[3.5] Zombie Apocalypse

[Drakevarg]

As I have mumbled in numerous other pages, one of the major themes of the campaign I'm designing is a zombie apocalypse. My current strategy is to simply use zombies with a modified version of Ghoul Fever tacked on, but I just thought it'd be a good idea to ask if there were any better methods of doing the same thing.

The campaign is starting at first level, though I might let them get as high as 3rd before letting out the horde.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

3.5 has very poor mechanics for an apocalypse feel. Masses of mooks are nigh-useless, magic makes things like limited food and water obsolete, disease isn't a worry, damage doesn't accumulate over time, running away is very binary and PCs are expected to be able to face anything that has stats. Pull out Gurps or AFMBE with the fantasy sourcebook, they do it much better.

[Drakevarg]

This is a low-magic campaign, throwing many of the shortcomings out the window.

Not to mention, running has constitution saves. Zombies don't hav constitution.

And I might just toss the "Create Food and Water" spell out because it's stupid and game-breaking.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

This is a low-magic campaign, throwing many of the shortcomings out the window.

Not to mention, running has constitution saves. Zombies don't hav constitution.

And I might just toss the "Create Food and Water" spell out because it's stupid and game-breaking.

Zombies move 30' a round. A Halfling Fighter in heavy armor(the slowest PC that I could conceivably see) runs twice that. And since zombies don't have Survival, the PCs basically only need to turn a corner to escape. Even if it's low magic, are the players? A single caster basically makes all of what I said valid, except now the enemies can't counter it. And if you want low magic, why are you looking at D&D, a very high-magic system with only 3 classes core that don't have magic?

[Jergmo]

Maximized Empowered Fell Animate Plague (Slimy Doom), enhanced by Metamagic Spell Focus (Necromancy). Spreads by contact, will likely affect your average joe commoner quite quickly, spread quickly enough not to be able to be caught by clerics, 6 Constitution damage initially, and for secondary damages. Upon death, they rise as a zombie.

[Drakevarg]

My campaign doesn't have Sorcerers, Bards, or Monks, as classes, and no Gnomes, Halflings, or Dwarves as races.

And if it was too difficult to, say, just make running zombies, I could just make all the zombies a mindless varient of first-level ghouls. That would even enable me to create stronger undead as the campaign progressed.

EDIT: Ninja'd. Core plus Libris Mortis is all I got, Jergmo.

[Jergmo]

My campaign doesn't have Sorcerers, Bards, or Monks, as classes, and no Gnomes, Halflings, or Dwarves as races.

And if it was too difficult to, say, just make running zombies, I could just make all the zombies a mindless varient of first-level ghouls. That would even enable me to create stronger undead as the campaign progressed.

EDIT: Ninja'd. Core plus Libris Mortis is all I got, Jergmo.

Ahh. If you want to look into 'em, Metamagic Spell Focus is from Complete Mage. It allows you to lower the cost of applying a metamagic spell effect to a spell by 1 3 times per day. Plague is from Secret College of Necromancy - it's pretty much just an AoE Contagion, 5th level. Affects everything in a 180 ft. radius.

Edit: In case you didn't know about the undead variant stuff, check out pg. 174 or thereabouts in Libris Mortis. That's where the variant zombies are.

[Drakevarg]

The method of bringing about this apocalypse is irrelevent. I'm more worried about the build for the undead so that they'll be a viable threat.

[deuxhero]

Prehaps make the zombies a mob?

That said, level 1? Remember that that is the level you have a better than even chance of loseing to a housecat.

[Fiat Lux]

I ran a game with a similar feel last year; on a large scale, zombies are zero threat to your average party of fifth-level characters (which is where I started them): they're slow, they have terrible attack bonus and AC, etc.

