Zombie Plagues in your Campaign Setting

[Jürgen Hubert]

A mile-wide moan?! Are insects and birds and weather all dead, too?

-- N

Well, classically wildlife does flee the approach of the undead...

But really, out in the wilderness, away from the sounds of civilization, noises can carry a fair distance, and these zombies do have fairly good Listen bonuses. I don't find it inconceivable that such sounds will be audible to them within a distance of one mile. Of course, if it is raining, the distance will be a lot smaller...

 

[mmadsen]

I wouldn't give them Improved Grapple, even though I'd stick with Grapple/Bite as the main attack form. They are zombies, so they should be a little inefficient at it. The AoO to foil the grapple will give adventurers a little help in not getting dragged down, but its the sort of thing that will quickly be overwhelmed when fighting hordes of zombies. (As will the adventurers themselves.)

This is exactly what I was going to say. The zombies aren't good at grappling, but they try anyway.

It doesn't stand out much in a typical D&D game, where everyone seems to plunge into combat without a second thought, but zombies should be creepy because they don't flinch at grappling a guy with a sword; they just come right in. Maybe they lose an arm; maybe they don't...

 

[atomn]

I think that sounds very cool. Although I'd make it for lower level characters. I think mid to high level characters would be unchallenged, even in the face of terribly unbalanced numbers. I'd also shorten the attracting moan to much less than a mile. I have no evidence but that seems too far to me.

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

I would also like to second World War Z.

It's written as peoples memories of the zombie outbreak. It starts in China, with a doctor examining Patient Zero, moves on, etc etc.

The thing is - what might make it useful for thinking about a zombie infection game they never tell you what the cause of the outbreak is. Even in the early stages, the news treats it as 'African rabies'.

My favorite story in there tho was the blind Japanese guy who makes it out to the wilderness and stakes out part of the forest. Becomes a monk-type guy, trying to save the kami and spirits in these woods.

Again, the point about natural life fleeing zombies was made in there. Same way in Max Brooks' other book - The Zombie Survival Guide - he recommends not relying on horses; they spook too easy, make too much noise.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I think that sounds very cool. Although I'd make it for lower level characters. I think mid to high level characters would be unchallenged, even in the face of terribly unbalanced numbers.

For mid-to high level characters the challenge is less about whacking individual or even a large number of zombies, but any of the following:

- Rescuing as many civilians as possible from the plague (after a certain point, the zombies simply spread too fast to kill all of them).

- Establishing "safe zones" free of zombies where the survivors can stay, and get enough food, water, and other vital supplies to help them surivive for the duration of the crisis.

- Develop tactics and strategies that allow you to wipe out most, if not all of the zombies in any given area, and then making sure that that area stays clean. After all, even a single zombie can restart the cycle if you are unlucky.

- Return some sense of home for the future to the shell-shocked survivors who have seen their whole existence devoured by the undead horde - as well as probably many friends and family members.

- Dealing with looters and other people profiteering from the situation.

- Dealing with liches and other powerful undead who can control the zombies and suddenly gained a really massive undead army.

- Deal with the warrior tribes across the border (orcs or otherwise) who were less vulnerable to the plague thanks to their way of life (lower population density, constant state of alertness against enemies, every member of the tribe knows how to fight etc.) and who now expand their territory and prey on the weakened humans.

- Deal with both revolutions of peasants who feel that their leadership betrayed them during the crisis and warlords now trying to carve out their own territory.


In some ways, such a zombie plague might only be the beginning of a campaign.

 

[Firedancer]

What makes a traditional zombie plague so lethal is the alien nature of the zombie. The unending need to devour life, forsaking injury to self, the incurable infection, all these make for something terrifying.

However, in DnD undead are relatively commonplace, certainly there's a means to combat them (turning, circle of protection) effectively, spells that target them specifically or more effectively. There's means to cure the disease. And quite frankly the zombie as stated out is weak.

Individual terror is derived from the unstoppable zombie, limbs crawling despite severance, only ending when the head is destroyed (a crit?). The SRD zombie dies in a swordthrust, any swordthrust. A flesh golem is nearer in ability to how the zombie acts in other media (although an individual one is still very scary to deal with).

Now look at the spells - mages can fly, they can get their allies to fly. Easy to bypass the town full of undead outside the building. Zombie plagues hit commoners and spread. firepower is the only effective weapon and you cannot avoid them.

I have used augmented zombies to challange 5th lvl party, given the effects of several feats/spells - augmented summouning, is it aura of desecration?, turn resistance, fast healing and some other stuff. Got the feeling of undying quite nicely. Gave them some weakness as well - confirmed crit severed the spine/crushed head, called shot to head doing 25% original HP damage killed it.

PCs did enjoy it and certainly remembered it.

So, in the game worlds I play a zombie plague would be contained and destroyed once the clergy could react. It would be good for lower level PCs, it would make an interesting game for higher (they'd really get to show off their abilities and planning) but it needs careful consideration to capture the right essence.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

However, in DnD undead are relatively commonplace, certainly there's a means to combat them (turning, circle of protection) effectively, spells that target them specifically or more effectively. There's means to cure the disease. And quite frankly the zombie as stated out is weak.

