I'm working on a zombie apocalypse campaign and I want it to be realistic but I need some subclasses and a few other things.

I'm not doing any spellcasting or spellcasters and banning most magic items.                                                                                                                               

For classes I'm only doing Barbarian, Fighter (without Spellcasting), Ranger (without Spellcasting) and Rogue (without Spellcasting) and for races I'm only doing Human.

I'm looking for homebrew Paths for these classes and something to entirely replace the Rangers Spellcasting with. I also am looking for items like guns and am even open to having the zombies mutating as the party levels up and the zombies would be able to infect creatures. There would only be zombies, Beasts and Human Humanoids in the campaign.

Problem is I've been busy so if anyone wants to give suggestions for the campaign or help create homebrew stuff for me that would be awesome.

If you want your homebrew thing viewed by me comment what the homebrew thing is (subclass, race, item, E.T.C) and I'll check it out when I can. Below is what I'm looking for. Serious submissions only please.

Mutating zombie and/or infectious zombie

Various guns (any kind)

Barbarian, Fighter, Ranger and Rogue survivor subclasses and something to replace the Rangers Spellcasting

Improved Human race and Survivor backgrounds

Other things like motorcycles, smokebombs, and other things you would want to have during a zombie apocalypse. 

Thx for any submissions and/or suggestions. :)

You should look up the UA Spell-less Ranger... it gives alternatives to spellcasting, such as having mechanics for creating healing poultices to heal HP, which can't be applied mid-combat but gives access to a form of healing to make up for loss of spells.

The DMG has stats for firearms... they're generally more powerful than crossbows and other more common ranged weapons. 

I think that, rather than restrict players to playing exclusively as Humans, allow them to reflavor different races as just types of human. For example, someone could use Half-Orc stats to represent just being a particular big and strong human... maybe drop Darkvision, but other than that there's nothing about the race's stats that make them impossible to apply to a human instead. I'd say ban any race that includes spellcasting and ignore darkvision, then from there just go case-by-case with whatever race your players want to reflavor, just to make sure the race doesn't include any features that can't be explained away as human.

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

You should look up the UA Spell-less Ranger... it gives alternatives to spellcasting, such as having mechanics for creating healing poultices to heal HP, which can't be applied mid-combat but gives access to a form of healing to make up for loss of spells.

The DMG has stats for firearms... they're generally more powerful than crossbows and other more common ranged weapons. 

I think that, rather than restrict players to playing exclusively as Humans, allow them to reflavor different races as just types of human. For example, someone could use Half-Orc stats to represent just being a particular big and strong human... maybe drop Darkvision, but other than that there's nothing about the race's stats that make them impossible to apply to a human instead. I'd say ban any race that includes spellcasting and ignore darkvision, then from there just go case-by-case with whatever race your players want to reflavor, just to make sure the race doesn't include any features that can't be explained away as human.

 Awesome I'll look into that thx

If it isn’t too much trouble and your group is experienced enough, it might be a bit easier to learn a different system that is intended to work for this kind of game. You are cutting 2/3 of the classes and heavily changing one of the ones you are keeping. If you for any reason are sticking with 5E, here are some tips:

Firearms (or any ranged weapon with a huge damage die) will greatly benefit Fighters and Rangers, way more than Rouges and Barbarians. Rogues don’t get extra attack, and Barbarians only benefit from melee weapons. Fighters and Rangers will really profit from their fighting style and extra attacks, and might cause a large imbalance in DPR.

Monks can work (with lots of subclass restrictions, probably just Open Hand and Kensei) as a heavily trained martial artist. Just make KI skill-based and not mystical, and they are “realistic” enough until level 18(?) when they get Empty Body and can turn invisible. Open Hand monks also suffer from the lack of Firearm bonuses, at least relative to Kensei, who are actually quite good with guns.

You definitely need different types of zombies, not just in stats but in playstyle. Adding in beasts, and no magical things, you run the risk of every encounter feeling “same-y” where everyone just runs forward/backwards while attacking.

Quote from Flare76 >>

If it isn’t too much trouble and your group is experienced enough, it might be a bit easier to learn a different system that is intended to work for this kind of game. You are cutting 2/3 of the classes and heavily changing one of the ones you are keeping. If you for any reason are sticking with 5E, here are some tips:

Firearms (or any ranged weapon with a huge damage die) will greatly benefit Fighters and Rangers, way more than Rouges and Barbarians. Rogues don’t get extra attack, and Barbarians only benefit from melee weapons. Fighters and Rangers will really profit from their fighting style and extra attacks, and might cause a large imbalance in DPR.

