How much brain damage is required?

[flatline]

How much brain damage is required to drop a zombie?

If I pierce a zombie's temple with a scratch awl and penetrate 2 or 3 inches, is that enough?
Or does it need to be more substantial like the pick end of a fireman's hatchet or 22oz rock hammer?

Is it sufficient to crush and deform the skull (say, with an engineer's hammer) or do I need to also "scatter" the brain somehow?

I know that art is never canon, but there are plenty of pics of zombies with exposed gray matter in the book, so I'm just trying to get an idea of how fragile the zombie brain really is.

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

How much brain damage is required to drop a zombie?

If I pierce a zombie's temple with a scratch awl and penetrate 2 or 3 inches, is that enough?
Or does it need to be more substantial like the pick end of a fireman's hatchet or 22oz rock hammer?

Is it sufficient to crush and deform the skull (say, with an engineer's hammer) or do I need to also "scatter" the brain somehow?

I know that art is never canon, but there are plenty of pics of zombies with exposed gray matter in the book, so I'm just trying to get an idea of how fragile the zombie brain really is.

--flatline

The Dead Reign setting implies that you pretty much have to blow the zombie's head off completely or nearly completely.

"Walking Dead" one-shot-to-the-head-with-an-icepick-and-you're-good-to-go type Zombies, these guys aren't.


See Dead Reign Main Book, pages 36-37.
(And the SDC damage requirements by section are rather substantial, given the lack of psionics and magic in the setting.)

[azazel1024]

Based on the game rules, pretty have to completely destroy the entire head due to the ridiculous amount of SDC and HP.

Of course I don't play by those rules. Otherwise a zombie is massively tougher than a person and 1-on-1 a person has little chance in hand-to-hand and is going to go through crazy amounts of ammo just to take out one zombie at range.

As for what I'd expect, I'd expect it would take roughly the same amount of damage to kill a zombie through brain trauma as it would a person, probably a little more, with the exception that you are going to need to be focusing it more on the brain stem and limbic system than things like the frontal cortex, amigdala, etc (parts of the cerebral cortex would still be important to the zombie, such as the sensory centers, motor cortex, etc). So, a zombie brain is probably somewhat tougher as it isn't using parts of it, memory centers don't matter, front cortex is useless, etc. Circulation also doesn't really matter, so blood loss isn't an issue and "starving" parts of the brain from damaging arteries and stuff isn't going to cause brain death.

So doing something like simply putting an ice pick through the forehead of a zombie probably won't kill it. Same with a knife. Putting a bullet through its forehead probably would kill/drop a zombie as most of the time that'll do sufficient trauma to "disrupt" most of the brain between hydrostatic shock, wound channel and secondary skull and bullet fragmentation. Smash its head with a hammer pretty hard might also do it. A couple/few blows to be sure though. Axe to the head would also probably be sufficient.

If all you've got is a knife, try to go in through the rear base of the skull to destroy a zombie's brain stem.

Just some thoughts.

[MurderCityDisciple]

If you remember the one scene from Day of the Dead, the one where Dr. Logan removed most of the brain from a zombie specimen, leaving just the goo on the brainstem, that should tell you right there how much of the brain is just dead meat. You have to get to the core to put a zombie down...that's a lotta mashed potatoes!!!

[azazel1024]

Which is a movie and not "real life". That said, zombies aren't real life either.

However, if you figure you need to at least have the structures of the brain functioning that are in charge of things such as voluntary motion and actual motor control (most of the involuntary motion centers aren't needed when you are dead, such as a beating heart, breathing (which is a semi-involuntary action. Pass out or are a sleep and you keep breathing), REM induced eye motion etc).

That is a lot more than simply the brain stem. However, yes, a lot of the brain would be unnecessary. At the same time, the trauma of something like a sledge hammer or wood axe slamming in to a zombie's head is likely to result in sufficient trauma to the whole brain as to render a zombie dead.

[cornholioprime]

Based on the game rules, pretty have to completely destroy the entire head due to the ridiculous amount of SDC and HP.

Of course I don't play by those rules. Otherwise a zombie is massively tougher than a person and 1-on-1 a person has little chance in hand-to-hand and is going to go through crazy amounts of ammo just to take out one zombie at range.

As for what I'd expect, I'd expect it would take roughly the same amount of damage to kill a zombie through brain trauma as it would a person, probably a little more, with the exception that you are going to need to be focusing it more on the brain stem and limbic system than things like the frontal cortex, amigdala, etc (parts of the cerebral cortex would still be important to the zombie, such as the sensory centers, motor cortex, etc). So, a zombie brain is probably somewhat tougher as it isn't using parts of it, memory centers don't matter, front cortex is useless, etc. Circulation also doesn't really matter, so blood loss isn't an issue and "starving" parts of the brain from damaging arteries and stuff isn't going to cause brain death.

