By: Chris Acuff

Yeah, you read that right, skeletons. Not some weird alien or underground super predator like the last ones. (Click Here for the earlier entries in this series for the Grell and the Bulette) This time it’s just regular ol’ bony boys.

Skeletons fulfill a quality that for me is required for me to use them- vibe. A person is dead. Time, the elements, and decay have worn everything down until the only thing that ever remains of anyone on this earth- bones, our own version of foundational stones to our bodies. This is the fundamental building block of a person re-animated and it’s here to kill you. Undead are a classic enemy type because this concept of the dead coming back after the living is such a scary and foundational story to humans. Plus, you can have the animating energy fueling them come about in a myriad of ways- liches, curses, artifacts that need a guardian, lost souls of the damned, a weapon that animates the body of its former master, we got versatility here folks!

Stat wise, they are one of the few creatures that have a real vulnerability paired with interesting immunities that don’t break anything. I really like this, I think vulnerability is an underused mechanic- fights are puzzles, in their own way, after all, and having a hidden weakness is really cool in my opinion. It makes it worth exploring different damage types and exploring bludgeoning being not that common makes it a cool discovery for new players. For seasoned players, something I have experimented with is that their characters don’t know how to get a hold of vulnerabilities without researching the enemy first, OR, after the first fight with them, if one of them does use the vulnerable damage type, saying something like “After the battle, you realize that the brittle old bones of the skeletons were cracking and splintering when you swung your club in great arcs. You think if you start attacking that way you will be able to dispatch them faster” This creates an element of discovery, like the witcher, and gives me the ability to add vulnerabilities to monsters that only ever come up if my players put in the effort to discover them. 

Skeletons are low level enemies. My favorite range to run dnd is levels 3-5. That’s the sweet spot for me. Its when a character comes into their own but still feels like a normal/real person for the most part, magic hasn’t risen to possible world breaking heights. To me, 5 or 6 is the level cap for a grounded campaign, this is the highest level of a character that you could take and plop into something like a grounded setting of Lord of The Rings or Game of Thrones. After this, it truly becomes epic fantasy in tone from the power scaling. 

I like skeletons because they are a great enemy for that 1-5 range. At low levels, just a couple of them can be a real problem, while later on a mob of them makes for a cinematic grand moment, or a perfect way for the cleric to show off the power of “turn undead.”

That makes me think of a great scenario: After stumbling in the damp dark through narrow dungeon passageways you come to a larger room, more care was evidently used in the carving of this chamber, with narrow, rectangular slots carved into the side of the walls. Cloth bundles lie in those slots, threadbare with age. You touch one? Cold, pale-yellow bones wrap around your hand as it goes for the cloth. All of a sudden the chamber is filled with a clatter as bones, seemingly held together by nothing, slide themselves out. Old hands grip rusted blades that last saw service two hundred years ago. – Yeah that’s right bitch, I tricked you, skeletons are ambush predators too. 

Roll Initiative.