Just watched Zee Bashew's latest video on homebrewing scarier zombies: https://youtu.be/rT6jGPVcPIw and i have a question:
I'm confused about the HP bit of this homebrew, whats the difference between dropping current HP and Max for a monster, I know for a player it would matter a ton as they're likely to be healing and shiz but for a monster that's not gonna happen so surely it amounts to essentially the same thing? Am I missing something?
I think it boils down to dropping the zombies hp to1 means you throw more fo them at the party. Zombies are much more terrifying in a a mass, if you read or watch the Walkin Dead then the big fear they have about the walking dead is that a large group will find one of their towns. Yes, a 1hp zombie will go down easily but if the party are out numbered 5-1 and they have to use steath to take them down or possibly attract more then you have tension building as the spell casters have to weigh up using their big area effect spells to take out the horde of zombies ASAP against the possibility of attracting more zombies in the area, combine that with the risk of infection mechanic and the melee fighters ahve to weigh up their chances of not getting hit.
The sound attracting mechanic sounds like a board game called Zombicide which is a great game if only for the miniatures you get with it. It gives the party a way to potentially deal with a massive group of monsters as well as they can send some one off to make a massive noise and try to draw the horde away.
The most zombies I've used in a session was 300 vs a party of 4 and 1 npc, the pc'npc were in a crumbling tower and the goal for the pc's was to hold the zombies off long enough for the NPC to cast a teleportation circle, the rules I used were:
all zombies have 1hp and auto fail saving throws (so I didn't have to keep massive notes on each one and as one died I just moved the mini to the back of the horde).
all zombies go last in initiative and can only use attack or dash actions, no undead fortitude.
on initiative count 20 an action called "weight of numbers" happens (all zombies move 5ft forward due to the press of bodies behind the front rank, this could also force them over barricaeds, through doors etc).
It all started off with the party being very casual with "zombies? pff!" approach but after a few rounds, zombies forcing past abriricades and chasing them up narrow stair cases as well as attacks wth advatage due tot he copious amounts of flanking and they soon got worried....especially when they forgot how many rounds it had been since the npc starting casting the teleportation circle.
Had to rewatch the video to understand the context of the question. Now that I've done so, however...
What Zee is suggesting is that zombies you encounter 'in the wild', i.e. enemy zombies, are dropped to a single hit point in order to represent their rotting nature - these are not fresh critters under the sway of a necromancer, these are shambling corpses with no caretaker. They're not difficult to put down. The fact that they still have 22 max HP means that if a necromancer does come along and start maintaining his zombie horde, the players can be surprised by zombies that can absorb a punch or two before dropping. Elsewise, dropping the current HP value to 1 on regular zombies is one way to enable the DM to fit more of them into an encounter.
Zombies don't really work unless they drastically outnumber the PCs. One of my favorite game sequences I've ever played was a heavily modified Phandelver, where the low level (~4th) party had to deal with an old village full of over a thousand zombies. Combat was straight out; had to be sneaky and subterfuge-y just to not die because The Horde could descend any time you made a mistake. Slashing the HP of any given individual zombie means more of them can be packed into a map, and it's when there's four or five zombies per PC at the minimum that The Horde starts becoming a real - and exciting - threat.
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Just watched Zee Bashew's latest video on homebrewing scarier zombies: https://youtu.be/rT6jGPVcPIw and i have a question:
I'm confused about the HP bit of this homebrew, whats the difference between dropping current HP and Max for a monster, I know for a player it would matter a ton as they're likely to be healing and shiz but for a monster that's not gonna happen so surely it amounts to essentially the same thing? Am I missing something?
I think it boils down to dropping the zombies hp to1 means you throw more fo them at the party. Zombies are much more terrifying in a a mass, if you read or watch the Walkin Dead then the big fear they have about the walking dead is that a large group will find one of their towns. Yes, a 1hp zombie will go down easily but if the party are out numbered 5-1 and they have to use steath to take them down or possibly attract more then you have tension building as the spell casters have to weigh up using their big area effect spells to take out the horde of zombies ASAP against the possibility of attracting more zombies in the area, combine that with the risk of infection mechanic and the melee fighters ahve to weigh up their chances of not getting hit.
The sound attracting mechanic sounds like a board game called Zombicide which is a great game if only for the miniatures you get with it. It gives the party a way to potentially deal with a massive group of monsters as well as they can send some one off to make a massive noise and try to draw the horde away.
The most zombies I've used in a session was 300 vs a party of 4 and 1 npc, the pc'npc were in a crumbling tower and the goal for the pc's was to hold the zombies off long enough for the NPC to cast a teleportation circle, the rules I used were:
all zombies have 1hp and auto fail saving throws (so I didn't have to keep massive notes on each one and as one died I just moved the mini to the back of the horde).
all zombies go last in initiative and can only use attack or dash actions, no undead fortitude.
on initiative count 20 an action called "weight of numbers" happens (all zombies move 5ft forward due to the press of bodies behind the front rank, this could also force them over barricaeds, through doors etc).
It all started off with the party being very casual with "zombies? pff!" approach but after a few rounds, zombies forcing past abriricades and chasing them up narrow stair cases as well as attacks wth advatage due tot he copious amounts of flanking and they soon got worried....especially when they forgot how many rounds it had been since the npc starting casting the teleportation circle.
Had to rewatch the video to understand the context of the question. Now that I've done so, however...
What Zee is suggesting is that zombies you encounter 'in the wild', i.e. enemy zombies, are dropped to a single hit point in order to represent their rotting nature - these are not fresh critters under the sway of a necromancer, these are shambling corpses with no caretaker. They're not difficult to put down. The fact that they still have 22 max HP means that if a necromancer does come along and start maintaining his zombie horde, the players can be surprised by zombies that can absorb a punch or two before dropping. Elsewise, dropping the current HP value to 1 on regular zombies is one way to enable the DM to fit more of them into an encounter.
Zombies don't really work unless they drastically outnumber the PCs. One of my favorite game sequences I've ever played was a heavily modified Phandelver, where the low level (~4th) party had to deal with an old village full of over a thousand zombies. Combat was straight out; had to be sneaky and subterfuge-y just to not die because The Horde could descend any time you made a mistake. Slashing the HP of any given individual zombie means more of them can be packed into a map, and it's when there's four or five zombies per PC at the minimum that The Horde starts becoming a real - and exciting - threat.
Please do not contact or message me.