Screw D&D zombies!

[TavishArtair]

Screw D&D zombies! They are not at all impressive or terrifying, and there is no reason for them to exist as an undead unit when we have ghouls right over there, who look exactly the same but are better. You don't even have to give them a paralyzing touch, but they need to have an actual hunger for flesh.

Skeletons are close to being as annoying but can hang around on coolness factor. I prefer the ones from Jason and the Argonauts that were moderately badass though.

That is all.

[TOZ]

Someone needs to come up with stats for the RE Crimson Head zombies.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you want to support a version of the game which has mindless, learned helplessness zombies (like for voodoo) then the 3.0E works just fine.

Honestly, I think it's a problem with the name. I think that the ghouls should be called zombies (since they hunger for flesh and replicate) and zombies should be called ghouls (since they basically exist to have their wills crushed and can be applied to any creature).

Or you could just give zombies the ability to zombify creatures of the same size. Non-humanoid zombies would of course have a natural self-destruct mechanism built in to prevent wilderness for being overrun with them (zombie bears are awesome, but we don't want every forest to have nothing but zombie bears).

[Judging__Eagle]

Zombies are helpless pawns.

Ghouls are cannibals.

For some reason, people think of Ghouls as undead.... in history, and myth, they're really not.

D&D sort of fucked up on that imo. They literally screwed the pooch on ghouls; and marked them as undead.

Instead of being a template that's applied to humanoids.

Seriously, ghoul is something that you become.

You get there, by eating the flesh of intelligent creatures.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I thought that was the Wendigo.

[Koumei]

For scary zombies:

1. Let them run or make staggering charges with occasional boosts of speed.

2. Make eating your entrails a full round action that grants healing to them.

3. Give them a Disease (bite) that ends up turning you into a Zombie.

[shadzar]

While necrophilia is illegal in most countries, whatever gets your rocks off.

Ghou8ls are undead, because the loss of the soul through the evil acts, or that it has changed into something of a demons rather than their former human self.

Zombies are corpse puppets.

Where is the problem? Someone been looking for new age zombies in a game that uses old age monsters?

[Username17]

I thought that was the Wendigo.

The Wendigo is a Ghoul that happens to be named by Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest.

If you're using Euro-terminology, you'd call them Ghouls.

-Username17

[TavishArtair]

I think having ghouls be undead is fine. Sure they should be Tome of Necromancy style unliving, but that's really just a particular detail. And frankly if I wanted Haitian-style zombies I couldn't even fricking call them zombies because people would immediately think I'm talking about the living dead, which are basically ghouls, so we might as well just skip them and use ghouls, with skeletons being our mindless puppets.

[God_of_Awesome]

Zombie, runner (Based on L4D Infected)
HD 1d6 (These things are literally meant to splatter under a light wind)
Init +5 (On the other hand, they will at least claw you before that happens)
Speed 100ft 20 squares (You cannot outrun them)
AC 1 (Only absolute failure would incur you not to hit them)
BAB +0
Attack Claw 1d3
Reach Melee
SQ Darkvision 60 ft, Low-light vision, undead traits
Abb 8 on everything
Skills Climb +10, Spot +10, Jump +10, Swim +10 (They will find you and they will get you)
Organization Solitary, Loose Cluster (3-5) or, my favorite, the motherfucking Horde (10-100)
CR A guestimation of 1/3?

Just my random take.

[K]

I'm fine with ghouls staying undead. I mean, you:

1. eat the flesh of the living,

2. you turn into something messed up,

3. and you live forever.

..... sounds like undead to me. I mean, Ghosts feed in a different way and vampires sometimes turn into euro-trash pretty boys, but the essential three criteria are met for all undead.

That being said, Zombies can be made awesome by just rewriting the template.

[TavishArtair]

I would also like to give negative points for the proliferation of incorporeal undead, including wraiths, shadows, ghosts, spectres, allips... I'm willing to grant that we can use a couple variations on the "incorporeal undead" theme. But seriously? Five are in the MM alone, and each new MM adds another couple of these things. Over 50% of them follow the same theme as the wraith, too, in being incorporeal undead with only one motivation, reproduce by murder, which is accomplished by stat-drain (usually something important like Constitution). At least the allip has taken the different tack of being themed about madness. Come on! Just use some HD progressions! Seriously people.

[shadzar]

OH goody, now you cannot have undead or ghosts.

