Zombies! New Dungeoncraft article up

[Andor]

In other words, the rules cease to be adequate and REQUIRE a houserule? That's bad - terrible - game design.

Nonsense. It's bad game design if the book fails to cover every possible variation on theme that I could possibly want for any game I might want to run? The Monster Manual would be the size of Encyclopeadia Britannica, be utterly unusable, and still wouldn't manage to cover everything I can come up with. We know that monster design is greatly simplified, and that guidelines for level appropriate challanges are provided.

That sounds to me like a vastly superior system than a rigid system of layered templates and conditions. Quick! If I make a celestial, half-dragon, wolf zombie what template has precedence for HD? How do you stack the layers? Stat mods?

I'd rather eyeball it thanks.

And a newbie DM is no better off with current system. I'm currently playing under a first time GM and it was downright painfull last session watching him try to deal with an NPC necromancers pet giant zombie.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

I have to wonder how all the people raging about the no-template zombie managed before 3.5.

3.0 - I didn't do much with zombies. I think I fought some... once?.. as a player, but that's it and it wasn't much of an encounter.
BECMI - I recall having zombie encounters as a player, and as a GM used them from time to time. Never did anything special with them except putting them on Spelljammer crews, where they didn't need air but still potentially befouled it. Absolutely brutal in a boarding action.
2e - Same as BECMI, because I played 2e until I got fed up with it and houseruled Spelljammer into BECMI.
1e - Encountered them as a player, never used them as a DM. They never seemed all that special.
OD&D - Didn't play.

Here's the thing. Previous versions of zombies were just sort of 'there.' But 3.5 zombies had the potential to actually be COOL. They could be customized, made more interesting. Necromancers could hunt down the absolute best corpses and use those, or partner with a transmuter to alter corpses into ideal forms. I even wrote a Dragon article about optimizing zombies and skeletons in just this way, mostly because I'd gotten a lot of use out of those rules and continue to do so even after having moved beyond 3.5 as a rulesset.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Nonsense. It's bad game design if the book fails to cover every possible variation on theme that I could possibly want for any game I might want to run? The Monster Manual would be the size of Encyclopeadia Britannica, be utterly unusable, and still wouldn't manage to cover everything I can come up with. We know that monster design is greatly simplified, and that guidelines for level appropriate challanges are provided.

We know that monster design is SUPPOSED to be simplified.

Anyway, how is it that the 3.5 Monster Manual, apparently with more complicated stats, managed to provide BOTH easy-to-use sample zombies (including generic Small, Medium and Large humanoid ones, as well as some other samples) AND a template for creating more if you happened to want to?

Of course, the 3.5 Monster Manual ALSO somehow manages to provide a lot of fully usable races (and, admittedly, some not-at-all usable races that still get a LA).

AND it manages to cover almost all the staple monsters (phoenix is the only glaring omission, IMO) and most of the D&D icons like mind flayers and beholders, AND still has room for 'filler' monsters like the Tojanda.

Keeping in mind that 4e stat blocks SHOULD be shorter, why CAN'T the 4e MM cover at least as much ground as the 3e one?

That sounds to me like a vastly superior system than a rigid system of layered templates and conditions. Quick! If I make a celestial, half-dragon, wolf zombie what template has precedence for HD? How do you stack the layers? Stat mods?

Celestial and half-dragon can come in either order; zombie comes last because those two templates have to be applied to a living creature.

I'd rather eyeball it thanks.

And I would rather play M&M or HERO if I have to do the work of creating stuff anyway. Those are better systems in play than any version of D&D I've yet seen, they just require more effort up front. If D&D by lack of systems requires as much as HERO via its system, I would lose all reason to play D&D.

And a newbie DM is no better off with current system. I'm currently playing under a first time GM and it was downright painfull last session watching him try to deal with an NPC necromancers pet giant zombie.

I, on the other hand, am ALSO in a game with a first-time GM, and saw him use zombies, both regular and minotaur, to very good effect - much better than he's handled some of the other encounters, actually.

Unsurprising, considering that, y'know, he could just reference the sample zombies in the Monster Manual?

 

[Merova]

Hard Work

I have to wonder how all the people raging about the no-template zombie managed before 3.5.

I can only speak for myself, but, before the modern template system and the much reviled CR classifications, creating well designed specialized zombies was a pain! It was a trial and error method that resulted in much error. That's why I'm "raging" about this situation. I remember too well the frustrations of "homebrew" undead in 1st and 2nd eds; I don't want to go back to that.

