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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010534" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack and Co-host of Mortality RadioSizing Up the TargetThe 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 BloodThe 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 HitsA 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 MissesI 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 GraceI 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 <a href="http://www.d20zines.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=358" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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