Messageboard Golem
First Post
No description available.
The Slayers Guide to Undead
- Thread starter Messageboard Golem
- Start date
GameWyrd
Explorer
It certainly isn’t every D&D accessory that makes me nervous. The Slayer’s Guide to Undead manages this, it makes me nervous whenever I turn the page. If you were to admit to me that the full colour artwork on the inside covers made you nervous or uneasy then you’d have my sympathy, I can see why that would be the case. It’s not the illustrations that worry me. The book itself makes me nervous. More preciously, it’s the paper; it’s the very thin paper. I pushed The Slayer’s Guide to Undead up against the other 128-paged book in the series, the Slayer’s Guide to Dragons, and the difference is striking. The Slayer’s Guide to Undead is only about two-thirds the width of the latter. I feared sneezing while reading the book or turning the page too briskly in case I tore the page.
Comparisons to the Slayer’s Guide to Dragons are inevitable. They’re both larger than usual Slayer’s Guides, they’re both hot topics and both written by this Gary Gygax guy. Actually, SG Undead finds space for co-author Jon Creffied on the front cover and so it seems likely that his contribution was significant. The two books are very different though; the SG Dragons is one great big Slayer’s Guide but the SG Undead is more like a collection of mini-Guides. The Slayer’s Guide to Undead works well. There is a plethora of undead nasties in any D&D game and so the approach of looking at each type in turn helps to ensure that the reader’s favourite will be given sufficient attention. The strategy helps keep any overlap between the SG Undead and the Encyclopaedia Arcane: Necromancy, an alternative Mongoose product, down to a minimum.
The book isn’t entirely this collection of mini-Guides. After the mandatory introduction a chapter called "A Demonic Overlord" scores a mixed success. We’re told that the demon prince Orcus is the master of Undead, their original creator. Well, maybe, there are pros and cons to the mythology but what I wanted to see in the Slayer’s Guide was continued support and references to it. I’ll admit it; I was slightly surprised to actually get this. As the book talks about the various types of undead it does continue to talk about Orcus and his role. While reading about Devourers, for example, we discover how they’re created and that sometimes Orcus (or other dark powers) "rewards" followers with the status. I’m not so impressed by the book’s efforts to define what can become Undead and what cannot. Plants can’t become (or are unlikely to) undead because they don’t have a soul – fair enough. Oozes are unlikely to become undead because they’re gelatinous. Hmm. Why would negative energy be thwarted by a bit of gel? Now, if the pitch was that the Ooze doesn’t have a soul and therefore unlikely to be undead then I’d have bought that. Giants make for uncommon undead because they’re so big. Oh right. This all-corrupting negative energy or Orcus’ curse of undeath seems a bit wimpy to me. Monstrous Humanoids make good undead but are rather rare because they’re strange.
The chapters on the other side of the mini-SG collection are equally mixed. Hybrid Undead is a tiny chapter but a great example of the jumble of good and bad. Hybrid Undead wouldn’t even be possible without the successes of the mini-SGs in the middle of the book. A Hybrid Undead is a creature unlucky enough to be suffering from two types of undeath at once! The book asks one simple question and in a single stroke makes the concept entirely believable. "What happens to a ghoul when its physical body eventually wears away? Perhaps it becomes a spectral ghoul, doomed always to hunt for flesh it cannot eat!" Wonderful. The same chapter then looks at the art of terror – how to scare your players. It’s a good start; it straight up admits that the nature of D&D as heroic fantasy makes this hard. Other intelligent offerings are the reminders to pay attention to the atmosphere of the gaming environment and that the horrific isn’t always horror. A bloody death isn’t scary horror, its just gore. All too quickly though the section devolves into a discussion on how to keep the unliving scary in a dungeon crawl.
Then there’s the adventure. I don’t mind the short little adventures in the standard Slayer’s Guides; normally they’re a sample map of the lair of the creature being covered in the Guide and a page or two on how to run an encounter there. Fifteen pages of adventure are too much of a bite out of my Slayer’s Guide though. Outline maps of castles are as common as adventures featuring a vampire in a castle and a village below cooperating with sinister plans.
The Bestiary of the Damned rights wrongs. The Bestiary of the Damned makes explicit the huge success of the Slayer’s Guide to Undead, a success that the mini-SG interior leaves implicit. Why are undead almost always human? In many high fantasy games mankind is but one of many races, in fact, in some high fantasy games mankind is a minority and yet skeletons, zombies, bodaks, shadows, you name it, are almost always "human". This isn’t so in the Bestiary of the Damned. The chapter is just a short creature collection, one without illustration too, but by giving us stats for Giant Bodak-Eages, Mohrg Satyrs, Mummified Dark Nagas, Shadow Harpies and others it can do very little wrong in my eyes.