If you want to make them scarier, increase their Damage Resistance to 10/slashing and rule that once they reach 0 hit points, they are still "alive" - their limbs might be smashed, but they can still crawl at a speed of 5' per round and they will attempt to bite people.

But I'd caution against making them too individually powerful. That's not their point - any organized group of fighters (even commoners, if they know what they are doing) should be able to deal with them if they are not outnumbered.

The main question is if the living are able to organize themselves fast enough to be overwhelmed by the zombies. After all, if there are enough infected people, both cure disease spells and turning attempts of the clerics on the scene will run out fast. And sure, high-level fighters will be able to take out a lot of zombies - but they can't be everywhere at once, and people will be infected faster than they can find and destroy zombies.

Ultimately, to defeat the zombies, humans need:

(a) Good fortifications in which they can regroup. Traditional castles shine here - their whole point is that they serve as "safe points" against outside enemies (although the defenders must keep vigilance against any of the infected infiltrating the castle...). Most cities, on the other hand, are death traps - first the plague will spread like wildfire in the poor neighborhoods and quickly overwhelm the rest.

(b) Good organization. Someone must always be on alert against new approaching zombies and be able to warn the others - but at the same time, people must be able to continue in their day jobs, or else the fields will fall fallow, equipment won't be replaced, and so forth.

(c) Good morale. Getting bitten by a zombie is essentially a death sentence unless a cleric is nearby who hasn't expended his cure disease spells yet (or someone has a potion with this spell effect). Nevertheless, people must be willing to stand up to the zombies and use efficient tactics to defeat them - if they just flee from the zombies, the zombies will eventually win, because they can dedicate 24 hours a day to following and attacking humans.

 

[Merkuri]

Folks reading this thread might find this interesting. It's a zombie simulator. You can watch a large group of people slowly be overwhelmed by a zombie invasion.

 

[phindar]

That's the thing about the higher level characters. Mages can make the whole party fly, clerics can use turn attempts to detonate large numbers of zombies, fighters can wade through them, rogues can sneak by/climb walls/hide behind the mages, clerics and fighters. But its still 400,000:1. (I'm using the pop estimates from the original Day of the Dead, because, why not?) But fly spells end, turn attempts are finite, and characters have to sleep sometime. If they teleport, they have to teleport somewhere, and if zombies are a global phenom, where will they go?

Plane Shifting is probably the best escape route since other planes might not be affected, but even then, that puts the pcs in the position of helping to evacuate the entire plane (unless they plane shift away and decide to never go back). And the inexact nature of Plane Shift makes this kind of dicey, as they will be miles away from their intended target point when they blip in. (Even though I like this aspect of the Planar Evacuation, I find zombie plagues work better in isolated worlds where people don't have the option of blipping to other planes.)

There were some things I was looking forward to in my undead game. The Darkbond PrC from Arcana Evolved has an ability that makes undead treat them as one of their own, so the darkbonds would be okay. I had an idea that isolated hobgoblin tribes would react fairly well, and that when they sent their warriors out they'd bolt metal masks on so that if the warriors fell in battle, they wouldn't be able to immediately infect others around them. I liked the idea of vampires realizing that while they were not in any immediate danger, their primary food source was being made inedible.

One of the things I liked about the Day/Land of the Dead scenarios is all the isolated pockets of resistance, and how reestablishing contact would be something the pcs could do. And trying to get all these different groups of traditionally hostile people (orcs and humans, drow and elves, dwarves and everybody) to work together for survival now that they face a greater threat, an enemy that doesn't think or feel or rest, that exists only to feed.

 

[atomn]

For mid-to high level characters the challenge is less about whacking individual or even a large number of zombies, but any of the following:

- Rescuing as many civilians as possible from the plague (after a certain point, the zombies simply spread too fast to kill all of them).

- Establishing "safe zones" free of zombies where the survivors can stay, and get enough food, water, and other vital supplies to help them surivive for the duration of the crisis.

- Develop tactics and strategies that allow you to wipe out most, if not all of the zombies in any given area, and then making sure that that area stays clean. After all, even a single zombie can restart the cycle if you are unlucky.

- Return some sense of home for the future to the shell-shocked survivors who have seen their whole existence devoured by the undead horde - as well as probably many friends and family members.

- Dealing with looters and other people profiteering from the situation.

- Dealing with liches and other powerful undead who can control the zombies and suddenly gained a really massive undead army.

- Deal with the warrior tribes across the border (orcs or otherwise) who were less vulnerable to the plague thanks to their way of life (lower population density, constant state of alertness against enemies, every member of the tribe knows how to fight etc.) and who now expand their territory and prey on the weakened humans.

- Deal with both revolutions of peasants who feel that their leadership betrayed them during the crisis and warlords now trying to carve out their own territory.


In some ways, such a zombie plague might only be the beginning of a campaign.

Those are some great start concepts to keep the campaign interesting. I still have a hunch some of them would be pretty easy for mid- to high-level characters (or at least not a threat to themselves, personally) but it'd still be interesting to find out if my hunch is true. If you ever decide to run it in Baltimore, I'll definitely sign up!!