So doing something like simply putting an ice pick through the forehead of a zombie probably won't kill it. Same with a knife. Putting a bullet through its forehead probably would kill/drop a zombie as most of the time that'll do sufficient trauma to "disrupt" most of the brain between hydrostatic shock, wound channel and secondary skull and bullet fragmentation. Smash its head with a hammer pretty hard might also do it. A couple/few blows to be sure though. Axe to the head would also probably be sufficient.

If all you've got is a knife, try to go in through the rear base of the skull to destroy a zombie's brain stem.

Just some thoughts.

You seem to be applying the rules of human physiology to an undead creature.

Of course a Zombie is going to be much, much, much "tougher" than a human could ever be, because in the case of the Human, you're actually killing something living -and we living things are very, very, very delicate, all things considered.

On the other hand, Zombies are essentially automated drones that do NOT function with the same rules of physiology as a living brain does; for one thing, the brain inside that head is already dead, and Zombies -at least most of them in fiction -are destroyed/"deactivated" for supernatural (i.e., non-logical/non-physiological/non-biological) reasons when the head is destroyed.



Most people would probably agree that you can't put a Zombie down under normal circumstances even with a double-damage shot to the heart or the lungs, even if said shots completely vaporize those organs......so why would anyone think that the Zombie's brain would be any different or any less "durable"?

[flatline]

Most people would probably agree that you can't put a Zombie down under normal circumstances even with a double-damage shot to the heart or the lungs, even if said shots completely vaporize those organs......so why would anyone think that the Zombie's brain would be any different or any less "durable"?

Zombies don't need their heart or lungs to function, so being able to do lots of damage to those organs without killing the Zombie says nothing about the durability of said organs.

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

Most people would probably agree that you can't put a Zombie down under normal circumstances even with a double-damage shot to the heart or the lungs, even if said shots completely vaporize those organs......so why would anyone think that the Zombie's brain would be any different or any less "durable"?

Zombies don't need their heart or lungs to function, so being able to do lots of damage to those organs without killing the Zombie says nothing about the durability of said organs.

--flatline

They don't need their brains to function, either.

Not in the sense that normal creatures do.....as is evidenced in the fact that, by the RAW, you have to cause so very much damage to both the skull and the brains in the first case.....far, far, far, far more damage than is needed to kill (or even temporarily put down) most lifeforms.

It just magically kills them if the head is destroyed/removed.

[flatline]

Most people would probably agree that you can't put a Zombie down under normal circumstances even with a double-damage shot to the heart or the lungs, even if said shots completely vaporize those organs......so why would anyone think that the Zombie's brain would be any different or any less "durable"?

Zombies don't need their heart or lungs to function, so being able to do lots of damage to those organs without killing the Zombie says nothing about the durability of said organs.

--flatline

They don't need their brains to function, either.

Not in the sense that normal creatures do.....as is evidenced in the fact that, by the RAW, you have to cause so very much damage to both the skull and the brains in the first case.....far, far, far, far more damage than is needed to kill (or even temporarily put down) most lifeforms.

It just magically kills them if the head is destroyed/removed.

Whether or not that view is correct according to canon, I find it completely unsatisfactory and do not accept it.

Ignoring critical hits and damage bonuses, it will take an average of 6 head hits from a mace or engineer hammer (the most easily acquired modern mace equivalent) to kill a zombie. In real life, a regular human is dead after 1, maybe 2 such blows. By blow three, there is less gray matter inside the skull than outside of it.

Are zombie heads somehow tougher than human heads? Or is this just another case of game mechanics being poorly balanced to get the proper effect?

As I look through the book, I am extremely tempted to simply double the damage done by all listed melee weapons. That would both balance melee weapon damage against that of firearms and against the listed SDC/HP values listed for zombies.

Thoughts?

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

Most people would probably agree that you can't put a Zombie down under normal circumstances even with a double-damage shot to the heart or the lungs, even if said shots completely vaporize those organs......so why would anyone think that the Zombie's brain would be any different or any less "durable"?

Zombies don't need their heart or lungs to function, so being able to do lots of damage to those organs without killing the Zombie says nothing about the durability of said organs.

--flatline

They don't need their brains to function, either.

Not in the sense that normal creatures do.....as is evidenced in the fact that, by the RAW, you have to cause so very much damage to both the skull and the brains in the first case.....far, far, far, far more damage than is needed to kill (or even temporarily put down) most lifeforms.

It just magically kills them if the head is destroyed/removed.

Whether or not that view is correct according to canon, I find it completely unsatisfactory and do not accept it.

Understood.

However, questions posed to the posters in the Forums are given canon answers unless the question asks for something else.

Ignoring critical hits and damage bonuses, it will take an average of 6 head hits from a mace or engineer hammer (the most easily acquired modern mace equivalent) to kill a zombie. In real life, a regular human is dead after 1, maybe 2 such blows. By blow three, there is less gray matter inside the skull than outside of it.

Are zombie heads somehow tougher than human heads? Or is this just another case of game mechanics being poorly balanced to get the proper effect?

No, it is (in my opinion) an effort on the part of the game designers to "express with SDC Points" just how hard it would be in real life to take down a human head while its owner is desperately seeking to tear off yours, not just standing still like a prop on the set of a CSI episode.