Ah yes, and what of these mini-Slayer Guides in the middle of the book? There’s divided up into four main sections; the unwilled living dead, free-willed living dead, spirits of evil and the lords of the living dead. Each mini-SG in the sections enjoys similar layouts; a look at the physiology, habitat, society, methods of warfare, roleplaying tips, scenario hooks and best of all; a template. These headings will be familiar to anyone with a Slayer’s Guide in their gaming collection. These headings are not sacrosanct, sometimes they’re missing, sometimes for a reason and sometimes not. It’s the templates that matter to me; with the skeleton template I can make my skeletal dwarf different from my skeletal orc or with my wraith template I can ensure that my elf wraith is different from my halfling wraith. The picture of the mummified mind flayer will haunt players.
There are new types of undead in the book too. Making new sub-types of ghouls seems to be especially popular with the book’s two authors; the Tr’oul is a Troll Ghoul. Gholles and Ghulaz are something entirely different from a ghoul. Honest. There are occasionally particularly powerful individuals of any given unliving caste that the book describes and stats. The Ghoul King is a Challenge Rating 29 monster but the Demon Gholl only manages CR 21. I really can’t shake the feeling that ghouls are a personal favourite for the authors.
The new types of undead don’t impress me nearly as much as the collection of templates. With all the templates the Slayer’s Guide to Undead provide I’m free to go off and create all sorts of living dead with interesting twists all by myself. The book fights for and wins its position as a special 128-paged Slayer’s Guide and I’m pleased with most of the use of this extra space. Without any doubt, the book does guide you through a vast collection of undead and does so successfully.
* This GameWyrd review was first published here.
Comparisons to the Slayer’s Guide to Dragons are inevitable. They’re both larger than usual Slayer’s Guides, they’re both hot topics and both written by this Gary Gygax guy. Actually, SG Undead finds space for co-author Jon Creffied on the front cover and so it seems likely that his contribution was significant. The two books are very different though; the SG Dragons is one great big Slayer’s Guide but the SG Undead is more like a collection of mini-Guides. The Slayer’s Guide to Undead works well. There is a plethora of undead nasties in any D&D game and so the approach of looking at each type in turn helps to ensure that the reader’s favourite will be given sufficient attention. The strategy helps keep any overlap between the SG Undead and the Encyclopaedia Arcane: Necromancy, an alternative Mongoose product, down to a minimum.
The book isn’t entirely this collection of mini-Guides. After the mandatory introduction a chapter called "A Demonic Overlord" scores a mixed success. We’re told that the demon prince Orcus is the master of Undead, their original creator. Well, maybe, there are pros and cons to the mythology but what I wanted to see in the Slayer’s Guide was continued support and references to it. I’ll admit it; I was slightly surprised to actually get this. As the book talks about the various types of undead it does continue to talk about Orcus and his role. While reading about Devourers, for example, we discover how they’re created and that sometimes Orcus (or other dark powers) "rewards" followers with the status. I’m not so impressed by the book’s efforts to define what can become Undead and what cannot. Plants can’t become (or are unlikely to) undead because they don’t have a soul – fair enough. Oozes are unlikely to become undead because they’re gelatinous. Hmm. Why would negative energy be thwarted by a bit of gel? Now, if the pitch was that the Ooze doesn’t have a soul and therefore unlikely to be undead then I’d have bought that. Giants make for uncommon undead because they’re so big. Oh right. This all-corrupting negative energy or Orcus’ curse of undeath seems a bit wimpy to me. Monstrous Humanoids make good undead but are rather rare because they’re strange.
The chapters on the other side of the mini-SG collection are equally mixed. Hybrid Undead is a tiny chapter but a great example of the jumble of good and bad. Hybrid Undead wouldn’t even be possible without the successes of the mini-SGs in the middle of the book. A Hybrid Undead is a creature unlucky enough to be suffering from two types of undeath at once! The book asks one simple question and in a single stroke makes the concept entirely believable. "What happens to a ghoul when its physical body eventually wears away? Perhaps it becomes a spectral ghoul, doomed always to hunt for flesh it cannot eat!" Wonderful. The same chapter then looks at the art of terror – how to scare your players. It’s a good start; it straight up admits that the nature of D&D as heroic fantasy makes this hard. Other intelligent offerings are the reminders to pay attention to the atmosphere of the gaming environment and that the horrific isn’t always horror. A bloody death isn’t scary horror, its just gore. All too quickly though the section devolves into a discussion on how to keep the unliving scary in a dungeon crawl.
Then there’s the adventure. I don’t mind the short little adventures in the standard Slayer’s Guides; normally they’re a sample map of the lair of the creature being covered in the Guide and a page or two on how to run an encounter there. Fifteen pages of adventure are too much of a bite out of my Slayer’s Guide though. Outline maps of castles are as common as adventures featuring a vampire in a castle and a village below cooperating with sinister plans.
