Spooky Scary Skeletons!

 Happy Halloween my ghoulish guests! Welcome to a late October blog post care of the spookiest holiday around! This week I'll be tackling October's RPG Blog Carnival theme, Horrors, Monsters, and Gods with a horrifying selection of tables to spice up your skeleton encounters! Read on for useful tables to differentiate one skeleton fight from another with unique descriptions, armaments, and personalities you can use on your next skeleton encounter! If you like this month's Blog Carnival article, take a look at last month's. If that's not to your liking then check out my last post, a big D66 table of chaotic landscapes to inflict on your traveling adventure parties. 

Spooky Scary Skeletons!

As October draws to a close the veil between worlds parts for a brief moment and allows us congress with the lingering souls of the long departed. With the most spooky of holidays upon us, it is time to talk about the horrors of the adventuring world, the undead menace all adventurers must eventually face, skeletons. The host of tables below can be utilized by canny referees everywhere to add variety and verisimilitude to their skeletal encounters. With a few quick rolls you can populate your next encounter with a variety of unique skeletal warriors that will be sure to stick in the minds of your players.

*Burnside, R. H. (Robert Hubberthorne), 1873-1952

Appearance:

Adventurers come across many animated skeletons in their careers plundering tombs and raiding sorcerers’ laboratories. The tables below can be used to generate different descriptions of the various animated skeletons a party of doughty treasure hunters are sure to run into sooner or later.

D4	What is different about this skeleton's...
1	Head
2	Arms
3	Legs
4	Torso

 

D12	Head
1	The skeleton has a thick notch cut out of its right brow. Glowing green moss is starting to grow from the crack.
2	This skeleton is missing its lower jaw. Of the skeleton's remaining teeth, two are made of gold. (250 gp each)
3	The skull cap of this skeleton has been cut clean off and reattached with a curved strip of verdigris-encrusted copper and small rivets.
4	The left eye of this skeleton has become home to a friendly vinegarroon the size of a large platinum piece.
5	This skeleton's eyes glow with a ghostly blue light projecting weak beams of light wherever it stares.
6	This skeleton’s teeth have been filed down to sharp points. (Extra bite attack, d4 damage)
7	This skeleton's skull has been mineralized into a jagged quartz-crusted mess.
8	This skeleton’s rotting eyes are still rolling around in its skull.
9	Someone has painted the skull of this skeleton in overlapping geometric patterns of black and red pigment.
10	Instead of a regular humanoid skull, this skeleton bears a ram's skull for a head.
11	This skeleton's skull has a large ruby faceted into each eye socket. (300 gp each)
12	This skull bears a terrifying death mask made of jade, obsidian, and red carnelian. (800 gp)

 

*Hans Holbein the Younger

D12	Arms
1	This skeleton has had its arm bones reinforced with riveted bands of iron.
2	This skeleton has had its arms replaced with the elongated arm bones of an ape.
3	This skeleton is still wearing rusted pauldrons and vambraces on its arms.
4	This skeleton has ghastly large hands with long claw-like finger bones.
5	This skeleton's arm bones are crusted with purple blotches of mold.
6	This skeleton bears two zombified human arms instead of the usual bone arms.
7	This skeleton has an extra set of arms underneath their original set. No doubt the work of some enterprising necromancer.
8	This skeleton has animated sculpted marble arms instead of their usual arm bones.
9	This skeleton's arm bones have been discolored by some unknown process and are now a sickly green color.
10	This skeleton is wearing ornamental golden vambraces etched with images of ritual feasting. (200 gp each)
11	Instead of a right arm, this skeleton has a gigantic dead crab claw. (claw attack, d6 damage)
12	This skeleton's arm bones are etched with vile magical runes.

 

D12	Legs
1	This skeleton's legs have been painted with gold leaf and small flower motifs of crushed sapphire.
2	This skeleton still wears ancient bronze greaves on its shins that are adorned with Medusa head motifs. (100 gp for the set)
3	This skeleton’s lower half is that of a giant snake's skeleton and slithers around like one.
4	This skeleton's leg bones have been bound together with copper wire and silver nails. (150 sp in total)
5	Long strips of paper inscribed with magical runes of necromantic power have been plastered to this skeleton's leg bones.
6	This skeleton is still wearing its now half-rotten boots.
7	This skeleton is wearing the desiccated remains of the leather britches it was  buried in.
8	This skeleton ambles around on a wooden peg leg.
9	This skeleton's legs are not actually bone but hollow pewter replacements.
10	This skeleton's leg bones are encrusted with small growths of glowing neon orange slime mold.
11	This skeleton's lower half is studded with the remains of sharp dead barnacles.
12	This skeleton's shin bones have been studded with six-inch iron spikes. (Bearer adds 2 additional points of damage to melee attacks.)

