Zombie Plagues in your Campaign Setting

[atomn]

I liked the idea of vampires realizing that while they were not in any immediate danger, their primary food source was being made inedible.

Aw man, I like that idea a ton! What a tenuous alliance that would be!

 

[Wolfwood2]

- Plague zombies get the Improved Grapple feat and a Bite Attack. They will always try to first grapple and then bite a victim. A victim suffering any damage from the bite of a zombie will automatically contract zombie fever (see below).

I wouldn't give them the Improve Grapple feat. Let characters slap away their feat-less grapple attempts with attacks of opportunity. Easy enough with one zombie, but when you get swarmed by multiple zombies eventually you'll run out of AoO or blow a roll.

- Zombie fever is a magical disease. It has a Fortitude DC of 15, an incubation time of 3 hours, and a time interval between further Fortitude saves of 3 hours. The damage caused is 1d6 constitution at each failed saving throw. Note that it is impossible to shake of the disease without magical assistance (such as the cure disease spell) - the victim continues to make saving throws against the disease until it reaches 0 Constitution and dies.

Sounds good.

Any humanoid, monstrous humanoid, or other living creature which is not an outsider or elemental and which has an intelligence higher than 1 and dies after it was infected by zombie fever - whether the fever was the ultimate cause of death or not - rises as a new plague zombie three hours later. The only way to prevent this is to destroy the brain. Creatures with an intelligence of 1 only die and do not rise as zombies.

I'm not sure about how broadly you've expanded the category of affected creatures. I think it would work better for me if only humanoids (and maybe giants) were affected. Sure you see zombie animals in some genres, but disease zombies feel better as humanoid-only to me.

So, what would happen in your favorite campaign world if such a plague came into existence? Would the natives be able to mount an effective resistance? Would they fare better or worse than the people of Earth in World War Z (where at least three-quarters of the population died - and probably more)? And would you use such a scenario as the climax in your campaign?

Depends on too many factors to say for certain, but it could be a fun scenario.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

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!!

Sorry, but while I might go to the USA for a few months later this year, I will go to Ohio instead of Maryland...

 

[hamishspence]

Corpse creatures?

Vile Darkness has Corpse Creatures: identical to original creature, but undead. Nice if you want zombie types that retain every ability in life. Corpse Trolls would be very like classical zombies: dangerous even when chopped.

Libris Mortic has Fat zombies and Fast zombies, both of which can be more interesting opponents than your classic lurching body.

 

[Wik]

I like using the viral deathspawn from d20 Apocalpyse - it's much more of the classic zombie that you see in the movies.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Another thought: When zombies get into the Underdark and overrun some large caverns there, then who is going to clean them up? And what are the surface dwellers going to do about zombie plagues coming up to the surface from time to time?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

And let's not forget the drastic effects a zombie plague will have on the economy!

Precious items become almost worthless. Coins will loose much of their value. Barter will predominate.

The most valuable items, of course, are potions or wands of remove disease. Food will also become very expensive indeed - after all, even if enough farmers remain to tend to the fields, will they risk going out on them when zombies might lurk nearby? I expect starvation to be a common problem, unless there are effective magical solutions (and remember that create food and water has the same spell level as remove disease...). Weapons and ammunition will also command high prices - including magical weapons, especially those that are made for combatting undead.

Characters who are willing to think far enough ahead can probably gain immense profits if they are able to cast remove disease or secure significant food resources. But they should probably try to get their payment in land or other tangible objects instead of coins, since the economy will be in shambles for years even after the plague ends, and once the land is cleared looters will find an abundance of coins.

 

[Wraith Form]

This thread's cool. Consider it subscribed!

 

[phindar]

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that my players absolutely hated my zombie game. Something that unrelentingly grim can be a tough sell, especially since players bring a certain mindset to D&D. Its reflexive; I sold the game as "Survival Horror", I told them that the CR system was not going to be used in any form, that every encounter could be potentially overpowering, that they had no hope. But when the minis are on the table, in D&D, the assumption is that you can take them. Or that if you can't, there will be some way to get out of it. It seems sort of irresponsible for a GM to put a party into a situation that is just a big, never ending pile of hungry zombies.

It was the second session before the pc's figured out the undead weren't a localized phenom, and as they were running around my isolated Night of the Living Dead village I had one player state at a particularly grim moment that he was attempting to disbelieve the zombie horde. Its not a bad reaction (it is what I'd probably do if confronted by the living dead), but everything he knew about D&D EL's and CR's ran completely counter to what he was seeing. No matter how much I had prepped them for Survival Horror, they had D&D characters and D&D books and they were instinctively trying to play D&D; but brother, it wasn't D&D.

I would have thought it was a one-time problem, but after the first TPK in the second session, the group made higher level characters and I ran them through the Dawn of the Dead scenario in a large, abandoned city. The first session went pretty well, but the second session we were right back where we started, with the players falling back into D&D habits and getting another TPK. There was some bad blood after that one, and I wasn't unsympathetic to the players point. About the only conclusion I came to from that was D&D thinking doesn't solve Survival Horror problems.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Now that we have discussed the zombies' point of view, perhaps it is time to talk about countermeasures. How would you, within the context of the D&D rules, deal with the following:

- Zombies have spread through multiple sections of a city - but most people haven't been infected yet. How can you save as many people as possible?

- How do you cleanse an area of zombies so that you can be reasonably sure that none are left - and then protect it so that the farmers can get back to working in the fields and providing people with food?

- Your own city/province/kingdom has not had major zombie breakout yet, but the neighboring kingdom is close to being overrun. How do you protect your land to make sure you aren't overrun either?

- How and where will you establish "safe zones" for the remaining living people? Where will you get food and other supplies required to keep the refugees alive?