I'm suddenly imagining a "religious schism" forming within the Cult of the Dragon of whether or not the future undead Dragon Masters will be Lichs or Vampires.
Actually, this is touched on in the year of rogue dragons novels. There was a smoke drake named Brimstone that was one of the original dragons that submitted to Samasters rituals to become an undead dragon overlord, and he wound up becoming a vampire. Brimstone actually helps stop Samaster due to Samaster deciding vampires were too limited, and that liches would be better, and wound up discarding him.
@@dillongage it actually already has. In the wake of Samasters death, Tiamat took on the illusion of being the "Everlasting Wyrm" and was corrupting the cult to worship of her. In fact, Samasters death and the destruction of the dracorage mythil are the direct cause of the HotDQ and RoT modules in 5e!
Imagine a wight dragon, enlarged magically, holding a whole castle on its back, never stopping its flight by its ill masters commands. The necromancer controling thia flying dreadnaught sould surely be an end game level boss. Or my next characters end goal 👿
So many Undead Dragons. Except one. Dragon Atropal. Just imagine it, a Giant dragon egg, discolored like any egg gone bad. A giant crack running up the side. The stench of rotten albumin leaking from the wider break near the bottom and pooling brownish-green with black streaks on the ground. A hole near the middle, in which you can see the glowing eye of the unhatched dragon godling staring at you. Give it a cool name like Caridemyx, Unhatched or Ju'ppe'ra-Ital the Slug. All the horror of undead stillborn godling, combined with all the horror of evil dragon.
I remember when my GM allowed me to make a Undead Dragon. I was playing a Necromancer Wizard who started off as CG as his goal was to gather all the knowledge of Necromancy he could locking away the real bad stuff in a place were no one could ever find it and to find positive uses for the less evil Necromancy spells with the mind set of ‘Not all evil magic has to stay that way.’ As the game advanced he saw that other schools had power to destroy that rivaled Necromancy in sheer destructive and malicious power so he changed to LG ‘No one but only the most knowledgeable and trusted people should know o& these spells power.’ Then he ended up being duped by a church into obtain a dark ritual that they used to destroy any book that bore the name of the target of the ritual. They used that spell to destroy a rival church who believed in a rival god then he dropped to LN. ‘No one deserves this knowledge it will only cause more death and suffering only I should have it because I have proven to be above it’s manipulation.’ So he started gathering knowledge and using said Dark Ritual that the evil Church had him learn to destroy all the other copies of that spell in the world. During this time he slowly fell into a relationship with the party Rogue (as a joke because me and the Rogue’s player were super close friends to the point we would crash at each other’s apartments if gaming went on to long.) it was getting rather late in the campaign and we were reaching those levels of powers where we where facing world threats. The game came tumbling down when the Rogue was Double Crit by a Vampier (In our Games double Crit is Crit damage X Crit Multiplayer) 2d6x3x3 Con Drain she never stood a chance. She was drained and then would raise as a Vampire under his control. We slew the vampire after that quite easy but my Wizard refused to kill the rogue and instead had her locked away in his tower. Clone would not work as soon as her soul left her body it would have been dragged to Hell as per a contact agreement and so it left finding a cure (Wish being banned from players.) so the party all decided to spit up to find a cure. Slowly as leads lead to dead end and Leads lead to dead ends my Wizard started just laying siege to anything with the hint of possibility knowing the cure and leaving shattered kingdoms in his wake salting the earth leaving behind a rainstorm of Necromancy Magic that would cause everything that died to raise as a undead. As you can tell he firmly was now CE and this came to a head when the party came together and killed a Gold Dragon who knew the cure and knew who else knew but refused to tell us. After killing him the party found out the only other people that knew were the Heads of that evil church we destroyed. This was way too much for my wizard to take and in a rage he brought the Gold Dragon back as a White a who was not under my Wizards control. The White did not even register my Wizard’s presence there as if in the GM’s own words “There was no life left in that husk.” Before it left to go cause untold destruction. After returning to their base the Rogue told him that she felt that their time was up that they made a mark on the world that they (The Rogue and Wizard) could never fix even if the rest of the party thought they could redeem themselves. That day all the Necrotic storms and the undead they created would crumble away into smoke and a woman who lost the ability to enjoy the morning sun saw the sun rise one last time as the wizard would sweep her ashes into an urn right before he sealed himself inside Tomb.
Imagin sahuagin riding a zombie dragon turtle with healers on its back. When the healers die the fighters put a headband of intellect on the dragonturtle..
There's a surprising amount of undead dragon types in D&D: Dracoliches Zombie Dragons Skeleton Dragons Graveyard Dragons Ghost Dragons Vampire Dragons Technically a construct but dragonbone golems too. Pretty sure there's also some manner of frankenstein type of dragon, which are just bits and pieces of different dragons reanimated by magic. Edit: They're called Dragonflesh Golems.
I ran a campaign set on Bytopia and one of the flavor locations I had was a twinned peak that contained a cave haunted by a ghost adamantine dragon who had lost its life attempting to defend its eggs so now it just defended an empty nest of old eggshells. While the other adamantine dragons dont exactly like the ghost, it never leaves the nest or hurts anyone outside its one large cave so they leave it as a sort of tragic monument. one of my players, of course, wanted to fight it; fortunately they were out voted
I'm entertained by the idea of having an egyptian themed dungeon with mummies of various levels, and to make sure while peeps are looting the area to describe the lil canopic jars and if they open one, they find a dried organ that must have been from one of the mummies...... Then you describe a room with 6 canopic jars that are bigger than any person in the party.
A favorite of mine: An advanced zombie dragon zombie I then gave the Favored of Kyuss template to. Imagine an undead dragon that can vomit brain eating worms as a breath weapon.
2:00 Because it's very unrealistic how the villains can or seem to succeed in this endever all the time while the PC's have to struggle in doing it only once. Now this is something to ponder only for people who want their world to feel truly, truly real. 3:24-3:46 That's an incredible way to explain why DnD is the way it is. 5:00-5:41 Beautiful just, just beautiful! Prof of how criminaly underrated this channel is.
I'm giggle at the idea of the party of PC's arriving in the village to help fight the local "white" dragon, and just never clearing up any misunderstandings until their face to face with an undead.
I know this is an older video but I was thinking of a spell that I would call lockjaw. It keeps magic users from speaking and dragons from using breath weapon. Just crossed ming watching this video
The Forgotten Realms series Year of Rogue Dragons features battle scenes with nearly all of these and more. One of the main characters is a vampiric smoke drake named Brimstone and he is absolutely the worst. Great series!
I'm working with a dracolich blue dragon named korthax. Unlike his contemporary chromatic dragons (in this world they all have some kind of empire) he does not need an heir because he is a dracolich and wants to exterminate all living blue dragons before going to war with the other chromatic dragonlords
Theres one realy rare and rather unigue version of undead dragon.. with realy stupid name: Hoarder dragons (they are in 3th edision.. They can use any item in theyr hoard, including weapons, scrolls, books etc... Not only they keep theyr breath attack (one they had when alive) but it gets added bonus as now it comes with flyng treasures.. So You can get hit by fast movin coins, weapons and what ever else it spits on You, lol. CR: Base creature +2... "Dragons all collect a hoard of wealth over their life, but if a dragon becomes too greedy and too obsessed with their wealth it can cause the dragon to live on after death. The dragon's spirit physically becomes a part of its hoard. The great blades in its collection becomes its teeth and claws, shields and gold plates becoming scales, and all the rest of it is made from its trove of coins."
I got to finally run a cobra dragon a while ago as a capstone to end our remote campaign. It was the best boss fight I've ever run and the most intresting lair I've designed. Their was also 2 different kinds of mummies in that campaign but my players were able to avoid those fights. I love mummies and think a mummy cobra dragon with it's phylactory fleeing aboard a spelljammer could be a good campaign. "I failed in life as a mercenary but perhaps working for myself I could command the world." They chase his minions ship, he chases them. Resurrecting a dead primordial, a few epic mini-bosses and ship fights, and fighting the brutal powerful and far too cunning dragon as the final battle. Thanks for the inspiration.
Imagine an undead dragon weapon (small dragon that turns to a weapon) and it like has a spell to like speak to dead or raise a corpse and does bonus necrotic damage
I can't help help but think of a Draconic Crawling Claw; A not-so-skilled Necromancer's last resort when he found the corpse a little too late. I can see the player's faces now-- The utter confusion and concern as a Dragon Claw scurries toward them in the dead of night.
