Homebrew Intelligent Zombie Species Details
Death is not the end
A scratch, a bite, drinking blood, magical resurrection, or even a defect of alchemy. Zombies can be created any number of ways. Most turn into mindless undead, serving whatever dark power brought them, some remain true to their former selves, or at least a shadow of it.
Whatever the case, a Zombie may retain some base appearance of the race they once were, but now are something else. They lose any connection to their former lives (and, by extension, any traits that may have been associated with that former life) and become a member of the undead.
Corpse body
Zombies retain the appearance they had in life, however, the process of becoming undead has permanently changed their physical appearance. Any hair they have would become stark white, and their skin (or scales, if applicable) become pale.
Undead Quirks
Due to the rarity of this condition, there is no baseline zombie culture, but some general quirks have been noted from what breif interactions Intelligent Zombies have with general society.
| D10 | QUIRK |
|---|---|
| 1 | You only eat meat, which is raw, and recently killed. |
| 2 | Despite how much you bathe, you constantly smell vaguely of death. |
| 3 | You don't appear to breathe. (but must still breathe to survive) |
| 4 | You are incapable of feeling pain. (But can still be damaged) |
| 5 | Occasionally, you lose an extremity absent-mindedly. (Can be re-attached with a DC 5 medicine check) |
| 6 | You sometimes wake up screaming. |
| 7 | You have a pre-occupation with eating the brains of creatures you kill. |
| 8 | You bleed a viscous black ooze. |
| 9 | You are completely cold to the touch. |
| 10 | The only time you are happy is during a kill. |
Intelligent Zombie Traits
Your intelligent zombie character has the following racial traits.Zombification
Either by infection or ingestion of alchemical potion, you have become undead. You gain resistance to poison damage and an immunity to being poisoned and proficiency in Intimidation and Stealth.
Ability Score Increase
Your Constituion score increases by 2, and your Strength score increases by 1.
Age
Zombies have lifespans equivalent to humans. However, they do not age from the age they were turned.
Alignment
Zombies tend toward chaotic alignments, as they let impulse guide their decisions. They are usually evil, with most of them driven by greed or other dark impulses.
Size
Zombies are the same size as humans and relatively slender. Your size is Medium.
Speed
Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision
You can see in the dark due to your undead nature. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can’t discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.
Zombie Scratch
Due to your zombification, you have gained the ability to damage others with a scratch. Your scratch does 1d4 + your strength modifier slashing damage.
Comments
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Posted May 18, 2018While I don't really have any mechanical complaints about this class, the thematics drive me up a wall. This stems largely from the differences between the race and the monster. A standard zombie has immunity to poison (damage and condition) and the Undead Fortitude feature. More than anything, that's the core identity of the Zombie.
They both have Darkvision at least. The monster is slower, but we can easily write that off as being an intelligence thing. Your zombie has poisoned immunity, but not poison immunity. Yuan-Ti have it, so it's not like there's no precedent. While That's a big part of the Yuan-Ti's power, Zombies don't otherwise have much going on. Zombification implies your creature type changed to undead, but doesn't actually state it. That's really important to resolve one way or the other.
The other big element is Undead Fortitude which is completely absent from the race. This is surprising since the Half-Orc's Relentless Endurance is a pretty easy match. In fact, the half orc would have been a pretty good place to start designing this race. Flip the ability mods and drop Savage attacks and you're almost there. That'd also explain why you gave the zombie Intimidation proficiency (while still being a mismatch against the monster), though the stealth proficiency still makes no sense.
My recommendation would be: Drop both skill proficiencies from zombification and raise the damage resistance to an immunity. Explicitly state if the creature type is Humanoid or Undead. Drop Zombie Scratch and add Relentless Endurance.
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Posted May 18, 2018I've been working on a better version (specifically to address if it classifies as undead regarding healing spells), mostly just conferring with friends if it being undead would ruin the race or if them being able to heal would make it too much.
I was unaware of the poison damage immunity on Yuan-Ti, and assumed full immunity to a damage type would be too much. I am afraid most of the issues stem from my own dislike of making something that seems "too op"...
Also, the stealth proficiency was because I was batting around the idea that the race would eat the flesh of the living/recently dead, and that would require some level of being able to stay hidden while feeding...
I'll definitely take these into consideration while working on a new version, thanks.
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Posted Jun 2, 2018Hi! I really like this concept, however, I feel that it is lacking. Just as Vaegrim said, this race would benefit from a trait similar to Relentless Endurance. I would also like to question why you didn't give this race a feature to negate turn undead or similar spells. Another point Vaegrim had that I agree with is dropping the skill proficiency of stealth at least. A tiny change that I feel would help is making the damage from Zombie Scratch necrotic instead of slashing as it more thematically fits the zombie.
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Posted Jun 2, 2018I am unaware of any feature that would negate a turn undead spell or anything like that, if you have an example I would love a link to it, my current testing version is using something similar to Centaur/Minotaur's Hybrid Nature feature to give it a Humanoid/Undead listing.
Unfortunately I'm unable to change the natural weapon damage to special damage types, only slashing/piercing/bludgeoning, so that is something you'd have to take up with the people who run DnDB, not me.
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Posted May 28, 2019You call it an Intelligent Zombie, but there is not one INT modifier? What makes it intelligent, and not just a regular zombie?
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Posted May 28, 2019...The fact it would be a playable character.