[campaign]Zombie Infestation - I BEG YOU TO COMENT

[Arakune]

I will ressurect this treat just to update things.
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History

Prelude
XX/YY/2004, Rain, 2 o'clock
Well, happy birthday for me, I think. From were I should start? My own lonelyness or a recap from all this mess?
...
Guess I will let the self-pity for later, but who whould know all this could happen in less than 15 days? Personaly I don't know what happned though the country, but I can say what I found out later...

The TV show a huge infestation in the state, starting everywere. In the first 2 hours the contamined person develop a strong symptoms of cold, killing him very fast. Afther ten minutes later the person start to move again and attacking the nearest person, trying kill and eat his victim. Afther that the victim wake ups again and the process repeat indefinidely. One bite or scratch are more than enough to contamine a person, but there are still rumors of others uncorfimed vectors.
The cops and hospitals were having trouble to stop the dicease from spreading: the dicease happend at the same time in almost all cities though state.
Later I discovered the dicease could spread initialy only for two ways: water or food. As far I know the primary vector are not very efective because the virus (after some analisys of some these creatures blood and cels and noticed some huge anomalies, maybe because a viral contamination, althogh I didn't have the necessary equipment for a more precise observation) can't live for long outside living cels (until they become zombies, of course). Until now I only saw humans infected, but it's a matter of time to dogs, cats or even birds to become a vector.

The funny thing is that all this mess started at the day of my birthday. Now I'm on a huge commercial building in a place were it's suposed to have a museun, a library and a restaurant for one year now in the Campinas that I wanted to came ever since. Soon I will be out of food and need to move on. Good thing I studied all this time (memorization techniques, war tactics, fighting styles...) and got a weapon: Muramasa, a original one that was being exposed the week this hell started. Funny thing, this is a cursed Nodachi (long blade) where all of his wielder died youg by some way: war, execution and duels in japanese feudal era and several diceases and bloddy accidents tough more peacefull times. Ironic this blade made me survive all this time, huh? And special clothes , that make me "invisible" to those monsters.
They can "see" (though later I discovered they are blind and deaf) the heat of things and have a strong sense of smell. By using a termal isolant as clothes and putting their blood on the outside, I can fool then for enough time to pass quick from them.

If my notes could be of any help I will be pleased, because today I will leave this place to find food and another hideway. I wish good luck for anyone who read this.


Storytelling system

Semi-linear character progression
The campaign will be split in various time periods, and the only thing relating every time will be the "Survivor", the author of some notes the characters will find though the campaign.
You make a character sheet as 1rst level, and start playing. When the time period swith, you will need to make a new character, but instead making then from zero, you will recicle the previous character sheet and except for the itens you keep all your experience.
Even using a new character, your previous character actions will have great influence though the history.
If you want to use the previous character, then he will come -2 levels from the average party level. If you want to create a whole new character you will start as 1rst level, but that doesn't mean less action to your character, just that you are less powerfull than the average (but in a world where your life espectative are two days, a third level character are already a "veteran")


Feats

Sensitive [General]
Pre-requisites: Only 1rst level
Benefices: A character with this feat have a competence bonus of +2 in listen, search and spot.
If the character enter in a room or touch a object, he will have a "flash back" of some event. Sometimes in 3rd person and other times as 1st person, the visions are involuntary and only the DM can trigger or stop it. After the vision the character must succed a will save with DC variable (tipicaly 15~25). Some times the vision can grant a special ability (the character knows the passcode of some door, can perfom one task that otherwise require some specific knowledge, etc) and it's also set by the DM, and only for a few tasks.
Special: You gain -2 on your AC/Defense and all Will checks for one hour afther the end of use of this feat.

Spoiler

Template

History: No one knows why, but a letal virus spreaded in Brasil with a absurdly fast contamination rate. Killing the host in usualy two hours and turning him into a killing machine ten minutes later, this dicease killed over 10 milions of people only in the first week, and almost the entire South America population and part of continental Central America (the dicease stopped in Panamá after the U.S.A goverment in agreement with the Panama goverment, making part of the country in to a desert afther a "clean up" nuke strike, and constructhing a 25m tall wall around) in six months after the first two weeks.
A theory says that one corrupt company was making experiments with a new virus ordered by the U.S.A goverment to make quickly a near-to-perfect soldier, without confirmations. Truth or not, many companys and goverments got interest in this dicease and are making advanced posts in the first focus of dicease, São Paulo/Rio do Janeiro/Minas Gerais triangle in Brasil, to study and to try to control the dicease. Sucefully or not, they learned by the hard way how terrible it is.

