Walking Dead in D&D?

[Kafana]

So, I've started watching AMC's The Walking Dead and I wanted to see if anybody was able to pull off an adventure or campaign centered around the idea of infectious zombies. The main problem as I see it is magic, and as far as I can see D&D isn't a system designed for such "horror" scenarios, as anybody with flight is pretty much immune to this hazard. However, perhaps a campaign with tier 5 and 6 characters might be interesting.

So, any stories?

[malonkey1]

Well, the thought here is that it would actually be easier to simulate the walker infestation with a Wightpocalypse (create a wight, set it loose on a large native population to make more wights, who all go off to make more wights, etc.), because then it spreads, whereas a Zombie bite won't, in RAW, spread zombie-ism.

[satcharna]

Wights otherwise act nothing like the Walking Dead zombies. It would probably be better to just houserule in a bite attack for the zombies, with some form of rapid acting disease. Also note that in Walking Dead, you don't need to be bitten by a zombie to rise. Every dead body everywhere automatically reanimates. Zombie bites are merely disease filled and a rapid way to die from infection.

[dascarletm]

If you look at pathfinder, they have two variant rules for zombies that would turn the Zeds into more Walking-dead-like Walkers. They are called Fast and Plauge zombie.

I did a Zpocalypse campaign, but I used d20 modern instead of DnD. Since most settings take place in the present for this theme I thought it would suit the campaign more.

[Brookshw]

Check out Strahd Zombies (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft). They can infect people with zombie, closest analogy I've seen in D&D for that classic zombie feel.

[Gildedragon]

Ghouls also spread ghoulism via bites.
Also you can model zombie plague via the lycanthropy disease
Though zombies with a poisonous or infectious bite and certain rising for ill-disposed bodies may be neater:
The bite may kill you, death will make you walk.

Make burial require a specific ritual (see: incantation mechanics) that also involves cremation or dismemberment or something. Failed rituals might produce other undead (crawling hands, deathsheads, ash zombies, those flappy flayed skin things) each with different diseases

[Flickerdart]

You probably want to borrow some bits from ghouls - the ghoul's Ghoul Fever is a serviceable disease that can kill an average human being in 4 days, and being grabbed by it causes people to be paralyzed with fear (though you should probably bump this down to Shaken if using mobs of these).

I would also remove the HP doubling and DR that zombies have. Walkers are extremely fragile (several moments have them being pulled apart by regular people) and die from a wrench or screwdriver to the head.

Given that walkers seem to want to grab on rather than stand and punch stuff, you may want to plug in a Blood Drain ability like vampires have. Perhaps also give them Improved Grab on their claws.

So a walker designed to be an apparent, preventable, but significant threat might look something like this:

Walker Zombie
Medium Undead
HP 6 (1d12 HD)
Initiative -1
Speed: 30ft (can't run)
AC 11 (-1 Dex, +2 natural), touch 9, flat-footed 11
BAB/Grapple: +0/+5
Attack: Slam+1 melee (1d6+1)
Space/reach: 5 ft./5 ft
Abilities: Str 12, Dex 8, Con Ø, Int Ø, Wis 10, Cha 1
SA: Walker grab, walker bite, walker fear
SQ: Single action only, undead traits, scent
Saves: Fort +0, Ref -1, Will +3
Feats: Improved Grappleb
Challenge Rating: 1/2

Combat
Walkers advance upon their foes, grabbing them and attempting to feed. They use their slam attack to clear away obstructions.

Walker fear (Su): Creatures in combat with walkers feel unnatural dread. Enemies that start their turn adjacent to a walker are subjected to a demoralize effect (DC10 +1 per walker involved in the encounter).
Walker grab (Ex): Walkers have a +2 racial bonus on touch attack rolls to initiate a grapple.
Walker bite (Ex): When a walker wins an opposed grapple check to deal damage, it bites with its rotting teeth. Instead of unarmed damage, it deals 1d4 points of Constitution damage and infects the victim with walker fever.

Disease: Walker Fever
Infection: Injury
DC: 16
Incubation: 8 hours
Damage: 1d4 Con, 1d4 Wis
Special: Walker fever may be avoided with a timely amputation. When a creature becomes infected through a walker's bite, roll 1d10 to see where the creature was bitten (1-2: upper arm, 3-4: lower arm, 5-6: upper leg, 7-8: lower leg, 9: torso, 10: neck). A creature bitten on a limb can be saved from walker fever if that limb is amputated above the bite within 1 hour.


Such a zombie would be threatening - not because of your description of how spooky it is, but because getting grabbed by it is seriously bad news. They give players ample time to rescue any victims before they are bitten, so there's plenty of time between "oh crap he's right up in my face someone help" and "oh he bit me, I guess I go make a new character" in which your players really get to sweat.