The Bestiary of the Damned rights wrongs. The Bestiary of the Damned makes explicit the huge success of the Slayer’s Guide to Undead, a success that the mini-SG interior leaves implicit. Why are undead almost always human? In many high fantasy games mankind is but one of many races, in fact, in some high fantasy games mankind is a minority and yet skeletons, zombies, bodaks, shadows, you name it, are almost always "human". This isn’t so in the Bestiary of the Damned. The chapter is just a short creature collection, one without illustration too, but by giving us stats for Giant Bodak-Eages, Mohrg Satyrs, Mummified Dark Nagas, Shadow Harpies and others it can do very little wrong in my eyes.
Ah yes, and what of these mini-Slayer Guides in the middle of the book? There’s divided up into four main sections; the unwilled living dead, free-willed living dead, spirits of evil and the lords of the living dead. Each mini-SG in the sections enjoys similar layouts; a look at the physiology, habitat, society, methods of warfare, roleplaying tips, scenario hooks and best of all; a template. These headings will be familiar to anyone with a Slayer’s Guide in their gaming collection. These headings are not sacrosanct, sometimes they’re missing, sometimes for a reason and sometimes not. It’s the templates that matter to me; with the skeleton template I can make my skeletal dwarf different from my skeletal orc or with my wraith template I can ensure that my elf wraith is different from my halfling wraith. The picture of the mummified mind flayer will haunt players.
There are new types of undead in the book too. Making new sub-types of ghouls seems to be especially popular with the book’s two authors; the Tr’oul is a Troll Ghoul. Gholles and Ghulaz are something entirely different from a ghoul. Honest. There are occasionally particularly powerful individuals of any given unliving caste that the book describes and stats. The Ghoul King is a Challenge Rating 29 monster but the Demon Gholl only manages CR 21. I really can’t shake the feeling that ghouls are a personal favourite for the authors.
The new types of undead don’t impress me nearly as much as the collection of templates. With all the templates the Slayer’s Guide to Undead provide I’m free to go off and create all sorts of living dead with interesting twists all by myself. The book fights for and wins its position as a special 128-paged Slayer’s Guide and I’m pleased with most of the use of this extra space. Without any doubt, the book does guide you through a vast collection of undead and does so successfully.
* This GameWyrd review was first published here.
Simon Collins
Explorer
Beware! This review contains spoilers (one of the chapters is an adventure).
This is not a playtest review.
The Slayer's Guide To Undead is Mongoose Publishing's look at a range of undead creatures - notably, it is written By Gary Gygax, along with his co-author Jon Creffield.
The Slayer's Guide To Undead is a 128-page mono softcover product costing $19.95. Space usage is good (including the use of the inside covers), margins seem slightly larger than standard, but font size is average. Interior art runs from poor to good, and shows off the talents of a wide range of artists. The inside covers display some amusingly gross full-colour art, including an undead corpse eating his own entrails (for those with a weak stomach - beware, my wife wanted me to change that last comment to amazingly gross!!). The same artist is used for the front cover which pictures a number of different undead in a gothic-style cathedral. I found the writing style very appropriate to the topic covered - it has a hint of gothic formality without quite descending into cliche. Editing seems good.
Unlike most previous Slayer's Guides, this one concentrates on a number of different undead - indeed, all the undead from Core Rulebook III are discussed. Each type of undead has information on its physiology, habitat, society, and methods of warfare, along with general ideas for use in a campaign, together with specific scenario hooks and ideas. As well, many of the undead creatures are presented as a template, rather than just as a creature (unless such has already been done in Core Rulebook III). This makes it possible to create hundreds (if not thousands) of different creatures using a mix of these different undead creatures with various base creatures - e.g spectral nymphs, shadow pegasi, skeletal stirges, etc., etc.
Chapter 1: A Demonic Overlord
This chapter gives one popular option for the presence of undead in a campaign setting - a demonic lord of the living dead (Orcus), who created the undead through a mighty curse. There is also a sidebar covering the presence of good undead within this concept and some flavour text.
There is further advice to the GM on creating undead from different creature types - very relevant to the rest of the book, with regard to the undead templates, though somewhat nebulous and unhelpful in its comments. The chapter continues with a discussion of the physiology of undead creatures, bringing together varied information from Core Rulebook III and relevant spell information from Core Rulebook I to present a cohesive overview.
Chapter 2: The Unwilled Living Dead
This chapter looks at skeletons, zombies, and a new type of undead - the skassassin, which, as its name implies, is a skeletal assassin, raised by a necromancer to be a deadly killing machine.
Chapter 3: The Free-Willed Living Dead
This chapter looks at bodaks, devourers, ghouls, ghasts, and lacedons, mohrgs, mummies, and wights. Two new free-willed undead are also presented - gholle and ghulaz (regenerating ghast-like undead), as well as two demonic rulers of these two undead of CR 20 and 21 respectively.
