[3.5] Makin' A Zombie One-Shot

[Deth Muncher]

Hey all. As an apology to a friend of mine who I've kept her zombie movies way too long, I've decided to do a Zombie-riffic one-shot. I told her characters are at level 8, and not to too heavily optimize. I also told her to find three friends to do this with, so, for those of you keeping track, that's 4, level 8 characters. My question is, what should I do for this? I'd prefer a more virus-zombie approach as opposed to necro-zombie, so I'm in heavy need of some homebrewed materials if people know of them. Although, I suppose, I can just used evolved undead templates from the Book of Bad Latin to simulate the effects of the more advanced zombies.

So, what exactly am I asking you all for help on? How to craft this one shot, actually. I'm not familiar with how to condense a story into one sitting. I'm betting this will end up being between a 5 and 8 hour adventure. Other things I need:

-A list of upgrades for regular D&D zombies.
-Homebrew for movie zombies.
-Ideas on how to simplify large scale combat in the event that one PC gets swamped. (I know Cityscape has a Mob rule, I'll go look at that.)
-How to make this challenging but without necessarily overpowering them (I'm okay with a medium lethality rate).
-Headshot rules.
-Actually, any kind of rules for taking off a body part, and what that could entail (i.e. taking off one leg = movement half, etc.).

Oh, and I'll be looking over SCS's Halloween Adventure for this. :smallamused: Though no Kythons.

[Paulus]

Aim for the head!

Oh, not THAT kind of one shot, my bad.

But seriously, always go for "escape on the run" with zombie stories so as to keep the encounters and setting moving. Swarmed equals dead. Also, what kind of zombies are you going for? 28 days, dawn of the dead, resident evil, etc?

[Deth Muncher]

Aim for the head!

Oh, not THAT kind of one shot, my bad.

But seriously, always go for "escape on the run" with zombie stories so as to keep the encounters and setting moving. Swarmed equals dead. Also, what kind of zombies are you going for? 28 days, dawn of the dead, resident evil, etc?

I'm gonna say X of the Dead series zombies, since that's the movies I borrowed and have yet to return, which is spurring this in the first place. :smallredface:

Plus, X of the Dead lets me use advanced templates without the retardedness of RE "zombies" since I don't really want to have to figure out how Umbrella got shifted into a generic fantasy setting. But yeah. In Dawn of the Dead, Zeds seem capable of walking/jogging, and as the series progresses they seem to get a little faster and smarter. I'm thinking of the game being set over the course of a week in game, with the first two days encountering Zeds in the field, with day 3 bringing them to a town in desperate need of help, and from there the PCs helping the villagers.

[Evard]

there is no such thing as a one shot zombie you ALWAYS double-tap it is like rule number 2

[Deth Muncher]

Okay, the "One shot meaning I'm shooting a zombie once to kill it" joke is officially as dead as the zombies I'm trying to use in this campaign.

[Jarrick]

The Eberron sourcebook "City of Stormreach" has a spell in a sidebar that makes contagious necromantic zombies that spread zombieism(?) through disease. Don't know if this helps. < /my two cents>

[Deth Muncher]

The Eberron sourcebook "City of Stormreach" has a spell in a sidebar that makes contagious necromantic zombies that spread zombieism(?) through disease. Don't know if this helps. < /my two cents>

There's a City of Stormreach book? I didn't know.

[Jarrick]

There's a City of Stormreach book? I didn't know.

Yeah, I found it on amazon.com on accident. Before that, I didn't know it existed either. It's a good book, like sharn:city of towers in overall layout. We used it to run a whole campaign out of stormreach. Nothing fits an evil party (Or even a roudy neutral party) like a lawless pirate town. :smallbiggrin:

*Ahem* but um yes, back on topic. It's in there.

[AslanCross]

The zombies in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft are also contagious and are far tougher than regular zombies. Basically if they're dealt enough damage to destroy them; roll 1d20. If they roll 11 or higher, they go back to 1 HP.

They can also move and attack instead of being stuck with the "one move or standard action only" clause that normal zombies get. They still can't charge or double move, though.

[Bibliomancer]

The rules for a Mob are also listed in the Dungeon Master's Guide II. Conveniently, a Mob of CR <1 creatures is CR 8.

It occurs to me that it would be fairly easy to convert other undead into 'advanced' zombies. Bodaks are radioactive zombies, vampires are sentient zombies (with a lot of their signature abilities removed), ghouls are elite zombie mooks, etc.

This would be especially easy if the people involved are not especially familiar with D&D rules. For a real surprise, throw in a Graveyard (not sure if that's the exact name) from the MMII (CR19, so they have to run, which most people would do when confronted with a 40 foot tall walking graveyard.

[Deth Muncher]

The zombies in Expedition to Castle Ravenloft are also contagious and are far tougher than regular zombies. Basically if they're dealt enough damage to destroy them; roll 1d20. If they roll 11 or higher, they go back to 1 HP.

They can also move and attack instead of being stuck with the "one move or standard action only" clause that normal zombies get. They still can't charge or double move, though.

You don't saaaaaay...I'll have to go rummaging to find them.


The rules for a Mob are also listed in the Dungeon Master's Guide II. Conveniently, a Mob of CR <1 creatures is CR 8.

It occurs to me that it would be fairly easy to convert other undead into 'advanced' zombies. Bodaks are radioactive zombies, vampires are sentient zombies (with a lot of their signature abilities removed), ghouls are elite zombie mooks, etc.

This would be especially easy if the people involved are not especially familiar with D&D rules. For a real surprise, throw in a Graveyard (not sure if that's the exact name) from the MMII (CR19, so they have to run, which most people would do when confronted with a 40 foot tall walking graveyard.

I'm not so sure I necessarily want to just reskin old undead to be superzombies, but this does bring up the fact that mummies are like zombies, and they've got the whole contagious thing going on, so they might be good to look at for a disease-zombie.

Also, the Graveyard idea is crazy. I'd have to do it on principle.