Zombies Grappling/Shoving

[Oofta]

Yeah? So? I don't see the problem. Do people's heads explode when the game's zombies don't match a movie zombie?

The "zombie eats flesh, and the bitten turn into zombies" is a pretty narrow story space to deal with. It is fine when you specifically want a zombie movie, but otherwise it kind of takes over any world in which you put it. And, if the game's zombies worked that way, the Create Undead spell would be a risk of an extinction level event every single time it was cast, and thus *WAAAAAY* higher than 6th level.

I have thought about running an apocalyptic zombie game where there's an infectious version of zombies slowly taking over the world and I think it would be tough to implement, especially depending on how infectious the undead are. Do they have to get a good chomp in? How are they going to do that against someone in plate? Doe a mere scratch do it? Short campaign, have fun playing zombies vs humans.

If you tweak the mythos a little bit they could be like wights, the victim only turns if killed. Or maybe being reduced to 0 (or some other threshold) means you have a chance to be infected, perhaps treating it something like lycanthropy. So with magic there's a chance to recover but there's not enough magic around to cure everyone. I think the real danger (if following modern zombie tropes) is that anyone that dies becomes a zombie. At a certain point if there's a plague or other significant cause of mortality the problem is not the zombie horde outside the walls, it's the child or your spouse sleeping next to you that die in the middle of the night.

In any case, when I've done anything like this there was a significant source of necromantic energy driving the hordes so it was always a self-contained mini-apocalypse and it was never infectious. But maybe someday as survival horror mini-campaign.

 

[Charlaquin]

Yeah? So? I don't see the problem. Do people's heads explode when the game's zombies don't match a movie zombie?

No, it's fine, but that doesn't mean I don't find it odd that D&D's zombies slam instead of grappling and biting once a grapple has been established. Like, there's nothing wrong with that take, it's just not what I typically expect out of zombies.

 

[Warpiglet]

No, it's fine, but that doesn't mean I don't find it odd that D&D's zombies slam instead of grappling and biting once a grapple has been established. Like, there's nothing wrong with that take, it's just not what I typically expect out of zombies.

You could have them grapple and do damage either way by raw. For extra creep factor have some damage be piercing or slashing via bite. It changes nothing about the challenge rating imho.

Got for it.

 

[Charlaquin]

You could have them grapple and do damage either way by raw. For extra creep factor have some damage be piercing or slashing via bite. It changes nothing about the challenge rating imho.

Got for it.

That's pretty much my thinking as well.

 

[jasper]

I started playing in 80s so only bad zombies movies were in my head. They were stupider than D&D zombies. How about this save vs zombie plague. DC 5 + total amount of zombie damage. This is an increasing number. Get hit and the dm doing avg damage. DC 9. Second hit DC 13. DC only resets when a person is magically healed to their max hit points. Person turns in 1d4 days.

 

[Dausuul]

Keep in mind that 5E has dispensed with the notion of "mindless" creatures. Int 3 is smarter than most predatory animals, and predators are certainly capable of using knockdown and grappling tactics.

Zombies may have no sense of self-preservation, but if their intelligence is good for anything, killing the living should top the list.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I think ghouls are supposed to represent the infectious zombie in D&D (although it seems like by the 1st or 2nd undead splat book of each edition, there will be a plague zombie). I like the swarm idea, particularly since you can play with the difficulty: "easy" only does 2 zombies' worth of damage to anyone who enters it, "lower medium easy" does 3, "medium" does 4, etc. with some adjustment for other effects (like grappling).