D&D 5E Undead in 5th Edition

[Chaosmancer]

It's also odd to find where they don't have vulnerability.

Vampires aren't vulnerable to radiant damage, it just shuts down their regen. For example.


But yeah, Zombies are super scary with that undead fortitude. Shadows and Wraiths are scary.

Oh, and watch out for using the ghosts horrifying appearance. Aged a human character by 40 years (and didn't want that sort of game) and had to quickly retcon since I misread the 1d4 and missed the "x10 years"

 

[aco175]

I remember reading a few years ago to change undead fortitude to just a d20 roll with 15+ saving the zombie. It has worked well and saves some time trying to think what the DC should be.

I also have changed some of the hit dice over the last couple years. I made a skeleton fighter type at level 5 and gave him d10 for HP and even critical on 19-20. Although I do not change the spellcasters to d6 from d8, my players seem to deal damage quickly enough.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The lore for the various types of undead in 5e is awesome. Well worth a full read of the monsters entries. It's also worth noting that some mechanical elements are actually included in the non-statblock portion of their entries.