D&D 5E adjusting 5E zombies to be like walkers?

[QuietBrowser]

Here's something you want to think about before doing anything: just how lethal do you want your "not!Walkers" to be? The Walking Dead is basically set in a world where zombies might only be doing d6+1 damage with their bite, but even a 20th level character only has 1+Con bonus hit points; it's an entirely different paradigm to the "heroes are tough and powerful" one assumed in D&D.


Secondly, I just want to point out that horror is a subjective thing in its own right, but trying to evoke horror through powerlessness... is a very fine tightrope to walk. Sometimes it can work, but it can easily backfire, making your players be not so much scared as annoyed. You have to remember; characters being in danger aren't the same as the players being in danger, and that disconnection can act as a buffer.


And, truth be told, I don't think you even need powerlessness to make horror work. I'm a big fan of Dead Island and Nazi Zombie Trilogy; in both of those games, you're nowhere near as vulnerable as the survivors are in the Walking Dead, but you still feel the horror in them from both the practical (how many zombies are coming? Got to make each blow count or you'll run out of combat for the next attack!) and the atmospheric attributes used in those games. I'm not scared of the zombies themselves, I'm scared of the situation, of the world I'm in, of the things I'm seeing. In Dead Space 2, once I have my Plasma Cutter, I'm scared because I can hear people around me screaming, fleeing, dying, I can hear myself being stalked, I can find the detritus of what were once people, and even if I can protect myself, I can't do anything to save them.


There's an art to scary zombies, really, and it mostly depends on the world-building rather than the shamblers themselves. Oh, and avoid getting too preachy with them, because that hamfisted symbolism is what ruined Romero's post-Night works.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Hmm,
zombies similar to TWD?

Step 1: make their movement speed 5 feet.
Step 2: reduce their attack bonus to +0
Step 3: rename their slam to 'bite', add mummy rot from the mummy entry to it
Step 4: repeatedly don't place 1/3rd of the zombies that are in an encounter on the board so that your PCs keep going "Ok, I stand here. What do you mean I get attacked by a zombie?" or "Ok, all the zombies are dead, what do you mean I get attacked by a zombie?" to mirror the sheer stupidity of the characters on the show. I mean you still probably need to arbitrarily change their good decisions into bad ones outside of combat, but for combat I think that probably covers it.

 

[wicked cool]

is mummy rot more fitting than the wights ability?

 

[DEFCON 1]

is mummy rot more fitting than the wights ability?

Depends on the story you are trying to tell with the ability.

Mummy Rot is technically a curse, not a disease or drain, so it only ends via a Remove Curse spell. So unless you were to change that aspect of the ability (to a magical disease for example), the story might not work for you-- a zombie walker giving players a curse.

That being said... Mummy Rot does last longer than the wight's Life Drain, so it does have that disease-like aspect to it. Life Drain only occurs when the wight hits, so once the wight is gone, the PC doesn't lose any more of their Max HP. And the lowered Max HP lasts until the PC takes a long rest. So its story is definitely "Every time I get hit I feel my life force get pulled out of me!", but not anything that infests inside of you.

Whereas Mummy Rot keeps draining the PC who gets it every 24 hours of their Max HP. So its story is much more disease-like, wherein there's this incubation period where the rot slowly drains them of their life over the next several days until they finally rot out. And they can't be cured of this until a Cleric or Paladin comes along and casts this powerful magic on them.

Either one can work for what you want... it really just depends on whether you want the drain to occur even after the battle with the walker is over. But even that might not necessarily occur, because of course if you adapt Mummy Rot to a walker ability and make it a disease rather than a curse... it'll disappear if you have a Cleric or Paladin in your group with a simple 2nd level Lesser Restoration spell. If you keep it as a curse, it'll disappear with a Cleric or Paladin casting a 3rd level Remove Curse. So there's no guarantee it'll have any sort of threatening long-term effect anyway. Depends on your PCs.

 

[Fanaelialae]

A lot of how dangerous a disease is will depend on how it's implemented. In TWD, you only have a few minutes before it's too late to treat someone. It does take a while for them to actually turn, so I would say 2d6 rounds (maybe fewer) they are knocked unconscious and then 2d6 hours later they crave flesh. That way you have a moment or two to save them. Because it's D&D I'd let any magical healing cure them before they go unconscious but after that it would take something more powerful like remove disease. Hopefully it's not your paladin that just got bit.