Man it's amazing the lvl of "extra" lore you slip in that is mixed in with the most relevant lore. You sure truly are a scholar of the highest order of candle keep.
Humanoid vampire maybe feeds on dragons blood for sometime. The powerful elemental nature of the wyrms blood changes their animal for in time to that giant bat thing I just saw.
Maybe, they would be seeking out things like large monstrosities or other dragons? I could see a vampiric dragon who, while cruel, has no interest in harming humanoids, instead hiring adventurers to take out big monsters and bring them back to its lair.
Absolutely incredible as always Professor. You better believe my lvl 15 group is about to be real upset with the new minions inside an ancient blue dragons lair. Also as an aside thank you so much for the remastered series. I really appreciate how they are mostly supplemental to the old videos and not a complete replacement or rerecording. Excellent so far
A group of adventurers roll up to a wizard's tower with a heavily laden covered wagon, "Wizard! We have brought that dragon corpse you wanted!" The wizard rushes down to inspect the corpse, "Excellent! Let's see it." The group uncovers the wagon, "We killed it ourselves so you know it's fresh." The wizard's eyes bulge as it looks over the corpse, "What in the Pits did you DO to this thing? It's mangled!" Party leader folds his arms over his chest, "It's *Artisanal* ! Now pay up."
Having fun putting together Spelleater Dragon. A wizard dragon that uses followers to bind spell scrolls similar to mummy that the dragon can use, replenishing when the party cast arcane spells within 120 ft.
A player in my current Tyranny of Dragons game is a Lizardfolk Necromancer who is a servant of Ebondeath. He is actually carrying Ebondeath's phylactery as his magic focus but does not really know that. His tribe of Lizardfolk who served Ebondeath were wiped out by the reformed cult so he has a list of targets he wants to kill for revenge while also carrying out his master's will as he talks to him from the phylactery (which is a giant black zircon. He also has a custom ritual to feed the zircon souls of enemies he captures. When he does that zombies rise in their place. He recently fed two wyrmlings still inside their eggs to the zircon. I can't wait to make them hatch as Zombie dragons (the party are currently carrying the eggs in a bag of holding intending to sell them to some underworld figure or something).
In my world elves are friends and allies with dragons won't go too far into that but one of my players are a druid that are helping with taking care and helping the dragons. So i have planned an encounter where the players are gonna kill a mad dragon that the elf player know personally so after the battle the big bad will resurrect it turning it undead so that the players will fight it again
I always love it when you talk about hypothetical creatures. It truly feels like we are in a grand lecture hall and the great and wise Picket tells us about what we might discover in the future
This reminds me of the good ol' days. Let's bring back the Forum, just like the athenians of old! Maybe in VR to expand the concept for modern sensibilities. Hmmm....
I've used a skeleton dragon didn't know a bone claw dragon was a thing but I had changed the wing attack to percing damage as it would try to spear the players with the bones in the wings
Great video AJ. I see I was not the only oldschool guy who used undead dragons. One, the mummy dragon. I didn't know they existed in other realms, I created mine. A rogue Yellow (desert) Dragon was a friend of humans and was a champion for them. In a misunderstanding, the players killed it... and assuming his attempts at parley were trickery. So, they became pariahs to that allied kingdom. While the players were gone, that kingdom's healers fully healed the dragon but were not able to restore life to it. Over a period of several months, they successfully made it into a super-mummy as their desperate way to bring their draconic friend back to life. It worked alright. The Dragon was still a good guy but he was also a life-enemy to the party for being the reason he died and was forced into his undead state. Can you imagine being in a party where those top-tier behind the villains you defeated and now over half of the top-tier behind the side of good are all your enemies? Those player characters had a rough existance the rest of the campaign. Two, I've used basic undead dragons, skeleton and zombie. I think I took the stats out of Dragon Magazine at the time. Three, the Undead Dragons just came into being via my Land of the Dead (Romance of the Soulless Overlords) campaign. If a dragon died in that area, it will return as some form of undead... like everything that dies or have died there.
for a "fun" twist: allow the ghost dragon to posses other dragons. while the draconic "soul" is incompatible with regular souls it'll probably match well enough with a regular dragon (especially of the same type it was). could be a fun 2 stage boss: the possessed (maybe one stage younger) dragon, and when that's defeated the ghost dragon emerges. give hints and a clever party may be able to expel the ghost from it's host, which potentially leaves, cutting out the first stage, or stays to help them take down the person they possessed, turning a hard fight into one relatively easy one (maybe pick a type of dragon the ghost is immune to to make it not too powerful) but suddenly having a dragon fight alongside you (who'll want at Least part of the hoard after victory)
Wait if a shadow dragon becomes undead seeing as even in life there are infused with The negative energies planes of wouldn that enhances there already nasty breath weapon? Also wouldn't that almost gaurnetee that they are a stronger version of undead?
I believe shadow dragons can generally see becoming a true undead is just the next step in their life cycle. So a prepared shadow dragon may have all the materials for the lichdom ritual on hand and is just waiting until they mature to a sufficient degree.
I _knew_ positive energy undead were possible. I mean, obviously negative energy undead are the most numerous, but positive energy heals biological things while too much positive energy burns them(and too much for a prolonged amount of time causes people to explode, such as being in the positive energy plane), so it stands to reason that a body that is overloaded with a high concentration of positive energy could become trapped in a cycle of burning and regeneration(with the constant radiant damage keeping them from exploding) effectively creating a similar psyche to undead things. And by that I mean being in constant torment while mindlessly attacking everyone around them in a "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS KILL MEEEE" state(of course that's just my reasoning for simple undead's evil status. I also like the "night of the living dead" style zombies where their desire to eat stems from the constant pain of having their dead cells and nerves be forced into action by magic, and only by consuming the positive energy that living bodies contain does the pain recede temporarily, as a substitution for the movie's "eating nerve tissue stops the pain for a time" because science has no power here. I also choose to believe that the spells that create undead target the animas, the vestiges of the life force the body has, like the spell "speak with the dead" does, and doesn't involve immortal souls at all because how the hell does a mediocre spell caster have the power to override the wills of extraplaner entities, let alone the reality warping gods above them? Even the pro-undead gods will demand something in return for the souls they have jurisdiction over, and somehow I find it unlikely that every single random person that is raised happens to be chaotic evil and under the jurisdiction of Orcus or such. In addition, the control of undead, in this alternate reasoning, via spells do so by putting their consciousness into a almost hypnotized/sedated state, with better/more intelligent undead riding the line of sedation more accurately, ridding the undead of their desire to murder by ridding them of the pain that drives them, while also making them more suggestible. It allows the creation _and responsible upkeep of undead,_ by maintaining the spells and killing off no longer needed ones, to be a neutral act that can be used for good, while leaving the necromancer with an undead horde shepherded along by a few controlled zombies to remain sufficiently evil. Basically I like my evil to actually have reasoning behind it, and not be "they're evil just because they are" like how undead are painted. It also allows the "SMITE THE UNDEAD" to be less "my god says it's bad, so we must kill anyone who even looks like they might use necromancy" zealotry, and more of a merciful act to purge uncontained undead, smite the irresponsible necromancers inflicting unecessary suffering, and give good aligned groups, even with the most zealous of Paladins, an excuse to allow PCs to play necromancers if they want to, under the guise of ensuring their usage is within regulation. Because they removed the lawful good alignment restriction from paladins, but currently for many groups necromancy is restricted to evil alignments despite the fact that there's an entire setting where the responsible use of undead is viewed as beneficial, and the fact that the mind rape school(enchantment), the war crime school(evocation), the kidnapping and enslavement school(conjuration), the stalking school(divination), the imprisonment school(abjuration), the framing school(illusion), and the forgery school(transmutation) all are not judged by the worst crimes(and in evocation, enchantment, and conjuration's case their most used effects) that they are capable of, yet necromancy, the scool that allows for healing and bringing willing creatures back to life, is the school that is viewed as pure evil, to the point where healing was removed from it and given to other schools because ambiguity of usage of the school of _life,_ death, _and the soul_ is dumb. Ok, that was a longer rant than I expected, back to my main point) Of course that's just the zombie/skeleton level of unlife, higher tiers would have other physiological effects, like the Hollow dragons being a sack of scales filled with positive energy.
