Monster of the Week: Zombies

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Ah, Zombies. A classic creature from various mythologies that, like many others, has been revived through modern film and literature, and is thus standard fare for roleplayer gamers such as us. Ironically, many of the aforementioned reviving pieces are set in modern times: the standard way of killing a Zombie seems to involve a shotgun. For this article, however, I will be focussing on the use of Zombies in 3.5E and 4E D&D, so you’ll have to use a crossbow.

Unlike previous Monster of the Week entries, I will attempt to address this creature from both DM and player perspective equally, rather than the DM focus in the past. Hopefully this will prove useful to everyone.

As a DM, the use of Zombies is simply a no brainer (pun intended). You’ve used goblins, orcs, kobolds, and skeletons… you need some other random minor monster to fling at them. Or perhaps they fit with the theme of some necromantic magics in your story. However you come to them, the purpose of Zombies is fairly simple: they’re a speed bump. Their only purpose in existance is either for XP, or to distract the Player Characters from attacking a more important target, at least for a few rounds. They’re not intelligent, they don’t have tactics, they aren’t particularly damaging: but enough of them can cause the players to notice. If you do use them as distractions, make them get in the face of the vulnerable members of the party, and try to draw the heavy melee characters away from the (probably vulnerable) master.

On the flip side, if you’re a player, you’ll encounter zombies in one of two situations: as random chunks of walking XP, or as minions of some necromancer. The first situation is fine: blow a Turn Undead or something and Cleave through. No worries. The more dangerous kind of zombie occurs when they are a distraction. You have to be rather careful in dealing with this kind of Zombie, because every round you spend killing mindless undead is one less round spent killing the master. Specific tactics follow in the edition specific sections below.

3.5 Edition

Zombies in 3.5 are really best at quite low level. I tried to use them at higher level, but they don’t scale well, and the Cleric just nuked them. Huh. They make decent encounters by themselves up to about level 5. Beyond that, various spells and abilities make them simply too weak. A single Fireball or Hasted Cleaving Fighter makes short work of any amount of weaker Zombies, and the more powerful ones are easily outmaneuver.  If the Wizard casts Fly and Haste on anyone with a decent range weapon, there’s basically nothing the zombies can do. With that in mind, the Wyvern Zombie scales better than the others: its flight really helps.

Be careful when flinging Zombies at a party. Consider the party make up: if the party is a Rogue, Druid, Beguiler, and Bard, all level 4 or less, then they will have serious problems due to the Zombies’ various resistances and immunities, combined with the lack of Turn Undead. Higher than that, and the Druid can Wild Shape, so it’s not a problem any more, but you don’t want to accidentally wipe them.

As a distraction, the tougher Zombies are feasible until, oh, at least level 9. After about level 9 the spells in the game become powerful enough to handle any form of distraction, as I explain below. Since the Zombies are fairly tough, and immune to quite a number of nasty spells, they can  physically get in the way of the enemy in addition to simply swarming the casters. Note that if the party has a Cleric, Zombies become redundant faster: more so if the Cleric has Sun Domain.

For the players, dealing with Zombies is mostly simple. Before level 5, your best bet is to use heavy melee to take them down. Throw in a Bull’s Strength and the occassional heal, and your Fighter/Barbarian/whatever can probably handle it. If you don’t have heavy melee, buff up the best melee fighter you’ve got, and hope for the best. Preference order: Cleric, Druid, Bard, Rogue. At level 5 and up, a Haste, Fly, or Fireball makes almost all the Zombies easy by themselves.

If the Zombies are being used as a distraction, try to put as few characters into handling them as possible. Ideally, you want to handle them with a single Standard Action from one character, and then concentrate on the Zombies’ master. Turn Undead is handy here, but other than that, you may need to get creative. As commented above, Zombies, and basically all minions, become a non-issue at around level 9. You can just fling a Wall of Force or something similar at them, and suddenly, the Zombies are no longer an issue. For weaker Zombies, the level 4 spell Wall of Fire is also alright, but is a short-term solution.

4th Edition

Zombies have had a bit of an overhaul. No longer are they immune to Critical Hits, and the weaker ones actually die straight away if you do Crit them. Like the 3.5 versions, however, 4E Zombies are only useful at fairly low levels, although they do scale better.

Most of the Zombies suffer the same scaling problem as the 3.5 ones: their lack of maneuverability hurts more and more as the player characters become more powerful. Even early on, the characters can outrun even the toughest Zombies… bar one. The Gravehound is a very interesting addition that provides many more options for Zombies. Moving faster than almost all player characters, they are the fast cavalry of Zombies. By engaging an enemy with Gravehounds, you can then move in slower and tougher Zombies to mop up. Very cool. Unfortunately, the flying Rotwing Zombies are nowhere near as useful as the 3.5 Wyvern Zombies due to a very low Fly speed. If you use Zombies, just make sure you bring enough: they do tend to die fairly easily, especially if the players get clever.

Players, however, will soon realise that even Gravehounds have a very strong weakness, and it’s not the Critical Hits one. They’re dumb. Completely mindless, if fact. Superior tactics will always defeat Zombies, and once you get some good area control spells (Wall of Fog, Wall of Fire, Wall of Ice… get the picture?) the Zombies simply aren’t smart enough to do anything about it. Zombies also lack any particularly special attacks: yeah, they can grab, and a couple can knock people prone, but the only real status condition any of them cause is the Chillborn Zombies’ Immobilization. Exploit this! Push them, Pull them, Slow them! A Slow non-Gravehound Zombie has a Speed of just 2! Split them up, flank them, and kill them separately. Remember, tactics and teamwork are the names of the game in 4E.

That about wraps up another Monster of the Week. Come back next week, or Subscribe to our RSS feed, to get all the latest updates and a new Monster next week!

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