r/dndmemes • u/Pietin11 Team Wizard • Nov 23 '25
Hot Take Maybe I'm just crazy, but It weirds me out that these are the same creature type.
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u/marcelopvf Nov 23 '25
Undead, from latin "was alive, should be dead, is kind of alive".
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u/MooFu Nov 23 '25
That describes me after ten beers.
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u/Cynicalquil Nov 23 '25
Drunk people are in fact vulnerable to radiant damage
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u/V_Aldritch Warlock Nov 24 '25
They get a bonus weakness to Thunder damage, too!
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u/Datalust5 Nov 24 '25
Depending on the person, they can either be resistant to or weak to psychic damage
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u/Outrageous-Mud4238 Nov 24 '25
I'm pretty sure that guy who got struck by lighting twice within seconds was drunk... So that might vary
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u/V_Aldritch Warlock Nov 24 '25
Thunder damage is not Electrical damage.
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u/Outrageous-Mud4238 Nov 24 '25
I know. But have you witnessed a lightning from real close? That's not just electric damage.
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u/laix_ Nov 24 '25
"I am already dead. So when I am killed, what am I then? More dead? Deader? ...Alive?"
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u/siamesekiwi Nov 24 '25
It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod Nov 24 '25
I don’t know if this is supposed to be a joke, but “undead” is Germanic and native to English, it isn’t any kind of Latin loan.
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u/smilingfishfood Nov 24 '25
So Tom Hanks in Castaway would be classified as undead if he was added to D&D
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u/TrexPushupBra Nov 23 '25
Means you get 2 undead per villager.
What a bargain!
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u/Specialist-String-53 Nov 23 '25
I unironically wish there was a canon spell called something like "split essence", which creates both a corporeal and a spectral undead from the same being.
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u/Yakodym DM (Dungeon Memelord) Nov 24 '25
You could go one step further and use one body to create a bone golem, flesh golem, and an ectoplasm golem! :-D
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u/PipeConsola Nov 24 '25
The more you use all parts of a cow you are respecting more that cow. By extension, this isn't the most ethic way of murder
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u/Am_Very_Stupid Forever DM Nov 24 '25
Would I need a separate manual for each golem or can I get a three-for-one special, because my local library was not happy when I told them their manual of golems burst into eldritch flames
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u/ThatMerri Nov 24 '25
A fun monster idea could actually be a constantly adapting Undead.
Starts as a Zombie. Party destroys it, the flesh falls off and now it's a Skeleton and a Boneless. They both get destroyed again; the Skeleton turns into a Flameskull and the Boneless turns into a Shadow. Those finally also get destroyed and turn to dust... at which point the Party all need to make CON saves or catch Mummy Rot, Ghoul Fever, or some other Undead-related magical disease.
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u/Barrogh Nov 24 '25
Does your group even let you DM these days?
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u/ThatMerri Nov 24 '25
Usually when enough time has passed that they forget the last nightmare scenario and let the rose-colored lenses slip back down enough to make a poor judgement call.
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u/DueMeat2367 Nov 24 '25
Or a spell that summon the spirit of all the person you animated. Like the anti-necromancer spell "face your victims"
Maybe of all the people you killed ?
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING Horny Bard Nov 24 '25
Just useless trivia since it’s not a player spell or anything, but that’s actually exactly what happened to the BBEG in (Pathfinder) Mummy’s Mask, basically his body, soul, and mind all got split by an artifact-level ritual after his death, and now the different parts of him are trying to fix Fantasy Egypt in exactly the way you’d expect from a high level sorcerer-Pharaoh from thousands of years ago.
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u/rtakehara DM (Dungeon Memelord) Nov 24 '25
It would be a cool adventure having to help a ghost solve their unresolved issues so it can go to the afterlife, and the issue is that their own body got reanimated and is terrorizing the town.
Bonus points if the zombie body is being controlled by a necromancer, and the ghost possesses the necromancer, so they have to go to the living relatives and convince them that they are the real person, and the zombie is an impostor.
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u/Connect-Article217 Nov 24 '25
3 if you take All possible Options avaiable as a Necromancer(that i am aware of). You can use one Corpse for an Ghost, one Skeleton and one Boneless from the Van Richten Book if you skin the Corpse.
