The Zombie Dillema

[BRC]

Zombies are perhaps the most iconic undead monster. A simple type A reanimated corpse that wants to smash your face in an quite possibly eat your delicious brains. Zombies are so iconic that the nitch of "Tough undead monster that wants to smash your face off" hasn't been filled by anything else. Nitches have been filled over and over by a variety of other monsters (the gajillion types of Dragon. The gazillion types of "It's stronger than humans but stupider and uglier, so kill it" monstrous humanoids (not to mention the billion types of _Folk that show up). But WoTC looked at the Zombie and said "It's good, we can leave it like that".

Zombies are also boring.
Maybe it's just because the groups I DM lack Sorcs or Wizards (For blastyness), and tend to be rogue-heavy (No fighters or barbarians packing big swords to kill zombies with), but whenever I use zombies the fights tend to drag on and on and on. Zombies have lots of hit points for their CR. a standard issue human commoner zombie has 16 HP for a CR 1/2 monster (Compare another CR 1/2, the Hobgoblin, with it's 6 HP).

Now, the problem isn't that my groups are unable to beat zombies. It's how long it takes. My party smashes the zombies for round after round until they finally die. The fight drags on and on and on. The last (and first) Time I used zombies with this group they made me promise "No more zombies".
But, as I said, I like Zombies as an idea, you simply can't mess with the classics. But for the reasons stated above I can't really make use of them.
On a general note, have other people encountered the problem of zombies having so much HP that fights get boring? or is it just me. Have people found other monsters or variants that can be Zombies, but not take so long to kill.


On a specific note, I'm running a nautical campaign, next adventure has some undead. Do I use the obligatory Coleridge quote now or save it for a more undead-focused adventure?

[barteem]

Use a few less, but up their damage dealing abilities. Give them weapons. Give them "icy", "Diseased", or "on fire" traits for additional damage and horrific effect.

Use a few more, but half their HP. Make them extremely rotten, dry and husk like, or in your aquatic adventures, water logged.

Make them "fast" zombies. with both traits above and base move 6-7.

Make them noisy zombies who wail and scream adding a fear ability.

Etc...

Essentially, deviate from the rules however you see fit to add some flavor to your zombies and skeles. If in the middle of combat you realize that what you did is too powerful or not powerful enough, fudge it right then and there. Make a note on what needs to change and tweak them out after the game.

[Zom B]

"They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake nor moved their eyes
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To see those dead men rise."

I'm a bit more worried about your players' inability to do 16 damage in a timely manner, even at first level. Also, to quote V: "Unbelievable! Do you not know the importance of having an arcane caster in the party?"

[oxybe]

add variety:

grapple zombies, flaming zombies, zombies that throw their diseased innards, flying zombies, exploding zombies, ect...

it's one thing to be attacked by a bunch of shamblers. it's another to have 4 zombies jump you, drag you down and start emptying their festering bile-filled stomacs onto you.

[Oslecamo]

Like my DM once said:

If zombies weren't so tough, what kind of threat would they be?

So, meh, use zombies of lower CR so there's lots of them but they die easier. Use the libris mortis variants wich increase CR but not toughness in return for nifty abilities (like actualy a bite attack).

For example, diseased hunting biting leaping zombies would be +2,5 CR. They can take normal actions, +30 base speed, bite attack with improved critical that sucks con on crits and delivers a disease plus +2 will and decent spot/listen.

[BRC]

"They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake nor moved their eyes
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To see those dead men rise."

I'm a bit more worried about your players' inability to do 16 damage in a timely manner, even at first level. Also, to quote V: "Unbelievable! Do you not know the importance of having an arcane caster in the party?"

oh my party can do 16 damage, it's just that their main source of said damage is sneak attacks. And it's less "Kill a zombie in a timely manner" and more that, because zombies are only CR 1/2, for a CR appropriate encounter I'm using alot of them, and since the party lacks an Arcane caster, they don't have a good way to do AoE damage, which means lots of low-health mooks are one thing (since they chop through them quickly and feel awesome doing so), but chopping their way through a band of zombies is like wading through molasses.

