Walking Dead D20 Style

[Fosco the Swift]

If this has already been done before, please leave a link for the thread. If there are any books out there on this, please leave a list of them. If not, i come to the Playground for help on creating a D20 fantasy world using the Walking Dead as a base. I have a group of very experienced players who want a very realistic game involving a zombie appocolypse. The main trouble is with Bites, becasue getting bit once can mean instant death for a character, and I don't want that. But nor do I want my PC's wading through a herd of zombies and coming out alive. This is a fairly low-magic world. I'm also looking for help on creating a new Zombie monster, as the Monster Manuel/ Beastary would be lacking in the kind of ideas I'm working with. since tis is low magic, Sorcerers, Bards and other spontaneous spellcasters need some work.
The whole idea with magic is that learning it is quite difficult now. Scrolls and spellbooks are now treasured artifacts. This prevents the Wizard from being nigh unstoppable with nonstop ranged atttacks.

[Freddrick]

I am not aware of any games or rules that already exist but here would be my suggestions.

Make an E6 game with the D20 modern base.
You get squishy characters and they keep the realism of people only being so tough.
As for changing the disease to not be super deadly takes away part of the Walking Dead experience. The players have ways to stay out of melee combat and know that entering melee with zombies will have that extra risk. No matter how high a players AC, if they wade into a horde of zombies, there is always a 5% chance per attack the players will get hit.

Also:

Spoiler

Show

Getting bitten isn't instant death. There is always amputation as an option.

Hope this helps.
-Freddrick

[Fosco the Swift]

I guess throw in that zombies don't get AoO and we have a decent startoff. Thanks. Sorry there wasn't much to work off of.

[Debihuman]

You might want to check out Year of the Zombie RPG (D20 Modern).

Debby

[Fosco the Swift]

Thanks for the help, but I personally do not like D20 Modern, expecially class wise. Also for this campaign, I'm going to need completely new classes. Since Spellcasters are going to be removed from the game, fighters and Barbarians would be really the only worthwhile class, so I need completely new ones. Plus D20 Modern's classes are a tad too weak for me, they would be too easily killed. So I basically want classes based off of more of the job the character did before the appocolypse happened. The obvious ones-
Doctor- Anybody who has training in healing and treating diseases
Soldier- Millitary, police, etc
Criminal- Sneaky people, does not include hit men or the tougher people
White Collar- Simple Cubicle jobs, including teachers
Scientist- Anyone with expirence with technology, the smart guys

These are the basic ones I want to use. I will be using the E6 variant so I need only abilities and class powers for levels 1-6. Anybody have some simple ideas for abilities and possibly other classes?

[Fosco the Swift]

Honestly I've never even heard of SpyCraft. Is there a link that I can go to? I don't have the time to find the book.

[Freddrick]

... D20 Modern's classes are a tad too weak for me, they would be too easily killed.

Consider gesalting the modern classes to make them more powerful.

So I basically want classes based off of more of the job the character did before the appocolypse happened. The obvious ones-
Doctor- Anybody who has training in healing and treating diseases
Soldier- Millitary, police, etc
Criminal- Sneaky people, does not include hit men or the tougher people
White Collar- Simple Cubicle jobs, including teachers
Scientist- Anyone with expirence with technology, the smart guys

Doctor - Dedicated/Smart
Soldier - Strong/Tough
Criminal - Fast/Smart or charasmatic
White Color - Tough/Dedicated
Scientist - Smart/Dedicated (Considering Dr are scientists)

Another thought is just give each of them 3 free levels of the basic classes and have them start at level 1 of the corresponding advanced class.

Anybody have some simple ideas for abilities and possibly other classes?

You have white collar workers, why not blue collar? Law enforcement? Drivers?

-Freddrick

[Fosco the Swift]

The main problem is that they will probably be multiclassing outside what their old job/ class is. If you're a smart hero, you won't have all the technology that you used to have, so some of your abilities are worthless. Plus, lots of the advanced classes aren't really applicable anymore for what they are actually going to be doing for survival. It might be easier to work with since I'm going with the E6 variant, but i need things that are less "Modern" than Modern.
So I guess i need to scrap those Modern classes, and just have them go just Apoclyptic classes. They might get some traits or bonuses for what their old lifestyle was, but it seems to be far simpler to go straight to zombies. New ideas, hopefully some good:
Hunter- while having less straight on skill at arms than the Soldier, the Hunter is the best equipt mentally and training wise for survival, even by himself.
Soldier- While not good at stalking animals or healing someone else's wounds, few can compete with a Soldier's accuracy and skill with his chosen weapon.
Healer- Trained with both First Aid and the use of medicine, a Healer soon learns to find items and to improvise to help someone else, possibly even stop their death.
I need the other obvious and needed classes (Rogue, Wizard, Bard mainly). I'll be posting the class abilities for what I have soon, but ideas will be very appreciated.