Each new MM is a piece of junk and not required. They exist for 2 reason....

-make more money

-offer something new for when you got tired of the same old thing, and don't want to make something yourself.

If you really don't like undead, then why use them?

Undead, anything still moving around but not alive. Corporeal or not...there is plenty.

Nothing says you have to use them all. If you really have problems with them in the book, then write to the company that makes then and tell them to pis off with the undead.

Why not just use hit die progressions for all races and things, and just have variations of humans? Small ones (halflings) get 2 less hit die, pointy eared ones (elfs) get -1/2 HD....etc.

But the older games get, the more crap exists, so the more crap that must be added to the initial game to keep everyone happy with setting/monster/class/etc bloat, so that everything is still in the game to make sure as many people will buy it.

What is wrong with variation on a theme? That is how all the initial PC races came about: dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, half-elf....all variations on a human.

[Itay K]

OH goody, now you cannot have undead or ghosts.
...
If you really don't like undead, then why use them?
...
Nothing says you have to use them all. If you really have problems with them in the book, then write to the company that makes then
...
But the older games get, the more crap exists, so the more crap that must be added to the initial game
...
What is wrong with variation on a theme? That is how all the initial PC races came about: dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, half-elf....all variations on a human.

Shadzar: I am seriously trying to understand - are you being sarcastic? Overtly cryptic? Just randomly rambling?
It is obvious that some information was intended to be relayed by your post but I just can't decide if the strawmen are intentional or not.

1) The OP did not claim to "not like undead" one bit. On the contrary, he claims that D&D's depiction, or at least nomenclature, misses the point of having undead; That the mechanics do not match his vision of "undeadness".

2) Saying "Just complain to the company" is less than useful on a game design forum. This is not a tech-support forum but a place to exchange ideas. If you believe an idea or a problem should not be expressed, at least give some argument in your favor.

3) Ghouls and Zombies had similar concepts in very early D&D (I started on 2E and they were already "shambling automatons" and "paralyzing cannibals" then). The "pointless zombies" were a dissonant concept back then just as they are now.

4) First, many people will disagree that 3 kinds of elves and 3 kinds of dwarves are in any way a positive aspect of D&D; But even accepting the truth of that statement (which, as mentioned, is a bitter pill to swallow), it doesn't follow that there should be different writeups for Ghost, Wraith, Specter, Haunt, Phantom, Poltergeist, Allip etc.. as the mechanics *and* fluff for most of those are nearly identical (except for number of HD and type of stat drained). Especially egregious are the Ghost variable powers in 3.0/3.5 which allow you to customize the Ghost to be mechanically identical to the Wraith and the Specter.

TL;DR - If sarcastic, please do so in a discernable matter. If not, why bother posting if you're going to massively distort the thread subject?

[shadzar]

Shadzar: I am seriously trying to understand - are you being sarcastic? Overtly cryptic?

Overly sarcastic.

Sure many monsters duplicate with slight changes, but how many of the same thing will you get after you run out of new ideas?

ot to mention in the case of ghosts, the same one all the time is kind of telling.

If you just see an apparition, you don't know right away if it is a ghast, ghost, wight, wraith, etc. So you have to decide how to approach if you want to. Having the variation gives a chance for the player to never know what they are dealing with.

Say if only ghosts exist. Every one you found would have the same weakness, and the same dangers. Even slight HD adjustments really doesn't give them an advantage just because they could take a few more hits, because you already know what they are weak against, and what too look out for.

Most int he MM are primarily the same, but they offer that important variation so if one says "you see a shadowy figure on the other side of the room", the players will not know if it is a thief trying to hide in the shadows, or a spectre or what.

I can understand more the problem with new age zombies vs mythical ones being different and time changed to make things wanted different from the past on the basis of time changing....but with ghosts there is not much you can do but change some things.

I don't have any MM beyond 2nd edition, so don't know what they exactly have, maybe it was a fault with those editions versions, but I never really found the 200+ page Monstrous Manual to have too many things repeated, but plenty of variation to say add suspense when a battle comes or some other kind of interaction.

Again, many people think you have to use everything, and myself not liking psionics for D&D, many people are surprised when I tell them I never use mind-flayers. Kind of made thing funky for SpellJammer...but I still didn't use any monsters with psionics from the mind-flayer to the brain mole or even thought eater.

Just toss out the ones you don't like and use the others sparingly.

