Updated the blazing skeleton with some input from @ToddKenreck here it is. Commentary on what I changed and why follows. pic.twitter.com/vEtQoJh36r
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 11, 2018
I really liked the spiteful, hateful, and chaotic element of their personalities, so I recast the attacks as spells to give me an excuse to drop the very lawful, predictable stat modifier. More dice feels chaotic to me, plus produces some truly punishing crits. Todd also had the very cool idea of these guys spawning more of their kind if their death burst kills something. The death burst idea came up a few times, but his flourish added a flavor I really liked. I also loved the idea of Orcus-inspired undead having an infestation angle.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 11, 2018
That fit in really well with his concept of wanting to turn every living thing in the cosmos into undead vassals. I also turned down the melee attack quite a bit to get across that these are primarily ranged fighters. As I tweet this I’m also considering an effect where anything killed by their ranged attack pops up as a normal skeleton. That might be too much, but in the case of a servant of Orcus too much might be just enough.
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 11, 2018
I hope this illustrates one of the big parts of what I see as my creative voice – I like infusing personality and a narrative into everything. Finding the view point character and then building on that leads to a lot of fun design, IMO. In this case, our view point characters are the demonic spirit that infests the undead (it’s a destructive pyromaniac) and Orcus (he’s a beast with limitless ambition who wants to render everything undead).
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 11, 2018
“Just enough is unacceptable. Do more or suffer my wrath!” -Orcus I see you’ve met him, too
— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) July 12, 2018