Eberron has positive undead They require constant ancestor worship (and nothing else) to remain functional but retain intelligence and their original personality regardless of undead type
I can understand doing the checks to see if the cult or lich that is trying to raise a dracolich or other undead dragon, since you could have it that each adventure session you make a check to see if the cult succeed in the ritual. Just have the dc/dr for the success of the ritual to be lowered as the sessions continue on till it is a guarantied success. This can give the players a pressing need to push thru the encounters, and adventures since the cult completing the ritual is not fully linked to the adventure session. Like how in a true adventure if it were irl the dread threat would push the group to push on not knowing how long they had.
I like to think a lot about how undead dragons would be viewed by regular living ones. Would they be seen as abominations? Would they be seen as powerful and glorious. I have trouble believing that a creature so long lived would willingly become undead until it was nearing the end of its life span.
That reminds me of Klauth, an ancient red dragon from the Neverwinter nights computer game. In order to extend his life he ordered minions to steal the eggs of other dragons that he would force hatch and then murder the hatchlings for their lifeforce. I could easily see him becoming a dracolich or vampire dragon to extend his lifespan. Klauth minion: But but if you did that you would have to murder other dragons forever to extend your undead life for eternity!!! Klauth: Sure sure, but is there actually a downside?
@@mal35m Sounds like something that a group of other dragons would have to come together and go to war with Klauth for. They could fund many adventuring parties with their hordes to go and fight his minions. A great way to bring a party together is to say. ok so this power hungry guy did a thing to get power. People saw that and their reaction is to fund expeditions to fight him and or gain power for themselves so he doesn't conquer them.
a good first take would simply be to ask how humans look at human undeath. probably a lot of instinctual "it's unnatural and must be stopped", the weirdo's like me who'll think "man i can really see the appeal in some forms of that" and academic side with thoughts like "that's wildly impractical and doesn't even really do what you want it to do.".
@@florenmage Even a necromancer making lesser undead from younger dragons would be considered an unforgivable abomination and insult to all dragons. The mere existence of a dracolich or vampire dragon greater undead would be considered a existential threat to all dragonkind across the multiverse. Best scenario is it would be an all claws on deck moment with chromatic and metallic dragons working together and pooling resources to bring down a common enemy. Most likely scenario the dragons would fall prey to panic and paranoia as drained dragon bodies piled up and even good aligned dragons would start attacking each other in fear. I think there would be at least one dragon version of Van Helsing out there in the multiverse who specifically hunted dragon undead.
I was pondering vampiric dragons just the other day. I even included one in the back story of the area I'm homebrewing. The site of its "final" death is within a few days travel of the town where the campaign began. So once again your lore is timely and greatly appreciated by one guy way over here in Canada. Thanks for another one AJ.
This bring back memories from playing Baldurs Gate II, Shadows of Amn where one of the foes are a shadow dragon. To claim that it was evil is understatement.
While an army of undead dragons might sound awesome on paper, or if you played The Scourge in WarCraft III Reign of Choas & Frozen throne then Death Knights in WoW, is a loooooot of work and more dangerous then its worth, sure you can tap into the Shadow Weave and raise a whole graveyard of them, but it's going to end up killing you, 1 per Vampire Lord, Master Necromancer, etc., keep in mind in terms of power to raise more, you would need a nuclear power plant the side of Manhattan to keep operational,
from now on, I'm adding Vampire Dragons to my campaign world & one of their effects on the land will by the unnatural amount of awesomely beautiful female humanoids. oh, & they will be at the head of a hierarchy of Vampires made up of Spawns; Vampires; & Warriors/Spellcasters, & other things in between.
AJ we are preparing for a blizzard here in Maine and I am grabbing a tasty beverage, Thank you. Been catching up on older videos such as carrion crawler and rot grub.
I made a template for the zombie dragon, it was hard. The following template can be used to create zombies of any creature with the dragon creature type, instead of using the template found in the creating an NPC table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The zombie might retain or loose any or none of its Legendary, Mythic or Lair Actions, as the DM sees fit. Retained Characteristics. The zombie retains its vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities. Lost Characteristics. The zombie looses any special senses, any languages, any skill or saving throw bonuses and the traits Amphibious, Spellcasting or Innate Spellcasting if it has them. It can’t speak, but understands the languages it knew in life. Actions. The zombie retains any action that required it to make an attack roll, also retaining multiattack. If the zombie’s breath weapon or bite actions deal acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder damage, reduce this damage by half, rounding down. Creature Type. The zombie’s creature type is undead, and it looses any tags. Undead Fortitude. If the zombie is reduced to 0 hit points, it must make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the zombie drops to 1 hit point instead. Undead Nature. The zombie doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep. Alignment. The zombie is Neutral Evil. Ability Scores. The zombie’s Ability Scores change as follows: STR +2 DEX -4 CON +4 INT 3 (-4) WIS 8 (-1) CHA 5 (-3) Armour Class. The zombie’s Armour Class changes in accordance to the changes to its Dexterity Score: remove the ability score bonus from the zombie’s Armour Class, recalculate the zombie’s Dexterity Score, and apply the new bonus to the zombie’s Armour Class. Speed. Reduce the zombie’s Fly speed by half, rounding down. Poison Immunity. The zombie is immune to Poison Damage and to the Poisoned Condition. Saving Throw Proficiency: Wisdom. The zombie is proficient in Wisdom Saving Throws. Senses. The zombie has Darkvision up to a radius of 30 feet. Fetid Infestation. The zombie only has access to this characteristic if it is size large or larger and has a Breath Weapon action. When the zombie uses it’s Breath Weapon Action, roll or choose from the list below. The selected creature appears in a random unoccupied space within the Breath Weapon’s area of effect, at half it’s maximum hit points, rounded down. D6. 1. Giant Rat. 2. Giant Centipede. 3. Swarm of Rats. 4. Diseased Giant Rat. 5. Swarm of Insects (Wasps) 6. Swarm of Rot Grubs. (Found in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, if not owned, use a Swarm of Insects (Beetles) instead) I first made this on my phone in DND beyond, before copy pasting it here, this was exhausting
🎶UNDEAD! (undead)🎶 🎶UNDEAD! (undead)🎶 🎶Undead!🎶 🎶You better get up out the way🎶 🎶Tomorrow'll rise so let's fight today🎶 🎶And no, I don't give a fk what you think or say🎶 🎶Cause we gonna rock this whole plane anyway🎶
I'm doing a homebrew campaign with a vampire dragon sacking a city and making it, it's horde underneath the city itself. I'm very intrigued by vampire dragons, especially because dragons already live so long(like 800-1000 years, right) but making it immortal means it could be many thousands of years old, and I think I might also make it extremely large, like 250-300ft wingspan, due to this age, even though it's dead; I think I'll say it's just "alive enough" to keep on growing over the years, the same way a crocodile in real in real life never really stops growing and only dies when it gets too big for its heart to give out, but it's a vampire so it never does.
Kinda inspires me to make a meso-american-like setting that has “Vecna” as a dracolich and “Kaz” as a vampire dragon, both worshipped with human sacrifices. Souls for the soul dragon and blood for the blood dragon, then maybe the flesh was given to some other undead draco-lad
@@rafaelcastor2089 Yes and no, the souls Slan2 receives are simply the medium by which the pain and suffering of their priests victims are transferred to them, of course the energy the souls themselves are comprised of is an appreciated bonus. The extreme sensations and emotions are the priority, the soul is simply the edible wrapping, like a burrito.
Now I'm picturing a false undead Dragon that's actually masterpiece of a flesh golem creator. This is kind of inspired by the "Stitchers" from the Innistrad setting of Magic The Gathering, who are basically like Dr. Frankenstein but more experimental & numerous. Why settle for a regular humanoid corpse golem, where there's a natural world full of parts to bring into your unnatural mad experiments? Worried about your guard golems being disarmed, give them more arms than they had while alive, like four, six, or eight. Want your servitors to move faster on the battle field? Make a pseudo centaur corpse golem by fusing together a horse & rider together. I'm sure you can imagine where else this can be taken. So why would you need to get a hold of a dragon corpse to make a Dragon Flesh Golem when you could just use a herd of cows, a bunch of metal supports to join bones from multiple animals together, some anatomy knowledge, & imagination?
AD&D2ndE Ravenloft Van Richten Guide to the Created/ Golems. Giant eagle wings attached to a pseudo centaur was a creature mention in the book as a few paragraph short story. Twisted flesh golem monsters with multiple arms are fun.
@AJ Pickett I can't help but think what if a really mad wizard made a draco flesh golem from a blue dragon? Would it be able to heal itself with its lighting breath? It might even work if you made human sized and shaped flesh golem from blue dragon parts. It would look like a regular flesh golem in blue draconic armor but would have lightning breath and the ability to heal itself.