Chapter 4: Spirits Of Evil
This chapter looks at allips, ghosts, shadows, spectres, and wraiths. It also includes three new colourful varieties of wraith with differing special attacks.
Chapter 5: The Lords Of The Living Dead
This chapter discusses liches (with additional sections on its advanced planning abilities, lieutenants, minions, and some advice on personal confrontations, the final fate of a lich, and some final discussion on good-aligned liches), nightshades, and vampires (with additional information on their hunting methods and tactics).
Chapter 6: Hybrid Undead
This briefly discusses mixing templates to create such undead as a spectral ghoul. However, most of the chapter is taken up with advice to GM's for creating an atmosphere of horror so as to present undead as chillingly as possible.
Chapter 7: The Peak Of The Nightlord
This is a 14-page adventure designed for 4-5 players of levels 9-11. Three plot hooks are given, some interesting background, though the rest at first glance seems to be a dungeon crawl starring some of the new undead from the product. However, there is some opportunity for roleplaying, as there are in fact two factions within the 'dungeon' vying for power, and the players may interact with them. The adventure may need some amendments to account for its specific religious implications.
Chapter 8: Bestiary Of The Damned
This chapter gives specific examples of how the templates in the book can be used, including such creatures as an allip treant, ghoulish dryad, mummified dark naga, spider-wight, and winter wolf wraith.
The book ends with an index.
Conclusion:
The book scores a huge success to my mind with the undead templates, and has probably stolen a little of the thunder of undead in the upcoming v3.5 of Core Rulebook III. The book provides a GM with hours of malicious fun creating various undead based on the templates and even hybrid undead.
The rest of the book was average at best - it needed better reasoning and more specific advice on limitations of creatures to be used as a base for the templates, more (and more original) options on the origin of undead, and probably to have left off the adventure in preference for more rule-related information (or a shorter page count at a lower price). I wasn't immensely impressed with the new monsters, particularly the fact that none of them was presented as a template (the major innovation of the book). I would have also liked to see the concept of hybrid undead expanded (and the GM advice put in a different chapter - probably the first).
Its pedantic, I know, but I did get annoyed that the sections titled "Roleplaying with [specific undead]" mainly gave advice on campaign and adventure use or nebulous comments about their general demeanour, instead of sound advice on how to present them in terms of visual and verbal cues at the table, and identifiable behavioural idiosynchrasies.
I did like the inclusion of scenario hooks and ideas, and some of the extended information related to the lich and vampire (shame they didn't do the same for the Nightshade, which got short shrift).
All in all, good value for money, but mainly based on the template concept.
This is not a playtest review.
The Slayer's Guide To Undead is Mongoose Publishing's look at a range of undead creatures - notably, it is written By Gary Gygax, along with his co-author Jon Creffield.
The Slayer's Guide To Undead is a 128-page mono softcover product costing $19.95. Space usage is good (including the use of the inside covers), margins seem slightly larger than standard, but font size is average. Interior art runs from poor to good, and shows off the talents of a wide range of artists. The inside covers display some amusingly gross full-colour art, including an undead corpse eating his own entrails (for those with a weak stomach - beware, my wife wanted me to change that last comment to amazingly gross!!). The same artist is used for the front cover which pictures a number of different undead in a gothic-style cathedral. I found the writing style very appropriate to the topic covered - it has a hint of gothic formality without quite descending into cliche. Editing seems good.
Unlike most previous Slayer's Guides, this one concentrates on a number of different undead - indeed, all the undead from Core Rulebook III are discussed. Each type of undead has information on its physiology, habitat, society, and methods of warfare, along with general ideas for use in a campaign, together with specific scenario hooks and ideas. As well, many of the undead creatures are presented as a template, rather than just as a creature (unless such has already been done in Core Rulebook III). This makes it possible to create hundreds (if not thousands) of different creatures using a mix of these different undead creatures with various base creatures - e.g spectral nymphs, shadow pegasi, skeletal stirges, etc., etc.
Chapter 1: A Demonic Overlord
This chapter gives one popular option for the presence of undead in a campaign setting - a demonic lord of the living dead (Orcus), who created the undead through a mighty curse. There is also a sidebar covering the presence of good undead within this concept and some flavour text.
There is further advice to the GM on creating undead from different creature types - very relevant to the rest of the book, with regard to the undead templates, though somewhat nebulous and unhelpful in its comments. The chapter continues with a discussion of the physiology of undead creatures, bringing together varied information from Core Rulebook III and relevant spell information from Core Rulebook I to present a cohesive overview.
Chapter 2: The Unwilled Living Dead
This chapter looks at skeletons, zombies, and a new type of undead - the skassassin, which, as its name implies, is a skeletal assassin, raised by a necromancer to be a deadly killing machine.
