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Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[wierd]

Draignean:  Loathe to create, does not equal "does not create."

Some compelling situations:  Micromanagement of a state does not work. The more holdings you have, or the more complex the system becomes, the more administrative overhead there is.  Either you dare to allow mere mortals to hold positions as bureaucrats, and run the risk of constantly having to retrain replacements as they invariably die horribly from old age--- OR, you find some way to keep an immortal workforce who never needs replacement or retraining, and bind them to your will somehow.  I see immortal vampire lords favoring this second one, with promotion to "bureaucrat" being one of the coveted ways of climbing up the social ladder mortals have open to them-- but only being granted to those that are exceptionally useful (already trained), AND already exceedingly loyal (Easy to bind to service). Said bureaucrats subsisting on "Grog", or other low quality vintages, as they need to keep their cunning, and not lapse into decadence.  That privilege is held for upper crust vampires. As such, bureaucrats are always looking for ways to subtly escape an eternity of toil and monotony, and seek ways to either annex nearby uncontrolled territory (EG, neighboring human-run kingdoms) through legal trickery (and thus move up the totem pole to regional governor, etc. without engaging in open warfare), or to destabilize controlled territories through similar means (Still fiercely loyal to their creator, they never undermine their own power base, just that of rival lords, and never openly.) 

[Draignean]

Quite, the Necrocracy grows, but it grows slowly, and with far more Vampire Spawn than Full Vampires- which already forces you very deep into second class citizen territory as far as Vampire politics is concerned.  That would be a rather fun character- a mortal bureaucrat turned spawn in order to perpetually govern an outlying province, always desperately trying to put on the airs of being a 'real vampire'.

Necrotic cysts would be an interesting way to control certain living officials. They're a mechanic added in Libris mortis that basically lets you put a control tumor in a living creature, to either invade their mind if you're a decent enough necromancer, or to explode hideously painfully if you're a bit less skilled...

There's a lot of possibilities for non-elite, particularly when you think about how many generally oppressed classes and/or entities could hold positions of prestige and power. Necropolitan transformation would be an easy way to get servants that aren't anymore powerful than a regular mortal, but immortal w/ maintenance. Can't be bound as thralls easily, but it's a good way to keep around a skilled individual well past their time. Were-critters of varying stripes are always fun, and they don't mind eating plain meat too much.

Ah, well, as stated. It's a fun setting to think about, I'm just paranoid that the players will go 'but everything is horrible!' and bug out to the nearest not horrible place. Granted, that's only happened once, but the character with the plot macguffin was the one who buggered off and left everyone else to die in a hopeless battle.

[Kadzar]

Ah, well, as stated. It's a fun setting to think about, I'm just paranoid that the players will go 'but everything is horrible!' and bug out to the nearest not horrible place. Granted, that's only happened once, but the character with the plot macguffin was the one who buggered off and left everyone else to die in a hopeless battle.

I mean, it at least seems a lot better than Ravenloft, where no one is allowed to enjoy themselves and there's only one guy in charge who you can't ever kill permanently. At least in your setting there's room for political intrigue. Yours sounds like a setting I'd like to play in, whereas I'd probably only want to go back to Ravenloft to finish the campaign I was in.

[highmax28]

Need 2 more before I start that D&D Basic game. Might have a third slot open too if one of the players doesn't get back to me.

PM me if interested. Do note that its more for learning mechanics

[Egan_BW]

Worth considering: you need to create lots of skeletal workers, but all you have is a pile of fresh corpses! Skeletons are cheaper and faster than zombies, and probably much less likely to spread nasty diseases among the living. So naturally there would be an industry devoted to stripping the flesh from corpses, leaving only the bones to be raised as cheap labor.

[Rolan7]

Which nicely reduces the amount of farming you have to do.

[wierd]

Or, supplies human flesh for other kinds of undead, like ghouls.

[Harry Baldman]

Worth considering: you need to create lots of skeletal workers, but all you have is a pile of fresh corpses! Skeletons are cheaper and faster than zombies, and probably much less likely to spread nasty diseases among the living. So naturally there would be an industry devoted to stripping the flesh from corpses, leaving only the bones to be raised as cheap labor.

Animate Dead actually does this as part of its spell description, whenever you animate a skeleton within a meatier corpse the flesh, organs and skin just kind of slough off for the most part.

[Egan_BW]

Aw, really? That really seems to take the fun out of it.

[Harry Baldman]

Very convenient on the field though, especially as a method of defiling the corpses of your enemies so they can't get easily raised afterward.

[heydude6]

According to the spell description, you have to walk up to the corpse to place the gem in its mouth (where it will likely be surrounded by enemies). You can't just animate it from range like you can in Dungeon crawl Stone soup

[Harry Baldman]

Well, corpse defilement is usually a thing you do post-battle rather than during it, with some possible exceptions.

[highmax28]

Well, corpse defilement is usually a thing you do post-battle rather than during it, with some possible exceptions.

I got for telefragging. I tend to let my players do this after they kill enemies, but never when they're alive. Ask Mastahcheese; it was his calling card

[Jimmy]

There's a couple of classes or alternate builds that don't worry about the onyx requirement for creating undead.

In 3.5e the Warlock class has a lesser invocation called The Dead Walk that lets you either animate dead permanently using onyx or temporarily for 1 minute per caster level without onyx, after which they crumble to dust.

In Pathfinder there's a variant magic system called Words of Power that is honestly a terrible downgrade for most spellcaster classes. However, one quirk of the system is that it has two useful features: the ability to use Summon Monster spells as standard actions instead of full round actions, and the ability to use Animate Dead without material components and at range. You can pick up this feature with a single Feat called Experimental Spellcaster if you want to have your cake and eat it too.

[Criptfeind]

If you're producing a lot of Necropolitans as a "slightly higher then mortal but still very low" caste, you could also spell stitch them (although you'd probably have to either find a way to handwave away or avoid the exp cost, since it's probably not worthwhile for a big old necromancer to be draining himself so heavily and so often for a shitty caste), give them animate undead and then you'll have a nice little undead herder who can make and upkeep a handful of skeletons or zombies for free (and also have some other basic magic abilities to help keep the peace or be useful in a war)