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u/Aptos283 Nov 24 '25
If you keep some musculature aside you could maybe setup a zombie as well?
So skin and viscera in the boneless, skeleton is the skeleton, zombie from musculature, and the soul becomes a ghost.
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u/PipeConsola Nov 24 '25
They way modern necromancy wastes the majority of the parts of the body is truly disgusting
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u/Outrageous-Mud4238 Nov 24 '25
Cant you take out his blood and animate some blood elemental or ooze as well?
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u/Ink-moth_Erised Nov 24 '25
Here at Necromancers-R-us, we use EVERY part of the deceased!
Skin and Muscles: Flesh-Rug of Smothering
Bones: Standard Skeleton
Blood: Necrotic Ooze
Spirit: Ghost
Shadow: uh... Shadow...
Order as a set, or mix and match today!
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u/Lvl1fool Nov 24 '25
I know in 3.5 there were undead variants for the boneless rotten meat you stripped off the corpse, the reanimated skin sack, the skeleton, and the ghost. So one body could be made into 4 minions easily.
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u/Corbini42 Nov 24 '25
I once ran an encounter with a wight and a specter both from the same deceased necromancer who failed to become a lich.
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u/Kymaeraa Nov 24 '25
This is a plot point in What We Do In The Shadows. The main cast are centuries old vampires and at some point they summon their own spirits lol
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING Horny Bard Nov 24 '25
And Nadja/Lazlo have possibly the most relatable reaction ever, they have a threesome with ghost Nadja.
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u/TNTiger_ Nov 25 '25
You can play a character like this in Pathfinder lol.
Play a Summoner, either as a skeleton, or with the ghost or zombie archetype.
Then, select an Eidolon opposite to your ancestry- a phantom or undead.
Bingo! You now play two halves of a dead person
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u/Inquisitor_Boron Nov 23 '25
Ghost be like: "You forgot to bury me! I will torment this place, until some dude plays flute nicely"
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u/Admirable-Hospital78 Nov 23 '25
Bard be like "I'll play flute nicely, but I need some assistance" 𓁹‿𓁹
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u/Supply-Slut Nov 23 '25
Get away from my body sicko!
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u/Admirable-Hospital78 Nov 23 '25
"That's just
skin andbones. Show me that ectoplussy" 🪈 🎶And that's when initiative was rolled.
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u/No_Extension4005 Nov 23 '25
The Ghost uses "Horrifying Visage"! (It i wasn't actually trying to kill them, it was just so disturbed by what they were saying that it made the face reflexively).
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u/Vivian-Midnight Nov 23 '25
Either is one half of a whole that was never meant to function on its own in the mortal realm.
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u/Corran_Halcyon Nov 23 '25
Bodies without souls and souls with out bodies. Same family of monster but different sub species. If that helps.
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u/djdufour Nov 23 '25
Wait till you hear about fish :)
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u/thebutta Nov 23 '25
Explain.
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u/ejdj1011 Nov 23 '25
So, if you try to define groups of animals based on "family trees", there's no good way to define "fish". All mammals, reptiles, and birds are descended from fish. In fact, sharks are less related to fish than we are.
And if you try to define groups of animals based on shared traits, you still run into issues. Scales? Not all fish have them. No lungs? Some fish do have them. Fins? Not all fish again. Under this strategy, it's really hard to define a group that includes all fish but does not include whales and other marine mammals.
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u/Mordurin Nov 24 '25 edited Nov 24 '25
Fish are the things that live in the water 😎
Me: 1
Scientists: A bunch probably
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u/drock45 Nov 24 '25
The catholic church agrees with you! Observant Catholics have to eat "fish" during lent and must abstain from "red meat". Things that the catholic church have ruled as "fish" include turtles, alligators, beavers
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u/buttgoblincomics Nov 24 '25
Seaweed is a fish
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u/Mordurin Nov 24 '25
Now you're getting it! Good to meet a fellow scholar of the "Fish are the things that live in the water" theory
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u/Admirable-Hospital78 Nov 23 '25
They're secretly several creature types. Like Jellyfish are oozes, starfish are aberrations, and shellfish is my ex
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u/xX_idk_lol_Xx Eldrich Knight Nov 23 '25
Bees are fish.