 

D12	Torso
1	An inch long hairy spider has spun a thick web inside this skeleton's ribcage.
2	Thumb-sized crystals of some kind of translucent green mineral is growing all over this skeleton's ribcage and spine.
3	This skeleton is still wearing the remnants of its desiccated old crocodile-leather pauldrons.
4	This skeleton has an eerie green glowing heart still beating in its chest.
5	This skeleton has had its ribcage reinforced with bands of cold-iron, and inside its cage-chest a small angry sprite is jostled about with the movements of the skeleton and rants in Silvan!
6	This skeleton has shiny blue toadstools sprouting inside its large ribcage. (If eaten, the mushrooms grant +2 to STR and -2 to INT and WIS for the next 20 minutes.)
7	This skeleton's ribcage, spine, and pelvis are all made of iron! (+1 to the skeleton's AC)
8	This skeleton's pelvis and ribcage have been inscribed with glowing red runes of magical power.
9	This skeleton is wearing a long, tattered leather coat that hangs in shreds.
10	This skeleton has had its torso wrapped over and over again with gold wire. (150 gp total)
11	Twisted green and red vines wind their way through and around this skeleton's pelvis and ribcage. Large, ghostly white flowers bloom from the vines.
12	This skeleton's ribcage is composed of clear crystal bones.

 

Skeletal Personalities

Not all skeletons can talk, but when you need one to, you may use the table below to quickly generate a sketch of the skeleton's personality, goals, etc.

*Hans Holbein the Younger

D12	Personality
1	This skeleton is very polite since they don't often meet many people to have conversations with within a dungeon. Their favorite topics are ancient history and poetry.
2	This skeleton cannot talk for some reason but does excellent pantomime. They are always playing around and making little jokes.
3	This skeleton is vicious and will taunt adventurers whom it can get the upper hand on. This skeleton wants to feel like it is more powerful than its opponents.
4	This skeleton talks in a high-pitched voice. They are fans of a good song though and will favor adventurers who sing to them.
5	This skeleton has lost one of the bones in its toes and is frantically looking for it. They will be happy to help anyone who can find it for them.
6	This skeleton talks like a gameshow host for some reason and keeps asking characters to pick their next door.
7	This skeleton is a being of honor. They will not fight unless their goals can be met no other way. They respect Clerics, Paladins, and Knights as people of authority.
8	This skeleton has a cackling laugh and a deranged personality to go along with it. They delight in the pain of living creatures.
9	This skeleton was a zealot in life who offered themselves willingly in death as an eternal servant. They only communicate in small snippets of their apocryphal scriptures.
10	This skeleton is convinced that they still have a body, and an attractive one at that.
11	This skeleton is ancient beyond measure, yet somehow, they have managed to survive all these years. If their ancient language could be identified, they would be a fantastic repository of lost lore.
12	This skeleton is confused and will ask friendly adventurers for help finding its master.

Unique Armaments

One of the best ways to make your skeletons different from the last group your players encountered is to give them unique armaments to wield. The table below can help give you ideas in a pinch.

*Hans Holbein the Younger

D12	Armaments
1	A verdigris-encrusted brass trident and a faded wooden shield.
2	A two-handed bronze khopesh. (+2 to saving throws against heat, or sand effects.)
3	Two rusted black-iron short swords.
4	A dusty wooden shaft with a jagged-edged steel spearhead affixed to it. (+1 to damage)
5	A heavy two-handed stone mace whose reliefs glow with a dull blue light. (+2 damage to spellcasters)
6	A silvered longsword.
7	Two beautifully engraved katars, caked with long dried blood.
8	A large, fluted ball of iron fixed to a length of chain. (As a flail)
9	A long, curved falchion with polished pearls inlayed in the hilt. (As a two-handed sword, 150 gp intact, or 50 gp of just pearls)
10	A long bronze sickle and a bronze shield with a Medusa head painted on it.
11	Either a simple iron-headed spear or a simple short bow and stone-headed arrows.
12	Either two rust-flaked iron swords or three bronze hand axes.