To counteract this, I applied the Fast Zombie template -- it gives them a slight bonus to AC, but more importantly it makes them viable harriers, as they're moving 50-60ft. with a single move action and can still attack normally. The look on my players' faces was priceless when they came across the first of these -- returning to town from a long stint in the wilderness, the first person they see is standing in the middle of the dirt round, staring aimlessly off into space until he noticed them -- and then covered the sixty feet between them in a few seconds, bloodied and obviously dead, to go straight for the archivist's throat with his bare hands.

That neatly solves the mobility issue, making them a pressing threat the players can't just stroll blithely away from -- but they're still just zombies, and individually your melee fighters can just mow through them like a scythe through wheat, especially if they've invested in Cleave or, God forbid, Great Cleave.

But classically, the individual zombie isn't much of a threat, especially to characters who are prepared and in the know. It's the zombies en masse that are a serious danger...so to reflect this, I represented masses of zombies with the Mob template from DMG II, which gives them (as a collective) massive bonuses to grapple, more hit points and a bludgeoning attack similar to that of a swarm (i.e., doesn't require an attack roll, so even the stratospheric ACs your PCs attain won't render them invulnerable). If you don't have access to DMG II, I'd still recommend homebrewing something like this -- it maintains large masses of zombies as a viable threat well past the point where individual zombies cease to be.

EDIT: wow, ninja'd with alacrity.

[Drakevarg]

Well given that the first bunch of zombies I intend for the group to encounter is a force 10,000 strong, I don't thing I'll have much of a problem creating en masse zombies.

Indeed, I predict that this plague could well cover the game map over the course of a few months, especially with the White Hand (a necromantic organization that started up the plague in a major trade town) herding them from population center to population center by rebuking some of them in that direction and letting the rest follow.

[awa]

their was a template and disease in a dragon mag the template gave the zombies improved grab and a bite attack among other things and the disease was really hard to get rid of really infectious and would slowly eat a way at the victim for potentially a very long time.

I also second the suggestion to use mobs, undead (particularly the simple straight forward undead like zombies) make lousy mooks becuase they have good defense and lousy hit points in proportion to their ability to deal damage. so by the time a pc can drop a zombie in a single hit reliably the zombie cant hit him with out a 20. Mobs allow you to have vast hordes of undead that dont bog down game play

[Shalist]

http://www.thezombiehunters.com/zombies.php

Link goes to an 'encyclopedia' page that does a wonderful job of describing the setting's various flavors of undead--definitely a must read for anyone looking to spice up their zombie game. (The webcomic itself is pretty awesome too :P )


(excerpt)

HUNTER

"You can run from me,
You can hide from me,
You can cross the ocean, climb the highest mountain, or even fly from me.
But I will always find you, before you will ever find me.
I give you my word."

[PhoenixRivers]

I recommend doing this in a low magic setting, first. Disallow any form of flight, and food/water creation.

Second? Make zombies dangerous. Give em grapple bonuses, and make them transmit a disease that kills and animates.

Further, put it up there with mummy rot. No fighting it off without magic. Make only the most powerful healers able to remove it, and make immunity to disease ineffective against it. Provide significant mental damage with the disease, and when you hit 0? You die and become one.

Make em fast, make em strong, but keep em dumb. The idea is that people die when they make mistakes. Even small ones. One guy makes a mistake? 20 people get turned into zombies.

[Ravens_cry]

The Pathfinder Bestiary has rules for Apocalypse type zombies.
I know it sounds silly, but fast zombies always destroyed my suspension of disbelief. You're a rotting corpse. The fact your moving at all is astonishing enough. The idea of you moving faster then a shamble just strikes as wrong. Silly, I know.

[PhoenixRivers]

The Pathfinder Bestiary has rules for Apocalypse type zombies.
I know it sounds silly, but fast zombies always destroyed my suspension of disbelief. You're a rotting corpse. The fact your moving at all is astonishing enough. The idea of you moving faster then a shamble just strikes as wrong. Silly, I know.

Fast zombies don't represent undead. They represent a form brought to a below feral level of primitive.