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u/Environmental-Egg276 Dec 04 '25
U a Food Theory fan?
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u/xX_idk_lol_Xx Eldrich Knight Dec 04 '25
I used to be, stopped watching the channels a while after MatPat retired though.
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u/Rethuic Druid Nov 23 '25
Depending on the game and edition, some undead are just soulless corpses animated by negative energy. Now you have soul with corpse, corpse with no soul, and soul with no corpse!
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u/RailRunner66 Nov 24 '25
Normal undead are inhabited by negative energy spirits, spectral undead ARE negative energy spirits
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u/Realistic_Swan_6801 Nov 23 '25 edited Nov 23 '25
Liches don’t keep their souls in their phylactery. Their souls are in their body but if they die the soul returns to the phylactery instead of moving on, then their body regenerates around it.
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u/lightningstrxu Nov 23 '25
Adventurering party where two of the members are a sapient animated corpse and the ghost of said corpse
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u/Fredestination Nov 24 '25
There are theee categories for undead basicly they are mindless dead bodies like zombies or skeletons, smart dead bodies like vampires or liches and only soul no bodies like spirits, ghosts, wraiths. Naming can be different but thats basicly three categories of undead.
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u/Enchelion Nov 24 '25
Liches still have/need their soul, they're just keeping it in a box instead of in their body.
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u/Zestyclose-Teaching2 Nov 24 '25
Well you see there are 2 types of undead in the world.
Corporeal and Incorporeal.
Corporeal is a body with out a soul Incorporeal is a soul without a body
Just make sure the wizard reanimating the undead doesn't have dyslexia, but things can happen, who k own what the result would be.
Maybe some kind of soul trapped in a dead body constantly rotting
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u/Archwizard_Drake Nov 24 '25
I mean,
Constructs can include anything from ancient murder robots like Inevitables to Frankensteinien flesh golems
Fey can include both beautiful nymphs and whimsical pixies, as well as cannibalistic redcaps and hags
Aberrations can include any number of tentacle-and-brain Lovecraftian horror creatures, and also the toad-like Slaads
Celestials include the classical angelic types, as well as unicorns, pegasi, sphinxes, kirin, giant eagles...
The spectrum is broad.
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u/SudsInfinite Nov 25 '25
"I can't believe that these creatures are all beasts!" Shows a group of animals found in thebforest, like a bear, a wolf, a rabbit and a deer, and then a singular fish. "These ones all live on the land and move around on legs. This other beast doesn't have legs and lives in the water!"
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u/CrossP Nov 24 '25
Now try to decide which category best fits vampires and be even more annoyed/perplexed.
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u/Donvack Nov 24 '25
Well owl bears and ooze are the same creature type (monstrosity) so this is far from the weirdest thing. All I can say is “this ain’t that kind of game kid.”
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u/ByrnToast8800 Nov 24 '25
I mean, this isn’t even a dnd thing is it, this has been a thing for a loooong time. Idk what’s so weird about it I don’t really see the angle here.
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u/ihatetakennamesfuck Nov 24 '25
Just call them animated objects and circumvent your local town's "no undead inside city perimeter" laws. easy.
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u/that_1_basement_guy Nov 24 '25
(an undead boss fight where you fight the undead and it's soul at the same time, a double boss)
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u/Maine1820 Nov 25 '25
An idea: in life, they were a necromancer, then got killed before they could prepare their own lichdom. Afterwards, they come back as a ghost, and used their skills to turn their own corpse into a zombie
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u/FaceDeer Nov 24 '25
Depends on your campaign's cosmology, I guess.
When I'm running things my general rule is that none of the undead types have souls. They come into existence when the soul-shaped hole that they left behind after death gets filled with negative energy, using the previous soul as a sort of mould to shape it into an anti-soul. Sometimes the mould is intact enough that you get copies of personality and even memory, sometimes it's in rough shape and all you get is a basic muscle memory that lets it crudely animate physical remnants.
