The Undead: WARNING SPOOKY

[Weepo]

disclaimer: this idea was originally suggested in the poor suggestions and ideas thread so I can't vouch for the quality.

Replace the 'skeleton' and 'zombie' races with a single unified 'undead' race. An undead starts out looking just like a regular person but suffers degradation like corpses do, slowly rotting to a walking husk and retaining wound sprites, their skin also gets progressively greener. You can stave this off by ingesting formaldehyde which cures your wound sprites and greenifying.

If you accidentally take too much burn damage or get stabbed up enough with sharp weapons your zombie flesh falls off and leaves you with a skeletal limb, This can happen to your head and torso too. You can voluntarily flense yourself of your flesh if you wanna move around quicker by using a knife or sharp object.

Zombies and undead don't die easily, if your head / skull gets knocked off you can still speak and hear fine. Even cast spells if you're a lich / wizard who happens to be undead. You can't move much though and your powers will mostly consist of haranguing someone into putting you back on your body. If you're debrained you become a zombie brain! Being placed in a fresh corpse will instantly cure all suffocation and toxin damage, if they didn't get too physically mauled you should instantly rise up, no mmi or surgery required, just a knife. If you ghost however your brain crumbles to dust, you can't be a zombie ghost! (Plus being able to hear the dead than just get slammed dunked back into your body as a weird way of communing with the spirits would be pretty OP) this also makes cloning your dead ass impossible so be careful not to get chopped up too permanently

zombies can't move fast, each skeletal piece of you lowers the move penalty but is more susceptible to brute and easier to knock off. Skeletons can't hold cavity implants / any implants and they fall right out of you if you lose your flesh. conversely having a skeleton torso makes you immune to chemicals since you have no bloodstream, heart or stomach. eating anything deposits it directly on the floor below you. Having a zombie torso makes you suffer hunger worse than regular people, hunger that can only be sated with raw flesh and brains.

[Armhulen]

i still think this is fantastic

[Dagdammit]

It's heartening to see multiple threads in firm agreement that violence against skeletons should ultimately reduce them to talking heads that can continue to make terrible bone-related puns at everyone in earshot.

[Wyzack]

Would be cool, I am all for more skellingtons

[Okand37]

if your head / skull gets knocked off you can still speak and hear fine.