Deep Thoughts With Barbarian – Skeletons

The type of magic that brings them back

Zombies are reanimated dead bodies. Skeletons are long dead remains animated and imbued with an evil spirit.

At least that’s my lore.

Edit: it’s also more or less what happens with “natural” skeletons in places like ancient battlefields and ruins. It’s the spirit of the dead animating them to do harm to the living (because they’re probably too weak to do anything on their own).

There flesh was holding them back

Zombies rely on the organs (brains) that the body once had. The magic that reanimates them is slight, most of it goes to returning animation to what once lived, decayed as it is.

Skeletons are nameless, faceless, identity-less. The hateful negative energy and spirits that revive them shine through.

*An interesting phenomenon occurs when raising a Zombie vs raising a Skeleton. As the magic floods the zombie corpse it merely forces the remains of its brain to function as best as possible resulting in a rather stupid creature. But with a skeleton the magic attempts to fully replicated brain functions resulting in a relatively more intelligent creature.* – Professor Zaust Necromancy 101

Let’s say I’m dumb, like real dumb. I get turned to a zombie, I’m extra dumb cause the brain (that contains my dumbness) is rotting. After my brain finishes rotting, I can no longer store my dumbness anywhere, so I’m no longer dumb.

Next question, is a skeleton considered a construct? It’s made of magic and bones.

They had to make it so skeletons could make jokes. That’s why everyone loves brook from one piece.

The magic forms an intelligence of the skeleton, but is impeded by the decaying remains of the nervous system.

Magic.

My new favorite template

Nothing to weigh them down.

Less rotted brain to get in the way of it’s intelligence.

Because the skeleton is older (it takes time to rot away all the meat) and so it gains experience from its life

aren’t skeletons fueled by magic and zombies are just undead people?

Because Skeletons are a different “species” of undead than Zombies. They’re just different. A Zombie can’t become a Skeleton. Even if it flays itself and removes all the meat to the bone it’s still a Zombie.

I didn’t make that up. Forgotten Realms lore.

Zombies are just meat heads

If I lost my meat I would immediately gain +4 INT.

If the skeleton in question is a raised minion who have advantage on saving throws against being charmed or frightened because they’re “mindless,” why do they have an intelligence score at all?

Less negative energy is spent controlling the meat and more goes to forming a semblance of a spirit mind

My homebrew actually has an answer for this in the form of multiple classes of Zombies. The list of intelligence, from smartest to dumbest, looks similar to this:

1. Pristine Zombies – Zombies raised from corpses where the cause of death was miniscule in terms of damage (like, surgically precise death). Pristine Zombies retain memories, personality, almost everything, and their wills are slaved to the raiser only if the necromancer integrates it into the ritual; normally this isn’t done though, since most Pristine Zoms are raised voluntarily due to rot quickly making the corpse a…
2. Fresh Zombie – Zombies raised from corpses where the cause of death was relatively minor and didn’t harm most of the corpse. Have to be raised quickly, but not as quickly as a Pristine Zombie. They retain their memories, fragments of personality, and problem-solving skills, but their wills are usually slaved to a master, often the raiser or a Pristine Zombie in a Necromancer’s employ. This is because without the slaving the Zombie will usually return to a familiar place and continue doing some menial task; they effectively have alzheimers.
3. New Zombie – Zombie raised from a corpse which has not begun to rot. These guys comprise the bulk of a Necromancer’s army because they’re generally in high supply, and they have some very basic problemsolving, plus they’re the lowest class of Zombie capable of articulating enough to run for any appreciable distance. Their personalities have all but faded, and their memories have begun to go too, so they’re not particularly smart, but they’re solid shock troops and can be commanded to attack a certain *kind* of person and not fuck it up. Comparable to the zombies in, say, Left4Dead.
4. Skeleton – Not a zombie. Most comparable to a robot. Without the brain acting as a lattice for the magic reanimating the corpse, a magical simulcrum has to be created. Skeletons are actually kind of a bitch to create for what they do; they’re not particularly intelligent and will continue doing whatever mindless task they’re assigned. They have no personality and no pre-existing memories or skills. But they have a couple advantages; namely, they’re skeletal, and as such piercing weapons such as pikes and arrows do literally nothing if they don’t hit perfectly. Cutting weapons are also next to useless against a skeleton, as they can’t bleed out. A skeleton doesn’t need upkeep the way a zombie does either, meaning you can seal one behind a wall without needing to install a door and have it still be there 100 years later, active and doing exactly what it was told to do. And they can be extracted from a mangled corpse and still be mostly effective. This means they’re actually decently popular, particularly for back-line troops who aren’t supposed to be hit with hammers or axes. Their wills are always slaved, like all low-level necromantic troops, because without a master intelligence a skeleton will literally just stand in the middle of a room stock still doing exactly nothing.
5. Old Zombie – not necessarily older than any kind of zombies, but this corpse has been ravaged by something. The name comes from the fact that usually these zombies are only raised from old cemeteries by nooby necromancers who just need a starter unit and aren’t willing to put in the work for a proper skeleton troop or to find a more recent grave. These are typical Day of the Dead zombies; shambling. Mindless. Dumb as a brick and half as deadly to anyone actually paying attention. The only reason a more advanced necromancer might raise one of these sorts of zombies is because there are a couple of spells that allow them to be risen en-masse, or because they overused and undercoordinated their New Zombie horde and the town wound up getting mostly eaten. Destroyed organs have to be replaced with magical simulacrums, which are usually not as effective as just magically hijacking the old organ, but do have the bonus of being basically immune to most weapons and magic, which is why these guys are usually considered to be a bit tougher than any other kind of zombie. The real issue is that by the time you’ve approached anyone not living in a peaceful hamlet with them, you’ve lost half your troops, and when you’re done fighting you’ll be lucky to still have a fifth of the number you started with.
6. Ancient Zombie – A lot like Old Zombies, except everything has gone to shit. This is what you get if you try to raise someone who popped out of SCP-106’s pocket dimension. And you get what you paid for – these Zombies are literal trash. They struggle to fight even an unarmed and panicking civilian. They struggle to move over anything but the smoothest terrain, and sometimes they struggle with that. There are legitimate arguments to be made that they actually get less intelligent when raised. And they’re about as dangerous as the Paramecium they’re frequently outwitted by; that is to say, they’re only really a threat if ingested, because they’re a rotted corpse.

All of the above are considered to be relatively simple to make – Skeletons are complicated but once you understand the theory and magic they’re more of a pain in the ass than a conundrum. Other undead are usually more major undertakings. Ghouls require finding the dead person’s soul and either tricking or tearing it roughly from it’s afterlife to serve as a silently screaming, agonized power source for what basically amounts to an automatic Pristine Zombie. Liches require a complex ritual that involves hanging yourself upside down over a magic circle and being ritualistically vivisected, usually by yourself or another lich, with the extracted organs having to be placed in a jar that’s used as a basis for a more advanced form of the Skeleton magics (the old organs are used as blueprints for simulcrums, so you stay you in this one). Ghosts are strong as hell by default but have to be nailed down with equally strong magic.

Without a brain, a skeleton is unimpeded by rogue thoughts of its former life. There is no conflict with its orders, no struggle with old memories, no stray desires of the living. Only grim perfection.