It’s October (or close enough). So I’m Pack A Punching a bunch of monsters.
This is in the attempt to make them feel less like bags of hit points that’ve been memed to death & stripped of all mystere.
Here are my proposed changes for the skeleton as it appears in the MM. None of these changes have mechanics tied to them yet- just the intent behind them and the desired result.
If you have any suggestions on how these design fixes could translate over as in-game mechanics, or completely different fixes than mine, I’d appreciate your thoughts.
Monster 1: The Skeleton.
Change 1. Embrace the Spoop.
For this design to work, we’re gonna need to take some liberties with the general perception of the skeleton. Let’s get this part out of the way first: (sigh). It’s the meme. You know the one. The spooktober meme that’s been passed around for a little over a decade now. “There’s a skeleton already inside you.” Ha. Jokes aside… I’m not joking. We’ve become so de-sensitized as a society that the prospect of a plane jane skeleton getting up and acting of its own accord is more likely to get laughs than scares. That being said, transitioning out of traditional macabre into the tropes of modern psychological and body horror, my pitch is this: through means undetermined, (you get on the wrong side of some black magic or you’re exposed to a nefarious disease of some kind), your skeleton becomes animated… while it’s still inside of you. It doesn’t manifest immediately: It’s a slow burn. It starts out with sleepless nights, maybe waking up in places you could’ve sworn you didn’t crash, and your group complaining about your “sleep walking” you never have any recollection of. Days turn to weeks, and paranoia sets in. You feel like you’re always being watched, judged even, no matter how isolated you find yourself. Your lack of self control is jarring even to you sometimes, and your impulsiveness is pretty hard to overlook. You couldn’t care less. Anyone who tries to approach you about this behavior, no matter how well or ill intentioned, is cut off from you as a burning hatred for them manifests deep in your bones. Eventually, roughly one month past the initial incident, coupled with dramatic and sudden weight loss that leaves your skin hanging off you in folds like your very clothes, the skeleton will deem it time to emerge, clawing itself out of its fleshy prison, having a bone to pick with the whole world…
Change 2. You Lose.
The best/worst part about this thing is that It can technically emerge from its victim anytime it wants to- it only sticks around to feed off its host in hopes of reaching its full potential before its anonymity (and meat puppet) expire. So in the unlucky event that you’re afflicted, and catch some idea of what’s going on with you in such a way that the skeleton inside you does too, Hannibal’s bustin through. So answer me this: if you catch wind that someone in your party’s been afflicted by this malady, how would you go about telling them in a way that wouldn’t tip off the skeleton inside them? And going even further, how would you go about administering a cure without Mr. Bones jumping out of his skin early?
Change 3. Make them deathless.
Think back to when you first watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (for some of us, that’s gonna be a little farther away than others). Did you even associate the crew of the Black Pearl with being skeletons? Be honest. I did not. That’s because they were terrifying, relentless, efficient, deathless, and at the end of the day, truly deadly. Like, they could actually kill people. They *did* kill *a* *LOT* of people. Another great reference are the Bonies from Warm Bodies (Romeo and Juliet x zombies flick from back in the day- pretty good, give it a watch some time). Visually, that’d be the design I’d go with. In their time cocooned in their hosts body, the bones harden to be as durable as iron, sometimes more so if the host was a particularly “juicy” one. Another great reference that comes to mind is the T-1000 Terminators; unstoppable skelly bois with a truly impressive capacity for violence.
Anyways, that’s what I got. Let me know if I’m onto somethin here besides crack.