@@AJPickett I could see an ancient red dragon paying an evil human wizard big bucks to create a company of blue dragon guards from a defeated blue dragon for his hoard. The evil wizard would probably be happy just to be able to work with dragon flesh. They would be able to make really dangerous guards of all shapes and sizes.
What did the necromancers do? How is this possible? Who knew it was even remotely possible to have no cute girl. I mean, it's not even slightly possible Someone messed up huge. YEs, they did the imposible. GOod job draco necromancers..
The hollow dragons originate from the 4th edition metallic dragons draconomicon, one of the many amazing 4e dragons that got ignored because everyone hated 4e. Here's hoping they bring the deathmask dragon back.
If it's not a Dracolich I naturally assume that an undead Dragon is a victim. Only inept or unprepared Dragons would allow themselves to become an undead vassal to a lesser power. However it's also important to understand that Dragons aren't all powerful, and their bodies are subject to theft or corruption just as any corpse could. Spectral Dragons scare me the most however. Nothing scarier than a incorporeal, fear-inducing, life-sapping monstrosity that has ages of magical knowledge and power at it's command and thinks only of the destruction of life.
When I heard vampire dragon, the first thing that popped in my head was dhampir dragon. Like I'm all for a dhampir steel dragon who runs a guild of vampire hunters. On a side note I like the idea metallic dragon get corrupted into a vampire. With me and vampires I never liked the idea of someone just getting bit and that turns them into a vampire their needs to be an aspect of drinking the vampire's blood. While I wouldn't think a dragon biting a vampire dragon necessary would turn the dragon that bits it unless that dragon had been fed on or weakened something. At the very least I see it might taint them. Like a sliver dragon if tainted scale may turn dull gray and feel themselves get cut off from lightness and good, effectively turning then more neural.
At last! The only thing cooler than a dragon, is an undead one. And yes, a vampire dragon actually does sound worse than a dracolich. As evil as a dracolich might be, a vampire dragon's hunger sounds like it will lead to a lot more death and suffering.
Mohrg dragon is terrifying. Thanks for that. I made a devourer (undead not fiend) dragon . It could consume the souls to make its breath weapon deal lingering damage, add necrotic damage to its claws, or power some spell like abilities.
Ages ago a friend of mine and I made our own RPG games one of the Big Bads was a ghost dragon. He dwelt in Mt. Peril his name….. Draghost. We were in jr high.
skeleton dragons Heroes of might and magic 3 necropolis theme intensifies! I once made Fossil dragons, also with a petrifying breath and flesh to stone curse on melee attacks, Basically, they where some progenitor to dracoliches, so old that their bones had petrified.
What would a dragon's kobolds do if their master was raised as a zombie? Would they go mad and hide inside the corpse to "care for it?" If you wound the dragon, the kobolds can now attack through the cut flesh, and maybe they even try to sew it up. The zombie dragon gains extra legendary points and actions as it takes damage, and the party can target kobolds inside to lower its number of legendary points. Maybe if the zombie dragon has been thrashed enough, there is a legendary action to "swallow" players as kobolds reach out from inside the stomach and pull players inside? Or maybe they would "just" zombify themselves or get a new master.
I have plans for my campaign where a cult, being led by Abishai. Are attempting to resurrect Tiamat by reanimating parts of her dead avatar's body and the hearts and heads of 5 living chromatic dragons of different colours. My party also have a pet baby white dragon so it's going to emotional.
I have a question - BG3 SPOILERS BELOW Is it possible for a dragon to become undead on its own? In bg3 there is an Undead Bronze Dragon laying dormant under the city, though its never explained how he actually became undead. He was killed, with a sanctuary being built around him and a fortress being built over the sanctuary. He retains all of his memories and intelligence enough to tell you his history and is powerful enough to posess the characters body and speak through them. I thought maybe the dragon cult may have had something to do with it but the only info is that his soul just stuck with his body when he died.
Also spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 below: Ansur was likely a weird kind of revenant. He was killed by his trusted friend, if not his lover, Balduran A.K.A. The Emperor, and became undead after that betrayal, which fits the standard method of creating a revenant. What is weird is that Ansur does not try to hunt down the Emperor, nor do we see him try to possess any other suitable corpse. The latter of those two can be explained away by stating that there were no dragon corpses close enough for Ansur's spirit to inhabit, so we don't see him again in the timeframe of BG3, but the former of these two discrepancies does not have any easy explanation like this.
Dragons are weird. And given how the sanctuary is in such a weird place...I would guess it was magical as well. Perhaps the Emperor feared his secret being leaked even through death so made sure that could not happen unless the situation was dire enough
On a semi-related note (also great vid as usual), I'm assuming the flesh golem is based on frankenstein's monsters, but I was surprised to find a counterpart from actual mythology. In inuit folklore, there's an undead creature called a tupilaq, which are created by stitching together parts of dead animals or children. These are usually used by shamans to seek out and kill a certain target.
i love making all sorts of weird dragons, from cyborg and ooze dragons, to the mirror and salt dragons. i treat dragon as more of a template than a creature in of itself.
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My old video on the Dracolich th-cam.com/video/NnfZQckHIH0/w-d-xo.html
Can you do a video on the spider dragon that would be awesome 🤘🤘
Better audio now
Are shadow Dragons undead?
@@VigilanteMike shadow dragons, no. Dragon shadows, yes.
I'm suddenly imagining a "religious schism" forming within the Cult of the Dragon of whether or not the future undead Dragon Masters will be Lichs or Vampires.
You could base an entire campaign on that conflict.
Actually, this is touched on in the year of rogue dragons novels. There was a smoke drake named Brimstone that was one of the original dragons that submitted to Samasters rituals to become an undead dragon overlord, and he wound up becoming a vampire. Brimstone actually helps stop Samaster due to Samaster deciding vampires were too limited, and that liches would be better, and wound up discarding him.
@Lyn Guerro now that he was destroyed it's possible the new leadership changes tune tho.
@@dillongage it actually already has. In the wake of Samasters death, Tiamat took on the illusion of being the "Everlasting Wyrm" and was corrupting the cult to worship of her. In fact, Samasters death and the destruction of the dracorage mythil are the direct cause of the HotDQ and RoT modules in 5e!
Vampire dragons are weak compared to a Dracolich
So in case of a fat white dragon you can actually end up with a "wide white wight dragon"!
Funny!
Imagine a wight dragon, enlarged magically, holding a whole castle on its back, never stopping its flight by its ill masters commands.
The necromancer controling thia flying dreadnaught sould surely be an end game level boss.
Or my next characters end goal 👿
Ahh, a good snack and a yarn. Just what I need to relax a while.
So many Undead Dragons. Except one. Dragon Atropal. Just imagine it, a Giant dragon egg, discolored like any egg gone bad. A giant crack running up the side. The stench of rotten albumin leaking from the wider break near the bottom and pooling brownish-green with black streaks on the ground. A hole near the middle, in which you can see the glowing eye of the unhatched dragon godling staring at you. Give it a cool name like Caridemyx, Unhatched or Ju'ppe'ra-Ital the Slug. All the horror of undead stillborn godling, combined with all the horror of evil dragon.