I watch TWD as well, and from what I've gathered unconsciousness doesn't occur as a direct result of being bitten, but is rather due to blood loss from the bite. The guy with a drinking problem whose leg got eaten was fine for quite a while after getting bitten. He even had time to gloat at his captors. Admittedly, even characters who aren't gushing blood will succumb to unconsciousness eventually due to the fever, but that seems to take a little while to set in. There have been a few characters on the show who lasted (seemingly) quite some time after being bitten.

It's also unclear as to how much time characters have to amputate someone who's bitten. They're always in a rush to do it, because the assumption seems to be 'the sooner the better', but as far a I can recall no one has waited a while and then amputated a bite. There's a chance it might work, since there's nothing in the canon as far as I'm aware that it doesn't work. If they had strong antibiotics, that might also be enough to knock out the infection caused by the bite and thereby save the bitten victim.

As for 28 days later, the infection was almost immediately effective from what I remember.

That's not what I was referring to. I meant that the infected in that game where fast, hyper-aggressive, and not undead.

The speed of infection nearly ruined that movie for me. Viruses don't work at that speed. It takes time to infiltrate a cell and reprogram it. I know it's just a movie, but would it have killed them to crack open a 3rd grade biology textbook?

In any case, it might be fun to have a "we have a round or two to heal" along with "he's down, so now it's not going to be simple to get them back up" routine. Maybe a special ritual that takes 10 minutes to bring someone back from the unconscious but not a zombie yet state?

I don't think a 10 minute ritual is going to work that well in a zombie game if you want to keep up the pressure. If you have zombies trying to break down the door, taking 10 minutes to heal someone is probably not going to work.

This is also very much related to my earlier point about CR - an intelligent, cunning creature of a certain CR will be much less of a challenge if they're played as mindless bags of hit points. A bugbear has a significant advantage if it surprises a foe. With Stealth +6, it should be ambushing the PCs, not heedlessly rushing in to melee. If you can do 12 points of damage, with a good chance for 24, with javelins before the enemy gets a chance to respond, you're much more likely to win. If you do it from 3/4 cover, you make it even less likely you'll suffer any casualties, and give yourself the option of running away to harass with more ambushes. Even better, that's what the flavor text says they like to do.

Now, because BadWrongFun is distasteful, I can't say DMs who play bugbears as mindless bags of hit points are failing their obligation. (I save that for my DM's Guild monograph on DMing! ) But they are failing themselves and their players if they maintain bugbears as CR 1. They should be CR 1/2, because then they're just goblins with more hit points and damage potential. They're less of a threat, so they should be less XP to defeat.

I generally agree with this sentiment, but with the caveat that even a hyper-intelligent being isn't going to be able to maintain the level of paranoia necessary to be 100% alert every day without going completely insane. I've seen DMs who played a high intelligence to mean that this creature is basically impossible to outwit. When I DM an intelligent opponent, I will layer his defenses intelligently, but if the players find a weak spot and exploit it then good on them. Even geniuses can make tactical errors.

Richard Feynman wrote in one of his books that he was once punched by a drunk guy in a bathroom (IIRC Feynman punched the guy back and asked if he'd like to keep trading blows). Extremely smart man, but not impossible to surprise. Intelligence =/= magical divination powers.

Intelligence only allows you to prepare for such things as you might reasonably and logically expect to take place, and even then your preparations will only be as extreme as your level of paranoia. An intelligent but lazy dragon might realize that eventually adventurers will come looking for it... but that day probably won't be today so why not take a nap instead? There are more facets to a person, be they human, dragon, or lich, than their intellect.

If that bugbear gets wind that the PCs are coming, then he should absolutely set up an ambush. On the other hand, if the PCs managed to infiltrate the dungeon without making much noise or letting anyone get away, then it's a stretch to say that the bugbear is waiting in ambush (unless he happens to be hunting rats or something). He might be skinning the rats he caught, cooking his rat stew, gambling with some hobgoblins, or grabbing some shut eye. He certainly isn't standing in a darkened corner 24/7 waiting for the PCs to come along so that he can ambush them.

I disagree that you should modify the XP if the players manage to ambush the bugbears rather than the other way around. Admittedly, the difficulty of the encounter is different, but in my opinion the XP should be the same. If the players are clever (or even just lucky) enough to avoid being ambushed, they should not be penalized XP. If, on the other hand, the DM never has the bugbears ambush even when they have the perfect circumstances for it, the DM ought to simply use a more straight-forward monster and reskin that as a bugbear. However, Surprise Attack isn't a big enough factor in the Bugbear's CR IMO to justify reducing it from a CR 1 to a CR 1/2. If you really want to use bugbears and never ambush, I'd say add another goblin or two to the encounter to make up the difference in challenge (and give the players XP for those goblins as normal - the players shouldn't have to pay the price for the DM's laziness).

