Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead™

If you play D&D and love undead( and who isn't really?) then your library should include Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead™. Walking corpses, shambling along, wanting noting more than to eat your warriors brains, drink the lifeblood from your cleric, and drain levels from your paladin are a staple of D&D. Not content to lie in their graves inside the Monster Manuals, they desire a book of their own, and since the original masterwork of D&D undead, Ravenloft, coalesced from the mists, nearly ever edition of the game has one.

Led by Bruce R. Cordell, who also updated Ravenloft for 3rd edition and wrote the previous incarnation of this book, Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead™, the design team has managed to provide a plethora of useful info for your game while wrapping it all in as bland a presentation as possible.

There are four major sections to the book. The first part is the campaign lore fluffy bits. Second are non combat encounters, magic items of note, and necromantic rituals. Next are combat encounters. Finally a menagerie of over one hundred and sixty different undead nasties for your players vanquishing pleasure.

Part the first is an explanation of what undead are, and how they came to be in the generically specific fourth edition D&D world. This is the role-playing aspects of how they tick and think. Some bits seem to be dredged from the Mists of Ravenloft, which Wizards seems to be slowly, and unofficially incorporating into mainstream 4E (The Shadowfell's Domains of Dread and Dread Lords, anyone?). Nothing really grabbed me in this section, and it really made me long for Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead (Created, Ghosts, Lich, Vampires, Walking Dead...he pretty much covered them all in depth).

Part the second is a lot of fun, and makes use of the most new rules in 4e. There are nice examples on how to bring such diverse undeath encounters as hauntings and zombie hordes to the party in the guise of skill challenges. A really nice one details how to turn the classic murder mystery haunting into a detailed skill challenge. Included are three examples on how to craft an entire undead themed campaign to take characters through the three tiered leading to a climactic battle with some of the most powerful undead in the system. This section also has a nice selection of magic items to both hinder and help the party's undead foes. Wrapping up are rules for grafting bits of undead onto your living PC for some added flavor. These look to be inspired by Pinnacle Entertainment's Rippers Setting for Savage Worlds.

Part the third has ready to drop in dungeon crawls, or "Dungeon Delves" in the 4e parlance. This tome attempts to cover it's bases with battling zombies in the streets to re-burying a vampire in the cemetery, and a running street fight through a necropolis, teeming with creepy crawlies.

Part the fourth is the largest section, and the one most likely to get the most use. It's the Monster Manual of undead. Mummies, Vampires, and Jars full of brains, oh my. In easy to use 4e stat blocks, each monster also has the new lore checks to help the party figure out the best way of killing it, if they just don't want to beat it with a stick until it doesn't have anymore hit points. Altho most of these would still get up again, so do your homework and learn what your going up against, party peoples.

After the glut of evil is even more evil, but these have scary names like Vecna, Orcus, and Strahd. Here, Wizards has updated it's infamous who's who of non-living monstrosities to 4e. When last we saw Strahd von Zarovich he weighed in at a hefty two and a half pages of stat block in 3.5, but here he takes up three quarters of a page.

After the Hall of Presidential Monstrosities are templates you can add to any creature to make them undead. The standard fare are represented, mummies, vampire thralls, and liches. Finally the book concludes with new powers you can swap out for any undead in previous books, such as the Monster Manual^TM to shake things up and make them interesting for your players.

Although I do enjoy this book, and will get much use from it, it does have some drawbacks. Mostly stemming from the way 4e is presented. After all the color, style, and pizzazz of 3.x, 4e while mechanically very sound and  fun, comes off like reading the 1968 World Book Encyclopedias I grew up with. Useful information presented in a bland, sterile way.

I give Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead^TM eight out of ten phalanges.

-tedwrd