Think 28 Days Later.

They're not dead, they're altered. Max Brooks has a Zombie survival guide that's useful.

[Melamoto]

I recommend making it E6 to get the darker, grittier feel of a zombie apocalypse. Otherwise it all goes to hell when the players hit level 10-13 and no number of regular zombies can challenge them, so you have to create new, more powerful zombies that should have wiped out the survivors already anyway.

[ghashxx]

Humph, stupid zombies and other mindless things being unaffected by my Nightmare spinner. But that just means I do things other than phantasm weaved illusions, like enlarge person and grease!

[Kelb_Panthera]

Libris Mortis has some good stuff that's easy to overlook for this sort of thing. Page 173 has some variant zombies that can make things more interesting, and page 12 has the "undead density" rule in a sidebar. Grab the mob template from DMG2 and you effectively neuter the turn undead ability pretty effectively, and that's one of the biggest hurdles to the traditional "Zombie Apocalypse" scenario. The advanced undead template can be very interesting with zombies. If you don't mind fudging the rules just a little, you could add extra HD to zombies for certain encounters. Once the players reach mid-level Zombie Apocalypse is only really challenging if you can find ways to force the PC's into actually facing the zombies, because escape gets ridiculously easy, this is most easily and smoothly accomplished by plot hook ie: there's too many people to herd away from the zombies to effectively use teleportation or buffing for all of them. Getting things below ground or indoors somehow can make flight a non-option or at least a problematic option one. Teleportation is harder to get around without simply disallowing it. Liberal use of semi-hidden macguffins can help. If the PC's have to find it then they can't just teleport in grab it and go. This can be taken further by having the PC's looking for something when they don't know exactly what it is they're looking for. You should only rarely use few enough zombies or zombie mobs that the PC's can win handily, it's supposed to be an apocalypse scenario after all. If I was to do it, I'd probably put at least 65% of encounters at EL = party level +2, 20% at +3 10% at +1 or less, and 5% at +4 or more.

[Vizzerdrix]

My and no Gnomes, Halflings, or Dwarves as races.

Racist. I bet elves are still in. Eeeew, elves

[Oooohaloophole]

Plus what is the ending? What will the pcs achieve? Will they all die? is that the end of the whole story? Do they Destroy the Necromancers and destroy the Zombies? Plus Zombies will only last for roughly a year after which they will rot down to skellotens. And Skellotens are not as frightning. But if they do not rot you can have em dance. "Oh no the entire world is now a Michel Jackson Music Video!".

Do they have to destroy the special undead? Or do they escape to a safe continent or to the Choppah?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Plus what is the ending? What will the pcs achieve? Will they all die? is that the end of the whole story? Do they Destroy the Necromancers and destroy the Zombies? Plus Zombies will only last for roughly a year after which they will rot down to skellotens. And Skellotens are not as frightning. But if they do not rot you can have em dance. "Oh no the entire world is now a Michel Jackson Music Video!".

Do they have to destroy the special undead? Or do they escape to a safe continent or to the Choppah?

Coming up with a positive ending is a good idea, it shouldn't be an easy thing to reach by any means, but it should be at least possible for the pc's to save the day. But where in the world did you get this zombies devolve into skeletons bunk? The rotting flesh of a zombie is held to the zombie by raw negative energy that also, magically keeps it from rotting completely. It's ever-rotting flesh.

[Ravens_cry]

Fast zombies don't represent undead. They represent a form brought to a below feral level of primitive.

Think 28 Days Later.

They're not dead, they're altered. Max Brooks has a Zombie survival guide that's useful.

Then that gets into the moral issue. They were altered, can they be altered back? Should we be doing more then simply destroying them?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Then that gets into the moral issue. They were altered, can they be altered back? Should we be doing more then simply destroying them?

which could be fun, but then you're not really fighting "zombies" anymore. You're fighting "the infected" The enemy being not-undead could make things much easier or much harder for the party.