Customer Reviews

Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wizards of the Coast has released three books over the last few months (Draconomicon I, Manual of the Planes and this) that basically follow the same formula: start with a fluffy descriptive section with no real gameplay value, follow that up with some pre-fab encounters / maps / adventure hooks, and follow that up with some monsters. This book does that formula the best out of those three books by far.

Two things stand out: the encounters / maps are short and varied, allowing you to easily plug them into an ongoing adventure; and, there are a LOT of interesting undead monsters to use. (I particularly love the brain in the jar - way to go WotC). As an added bonus there are a lot of exciting artifacts that work a lot differently from the typical magic item (for example, undead grafts allow you to actually add undead body parts to a PC or NPC for an effect).

IMO, this one ranks up with Adventurer's Vault and Martial Power as one of the best supplements of 4th Edition's first year. Worth a purchase.

I'll get right to the review: The book is very useful, probably 60/40 flavor/function split.

-Undead Lore:
This section deals with the most flavor. It talks about the creation of undead, their physiology, mentality, and society. The most useful parts pertained to locations, especially Hantumah, a totally undead city, which seems a nice place to siege. My major gripes about this section are the attempts to mix magic and biological processes, and the fact that the author can't seem to go three paragraphs without bringing up Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead, and how he wages a constant struggle with the very generic Raven Queen.

-DM's Guide to Undead
This might be my favorite part of the book. Right off, it gives some skill challenges, which are predictably of the 'appease this creature or else' sort, but welcome nonetheless. Then it goes into hauntings, presenting them as plot, traps, terrain, and skill challenges! Three short undead adventures are then given, culminating with advice on running a big zombie battle. A swarm of medium creatures which is also a skill challenge? Looks good to me. The chapter also gives three short campaign arcs about undead, a good quantity of pro- and anti- undead artifacts, a handful of rituals, and undead grafts.
I am taking an extra bit here to talk about undead grafts, because I feel it is a great idea that wasn't handled very well. The book explains grafts first by saying it's an unorthodox way to enhance characters in a macabre setting, but the first example is a giant flaming bone claw! Uhh? Two more examples- a graft that gives you fangs... and also a vampire's thirst for blood. The last example gives you a Lich's brain, and I have no idea how. So, grafting undead body parts? Sure. These particular ones? Nahhh.

-Undead lairs
This chapter provides 9 relatively robust, complete with map, dungeon delves, the highlight of which is a dungeon entirely inside a giant space-god-corpse. All of these look worthwhile and can be dropped into a 4th campaign quite easily.

-New Monsters
This last chapter provides a bunch of new undead, including the brain in a jar. Most all of this stuff looks good, or at least usable, and my biggest problem with this section is that one would think it would be earlier in the book, considering it is going to be used often, and referenced by earlier chapters. The undead hall of infamy is a sub-chapter here, which gives stats for beings such as Acererak, Kas, and yes, Vecna. Yes, he's LVL35. Yes, he's killable, and yes, it is a huge (campaign length) pain in the rear to do so.

-Undead Templates
This last chapter provides a handful of useful templates to be added to players or monsters, as well as a variety of special undead powers.

Overall, I give the book 5 stars because it reasonably provided everything I could ask for, undead-wise. There are a couple of issues, but these pale in comparison to the amount of useful information given.

The coolest thing about this book is that it takes time to talk about 'how' undead work in the D&D fantasy universe. That includes physiology, psychology, and tactics. Throw in there some cool templates to drop on Monsters, a few excellent critters, and some useful rituals and your golden. There was an editing snafu that left out the Zombie Plague illness, and I'd love to see some PC feats or starting backgrounds to go hand and hand with this. (Though that stuff is in this months Dragon (Feb 09) but still. Dang near perfect. Oh, and it's loads of Vecna and Vecna is cool and smart for a primary baddie.

Quickly: interesting, basically an addition to the Monster Manual.

Summary:
This is a hardcover Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition sourcebook containing 223 page about Undead. This is mainly a DM book and I would actually suggest player's not read it in the way I suggest they not read the Monster Manual: it takes away some of the fun and discovery.

The book is divided into 4 chapters.

Chapter 1 deals with undead lore. This strongly reminded me of the Draconomicon: Chromatic Dragons book (which I just realized I failed to review here). There are details about Physiology, Outlook and Psychology and Society with a section in the back looking at The Shadowfell.

Chapter 2 is called the DM's Guide to Undead and contains some great out of the ordinary encounter ideas. By out of the ordinary I mean social encounters, skill challenges and even idea on using Undead as Patrons. Three different Campaign arcs are given as well. Quite a few artifacts, some new rituals and a great section of undead Grafts round out this chapter.

Chapter 3 presents a series of lairs. These are fully detailed encounter locations including 2-3 set combat encounters and many suggestions for more. There are 3 lairs included for each Tier of play.