Ooh, I hand' thought of the Libris Mortis Zombie varients, let's check those out.

Fast Zombies look good, 16 HP for a CR1 monster works better.

[Zeta Kai]

The easiest solution would be to lower their HP significantly. Use something akin to the minion rules for 4E: the zombies each have 1HP, so any hit kills them. Zombies can't be anything BUT minions, so you won't have any dragging combat. The excuse could be that these particular zombies are old & decayed, held together by the flimsiest remnant of necromantic energy. If 1HP is too low for you, then how about 3 or 4 HP? Then the PCs could roll low damage, strike a glancing blow, & the zombie would still be alive, while a stronger hit would be enough to drop them. Thoughts?

[rayne_dragon]

As everyone has been saying, just adding different traits to zombies gives you quite a bit of variety and can add extra zazz to encounters. To deal with the hp issue, you could halve their hp but double the damage, either that or have a larger number of spread out zombie minions with tougher special zombies mixed in.

If you'd rather substitute another kind of undead, I've found my DM using Ghouls as the main undead monster.

[aje8]

The easiest solution would be to lower their HP significantly. Use something akin to the minion rules for 4E: the zombies each have 1HP, so any hit kills them. Zombies can't be anything BUT minions, so you won't have any dragging combat. The excuse could be that these particular zombies are old & decayed, held together by the flimsiest remnant of necromantic energy. If 1HP is too low for you, then how about 3 or 4 HP? Then the PCs could roll low damage, strike a glancing blow, & the zombie would still be alive, while a stronger hit would be enough to drop them. Thoughts?

But then.... wouldn't Zombies be no challenge? The only thing they're actually good at is hp.

Solution: Use Skeletons. They work fine as 'generic necomancer minion' and are stronger offensivley then zombies (so as to remaina threat), but have lower hp.

Regardless, it really sounds like your party just has major trouble with anything sneak attack immune. (Due to what sounds like complete lack of other damage dealers) Maybe get them some crystals of true-death from Magic Item Compendium?

[Sir.Swindle]

You could kill them unmercifully untill one of them makes a booping Cleric!!

Your groups run with no "tank", no caster, and no healer?!? What did they expect to happen.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Why are you using commoner zombies? An ogre zombie, bear zombie, or zombie Rage Drake(MMIII, draconomicon rules) is incredibly deadly.

If the reason you use commoners is for the "inexorable wall of flesh" feel, then your best bet is making an infinite number of them, arriving constantly, with the goal not being killing them, but rather destroying the crystal/lich/6-year-old girl that's animating them.

[Optimystik]

Solution: Use Skeletons. They work fine as 'generic necomancer minion' and are stronger offensivley then zombies (so as to remaina threat), but have lower hp.

Seconded.

You could kill them unmercifully untill one of them makes a booping Cleric!!

Your groups run with no "tank", no caster, and no healer?!? What did they expect to happen.

I agree with this too. If a pile of rogues complain about not being able to kill zombies fast enough, they clearly haven't gotten the message. Move up to ghouls.

If the reason you use commoners is for the "inexorable wall of flesh" feel, then your best bet is making an infinite number of them, arriving constantly, with the goal not being killing them, but rather destroying the crystal/lich/6-year-old girl that's animating them.

...
I think you gave me a campaign idea...

[Oslecamo]

Why are you using commoner zombies? An ogre zombie, bear zombie, or zombie Rage Drake(MMIII, draconomicon rules) is incredibly deadly.

Because the classic zombie is an humie zombie, duh!

If the reason you use commoners is for the "inexorable wall of flesh" feel, then your best bet is making an infinite number of them, arriving constantly, with the goal not being killing them, but rather destroying the crystal/lich/6-year-old girl that's animating them.

