D&D 5E (2014) Should all undead have some kind of resistance against "cold"?

[Corpsetaker]

I firmly believe all undead should have some resistance to cold. The phrase "Chill of the Grave" has had meaning in the past with regards to undead and it's something I always felt made sense.

I've actually given cold resistance to all undead and it's worked out great.

 

[GreenTengu]

Undead should probably have a lot of resistances that I don't think they have.

Granted, in the past Undead have had immunities to things that they shouldn't have had-- for instance undead being immune to psychic/charm effects makes sense for a zombie or skeleton, but less so for a vampire or lich that still clearly has a mind and the ability to choose their actions on more than just programing or instinct.

So it is a mixed bag.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It depends on how you view cold damage. If you view it as freezing cells until the cells rupture, then undead should be immune or at least resistant. If you think it's some kind of sharper cold like the liquid nitrogen used against the T-1000 in Terminator 2, then maybe not. Me, I'm on your side. I'll probably implement your house rule for most undead (not vampires or ghouls though) and also for golems and animated armor.

One nice thing about 5E's loosey-goosey CR system is that I can give them all blanket cold resistance and not have to recompute the CR.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Just because flesh is (un)dead doesn't mean it can't freeze and shatter.

 

[Celtavian]

Undead are pretty weak in this edition. Anything you boost them with would help.

 

[EdL]

Can't say that I've ever really thought about it, but yeah, it makes sense.

 

[Leatherhead]

If anything, they would be less resistant to being frozen, seeing as how they don't have any body heat to counter it.

 

[Sunseeker]

Undead are pretty weak in this edition. Anything you boost them with would help.

I think it's part of the expectation that they are often low-level threats.

If you take a skeleton and make it immune to cold, poison, electricity(?), psychic, piercing and I dunno some set of other things you make what generally amounts to a meaningless waste of time (lets face it folks, undead armies are rarely portrayed as hosts of mighty warriors) drag out into an unnecessary slog. Especially when player options for destroying them are limited.

While I like that 5th is "simpler" in that a lot of answers to questions are "yes" or "no", I think it leads to a lot of situations were granularity is needed. Is an undead from the desert resistant to cold AND heat? Is an undead from the frozen wastes immune to cold, but vulnerable to fire? Trying to say "all undead are immune to the same things" really takes away from a lot of the possible creativity of resistances and vulnerabilities of the dead based on their manner of death.

I think resistances and immunities should, beyond the undead, be kept as limited as possible and only represent the most basic elements of protection, and allow room for the DM to get creative with say, undead killed by a volcano, now immune to fire but weak to cold or undead killed by toxic plants in a tropical jungle, immune to poison and acid, but weak to fire and cold.

There's plenty of good arguments for and against, which is why the base game should make as few assumptions as possible.

 

[Uchawi]

Pure undead (zombies, skeletons, etc.) should be immune to things that may cause the loss of senses in humanoids, like blindness, deafness, mute, etc. Other damage against the body is fair game. Special undead like vampires, or wraiths should be treated on a case by case basis. At least that is another spin you can add against the standard D&D cannon. I often implement my own rule where invisibility does not affect undead.

 

[MG.0]

I think resistance to cold is fine for most undead.

Although...I can easily envision firey undead beings which would not have cold resistance. I think there may even have been something like this in first edition. I could be wrong though.