[3.5] Zambies

[Sir Chuckles]

Not too long ago my players had the brilliant idea of an E6-based campaign where we play as ourselves.
Now, only one of my players are unfamiliar with the Zombie Survival Guide, so they decided that they want those zombies.

Now, the whole campaign is pretty easy to set up, what with Pathfinder gun rules, Wikipedia lists, and a touch of homebrew loot lists and locations.
My problem?

How do I go about statting a Max Brooks zombie? What do I max their attack bonus? Do I give them Improved Grab? How much HP do I give a human skull? And all that fun stuff.

[Fosco the Swift]

Time to pull out the ol' 3.5 books.
Quick question before we get started, what books do you have/ are using?

To work: it is almost universally agreed that zombies are most dangerous in groups. Solitary to about 5 zombies- not too bad. Fifty zombies? We're dead. But controlling 50 different zombies takes a long time. So we take a peak into the Dungeon Master's Guide II. And on page 59 there is a magical entry on a new Creature: the Mob. Basically a swarm composed of Small-Medium creature. If you don't have this book I'll happily start copying down some stats for it.

[Debihuman]

This might help: http://dungeonsmaster.com/2011/10/7-tips-zombie-campaign/

And this: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/zombie/zombie-apocalypse

And this: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?49714-Resident-Evil-D20

And this: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tt/20060124a

And this: http://diceofdoom.com/blog/2013/07/guide-to-running-a-zombie-apocalypse-horror-roleplaying-game/

Debby

[Sir Chuckles]

Time to pull out the ol' 3.5 books.
Quick question before we get started, what books do you have/ are using?

To work: it is almost universally agreed that zombies are most dangerous in groups. Solitary to about 5 zombies- not too bad. Fifty zombies? We're dead. But controlling 50 different zombies takes a long time. So we take a peak into the Dungeon Master's Guide II. And on page 59 there is a magical entry on a new Creature: the Mob. Basically a swarm composed of Small-Medium creature. If you don't have this book I'll happily start copying down some stats for it.

Completely forgot about the Mob template. That will help later on. I have access to just about every 3.5 book, and some 3.0.


This might help: http://dungeonsmaster.com/2011/10/7-tips-zombie-campaign/

And this: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/zombie/zombie-apocalypse

And this: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?49714-Resident-Evil-D20

And this: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/tt/20060124a

And this: http://diceofdoom.com/blog/2013/07/guide-to-running-a-zombie-apocalypse-horror-roleplaying-game/

Debby

I should clarify further:
Everyone is playing themselves, meaning everyone is, currently, a Human Expert 1. No Clerics no Wizards, headshots are the only kills, infections spreads via bite, aaaand it's 3.5 with a touch of Pathfinder. Crossbows and bows are exotic, handguns are simple, long guns are martial.
It also means that the PF Apocalypse Zombie would most likely be a TPK if it was anything other than a 100% player-ideal surprise round.

The biggest bedazzled pink elephant in the room is "what stats do I give a Max Brooks zed?"
They have to be kill-able by Steve from Accounting with a stapler, but lethal enough that Steve doesn't become El Bandido de Grapadora.

[Aergoth]

Standard 3.x/PF rules are poorly adapted for the modern zombie apocalypse. Zombies in the ZSG are basically the standard Romero-style slow zombie with the usual caveat that it is an infection that is capable of being spread by bodily fluid, typically by the bite. (Note all this is based on the assumption that you're working with a modern world under 3.5 style rules)

My suggestion is that you fudge the numbers. Start with old-fashioned 3.5 zombies since they have the basic shambling down. The limit of move or attack should be enough to simulate a romero zombie without getting into the problems of 3.x character speed and the length of a round. The CR 1/2 human zombie has an AC of 11 and 16 hit points with a +2 slam attack.

What you probably want to do to maintain the killability of the zombies is to reduce their overall hit points, since you're not going to have things like magic to fill out the damage. Call it an even 5-6 HP on average since most weapons you're going to be working with are capable of doing 6 damage on a max roll. You could use called shot rules for headshots, but those are notoriously crap. Instead raise the AC arbitrarily and flavour things that don't meet that value as being non-lethal body shots or misses.

Lone ZSG (and all romero zombies) are never a threat. The threat is always going to be from the thought that there could be three or four of them around the corner. Or ten. Or twenty, or one hundred. So we could keep the AC at roughly the same level.

From running a few first level games we're going to bear in mind that the best that most people can expect on an attack roll at first level is in the neighbourhood of +5 (Strength/Dex bonus of +4, +1 BAB) and your characters probably aren't going to have that. If you bump their AC up to 14-15 you're still dealing with a situation where a really good first level character has to roll 10 or better to hit a zombie and that's not guaranteed to kill them. This might work. 1st level experts you're probably dealing with more in the range of a +2 or +3 to hit at the start depending on how you're generating the characters so play it by ear. I'd probably start with an AC of 12-13 and see how the dice are rolling that night.

Standard 3.5 zombies have a +2 slam attack. Changing this to a +2 bite doesn't hurt much, a medium bite is 1d4 if I recall. HOWEVER, working with bites as infection means that ANY hit is going to be lethal, so you don't actually want to bump this up too much and instead focus on the AC of your players and making them feel vulnerable.
You could do Armor as DR (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm)instead, which might work better for the zombies trying to bite you and make dodge/dex bonuses more like what they are. We can further mix this with some alternate rules from Pathfinder to allow for piecemeal armor (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/piecemeal-armor) if you'd like but that's going to get a little messy.

