what's the best way to run a horde of zombies?>take all their turns individually you coward>a grappling amorphous blob>other
Grappling amorphous blob, which an occasional "special" zombie. It has some issues, but I really like how Red Markets handles zombies.
>>94923493
>>94923493>take all their turns individuallyGiving a full turn to a horde zombie doesn't matter. If they're not in range to attack then all they're doing is moving which can be done as a blob and unless your players are idiots (blank) then they'll mitigate the numbers by taking choke points, meaning even less zombies get to attack and so don't get real turns.
>>94923539>>94923570I was thinking of doing both, where zombies move individually but attack as one, with each additional adjacent zombie giving +1/+1 to the attack
>>94923493A number of conditions:Gets up from any injury that does not destroy the brain or detaches from the body, may still ambulate after dismemberment. Can grapple in large groups, and sneak inngroups too. The latter sounds dumb, but it's an unspoken staple of the genre.
>>94923493I prefer to run the undead as extremely powerful individuals rather than a horde of rotting flesh. Even Weidergangers (Zombies) are huge threats individually unless you know one is coming and have weapons appropriate to deal with it, because the brain rule doesn't apply, you have to hack it to pieces to stop it from coming after you, and it's not slow or weak, but rather like a human that is freakishly strong and can't feel pain or fear.
>>94923493Legitimately, what system? Because a zombie horde will need to be managed differently in D&D5e vs. WFRP 2e vs. Honor + Intrigue vs. Savage Worlds.My general rough solution for hordes of trash enemies though is to make a 'team' of 4-5 share a single initiative roll.
>>94923830WWN, which is OSR-adjacent
>>94923596Just mass roll their attacks. Roll all attacks at once with handful of dice and count the hits.
>>94923493I was just talking about this recently, in the 3.5 thread. All their turns individually, but they're trying to grapple rush you. Each zombie will attempt to overrun you until you are knocked down, then they'll start grappling until the max number of grapplers is reached, then any remaining will stand around you and make their slam attacks. I'm giving them an ability called "unfeeling" that lets them continue an action that normally fails when they are hit with an AoO. This so much more interesting and scary than "each zombie moves up and slams". I don't like how grapples in D&D automatically do damage though; thats a bad rule imo. I've been trying to think how I want to handle it.
>>94923854Oh, totally different. In WWN I'd treat them as individuals.I'd make 'em weird as fuck, too.
>>94923493"The best" according to what standard?
>>94923493I've been tired of zombies for a decade, but sure. Return of the Living Dead style is my preference but I'm a skeleton guy.Do not run each one individually, that's slow and boring and not what you want in a combat. If you want a horde you can run it like a swarm, or you can bum the minion rules from 4e so instead of keeping track of the HP of every individual zombie so it's a binary yes/no situation, give them a gang up bonus.Boss zombies are a staple, but do more than just "bigger more HP". Use the horde. The players can't move through a corpse carpet, but they can. Depending on the boss they could throw zombies or redirect attacks into the mass. Depending on how smart they are they could drag zombies into the players, or the other way around. If they're real nasty they could chunk a PC into the maw of meat mountain. Just do not run a combat where you keep track of an acre of health pools slowly shambling forward with nothing interesting going on, that sucks for everyone at the table including you.
>>94923493>>take all their turns individually you cowardthis
>>94923493... literally depends on the game?
>"The best" according to what standard?>... literally depends on the game?
>>94923493The more enemies you have, the better practice it is to abstract them. Rolling out several turns of individual fodder moves, individual fodder attacks is tiring and a waste of everyone's time. Generally, horde abstractions are good unless you believe that the individual entities involved are capable of large scale planning.
