't change them.

>>51393078
>Where is this information from?
It's an established fact that every time a Horcrux is created it splits the soul in half, so you can just do the math.
https://youtu.be/mbC-sDMHypU
This video explains the timeline and the soul fraction size in each Horcrux and the amount left in Voldemort fairly well, although not perfectly. And also points out the missing two Horcrux, it even has a time frame for their creation.

I've been kicking around the idea for a campaign whose main villain is a Lich. It's still in the basic outlining stages, but what I've got so far:

>All players come from a large city surrounded by huge walls, ruled over by a dictatorship
>Everything outside the walls are the wild lands, full of dangerous creatures that constantly assault the walls
>The government regularly sends out squads of warriors of all varieties to go live in the wildlands to scout out any monsters that may attack, and basically just fight until they die with little hope of ever being allowed to return home
>The people sent out are a mix of criminals, people selected from a lottery to control the population, and soldiers who volunteered looking for glory
>There turns out to be some settlements built by people sent out before, but for the most part its a wasteland of constant battle and full of death
>The players eventually learn of some "Dark Despot" who controls all the evil creatures
>More investigation could lead knowledgable players to realize its a very powerful Lich
>Turns out the practice of sending out people to die is just a deal with the Lich to harvest souls so that the Lich won't obliterate the city
>If the players decide to fight the Lich (I have other plans if they choose other things to do) and manage to actually come into his lair and kill him, they realize they were misled into thinking the philactory would be there
>It's actually hidden in an ancient part of the city (I have a rough backstory of the Lich being involved in the founding of the city)
>If they return to the city they'll bet attacked on sight, but if they don't then the Lich could destroy the city in anger, and never stop hunting the players

It's not the most creative campaign, I know, but I feel like it uses the concept of a Lich well enough to make it feel like an actual monumental task to take him down and doesn't feel like just another mob that needs to be killed for xp.

>>51393123

Oh, so it's just speculation? Because the books always made it sound more like the soul was having fragments of it chipped away, instead of having them split evenly down the middle each time.

As for those two missing Horcruxes, they don't exist. His Horcruxes are the Locket, the Ring, the Diary, the Diadem, the Cup, his own body (which was also Quirrell's and his reformed body's soul), Nagini, and Harry. That's all 8 pieces.

>>51393267
"Himself" can't be a Horcrux. That would make you and I Horcruxes as well.

>>51393005
I'd agree he's specialised undead - he's a spirit floating around/stuck in things for most of the series, but I wouldn't say he capital-D "Died".

I think he or Dumbledore mentions him being a "shade" and "coming within an inch of death", or getting "closer to death than any other wizard has gone before"

>>51393295

I mean Horcruxes as in the pieces of his soul. Rowling always said there were 8 pieces in total, and that's all of them accounted for.

>>51390505
I want to play in your game

did you smoke purzposting

>>51393267
Tom Riddle specifically asks about splitting his soul 7 times. That means 7 Horcruxes plus himself for 8 total soul fragments. Voldemort only made 6 Horcruxes, he never realized or intended to make Harry into one. That means that there's a Horcrux we don't know about.

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Was pic related a defeated Lich with the Ring being his phylactery?

>>51393368
Pretty much. The Ring functions more like a Horcrux, but different in key ways. Part of his power is in the ring, and part seperate in the eye. If either is destroyed, he can't live, and he can only exist bodily if he wears is phylactery. He's close enough.

>>51393341

He asked about it, but clearly didn't do it. Otherwise Rowling would've mentioned it.

>>51393409
Rowling didn't mention plenty of things. Half the things in that video are from interviews, and weren't in the books or movies. She left plenty out. Riddle planed to make 7 Horcruxes, and although he did, he didn't know it. He only knew he made 6. It stands to reason there's a missing one.

>>51393460

Yeah, his "missing" one is himself. That's the final piece of his soul.

>>51387539
the only right action.
deus vult

Try hitting them with the old mythos bait and switch a couple of times.

Aristocratic count who is mostly nocturnal and keeps visiting the houses of the young ladies of the town? Hey he sounds like a vampire. Nope he's just a regular human, his wife on the other hand is an aswang; the nocturnal nature is because she's more active at night, and he's visiting all these young lassies to try and create a couple of pregnancies so his wife can feed. Most parties start to think twice when the stab a 3rd level aristocrat with a wooden stake and you describe him drowning in own blood.

Those animal attacks sound like a lycanthrope is in the area? Half right, it's a Loup Garou but that silver isn't going to do jack shit to him, y'all need to go find his grave during the day time and burn his body.

Just read around and have some fun with similar sounding myths from around the world that have different weaknesses and throwing in a couple of red herrings and with any luck your players will actually feel like they have to pay attention again rather than just giving the evidence a perfunctory once over and cross referencing with the monster manual.

>>51392749
>lel russia is shit amirite
I'm soo tired

>>51392275
Hi there, brit fag here, lich is also an old english/scots gaelic word for corpse hence why you sometimes here references to lichgates, meaning the gates into a cemetery.

My party completely failed to recognize a feral vampire I described to them. Admittedly it wasn't wearing a cape and preying on young women, but I still described fangs, hissing, superhuman strength and speed, and it exploded in sunlight. They think it was just some sort of fast zombie.

>>51393579
The problem is those things don't work in an actual game.
Works in a narrative because you can dictate the plot to flow into the protagonist(s) discovering the true identity of the monster and it's weakness.

But in a game the players will just bang their head against the wall because it's weakness is entirely arbitrary and no one knows what your bullshit obscure underground monster is and now you have to spoonfeed and railroad them for any progress to happen and now it's just a statblock again. Or worse, a mobile puzzle with an occasional "rocks fall, you die" situation.

>>51388298
stealing this

>>51387486
There's a relatively simple solution to this.

Step 1: Stop playing 3.5. 3.5 really created this kind of thinking and enforces it with an iron fist. Try some different RPGs, like Basic Roleplaying, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, the Dark Eye (now available in English finally) or Savage Worlds.

Step 2: Don't just say "you see a vampire" describe the creature as vividly as possible. Say something like:

"The flickering lantern illuminates the ancient crypt, trying vainly to push back the shadows. The village girl you were sent to rescue lies prostrate on an ancient tomb, her body pale and lifeless. A figure hunches over her a ragged cloak obscuring its form. Slowly it turns towards you revealing a bald, rat-like countenance. Its pale skin stretched too tight over a narrow, predatory face. Jet black eyes turn towards you, embers burning within with an animal hunger. Its lips pull back over jagged, razor-sharp teeth in a wicked, rictus-like grin."

"So eager to meet your doom, fools? Tonight I will feast on your blood"

"Roll for initiative."

>>51392184
Okay, while Voldemort is obviously a lich - and anyone disagreeing is just a contrarian retard - I wouldn't call Rowling's writing "good".

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>>51392723
>>51391556
>>51387486
Bitches please. Pic related trumps all of them.

Part of the problem in the whole thread is how eager we are to taxonomize and classify, to order things into near little categories to make the world more legible. [Spoiler]That's even the problem with all this Voldemort bullshit now shut the fuck up about Harry Potter who cares if he was a lich or not[/spoiler]

But maybe that's not the way the world actually works, right? Maybe those are just our own feeble attempts at understanding it. A thing doesn't necessarily need to be of a kind with anything else; some creatures, like zombies or Unseelie races, depend on the existence of more like creatures to inspire fear, but if you encounter some sort of beast prowling the sewer system of a great walled city, why should you worry about relating it to anything else? A BBEG especially should never be formulaic.

Basically, like other anons have said, punish your players for making assumptions, for arrogance, and make them feel like they're stumbling into things totally unknown.

>>51391967
t. Max Brooks

>>51393907
Anon, the wolfwere was created expressly to deal with players who think they know how to deal with everything already when their characters may not know.
Even then, I've encountered a single werecreature in decades of gaming, a wereboar, and no, we didn't have silver on hand to deal with it anyway.

>>51387486
>a nocturnal nobleman, who seems to frequent young ladies, they know it's time to bring out stakes and holy water
Stop using such cliche depictions for your monsters.