They are also trying, I think, to "express with SDC Points" just how much more durable something is to kill when it isn't constrained any longer by the limits of normal physiology ("Oh dear, you seem to have just blown out my heart and most of one lung. It tickles").

Perhaps he wanted to make sure that the Players' first reaction is to run away whenever possible, not just go in with guns a-blazing and confidently taking down zombies with a single shot.


Maybe I should go to one of those live podcasts that Kevin does or at least occasionally shows up in(??) and pose the question to him sometime, see if any of my opinions on the matter match his intentions.

[flatline]

However, questions posed to the posters in the Forums are given canon answers unless the question asks for something else.

Rather than assuming that the canon answer is desired, it would be better to provide a well reasoned answer perhaps followed by a brief discussion of how that answer is supported or contradicted by canon.

"Canon only by default" seems like a harmful position to take with respect to healthy forum discussions especially when it's presented as if it's a forum rule or something (which it's not).

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

However, questions posed to the posters in the Forums are given canon answers unless the question asks for something else.

Rather than assuming that the canon answer is desired, it would be better to provide a well reasoned answer perhaps followed by a brief discussion of how that answer is supported or contradicted by canon.

When the canon rules are not adhered to in terms of answering a given question (again, assuming that the OP isn't asking for a House Ruling in the first place), then the "well-reasoned answer" typically isn't really "well-reasoned," it's merely what the guy who is giving out as that "well-reasoned" answer, WANTS to see happen in his or her own games.

And in any event, the "well-reasoned answer" as a response doesn't always work as an answer anyway......not even if the person in question giving out such answers is the world's most reasonable and balanced and unbiased person ever.....because a great many (most? nearly all?) rules and powers and abilities inside the fictional settings of Palladium Games, aren't based on real-world logic or adherence to how things work in the real world.

[azazel1024]

Poor balance is my answer. Which is why I don't play with DR rules for how tough zombies are (as related to both difficult to make a head shot and the vast quantity of SDC and AR that their head has).

A zombie's brain shouldn't be terribly more difficult to destroy than a person's. The only real difference is, a zombie probably doesn't need most of their brain where as a person does (and things like blood loss, strokes, etc can kill a person from brain damage where as with a zombie those don't apply at all).

I totally agree, a zombie probably doesn't need much, however "dead" or not, somehow their brain is functioning in some way. A few shows/movies, such as Walking Dead, show some kind of wierd brain activity going on in a zombie's brain. That is indicitive that, however it is functioning, parts of the brain aren't truely dead. They might not require circulation, but the cells are still talking to each other in parts of the brain and still sending signals down the nerve pathways. So something that would disrupt that (IE causing true cell death and/or breaking neural pathways), should kill a zombie just like it would a human.

So some big trauma to the brain likely would kill a zombie. Some "minor" trauma that would likely kill a person, or at least likely require major brain surgery to prevent death, such as stabbing an ice pick through their forehead or similar isn't likely to kill a zombie. A few bashes with heavy and hard objects should, a decent sized bullet through the skull should, or severing the brain stem should.

Also going by most movies and TV related to zombies (and books), realistic or not, most times a bullet to the head kills a zombie. As does most major trauma, like a couple of crow bar hits or a few hits with a baseball bat. Not much zombie lore requires a person to basically obliterate their head 100%. So that would be mostly in keeping with it taking some simple major trauma to kill a zombie.

DR is one of the few cases where it takes effectively obliterating their entire head to kill a zombie (as pointed out, a good half dozen OR MORE strikes with something like an engineers hammer, hell even several good hard strikes with a sledge hammer or crowbar, supposing you luck out and roll above the AR of the zombie's head).

[cornholioprime]

Poor balance is my answer. Which is why I don't play with DR rules for how tough zombies are (as related to both difficult to make a head shot and the vast quantity of SDC and AR that their head has).

I suspect that, at some point, Kevin and company play-tested "pretty much delicate as a living human" Zombies and found them "lacking" in terms of whatever atmosphere hr/they wanted to set up in the Dead Reign.

So they made them much, much tougher than humans are, on purpose.
(Who would try to argue as counterpoint that, after 20-30 years of designing SDC for normal human beings in every Palladium Game module, that Kevin accidentally made Zombies this tough??)

They're already at least twice as strong as humans are -and this without any known adrenaline boost -so why should it somehow be kept completely out of the realm of possibility that they'd be much tougher than humans as well?

I totally agree, a zombie probably doesn't need much, however "dead" or not, somehow their brain is functioning in some way.

Not in the normal physiological sense; Palladium Zombies, unlike the "can be explained by pseudo-physics/pseudo-physiology" Zombies of fictional settings such as "The Walking Dead" and "Resident Evil" series, function on a supernatural level.

A few shows/movies, such as Walking Dead, show some kind of wierd brain activity going on in a zombie's brain. That is indicitive that, however it is functioning, parts of the brain aren't truely dead. They might not require circulation, but the cells are still talking to each other in parts of the brain and still sending signals down the nerve pathways. So something that would disrupt that (IE causing true cell death and/or breaking neural pathways), should kill a zombie just like it would a human.

