Zombies are a plague, an ever present threat that must be put down before they become an unstoppable horde. While most adventurers regard them as a nuisance, the common folk know better. Zombies are a rot, sent to gnaw away at the foundation of civilization itself. Monster Focus: Zombies is here to give you the tools you need to make your players fear the walking dead!
Inside, you'll find a number of options for player characters facing off against zombies. Options like the Stagger Undead feat, which allows a cleric to stop zombies in their tracks, or the new spell light of purity, which can send the undead back to their graves. In addition, there are a wide variety of new rules for Game Master to use in their game. You can litter the map with Corpse Fields, a new hazard that claws and bites those that pass through it, or you can challenge your players with the terrifying Brood Zombie, which can unleash swarms of infected vermin. Game Masters will also find plenty of new magic items, new zombie varieties, and adventure ideas inside. In total, this PDF contains:
4 New Feats
5 New Alchemical Items
5 New Spells
4 New Magic Items
1 New Hazard
1 New Undead Creature
2 New Types of Zombie
3 Adventure Hooks
Monster Focus is a series of short, easy to integrate PDFs, designed to make one classic monster the central theme for an adventure or even a small campaign. Each PDF in the series includes options for player characters and game masters, including new feats, spells, magic items, and more! Written by veteran game designer, Jason Bulmahn, you can be sure that these rules will fit seamlessly into your game.
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continues with the second installment of the Monster Focus line. Before it was Skeletons, now it's Zombies!
I will join the rest of the reviewers in praising that the Feats, Spells, and Items are useful and balanced. I especially enjoy the introduction information from a gamemaster perspective.
All in all a great product, at an unbeatable price with an old school feel!
This second helping of undead has several pleasant (or unpleasant if you are a player) surprises that you can immediately add to your game.
I've always been a fan of giving my players a shock or two when they start getting complacent about what they are facing. Having a quick template as the Relentless template can add some cinematic flair to the game, or using the Brood Zombie as a minor boss can certainly throw your players off guard.
The few feats that it supplies do add some flair, such as Brain piercer to help speed up some zombie slaying. For the Undead Master in waiting, the Zombie Master feat can help make a Zombie Lord with her hordes of undead a reality.
Some of the magical items did catch my attention, such as the Sword of Final Rest, which could become the focus of an Zombie Apocalypse campaign to slay the legions of these brain sucking hosts with greater alacrity. And, let's not forget the Staff of Decay! That could easily be the focus of an evil NPC's endgame if you so wish.
The spells are pretty basic fare with little to be excited over.
If you own Monster Focus: Skeletons then you will find more of the same (only zombie focused) in Monster Focus: Zombies.
For those who don't, MF:Z has one cover page and 3/4 page of OGL and Design, Art, and Layout. The remaining 4 pages contain a host of useful rules for those looking to expand the role of zombies in their game.
The Feats, Spells, and Magic Items are good without being overpowered and all of them can be useful. More alchemical items are always welcome for both alchemists and low power games and these five are useful against any of the corporeal undead.
The zombie and templates are the best part of the pdf as they give GMs a way to create hordes of infectious zombies and scenarios in which a lone zombie can be the main villain for a mid (5-7) level campaign. Three such scenarios are included at the end and combined with the new hazard a GM could easily create a campaign using nothing but zombies.
Summary: The pdf is well worth the price for both GMs and players who are looking to incorporate zombies (and to a lesser extent corporeal undead) into their campaign. While the templates do allow for higher level play the pdf seems to fit a 9th level or lower group best.
In Monster Focus: Zombies we have about 4 pages of content after we get through the cover, OGL, credits, and the little maze who seems to have no purpose but to waste space and ink on the bottom of each page. But what a glorious 4 pages it is.
There's pretty much 3 - 5 of pretty much anything you could want for a zombie themed character or game. There's variant zombies, feats, alchemical items, spells, magic items, even adventure ideas.
However, in my opinion this product suffers a little from a lack of focus, which is ironic considering it has a very tight focus on zombies. What I mean is that when you're only getting 3 - 5 feats in a product about zombies, I want them to be about making or controlling or using zombies, instead we get 1 feat that is pro-zombies and 3 feats that are anti-zombie (and 2 of those are pretty narrow in use unless you're in a full out zombie apocalypse style world). This lack of focus is really the only thing preventing the pdf from getting 5 stars because really, it does come with a lot of cool stuff for zombies.
I'll give you an example, the corpse field hazard. Imagine an area scattered about with the still animate hands / heads / what have you, of zombies & skeletons. This has rules for that.
So all in all definitely a great product, had it been based a little bit more around making and controlling of zombies and less on the fighting there of, I'd give this 5 stars. As is, I don't think I can do that, so I'll settle for giving this 4 stars and a hardy endorsement.