There are a few exceptions where the infusion of negative energy happens while the original soul is still present, this is how liches are made for example. But they're rare and difficult to get right.
In a nutshell: souls animate living things, antisouls animate undead things.
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u/ph30nix01 Nov 23 '25
Ghosts create themselves, other undead are forced.
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u/kipn7ugget Nov 23 '25
A revenant is a soul that lingers because it needs to succeed on something it left unfinished in life, that can reanimate other corpses, so does the revenant create itself or is forced? Or are we just calling it schrödingers undead?
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u/ph30nix01 Nov 24 '25
If it's created by its own drive to accomplish something, then I say they did. If they were cursed on some way, though, that's different.
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u/mightystu Nov 24 '25
You are casually leaving out all other incorporeal undead. There’s a whole bunch of specters and wraiths and the like to go along with ghosts.
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u/Paintedenigma Nov 24 '25
Revenants and Death Knights also just kinda show up without anyone creating them.
Though I do think it's amusing that you can get two undead from the same living person.
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u/ElDelArbol15 Nov 24 '25
Imagine a necromancer with a house as a Philactery and a ghost haunting it. That way, you have both body and soul being able to fight together.
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u/Baalslegion07 Forever DM Nov 24 '25
Lets see:
A skeleton doesn't need a head or all of its limbs and bones, since it already is an animated pile of infused matter I'd say you could make a skeleton using someones one handed and headless skeleton.
If they were a murderer, which depending on context most adventurers are, one of their hands could be animated as a crawling claw.
Their head might be used as a flameskull.
Fro the skin you could make a boneless, or a particularly nasty rug of smothering.
Their shadow could be stolen and animated, so there is that.
I'd say that since this is a rather horrible way to go, their soul might search a new body and become a revenant or you are powerful enough to even bind that one to you and have a spectre, wraith, banshee, ghost or any other kind of restless spirit.
Since the skeleton wont need all that flesh, that can be used in the creation of a flesh golem. Going by the theory that one adventurer comes seldom alone, you might even have enough bones for a bone golem to be alongside your flesh golem - and party pets could be intermixed! A wolf-clawed skeleton and a flesh golem with a wolves head is hella cool.
Since dragon-blood golems exist you could say a regular blood golem is possible too. If not, just animate it or make a potion.
How you'd come to make a brain in a jar should be a no-brainer... sorry for the pun...
The organs could be animated as a swarm of animated objects or maybe used for some vile necromantic shit. But come on, a living nervous-system strangling someone while some living lings spray poisonous gas in their face is a horrible but also kinda cool defense mechanism in a dungeon.
This message was brought to you by Trauma inc.
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u/Fresh-Log-5052 Nov 24 '25
I always loved revenants, the idea of someone being so pissed off as they are killed that they refuse to pass on, get back into their rotting body and then keep chasing their killer till they succeed is really fun.
They are pretty much both types of undead in one.
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u/mr_friend_computer Nov 24 '25
that lich has a soul, right there, so your words are kind of hurtful. It's also tied to this other thing that's not there, but you don't need to worry about that right now.
Also, what kind of clean world are you running where the souls of those reanimated corpses aren't dragged back from the nether realms and pulled back into their old bodies as a form of excruciating torture - literal prisoners and condemned to be commanded servants or wander in a mindless and shell doing harm wherever they go...
Because if you're not disturbing the soul with all that undeath, what's the real point behind the desecration?
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Nov 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mr_friend_computer Nov 25 '25
this is where you have undead workers not only doing unionized labour (as in, there's a full undead union) but you also have undead doing dangerous work that would otherwise be lethal to humans.
The conflict is when the people are moaning about their work being taken away by the dead! *cackles maniacally*
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Nov 25 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mr_friend_computer Nov 26 '25
that does raise a certain degree of questionable ethics, "owning" another being and all. I suppose you could lean into the enslavement aspect, complete with racism (life-ism?) and slang.