You sound as if you're probably unaware that, at death, the brain is one of the first organs to die if not THE first, and the cellular breakdown process that occurs when an organism dies (there's actually a medical term for this, but I forget what it is) turns said brain into an unusable meat mush. Those neural pathways are ALREADY broken in the average dead individual long before the body even turns cold (sorry, Doctor Frankenstein).

Pseudo-physical/Pseudo-physiological settings like the two mentioned above ignore that.

So some big trauma to the brain likely would kill a zombie.

The most "traumatic" of which occurred when the heart stopped beating and the brain's individual cells destroyed themselves from the inside.

The rest of your body's organs/cells can survive from hours to days to weeks (IIRC the ears are the last to "go"); the brain, however, is rendered a little more than a fleshy meat sack in a mere 5-30 minutes after the oxygen stops flowing, maximum, depending upon the brain cell type (and I'm including the rest of the nervous system as an 'extension' of the brain).

Some "minor" trauma that would likely kill a person, or at least likely require major brain surgery to prevent death, such as stabbing an ice pick through their forehead or similar isn't likely to kill a zombie. A few bashes with heavy and hard objects should, a decent sized bullet through the skull should, or severing the brain stem should.

Agreed.......IF we were talking about a creature that still functioned physiologically.

Supernaturally, the brain is the nerve center, the heart, the linchpin, of the entire zombie.
Physiologically, however, that brain really can't get any "deader" after the first several minutes of oxygen starvation; it is about as useful to the functions of the rest of the body as a lump of ground beef inhabiting the same space in the skull.

Also going by most movies and TV related to zombies (and books), realistic or not, most times a bullet to the head kills a zombie. As does most major trauma, like a couple of crow bar hits or a few hits with a baseball bat. Not much zombie lore requires a person to basically obliterate their head 100%. So that would be mostly in keeping with it taking some simple major trauma to kill a zombie.


DR is one of the few cases where it takes effectively obliterating their entire head to kill a zombie (as pointed out, a good half dozen OR MORE strikes with something like an engineers hammer, hell even several good hard strikes with a sledge hammer or crowbar, supposing you luck out and roll above the AR of the zombie's head).

Apparently, the Author(s) of the setting don't want to be able to take them out quite that easily.

Again, the great-difficulty-to-kill factor with these particular undead seems to be of deliberate design.

[azazel1024]

PB/Kevin has made it pretty clear, they don't really do much play testing anymore for anything. As for the level of difficulty, Kevin more or less seemed to want it to be at a level of "run away", not try to take on zombies. Run and hide were the only real ways, or if you were lucky and it was just one of them, maybe try taking it on then. This is a fair amount different from most zombie stuff, which sure, you don't like zombies, but hey, your average person (unless it is great for dramatic effect or suspense) has no problems taking on a zombie or two if they have a baseball bat handy. Give em a gun and a handful are no trouble. Swarm coming...RUNNNNNNNNN!

As for brain function, at approximately 60 seconds after complete oxygen starvation at room temperature (as a result of exanquination) the brain is dead (not breathing doesn't cause stoppage of oxygen, nor does the heart not beating). At that point a voltage spike occurs as the voltage potential across the plasma membrane of neurons degrenerates brain wide. That is the point of no return.

However, the actual synaptic pathways don't instantly disintegrate. Considering that in a lot of lore, TV, etc zombies are basically reanimated dead, that (depending on how you want to look at it) means that the cells are reactivated to some degree. Might not be life as you know it though, but just because a cell stopped functioning doesn't mean it can't be "restarted" in some way.

Neurons don't instantly fall apart. Cease functioning, yes, disintegrate, no. Same with neural pathways.

Slamming a 3lb masonry hammer through a zombie's skull is a good way to distrupt those neural pathways though.

As I have kind of mentioned, what I am saying isn't canon to DR in terms of how much head damage. According to the rules you should pretty treat a zombies head like a big steel neighborhood mail box. Figure you need to wail on it with something big for awhile and then maybe you can consider it torn up.

I forget the exact numbers off the top of my head, but IIRC zombies have roughly 45SDC for their head and an AR of 16.

So that means with a weapon doing 2d6 damage and lets figure a +2 to strike, on average it would require roughly 12 attempts to actually kill a zombie (slightly less than 50% chance of scoring a hit that does damage and on average 10 damage per hit). If you have 3 attacks per melee round that means roughly an entire minute to kill a single zombie. All the while it is trying to eat/kill you.

If a zombie can do 1d6+2 damage to you and is guaranteed roughly 3 in 4 attempts hit you supposing you aren't parrying or dodging and sucking up your attacks (unless you have automatic parry or automatic dodge) and it has 2 attacks per melee round, in the same 4 melee round period it is going to do 30 damage to you. Considering your average character, supposing one of them doesn't pin you, and you don't have any special skills, training, distance weapons, etc, the average amount of SDC and HP for a character means that two zombies are likely to kill you if you get in to melee range and you try to fight it out.

