Death Frost Doom Takes Place in a Crypt There Should be a Crypt Thing

Please Don't Touch Anything. It's Not Yours.

In the Revised version of Death Frost Doom. There are some skulls of clerics that sacrificed themselves to seal the death cult. Once you enter the tomb/temple the skulls start dropping from the ceiling.

I didn’t think this was cool enough.

I decided to replace one of the skulls with Adalhard the Crypt Thing. I made him the first thing to reanimate when you entered the crypt. He was the head Cleric who led whatever sealing ritual or whatever it was that the clerics were doing in the crypt when they became a skull chandelier. He had damned himself by sacrificing the souls of his comrades to seal the evil in an in doing so damned himself to watch over the tomb/temple.

I had been wanting to use something from the Fiend Folio and there wasn’t a lot in the adventure that would prod players onward if they got confused.

I feel in love with the Fiend Folio for the same reason I think a lot of people love the fiend folio.  A lot of the monsters seem gimmick or stupid an when you figure out a good way to use one of them you feel like a genus. I like to feel like a genius. Also, the art is good.

I chose the Crypt Thing because: 

1. The Crypt Thing is Neutral 

The most interesting thing about he Crypt Thing is that it’s neutral but undead. I decided that Crypt things were in life lawful good clerics who had died under a curse somehow. Adalhard had been lawful good in life but had damned himself by casting a forbidden ritual and doomed himself to undeath. He was now an abomination to his god and could no longer be lawful good. He wasn’t evil and died to prevent chaos from engulfing the world so he became neutral. Adalhard like all Crypt Things was lost, confused, and mad. Crypt Things do not understand that they are dead and are completely unaware of their powers.

2. I Have Bad Reading Comprehension/ The Teleportation Gimick

This feeds into the second interesting thing about the Crypt Thing, teleportation. Crypt Things will teleport people and then say that they are destroyed. Of course I misread the part about teleportation. I thought that his touch caused someone to be teleported away in a random direction. So, I stuck with that. The Crypt Thing, when it touches you it doesn’t deal damage but teleports you with no saving throw. In Death Frost Doom this made it more likely that the party would actually find all the crazy stuff behind the gross baby thing.

3. I Thought the Crypt Thing Would be fun to Roleplay

The default, by the book, Crypt Thing is probably guarding a crypt. The Crypt thing doesn’t want adventurers to ransack the crypt. The Crypt Thing reminds players that their characters are, at least in part, grave robbers and plunderers and not heroes. I imagine that by Default Characters are selfish and insane. They are so driven to amass wealth and power that they will gamble their lives against really bad odds. I wanted to pretend to be an insane talking skeleton that would give a diatribe along these lines and then teleport one of the party and then break down crying about how he had destroyed the pc by accident because of his horrible curse. I was right; it was fun.