D&D 5E Zombies: Sink or Swim?

[Mind of tempest]

There's fun things like the zombie clot from Van Richten's and of course greater zombies. I may have thrown in some custom zombie boomers boomers now and then, of course things like giant zombies are a good stand-in for tanks.

Hmm, Halloween episode may have to come a bit early this year.

if you need ideas I can get you a lot of videos for ideas, I would suggest listening rather than looking as zombies are ugly.

 

[James Gasik]

give the sear list of options how come necromancers do not just rule all dnd worlds? they have undead for all possible options it would seem.

Nobody knows. I mean, in 3e, someone posited the inevitable "wightpocalypse". Take an undead which can create more of it's own kind- wights, shadows, ghouls, what have you, set it loose up on a village.

Soon there's an entire village of these things. Have them knock over another village, and another. Eventually, there's an army of these critters, and each person they kill, adds to their number. Even high level characters will have a problem dealing with a vast horde of such creatures!

 

[Mind of tempest]

Nobody knows. I mean, in 3e, someone posited the inevitable "wightpocalypse". Take an undead which can create more of it's own kind- wights, shadows, ghouls, what have you, set it loose up on a village.

Soon there's an entire village of these things. Have them knock over another village, and another. Eventually, there's an army of these critters, and each person they kill, adds to their number. Even high level characters will have a problem dealing with a vast horde of such creatures!

maybe gods do something as honestly it seems turning the world undead would not be hard, I wonder what a world of nothing but undead would even be like?

 

[Voadam]

give the sear list of options how come necromancers do not just rule all dnd worlds? they have undead for all possible options it would seem.

Hmm.

Strahd - Ravenloft

Azalin - Ravenloft

Szass Tam - Forgotten Realms

Sorcerer-King Dregoth - Dark Sun

Karrnath - Eberron (a bit of a stretch, necromancy is the kingdoms power base, not necessarily that the ruler is technically themself a necromancer).

While there are many different sources of power so nobody really rules the world alone in any D&D campaign world, lots of settings have necromancers running a kingdom.

 

[Voadam]

Throw in 28 Days Later, World War Z, Resident Evil, The last of Us, Left 4 Dead and so on. Some zombies are still living creatures controlled by some other force, be that virus or priest. Others are on their way to becoming animated skeletons. Some are weirdly in-between depending on type.

I've toyed around with doing a zombie themed campaign or side-arc but if did there would definitely be different types. So it just depends, the types of zombie are quite varied.

There are tons of variant zombies in most every edition of D&D I have found and many variant concepts are fairly easy to implement in different editions.

 

[Mad_Jack]

In my worlds, zombies can theoretically swim short distances if they had to, particularly if that was a skill they had in life. Although, if there's enough of them, they could walk along the bottom of the water and then climb up one another like a swarm of ants to reach a ship as well.
Personally, I'm of the school that corporeal undead can generally do whatever inconveniences the party (and/or creeps them out) the most, lol.

 

[Rabulias]

How else do they climb aboard the ship carrying the PCs?

 

[Lanefan]

In my worlds, zombies can theoretically swim short distances if they had to, particularly if that was a skill they had in life. Although, if there's enough of them, they could walk along the bottom of the water and then climb up one another like a swarm of ants to reach a ship as well.
Personally, I'm of the school that corporeal undead can generally do whatever inconveniences the party (and/or creeps them out) the most, lol.

That's ghouls.

Zombies ain't nowhere near that smart or co-ordinated.

 

[Voadam]

View attachment 2701482e Sea Zombie
On land sea zombies moved at a very slow, clumsy and shambling gait, but in water they were very fast swimmers. They could also sink and walk unimpeded by the water.

The Tome of Horrors 5e has a Brine Zombie which is basically a 5HD, 20' land, 30' swim zombie. The AD&D Sea Zombie was basically a 5 HD, 6" land, 12" swim zombie. The flavor text is also fairly similar to the Sea Zombie.

"This creature appears as a rotting humanoid dressed in tattered and ragged clothing. Its semi-bloated body glistens from the slimy mixture of water and seaweed that hangs from its form. The creature’s rotting flesh is blue-green in color. No semblance of life burns in its eyes.
Brine zombies are the remnants of a ship’s crew that has perished at sea. They are mindless creatures, not very pleasant to look at, and relentless in their attacks on the living. The spark of evil that brought them back from the ocean depths drives them to seek the living so they may join them in their watery graves. Brine zombies appear much as they did in life."

From 1e/2e Greyhawk Adventures "Drowned ones (also known as sea zombies) are the animated corpses of humans who died at sea. Although similar to land-dwelling zombies, they are free-willed, and are rumored to be animated by the will of the god Nerull the Reaper."

The Sea Zombie was in 1e and 2e. Tome of Horrors put the Brine Zombie into 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder 1e, Swords & Wizardry (0e retroclone), and 5e.

 

[aco175]

They build a raft.. out of other zombies!

Like those ants that create nets that catch birds and such. Or these fire ants making a raft.