Closet O'Zombies
This thread reminds me of an argument I had with a group of players a while back. It has since turned into a joking reference called "the Closet O'Zombies."
To set it up, here's the background of the story:
The PCs come across a ransacked Gnome cliffside village. Inside they find that most of the gnome residents have been killed and quite a few of them have been turned into zombies by a necromancer who lead the raid on the village.
After the party cleared out the zombies and rescued the sole survivor, a party member does some exploring and finds a closed door. In front of the door are hundreds of broken ceramic plates.
The PC opens the door, and sees that it's a closet that jam-packed, from ceiling to floor, with corpses.
Unfortunately, the corpses are all zombies.
So over the next few rounds, the 23 zombies spill out of the closet.
As they drop out, one or two at a time, the party members gather around for a Attack of Opportunity. The zombies get a second AoO against them as they continue to move out of the "deployment space" and into other spaces threatened by the PCs.
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Here's how I see the zombies fittiing in this space:
++ 6 stand with no problem on the floor. The floor space is limited by a set of shelves that wrap around the three walls in the closet.
++ The shelves are just big enough to hold dishes, so I figure they are about 8 inches to a foot wide. The there are at least four tiers of shelves.
++ The non-standing zombies climbed up on the shelves and held themselves there. With three sides and four tiers, I figure at least 3 zombies climb up and hold themselves on the shelves per wall. So there's another 9 zombies total.
++ 4 more zombies Take 10 and brace themselves in the corners at the top of the closet.
++ The final 3 zombies lie on the floor in between the others legs.
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Anyway, my Players were absolutely appalled that there could be so many (again 23) small-sized zombies filling this 5x5 space.
I tell them they're thinking about the rules too much and not seeing the space and seeing the fact that these are very small creatures.
Additionally, zombies, being dead, don't need to have "personal bubble space" or are they concerned with lack of air or comfort.
Further, the zombies being undead and creatures that never tire or get exhausted can hold themselves in unusual positions for an infinite amount of time.
They also complain that the EL was way too high, but I didn't think so. They were second level, but I adjusted it down because of the fashion in which the zombies entered their threatened areas.
Still to this day, they point to that encounter and say its impossible, even with all the AoOs I gave them (and don't forget that zombies have partial actions too).
I shake my head and say they don't realize how small gnomes are and how little space a zombie needs to exist.
Your thoughts?