Chapter 3: The Free-Willed Living Dead
This chapter looks at bodaks, devourers, ghouls, ghasts, and lacedons, mohrgs, mummies, and wights. Two new free-willed undead are also presented - gholle and ghulaz (regenerating ghast-like undead), as well as two demonic rulers of these two undead of CR 20 and 21 respectively.
Chapter 4: Spirits Of Evil
This chapter looks at allips, ghosts, shadows, spectres, and wraiths. It also includes three new colourful varieties of wraith with differing special attacks.
Chapter 5: The Lords Of The Living Dead
This chapter discusses liches (with additional sections on its advanced planning abilities, lieutenants, minions, and some advice on personal confrontations, the final fate of a lich, and some final discussion on good-aligned liches), nightshades, and vampires (with additional information on their hunting methods and tactics).
Chapter 6: Hybrid Undead
This briefly discusses mixing templates to create such undead as a spectral ghoul. However, most of the chapter is taken up with advice to GM's for creating an atmosphere of horror so as to present undead as chillingly as possible.
Chapter 7: The Peak Of The Nightlord
This is a 14-page adventure designed for 4-5 players of levels 9-11. Three plot hooks are given, some interesting background, though the rest at first glance seems to be a dungeon crawl starring some of the new undead from the product. However, there is some opportunity for roleplaying, as there are in fact two factions within the 'dungeon' vying for power, and the players may interact with them. The adventure may need some amendments to account for its specific religious implications.
Chapter 8: Bestiary Of The Damned
This chapter gives specific examples of how the templates in the book can be used, including such creatures as an allip treant, ghoulish dryad, mummified dark naga, spider-wight, and winter wolf wraith.
The book ends with an index.
Conclusion:
The book scores a huge success to my mind with the undead templates, and has probably stolen a little of the thunder of undead in the upcoming v3.5 of Core Rulebook III. The book provides a GM with hours of malicious fun creating various undead based on the templates and even hybrid undead.
The rest of the book was average at best - it needed better reasoning and more specific advice on limitations of creatures to be used as a base for the templates, more (and more original) options on the origin of undead, and probably to have left off the adventure in preference for more rule-related information (or a shorter page count at a lower price). I wasn't immensely impressed with the new monsters, particularly the fact that none of them was presented as a template (the major innovation of the book). I would have also liked to see the concept of hybrid undead expanded (and the GM advice put in a different chapter - probably the first).
Its pedantic, I know, but I did get annoyed that the sections titled "Roleplaying with [specific undead]" mainly gave advice on campaign and adventure use or nebulous comments about their general demeanour, instead of sound advice on how to present them in terms of visual and verbal cues at the table, and identifiable behavioural idiosynchrasies.
I did like the inclusion of scenario hooks and ideas, and some of the extended information related to the lich and vampire (shame they didn't do the same for the Nightshade, which got short shrift).
All in all, good value for money, but mainly based on the template concept.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality Radio
Sizing Up the Target
The Slayer's Guide to Undead is a 128-page soft cover sourcebook published by Mongoose Publishing. The Grand Wizard, Gary Gygax is the author with the assistance of Jon Creffield. The cover is done by Chris Quilliams and is a gothic cathedral setting with various undead looming near, a vampire being foremost, interior work is by a number of artists and retails for $19.95.
First Blood
The Slayer's Guide to Undead is sixteenth in the Slayer’s guide series by Mongoose Publishing. Much like City of the Necromancers, the Master lends his hand to this handbook for the unliving. This guide can be immensely useful to DMs running Ravenloft or City of the Necromancers, or a similar setting. The inside covers have rather gruesome color pictures of ghouls.
There is a short introduction to what the book entails, the Slayer's Guide series and a brief introduction to the unliving. The introduction is topped off with a one-page piece of prose. The book moves into Chapter one describing the use of undead by the Demonic Overlord Orcus. Vampires as his knights and ghouls as soldiers in Orcus' bloody campaigns and how they can be created and brought into his service, in foul shrines across the multiverse.
The occurrence of good-aligned undead are treated in a sidebar piece as rarities but possible. Ghosts and Vampires being the more commonly encountered, good Liches and Mummies are also rumored to be encountered in some cases. But, while still good in alignment, these creatures will still be treated with fear and loathing by other good-aligned creatures for their very nature.
A guide to make homegrown undead is then given. As can be expected, Humanoids, Giants, Monstrous Humanoids, animals, beasts and magical beasts, Dragons, and vermin are prime candidates for undead status, while shapechangers like lycanthropes and dopplegangers and aberrations like Mind Flayers and Beholders are also good selections. Fey, Phasms and other types of aberrations, plants (for the most part), Elementals, Constructs, Oozes and Outsiders will not make for easy or good undead.