Chapter 4 contains almost 100 pages of new monsters. Most of these are typical Monster Manual style monsters and include some great new mobs like: "The Brain in the Jar" and "Crawling Gauntlet". Many old mobs are given new types (your typical undead, zombies, ghouls, skeletons etc). There are 7 famous undead stated out near the end of the book. These include famous characters like Vecna and Strad. Quite a few new templates are included. The final section of the book contains some great alternate powers for the typical undead types.

The Good:
The first section on Physiology and Psychology was actually rather fascinating. I loved the ideas of skill challenges and the sections on hauntings were rather good as well. I've already had an Undead patron in one of my games but that section gave me some great new ideas. Many of the new monsters are great. I so love the Brain in the Jar, the Tombstone Golem and the Flesh Cult (would make great Mid Paragon level baddies).

The Bad
I'm not a huge fan of the artifact system in 4e and I was even less of a fan of the artifacts in this book. Most of them seemed to be designed more for an evil character then good. I can't see most parties wanting to keep the items. A few were good, like Kaz's sword needed to Kill Vecna but many just didn't seem useful. I actually would have preferred more theory in this book. I really loved the Draconomicon: Chromatic dragon book for all of the background, fluff and theory. To me that book was more about background and info then about stats. This book seems to be the opposite. It's more about the crunch and less about the fluff. It's more of a Monster Manual then anything, and it can as boring to read as a MM at times.

The Ugly
I personally thought way too much time and space was given to the monster lairs. Sure they are neat and all but I highly doubt I will use more then one in my games. 78 pages of the book are given over to these lairs I will probably never use. Reading through them was uninspired as well as most of it was just a series of 'read aloud text' with a couple of combat encounters at the end.

Overall:
I wasn't as impressed with this one as I thought I would be. I really liked the Chromatic Dragons book and expected this to be as fun to read and it just wasn't. This one is a lot more mechanical with a lot more crunch. Now if all you are looking for is some new mobs, some places to fight those mobs (lairs) and some artifacts for them to have, you will be very happy with this book. Even saying that it's still a good book, there's some great stuff in here that will definitely enhance my game, it just wasn't as interesting or fun a read as I thought it would be.

Of the DnD 4th ed. books, that I've read so far, this one delivers the most real content.

Aimed mostly at DMs, there is something for everyone, expansion on the Shadowfell, monsters, even a race template if you just have to be Lestat/Edward/Angel/Vlad...

I'm really enjoying reading this.

This book is completely awesome.

It contains a lot of really well designed monsters, some of which are classics. I feel they are so classic this book is almost required to play D&D. There's a lot of cool variant versions of lichs, wraiths, zombies, skeletons, and the crawling claw, and brain in a jar! The other theme books are filled with weird crappy monsters, but I look forward to using almost every monster in Open Grave.

Even the short "dungeon delves" they include are superbly written. The authors of these did a excellent job using descriptive writing to set a macabre scene. The level 1 delve is almost perfect. I wish WOTC used it as a guide for how awesome a delve format adventure could be. The read-aloud text in italics is what I am referring to. Along with the History checks they convey well flavored text that helps to make the place seem real to the players such as:

A chill hangs in the air, a cold that seems more spiritual
than actual. Here and there, empty graves gape near fallen
headstones. Fresh dirt is scattered around these empty
graves. Judging by the way the soil is dispersed around one
of the holes, its occupant might have dug itself out.

Regardless of your opinion of the 4th edition system, one really can't deny the professionalism with which Wizards of the Coast puts together their D&D books. So far, every 4th edition book has been a thing of beauty and this one is no different. The layout is superb and the art is top-notch. As for content, if you're a DM, this book, which is along the same lines as the Draconomicon, is great. It's chock full of undead fun and, seriously, what DM doesn't like to throw undead at his PCs, right? Best of all, it's more than just a monster manual. It gets into the hows and whys of undead existence, from psychology to biology. It's fascinating stuff. If you're just a player, however, you can skip this one as it contains almost no information that's useful to you. In fact, reading this book could actually spoil your fun. This is my main problem with the book. I think WOtC might have been a little smarter to include stuff in here for everyone.

I have been skeptical from the start with 4E, but to be honest to Wizards, it is a great product and a great game.

And this supplement is AWESOME! The creatures it presents, along with the venues to place them are game enhancers of quality and ease.

When I purchased it I knew that there would be items I could immediately drop into both my heroic tier and near paragon tier games that I am running as DM. And WHAM! there was what I was looking for. With just a couple of modifications both times I have used the book it has worked out great.

Buy it if you have a lot of undead in your game, or even if you are looking at just a night's worth of playing--it's in there!

This is a very fine addition to the 4ed collection. My players groan delightfully when they see this book missing from its place on my bookcase.

This a five-star supplement. It provides extensive background and ideas on undead and how to incorporate them into your existing campaign or how to create an entire campaign based around undead. It also offers new monsters and rituals, magic items, etc.