Monks can work (with lots of subclass restrictions, probably just Open Hand and Kensei) as a heavily trained martial artist. Just make KI skill-based and not mystical, and they are “realistic” enough until level 18(?) when they get Empty Body and can turn invisible. Open Hand monks also suffer from the lack of Firearm bonuses, at least relative to Kensei, who are actually quite good with guns.

You definitely need different types of zombies, not just in stats but in playstyle. Adding in beasts, and no magical things, you run the risk of every encounter feeling “same-y” where everyone just runs forward/backwards while attacking.

Thx. I appreciate the info.

I don’t know if anyone looks on this much anymore but I wanted to let other people who look on here know if you search up DNZ (Dungeons and Zombies.) You can download a load of rules for zombies and new classes.

Yikes this forum is from over 2 years and I remember when OP was active... I feel ancient lol.

But this did actually come up recently on the Anything but the OGL 2.0 thread, and I'll just copy and paste what I wrote there on buffing zombies and zombie apocalypse campaigns:

Turning D&D zombies into horrifying ones:

• I like giving them more HP.
• Give them a claw attack instead of or in addition to a slam one and have it deal more damage. Give buffer ones multiattack.
• Have them be able to take an action to gnaw out a dead creature's brain. Some more powerful ones could do this to living or even unconscious targets. Spells like Protection From Evil and Good with the creature type being undead would prevent this on a target for the duration.

You could use these zombies in conjunction with the regular ones and more powerful ones. I might try and homebrew these, but I doubt it. And Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft has some creepy zombies, and Explorer's Guide to Wildemount has the Husk Zombie, which is Critical Role attempting to zombify the D&D "zombie".

Dungeons and Dragons isn't the perfectest of systems for the true zombie apocalypse campaign: Gritty, horrifying, potentially full of character deaths, and more importantly having drastically different flavor and mechanics species wise and weapons wise with much more of a fixation on guns and humans in these types of things. But a campaign like that's definitely doable with a boatload of homebrew, and you don't even need these to use things like the Husk Zombie in your campaign. But the typical style of 5e prevents even seemingly terrifying zombies from being that scary merely due to the design of the game and style of bold and reckless play that sees little dstinction between a character's zombification and their death. But you can still make zombies creepy with the right stuff, though the statblock isn't even the worst offender here.

Reflecting on this here’s what I’d have said to the OP. Maybe it will help someone in the future. 

Setting aside classes, a lot of what already exists in DND would work fine as is just by reskinning. Reskin crossbows and now you have firearms. Take a bunch of monsters with interesting mechanics and reskin them, now you have interesting, powerful zombies. eg. A zombie with the phase spiders stats with its phase ability narrated as being able to dash super fast. 

I’d say homebrewing classes, and new weapons, and new monsters sounds like a recipe for balance nightmare. 

*cocks shotgun* lets git 'em

• regular handgun(its in the DMG)
• telsa cannon(allows casting of Chain Lightning(mechanics only, no spellcasting)
• shotgun(1d12 cone of pierceing damage)
• sound cannon(toll the dead)
• liquid nitrogen cannon(frostbite)
• flamethrower(burning hands)
• rocket launcher(magic missile)
• agent orange gun(blight or cloudkill)

not guns proper but some other weapons may include

• tesla gloves(shocking grasp)
• putetrefication glove(finger of death)
• can of napalm(agganazar's scorcher or incendiary cloud)
• "magic" mushroom spores(weird, affects caster)

dropping in to thank everyone for their suggestions, I'm a long term player who's recently gotten into DMing for some friends who want to learn DnD but want their first campaign to be a zombie survival with no magic (their own choice for some reason...), so i've been searching the internet for some helpful tips and tricks and these have been a god sent!

@ User - I cannot agree enough with Captain Crunch - re-skinning - is always easier more balanced than out of the ground HB unless you are really really good at understanding the mechanics and math. Reskinn 20 skills 10 weapons and  call them all ZA _ XXXXXX so your players can easily find them and go to town.  

Nice. Thank you.

Have you considered using a system other than D&D if you want a more "realistic" world with guns and no magic?

I'm a big fan of Savage Worlds which can be used for any genre, but there's a Walking Dead RPG and other games that are specifically designed to take place in a zombie apocalypse with mechanics to support that specific style of game.

If you insist on keeping it within D&D, I recommend picking up "Everyday Heroes" for running D&D in a modern setting.