OBS: The DM should only give this template to humans and making animals, plants and such immune to the dicease. But only for a small time...

The Infected Zombie Template can be aplied to any corporeal creature (from now on called Base-Creature), but most likely humans.

Characteristics: a killing machine without emotions, this creature will attack anyone by the impulse to feed, usualy grippling the victim and biting him. Unlike some horror movies they can run prety fast, mostly because they won't stop by anything, and have a strong gripp. They will root very slowly, becoming a real corpse only after 200 years.

CR: vary by size: Tiny or smaller 1/4, Small 1/2, Medium-size 1~3, Large 6, Huge 10, Gargantuan 14, Colossal 18

Type: changes to undead.

Hit dice: loses every class hit dice (at minimum 1 dice). The remaining dices are mutiplied by two and changes to d12.

Movement: don't change, but if the creature have another type of movement, its rating movement as a zombie drops to the worse category or are divided by 2, to DM choice.

Defence/AC: A zombie’s natural armor bonus to Defense increases to a value based on the zombie’s size (but use the base creature’s natural armor bonus, if it’s higher): Tiny or smaller +0, Small +1, Medium-size +2, Large +3, Huge +4, Gargantuan +6, Colossal +10.

Attacks: The zombie retains all the natural attacks but can't use weapons. If don't have any attacks, it gain a bite attack with the same BAB of the creature.

Damage: Natural weapons deal damage normally. The bite deals damage depending on the zombie’s size (but use the base creature’s bite damage if it's greater): Fine 1, Diminutive 1d2, Tiny 1d3, Small 1d4, Medium-size 1d6, Large 1d8, Huge 2d6, Gargantuan 2d8, Colossal 4d6. The bite of a zombie are very powerfull and gains double the Str modifier to calculate the damage.

Special qualities: a Infected Zombie loses all his previous Special qualities and gain the following ones.

Heat sense[Ext]
Although the zombies are blind and deaff, they can sense the heat of any living creature within 9 m . They will instictly run though it if have the heat spectrun of a normal person (usualy 36,5~37 °C) and will attack, but won't fall by silly tricks all the time because their other special sences.

Sense of Smell[Ext]
They get a powerfull sense of smell, specialy for the smell of blood, and can track for an entery building if necessary. They will stop attacking if the object of attack won't split the smell of blood after attacked 3 rounds consectively. They get a +10 racial bonus in their search and spot checks.

Slow reaction[Ext]
They can only make a movement action or attack action by turn. Alternately, they can charge and do a grippling atempt as a full-round action (a Ref Save with DC 10 + BAB of the zombie dodge the attack) and if missed they will spend one turn before take any action after this.

Bio-Weapon Undead[Ext]
Imunity to poison (unless strictly designed for then, to DM choice), sleep effect, stun, mental effect, any dicease and death effects. They got imunity of contusion damage, hability damage, energy drain and macive damage death. Since they are a undead they don't have a Int and Con value and have imunity to any effect that need a Fort save (unless it can effect objects too).
The Bio-Weapon Undead have as a weak point their brain: the organ are still responsable by most of the remaing functions of the body, and if you manage to destroy it or cutting his neck the Zombie will "shut down" (they won't be anymore a treat, but a minucious research will discover their cels are still functional for a long time). As a mindless animal acting only by instict, they are not affected by effects like "turn undead" and detect aligment spells will only see a neutral creature (they can't really think, making their actions equal to a insect in constant search for food).

Infection[Ext]
A infected zombie can spread his dicease by a bite or a simple scratch. Any creature who take damage from a zombie will need to make a Fort Save (CD 15 + HD of zombie) or will be infected. Infected creatures will lose 1d6+4 points of Con by hour, dying and becoming a zombie after ten minutes. There isn't any cure yet and once infected your hopes are already lost.

Saves: all saves are bad, based on zombies hit dice.

Action points: Don't have any action point and don't get any action point by progressing.

Reputation Bonus: A zombie has a +0 Reputation bonus.

Ability Scores: A zombie’s ability scores change as follows: Str +2, Dex -2. Additionally, it has no Constitution or Intelligence score, its Wisdom changes to 10, and its Charisma decreases to 1.

Skills: The zombie loses all skills, but get the +10 racial bonus at spot checks.

Feats: The zombie loses all of the base creature’s feats and gains the Toughness feat, one instance by 5 HDs.

[Eighth_Seraph]

Urm...I'm not exactly sure of what you're asking. You say that you want to use this thread to compile all the potentially evil stuff for a horror/death/zombie campaign? If so, you might want to take a look at The Demented One's Wombmother monster, because of which I only recently stopped leaking brain fluids after seeing it.