Even if you are talking at a distance, your average 9mm pistol in the game, roughly 12 rounds supposing you don't have a lot of WP skill or PP for a big strike bonus. Have a couple of zombies coming at you and you are going to BLAZE through ammo just to take 2 or 3 down.

Really, unless there is a big group of you, you should never attempt even 1 on 1 zombie melee combat unless you really need to. At a distance maybe, but only if you can do it quietly and have lots of ammo. If there is a group of you, say 3 or 4, you could probably take on a number of zombies, but it is going to have to be 1 at a time and have to be real, real careful.

I changed the rules to drop the ridiculous AR bit and made it a simple called shot at -3 to strike for ranged weapons (no penalty for hand-to-hand) and dropped the SDC to 15+1d6. So if you don't have terrible luck, you can probably get a head shot/head hit. Depending on the weapon you can probably take one out in maybe 2 hits (3 or 4 if using something "weak" like a baseball bat, or 1 if using something like a rifle and a good roll).


The few times I have played with my group with those rules...no issues. The games never once resembled resident evil or anything else like that. Players still tended to try to avoid zombies. However, most times when a player ended up running face to face with one hidden in a broom closet or under a bed, most of the time they took it out without too much trouble other than a scare and maybe getting hurt a little depending on how suprised they were and availability for team member help. Any time a big swarm hit, they still ran for it or were dead meat. It did allow them to manage clearing buildings and such for reasonably and kept big swarms from coming down on them a few times (you can't really stop a zombie from moaning and attacking all of them around you with a quick silent kill if it is IMPOSSIBLE to quickly kill one. Oh yeah, nail it with a crossbow...oh and a dozen bolts/attempts. Yeah, it'll just standard there quietly while make it look like a pincushion).

[flatline]

According to DR p36, SDC of a zombie head is 2D6+14.

So on average, your house rule only provides 2.5 less SDC than canon.

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

PB/Kevin has made it pretty clear, they don't really do much play testing anymore for anything. As for the level of difficulty, Kevin more or less seemed to want it to be at a level of "run away", not try to take on zombies. Run and hide were the only real ways, or if you were lucky and it was just one of them, maybe try taking it on then. This is a fair amount different from most zombie stuff, which sure, you don't like zombies, but hey, your average person (unless it is great for dramatic effect or suspense) has no problems taking on a zombie or two if they have a baseball bat handy. Give em a gun and a handful are no trouble. Swarm coming...RUNNNNNNNNN!

As for brain function, at approximately 60 seconds after complete oxygen starvation at room temperature (as a result of exanquination) the brain is dead (not breathing doesn't cause stoppage of oxygen, nor does the heart not beating). At that point a voltage spike occurs as the voltage potential across the plasma membrane of neurons degrenerates brain wide. That is the point of no return.

However, the actual synaptic pathways don't instantly disintegrate. Considering that in a lot of lore, TV, etc zombies are basically reanimated dead, that (depending on how you want to look at it) means that the cells are reactivated to some degree. Might not be life as you know it though, but just because a cell stopped functioning doesn't mean it can't be "restarted" in some way.

Oh, you can still put electricity through a cell.

But those cells in the brain, and particularly the brain, rapidly undergo (I found out what the term is) "liquefactive necrosis" in an extremely short period of time; while the physical structure of the axons and dendrites and neurons might remain intact -the "hardware," if you will -the interior of the cells that have the "programming" in them rapidly and literally turn to mush. And that's a freshly-dead brain, not the reanimated corpse of something that died days or weeks ago (the very proteins in the body that make up the cells also degrade over time, no matter how durable the cell is).

(By the way, without blood flow and oxygen [and sugar] flowing to the neurons, they too are useless.)

Neurons don't instantly fall apart. Cease functioning, yes, disintegrate, no. Same with neural pathways.

Slamming a 3lb masonry hammer through a zombie's skull is a good way to distrupt those neural pathways though.

You are

A]] assuming that Palladium Zombies' brains and nervous systems function strictly along the lines of real-world physiology (these creatures, unlike undead in other settings, are clearly shown to be supernatural)

and

B]] Forgetting that even if Palladium Zombies DID work along the lines of real-world physiology, then they wouldn't "work" at all (as mentioned above, the neurons still need blood/oxygen/sugar of their own to transmit and receive "data" -not an option with the non-functioning lungs and circulatory system).

As I have kind of mentioned, what I am saying isn't canon to DR in terms of how much head damage. According to the rules you should pretty treat a zombies head like a big steel neighborhood mail box. Figure you need to wail on it with something big for awhile and then maybe you can consider it torn up.

I forget the exact numbers off the top of my head, but IIRC zombies have roughly 45SDC for their head and an AR of 16.

Yes, something like that (actually, it's somewhere around 30 SDC for just the head...and even after you crush the skull, THEN you have to deplete the monster's Hit Points).

I will say it again -I don't think that Kevin designed these Zombies so that any hotheaded character with a ballpeen hammer and a baseball bat could just charge through a crowd with impunity.