Either way you don't have magic or plate armor neccessarily. A good leather jacket would probably be a solid subsitute for leather armor and you could make a case for tougher motorcyclist/racing gear for being studded leather. Sports equipment, likewise, makes pretty good armor when you're wearing it. BMX safety gear, football or hockey pads offer quite a bit of protection from things like bites, they're padded to absorb shocks and probably make a good subsitute for hide or scale mail. Combining stuff like this with a flak jacket or a stab-proof vest would eventually put you at chain mail levels.

Assuming you're working with modern times still, full on riot gear or heavy military equipment might be a substitute for heavy armor but I don't recommend it. The closest thing you're going to get to full-plate other than actual full-plate is something like an anti-bear suit and those have problems all on their own. They still wouldn't stop you from being overwhelmed by sheer mass of zombies. Even if they can't reach you to bite you, getting bogged down could lead to a very unpleasant death by dehydration.

A lot of what you're going to wind up doing as the DM (ZM?) is going to be managing the players. Things like the scarcity of ammunition, the quality of their gear, the number of zombies in play and that kind of thing is going to be a bigger deal than the actual bonus value on the zombies.

[Sir Chuckles]

Dang it, I really need to sit down and dedicate a full day to reading Pathfinder. Every time it's brought up, I find exactly what I'm looking for, in one way or another.

As of now, I've had one session where I set them to AC 12 and HP 3, flavoring "You rolled an 11, chest shot, it's a gosh darn zombie good job you wasted an arrow."
Aside from a few botched rolled with Driving (right out of d20 modern) and some very questionable ideas, it does decently well.
It's just a matter of mechanical stability.

As 1st level Experts, nobody has +1 BaB. As we're playing as our real-life selves and all but two of the group of seven are not nerdy white waifs, the highest to-hit in the party is a +2, purely from Dex. It's not generated characters, it's "I asked everyone except the person to write a sheet of everyone else's real life stats as an Expert 1 and finagled the averages." The highest stat in the group is a tie between 15 Charisma and 15 Wisdom. Charisma guy has 7 Strength.

With that short boost from Aergoth, I can definitely figure out the basics and play by ear from there.
My last two questions are
Piecemeal armor: should I use arm values for headgear? And would upping everything by 1, but removing the +1 from having a full set and making it only hit locations, be good for allowing a leather jacket to provide +1 to arms and +1 to the torso?

[Aergoth]

Pathfinder really is great. Admittedly we still ignore some of the stuff that is less inherently fun (arbitrary encumbrance stuff comes to mind) but the system as a whole is pretty cool. I still am not over archetypes. They've actually got driving rules in there as well but I'm not sure how they compare to d20M.

As far as piecemeal armor, I've never used it in a game I'm running. Headgear has generally been a non-issue other than descriptions of sets of armor including it. You could strip the suit bonus out and give headgear a +1 (heads are important) instead. A leather jacket should probably just be treated as a combined arms/torso piece from the table, since you can't really seperate it (unless someone wants to go mad max). My assumption here is that the suit bonus exists so as to provide some kind of mechanical benefit for being 'properly' equipped.

As far as your question, it's not something I'd do. Leather jackets are tough stuff but they won't turn away things actually meant to kill you unless you do something to reinforce them.

Glad that it's running well though. I've always wanted to try running a zombie game. Though if I was doing it with my group I might have to give one of them a 20' move speed :smallbiggrin:

[Fosco the Swift]

As already pointed out, the biggest problem with any HP/AC system and Zombies is one bite = dead. But, with a little imagination or different mechanics it could work.

1.(This works for D&D too) HP is not precisely how many wounds you can take, but more a an energy/ health level combine in one. As you narrowly miss blows and get minor scratches and stabs, you lose HP (when attack is equal to or higher than AC). Sometimes a hit is and actual major wound, but most of the time it represents your character's energy level. A high level character is better at narrowly dodging blows than a 1st level, and can do it for longer. AC represents dodging or blocking hits without using much energy, so you lose no HP.

2.in the Home-brew section of this very forum lies a thread called "Defense Overhaul" by Plato Play-doh. He overhauls the HP system and replaces it with dodge, block, parrying and AC becomes DR. This creates the idea that characters don't have a static number to prevent instant death, but have varying ways to prevent it.

3.Having a high fortitude means being resistant to disease/ poisons in D&D. But supposedly the Zombie Virus is instant death with no way to stop it (short of amputation depending on you view). So instead of changing slam to bite, keep it slam but only have bites come at specific situations. This includes being swarmed and grappled, incapacitated, surprised/ Flat-Flooted or in a awkward position (Attempting to grab an item out of a zombie's hand while they are still animated, Falling prone at a zombie or similar). This prevents death bites from coming without a serious disadvantage. And after being clawed enough and left dieing, the zombies can proceed to eat the character.

Also on the idea of continuity, what happens when plain zombies get boring? Should new special zombies be included (ie. Left For Dead) to keep the game active? And what happens when some one dies. And then animates?