The physiology of the undead is then discussed. Powered by Negative Energy, the unliving are given motion, senses and consciousness without the benefit of functional organs. More animate object than living being, an undead is unaffected by forces that would slay a living creature, wounds to a vital organ, pain or fatigue, things that require Fortitude saves such as Sleep or Blind, unless it is a force that would directly impact the creature such as disintegrate, poisons, toxins and polymorphs are also ineffective. Procreation is also beyond the undead, although there have been legends of Vampiric Offspring. Undead can see, hear and feel for the most part, these senses can be obscured but not affected directly.
The prime weakness of the undead is given as sunlight. Sunlight being the greatest manifestation of Positive Energy in the Prime Material Planes. Undead are also unable to heal or regenerate as living beings do, as that requires Positive Energy. The unliving are also unaffected by mind altering spells, Skeletons and Zombies have no minds, Ghouls, Ghasts, Wights and Spectres are all psychotically twisted, while Liches, Mummies and Vampires are highly intelligent and possibly magically resistant.
As with lycanthropes, there are two classes of undead, 'True' or Supernatural and 'Created', those who are created by another undead. The important difference is in the creation. Supernatural undead are the transformation of a particularly evil humanoid into an undead state after they die, compelled by their evil nature. Created or 'Spawned' undead are part of a contagion, their souls trapped in an undead state.
How to role-play the Unwilled Living Dead then follows. Skeletons and Zombies, their physiology, habitat, society and methods of combat are given, followed by Adventure Hooks. This section ends with the Skassassin, an undead skeletal assassin.
The Free-willed Undead, such as Bodaks, Devourers, Ghouls and Ghasts are then given the same description treatment with the Ghoul King and Tr'oul (undead troll/ghoul) followed by Adventure hooks ending the section. Higher Undead such as the Mohrgs, Mummies, and Wights also follow the pattern of description. A couple of new critters end this section, the Gholle and Ghulaz Created by the Demons, Gholl and Ghul, they appear to be stronger versions of ghouls.
The Higher undead are called Spirits of Evil. Following the book's pattern, Allips and Ghosts are described with a single Adventure Hook. Shadows are done in their own sub-section before moving onto Spectres and Wraithes wrapping up the chapter.
The Lords of the Living Dead titles the next chapter. Liche lead off, followed by Nightshades and Vampires. The book then veers into Hybrid Undead and the Art of Terror, aides for the DM running an undead campaign. A short 15-page adventure, The Peak of the Nightlord wraps up the book, followed by an Appendix, Beastiary of the Damned. This Monstrous Compendium has 19 undead creature examples of template usage including the Allip Treant, Ghoulish Dryad, Gold Dragon Wight and Zombie Titan.
Critical Hits
A passable guide, it contains some very clean and useful examples of expanding and playing undead creatures for the DM. Many of the ideas are well planned and not too power heavy that they would unbalance game play but unique enough that the most hide-bound players who know the Monster Manual by heart will pause or quake with fear when their dyed-in-the-wool pat solution fails and they have to rethink strategy.
Critical Misses
I hear alot of flak about Mongoose products and how they flood the market with product and such, but I've yet to see a really poor book from them. If anything, this book could easily have been doubled in size and still had fresh unused material as I am sure Mr. Gygax has reams on the subject and critters we could even imagine as yet.
Coup de Grace
I liked it. It wouldn't be first on my purchase list but it was one I couldn't pass up. Unlike other Slayer’s books like the Harpy or Yuan-ti, I found this to be more informative and useful, maybe the rest of the Slayer’s Guides should focus on groups as opposed to individual monsters.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
Sizing Up the Target
The Slayer's Guide to Undead is a 128-page soft cover sourcebook published by Mongoose Publishing. The Grand Wizard, Gary Gygax is the author with the assistance of Jon Creffield. The cover is done by Chris Quilliams and is a gothic cathedral setting with various undead looming near, a vampire being foremost, interior work is by a number of artists and retails for $19.95.
First Blood
The Slayer's Guide to Undead is sixteenth in the Slayer’s guide series by Mongoose Publishing. Much like City of the Necromancers, the Master lends his hand to this handbook for the unliving. This guide can be immensely useful to DMs running Ravenloft or City of the Necromancers, or a similar setting. The inside covers have rather gruesome color pictures of ghouls.
There is a short introduction to what the book entails, the Slayer's Guide series and a brief introduction to the unliving. The introduction is topped off with a one-page piece of prose. The book moves into Chapter one describing the use of undead by the Demonic Overlord Orcus. Vampires as his knights and ghouls as soldiers in Orcus' bloody campaigns and how they can be created and brought into his service, in foul shrines across the multiverse.
The occurrence of good-aligned undead are treated in a sidebar piece as rarities but possible. Ghosts and Vampires being the more commonly encountered, good Liches and Mummies are also rumored to be encountered in some cases. But, while still good in alignment, these creatures will still be treated with fear and loathing by other good-aligned creatures for their very nature.
