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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crothian" data-source="post: 4732093" data-attributes="member: 232">Open Grave    One of the most fearsome types of foes in Dungeons and dragons are the varies corpses brought back to life.  This is the area that Open Grave covers the fourth edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  Within the book Bruce Cordell, Eytan Bernstein and Brian James brings out much horror and monstrosities.  The hardbound book is two hundred and twenty some pages long.  The art and lay out are up to the high standards of Wizards of the Coast and the front cover is a nice art piece of an undead creatures head with green gases coming out of an eye socket.       I see this book in three parts even though it is divided up into four chapters.  The first is the good definition of what it is to be undead in 4e.  There is plenty of lore and good information on the Shadowfell, though Manual of the Planes is much better for that.  I like the information on the psychology of the undead and information on their society.  While 4e D&D can be a rules focused game I find some of the best parts have nothing to do with the rules but with he vast wealth of creativity the D&D writers and designers have.  This is the most useful part of the book to me and the main reason I got it.      One surprise I got from the book was its sense of D&D history.  I was not expecting to see Acererak in here or Kas or many of the other people and things from older editions of the game.  Sword of Kas is in the artifacts section and Whelm is elsewhere in the book.  These are iconic weapons from decades ago and I appreciate the writers including these items in here for the old timers so we can talk about what it was like the first time the Sword of Kas was used to kill our characters.  Or whatever stories these items and classic NPCs cauyse us to reminisce about.      The bulk of the book though is vast amounts of undead.  There are nine sample undead lairs for characters of most levels.  These lairs are small usually only a few encounter areas but they are easy to expand and to be used as the base for the DM’s own creativity.  It is easy to talk just about the adventure on the Astral Corpse or the necropolis, mausoleums and usual undead encounter places.  I like that there is a battle field in here as well though mostly the places where one thinks undead will be is the setting for these short adventures.      Then there are the maybe five dozen new undead monsters.  The new monsters are great but the part I enjoy the most is a small two page section at the end of the book called Alternative Powers.  This section has other abilities for the common undead found in the first Monster Manual.  For instance ghouls can have an attack that weakens its prey, vampires can have a teleportation power, and Bodaks can have a debilitation gaze.  Options that make the common undead different and keep the players on their toes are something I enjoy more then just heaps of new monsters.  But with nearly a fourth of this book all about the new monsters it certainly will not disappoint people who want them.    Open Grave is a great resource for undead creatures.  It has as nice sense of history with plenty of new and potentially scary creatures to frustrate and endanger the player characters.  It is a helpful book for DMs with plenty of sample undead encounters and easy to use new creatures and artifacts.</blockquote>

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