I'm guilty of doing something like this once, but still, I think BRC wants humie zombies who go down faster whitout cheating CR.

[BRC]

You could kill them unmercifully untill one of them makes a booping Cleric!!

Your groups run with no "tank", no caster, and no healer?!? What did they expect to happen.

Both groups have had a cleric. Both groups were perfectly capable of handling most of the encounters I threw at them, including non-zombie undead.
As I said, the problem isn't that zombies are too tough for my PC's to beat, it's that they take too long to beat.

I have used Ghouls before, to great (but challenging) effect. I may do so again, but for this particular fight I think skeletons will better serve my purpose. Sure only 2 PC's (The Cleric and the Druid's companion) deal much bludgeoning damage, but what am I gonna do.

I might also use Necropolitans, no pesky DR for my piercing-focused PC's to feel useless against.

Here is the specific fight


The PC's are in a crypt up against an Entomber (Libris Mortis, book of bad latin). Underneath the floor of this crypt there are some buried undead. The Entomber will occasionally, rather than trying to pummel the PC's into the ground, decide to pull one of these guys out of the ground to keep the PC's busy for abit.

Actually, if I make the focus of the encounter killing the Entomber, human commoner zombies may work perfectly well for this fight.

[awa]

See you shouldn't deliberately penalize the party for taking the classes they did like some pepole are suggesting you should do. The problem as your seeing is zombies make bad horde monsters they either have two many hit points to drop easily or their to inaccurate to harm the party. You give the zombies special abbilities but then you lose the zombie horde thing. You might try a mob of dungeon master 2 (i think) its like a swarm but for size medium or larger creatures it gives you the the giant horde of zombies that are dangerous with out taking forever to kill.

[Tavar]

Another option is to allow precision damage against anything with a discernible anatomy(constructs, undead). I mean, why not? It's not like it'd unbalance the encounter.

Also, remember to have zombies take aid another actions. Sure, their grapple isn't that great, but add a +4-+8 on and they'll strike fear into your PC's hearts.

[Cieyrin]

You could use a sneak attack variant that one of the best groups I played with use, in that sneak attack and critical resistant creatures, instead of being outright immune, they only take half sneak dice and 1 less crit mod from attacks. That is, if you normally have 4d6 sneak, you deal 2d6 against undead and constructs and you can't crit with your typical x2 sword (which is reduced to x1 against undead) but you can crit with an axe or a scythe (x2 or x3 against normally-crit immune creatures). Because I mean, seriously, just b/c creatures don't have standard vital points does not mean they should ignore being dismembered, like a critical from an axe would probably indicate.

Them's my 2 criticals. Take as you will.

[BRC]

Okay, I guess either of these things could work.



For the record, both campaigns had good reason not to have a Tank. The first campaign was investigation based, and the PC's had to reguarly move throughout an urban area without attracting attention, and I had banned Hats of Disguise because they would remove so much of the challenge of such a game, so they couldn't exactly have a guy running around in Full Plate.

This campaign is mainly a nautical one, and it started too low for anybody to afford the bouyant armor enhancement, so having somebody who relies on heavy armor for protection faces the rather obvious problem of what happens if/when they fall off the boat.

[Tavar]

This campaign is mainly a nautical one, and it started too low for anybody to afford the bouyant armor enhancement, so having somebody who relies on heavy armor for protection faces the rather obvious problem of what happens if/when they fall off the boat.

Use the armor crystal from Magic Item Compenduim?

[BRC]

Use the armor crystal from Magic Item Compenduim?

We didn't have MIC when we were making these characters. Also, Full-plate wearing knights don't exactly fit the pirate feel we were going for.

[barteem]

Because the classic zombie is an humie zombie, duh!



I'm guilty of doing something like this once, but still, I think BRC wants humie zombies who go down faster whitout cheating CR[sic].

Playing R.A.W is more or less against the spirit of the entire genre.

[Randel]

Not sure if this is what you want, but you could try reflavoring them as something similar but that doesn't just scream 'zombie apocolypse'.

