SKELETONS!

    i think skeletons are great, wonderful enemies. spooky undead without the gore and grossness of zombies. love that stuff.

    i love it when people take "regular" enemies and treat them as significant and scary! a lot of people do a lot of good work on that front. Im gonna try and do the same!

    I don't think skeletons should be normal enemies.

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    normal enemies is like bandits. it's like, goblins and kobolds, (ecological ones, not mythological ones. see this post.) people know they exist. they make regular incursions into ordinary life. goblins raid caravans, attack the fringes of civilization. they are natural.

    skeletons are UNDEAD. a reanimated human, subject to dark magic. unless you have a necromancy friendly society, but if that's true, then you already have your own strong opinions on skeletons. a walking representation of our animal fear of death! SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENON. i think they would be (to the people of a game world) SCARIER than goblins or beasts or even something completely alien like an ooze. again, this is just low level stuff we're talking about here. of course that howling writhing flesh ooze the Thing monstrosity is scarier than a skeleton.

• ordinary folk are deathly afraid of skeletons. they just run, screaming. this includes hirelings who are ordinary folk (the one the pcs hired to take care of their horses, or that farmer who took them to where the dungeon is)
• hirelings who have a little more backbone should save vs. fear, morale check, save or run screaming, whatever your system uses. torch bearers. loot holders. crossbow reloaders. those kinds of folk.
• pcs and hirelings who fight don't need to save. it's still a low level enemy, even if it's a scary one.

    i don't think you need to particularly try to describe them in a scary way. they're scary in the world, but i don't think they should be to the players. easy to figure out, easy to deal with once figured out. 

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skeletons take 1 damage from any slashing, cutting sort of attack. straight up tell your players this.

"I hit the skeleton with my sword. Oh nice, i hit. rolling damage."

"Naw, you don't need to roll. you do one damage."

"Wait, what?"

"yeah, your sword smacks into the skeleton and like, it bonk against it but it doesn't cut anything. What would there be to cut?"

    skeletons take no damage from arrows. ofc if your pcs have special bludgeoning arrows or guns or something then that's a different story.

    adjudicate piercing damage according to common sense. dagger? no dice. war pick? probably will work, just not as effectively as it would be against fleshy targets.

    bludgeoning weapons do damage as normal.

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    skeletons don't have ligaments or shit like that. their bones are held together by DARK MAGICS. if the pcs get cheeky and knock an arm off or something just have the skeleton reattach it. describe how they can see the magical energy pulling the bones back together. maybe even some magical rune/sigil/spell goodness carved into the bones.

    don't forget to inject a little goofiness in there. always gotta balance spooky with goofy. describe the clattering noise they make as they walk around. describe how the pc bops a head off and it goes bouncing away. just the bottom half, ineffectually walking around.

    if you want them not to reassemble you better start crushing shit.    knocking their head off is a good tactic only because skulls are more likely to shatter than other bones.

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     the defining trait for skeletons, in my eyes, should be "hard to kill" same category as oozes. they don't do much damage. they're not very fast. they're either there for flavor or as a frontline while something more annoying harasses the players. they don't have special abilites like oozes though! unless:

some weirder skeletons:

• animal skeletons. use animal skeletons. use monster skeletons. i'm begging you they're cool.
• ranged skeletons. put them somewhere hard to reach if you want to be nasty. archers who can't be shot is very funny.
• magical skeletons. don't have skeletons cast magic. have skeletons be the locus for magical effects. give your skeleton a magic necklace that dehydrates things in a radius. stuff like that that doesn't affect skeletons. locusts or something. localized sandstorms.
• skeletons that combine into a bigger skeleton. After the players dispatch the skeletons have the bones recombine into a huge skelemonster. same rules, more hit die, more damage. 3+ arms for sure.
• skeletons that have been put together funny. 4 arms means twice the attacks. works great with monster skeletons.
  
• crystalized skeleton. does more damage. takes more damage. anti-magic, absorbs spells thrown at it to heal
• fire skeleton. we love ghost rider.
• explodo skeleton. bones explode when broken. bone shard shrapnel. describe how they move "jerkily, shuddering, like they're under a lot of pressure."
  

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    put your skeletons in:

• coffins. the classic
• in water. the PCs are riding a boat over said water.
• cages/hanging from chains. they look like normal skeletons at first...
• on wheels. also a classic.
• in the dirt.
• in bone piles. "the bones start to shuffle around..."
• in oozes. destroy the ooze and out pops the skeleton
• just walking out and about. nothing wrong with that.
  

    skeletons shouldn't say things unless they're like, super scary liches or something especially dark and especially magical like that. but if you want your skeletons to Skeletor "NYEEEEH" then by all means. love that shit.