[DeltaEmil]

If wights are too deadly for your playstyle (Energy Drain, high intelligence, and ability to run/charge making them extremely brutal in great numbers), and you would like to focus more on the disease-spreading zombie who shambles forward, you could use Strahd zombies found in the adventure module Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. They're zombies with 42 hp (!), can move up to their speed and still make an attack on their turn, so that the group can still outrun them, and have that zombie resilience that 4e zombies have. And of course a bite attack that transmits a disease that can turn the infected into a zombie.

[Threadnaught]

Step 1: E6.
Step 2: Ghoul.
Step 3: Limit supplies.

If you don't want to play E6, then What you want would be difficult, but still not impossible. Though a Zombie infestation is primarily a threat at low levels.

[Extra Anchovies]

Two things:
1. What is E6? Everyone keeps mentioning it, but I haven't been able to find out what it is.

2. I highly, highly second Flickerdart's suggested stat block, both the fear/disease aspects and the 1 HD. Especially the 1 HD, in fact. I tried running a one-off zombie apocalypse-style adventure using standard Monster Manual zombies, and those things have 16 hp. The players were ripped to shreds by the third encounter.

[malonkey1]

Two things:
1. What is E6? Everyone keeps mentioning it, but I haven't been able to find out what it is.

2. I highly, highly second Flickerdart's suggested stat block, both the fear/disease aspects and the 1 HD. Especially the 1 HD, in fact. I tried running a one-off zombie apocalypse-style adventure using standard Monster Manual zombies, and those things have 16 hp. The players were ripped to shreds by the third encounter.

E6 is a variant ruleset in which the maximum level is 6th, and further progression beyond that comes from earning feats with XP. It's designed to give a somewhat more "realistic" feel to the game. I say, if you want realism, play another game, but my opinion isn't really relevant to how others play.

[Kid Jake]

It's been awhile since I've read it, but I seem to remember that Oakspar (http://home.nerbonne.org/dnd/oaksparthread-H.xhtml) put together a pretty interesting zombie apocalypse.

[Arbane]

Also note that in Walking Dead, you don't need to be bitten by a zombie to rise. Every dead body everywhere automatically reanimates.

Silverclawshift was in an excellent campaign that used that as a premise. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?116836-The-SilverClawShift-Campaign-Archives) Probably not much like Walking Dead, though you'll have trouble replicating that in D&D unless you keep things REALLY low-level, as D&D characters have way too much capability compared to 'normal' people. Plus, there's the obvious question: why haven't the gods/paladins/some 20-th level wizard sorted this out yet?

There's a semi-universal RPG system with a zombie theme: All Flesh Must Be Eaten (http://www.allflesh.com/flesh.html)

[Inevitability]

Atropus (basically a giant undead moon) has an ability that can cause everything that dies to reanimate at an increasing rate of success. Although he's an elder evil, so there should be less complex ways to make a zombie apocalypse happen.

[gorfnab]

Two things:
1. What is E6? Everyone keeps mentioning it, but I haven't been able to find out what it is.

Here is a link to the E6 Rules (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?352719-necro-goodness-E6-The-Game-Inside-D-amp-D)
Here is a link to an E6 Handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=6605.0)

[Kaeso]

Just a suggestion, but why do we need to have zombies that spread zombiesm through a bite attack? That's loyal to what a lot of movies and series portray, but with DnD we could make it a bit more interesting. What if there are just necromancers behind it, dedicated to some sort of deity that hates all life? They could let loose some zombies on a small town (from a local graveyard maybe), turn the corpses into zombies, let this larger group of zombies loose on a slightly larger city, get even more zombies etc. etc.

It wouldn't be so much a mindless horde as much as an army, directed by cunning and intentional necromancers.

[supermonkeyjoe]

The Eberron book City of Stormreach has the spell Animate Infectious Zombie, anyone the zombie hits has a chance to contract Zombie Plague;



Zombie Plague: The disease carried by an infectious zombie has an incubation period of 24 hours. After that time, a victim who failed its Fortitude save loses 1d6 points of Constitution. An additional save must be attempted every day thereafter until the victim either succeeds, negating the plague, or dies, rising as an infectious zombie.

I crunched the numbers on a city of mostly low level NPCs and if it's not contained quickly it soon reaches unmanageable levels.

