Quote Originally Posted by Tevin View Post
Hmm, appreciate the comments but I'm not convinced things are as dire as you believe. The ability is akin to a sound burst spell, only it has to be centered on the Screamer, it deals less damage, has a wider effect radius but has a lower DC and can be used seldomly. Chances are it will only go off once in a fight being on an AC 8 22 HP chassis and requiring a recharge roll. It is very much meant to keep characters away but I don't think that encouraging a tactic for an encounter type necessarily means it isn't worthwhile to play melee in the campaign. This is in a modern campaign as well, so one can be expecting there to be high base damage firearms available to them even if you're primarily a melee character.

What CR would you give it in its current state?
Sound burst isn't a spell in 5e.

I think you're underestimating the durability of zombies--that undead fortitude means that they've got a decent chance to last longer than their other stats would suggest. Basically, unless this one gets sniped priority, it's likely to get off at least 2 shrieks. Which means there's a 70% chance that at least one person's going to spend 1 or 2 rounds stunned, which drastically increases the encounter difficulty (without really changing the monster's CR, due to how it's calculated).

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By the books, it does an additional (averaged) 0.833 DPR [(2d6[0] - 1d6 - 1)/3] compared to a regular zombie, with the rest being equal. I'm away from my data right now, but I doubt that that would push it over any boundaries. So not counting the stun effect, no change.

Throw in an ad-hoc +1-step CR for the stun effect (effectively being the same as granting advantage to all allies on half the party[1] plus a 50% damage reduction for one round), and you've got a CR 1/2 creature. But then I'd have to play-test and see how it really felt. Might be worth a +2.

But as I said, it's not something you can really apply the standard CR calculations to and hope to get a decent result that really tells you much about how it will handle in a group. Because CR doesn't take into account that kind of group synergy. Alone, the thing gets smashed into oblivion by a level 1 party, no issues. With 3-4 other zombies and you could very well lose a person in a level 2 or 3 party. Get lucky on recharges or on placement (ie if it doesn't make itself noticeable until it's right near a cluster of PCs) or on saves and you could have a TPK.

[0] assuming it goes off once and hits two people, who both fail their save.
[1] by the assumptions of the book, 2 people get hit and fail. That means there's at least one round where half the party is out of commission and can be smashed by the rest and can't deal damage.