So that means with a weapon doing 2d6 damage and lets figure a +2 to strike, on average it would require roughly 12 attempts to actually kill a zombie (slightly less than 50% chance of scoring a hit that does damage and on average 10 damage per hit). If you have 3 attacks per melee round that means roughly an entire minute to kill a single zombie. All the while it is trying to eat/kill you.

If a zombie can do 1d6+2 damage to you and is guaranteed roughly 3 in 4 attempts hit you supposing you aren't parrying or dodging and sucking up your attacks (unless you have automatic parry or automatic dodge) and it has 2 attacks per melee round, in the same 4 melee round period it is going to do 30 damage to you. Considering your average character, supposing one of them doesn't pin you, and you don't have any special skills, training, distance weapons, etc, the average amount of SDC and HP for a character means that two zombies are likely to kill you if you get in to melee range and you try to fight it out.

Even if you are talking at a distance, your average 9mm pistol in the game, roughly 12 rounds supposing you don't have a lot of WP skill or PP for a big strike bonus. Have a couple of zombies coming at you and you are going to BLAZE through ammo just to take 2 or 3 down.

Really, unless there is a big group of you, you should never attempt even 1 on 1 zombie melee combat unless you really need to. At a distance maybe, but only if you can do it quietly and have lots of ammo. If there is a group of you, say 3 or 4, you could probably take on a number of zombies, but it is going to have to be 1 at a time and have to be real, real careful.

It would seem that, on the Earth of Dead Reign, discretion is most definitely the better part of valor.

(Frankly, I would bet that the super-durable nature of these Zombies must make for one hell of a good [scary] time around the gaming table. And maybe the designers of the game found it too boring to play less-durable Zombies, I don't know.)

I changed the rules to drop the ridiculous AR bit and made it a simple called shot at -3 to strike for ranged weapons (no penalty for hand-to-hand) and dropped the SDC to 15+1d6. So if you don't have terrible luck, you can probably get a head shot/head hit. Depending on the weapon you can probably take one out in maybe 2 hits (3 or 4 if using something "weak" like a baseball bat, or 1 if using something like a rifle and a good roll).


The few times I have played with my group with those rules...no issues. The games never once resembled resident evil or anything else like that. Players still tended to try to avoid zombies. However, most times when a player ended up running face to face with one hidden in a broom closet or under a bed, most of the time they took it out without too much trouble other than a scare and maybe getting hurt a little depending on how suprised they were and availability for team member help. Any time a big swarm hit, they still ran for it or were dead meat. It did allow them to manage clearing buildings and such for reasonably and kept big swarms from coming down on them a few times (you can't really stop a zombie from moaning and attacking all of them around you with a quick silent kill if it is IMPOSSIBLE to quickly kill one. Oh yeah, nail it with a crossbow...oh and a dozen bolts/attempts. Yeah, it'll just standard there quietly while make it look like a pincushion).

Your House Rule looks pretty interesting, and sounds pretty interesting to play, too.

[robertbc73]

How much sdc do zombies have in DR? I havent gotten the base book yet.

[cornholioprime]

How much sdc do zombies have in DR? I havent gotten the base book yet.

Let's put it this way:

They are assigned "SDC by location" stats, and just the head alone has as much as 26 SDC (2D6 + 14), and that's for a normal zombie.

The supernatural process of turning the dead into the undead in this setting also apparently, greatly, fortifies them physically.

[flatline]

How much sdc do zombies have in DR? I havent gotten the base book yet.

Let's put it this way:

They are assigned "SDC by location" stats, and just the head alone has as much as 26 SDC (2D6 + 14), and that's for a normal zombie.

The supernatural process of turning the dead into the undead in this setting also apparently, greatly, fortifies them physically.

Is this a case of the system presented in the book being out of sync with the setting presented in the book?

There's lots of flavor text mentioning bashing out zombie brains and no indication that this is more difficult than bashing out a regular human's brains.

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

How much sdc do zombies have in DR? I havent gotten the base book yet.

Let's put it this way:

They are assigned "SDC by location" stats, and just the head alone has as much as 26 SDC (2D6 + 14), and that's for a normal zombie.

The supernatural process of turning the dead into the undead in this setting also apparently, greatly, fortifies them physically.

Is this a case of the system presented in the book being out of sync with the setting presented in the book?

There's lots of flavor text mentioning bashing out zombie brains and no indication that this is more difficult than bashing out a regular human's brains.

--flatline

Flavor Text frequently clashes with the official stats.

In many (most?) Palladium publications.

[azazel1024]

PB/Kevin has made it pretty clear, they don't really do much play testing anymore for anything. As for the level of difficulty, Kevin more or less seemed to want it to be at a level of "run away", not try to take on zombies. Run and hide were the only real ways, or if you were lucky and it was just one of them, maybe try taking it on then. This is a fair amount different from most zombie stuff, which sure, you don't like zombies, but hey, your average person (unless it is great for dramatic effect or suspense) has no problems taking on a zombie or two if they have a baseball bat handy. Give em a gun and a handful are no trouble. Swarm coming...RUNNNNNNNNN!