A guide to make homegrown undead is then given. As can be expected, Humanoids, Giants, Monstrous Humanoids, animals, beasts and magical beasts, Dragons, and vermin are prime candidates for undead status, while shapechangers like lycanthropes and dopplegangers and aberrations like Mind Flayers and Beholders are also good selections. Fey, Phasms and other types of aberrations, plants (for the most part), Elementals, Constructs, Oozes and Outsiders will not make for easy or good undead.
The physiology of the undead is then discussed. Powered by Negative Energy, the unliving are given motion, senses and consciousness without the benefit of functional organs. More animate object than living being, an undead is unaffected by forces that would slay a living creature, wounds to a vital organ, pain or fatigue, things that require Fortitude saves such as Sleep or Blind, unless it is a force that would directly impact the creature such as disintegrate, poisons, toxins and polymorphs are also ineffective. Procreation is also beyond the undead, although there have been legends of Vampiric Offspring. Undead can see, hear and feel for the most part, these senses can be obscured but not affected directly.
The prime weakness of the undead is given as sunlight. Sunlight being the greatest manifestation of Positive Energy in the Prime Material Planes. Undead are also unable to heal or regenerate as living beings do, as that requires Positive Energy. The unliving are also unaffected by mind altering spells, Skeletons and Zombies have no minds, Ghouls, Ghasts, Wights and Spectres are all psychotically twisted, while Liches, Mummies and Vampires are highly intelligent and possibly magically resistant.
As with lycanthropes, there are two classes of undead, 'True' or Supernatural and 'Created', those who are created by another undead. The important difference is in the creation. Supernatural undead are the transformation of a particularly evil humanoid into an undead state after they die, compelled by their evil nature. Created or 'Spawned' undead are part of a contagion, their souls trapped in an undead state.
How to role-play the Unwilled Living Dead then follows. Skeletons and Zombies, their physiology, habitat, society and methods of combat are given, followed by Adventure Hooks. This section ends with the Skassassin, an undead skeletal assassin.
The Free-willed Undead, such as Bodaks, Devourers, Ghouls and Ghasts are then given the same description treatment with the Ghoul King and Tr'oul (undead troll/ghoul) followed by Adventure hooks ending the section. Higher Undead such as the Mohrgs, Mummies, and Wights also follow the pattern of description. A couple of new critters end this section, the Gholle and Ghulaz Created by the Demons, Gholl and Ghul, they appear to be stronger versions of ghouls.
The Higher undead are called Spirits of Evil. Following the book's pattern, Allips and Ghosts are described with a single Adventure Hook. Shadows are done in their own sub-section before moving onto Spectres and Wraithes wrapping up the chapter.
The Lords of the Living Dead titles the next chapter. Liche lead off, followed by Nightshades and Vampires. The book then veers into Hybrid Undead and the Art of Terror, aides for the DM running an undead campaign. A short 15-page adventure, The Peak of the Nightlord wraps up the book, followed by an Appendix, Beastiary of the Damned. This Monstrous Compendium has 19 undead creature examples of template usage including the Allip Treant, Ghoulish Dryad, Gold Dragon Wight and Zombie Titan.
Critical Hits
A passable guide, it contains some very clean and useful examples of expanding and playing undead creatures for the DM. Many of the ideas are well planned and not too power heavy that they would unbalance game play but unique enough that the most hide-bound players who know the Monster Manual by heart will pause or quake with fear when their dyed-in-the-wool pat solution fails and they have to rethink strategy.
Critical Misses
I hear alot of flak about Mongoose products and how they flood the market with product and such, but I've yet to see a really poor book from them. If anything, this book could easily have been doubled in size and still had fresh unused material as I am sure Mr. Gygax has reams on the subject and critters we could even imagine as yet.
Coup de Grace
I liked it. It wouldn't be first on my purchase list but it was one I couldn't pass up. Unlike other Slayer’s books like the Harpy or Yuan-ti, I found this to be more informative and useful, maybe the rest of the Slayer’s Guides should focus on groups as opposed to individual monsters.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
The templates are indispensable (sp?) if you ever have some kind of mass-create-undead effect that changes every creature for miles and miles into different kinds of undead. Got Extra Turning?
Joël of the FoS
First Post
Avoid this book ! I hated it! 
Slayer’s Guide to the Undead
Author: Gary Gygax and John Creffield
Type: Accessory – undead
Format: 128 pages, paperback
Release date: 2002
Summary of content: Book in the Slayer’s Guide tradition, exploring undead creatures.
Publisher: Mongoose.
Rating: *
(This is written a good two years after buying the book. I've read it often since then.)
As much as I like the Slayer’s Guide serie in general, I did not like this book.
Written by good old Gygax (sorry, Father of the Game!) and John Creffield (do you think we should we reverse this order?), the book is nearly useless, and full of no imagination templates.
