As might be guessed, this page is in the process of being decommissioned. The bulk of the entries have been migrated onto the main creature index, so they're safe, we just won't be able to see the "Allip" and "Zombie" folders on the same page anymore (which would have been the case if we'd gone with "Undead" and "More Undead" pages). Similarly, the common Undead tropes are on the Creature Types page with the others. The only trimming and deletion that's occurred so far have been cases where a monster had multiple images in its folder but no major visual redesign across the editions, like the death knight, ghost and banshee.
As for what remains, I haven't migrated these undead folders because, in my subjective judgment, I don't think they're very interesting. Bloodmote cloud: undead mosquitos are an unusual gimmick, but even its entry is only eight sentences long, including summaries of its combat abilities. Bone rat swarm and corpse rat swarm: I've mentioned them as skeletal and zombie variants of a Swarm of Rats in the Raising the Steaks bullet in the Undead common tropes section. Hulking corpse: literally just a big undead humanoid. Murk: a Shadow that does Wis damage and has no fluff. I added those creatures back in the day, but if I were going through Libris Mortis again now, I don't think I'd bother.
Kind of sad that the sourcebook all about Undead has some of the weakest fluff for its entries.
Anyway — if anyone disagrees with my assessment, and wants to migrate those entries after all, I am not going to argue with you, and you're welcome to move them to the main creature index. Heck, I might change my mind about the Bloodmote Cloud and see if I can spice up its entry. But if no one will miss the likes of the Hulking Corpse, it'll go with this page when I flag it for deletion in a week or so.
Edited by Tacitus Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"
Can we include an entry for the Atropal, even if it's just a link to the Abominations section of the A monster categories? Or maybe make the Abomination section link to this page?
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The logic used elsewhere, like when the beholders and mind flayers were all in folders rather than on their own subpages, was to include undead variants of those creatures in that same folder, rather than splitting them between pages. Such was the reasoning behind me migrating the undead dragons and giants onto those subpages.
So my first response would be "no, let's keep the Abominations together, an atropal has more in common with a phane than it does a crawling claw." I can see the argument that an atropal is not the undead form of a "base" abomination, but I'm not sure I'm convinced by it. We're kind of trying to pivot away from organizing monsters by Creature Type, anyway.
Something else to consider is that this page is currently at 228,367 characters, when recently the Dragons subpage had to lose weight after growing to 284,377 characters. And I'd rather delay the discussion over what to do when this page gets too big for as long as possible.
Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown"
Amateur Veteran
Is it really necessary to add so many images to every folder? I can understand wanting to use multiple ones to show drastic changes in design, but the majority of these are just graphical upgrades — they're largely the same thing as each other, the art has just gotten better with time. They seem to just take up a lot of space for no real gain, and most character sheets on the wiki limit themselves to one picture per folder anyway.
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I concur, there's little point in having them. It would probably be best to just use their image from their most recent edition, and if necessary, use hyperlinks to reference drastic alternate designs—like what I originally did for the Art Evolution entries for a number of creatures, such as bearded devils and maruts.
EDIT: On a unrelated subject, I also think we should make an effort to not copy text from official D&D books without attribution. For instance, the description for the Alhoon on this page is taken word-for-word from the opening paragraph of the creature's entry in Volo's Guide to Monsters.
Edited by SullenFrog The Danse Macabre Codex
Amateur Veteran
I was thinking about how undead dragons are listed in this page, while undead illithids and beholders are listed as parts of their broader species' folders on the general character sheets; it seems inconsistent. I don't strictly favor one system over the other myself, but I do think that we should at least be consistent — either the "monster family" groups include their respective undead, or all undead are listed here.
It's that time again, oh boy. The page is just bursting with undead monsters from D&D's 50-year history, to the point that we're getting warnings about its size.
I see two paths forward. The first is the creation of a "More Undead" page, splitting these abominations of unlife between it and this one, until such time that an "Even More Undead" page is needed. I dislike this option, it might lead to proposed "[Creature Type]" and "More [Creature Type]" pages. The looming split for the [true] dragons page is going to be awkward enough.
The second course of action, the one I prefer, is to ask why the undead need to be on a separate page in the first place. We now have a Creature Types page where the umbrella tropes for undead monsters could go, same as for Constructs and extraplanar creatures like Fiends. And as neat as it is that this page serves as inspiration for any aspiring necromancer out there, listing all their options across the editions... well, how does that serve them? Some of these monsters are decades old, with no modern rules, and D&D Beyond and other websites already provide lists of every undead monster playable in the current edition. The only advantage to putting all these things in the same place is that we can put a note that they're all classified as Undead at the top of the page and skip writing a "Classification: Undead (1E-5E)" line in their folders.
In other words, I'm proposing moving all these undead onto the alphabetized creature index and decommissioning this page. They won't be any harder to find, you just won't be able to see akikage and zombies on the same page anymore. And this shouldn't have any immediate effects on the main creature index, since the "S" creature pages split recently and the "D" page still hasn't passed the 200,000 characters mark, to my surprise.
Thoughts, screams?
Current earworm: "Awe of the Unknown" Hide / Show Replies