I remember when my GM allowed me to make a Undead Dragon. I was playing a Necromancer Wizard who started off as CG as his goal was to gather all the knowledge of Necromancy he could locking away the real bad stuff in a place were no one could ever find it and to find positive uses for the less evil Necromancy spells with the mind set of ‘Not all evil magic has to stay that way.’ As the game advanced he saw that other schools had power to destroy that rivaled Necromancy in sheer destructive and malicious power so he changed to LG ‘No one but only the most knowledgeable and trusted people should know o& these spells power.’ Then he ended up being duped by a church into obtain a dark ritual that they used to destroy any book that bore the name of the target of the ritual. They used that spell to destroy a rival church who believed in a rival god then he dropped to LN. ‘No one deserves this knowledge it will only cause more death and suffering only I should have it because I have proven to be above it’s manipulation.’ So he started gathering knowledge and using said Dark Ritual that the evil Church had him learn to destroy all the other copies of that spell in the world. During this time he slowly fell into a relationship with the party Rogue (as a joke because me and the Rogue’s player were super close friends to the point we would crash at each other’s apartments if gaming went on to long.) it was getting rather late in the campaign and we were reaching those levels of powers where we where facing world threats. The game came tumbling down when the Rogue was Double Crit by a Vampier (In our Games double Crit is Crit damage X Crit Multiplayer) 2d6x3x3 Con Drain she never stood a chance. She was drained and then would raise as a Vampire under his control. We slew the vampire after that quite easy but my Wizard refused to kill the rogue and instead had her locked away in his tower. Clone would not work as soon as her soul left her body it would have been dragged to Hell as per a contact agreement and so it left finding a cure (Wish being banned from players.) so the party all decided to spit up to find a cure. Slowly as leads lead to dead end and Leads lead to dead ends my Wizard started just laying siege to anything with the hint of possibility knowing the cure and leaving shattered kingdoms in his wake salting the earth leaving behind a rainstorm of Necromancy Magic that would cause everything that died to raise as a undead. As you can tell he firmly was now CE and this came to a head when the party came together and killed a Gold Dragon who knew the cure and knew who else knew but refused to tell us. After killing him the party found out the only other people that knew were the Heads of that evil church we destroyed. This was way too much for my wizard to take and in a rage he brought the Gold Dragon back as a White a who was not under my Wizards control. The White did not even register my Wizard’s presence there as if in the GM’s own words “There was no life left in that husk.” Before it left to go cause untold destruction. After returning to their base the Rogue told him that she felt that their time was up that they made a mark on the world that they (The Rogue and Wizard) could never fix even if the rest of the party thought they could redeem themselves. That day all the Necrotic storms and the undead they created would crumble away into smoke and a woman who lost the ability to enjoy the morning sun saw the sun rise one last time as the wizard would sweep her ashes into an urn right before he sealed himself inside Tomb.
A vampiric obsidian dragon sounds utterly horrifying.
Im new to dnd only been playing a yr. The fact that there’s more than 1 kind of undead dragon blows my mind
Imagin sahuagin riding a zombie dragon turtle with healers on its back. When the healers die the fighters put a headband of intellect on the dragonturtle..
If an undead dragon doesn't have sick runes I don't want it
- Apparently every necromancer ever
Its like their version of Painted rocket red with yellow flames up the sides.
@@AJPickett "Y'see Marius? The runes make the dragon go faster!" - Diocletian, Necromancer of the Cult of the Dragon
to be fair if you have the option between an undead dragon skeleton and an undead dragon skeleton with glowing runes, which one would you pick?
There's a surprising amount of undead dragon types in D&D:
Dracoliches
Zombie Dragons
Skeleton Dragons
Graveyard Dragons
Ghost Dragons
Vampire Dragons
Technically a construct but dragonbone golems too. Pretty sure there's also some manner of frankenstein type of dragon, which are just bits and pieces of different dragons reanimated by magic.
Edit: They're called Dragonflesh Golems.
I ran a campaign set on Bytopia and one of the flavor locations I had was a twinned peak that contained a cave haunted by a ghost adamantine dragon who had lost its life attempting to defend its eggs so now it just defended an empty nest of old eggshells. While the other adamantine dragons dont exactly like the ghost, it never leaves the nest or hurts anyone outside its one large cave so they leave it as a sort of tragic monument. one of my players, of course, wanted to fight it; fortunately they were out voted
You could argue ending the dragon's undeath, but would probably need the other dragons OK first
I'm entertained by the idea of having an egyptian themed dungeon with mummies of various levels, and to make sure while peeps are looting the area to describe the lil canopic jars and if they open one, they find a dried organ that must have been from one of the mummies...... Then you describe a room with 6 canopic jars that are bigger than any person in the party.
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A favorite of mine: An advanced zombie dragon zombie I then gave the Favored of Kyuss template to.
Imagine an undead dragon that can vomit brain eating worms as a breath weapon.
2:00 Because it's very unrealistic how the villains can or seem to succeed in this endever all the time while the PC's have to struggle in doing it only once. Now this is something to ponder only for people who want their world to feel truly, truly real.
3:24-3:46 That's an incredible way to explain why DnD is the way it is.
5:00-5:41 Beautiful just, just beautiful! Prof of how criminaly underrated this channel is.
Musing that Linnorm and Oriental Dragons could also fit
I'm giggle at the idea of the party of PC's arriving in the village to help fight the local "white" dragon, and just never clearing up any misunderstandings until their face to face with an undead.
Classic
I know this is an older video but I was thinking of a spell that I would call lockjaw. It keeps magic users from speaking and dragons from using breath weapon. Just crossed ming watching this video
Material component, a boiled sweet.
The Forgotten Realms series Year of Rogue Dragons features battle scenes with nearly all of these and more. One of the main characters is a vampiric smoke drake named Brimstone and he is absolutely the worst. Great series!
I'm working with a dracolich blue dragon named korthax. Unlike his contemporary chromatic dragons (in this world they all have some kind of empire) he does not need an heir because he is a dracolich and wants to exterminate all living blue dragons before going to war with the other chromatic dragonlords
Theres one realy rare and rather unigue version of undead dragon.. with realy stupid name: Hoarder dragons (they are in 3th edision.. They can use any item in theyr hoard, including weapons, scrolls, books etc... Not only they keep theyr breath attack (one they had when alive) but it gets added bonus as now it comes with flyng treasures.. So You can get hit by fast movin coins, weapons and what ever else it spits on You, lol. CR: Base creature +2...
"Dragons all collect a hoard of wealth over their life, but if a dragon becomes too greedy and too obsessed with their wealth it can cause the dragon to live on after death. The dragon's spirit physically becomes a part of its hoard. The great blades in its collection becomes its teeth and claws, shields and gold plates becoming scales, and all the rest of it is made from its trove of coins."
I got to finally run a cobra dragon a while ago as a capstone to end our remote campaign.
It was the best boss fight I've ever run and the most intresting lair I've designed.
Their was also 2 different kinds of mummies in that campaign but my players were able to avoid those fights.
I love mummies and think a mummy cobra dragon with it's phylactory fleeing aboard a spelljammer could be a good campaign.
"I failed in life as a mercenary but perhaps working for myself I could command the world."
They chase his minions ship, he chases them. Resurrecting a dead primordial, a few epic mini-bosses and ship fights, and fighting the brutal powerful and far too cunning dragon as the final battle.
Thanks for the inspiration.
My pleasure
Mummy dragon 23:36
Imagine a dragon whose breath attack actually animate undead?
Shadow dragon
Imagine an undead dragon weapon (small dragon that turns to a weapon) and it like has a spell to like speak to dead or raise a corpse and does bonus necrotic damage
I can't help help but think of a Draconic Crawling Claw; A not-so-skilled Necromancer's last resort when he found the corpse a little too late. I can see the player's faces now-- The utter confusion and concern as a Dragon Claw scurries toward them in the dead of night.
Damn I like this idea I believe I will steal it...lol... Good thinking bro
The claw can also double as a throne, given the size it would be intimidating, and mobile.
@@couchcommandoiv5528 good idea... Hell maybe a mount for a lich or archlich
Man it's amazing the lvl of "extra" lore you slip in that is mixed in with the most relevant lore. You sure truly are a scholar of the highest order of candle keep.
Humanoid vampire maybe feeds on dragons blood for sometime. The powerful elemental nature of the wyrms blood changes their animal for in time to that giant bat thing I just saw.
Vampire Dragons are so hard to believe. To them most humanoids would seem like trying to survive on tic tacs.
Maybe, they would be seeking out things like large monstrosities or other dragons? I could see a vampiric dragon who, while cruel, has no interest in harming humanoids, instead hiring adventurers to take out big monsters and bring them back to its lair.
The answer is dinosaurs and megafauna.
"Looks like a cross between dinosaurs and birds"
The department of redundancy department
Dude we've all seen Jurassic Park.
I love the Mummy Dragon idea, but if I put another Mummy in my campaign, one of my players may just kill me.
lol
Mummy kobolds.
Mummy beholder, all eyes petrify and an accelerated mummy rot cone breath instead of anti-magic eye.
Necromancers were so focised on "Can we do it?" That they never asked "Should we do it?"
Absolutely incredible as always Professor. You better believe my lvl 15 group is about to be real upset with the new minions inside an ancient blue dragons lair.
Also as an aside thank you so much for the remastered series. I really appreciate how they are mostly supplemental to the old videos and not a complete replacement or rerecording. Excellent so far
A group of adventurers roll up to a wizard's tower with a heavily laden covered wagon, "Wizard! We have brought that dragon corpse you wanted!"
The wizard rushes down to inspect the corpse, "Excellent! Let's see it."
The group uncovers the wagon, "We killed it ourselves so you know it's fresh."
The wizard's eyes bulge as it looks over the corpse, "What in the Pits did you DO to this thing? It's mangled!"
Party leader folds his arms over his chest, "It's *Artisanal* ! Now pay up."