I'm not trying to accuse anyone of badwrongfun, just stating my own POV on the matter.

 

[Kabouter Games]

Richard Feynman wrote in one of his books that he was once punched by a drunk guy in a bathroom (IIRC Feynman punched the guy back and asked if he'd like to keep trading blows). Extremely smart man, but not impossible to surprise. Intelligence =/= magical divination powers.

Then I'm glad that's something I never said, nor intentionally implied. That's why I snipped the rest.

What I object to is the DMing style of playing all foes as MWARRR CHARGE maybe with a breath weapon or spell effect, like the drunk in your story about Feynman.

I disagree that you should modify the XP if the players manage to ambush the bugbears rather than the other way around.

I'm glad I never said that, either, then. I said that if you're going to take away the foe's native intelligence, the CR should drop. A bugbear reacting to being ambushed by shouting MWARRR CHARGE is the bugbear choosing a course of action out of many available to it. That's an entirely different thing than stupidly charging down the length of the field at Balaclava, directly into the battery at the other end, subjecting oneself to enfilading fire; that is doing something at which one's native intelligence should rebel.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Then I'm glad that's something I never said, nor intentionally implied. That's why I snipped the rest.

I never said (nor intentionally implied) that you said (or intentionally implied) that intelligence = magical divination powers. I was stating what, in my opinion, is an important corollary to your point that you had not addressed.

What I object to is the DMing style of playing all foes as MWARRR CHARGE maybe with a breath weapon or spell effect, like the drunk in your story about Feynman.

Like I said, I generally agree with your sentiment.

I'm glad I never said that, either, then. I said that if you're going to take away the foe's native intelligence, the CR should drop. A bugbear reacting to being ambushed by shouting MWARRR CHARGE is the bugbear choosing a course of action out of many available to it. That's an entirely different thing than stupidly charging down the length of the field at Balaclava, directly into the battery at the other end, subjecting oneself to enfilading fire; that is doing something at which one's native intelligence should rebel.

If you're modifying CR then you are modifying XP. Unless you are using some system other than the one described in the 5e DMG and MM, XP correlates directly to a creature's CR. If you tell me a creature's CR, I can tell you how much XP it is worth. If you tell me how much XP a creature is worth, I can tell you its CR. You said that if you don't play monsters according to their intelligence, then their CR should be decreased. Which means that their XP value would also decrease commensurately. And I disagree with that idea.

Let's face it, while many DMs wouldn't do so, any DM could play a group of zombies as tactical savants or an ancient dragon as a complete nitwit. I don't think you should modify CR based on intelligence. That presumes a given scenario that may or may not be true of actual play. Those zombies could function as a cohesive unit if a death knight or necromancer has joined them. And the ancient dragon could be effectively rendered a nitwit if the PCs manage to ambush it in the right circumstances, or land a Feeblemind spell on it.

If the DM is determined to use the bugbears as brainless meatbags (perhaps the DM is hinting to the players that the local water supply has heavy levels of lead and mercury due to a nearby mine) then he'd be justified in reducing the relative difficulty of the encounter (from Hard to Medium, for example) and then adding additional monsters to bring the encounter back to the original difficulty (effectively giving it the same XP as a Deadly encounter). However, I don't feel that it is appropriate for the DM to reduce the actual CR of the monster, which would result in a lesser XP reward for the players.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Mummy Rot is technically a curse, not a disease or drain, so it only ends via a Remove Curse spell. So unless you were to change that aspect of the ability (to a magical disease for example), the story might not work for you-- a zombie walker giving players a curse.

Yeah, I considered that change so trivial that I didn't think it was worth mentioning... but discussion of it does have some merit. If you're looking to have this disease be any kind of threat, then it can't be curable by a first level paladin or a second level spell.

 

[discosoc]

Give them stealth, because that's the only explanation for how easy it is to sneak up on the living people the way they do. Seriously, the camera will pan around a dude in a sparse clearing with dead leaves on the ground, only to be surprised a few seconds later by an off-camera zombie that managed to approach upwind and without making a sound.

 

[Oofta]

Give them stealth, because that's the only explanation for how easy it is to sneak up on the living people the way they do. Seriously, the camera will pan around a dude in a sparse clearing with dead leaves on the ground, only to be surprised a few seconds later by an off-camera zombie that managed to approach upwind and without making a sound.

Actually the simplest explanation is that all the people in TWD are hard of hearing. They regularly fire weapons with no hearing protection, frequently on full automatic and indoors. It's surprising they aren't completely deaf.