But let’s go into details:
The first parts are about Orcus, the demon lord of Undead, about the senses of undead, etc. Nothing more then you could read in the WotC Monster Manual or quickly extrapolate from it. It is full of great stuff like “Undead are immune to virtually all spells that affect the mind (…) Some have hypothesised that the undead do not have working brains and thus magic cannot affect them.” First, it is false (wights, ghouls and vampires still have their brains and it’s not rotting) and second, the answer to that phenomenon is well known: it is simply because their mind is warped by undeath. The book is full of similar simplifications that do not stand under the most simple analysis or other already known fact.
Then you have templates. Poor ! They do not propose anything, it’s just that, i.e. for a skeleton – change the die to d12, speed: same as base creature, etc. Who really needed that? Poor page use, more like filling to me. Anybody could have done something similar without the book.
Astonishingly poor grasp of basic concepts: a new undead, the skassassin, is an unwilled undead executioner able to follow its target anywhere on the same plane, hide and use camouflage. Mindless like a skeleton or a zombie, huh? This error would have been laughed at in any fan-made netbook…
The other undead covered by this book are bodak, devourers, ghouls, ghasts, mohrgs, mummies, wights, allips, ghosts, shadows, spectres, wraiths, liches, vampires: other great templates and bland flavour text.
The section on mummy rectifies a funny mistake of the first edition of D&D: “Zagig” admits having done a mistake by saying mummies derive their magic from positive energy, and that it should be from negative energy instead. Great 1st edition mistake corrected.
There is a recurring fiction about a prostitute finding a book about undead in the things of a sleeping client. She reads it and is lured to more power (yawn).
The cover is quite cool, but it nearly stops there. The inside cover art is gory, disgusting and tasteless. It is absolutely repulsive and unneeded, and the illustration of page 34 (and others) reeks of a pimple-faced teen drawer.
The end adventure is cheesy to the max: a giant bodak-eagle? A spider-wight? A young gold-dragon-wight? But of course! Useless.
If you really want to read it, get a very cheap copy. Not recommended, even for a fantasy setting. Get the Van Richten’s Guides or Libris Mortis, you won’t get filling in these.
Not the best work from Mr Gygax ...
Slayer’s Guide to the Undead
Author: Gary Gygax and John Creffield
Type: Accessory – undead
Format: 128 pages, paperback
Release date: 2002
Summary of content: Book in the Slayer’s Guide tradition, exploring undead creatures.
Publisher: Mongoose.
Rating: *
(This is written a good two years after buying the book. I've read it often since then.)
As much as I like the Slayer’s Guide serie in general, I did not like this book.
Written by good old Gygax (sorry, Father of the Game!) and John Creffield (do you think we should we reverse this order?), the book is nearly useless, and full of no imagination templates.
But let’s go into details:
The first parts are about Orcus, the demon lord of Undead, about the senses of undead, etc. Nothing more then you could read in the WotC Monster Manual or quickly extrapolate from it. It is full of great stuff like “Undead are immune to virtually all spells that affect the mind (…) Some have hypothesised that the undead do not have working brains and thus magic cannot affect them.” First, it is false (wights, ghouls and vampires still have their brains and it’s not rotting) and second, the answer to that phenomenon is well known: it is simply because their mind is warped by undeath. The book is full of similar simplifications that do not stand under the most simple analysis or other already known fact.
Then you have templates. Poor ! They do not propose anything, it’s just that, i.e. for a skeleton – change the die to d12, speed: same as base creature, etc. Who really needed that? Poor page use, more like filling to me. Anybody could have done something similar without the book.
Astonishingly poor grasp of basic concepts: a new undead, the skassassin, is an unwilled undead executioner able to follow its target anywhere on the same plane, hide and use camouflage. Mindless like a skeleton or a zombie, huh? This error would have been laughed at in any fan-made netbook…
The other undead covered by this book are bodak, devourers, ghouls, ghasts, mohrgs, mummies, wights, allips, ghosts, shadows, spectres, wraiths, liches, vampires: other great templates and bland flavour text.
The section on mummy rectifies a funny mistake of the first edition of D&D: “Zagig” admits having done a mistake by saying mummies derive their magic from positive energy, and that it should be from negative energy instead. Great 1st edition mistake corrected.
There is a recurring fiction about a prostitute finding a book about undead in the things of a sleeping client. She reads it and is lured to more power (yawn).
The cover is quite cool, but it nearly stops there. The inside cover art is gory, disgusting and tasteless. It is absolutely repulsive and unneeded, and the illustration of page 34 (and others) reeks of a pimple-faced teen drawer.
The end adventure is cheesy to the max: a giant bodak-eagle? A spider-wight? A young gold-dragon-wight? But of course! Useless.
If you really want to read it, get a very cheap copy. Not recommended, even for a fantasy setting. Get the Van Richten’s Guides or Libris Mortis, you won’t get filling in these.
Not the best work from Mr Gygax ...
Last edited:
