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Brass Snakes are SCARIER than I thought...

Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2018 3:53 pm
by Axelmania
Page 138 of Mystic China mentions their Special Ability "enter into any dead body .. bring it to life under their control"

There wasn't any assigned cost to doing this, either in chi, PPE or time. I figure it would take at least 1 melee action, like most things...

I had at first assumed that they had to remain in the body to control the body... but it appears I was wrong about that.

If you look earlier on page 76 under the spell Turn Away the Dead...

if used against a group of dead animated by a Brass Snake, it will affect all of the corpses except the one actually occupied by the Brass Snake


This appears to indicate that once a Brass Snake enters a body and brings it to life under their control, they can choose to leave it and move on to reanimated another corpse... and another... and another... and the left-behind corpses will remain under that snake's control!

This is pretty terrifying because there are no stated limits to this ability. A single Brass Snake could bring to life an army of millions if
given enough time?

I was thinking as some sort of game balance, perhaps they should borrow the "Animated and Control Dead" rules for Undead Immortals from page 118. This would limit them to a maximum of 1 per level and require instilling 1 negative chi per each one. Otherwise, a single Brass Snake could unleash some kind of zombie apocalypse.

Then again... that might be fun.

Re: Brass Snakes are SCARIER than I thought...

Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2018 6:57 pm
by The Beast
I'm thinking the snakes were nerfed along the way to being printed, and that's why there's a discrepancy between their abilities and that spell's description. I would just go with them being able to animate only a corpse they inhabit.

Re: Brass Snakes are SCARIER than I thought...

Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2018 7:50 am
by Axelmania
Boring, why not let them work like the Undead Immortals?

Re: Brass Snakes are SCARIER than I thought...

Posted: Mon Nov 18, 2019 3:02 pm
by Sebastian
"Brass Snakes" sounds awesome. What kind are they?

Re: Brass Snakes are SCARIER than I thought...

Posted: Wed Dec 25, 2019 2:31 pm
by Axelmania
They're a form of demon/infernal in china. Can't remember if they got ported to Rifts.