[Hyrael]

I have my own idea for a D&D adventure that i may one day write up and send in to paizo. *Four 3rd level PCs against approximately 150 ghouls and one or two other undead types in a deserted mountain town. *All Ineed is a hook; someone or something they need to retreive from the location, maybe a Father Gregori type NPC.

What i liked is Shaun of the Dead.

Here's a setpeice: the PCs need to get to a prominent building, and must sneak from street to street, avoiding the ghouls rambling about. the streets are narrow and alley-ridden, full of detritus, and the ghouls are about twenty-strong, but spread out in groups of 1-3. Constant opposed spot, listen,hide,and move silently checks. its supposed to be nerve-wracking and stressful. As an out, of they get swarmed, the "father Gregori" can show up to lend a hand.

[Arakune]

Originally Posted by Capn Seraph, of the Eighth Sea

Urm...I'm not exactly sure of what you're asking. You say that you want to use this thread to compile all the potentially evil stuff for a horror/death/zombie campaign? If so, you might want to take a look at The Demented One's Wombmother monster, because of which I only recently stopped leaking brain fluids after seeing it.

yeah, much more like it, but i got some resident evil monsters and zombie's template, so i guess it's ok for now.
if anyone replies until today, i guess we have a start...

oh, and the main story will happen in Brasil, starting though SP (São Paulo state) and later infesting all south America.

The History about the scenario wil be tould by some copies from a diary found in a internet web site hosted U.S., but it will be all printed notes. Some people in Europe or U.S (places not infected) theorises the person who wrote that never existed, but in south America some people who could still use some type of comunication know this person existed and survived this event, gathering hope though his diary.

see first post to more details

[Eighth_Seraph]

Oooooh. I like it. Maybe you could make the PC's follow the notes left by this guy, so that they can work together with him to find a way to kill these zombies.

[Fax Celestis]

You must acquire a copy of All Flesh Must Be Eaten. Ultimate Zombie RPG of DOOM.

[Arakune]

well, someone replyed with a good review.

about the Survivor, he will be the only one "Uber" NPC with a little diference: he won't help the PCs unless he have a very good reason, and by very good reason he doesn't mean "life treatening situations", but life treatening of someone he cares (who certanly don't involve the PCs).
Don't blame him, among all of the entire continent he are the guy who suffered the most.
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see first post to more details

[The Demented One]

You want some sort of plague zombie? That'd be no problem to whip up, and viruses are fastly catching up to birth in my list of favorite monster themes.

[Randomman413]

You must also acquire The Zombie Survival Guide. At a bookstore. In the humor section. Truly, 'tis a wonderful zombie-related read.

[Maerok]

Yes, get that book. Max Brooks also wrote a book called "World War Z". It's written like a history book after humanity has fallen to a zombie horde. Hopefully someone has picked that up for me for my birthday Wednesday. ::)

[Altair_the_Vexed]

Someone did plague zombies... hang on...

*fetches link*

Okay, so that's D&D, but it fits the bill, yeah?

[Arakune]

sorry by the triple (previousily deleted) post in a row, but now i set things more ordered. I guess NOW this treat can have more attention or at least have a "well, at least it's a nice try" comment.

the ones who already did the comments I really give my thanks.

[Fredderf]

I like the idea, but I do have a few questions:
1) Are we assuming that you old characters are dead when you make the new ones?
2)d20 modern?
3)When you do the char. switch, would you find notes from all of your old party, or would it just be one of them?
4) The zombies will eventually threaten the entire world, correct?

Otherwise, I like the idea. Very clever. I may use it myself!

[Arakune]

Originally Posted by Fredderf

I like the idea, but I do have a few questions:
1) Are we assuming that you old characters are dead when you make the new ones?
2)d20 modern?
3)When you do the char. switch, would you find notes from all of your old party, or would it just be one of them?
4) The zombies will eventually threaten the entire world, correct?

Otherwise, I like the idea. Very clever. I may use it myself!

1- not exactly dead, but far away, inacecible by some reason, doing something else or simply are sucefully rescued.

2-yup. If there are an unerthed arcana (whorever you write it) version of D20 modern it could be the best, since in my contry some guys relased this game system.

3-if your old party leave notes, them maybe. Most probaly what you do and discover(blowing up factories, stealing documents, etc) will influence the later partyes, but you can find notes about yor old party made by a third party (neither the Survivor, the old party or yourself)

4- Not exactly; if all goes well in the campaign. then it will be only the american continent (with a special attention to Brasil, the ground zero and USA, because some secrets lie there)

good, now maybe this topic can survive :-)