New Monster question

[Omegaxicor]

I am creating an adventure where the party invade an underground research lab experimenting on Resurrection (without the gods' help) but it is a work in progress, the level 8s are fighting the guards and defenses outside while the Level 1-2 party progress inside, I don't know whether to kill the scientists, have the party do it or have the scientists working under duress but either way the adventure ends with the head scientist or captor being killed.

My problem comes in the "Chaotic Experiments" which are previous attempts, they are alive but missing a limb or part of their head, maybe a chunk of their torso, maybe they have their legs fused together, or some sort of damage incurred when they died on the battlefield. Most are mindless or primitive but some are just mad, though I have no idea what their stats should be, I was looking at the Zombie entry in the Monster Manual but it doesn't seem to have the "lacking a body part" aspect

Is there a way to randomly determine defects?

 

[Ahnehnois]

The closest thing that jumps to my mind is the Warp Touch disease from BoVD. There are a couple of things in that book that go in this direction.

 

[Omegaxicor]

I don't have BoVD sadly.

What does it do/change?

 

[Wicht]

For most of them, I would just use the zombie stats as is (and I think that is the right creature for you). Things like a missing limb, or a chunk of head missing shouldn't mess with the actual combat ability of the zombie

At the same time, you could also do a few simple mods to change up some of the zombies
Zombies with no arms but a bite attack (1d6 damage)
Zombies with missing legs which pulls themselves along and also bites (5 foot move, 1d6 bite attack)
etc.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I don't have BoVD sadly.

What does it do/change?

A variety of things; hard to represent without copying a large volume of text. It's a chaos disease that does a variety of alterations (only some of which would be appropriate) and has a decent size % dice table.
There's also, separately, some large zombie making machine that kicks out variants IIRC.

Libris Mortis also has a section specifically on zombie variants.

 

[Wicht]

Libris Mortis also has a section specifically on zombie variants.

Those are mostly just a zombie template applied to various creatures. None of the variant templates deal with missing limbs.

Though again, the zombie, as is, is a decomposing corpse, so a lot of it is just window dressing.

 

[Omegaxicor]

unfortunately, I'm not the one with Libris Mortis, I will look at it when I can next.

I will modify little bits of the Zombie template and just dress it up, thanks all

 

[delericho]

For most of them, I would just use the zombie stats as is (and I think that is the right creature for you).

Yep, I'd probably just go with the Zombie, and leave the "missing limb" aspect to fluff. Perhaps with the occasional 'boss' monster with different stats, maybe even built from the ground up.