Necromantic Lore (Legends & Lairs, d20 System)

Rating:
Summary: Creepy & unusual undead for your campaign
Review: "Necromantic Lore" is a compendium of unusual undead to add to any role playing campaign (although written for d20 games). There are no necromantic spells or feats presented for wizards, just brilliantly conceived undead. Among the monstrosities presented are the "Atrocity Wight ... a depraved jigsaw puzzle pieced together out of dozens of hunanoid corpses," the "Bloodpool ... created when innocents are killed en masse and their blood is allowed collect and merge. ... A bloodpool in its natural form resembles a roiling pool of bright crimson liquid, and can be mistaken for a new type of ooze or slime." There are "Dream Phantoms," the souls of those who died in their sleep and now haunt the living, and "Eternal Confessors," undead clerics carrying on the work of their god even after death -- try turning one of those! "Forever Jacks" are thieves who cheated death and now are nearly impossible to destroy (CR 12!).

The term of venery for a group of crows is "a murder" -- a murder of crows. "Necromantic Lore" gives us the "Horrid Murder," a flock of crows possessed by a malignant undead intelligence. Think of Alfred Hitchcock's "Birds" coming at a party. Think of a party afraid of every bird call for fear that it is a "Horrid Murder" of crows coming to get them!

Does the party's wizard think he can handle planar creatures? Let him face a "Necromental" -- an undead elemental -- and watch him run! Malevolent whirlpools, giant apparitions in the sky and troops of wind-swept zombies are enough to make all but the toughest parties tremble.

Want something smaller to horrify your players? Try unleashing the "Pale Masker," an undead face-hugger that forms a symbiotic bond with its victim, or the "Shadow Parasite," which merges with its victims shadow.

Not ALL of the beasties in "Necromantic Lore" are malevolent. The "Guiding Spirit" protects its loved ones from beyond the grave. What might happen if a cleric determined to rid the world of undead decides that a party member's ghostly grandpa has got to be destroyed? What should a party do? Help destroy an undead thing or fight a cleric to protect their ghostly friend?

"Necromantic Lore" is filled with terrific undead monsters to unleash on a party or placed to plague a location with which the party is familiar. This is a GREAT addition to any DM's library. Five stars!

Rating:
Summary: Creepy & unusual undead for your campaign
Review: "Necromantic Lore" is a compendium of unusual undead to add to any role playing campaign (although written for d20 games). There are no necromantic spells or feats presented for wizards, just brilliantly conceived undead. Among the monstrosities presented are the "Atrocity Wight ... a depraved jigsaw puzzle pieced together out of dozens of hunanoid corpses," the "Bloodpool ... created when innocents are killed en masse and their blood is allowed collect and merge. ... A bloodpool in its natural form resembles a roiling pool of bright crimson liquid, and can be mistaken for a new type of ooze or slime." There are "Dream Phantoms," the souls of those who died in their sleep and now haunt the living, and "Eternal Confessors," undead clerics carrying on the work of their god even after death -- try turning one of those! "Forever Jacks" are thieves who cheated death and now are nearly impossible to destroy (CR 12!).

The term of venery for a group of crows is "a murder" -- a murder of crows. "Necromantic Lore" gives us the "Horrid Murder," a flock of crows possessed by a malignant undead intelligence. Think of Alfred Hitchcock's "Birds" coming at a party. Think of a party afraid of every bird call for fear that it is a "Horrid Murder" of crows coming to get them!

Does the party's wizard think he can handle planar creatures? Let him face a "Necromental" -- an undead elemental -- and watch him run! Malevolent whirlpools, giant apparitions in the sky and troops of wind-swept zombies are enough to make all but the toughest parties tremble.

Want something smaller to horrify your players? Try unleashing the "Pale Masker," an undead face-hugger that forms a symbiotic bond with its victim, or the "Shadow Parasite," which merges with its victims shadow.

Not ALL of the beasties in "Necromantic Lore" are malevolent. The "Guiding Spirit" protects its loved ones from beyond the grave. What might happen if a cleric determined to rid the world of undead decides that a party member's ghostly grandpa has got to be destroyed? What should a party do? Help destroy an undead thing or fight a cleric to protect their ghostly friend?

"Necromantic Lore" is filled with terrific undead monsters to unleash on a party or placed to plague a location with which the party is familiar. This is a GREAT addition to any DM's library. Five stars!

Rating:
Summary: Dark Energy Unleashed
Review: I found this book VERY useful for my half vampire necromancer. My DM loaned it to me and quickly wanted it back because of my over reaching into to Dark Arts after his carefully constructed campain fell around him. Worth your time whether your charactors are just touching on dark energy or fully corrupted by it.

Rating:
Summary: Great Monster Manual Supplement For Undead
Review: Necromantic Lore is simply a collection of undead monsters. There are no prestige classes, spells, feats, or any other items in this volume. That being said, there are a number of interesting and unique monsters listed herein.

Though the monsters are listed in alphabetical order, the publisher breaks them down into various types: grudge monsters, terrain creatures, chase creatures, plot creatures, flavor creatures, and finally a "race" intended to be used as PCs or NPCs.

Grudge monsters can inflict permanent harm on a party. Thus, the party will likely have a "grudge" against this monster, perhaps leading to future encounters with the same monster or others of its kind.

Terrain creatures are found only in certain terrains or locations. For example, gravestone guardians are only found in cemeteries.

Chase creatures provide great opportunities to have a running villain in your campaign. The foreverjack, for example, is a rogue who was lucky enough to have escaped death. These would make great NPCs for the adventurers to hunt.

Plot creatures usually have a close connection with the underlying plot of the story. For example, the atrocity wight is created from mass burial sites (e.g. concentration camps, genocide). Usually, this would be linked up with the scheming of the villainous NPCs.

Flavor creatures take the place of normal creatures in other campaigns, usually animals. For example, the bloodseeker is an undead wolf (zombie in appearance with a skeletal head) that can unfailingly track a creature whose flesh it has tasted. This may very easily replace tracking dogs in your campaign across the board.

Finally, the damphir is a race of semi-vampires created when a pregnant woman is drained of blood by a vampire, but not killed. When born, her child is a damphir, have some strengths and weakness of the vampire.

Overall, the volume shows some unique and usable ideas. There are a few monsters that may be a bit too powerful, but overall, the volume can be used to add some new undead to your campaign. Most of the entries are not simple rehashes of existing undead, but provide a new view and new tactics to undead.

A complete list of the undead monsters contained in this volume follows. The number in parenthesis is its challenge rating. If the number in parenthesis is base plus a number it's an undead template. atrocity wight (24), blood pool (5), bloodseeker (2), bonecast (base +1), charnel wagon (12), dancing bones (1), dhampir (base +1), dream phantom (8), eternal confessor (base +6), fade (4), famine haunt (5), fever gaunt (3), foreverjack (base +2), gaunt king (5), grave leech (1/6), grave master (9), gravestone guardian (3), grim stalker (14), hecatombe (see entry), heirloom wraith (3), horrid murder (13), necrocorn (5), necromentals (15), pale masker (1/2), pestilent queen (6), shadow parasite (4), guiding spirit (3), legion of the dead (base +2), spirit steed (2), warning spirit (4), tomb guardian (base +3), and unvanquished (base +2).