Fixing the Zombie

[Shatteredtower]

Last week's Game Day featured encounters against graspiing zombies, using the statistics listed in MV...with one exception. Where before the zombie grasp simply grabbed a target, it also did a flat 10 damage to the target in this adventure.

I agree that this change was necessary in order to make the zombies remotely effective as threats. (It was too easy to break their grasp or kill them before they'd get in any sort of damage if they used this ability.) My main question is: Was this the right change?

Is it too weak? Too strong? Is the fixed amount of damage boring by virtue of being too predictable, or does it make the zombies easier to run?

I'm satisfied with the change, but other views would be appreciated.

[Sipex]

What level are the grasping zombies?

I find predictable damage isn't a bad thing, especially if it's predictable and threatening. It simply saves you a roll and keeps the players on their toes.

[Shatteredtower]

Level one in this case, and it was nice to have players respond to the grab with an, "Ouch!" instead of easily escaping with the assistance of a push, pull, teleport, or just massive damage before the zombie's next turn came.

[INDYSTAR188]

I'm a huge fan of this because its better for the fight (makes zombies an actual challenge) and it makes sense for what a zombie actually is. I also want to find rules for a zombie swarm.

[Shatteredtower]

Open Grave offers the zombie throng on page 198, and discusses options for handling hordes of zombies as a skill challenge. where failure could result in a combat encounter (possibly followed by another attempt at the challenge, possibly cycling back between encounter and challenge until the party either succeeds or you think they've had enough.)

Alternatively, you could also run a similar combat challenge with combat as interludes, where failed rolls might increase the difficulty of the encounters just a little bit. (One more monster of the encounter level might be enough, but flavour to taste.)

[Badgerish]

You could change it so the conditional attack works on any target that is grabbed by anyone, or immobilized in general (as opposed to just the target grabbed by the zombie doing the attack)

This keeps the flavour, keeps a single zombie as a joke (a single, unarmed, normal-sized zombie should be a walk over) but makes groups of zombies more threatening