[thornedorhar]

I ran a successful zombie apocalyptic game the infection either walkered you or you mutate think xman or heros where you have genetic based abilities that a magic in apperance goes further but that was the basics

[BilltheCynic]

A typical 'bite disease zombie apocalypse' really would not work in the DnD universe. Some problems I can think of off the top of my head:
*A Paladin becomes immune to disease at 3rd level and cures them 6th level
*Clerics can turn undead and cast Hide from Undead at 1st level
*Clerics and Druids can remove disease at 5th level
*Anyone with flight
*A Necropolitan and a warforged (especially one with Adamantine Body) are flat out immune to disease and can laugh off most of the zombies' worst effects
*Monks becomes immune to disease at 5th level

And that's just for PCs. How would an army of biters, no matter how many, pose any threat to a single iron golem? There are some many monsters that would absolutely ruin any biter Zombie apocalypse. That's not to say you can't have an undead apocalypse (see the SilverClawShift campaign linked above) but a straight up biter zombie apocalpse would fail pretty quickly. You could probably get away with an isolated village falling to some biter zombies, but the DnD world as a whole just isn't well suited for it.

[Clistenes]

Ghouls also spread ghoulism via bites.
Also you can model zombie plague via the lycanthropy disease
Though zombies with a poisonous or infectious bite and certain rising for ill-disposed bodies may be neater:
The bite may kill you, death will make you walk.

Make burial require a specific ritual (see: incantation mechanics) that also involves cremation or dismemberment or something. Failed rituals might produce other undead (crawling hands, deathsheads, ash zombies, those flappy flayed skin things) each with different diseases

I think Ghouls are the closest to the original movie's, barring some templates that make zombies infectious. Also, in the original movie Night of the Walking Dead the walking dead were called "Ghouls".


A typical 'bite disease zombie apocalypse' really would not work in the DnD universe. Some problems I can think of off the top of my head:
*A Paladin becomes immune to disease at 3rd level and cures them 6th level
*Clerics can turn undead and cast Hide from Undead at 1st level
*Clerics and Druids can remove disease at 5th level
*Anyone with flight
*A Necropolitan and a warforged (especially one with Adamantine Body) are flat out immune to disease and can laugh off most of the zombies' worst effects
*Monks becomes immune to disease at 5th level

And that's just for PCs. How would an army of biters, no matter how many, pose any threat to a single iron golem? There are some many monsters that would absolutely ruin any biter Zombie apocalypse. That's not to say you can't have an undead apocalypse (see the SilverClawShift campaign linked above) but a straight up biter zombie apocalpse would fail pretty quickly. You could probably get away with an isolated village falling to some biter zombies, but the DnD world as a whole just isn't well suited for it.

I dunno. In many settings characters with PC class levels are very rare. The zombies could overrun half the continent before the characters with PC class levels stopped them.

[Clistenes]

Sorry, double post

[BilltheCynic]

I think Ghouls are the closest to the original movie's, barring some templates that make zombies infectious. Also, in the original movie Night of the Walking Dead the walking dead were called "Ghouls".



I dunno. In many settings characters with PC class levels are very rare. The zombies could overrun half the continent before the characters with PC class levels stopped them.

The list was primarily to show just how easily the PCs could become completely immune to the zombie disease and any threat they pose. However, my point still stands that there is no way biter zombies could overwhelm half the continent. As I said in my first post, a single decently leveled caster could create a golem, which could fight the zombies forever while being completely immune to their disease and their pitiful damage thanks to DR. Barring that, a temple or church woupd have naturally have clerics, who even at level 1 can lay a serious hurt on undead, which would make it difficult for the zombies to build any significant numbers in the first place. Also keep in mind that there are enough monsters who can lay a serious hurt on the zombies with no possible way for the zombies to fight back that a pure biter zombie plague could only possibly hope to overthrow an isolated village.

Once again, this is not to say that an undead apocalypse couldn't happen, it would just need to have more advanced undead than mere zombies.

[Brova]

Search for "Triumph of the Necromancers" here (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=33294).

[elonin]

You don't need necessarily to use E6 for a walking dead type of game. All you need to do is have a low magic setting or make magic not particularly effective at dealing with zombies or curing the affliction. Also, everyone turns when they die.

[Halarond]

So I've actually been playing around with this idea for some time now. I have recently started to create my own d20 style game from scratch. My game really is an homage to AMC's The Walking Dead. It also differs from "regular" d20 style gaming because I have scrapped levels and classes altogether, although the character at character generation stage can pick "skills" in a similar way to the latter editions of D&D. I've basically re-written most of the rules surrounding the mechanics of the game, but it plays very much like D&D. I have had a few sessions now and the players love it (I have set the game right at the start, just as s**t goes down, right in the heart of New York City - one of the players plays a student nurse caught up in the mayhem in a NY Hospital and has to get to safety).

If anyone would like to see what I've written up so far then give me a shout.