With 4th you get that HD variation. 2nd you could alter monsters for your own purpose.

3rd should allow for creation of your own monsters...so I really don't see the problem unless you are thinking you must use only RAW.

The DM should make his own.

Want to rename ghouls to zombie, then do it. Want to make a new apparition, then do it. Nobody will stop you.

That was a thing about 2nd back, was that the DMG had the magic items, so anyone wanting to know what the Staff of Bob did, they would have to try it out first, rather than just be told it was a Staff of the Magi.

Rename whatever you want, and design what ever you want for your own game.

Don't get caught up in the company saying this exists.

I know people that DM without naming a monster ever. The players have to use character knowledge to tell what it is or how to fight it. That was some fun games trying to figure out something the character had never seen before, even though it was just a gnoll.

So make your own undead. Maybe check Ravenloft for other undead to replace, and convert them if needed to your edition or game.

Complaining about what the designers do is like pissing into the wind. You may no longer have to piss, but now it is all over your face, and that is all it will ever do to argue about a monster or something else nominal to the game.

They have never really done anything but add "bits" to the game to sell more books, and they will not stop.

Make your own bits for what you want.

Through a little vampire in with your ghoul, and give some viral effect to your wights if you want. Hell make it not be a loss of levels, but just like green slime that changes the afflicted person with no ill effects until the transformation is complete.

Arguing which monsters exist is just silly, as opposed to arguing why a monster just sucks (Intellect Devourer).

Better yet, ask others how to fix you a monster if you need more form it, but don't know what to do about it. There used to be a monster creature that would slap abilities, size, limbs, etc together and spit out an XP and HD value for you. If you can find the old DOS thing, it should work for 3rd or any other new edition...4th already has one I think....otherwise there must be something online like it for 3rd already.

So rather than "too many ghosts suck", what needs to be done to make ghost work better, and which isn't liked how they currently work.

There are plenty of 3rd-fluent people here to fix them up with the mechanics and such, and I have more ideas about monsters than I can ever get written in a lifetime.

[angelfromanotherpin]

From the wikipedia:

A ghoul is a mythological monster from ancient Arabian folklore that dwells in burial grounds and other uninhabited places. The English word comes from the Arabic name for the creature: الغول al-ghūl, which literally means "demon". The ghul is a devilish type of jinn believed to be sired by Iblis.

In the Arabic language, the female form is given as ghouleh and the plural is "ghilan".

In common Arabic everyday speaking, the term ghul (ghouleh for a woman) is sometimes used to describe a greedy or gluttonous individual.

The ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary travellers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, robs graves, drinks blood, and eats the dead taking on the form of the one they previously ate. Because of the latter habit, the word ghoul is sometimes used to refer to an ordinary human such as a grave robber, or to anyone who delights in the macabre.[citation needed]

The star Algol takes its name from this creature.

[RobbyPants]

There are a lot of ways to do zombies. I guess you really have to figure out what you want zombies to do in the first place. Lets say, we want zombies to bite people, be generally slow, but capable of quick leaps or perhaps sudden charges, and be strong and tough. Mabye a template like:

Type: Becomes undead with the unliving sybtype. Do not recalculate HP, saves, or BAB.
Ability Scores: +4 Str, -2 Dex, +4 Con, Int becomes 3, Cha becomes 1. Note the creature does not lose it's Constitution score.
Speed: Reduce base land speed by 10 feet if the original speed was 30 or higher. Otherwise, reduce it by 5 feet, to a minimum speed of 5.
Attacks: The zombie gains a bite attack that deals 1d6 damage as a medium creature (1d4 if small, 1d8 if large).
Special Abilities:
Fast charge: When charging, increase the zombie's base land speed by 20 feet.
Ferocity: Zombies continue fighting when below zero HP, but still die when at or below -10 HP.
Skills: Zombie's gain a +5 racial bonus on Climb and Jump checks.
Feats: The zombie loses all of its original feats and gains Improved Grapple.

So, a human commoner might look something like:

Human commoner zombie
Medium Undead (Unliving)
Hit Dice: 1d4+2 (4 HP)
Initiative: -1
Speed: 20 ft.
AC: 9 (-1 Dex)
BAB/Grapple: +0 / +6
Attack: Bite +2 melee (1d6+2)
Special:
Fast charge: When charging, the zombie's base speed is 40 feet.
Ferocity: The zombie continues fighting when below zero HP, but still dies when at or below -10 HP.
Skills: Climb +7, Jump +7
Feats: Improved Grapple
Saves: Fort +2, Ref - 1, Will +0
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 9, Con 14, Int 3, Wis 10, Cha 1
CR: 1/2?