As for brain function, at approximately 60 seconds after complete oxygen starvation at room temperature (as a result of exanquination) the brain is dead (not breathing doesn't cause stoppage of oxygen, nor does the heart not beating). At that point a voltage spike occurs as the voltage potential across the plasma membrane of neurons degrenerates brain wide. That is the point of no return.

However, the actual synaptic pathways don't instantly disintegrate. Considering that in a lot of lore, TV, etc zombies are basically reanimated dead, that (depending on how you want to look at it) means that the cells are reactivated to some degree. Might not be life as you know it though, but just because a cell stopped functioning doesn't mean it can't be "restarted" in some way.

Oh, you can still put electricity through a cell.

But those cells in the brain, and particularly the brain, rapidly undergo (I found out what the term is) "liquefactive necrosis" in an extremely short period of time; while the physical structure of the axons and dendrites and neurons might remain intact -the "hardware," if you will -the interior of the cells that have the "programming" in them rapidly and literally turn to mush. And that's a freshly-dead brain, not the reanimated corpse of something that died days or weeks ago (the very proteins in the body that make up the cells also degrade over time, no matter how durable the cell is).

(By the way, without blood flow and oxygen [and sugar] flowing to the neurons, they too are useless.)

Neurons don't instantly fall apart. Cease functioning, yes, disintegrate, no. Same with neural pathways.

Slamming a 3lb masonry hammer through a zombie's skull is a good way to distrupt those neural pathways though.

You are

A]] assuming that Palladium Zombies' brains and nervous systems function strictly along the lines of real-world physiology (these creatures, unlike undead in other settings, are clearly shown to be supernatural)

and

B]] Forgetting that even if Palladium Zombies DID work along the lines of real-world physiology, then they wouldn't "work" at all (as mentioned above, the neurons still need blood/oxygen/sugar of their own to transmit and receive "data" -not an option with the non-functioning lungs and circulatory system).

As I have kind of mentioned, what I am saying isn't canon to DR in terms of how much head damage. According to the rules you should pretty treat a zombies head like a big steel neighborhood mail box. Figure you need to wail on it with something big for awhile and then maybe you can consider it torn up.

I forget the exact numbers off the top of my head, but IIRC zombies have roughly 45SDC for their head and an AR of 16.

Yes, something like that (actually, it's somewhere around 30 SDC for just the head...and even after you crush the skull, THEN you have to deplete the monster's Hit Points).

I will say it again -I don't think that Kevin designed these Zombies so that any hotheaded character with a ballpeen hammer and a baseball bat could just charge through a crowd with impunity.

So that means with a weapon doing 2d6 damage and lets figure a +2 to strike, on average it would require roughly 12 attempts to actually kill a zombie (slightly less than 50% chance of scoring a hit that does damage and on average 10 damage per hit). If you have 3 attacks per melee round that means roughly an entire minute to kill a single zombie. All the while it is trying to eat/kill you.

If a zombie can do 1d6+2 damage to you and is guaranteed roughly 3 in 4 attempts hit you supposing you aren't parrying or dodging and sucking up your attacks (unless you have automatic parry or automatic dodge) and it has 2 attacks per melee round, in the same 4 melee round period it is going to do 30 damage to you. Considering your average character, supposing one of them doesn't pin you, and you don't have any special skills, training, distance weapons, etc, the average amount of SDC and HP for a character means that two zombies are likely to kill you if you get in to melee range and you try to fight it out.

Even if you are talking at a distance, your average 9mm pistol in the game, roughly 12 rounds supposing you don't have a lot of WP skill or PP for a big strike bonus. Have a couple of zombies coming at you and you are going to BLAZE through ammo just to take 2 or 3 down.

Really, unless there is a big group of you, you should never attempt even 1 on 1 zombie melee combat unless you really need to. At a distance maybe, but only if you can do it quietly and have lots of ammo. If there is a group of you, say 3 or 4, you could probably take on a number of zombies, but it is going to have to be 1 at a time and have to be real, real careful.

It would seem that, on the Earth of Dead Reign, discretion is most definitely the better part of valor.

(Frankly, I would bet that the super-durable nature of these Zombies must make for one hell of a good [scary] time around the gaming table. And maybe the designers of the game found it too boring to play less-durable Zombies, I don't know.)

I changed the rules to drop the ridiculous AR bit and made it a simple called shot at -3 to strike for ranged weapons (no penalty for hand-to-hand) and dropped the SDC to 15+1d6. So if you don't have terrible luck, you can probably get a head shot/head hit. Depending on the weapon you can probably take one out in maybe 2 hits (3 or 4 if using something "weak" like a baseball bat, or 1 if using something like a rifle and a good roll).