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>>51393907
Anything can be done well anon.
The key to this is to spoonfeed small bits at a time. For the Loup Garou example:

>adventurers enter the town, big graveyard in the back, gypsy tents selling curios in the square
>that night monster attacks, but not the players. They hear a howl
>when they wake up, the son of the local mayor/nobility/town leader has been drug off into the night
>the PC's are sent to track the creature
>Cue mini dungeon through the forest and into a nearby cave, throw in goblins, skellies, sidequest stuff
>in the cave they find an old, mostly looted, destroyed tomb/coffin and boy's corpse, ripped to pieces, old hereldry symbol on something
>the tracks lead to a hiding place at the start of the cave that they passed (think Skyrim style dungeon if you have played that game), tracks dissapear/reappear with big gaps, lose trail
>return to town, investegate/shop time. Intro friendly flirty gyppo girl, townsfolk tell PCs that symbol is old town heads who practiced necromany/dark powers, associated with Bad Things, killed by current head forebearers
>that night, alert goes out. PCs get on the scene as a huge wolfen beast chomps town head
>gets away before PCs damage it, or sees what damage does to it (have it be on a tall roof with dude in mouth for extra dramatics)
>party hears guard mention otherguy name, gaurds think wolfy is otherguy (old guard captain) who loved townhead wife but lost out due to ugly/poor/reason/ect
>pc's prob go get or have silver stuff by this point
>go investigate gurd cap house, find journal mentioning old necro townhead estate out inna woods
>cue second dungeon throw in hints of fiendish pacts, rituals ect
>in part of estate find journal of gurd cap, seeking power to win back ladymom next to wrecked ritual circle shenigans

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>>51395220

>return to town, probly try to set up round ladymom and her #living kiddos
>attack happens, get to fight creature, SURPRISE, immune to silver too, has legendary saves fer magic, upon close inspection burning eyes, black fur, ders devilry her son
>ether steals the lady, mercs a kid or two, or bails when the townies bust out the nets ect, whole point is the SURPRISE moment, couple rounds tops then it gtfo
>player wtf, gyppo girl who watched says granma might be able to help
>gyppo gran speaks of demon pacts gone wrong, cursed dudes ect ect
>Only vulnerable in sunlight, needs to sleep in desecrated ground under open sky ect, gives PCs tracking trinket
>back inna woods, if they wait till next day wolfy comes and picks off guards tryin to get at ladymom/kids
>track using trinket, find deep innawoods some weird misty graveyard with undeads, stuck on top of ruined cathedral/chruch/masoleum is ladymom, trapped due to undeads
>ladymom/trinket points out right grave, cue FINAL BATTLE, undead fodder, lair actions, have fun
>kill da beast, it won't flee and give up ladymom
>turns back to gurd cap when slain, make this tragic (ladymom still loved him too, or he reaches out to her,or he regrets in his final moments, idk man figure it out)
>PC's return to town, loot/reward/party, leave

Extra afterword for perverts
>If the PCs ever return long time later, or different party same setting, ladymom gave birth to tiefling son not long after, tiefling bloodline runs strong in the town generations later after son became local hero defending the town.

Low level campaign, easy to adapt on the fly. Just one example.

>>51395220
>>51395236
Oops, forgot to add
>when PCs confront wolfy for first time with the mumand hit it with the silver, give it shadowy/sulfersmoke,flaming midrange teleport, just to confirm demon shit
>for the final fight if ladymom didn't get grabbed just have wolfy hellbent with rage, tpin around in a frenzy instead of running cuz its coo koo

>>51395220
>>51395236
>>51395359
Also in case of RANGERSENSE
>You detect a strange, monsterous/fiendish presence constantly on the move. It vanishes and reappears erratically, moving quickly far in the distance. You don't think you could catch up even if you tried to chase.

Then just have it be a spirit thing that comes to protect the dead body of the gurd cap at the end when the PCs arrive, turning into his soul before vanishing instead of his body. Easy peasy

>>51387486
A big part of the solution is to not just play them as statblocks. If your Werewolves just run up to people and full attack, your players are going to get bored. If they use hit and run tactics with charge attacks (or the equivalent in your system), or some other actual tactic they're going to be much more interesting.

If you're not sure what approximate tactic some monster should use, go watch a movie that features that monster (or something very similar) and look for whatever is used to make it scary. Goblins swarm, or use stealth to get in close so AoE spells aren't as useful, or both. Werewolves are fast and strong and unless you use silver they're practically impossible to kill.

Vampires in particular are intelligent, social creatures that prefer to use trickery and deception (and minions) to get things done, they just happen to also be able to handle themselves in a fight. If the PCs start looking for one, he might hear about them and change tactics. If they manage to foil his plans once or twice, maybe he frames them for a murder to try to get the authorities to remove them for him. I, personally, also like to throw in some of the classic Vampire weaknesses: can't cross running water, can't enter private buildings without permission, that kind of thing. Liches would be similar, but with the social aspect replaced with something more like mind control and artificially created abominations.

