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After gaming a bit this morning, I've got just a little rant about undead in more modern RPGs: What happened to undead being the stuff of nightmares? I'm not saying that it's all wrong, everywhere. I think there are some kinds of undead that seem to have held on to the long standing ideas. Low-level corporal undead seem to be fine: Skeletons, Zombies, Mummies, Ghouls, etc. These range from weaker-than-NPC to stronger-than-NPC combat ability with the occasional nasty surprise like a disease or two. High-level undead like Liches, Vampires, Death Knights, Revenants are often okay, but just okay. The powerful caster or melee monstrosity side of them seems to have survived, but the special ability mechanics seem to have gone by the way-side. Mid-level undead is where I see the biggest problem... I don't know how to say it other than they have just become unimaginative. I'm talking primarily talking about incorporeal undead: Wraiths, Ghosts, Specters, Phantoms, Banshees, etc. Hell, in a lot of cases they don't even look scary anymore. Translucent-iridescent re-skins of NPC models just don't inspire that "oh crap!" feeling. I mean, what happened to this? This kind of undead use to be fearsome in RPGs. Even at higher levels they were not something to be ignored as trash in a fight. And, while they weren't wizards of legend, their special abilities made them a high priority: level drain, attribute drain, aging, magical disease, silence, death magic, mind-control (possession) etc. Not only that, but you sometimes needed special weapons to even hurt them. I can remember a PnP game I played once where we had become somewhat complacent and careless. The DM saw this and set us up. We just waltzed recklessly into a room occupied by a Banshee and a couple of other nasties. What ensued was pandemonium and party hysteria. We managed to pull though, but we had to pretty much retreat out of the dungeon after the fight was over because the party was all kinds of screwed up with long-term effects. I could say many of the same things about the way aberrations have come to be treated. Have you ever seen a Beholder played to its full capability? This is not a trash mob. Anyway, that's the end of my rant. Hopefully one of the PE developers will run across it and maybe they'll decide not to put the kid-gloves on ghosts.