Zombie Plagues in your Campaign Setting

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've just finished reading "World War Z", and I feel inspired. Let's say a plague of infectous zombies gets loose in your world. For this, use zombies with the following alterations:

- Plague zombies get the Improved Grapple feat and a Bite Attack. They will always try to first grapple and then bite a victim. A victim suffering any damage from the bite of a zombie will automatically contract zombie fever (see below).

- Plague zombies get +5 to Listen and Spot checks. Furthermore, if they spot prey, they will emit a moaning sound which will attract other plague zombies in the surrounding areas (usually within a mile or so, depending on the ambient noise). Unless those other plague zombies have already spotted prey of their own, they will follow this moan and also descend on the prey of the first zombie.

- Zombie fever is a magical disease. It has a Fortitude DC of 15, an incubation time of 3 hours, and a time interval between further Fortitude saves of 3 hours. The damage caused is 1d6 constitution at each failed saving throw. Note that it is impossible to shake of the disease without magical assistance (such as the cure disease spell) - the victim continues to make saving throws against the disease until it reaches 0 Constitution and dies.

Any humanoid, monstrous humanoid, or other living creature which is not an outsider or elemental and which has an intelligence higher than 1 and dies after it was infected by zombie fever - whether the fever was the ultimate cause of death or not - rises as a new plague zombie three hours later. The only way to prevent this is to destroy the brain. Creatures with an intelligence of 1 only die and do not rise as zombies.



So, what would happen in your favorite campaign world if such a plague came into existence? Would the natives be able to mount an effective resistance? Would they fare better or worse than the people of Earth in World War Z (where at least three-quarters of the population died - and probably more)? And would you use such a scenario as the climax in your campaign?

 

[mcrow]

I had been thinking about slapping something like this on Eberron. It seems like the Mournlands would be logical place for the infection to have started.

Cool, idea.

 

[Michael_R_Proteau]

Part of the background for the mini-campaign in a book Shades of Gray from Necromancer Games deals with a plague turning the population into mindless undead (plague ghouls not zombies, but close enough). It's easily dropped into any setting (I know as I wrote it, and tried to keep it as locale neutal as possible for ease of modularity).
-M

 

[Nightfall]

Jurgen,

I've always considered it but I figured I'd unleash in Termana more than Ghelspad.

Mostly because the fact it's more stable and who doesn't love zombie fests in Africa!?

 

[Jolly Giant]

In my homebrew world, those zombies wouldn't get far unless they had some serious turn resistance. In a more low-magic setting a Dawn of the Dead-like campaign could be a lot of fun though!

 

[Ibram]

I ran a brief adventure with a 'zombie plague'. The mindless essence of a necromancer escaped from a mine and infected the mining town. By the time the party arived there were no survivors (the party was hired to find out why shipments had stoped). The essence took the form of a mist, and was only active at night. Most disturbingly, it was able to animate corpses that had been previously animated (only bodily dismemberment could stop it, which required 3 full rounds).

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

I ran an AD&D 2nd Ed. campaign using the historical campaign rules in 1994–1997. Basically instead of the Black Death in the mid-1300s there was the Black Undeath.

A lot of fun was had by all.

 

[phindar]

I wouldn't give them Improved Grapple, even though I'd stick with Grapple/Bite as the main attack form. They are zombies, so they should be a little inefficient at it. The AoO to foil the grapple will give adventurers a little help in not getting dragged down, but its the sort of thing that will quickly be overwhelmed when fighting hordes of zombies. (As will the adventurers themselves.)

The one version of this game I didn't get to run was the high level one. I wanted to see how adventurers dealt with the 400,000:1 odds of Day of the Dead. Still do.

 

[Kurashu]

It'd be an interesting turn on the undeath plauge on the island of Capernaum.

However, unless they managed to actually get into the tree villages of Capernaum or onto the mainland, I doubt it would change anything really.

 

[Nifft]

I- Plague zombies get +5 to Listen and Spot checks. Furthermore, if they spot prey, they will emit a moaning sound which will attract other plague zombies in the surrounding areas (usually within a mile or so, depending on the ambient noise).

A mile-wide moan?! Are insects and birds and weather all dead, too?

-- N