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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nyeshet" data-source="post: 3340953" data-attributes="member: 18363">I recently watched "Dawn of the Dead" with my brother and father. The more recent of the two movies of that name. The undead in the first one - and in many zombie horror flicks - shamble, but the ones in that one charged, jumped, etc. If anything, I think it made them more frightening than their shambling cousins. The first Dawn of the Dead movie (I've seen that one in the last month too, also with my father and brother.) was more comic than horrific. At points one or two of the characters in the movie would jog (more than walk, but not really run) through a loose crowd of zombies, shoving them aside, striking them in the head as they passed, etc. They were even laughing at times as they did this, feeling no real sense of fright or even worry unless the crowds got too thick or one of the zombies managed to get a good grip on them - thus slowing them down enough for the others to also start latching on. The second Dawn of the Dead was different. Very different. From the beginning the zombies are terrifying the characters. Even a few of them - not even a crowd, just a few - is enough to take down one or more of the characters, and if there is not much room to run, a single one could easily take down a character not appropriately armed (with a gun, etc and the skill to make head shots at 30+ feet in a difficult situation). At times the zombies were punching through thin boards of wood, panes of glass, etc to get to the living on the other side. In the first one a (very) thin false wall managed to hide the group's get-away for over a month before one of their own - now a zombie - shambled back, following the route he had followed scores of times before. So, when I created these zombies, I used ideas from the second - more frightful - Dawn of the Dead: faster, stronger, etc zombies seemingly enraged in their lust for blood and flesh, breaking through wooden doors, glass, etc - even beating uselessly on the metal door of a metal cabinet (enough to make impression of their fists upon the surface of the metal) - to reach the living on the other side. To make them more frightful for a fantasy rpg, I granted them several small but useful protections against common means of slaying monsters: energy resistance, a little SR (little better than what a dwarf receives, but still . . . ), some DR, etc. They still had their weaknesses, of course - critical hits might actually deal more damage, vulnerability to fire, a chance of exiting their useful rage if they eat enough, etc. A single one is a frightful encounter for a group of low level PCs, but a group of them has the potential for TPK at low levels - and could present a challenge at mid levels just as easily, depending on the numbers involved. High levels still will be able to deal with them without much trouble. The little energy resistance the Horror Zombies have is just not enough to deal with high level fireballs, chain lightnings, etc. Yeah, I tended to think they were around 2.5 to 2.75, so CR 3 is probably about right. I'll fix that after this post. I haven't used a ghost ship yet. Most campaigns tend to stay on land . . . often on frontier lands, where exploration, unknown, etc can play and interesting part.</blockquote>

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