Lol!
Having fun putting together Spelleater Dragon. A wizard dragon that uses followers to bind spell scrolls similar to mummy that the dragon can use, replenishing when the party cast arcane spells within 120 ft.
Sneaky sneaky!
A player in my current Tyranny of Dragons game is a Lizardfolk Necromancer who is a servant of Ebondeath. He is actually carrying Ebondeath's phylactery as his magic focus but does not really know that. His tribe of Lizardfolk who served Ebondeath were wiped out by the reformed cult so he has a list of targets he wants to kill for revenge while also carrying out his master's will as he talks to him from the phylactery (which is a giant black zircon. He also has a custom ritual to feed the zircon souls of enemies he captures. When he does that zombies rise in their place. He recently fed two wyrmlings still inside their eggs to the zircon. I can't wait to make them hatch as Zombie dragons (the party are currently carrying the eggs in a bag of holding intending to sell them to some underworld figure or something).
Dude! That vampire dragon that looks like a bat. Holy crap. That's the coolest thing I've ever seen
I really like it that you acknowledge the artists inn your vids. Thank you for taking the extra effort.
I can just imagine an Ancient Black Dragon getting on in his years considering certain options to gain immortality.
In my world elves are friends and allies with dragons won't go too far into that but one of my players are a druid that are helping with taking care and helping the dragons. So i have planned an encounter where the players are gonna kill a mad dragon that the elf player know personally so after the battle the big bad will resurrect it turning it undead so that the players will fight it again
Just got this idea for a lichs castle on the back of a zombie dragon turtle
Why not IN a a zombie dragon turtle?
@@notsureicare488 with an army of zombie sharks swimming around it
And the water around it full of rot and disease that heals undead and damages ships and living creatures and animate anybody how dies in the water.
@@zimattack9994 you could fill it with drowned
Attacked by a fleet of ships that use ballistas to launch holy water filled barrels on it. There you got a battle!
I always love it when you talk about hypothetical creatures. It truly feels like we are in a grand lecture hall and the great and wise Picket tells us about what we might discover in the future
This reminds me of the good ol' days. Let's bring back the Forum, just like the athenians of old!
Maybe in VR to expand the concept for modern sensibilities. Hmmm....
A Wight Dragon in league with a Lich.
A Ghost Dragon in league with Illithid.
I see the wight dragon and the lich having a mutual arrangement.
I see the illithid extorting and gaslighting the ghost dragon into servitude.
@@Zenas521 Evil Friends in life, Evil Friends in death.
I've used a skeleton dragon didn't know a bone claw dragon was a thing but I had changed the wing attack to percing damage as it would try to spear the players with the bones in the wings
Great video AJ. I see I was not the only oldschool guy who used undead dragons.
One, the mummy dragon. I didn't know they existed in other realms, I created mine. A rogue Yellow (desert) Dragon was a friend of humans and was a champion for them. In a misunderstanding, the players killed it... and assuming his attempts at parley were trickery. So, they became pariahs to that allied kingdom. While the players were gone, that kingdom's healers fully healed the dragon but were not able to restore life to it. Over a period of several months, they successfully made it into a super-mummy as their desperate way to bring their draconic friend back to life. It worked alright. The Dragon was still a good guy but he was also a life-enemy to the party for being the reason he died and was forced into his undead state. Can you imagine being in a party where those top-tier behind the villains you defeated and now over half of the top-tier behind the side of good are all your enemies? Those player characters had a rough existance the rest of the campaign.
Two, I've used basic undead dragons, skeleton and zombie. I think I took the stats out of Dragon Magazine at the time.
Three, the Undead Dragons just came into being via my Land of the Dead (Romance of the Soulless Overlords) campaign. If a dragon died in that area, it will return as some form of undead... like everything that dies or have died there.
for a "fun" twist: allow the ghost dragon to posses other dragons. while the draconic "soul" is incompatible with regular souls it'll probably match well enough with a regular dragon (especially of the same type it was). could be a fun 2 stage boss: the possessed (maybe one stage younger) dragon, and when that's defeated the ghost dragon emerges. give hints and a clever party may be able to expel the ghost from it's host, which potentially leaves, cutting out the first stage, or stays to help them take down the person they possessed, turning a hard fight into one relatively easy one (maybe pick a type of dragon the ghost is immune to to make it not too powerful) but suddenly having a dragon fight alongside you (who'll want at Least part of the hoard after victory)
Wait if a shadow dragon becomes undead seeing as even in life there are infused with The negative energies planes of wouldn that enhances there already nasty breath weapon? Also wouldn't that almost gaurnetee that they are a stronger version of undead?
I believe shadow dragons can generally see becoming a true undead is just the next step in their life cycle. So a prepared shadow dragon may have all the materials for the lichdom ritual on hand and is just waiting until they mature to a sufficient degree.
Now we need Undead Giants if that is not already a video.
The way you organized this video and covered the more important aspects of each type is really well done. Kudos.
I've often wondered what an ancient dragon-sized pseudodragon would be created, and what it could be capable of...
Very loud cackling.
I _knew_ positive energy undead were possible.
I mean, obviously negative energy undead are the most numerous, but positive energy heals biological things while too much positive energy burns them(and too much for a prolonged amount of time causes people to explode, such as being in the positive energy plane), so it stands to reason that a body that is overloaded with a high concentration of positive energy could become trapped in a cycle of burning and regeneration(with the constant radiant damage keeping them from exploding) effectively creating a similar psyche to undead things.
And by that I mean being in constant torment while mindlessly attacking everyone around them in a "FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS KILL MEEEE" state(of course that's just my reasoning for simple undead's evil status. I also like the "night of the living dead" style zombies where their desire to eat stems from the constant pain of having their dead cells and nerves be forced into action by magic, and only by consuming the positive energy that living bodies contain does the pain recede temporarily, as a substitution for the movie's "eating nerve tissue stops the pain for a time" because science has no power here. I also choose to believe that the spells that create undead target the animas, the vestiges of the life force the body has, like the spell "speak with the dead" does, and doesn't involve immortal souls at all because how the hell does a mediocre spell caster have the power to override the wills of extraplaner entities, let alone the reality warping gods above them? Even the pro-undead gods will demand something in return for the souls they have jurisdiction over, and somehow I find it unlikely that every single random person that is raised happens to be chaotic evil and under the jurisdiction of Orcus or such.
In addition, the control of undead, in this alternate reasoning, via spells do so by putting their consciousness into a almost hypnotized/sedated state, with better/more intelligent undead riding the line of sedation more accurately, ridding the undead of their desire to murder by ridding them of the pain that drives them, while also making them more suggestible. It allows the creation _and responsible upkeep of undead,_ by maintaining the spells and killing off no longer needed ones, to be a neutral act that can be used for good, while leaving the necromancer with an undead horde shepherded along by a few controlled zombies to remain sufficiently evil. Basically I like my evil to actually have reasoning behind it, and not be "they're evil just because they are" like how undead are painted. It also allows the "SMITE THE UNDEAD" to be less "my god says it's bad, so we must kill anyone who even looks like they might use necromancy" zealotry, and more of a merciful act to purge uncontained undead, smite the irresponsible necromancers inflicting unecessary suffering, and give good aligned groups, even with the most zealous of Paladins, an excuse to allow PCs to play necromancers if they want to, under the guise of ensuring their usage is within regulation. Because they removed the lawful good alignment restriction from paladins, but currently for many groups necromancy is restricted to evil alignments despite the fact that there's an entire setting where the responsible use of undead is viewed as beneficial, and the fact that the mind rape school(enchantment), the war crime school(evocation), the kidnapping and enslavement school(conjuration), the stalking school(divination), the imprisonment school(abjuration), the framing school(illusion), and the forgery school(transmutation) all are not judged by the worst crimes(and in evocation, enchantment, and conjuration's case their most used effects) that they are capable of, yet necromancy, the scool that allows for healing and bringing willing creatures back to life, is the school that is viewed as pure evil, to the point where healing was removed from it and given to other schools because ambiguity of usage of the school of _life,_ death, _and the soul_ is dumb.
Ok, that was a longer rant than I expected, back to my main point)
Of course that's just the zombie/skeleton level of unlife, higher tiers would have other physiological effects, like the Hollow dragons being a sack of scales filled with positive energy.