[shadzar]

I think templates for the newest editoins are the best way to go with all things, not just undead. Those look pretty good from what I know about 3rd. But what exactly does that keyword "unliving" give it? Something more than the undead traits? Also wouldn't a zombie have a lower Will? It goes off of instinct rather than choice right?

[Leress]

I think templates for the newest editoins are the best way to go with all things, not just undead. Those look pretty good from what I know about 3rd. But what exactly does that keyword "unliving" give it? Something more than the undead traits? Also wouldn't a zombie have a lower Will? It goes off of instinct rather than choice right?

Unliving (subtype)
An Unliving creature is an undead that mimics many of the capacities of a living creature without truly being alive. An unliving creature has the following game effects:
- Unliving creatures have a metabolism of sorts, and thus have a Constitution score.
- Unliving creatures require food (often blood or flesh) and sleep, and are vulnerable to magical sleep effects even if they are otherwise immune to mind affecting effects.
- Unliving creatures have at least one vital organ, and are subject to critical hits from attackers with at least one rank in Knowledge (Religion).
- Not destroyed upon reaching 0 it points, though its existence still ends if it reaches -10 as normal.
- Subject to subdual damage, but can benefit from the Regeneration ability as normal.

Also the 3 INT represents it using instinct more than logic since it Wisdom is more about perception and instinct. A 3 INT is slightly above that of an animal. Wolves have a 12 WIS and 2 INT.

[Judging__Eagle]

I thought that was the Wendigo.

What Frank said.

Wendigos are not undead either.

They're people who are driven mad, and are addicted to the taste of human flesh.

Read a good amount of Inuit mythology and you'll see a theme, not only is cannibalism talked about, and a 'sometimes' problem, the real problem is this: human meat is super tasty. If you feed someone dead human meat, they will go mad, and crave its deliciousness.

Apparently there's something in human meat that makes the eater addicted.

The idea that an animal becomes a "man-eater" after it has "gotten a taste of human flesh" is actually not just superstition. Humans do the same thing when they eat human flesh.

All of our racial taboos against cannibalism are there for a bunch of reasons, the fact that human meat is also super omnomnomnom is one of them.

Some of the others include: you're now a junkie who can only get their fix by killing other people and eating them. As well, human flesh is full of diseases, parasites, and other wonderful things that you can only get by eating a person's flesh. Like brain-destroying prions; jackpot! Who needs cows or sheep, when you get get spongiform encephalopathy from your fellow humans? :3

---

Wolves have a 12 WIS and 2 INT.

Too right.

When I'm up north, in the winter, I have no problem with having to lug a shotgun loaded with slugs when I'm in wolf territory.

I do not want to fight a wolf unarmed, ideally with something that doesn't put my throat in jaws-reach of a wolf. I know that I'm no where as in shape as say... a deer or a rabbit, and that wolves are cunning creatures.

[RobbyPants]

Leress pretty much covered it. The Unliving type isn't something you'll find in the books though. The version I mentioned here was from the Tome of Necromancy Frank and K worked on (and Laress posted the info). The idea is to have the undead creature not be "fully" undead, and to give it some sort of a metabolism. In 3E, undead creatures have no Con score by default, which makes them interact weirdly with a lot of things. This also makes them seem less like an animated body (like a corpse golem or something) and more like a "living" creature that can be killed if you hit them in the right spot, as opposed to beating them into an unrecognizable lump.

[Psychic Robot]

The term "Wendigo psychosis" (also spelled many other ways, including "Windigo psychosis" and "Witiko psychosis") refers to a condition in which sufferers developed an insatiable desire to eat human flesh even when other food sources were readily available,[15] often as a result of prior famine cannibalism;[16] Wendigo psychosis is identified by Western psychologists as a culture-bound syndrome, though members of the aboriginal communities in which it existed believed cases literally involved individuals turning into Wendigos. Such individuals generally recognized these symptoms as meaning that they were turning into Wendigos, and often requested to be executed before they could harm others.[17] The most common response when someone began suffering from Wendigo psychosis was curing attempts by traditional native healers or Western doctors. In the unusual cases when these attempts failed, and the Wendigo began either to threaten those around them or to act violently or anti-socially, they were then generally executed.[18] Cases of Wendigo psychosis, though real, were relatively rare, and it was even rarer for them to actually culminate in the execution of the sufferer.[18]

One of the more famous cases of Wendigo psychosis involved a Plains Cree trapper from Alberta, named Swift Runner.[19][20] During the winter of 1878, Swift Runner and his family were starving, and his eldest son died. Twenty-five miles away from emergency food supplies at a Hudson's Bay Company post, Swift Runner butchered and ate his wife and five remaining children.[21] Given that he resorted to cannibalism so near to food supplies, and that he killed and consumed the remains of all those present, it was revealed that Swift Runner's was not a case of pure cannibalism as a last resort to avoid starvation, but rather of a man suffering from Wendigo psychosis.[21] He eventually confessed and was executed by authorities at Fort Saskatchewan.[22] Another well-known case involving Wendigo psychosis was that of Jack Fiddler, an Oji-Cree chief and shaman known for his powers at defeating Wendigos. In some cases this entailed euthanizing people suffering from Wendigo psychosis; as a result, in 1907, Fiddler and his brother Joseph were arrested by the Canadian authorities for murder. Jack committed suicide, but Joseph was tried and put to death.[23]

Fascination with Wendigo psychosis among Western ethnographers, psychologists, and anthropologists led to a hotly debated controversy in the 1980s over the historicity of this phenomenon. Some researchers argued that Wendigo psychosis was essentially a fabrication, the result of naïve anthropologists taking stories related to them at face value.[24] Others, however, pointed to a number of credible eyewitness accounts, both by Algonquians and by Westerners, as proof that Wendigo psychosis was a factual historical phenomenon.[25]

The frequency of Wendigo psychosis cases decreased sharply in the 20th century as boreal Algonquian people came in to greater and greater contact with Western ideologies and more sedentary, less rural lifestyles.[3] While there is substantive evidence to suggest that Wendigo psychosis did exist, a number of questions concerning the condition remain unanswered.

Fascinating. Cannibalism makes me queasy, though.

[Fenrisulfr]

All of our racial taboos against cannibalism are there for a bunch of reasons, the fact that human meat is also super omnomnomnom is one of them.

I highly doubt the taste has anything to do with it. In animals, it's much more likely that it has to do with humans sliding from the predator end of the scale to the prey end in the animal's mind. In humans, it has a lot to do with psychology: if only monsters eat people, and you've eaten a person, then you must be a monster, so you must eat people. A vicious, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Interestingly, I've heard that human tastes a lot like pork, which is why a nickname for human flesh is "long pork."

On topic, there's a bunch of alternate undead templates in Libris Mortis (named by someone who failed Latin) like Fast Zombie, Plague Zombie, Brain-Eating Zombie, etc, etc that can change things up if you don't like the MM version (as I don't).

[Judging__Eagle]

No, it's called something.

Windigo Pyschosis.

Read the post above yours.

People have seriously killed and eaten their own families, when there was food in the pantry.

Eating human meat is the ham and potatoes equivalent of taking crystal meth.

srsly.

Some people believe that humans are the way that they are because of cannibalism, and archeologists have found caves full of skulls with the back "neatly chopped out".

I'll be honest, after eating cow's brains; and knowing that human's are delicious... well, I can understand why early humans created piles of hundreds of hollowed out skulls.

As for the pork/long pork; old news chum. I'm betting that humans; with their massive variety of diets today, can taste like almost anything. You've got everything from vegans to daily carnivores today. That never really existed until the last 50 years or so.

Where it's at is apparently baby. It tastes like fish from my understanding, very delicately flavoured, and able to absorb spices and flavours well.

[TavishArtair]

If a ghoul was written to actually be the supernatural bone-eating shapeshifting demon I'd probably relent and give zombies a separate writeup (which would bear more similarities to the ghoul-as-is). I'd ask why we couldn't just call them rakshasa though.

Otherwise, the modern image of zombie is really a lot more like the D&D ghoul (ghast?) with less paralysis and more nauseating stench, and a skeleton is about as good as the current zombie in all ways. We only need a couple templates/monsters for incorporeal undead, and by that I mean 2. One for the dearly departed who continually haunt a location, and one for malevolent shades who stat-drain you.