The few times I have played with my group with those rules...no issues. The games never once resembled resident evil or anything else like that. Players still tended to try to avoid zombies. However, most times when a player ended up running face to face with one hidden in a broom closet or under a bed, most of the time they took it out without too much trouble other than a scare and maybe getting hurt a little depending on how suprised they were and availability for team member help. Any time a big swarm hit, they still ran for it or were dead meat. It did allow them to manage clearing buildings and such for reasonably and kept big swarms from coming down on them a few times (you can't really stop a zombie from moaning and attacking all of them around you with a quick silent kill if it is IMPOSSIBLE to quickly kill one. Oh yeah, nail it with a crossbow...oh and a dozen bolts/attempts. Yeah, it'll just standard there quietly while make it look like a pincushion).

Your House Rule looks pretty interesting, and sounds pretty interesting to play, too.

Keep another thing in mind though, in most zombie lore, including DR, a person rises as a zombie generally within seconds to minutes of having died. That may, possibly, be enough to cause complete and total brain death, but it wouldn't generally be sufficient to cause real break down of the nervous tissues/cells/pathways/etc.

Who knows how a zombie works. Maybe all it needs is the pathways and the viability of the cells themselves is completely irrelevant. They do tend to operate like machines after all.

It could be that in typical zombie lore (since generally zombies are caused by some kind of virus or disease), the virus preserves the neural tissue, or maybe the actual neural cells are completely irrelevant or even keep the zombie virus form working. The Z-virus ends up killing all of the neuron, axions, etc and litterally surplants them using the existing synaptic pathways. Patient death occurs when not enough neural tissue remains for the person to be "alive" and then the person dies. Over the proceeding seconds, minutes or few hours the zombie virus rapidly completes surplanting the necessary neural tissue with itself and reactivates the person, now in control of the body (with the z-virus already having taken over the muscles, peripheral nerves, etc in the process).

[flatline]

How much sdc do zombies have in DR? I havent gotten the base book yet.

Let's put it this way:

They are assigned "SDC by location" stats, and just the head alone has as much as 26 SDC (2D6 + 14), and that's for a normal zombie.

The supernatural process of turning the dead into the undead in this setting also apparently, greatly, fortifies them physically.

Is this a case of the system presented in the book being out of sync with the setting presented in the book?

There's lots of flavor text mentioning bashing out zombie brains and no indication that this is more difficult than bashing out a regular human's brains.

--flatline

Flavor Text frequently clashes with the official stats.

In many (most?) Palladium publications.

If the flavor text and system are at odds with each other, then it's up to me to decide whether I play the system as presented or make adjustments to better reflect the flavor text (or ignore both and do my own thing)

--flatline

[cornholioprime]

How much sdc do zombies have in DR? I havent gotten the base book yet.

Let's put it this way:

They are assigned "SDC by location" stats, and just the head alone has as much as 26 SDC (2D6 + 14), and that's for a normal zombie.

The supernatural process of turning the dead into the undead in this setting also apparently, greatly, fortifies them physically.

Is this a case of the system presented in the book being out of sync with the setting presented in the book?

There's lots of flavor text mentioning bashing out zombie brains and no indication that this is more difficult than bashing out a regular human's brains.

--flatline

Flavor Text frequently clashes with the official stats.

In many (most?) Palladium publications.

If the flavor text and system are at odds with each other, then it's up to me to decide whether I play the system as presented or make adjustments to better reflect the flavor text (or ignore both and do my own thing)

--flatline

It's "up to you" to decide whether or not you'll follow the RAW or go with your own, house-ruled alterations in any event in your games.

Why are you stating the obvious?

[robertbc73]

30 ish sdc for the skull isnt bad but people do make called shots to bypass the bone in movies. Stab through the eye. Stab up under the jaw. Ect.

[flatline]

It's "up to you" to decide whether or not you'll follow the RAW or go with your own, house-ruled alterations in any event in your games.

Why are you stating the obvious?

Because it pleases me to do so.

--flatline

[robertbc73]

For what its worth. It does seem that multiple brain anurisms (sp) is enough brain damage to prevent a person from changing into a zombie. At least in one line of zombie fanfare.

[cornholioprime]

It's "up to you" to decide whether or not you'll follow the RAW or go with your own, house-ruled alterations in any event in your games.

Why are you stating the obvious?

Because it pleases me to do so.

--flatline

Good luck with that line of attack in future discussions.

[cornholioprime]

For what its worth. It does seem that multiple brain anurisms (sp) is enough brain damage to prevent a person from changing into a zombie. At least in one line of zombie fanfare.

An interesting take on the issue, I'd say....especially when one considers that what happens to the brain upon death is so much more worse than a bunch of aneurisms.

[robertbc73]

Just sharing what I noticed reading. ^^

[Shotofentropy]

Also, to simplify things for new players, "easy" xp, or mass combat just to frustrate the players...assume zeds 4 days w/o PPE, have been attacked by rogue dogs, pecked at by vultures and crows, and posibly fallen down/walked into low-hanging objects (allready busted skulls); you could lower the sdc rating of many/any parts. If a human's damaged a zombie and escaped without either being killed a zombie could be in rough shape.

Edit: I forgot they "heal" every hour, even without PPE. But, the concept could still apply if one was only a couple hours refereshed.