1. Frankenstein Golems - There was a series of HP Lovecraft stories called Reanimator (I never read it) about someone who discovers a green serum that reanimates dead bodies. He brought some back and they were mindless but then he used hypnosis and lobotomies to put them under his control. I think one of the bad guys got decapitated but his assistant revived the head and sewed bat-wings to his head so that he could move and still command his minons.

I think it gives a bit of difference because they would be constructs (due to golem status or whanot) and the number of 'zombies' is limited by the quantity of serum the reanimator has. It becomes less "A big plague is spreading across the land." and more "A mad scientist plans to rule the world by having his reanimated minions collect bodies to his lair". Expect a few semi-sentient 'zombies' to speak up and show that they are not all mindless drones... but they can still be evil people with a vision.


2. Bagmen - Zombies with masks. There was a new season doctor who episode 'The Empty Child' and 'The Doctor Dances' where healing nanobots got loose in England (not sure if it was set in WWI or WWII) but they first came across a half-dead shild wearing a gas mask and they thought that that was the template for all humans. The nanites then began spreading around turning people into Gas Mask Zombies who all have the mind of the child driven in them, forcing them to wander around 'looking for their mommy'. The goal was to find out what happened, find the child, and then find his mother to let the nanites properly find out how humans work so they can return everyone to normal.


3. Silent Hill monsters - They show up out of nowhere, they look like anything, they might be undead or they might be weird physical manifestations of some psychos mental problems made real by a monster from beyond.

Whatever the case, these things look like twisted mockeries of humans and you just know that getting caught by them is not a good thing (at the very least they will kill you, they might make you just like them but frankly the way they show up out of nowhere they might nott even need recruits). Your job is to escape and or shut down whatever is causing this.


4. Minions of the Music Meister - A high-level bard just turned a whole ton of people into fanatic worshipers via INSANE performance checks. They may be regular commoners, orcs, goblins, dragons, wizards, random animals... if it has a brain and the ability to appreciate music then its playing for Team SuperBard now. The players have to make it past the small fry and interupt his big concert before he turns the entire world into his own musical number!

[jiriku]

I allow critical hits and sneak attacks against all creature types. The players are happier, rogues and swashbucklers suck less, and it's still just as easy to rack up kills on the PCs.

[Zom B]

their main source of said damage is sneak attacks.

And it's your responsibility to compensate for thissss...why?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Have you considered putting together a mob of zombies? That is use the mob template from DMG 2. It doesn't really help much with the number of HP the party has to chip away at, but it could make the encounter more interesting.

You'd get a "creature" with something like 198HP, but it would be a nightmare of a grappler and could do real harm, real quick since all it has to do is overrun the PC's.

[Lappy9000]

Hey BRC, were you using zombies as part of an encounter, or as the whole encounter? Zombies aren't the best thing on their own, but can be used pretty well as (literal) meat shields while other, more interesting combatants bounce around the battlefield.

[Alejandro]

In my group, I play the character that uses sneak attack (I am a rogue swashbuckler duelist.) I am a lot less effective against undead, golems, etc, because I can't sneak attack them. So, when those kinds of enemies come up, guess what I do?

I have the warmage or the cleric take them out. That's what a balanced, teamworking party is for. Sounds like your group hasn't grasped that yet.

[Zom B]

I have the warmage or the cleric take them out. That's what a balanced, teamworking party is for. Sounds like your group hasn't grasped that yet.

This. This is what I alluded to in my above post. The players are all insisting on playing sneak attackers and this DM is feeling...guilty? beholden? to assist them.

[Exterminatus]

A DMPC Fighter that has Great Cleave and Power Attack along with an Holy Weapon?

[Zom B]

I remember a character of mine with Great Cleave. Basically a whole room of skeletons that I could one-shot, and they all had ready actions to step into melee if their compatriot died. In short, something like 36 skeletons went down in one round by melee'ing with me.