Zombies! New Dungeoncraft article up

[sckeener]

Interesting. Looks like turn undead is in but modified, in that it replaces the "flee" result with "unable to approach." I heartily approve the change.

Yup, I liked that part....hopefully no vampires are going to be running away in the future but stay and taunt the turner.

 

[StarFyre]

sigh

Yet another creature that i will spend the time on to make variations of that we use in my campaigns.

I like having templates since 'it makes sense'. Anything can be an undead/skeleton , etc for the most part..but this new method is easier. Will just copy over stuff from the creature that it was based on.

It's quite easy.

My thoughts still remain:

I love what 4E appears to be doing with player races, classes, I like alot of the new plane stuff (mainly since it's easily converted more to my unique vision of planescape), and I am ok with any spell changes, etc since those can easily be changed back if needed. The monster changes though, not the concept of how they are doing it, but their visions of them, I do not like, and will stick with my own.

Sanjay

 

[Branduil]

I like it.

 

[Wormwood]

As a DM, you don’t have to worry about creating the gnoll zombie or the orc zombie. The one set of Medium zombie statistics should do you fine. The players won’t know the difference, except by virtue of your descriptive talents. They should be most worried about the pummeling their characters are taking anyway.

Another data point for the "4e Design Philosophy matches mine" column.

 

[BryonD]

You can critical hit undead.

It doesn't actually say that. It says you can critically hit zombies. And it is in the context of the "head shot" zombie idea. So it might be that zombies are an exception.

Or you can crit undead... We'll see.

 

[Darkwolf71]

meh.. not a lot of details

Par for the course.

I like the flavor, sounds like a zombie should be. Heck, may even be scarey!

 

[BryonD]

Yet another creature that i will spend the time on to make variations of that we use in my campaigns.

I like having templates since 'it makes sense'. Anything can be an undead/skeleton , etc for the most part..but this new method is easier. Will just copy over stuff from the creature that it was based on.

You may get the best of both worlds.

I can see how it makes sense that an orc and human and even a drow make the same default zombie. So this idea works fine.
But, particularly if you wait a little, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see other kinds of walking dead become published that may tie back to their living versions more.

 

[StarFyre]

oh yeah

i agree..for generic humanoids..who cares...like in real life here, humans are fodder...drop a bomb..kill 100s of soldiers from 2 armies..if the clothes are all charred and their faces/skin, without lots of analysis, you won't know who is from which side. in an overall concept...doesn't mean much.

Ive had stuff like necromancers raising specific creatures that should still have certain features from their living self, so for them, I would just keep the same stats as the living versions, but give them the 'undead abilities' instead of all the living ones..and make them a bit slower or something

Sanjay

 

[Jack99]

I really like their new take on things, zombies included.

 

[Pygon]

I always saw zombies and skeletons as the 1st level no-special-abilities junk undead for PC's to practice on. I like the flavor changes that are being made. I expect we'll see stats for large, huge, small and tiny versions as well.