Yawn of the Dead - no more

I, too, am glad to see that zombies are getting a re-working, and will be something that is added to an adventure as a challenge instead of just as expected flavor -- no one ever stopped delving into the Lost City of Somedarkplace because a few zombies were shambling around...

Until now. The last two Des&Dev articles have been about the zombie and their reawakening. But the second post has me wondering how they're making these variant versions.

I've mentioned before that I like the mathematics and the formulaic approach to creating monsters, "computational monstrionics" (a horrible phrase I just made up from my Computer Science and Linguistics backgrounds -- sorry Disciplines). Templates were the best addition to monsters, allowing all sorts of combinations that still followed a set of rules.

So are these variant zombies -- the chillborn zombie, the corruption zombie and the gravehound zombie -- created from templates, or are the developers actually regressing and making these three separate, distinct types of monsters? I've griped before that they're not making the production of monsters an accurate calculation -- that there will be a bit of fudging, which I don't like. But does this preclude the use of templates for their hand-waving and wishy-washiness?

I see myself taking the new 4th edition Monster Manual (June!) and going through it, finding all of the "errors" in the monsters, and reverse-engineering the template out of things like these zombies. Am I just thinking 3rd edition? Perhaps... but the Monster Manual, more than the PHB or DMG, will have its work cut out for it, to convince me that 4th edition is an improvement.

Braaaaaiiinnnns....

Oh joy! The zombie will be relevant once again!

As far as I was concerned the 3.5 Monster Manual went from A to Y. From the get go the zombie simply wasn't scary. The first one we faced in game was probably fun but I don't think it took more than a few rounds to realize that we could simply out walk it. *Yawn*

Now with this Des&Dev article by Chris Sims I have reason to believe that the good old zombie will return to it's glory (or gory) days. Huzzah!

I don't know about the rest of you but zombies freak me out. I can't watch zombie movies because those shambling, non-stopping, brain eaters scare the crap outta me. They swarm, rip apart, and devour. They might even break dance a little. *shudder*

Unfortunately in 3.5 the zombie comes at your low level party in small numbers, or else the CR goes too high. At medium or high levels the DM can throw a mob of them at you, but by then a couple of simple spells or a decent turn undead and they're forgotten.

Either way, that's a far cry from the terror inducing, pants wetting, horror that zombies should inspire. I love the image of my character swinging away in desperation as dozens of undead hands reach out, clamoring for his brains (assuming we've already sacrificed the party wizard and rogue with their big juice high Int score brains). Think of the tension that would create as I pray the dice won't fail me and that my poor character will keep his brains intact.

In 4e it seems like the changes to the entire encounter design rules is going to shine, and the zombie will shine right along with.