Think of all the "typical" zombie traits from the source material. Do the zombies have a weak spot? If so, how does one design this vulnerability mechanically? How do they move? Are they typical shamblers? Do they have cinematic "lunging" abilities? How about flying, leaping or climbing? How strong are they? Are they "dead joe average" or with superhuman might? Do they simply bash or bite? Or do they have special attack options such as grappling or strangling? And do they spread a zombie contagion? If so, how does it spread? How can it be cured? How intelligent is the zombie? If intelligent, what does it remember from its previous life? These are just the basic questions that I consider when designing a zombie. I can go into tedious depths of zombie design aesthetics, but I'll refrain.

Now, 3E didn't give me all the mechanics that I required to address all of my needs either. Obviously, my use of zombies is extensive and beyond the design concerns of the typical DM. However, unlike 1st and 2nd ed, 3E gave me a basic design parameter from which I could design the zombies to my particular desires. It provided a stepping stone.

For example, If I wanted a zombie type that could climb and was a bit stronger than the typical human zombie, but be of the same general threat level, then I would slap that template onto a baboon. Easy! That gets done in mere moments what would have taken significantly longer under previous editions.

I don't know if your question was snark, but I thank you for giving me an opportunity to further explain my "rage." Good gaming!

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

Rather than arguing the merits of a template versus the merits of a monster, let's actually look at the 3.5 Zombie template and compare two creatures to see what kind of difference you actually get out of the thing. Let's say we use an Elf and a Half-Orc.

Size and Type: Same for both creatures.
Hit Dice: Same for both creatures
Speed: Same for both creatures
Armor Class: Natural armor is the same for both creatures.
Base Attack: Based off of HD, and therefore is the same for both creatures.
Attacks: Same for both creatures, except for Elven weapon proficiencies.
Special Attacks: None for both.
Special Qualities: Hey look, this isn't even described clearly. Appears to be the same for both creatures.
Saves: Same for both creatures.
Abilities: 4 of them are the same for both creatures. The Half Orc has 2 more Str than the Elf, and the Elf has 2 more Dex.
Skills: None for both.
Feats: Just Toughness for both.
Alignment: Same for both creatures.

Result: The only meaningful difference between the graceful elf becoming a zombie and the brutish, boorish half-orc becoming a zombie in 3.5 are their Str and Dex scores, and even those are barely different.

The thing about the zombie template is that it really isn't that useful -- it doesn't adjust monster properties as most templates do, it simply sets them to the same value every time, whether this means dumping special attacks and qualities, hard-coding 4 of the 6 ability scores, dropping feats, or eliminating skills. This is hardly the only example. A Zombie Gnome is a Zombie Halfling with 2 less Dex and no bonus to thrown weapons. A Zombie Dwarf is a Zombie Human with Dwarven Waraxe proficiency and +1 to attack versus orcs and goblinoids. If you decide that a Warforged has a sufficiently skeletal structure, you can make a Zombie Warforged that's exactly the same as the Zombie Human except for his built-in armor. (And then what do you do if he took the Adamantine/Mithral Body feats?)

Zombies are pretty much the same, even when you do use the template. That's kind of iconic for zombies anyway -- they're faceless (literally, sometimes) members of a mob, utterly unremarkable from each other. The template further muddles things by not being very clear what gets retained and what gets dumped in the infamous catch-all category that is "Special Qualities."

Would a zombie template be useful? Possibly, though not likely. Is the current one useful? Not so much.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

-snip-

Try it with a Wyvern and a Minotaur. Same size, same hit dice. Totally different zombies.

 

[hong]

Try it with a Wyvern and a Minotaur. Same size, same hit dice. Totally different zombies.

Somehow, I would bet that the number of people who regularly use wyvern and minotaur zombies is vastly smaller than the number of people who use regular joe zombies.

Besides, the existence of a recipe doesn't guarantee the quality of that recipe. What if you want peanut butter but you get tomato sauce? That would mean you got ice cream with jelly instead OH WHOOPS MY CULINARY METAPHORS GOT OUT OF CONTROL FOR A MOMENT THERE. Anyway, there have been plenty of observations about the oddities of undead scaling, especially when it comes to turning and hit points. Just slapping a template on an existing creature, especially one that has funky special abilities that may or may not be retained, doesn't mean the end result will be particularly good. It just means it'll be standardised, for what good that does.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

Just slapping a template on an existing creature, especially one that has funky special abilities that may or may not be retained, doesn't mean the end result will be particularly good. It just means it'll be standardised, for what good that does.

ibid.

 

[Rechan]

While we're all having a coniption, I thought I'd point to a specific line in the article.

Now if we only had a few zombies that added some spice to the basic shambling corpse recipe. Perhaps I’ll go dig a few up for our next look at zombies....

Looks like just stock small/medium/large corpse isn't the last thing on zombies we'll see, guys.

 

[hobgoblin]

so basically we are back at the 3.0 way of doing zombies?