I also usually like to tweak the statblocks of monsters I use, partially so that nobody can metagame (though I trust my group to not do that deliberately), and partially so I can tailor them to whatever I'm going to be doing with them. This could be something simple, like making one group of Werewolves a little faster but not quite as durable (to encourage hit and run), or something major like making a Vampire that sucks heat out of people and leaves them as popsicles.

>>51395614
Oh, I forgot to cover Devils.

IDK what system you use, but my favorite version of Devils is the D&D one (at least pre-4e, IDK about 4e and 5e). They're orderly, precise individuals who are completely immune to fire and can see in all darkness (including magical darkness). A small group of Devils that work well together (making sure none of them get flanked, etc) and fill the entire battlefield with fire and darkness would be a much more interesting fight than "take X damage, roll above Y to hit him."

>>51393113
You're stupid if you actually believe this. The brain is the most powerful organ in the body, lessening symptoms of illness just because you think you should be getting better. If you don't think atmosphere makes a difference in the enjoyment of something try eating the same meal in a torture chamber.

>>51393174

Don't make the dictatorship normal. Make HIM the Lich. Those creatures are monsters he's created and flushed out of the sewers in an attempt to control his city by making it dangerous to visit or leave.

The criminals and population lottery are manipulated to the point that noone can tell one from the other and the soldiers aren't even aware of the corruption. Even at the top of the command.

The Lich therefore is sending out armies of people to die but the small villages and towns are just the guys who found holes in the net and don't get targeted by the Lich's monsters since they are sort of manipulated.

The towns arent aware of the Lich either and just assume that the monsters don't give a fuck because there's more value in attacking the city.

Have the players uncover the truth slowly by going to each of the minor settlements and realising the monsters range from undead to flesh golems of increasingly monsterous designs.

Then have the players try and escape or turn on the Lich by planning a rebellion within the city guard and populace after unveiling the City Prince is actually the Lich.

Have them succeed and then reveal the Prince wasn't even aware either. He was simply running the city as well as he could and after go full Bloodborne with the Lich unleashing his laboratories of shit into the streets of the walled city and genociding the populace since he either wants to ascend to some other level or just have a clean slate.

>>51393792
To be fair, modern media has a serious problem with just calling things what they are (like I Am Legend) so its understandable that they could think that.

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>>51387486
Don't be afraid to use decoys and misdirection. The nocturnal nobleman is just trying to avoid his wife's attention, hence going out on the town at early hours of the morning. The decrepit spellcaster who's occupied a tower for two centuries is really just his great-grandson keeping on the family tradition. The beautiful woman with reddish orange eyes at the local inn just got a wizard to change her eye colour to something more exotic for better tips.

Establish new powers and weaknesses for your monsters. Don't make them easy to spot or to detect, even with magical means. Consider what allies or servants they might have at their disposal, and have them use those resources to drive away or mislead any adventurers that come after them. Make their lairs well defended and hard to find. Have them be connected to other dark beings that might seek revenge or help them if they're attacked. Perhaps have the characters seek magical items or blessings that will help them resist or overcome the monster's defences and foil its supernatural abilities. Indeed, consider giving the monster additional abilities that can mess with the party if the party does not properly investigate or research what this creature is capable of.

Monsters like vampires, liches, and powerful demons can and should obliterate an unprepared party, especially if fought within their lairs or on their own terms. They should require careful preparation, knowledge of the creature's patterns and behaviour, excellent teamwork, and a great deal of luck. If your PCs are just running in and shooting fireballs at these creatures they should be prepared to get stomped.

I unironically recommend you check out JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Part 3 onwards) for how it handles boss fights. Every enemy has a trick behind it, and blindly swinging almost never works. You need to figure out how a boss works and what its weaknesses are before you have a chance at beating it.

>>51387486
>2) What are some obscure monsters I can use to make my players fear and respect the unknown?

Land Octopus armed with whips and spears. Nobody can handle that range.

>>51387486
For vampires you could try to portray them more as hidden vampires and not have any overt actions to make the PCs think they are a vampire until it is too late to prepare. The duke is just an eccentric weirdo with OCD in appearance but is really a vampire.

>>51396044
Brilliant
8 melee attacks per turn should catch them off guard

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>>51396044

>>51390492

Bloodborne?

>>51397814
that's what I was thinking, pretty much bloodborne to the letter