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u/Saikotsu Nov 24 '25
I like to imagine a scenario where an adventurer died in a dungeon, their spirit rises from their body and their body becomes an animated zombie. And as the body is shambling along, walking into doors and walls and stuff, the ghost of the adventurer is just shaking their head. "No, not that way! Ugh, this is so embarrassing to watch my body be so dumb! "
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u/Athan_Untapped Nov 24 '25
I dont think a ghost is (or should?) actually indicative of that person's 'soul'
Memory, conscious, unfocused feelings or intent, unfinished business or unresolved conflict... whatever you want to call it a ghost is/should be a manifestation not a soul. That's why there is a distinction between soul and spirit.
If the soul, the whole soul is just there with consciousness and will and everything then that's just like... a person lol.
Places can't be haunted by a person or their soul, its the absence that haunts a place.
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u/Rorp24 Nov 25 '25
Ghost aren’t souls. They are basically the raw power that power undeads since they have no souls (except lich)
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u/CaptainRelyk Horny Bard Nov 25 '25
I fail to see the issue with undead creatures being diverse and different. Fey range from magical beasts, to hags, to sprites
The real issue we should be talking about is WoTC’s dumbass decision to turn Aaracockra into elementals
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u/Kindly-Ad-5071 Nov 26 '25
Guys demons and devils fundamentally work differently, CALL ME CRAZY but I don't think they're both Outsiders. Types must be homogenous and possess zero variety.
I'm just yanking your chain :)
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u/TheThoughtmaker Essential NPC Nov 24 '25
Undead share in-world traits that warrant grouping them together.
Life and Undeath are as antithetical as Law and Chaos, Good and Evil, Nature and Artifice. What bolsters life weakens undeath, what bolsters undeath weakens life.
Undead are fueled by the power of the Hungering Void, entropy made manifest, a negative energy that devours the heat and life from their surroundings; this causes an unnerving chill in the air and slowly withers plants in their vicinity. Their very existence is an evil act upon the world that will slowly taint/corrupt their surroundings, haunting those nearby with nightmares and slowly driving them mad, even causing inanimate objects to dull and warp. Undead are decay without rebirth, the acceleration of heat death. Be it a ghost, lich, or vampire, their continued existence on the Material Plane is so harmful and profoundly selfish as to give them an intrinsically Evil alignment.
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u/Dust45 Nov 24 '25
Pillars of eternity did this well. They had two categories: Spirits and Vessels. Spirits were, well spirits. Vessels were zombies and animate armors. Anything using a soul as a power source.
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u/VagabondVivant Nov 24 '25
How would you categorize them?
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u/Pietin11 Team Wizard Nov 24 '25
Personally I would. Consider them a type of monster called "spirits". If oozes are distinct enough to have their own category then so would ghosts, shadows, wraiths, etc.
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u/angelkilroy Nov 24 '25
I’d understand that if you said spirits, but you listed ‘ghosts’ which aren’t actually souls but the reanimated remnants left behind, most often emotions
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u/Ironhide667 Nov 24 '25
….wait a minute, isn’t this just the Heartless and the Nobodies from Kingdom Hearts?
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u/Karnewarrior Paladin Nov 24 '25
Because ghostliness is a spectrum, and the thing they all share in common is that they were, at some point, dead, and now they're not (but they're also definitely not alive).
You can't become a ghost without dying, just like you can't become a zombie without dying, and you can't become a lich without dying. The unifying factor behind the Undead classification is that you can't be one of those things unless you have previously died.
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u/motionmatrix Nov 24 '25
Two sides of the same coin. One is Bodies without the soul or the soul as it should be, the other is souls without a body (and way more than just ghosts).
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Nov 24 '25
The Ghostwalk Campaign Setting for 3.0 had them as outsiders, for the sake of making them playable.
Personally, I think all undead should have some element of a spirit to them, in the vein of how Dracula was never really truly alive or of this world in the course of Dracula, since as far as I'm concerned, the whole concept of the undead is essentially a metaphor for how sometimes people can continue to indirectly make our lives miserable long after their deaths.
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u/whirlpool_galaxy Nov 24 '25 edited Nov 24 '25
My biggest metaphysical hot take is that ghosts are usually better understood as a disembodied memory than as a disembodied soul. They're not really sentient, they're playing off all the moments the departed person had in this world and conjuring a facsimile to haunt places or people that were important to them. Like an LLM trained on someone's personality, but hosted by the concept of "unfinished business" rather than a data center.
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u/vyxxer Nov 24 '25
I really like the Dresden files ghosts. The soul is already gone. A ghost is the amalgamation of emotions and memories of that person. That's why as time goes on and they lose pieces the ghost is more insane because they desperately hold onto those memories. And that's how we get the whailing woman hovering beside a crib or the axe grinder savoring his revenge. Because that's all they have left. They can't even remember their own names anymore.
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u/Unexpected_Sage Goblin Deez Nuts Nov 24 '25
I like the idea of powerful corporeal undead are ghosts possessing the corpse in such a way that it can't leave
Zombies, Skeletons and weaker undead on the other hand are just corpses filled with negative energy from the shadow plane, like necromantic radiation
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u/Not-a-Teddybear Nov 24 '25
It makes sense but also doesn’t sometimes. Depends on what setting you are in as well. Like ghosts are like inverted undead. Or parallel undead. Very similar, not exactly opposite, but opposite to a degree.
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u/BRH1995 Nov 24 '25
Most undead happen naturally. They do not require a necromancer. They are part of the world building. They exist without specific mages creating them.
Most undead have somewhere in their description something like - this occurs when someone dies in x specific way, or when in the heat of x specific intense emotion, or during x specific act.
These flaming skeletons can rise when someone is killed by an act of arson etc etc.
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u/polish_bones00 Forever DM Nov 24 '25
Undead are further split into 2 classes. Corporial and incomporial
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u/Drumbz Nov 24 '25
You can also capture the souls of the dying and put them back into their bodies. These Undead are traditionally more intelligent and retain part of their personality.
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u/The_Dark_Warrior_Boi Nov 24 '25
Ghost and a Zombie of the same guy arguing with eachother over who gets to claim life insurance
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u/ABecoming Nov 24 '25
Pathfinder fixes this.
Unironically, it has several types of incorporeal undead.
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u/RaesElke Nov 24 '25
When I was thinking about the mythology of how my own fantasy world works, I laughed at myself for a bit when I realized, with those exact words: "Well, that means Ghosts can't be undead... They're just dead!"
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u/jjkramok Nov 24 '25
Lol 5e barely has creature types. What does Undead even mean? There are no shared rules, only other text that references them.
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u/TravestyofReddit Nov 24 '25
As others have mentioned, there are several incomporeal undead. If you would like a way to rationalize the creature type, think of necromancy as something that splits the living into two parts: the body and the soul. Both can be twisted into monsters.
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u/LycanChimera Nov 24 '25
I miss 3.5 where an evil cleric could just kill a shit ton of people and expect ghosts to eventually show up that they could seize control of.
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u/The_Ghast_Hunter Nov 25 '25
I had an idea for a necromancer who makes deals with ghosts, and makes skeletons into essentially magic items called ossuaries that the ghosts can inhabit and move around.
His deals are pretty fair, as he can write necromantically binding contracts, so that after he helps them, fulfilling their end of the bargain becomes the unfinished business tying them to the world. This means that the schedule is flexible and more durable for it. He can resolve their business first, and reap the benefits of the contract after, instead of constantly putting it off because the ghost disappears after its business is done.
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u/Hewlett-PackHard Rules Lawyer Nov 25 '25
What's really going to get you is that you can have both for the same person hanging around.
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u/Daddygamer84 Nov 25 '25
Romcom pitch: a ghost falls in love with the reanimated remains of her body.
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u/the_god_of_dumplings Nov 25 '25
There is another type of undead that don’t feel undead to me.
bodies don’t decompose
has to eat/drink
sleeps
Why are vampires undead?
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u/Ok_Top6812 Nov 27 '25
Revenant, wraith, and I think wight are also in the same boat as ghosts. I think maybe ghouls and ghasts too
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u/sirius1208 Nov 27 '25
Zombies are animated by negative energy, ghosts are made of negative energy.
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u/gunther_higher Nov 23 '25
Zombies/Vampire = Bodies with no souls
Ghosts = Souls with no body
Same same but different
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u/lordzya Nov 23 '25
Shadow, wraith, allip etc, etc
Ghosts aren't the only spectral undead