Forums of the Megaverse®

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...



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.

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.

Boring, why not let them work like the Undead Immortals?

"Brass Snakes" sounds awesome. What kind are they?

They're a form of demon/infernal in china. Can't remember if they got ported to Rifts.