Eberron has positive undead
They require constant ancestor worship (and nothing else) to remain functional but retain intelligence and their original personality regardless of undead type
"They usually use their powers of enchantment to control influencers" - confirmed: AJ Picket is an undead dragon minion
I can understand doing the checks to see if the cult or lich that is trying to raise a dracolich or other undead dragon, since you could have it that each adventure session you make a check to see if the cult succeed in the ritual. Just have the dc/dr for the success of the ritual to be lowered as the sessions continue on till it is a guarantied success. This can give the players a pressing need to push thru the encounters, and adventures since the cult completing the ritual is not fully linked to the adventure session. Like how in a true adventure if it were irl the dread threat would push the group to push on not knowing how long they had.
I like to think a lot about how undead dragons would be viewed by regular living ones.
Would they be seen as abominations?
Would they be seen as powerful and glorious.
I have trouble believing that a creature so long lived would willingly become undead until it was nearing the end of its life span.
That reminds me of Klauth, an ancient red dragon from the Neverwinter nights computer game. In order to extend his life he ordered minions to steal the eggs of other dragons that he would force hatch and then murder the hatchlings for their lifeforce. I could easily see him becoming a dracolich or vampire dragon to extend his lifespan.
Klauth minion: But but if you did that you would have to murder other dragons forever to extend your undead life for eternity!!!
Klauth: Sure sure, but is there actually a downside?
@@mal35m Sounds like something that a group of other dragons would have to come together and go to war with Klauth for.
They could fund many adventuring parties with their hordes to go and fight his minions.
A great way to bring a party together is to say.
ok so this power hungry guy did a thing to get power.
People saw that and their reaction is to fund expeditions to fight him and or gain power for themselves so he doesn't conquer them.
a good first take would simply be to ask how humans look at human undeath. probably a lot of instinctual "it's unnatural and must be stopped", the weirdo's like me who'll think "man i can really see the appeal in some forms of that" and academic side with thoughts like "that's wildly impractical and doesn't even really do what you want it to do.".
@@florenmage Even a necromancer making lesser undead from younger dragons would be considered an unforgivable abomination and insult to all dragons. The mere existence of a dracolich or vampire dragon greater undead would be considered a existential threat to all dragonkind across the multiverse. Best scenario is it would be an all claws on deck moment with chromatic and metallic dragons working together and pooling resources to bring down a common enemy. Most likely scenario the dragons would fall prey to panic and paranoia as drained dragon bodies piled up and even good aligned dragons would start attacking each other in fear. I think there would be at least one dragon version of Van Helsing out there in the multiverse who specifically hunted dragon undead.
@@mal35m
Ah Dragon Vanhelsing.
What vampires have nightmares about.
XD
Vampire dragons. Thanks! This is going into the campaign im running now! Perfect time to find this vid
Did you find the vid... of did the vid find you?
@@AJPickett the video actually found me! Thanks for doing everything that you do. You do it all so well
Yes my personal abomnation Dracolitch Brain Stealer Dragon leading a council of Alhoon:- Group has not forgiven me for this one
this is so evil! I'm a forever DM, but I'm already terrified of this concept.
I was pondering vampiric dragons just the other day. I even included one in the back story of the area I'm homebrewing. The site of its "final" death is within a few days travel of the town where the campaign began.
So once again your lore is timely and greatly appreciated by one guy way over here in Canada.
Thanks for another one AJ.
This bring back memories from playing Baldurs Gate II, Shadows of Amn where one of the foes are a shadow dragon. To claim that it was evil is understatement.
While an army of undead dragons might sound awesome on paper, or if you played The Scourge in WarCraft III Reign of Choas & Frozen throne then Death Knights in WoW, is a loooooot of work and more dangerous then its worth, sure you can tap into the Shadow Weave and raise a whole graveyard of them, but it's going to end up killing you, 1 per Vampire Lord, Master Necromancer, etc., keep in mind in terms of power to raise more, you would need a nuclear power plant the side of Manhattan to keep operational,
from now on, I'm adding Vampire Dragons to my campaign world & one of their effects on the land will by the unnatural amount of awesomely beautiful female humanoids.
oh, & they will be at the head of a hierarchy of Vampires made up of Spawns; Vampires; & Warriors/Spellcasters, & other things in between.
"Unlikely to roll so badly, so often"
That's basically my entire roleplaying career!
AJ we are preparing for a blizzard here in Maine and I am grabbing a tasty beverage,
Thank you.
Been catching up on older videos such as carrion crawler and rot grub.
same, bracing myself for the two goddamn feet of that shit lmao
I made a template for the zombie dragon, it was hard. The following template can be used to create zombies of any creature with the dragon creature type, instead of using the template found in the creating an NPC table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The zombie might retain or loose any or none of its Legendary, Mythic or Lair Actions, as the DM sees fit. Retained Characteristics. The zombie retains its vulnerabilities, resistances and immunities. Lost Characteristics. The zombie looses any special senses, any languages, any skill or saving throw bonuses and the traits Amphibious, Spellcasting or Innate Spellcasting if it has them. It can’t speak, but understands the languages it knew in life. Actions. The zombie retains any action that required it to make an attack roll, also retaining multiattack. If the zombie’s breath weapon or bite actions deal acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, radiant, or thunder damage, reduce this damage by half, rounding down. Creature Type. The zombie’s creature type is undead, and it looses any tags. Undead Fortitude. If the zombie is reduced to 0 hit points, it must make a Constitution saving throw with a DC of 5 + the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or from a critical hit. On a success, the zombie drops to 1 hit point instead. Undead Nature. The zombie doesn’t require air, food, drink, or sleep. Alignment. The zombie is Neutral Evil. Ability Scores. The zombie’s Ability Scores change as follows: STR +2 DEX -4 CON +4 INT 3 (-4) WIS 8 (-1) CHA 5 (-3) Armour Class. The zombie’s Armour Class changes in accordance to the changes to its Dexterity Score: remove the ability score bonus from the zombie’s Armour Class, recalculate the zombie’s Dexterity Score, and apply the new bonus to the zombie’s Armour Class. Speed. Reduce the zombie’s Fly speed by half, rounding down. Poison Immunity. The zombie is immune to Poison Damage and to the Poisoned Condition. Saving Throw Proficiency: Wisdom. The zombie is proficient in Wisdom Saving Throws. Senses. The zombie has Darkvision up to a radius of 30 feet. Fetid Infestation. The zombie only has access to this characteristic if it is size large or larger and has a Breath Weapon action. When the zombie uses it’s Breath Weapon Action, roll or choose from the list below. The selected creature appears in a random unoccupied space within the Breath Weapon’s area of effect, at half it’s maximum hit points, rounded down. D6. 1. Giant Rat. 2. Giant Centipede. 3. Swarm of Rats. 4. Diseased Giant Rat. 5. Swarm of Insects (Wasps) 6. Swarm of Rot Grubs. (Found in Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse, if not owned, use a Swarm of Insects (Beetles) instead) I first made this on my phone in DND beyond, before copy pasting it here, this was exhausting
* Hit Points. Add 9 times the zombie’s constitution modifier Hit Points to it’s maximum hit points.
🎶UNDEAD! (undead)🎶
🎶UNDEAD! (undead)🎶
🎶Undead!🎶
🎶You better get up out the way🎶
🎶Tomorrow'll rise so let's fight today🎶
🎶And no, I don't give a fk what you think or say🎶
🎶Cause we gonna rock this whole plane anyway🎶
I have a campaign planned for my players where a dragon's ghost and body are brought back to life seperately and work together.
I'm doing a homebrew campaign with a vampire dragon sacking a city and making it, it's horde underneath the city itself. I'm very intrigued by vampire dragons, especially because dragons already live so long(like 800-1000 years, right) but making it immortal means it could be many thousands of years old, and I think I might also make it extremely large, like 250-300ft wingspan, due to this age, even though it's dead; I think I'll say it's just "alive enough" to keep on growing over the years, the same way a crocodile in real in real life never really stops growing and only dies when it gets too big for its heart to give out, but it's a vampire so it never does.
Kinda inspires me to make a meso-american-like setting that has “Vecna” as a dracolich and “Kaz” as a vampire dragon, both worshipped with human sacrifices. Souls for the soul dragon and blood for the blood dragon, then maybe the flesh was given to some other undead draco-lad
So... Slannesh and Khorne, but dragons?
@@rafaelcastor2089 Whatever that is, yes. Anything is improved with dragons afterall.
@@disgruntledbob2812 Dunno bout that one. But if you want to know what i was referring to, just look up Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy
@@rafaelcastor2089 Yes and no, the souls Slan2 receives are simply the medium by which the pain and suffering of their priests victims are transferred to them, of course the energy the souls themselves are comprised of is an appreciated bonus.
