I was looking at undead in the PHB and I noticed that they seem to be missing a few immunities (they are only immune to the poison condition). I then downloaded the DM Basic rules and discovered that the skeleton is immune to poison and exhaustion.
At this point I don't know what to think. Are these errors or are they intentional changes?
It looks like you can fear and charm some undead creatures now.
I'm really not sure how I feel about these changes.
I think I'd rather just have a standard set of immunities for all undead. Sure, a banshee (non-corporeal undead) can have more immunities (charmed, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, prone, restrained), but there should be more consistancy across monster types. At the moment a zombie is only immune to poison, but his cousin the mummy is immune to charmed, exhaustion, frightened,
paralyzed, and poisoned
I'll tell you one thing, most players are not going to be expecting a fear spell to work on a pack of ghouls and wights.
And yes even zombies workers need their sleep.. they get tired now.
It was probably intentional. It is a bit odd that all undead aren't immune to exhaustion, though.
I too have been wondering about this, also constructs, the flying sword is not immune to exhaustion.
I think it's because the huge immunity lists of 3e tended to totally stymie characters with "themed" ability lists, and thus to cut doing that off from players' options, while 4e's near-complete lack of immunities made no sense whatsoever in-world. They're trying to split the difference.
Also, undead don't have the traditional radiant damage vulnerability they had in 4e. But, holy water deals radiant only to them, and is harmless to others.
XunValDorl_of_HouseKilsek wrote:
Emanuele_Galletto wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
XunValDorl_of_HouseKilsek wrote:
It seems more like laziness or oversight by the editors. There is no mention of skeletons or zombies being immune to sleep in the monster stats. However the sleep spell indicates they are immune. WOTC needs to do a better job of editing.
kev777 wrote:
Chaosmancer wrote:
After a quick look. I think a 3rd level enchanter with the Enthral spell is more usefull than a 3rd level cleric against skeletons and zombies. He can cast enthral twice, and use arcane recovery. In addition he can use his hypnotic gaze feature.
I didn't think most undead would count as humanoid for the enchantment spells that require it.
For enchantments that do work on undead, I think it's kind of cool that they retain some utility against such creatures; the spells are much more potent and meaningful that way. It looks like higher level undead still have immunities to charm, fear, and the like, so that still plays to the usual trend.
Of all things, though, the specialist enchanter's hypnotic gaze should work on just about anything...it's the enchanter! Making a zombie sway back and forth instead of eat you seems pretty awesome to me.
I don't mind the simplified immunities. If you need undead in your story to be immune to something in particular, make them immune to it. Better that than cross referencing nine different immunities and keywords and (especially) trying to make them all fit an entire category of foes perfectly for every possible situation, story, and genre. For organized play I'd mostly just be concerned with whether or not it's balanced. Just my two cents though. 
My rule of thumb for these things:
If I am objecting to a new rule based on how old rules work, then my objection is not well founded. Different game, different rules.
marius4 wrote:
marius4 wrote:
iserith wrote:
iserith wrote:
So what skeleton is correct? The one in the PHB or the one in the DM basic rules?
Orethalion wrote:
kev777 wrote:
kev777 wrote:
TiaNadiezja wrote:
kev777 wrote:
Do we know yet if creature types in the MM have a list of immunities that all of them share? Do we know yet if when it says Banshee (medium incorporeal undead) if "incorporeal undead" has it's own immunities list in it's type entry? I'll agree that not having it in the stat block is a pain, but they might have listed all the immunities that are exceptional to just this creature.
Setzer_G wrote:
iserith wrote:
Okay, turn undead is still useful, especially since at 5th it starts becoming destroy undead.
I won't get into the cleric's healing, because I consider that a moot point.
Cleric's bonus damage isn't effected by undead (except the poison guys from trickery), zombies who take radiant can't use their "I'm not dead ability". But if zombies, for example, had weakness to radiant it quickly becomes a one-shot kill (they only have 3d8+9 hp).
Charm person only works on humanoids, not undead, same with hold person. I'm not going to go through the whole list but other than higher level spells, at low levels the best way to deal with a crowd of zombies is a cleric, at high levels it's a cleric who turns them all to dust.
Chaosmancer wrote:
kev777 wrote:
kev777 wrote:
Orethalion wrote: