In the first installment of The Zombie Papers, we analyzed some of the elements in horror; zombie horror, specifically, but applicable to a more general “survival horror;” that zombies are best at. Themes like viral infection, mob violence, and even comparing/contrasting a zombie’s anatomy to that of humans are all useful tools with which you can scare the hell out of your players. This time we’ll be looking at a few of the ways D&D addresses the issue of fear; means within the 3.5 rules to bring your own zombies to “life;” and finally, at our discussion’s conclusion, specimens inspired by movies, books, games and the like will be presented in D&D stats.
Fear Mechanics
“People have been known to either kill one another or go insane simply from the incessant moan.”1
Perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of horror gaming is whether the DM really has the authority to dictate when and how severely a character is frightened by events in the campaign. This is largely an issue about where the setting ends and a character’s inner struggles begin: some would argue that if a player doesn’t even have the final say about his character’s reaction to terrifying stimuli, why are they there at all? The DM may as well run even the PCs. Here, we’ll be working under the assumption that a DM stating “Your character is frightened of X” does so in the best interests of the story the group is collectively telling as a team.
My personal stance has always been that in a “traditional,” fantasy RPG, it doesn’t make any sense for creatures like the undead or fiends from the Lower Planes to inspire terror in the heroes when other legitimately scary threats aren’t cause for alarm at all. If you’re going to ask for a Will save to avoid being shaken by an encounter with zombies, why doesn’t someone leaping out of the broom closet with an axe elicit the same response?
However, this paper does not concern itself with “traditional” campaigns. We’re talking about horror and indeed in a horror setting every stimulus that may rattle the heroes might call for saving throws. I’d like to start with the “crunchy” aspects of fear you can find right in the core rulebooks or SRD. There is a progression from “shaken” to “frightened” and finally onto “panicked:” initially, a scared character applies a penalty to most of his rolls but can largely act as he normally would, although it may help to remind the player why the penalty was applied to help him roleplay through the encounter. As the fear escalates, however, fewer and fewer options are left on the table, with the character favoring escape over conflict. Finally, when “panicked” a character will simply cower in the corner if unable to flee, similar to undead turned by a cleric.
The real benefit of this system is an oft-forgotten line from the DMG: “Fear effects are cumulative.”2 For example, a hero turns a corner onto an empty street and literally bumps into a ghoul, blood still running down its chin from a recent meal. When the ghoul looks as if it will give chase, the DM calls for a Will save and, upon failure, declares the character is frightened. He turns and runs but is chased into a pack of three more ghouls, and in desperation (flight is no longer an option) stands and fights. A rival cleric appears from the shadows and just before the PC can dispatch the last ghoul, casts doom. This would normally make him shaken but he is already frightened; failing another save, the hero is now panicked and the chase resumes.
This progression from one condition to another is not unprecedented: fatigue and exhaustion work the same way, and sickened/nauseated could too with some tweaking. This idea is explored in Heroes of Horror, with shock, illness and weariness introduced to organize similar conditions like the fear mechanics. Despite their usefulness in adjudicating adverse effects of terror, there is a major problem with “crunchy” (by this I mean anything having to do with mechanical rules, as opposed to flavor text which simply describes to the player why and how severely a character is frightened) effects: outside of impairing a character’s ability to fight and, thus, making it more likely he will die, the player is largely unaffected.
There is nothing inherently scary about having to make a Fortitude or Will save unless the DM is able to back it up with a description so evocative, so horrific that the player is repulsed whether he makes the save or not. You will know you have succeeded when upon making a save, the player breathes a sigh of relief but is still taken aback; and when failing a save, the player becomes frantic and the character takes leave of his senses. In other words, the call for a saving throw must be more than an occasion to slap one more penalty on a PC. Let it be a cue for the player to emote: in a previous campaign, my players were being led through a canyon by a savvy ranger named Kuiper (easily the most powerful NPC they had befriended since the campaign began). He went on ahead while they were resting to check the area out but the next time they saw him, a savage gnoll chieftain was carrying Kuiper’s head by the hair. He nodded at the PCs atop the ridge they had chosen for their campsite, tossed the head to the ground and walked away unchallenged.
The first response, obviously, was shock. Although that campaign was particularly brutal, when accompanied by Kuiper the PCs felt no pain. Encounter after encounter passed unremarkably and by lulling them into that false sense of safety, I set them up for the fall. Their next emotion (the players, not the characters) was despair: if Kuiper was bested by the gnolls what chance did they have against the monsters? Finally, panic set in and the characters fled. I never once asked for a Will save, but if I had it would not have been an artificial tool to beat them over the heads with, teaching them “When X happens, you are shaken but if you encounter Y, you are frightened.” It would have been a gentle prompt in the same direction as my verbal description, reminding the players of their connection with the people the character sheets on the table represented.
Who Would Win: Superman or the Walking Dead?
“But this was no comic book and he was no hero: he was helpless. “ – Clayton Riddell3
In a traditional game of D&D the characters are superheroes. They can bend the laws of physics to their will through high-level magic, stand firm against hordes of enemies without breaking a sweat and, when laid low by a sword to the head, just chug a potion of cure light wounds and behave as if nothing happened. Under the core rules, PCs are even entitled to an (albeit drastically penalized) Reflex save while sleeping4. What do absolute badasses like these guys have to fear from measly zombies?
For one thing, zombies can be badasses too. Some incarnations of everyone’s favorite horror monster are simply templates that allow the subject to retain its combat abilities, meaning any of the scores of shambling undead in the mob could pose a significant threat to the PCs on his own. Another answer to the dilemma is to just make all the zombies tougher: in the recent adventure Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, the zombies plaguing the village of Barovia are much stronger than the garden variety available via animate dead. These zombies, too, are infused with a particularly potent necromantic illness, creating another zombie any time a victim is knocked into negative HP.
But what if the heroes are not the ones who need to worry about the zombies? Sure, they are akin to living gods but maybe their families and friends are not so fortunate. The NPCs your players have made a connection with might all be level 1 commoners, which makes even a single zombie from the Monster Manual a significant threat. Of course, as with any other danger looming over the heads of NPCs, if you kill off too many of the characters your players care about they will simply stop caring about the characters you create, so use this device sparingly.
Finally, there is the mob template from the DMG II. Similar to the swarm template but meant for sentient humanoids, this can be used to represent a crowded mass of undead that move as a single unit. Maybe they have something akin to Hivemind, as in Stephen King’s Cell, or maybe there are just too many zombies cramped into too small a space. Either way, the mechanics involved drive home the point that a hero can cut huge swathes through the horde but killing individual zombies or even a handful at a time won’t do him any good. Eventually, the zombies win the numbers game, which is why when an outbreak occurs everyone goes inside instead of standing in the street waving a katana. Well, almost everyone; the horde of undead had to come from somewhere.
By Tooth and Claw
“Infectuated individuals are known to be of a highly dangerous nature.” – The President5
It should go without saying but the kind of zombie you use in your game (whether it’s one encounter, a horror adventure or an entire campaign about the walking dead) reflects the traits you think best capture why they frighten people. In the zombie survival RPG All Flesh Must Be Eaten there is a whole chapter in the core rule book devoted to different traits zombies might possess: special vulnerabilities like brain trauma, the steps necessary to ensure a corpse reanimates successfully, whether the zombies are fast or slow or even whether the virus/curse/whatever affects all animals, not just humans.
In D&D, the various specimens of corporeal undead in the Monster Manual and other sources are all wonderful sources of inspiration if not candidates for use as zombies as-is. “Zombie,” in D&D, refers to a template applied to a once-living corporeal creature; HD are doubled and Toughness is granted as a bonus feat, and as a nod to Romero the specimen is slow, having to choose between moving or attacking every round. There are a few reasons, however, why this is unsuitable as a zombie for fans of the genre.
First, the corpse is reanimated using the spell animate dead. There is no way for a zombie to “infect” or “turn” its targets. Also, being dead and mindless, they pretty much just stand around waiting for orders from the spellcaster who created them. They don’t need to eat, sleep or breathe, and they don’t even moan when a victim is spotted. In short, unless you personally knew the zombie in question when he or she was still alive, it is not scary but gross.
Ghouls are another option. They carry a disease called “ghoul fever” which, as you might suspect, slowly kills those suffering from it and, upon death, reanimates them as another ghoul. Another classic trait is their infinite hunger: this is a concept explored further in Libris Mortis but to summarize, many times a ghoul attack is not motivated by malice toward the living. They just literally cannot eat enough to fill their bellies, so even if they wanted to spare someone’s life oftentimes the hunger makes that choice for them. Perhaps the only strike against ghouls is that they are sentient; this doesn’t mesh well with the themes we’ve discussed elsewhere, but in some ways it is even scarier to carry on a conversation with someone as they try to kill and eat you.
Of all the specimens from published sources perhaps the best candidate in recent history is, again, the Strahd Zombie from Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Two special traits set this one apart from its brothers: one allows the zombie to move and attack in the same round, but it is incapable of running or charging. The other specifies that a special roll must be made when the heroes deal enough damage to the zombie to incapacitate it; if the roll fails, the zombie is spared. These traits allow the zombie to methodically shamble toward their target and, when battle is joined, absorb theoretically infinite amounts of damage before succumbing. Finally, as stated above, the necromantic infection Strahd Zombies carry means they, like ghouls, wights and other forms of undead create new spawn whenever a victim is laid low. This version of the zombie comes closest of all WotC-published specimens to Romero’s ghoul.
That brings our theoretical discussion to a close. Next time we’ll take a look at zombies from other sources: video games, webcomics, novels and films. If you know anything about me, you already knew I’d start with Half-Life.
1 Max Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003), 74.
2 Monte Cook et al., Dungeon Master’s Guide: Core Rulebook II, Version 3.5 (Renton: WotC, 2003), 294.
3 Stephen King, Cell (New York: Pocket Star Books, 2006), 124.
4 Jonathan Tweet et al., Player’s Handbook: Core Rulebook I, Version 3.5 (Renton: WotC, 2003), 309.
5 David Wellington, Monster Nation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2004), 88.