The extreme sensations and emotions are the priority, the soul is simply the edible wrapping, like a burrito.
@@disgruntledbob2812 Counterpoint, DON'T look up Warhammer.
Now I'm picturing a false undead Dragon that's actually masterpiece of a flesh golem creator. This is kind of inspired by the "Stitchers" from the Innistrad setting of Magic The Gathering, who are basically like Dr. Frankenstein but more experimental & numerous. Why settle for a regular humanoid corpse golem, where there's a natural world full of parts to bring into your unnatural mad experiments? Worried about your guard golems being disarmed, give them more arms than they had while alive, like four, six, or eight. Want your servitors to move faster on the battle field? Make a pseudo centaur corpse golem by fusing together a horse & rider together. I'm sure you can imagine where else this can be taken. So why would you need to get a hold of a dragon corpse to make a Dragon Flesh Golem when you could just use a herd of cows, a bunch of metal supports to join bones from multiple animals together, some anatomy knowledge, & imagination?
AD&D2ndE Ravenloft Van Richten Guide to the Created/ Golems.
Giant eagle wings attached to a pseudo centaur was a creature mention in the book as a few paragraph short story.
Twisted flesh golem monsters with multiple arms are fun.
So many new ideas are brewing. AJ you are the reason for my dnd world having so many possible paths for my players to take.
@AJ Pickett I can't help but think what if a really mad wizard made a draco flesh golem from a blue dragon? Would it be able to heal itself with its lighting breath? It might even work if you made human sized and shaped flesh golem from blue dragon parts. It would look like a regular flesh golem in blue draconic armor but would have lightning breath and the ability to heal itself.
I think they certainly could regenerate by exchanging breath attacks for restoration bursts.
@@AJPickett I could see an ancient red dragon paying an evil human wizard big bucks to create a company of blue dragon guards from a defeated blue dragon for his hoard. The evil wizard would probably be happy just to be able to work with dragon flesh. They would be able to make really dangerous guards of all shapes and sizes.
The Wyrms were chewed by worms?
You now speak fluent draconic,.
A mummy red dragon sounds nihilistic.
I had a party give a mummy lord a Dragon corpse once. Now half of the nation is infested with undead.
What did the necromancers do? How is this possible?
Who knew it was even remotely possible to have no cute girl.
I mean, it's not even slightly possible
Someone messed up huge.
YEs, they did the imposible.
GOod job draco necromancers..
I'm running Tyranny of Dragons and I've really jumped the script. Anything dragon related is welcome to the mishmash meta of my living world.
The hollow dragons originate from the 4th edition metallic dragons draconomicon, one of the many amazing 4e dragons that got ignored because everyone hated 4e. Here's hoping they bring the deathmask dragon back.
If it's not a Dracolich I naturally assume that an undead Dragon is a victim. Only inept or unprepared Dragons would allow themselves to become an undead vassal to a lesser power. However it's also important to understand that Dragons aren't all powerful, and their bodies are subject to theft or corruption just as any corpse could. Spectral Dragons scare me the most however. Nothing scarier than a incorporeal, fear-inducing, life-sapping monstrosity that has ages of magical knowledge and power at it's command and thinks only of the destruction of life.
How about crawling dragon claws?
"The touch still gives the infamous mummy rot" dear God somebody hide rayce before he becomes rust
When I heard vampire dragon, the first thing that popped in my head was dhampir dragon. Like I'm all for a dhampir steel dragon who runs a guild of vampire hunters.
On a side note I like the idea metallic dragon get corrupted into a vampire. With me and vampires I never liked the idea of someone just getting bit and that turns them into a vampire their needs to be an aspect of drinking the vampire's blood. While I wouldn't think a dragon biting a vampire dragon necessary would turn the dragon that bits it unless that dragon had been fed on or weakened something. At the very least I see it might taint them. Like a sliver dragon if tainted scale may turn dull gray and feel themselves get cut off from lightness and good, effectively turning then more neural.
At last! The only thing cooler than a dragon, is an undead one.
And yes, a vampire dragon actually does sound worse than a dracolich. As evil as a dracolich might be, a vampire dragon's hunger sounds like it will lead to a lot more death and suffering.
Mohrg dragon is terrifying. Thanks for that.
I made a devourer (undead not fiend) dragon . It could consume the souls to make its breath weapon deal lingering damage, add necrotic damage to its claws, or power some spell like abilities.
guess i now have to sculpt the great Drakeula
I laughed at this way harder than I should have. A good pun gets me everytime
Ages ago a friend of mine and I made our own RPG games one of the Big Bads was a ghost dragon. He dwelt in Mt. Peril his name….. Draghost. We were in jr high.
skeleton dragons Heroes of might and magic 3 necropolis theme intensifies!
I once made Fossil dragons, also with a petrifying breath and flesh to stone curse on melee attacks, Basically, they where some progenitor to dracoliches, so old that their bones had petrified.
I'm hearing all kind of colored dragons I had no idea even existed, man D&D got wild after 3.5
A few of those pre-date 3.5
What would a dragon's kobolds do if their master was raised as a zombie? Would they go mad and hide inside the corpse to "care for it?" If you wound the dragon, the kobolds can now attack through the cut flesh, and maybe they even try to sew it up. The zombie dragon gains extra legendary points and actions as it takes damage, and the party can target kobolds inside to lower its number of legendary points. Maybe if the zombie dragon has been thrashed enough, there is a legendary action to "swallow" players as kobolds reach out from inside the stomach and pull players inside?
Or maybe they would "just" zombify themselves or get a new master.
All of the above
Which chromatic dragon is the nastiest one to turn into an undead dragon?
Red, they are the largest.
You should also do a video on Nupperiboos and the lesser known devil types.
But.. if the mummy dragon has its wrappings protected somewere. How come they are still extra vounerable to fire?
because they are dried out with special oils, gums and herbs, all of which LOVE fire.
@@AJPickett ah yea shure. Makes sense i guess
I have plans for my campaign where a cult, being led by Abishai. Are attempting to resurrect Tiamat by reanimating parts of her dead avatar's body and the hearts and heads of 5 living chromatic dragons of different colours. My party also have a pet baby white dragon so it's going to emotional.
This was a great video. I hope some additional videos are spawned from what was covered here.
I have a question - BG3 SPOILERS BELOW
Is it possible for a dragon to become undead on its own? In bg3 there is an Undead Bronze Dragon laying dormant under the city, though its never explained how he actually became undead. He was killed, with a sanctuary being built around him and a fortress being built over the sanctuary.
He retains all of his memories and intelligence enough to tell you his history and is powerful enough to posess the characters body and speak through them.
I thought maybe the dragon cult may have had something to do with it but the only info is that his soul just stuck with his body when he died.
Also spoilers for Baldur's Gate 3 below:
Ansur was likely a weird kind of revenant. He was killed by his trusted friend, if not his lover, Balduran A.K.A. The Emperor, and became undead after that betrayal, which fits the standard method of creating a revenant. What is weird is that Ansur does not try to hunt down the Emperor, nor do we see him try to possess any other suitable corpse. The latter of those two can be explained away by stating that there were no dragon corpses close enough for Ansur's spirit to inhabit, so we don't see him again in the timeframe of BG3, but the former of these two discrepancies does not have any easy explanation like this.
Dragons are weird. And given how the sanctuary is in such a weird place...I would guess it was magical as well. Perhaps the Emperor feared his secret being leaked even through death so made sure that could not happen unless the situation was dire enough
On a semi-related note (also great vid as usual), I'm assuming the flesh golem is based on frankenstein's monsters, but I was surprised to find a counterpart from actual mythology. In inuit folklore, there's an undead creature called a tupilaq, which are created by stitching together parts of dead animals or children. These are usually used by shamans to seek out and kill a certain target.
The fact that is part of a mythology is frankly terrifying.
@@AJPickett Oh Asian folklore is even worse, a lot of undead babies.
Ran a mummified blue dragon Pharoah once as a final boss very awesome.
In speaking of dragons, what about good natured dragons that are active soldiers or warriors?
Great video AJ! I love listening to your content while planning my own DnD adventures 🤣or while doing house work :p my love also loves your videos!
Vampire dragons are bullshit XD
UNTIL the sun worshiping cleric hits high enough level.
Orcus would be amused... If he could
i love making all sorts of weird dragons, from cyborg and ooze dragons, to the mirror and salt dragons. i treat dragon as more of a template than a creature in of itself.
To be fair, that was 3.5's entire approach to dragons.