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Otherwise what is the point of the rule where if you inflict triple SDC in one shot you destroy the head?

This is meant as a bypass to having to deplete the head's SDC and then the HP...

Meaning for the bypass to have any value whatsoever, the zombie's HP would need to be over twice their head's SDC.

The zombie with the most HP possible is the Mock Zombie, but even if you rolled max PE for them and the lowest SDC for their head, the HP is still less than double the head's SDC.

I think for this rule to make any sense we should make ways to increase zombie HP. Maybe make it PE x 2 or something?

If you are talking about canon zombies, they are already hard enough to kill, unless you have LOTS of ammo to burn through.

12 or 15 zombies comming at 4 pc's is already murder if they dont have lots of ammo, and gun shots bringing more ect.
A head shot should be a killer to the zombie, most people i know dont play dead reign with super powers.
A house wife, trucker, a cop and a nurse are a pretty normal party, not exactly snipers nor rolling in the ammo for mag dumps with automatic weapons.

The problem here is that there is a rules mechanic which is 100% non-applicable to any of the zombie variants as they presently exist, due to the ratio between SDC and HP.

So if raising the HP isn't acceptable, the SDC of the head needs to be lowered for this rule to actually come into effect.

The rules as written make zombies harder to kill than is appropriate for the genre.

What you suggest in the original post moves the balance in exactly the wrong way.

Every zombie movie and book is a little different, but most seem to agree that 2 adults with bats/axes/tire irons/whatever can beat down a single zombie with little difficulty. Almost all agree that a 12 gauge shotgun point blank to the head or face will end a zombie. If you suggest changes that make the balance more in line with these 2 observations, your ideas will probably get a more friendly reception here.

--flatline

Lowering SDC does it too. Or simply changing the ratio in the rule to double SDC instead of triple. Latter is simpler than redoing each variant.

I just.noticed the Crawler has less PE than the others. A mere 11 to 16 hit points. Head still 16 to 26 SDC.

Even requiring double SDC in one shot to shatter is pointless here. Even with 16 HP and 16 SDC if you did double you would have depleted the HP anyway.

I am tempted to.just say for ease to -10 SDC on heads for all zombies. Then a double/triple rule bypassing brain HP would actually do something.

Personally, I found the best balance is no HP for zombies. While Dead Reign holds a special place in my heart, it needs heavy house ruling to make it playable. Ten zombies should not be a TPK, it should be a turkey shoot.

Edited for spelling error.

I'm not even sure why they bothered with PE if calculating HP would be the only place it came into play. They don't exactly have human endurance and magic/poison isn't part of the basic system.

Unfortunate Son wrote:Personally, I found the best balance is no HP for zombies. While Dead Reign holds a special place in my heart, it needs heavy house ruling to make it playable. Ten zombies should not be a TPK, it should be a turkey shoot.

I totally agree. It's too hard as written.

I just go with SDC, as they're not living and living things have hit points. (just how i play it) I also don't necessarily have an A.R. for them either. That way they're easier to chop, stab and shoot. Limbs being hacked off and it feels more like a narrative than a brutal slug fest. The zombies, in my campaigns, are a component, but not always the center stage.
There are other villains, survivors, etc. The zombies are just a complication.

Plus i add the P.P. bonus to shooting ranged weapons (guns, bows, etc).

Called shots are in the 17-20 range, modified for movement, etc. they're still hard to pull off, but not impossible. I add more penalties for the first level or so, just because the characters are getting used to the action (depending on where i set the campaign -during or after the dead rising).

Thinking about only using AR on specific zombies. Make it an encounter based thing, with only Boss Zombies having AR.

This actually isn't about armor rating at all.

There's no purpose in introducing a special rule for a head being destroyed if you inflict 3x its SDC if it could normally be destroyed with less damage due to HP being less than 2x the SDC.

The other option, if you don't want to boost the HP, is to lower the SDC, or change it to 2x the SDC in one shot instead of 3x.

The general problem, as has been pointed out is how the zombies are already to fraking tough. Increasing HP only compounds that, decreasing SDC doesn't make them all that weaker. The rule in question is just one of many in Dead Reign that makes no sense.

It sorta makes sense, it's just that its ratio doesn't make sense in respect to the stats for the zombies, so we need to do one of these 3:

1) lower the HP:SDC ratio of the rule from 3x to something like 2x
2) raise the HP:SDC ratio of zombies by boosting HP
3) raise the HP:SDC ratio of zombies by lowering SDC

Options 1 or 3 (we could do both) would make zombies weaker, option 2 would make them stronger.

I only opted to request 2 since I didn't want to sound like I was whining about weak zombies, since in this case it would make stronger ones.

A fourth option is also possible: keep everything but instead of it being 3x the full SDC, have it be 3x the CURRENT.

That way, it would still be pointless to try and 1-shot the zombie if they were at full health, but if you had already hit the head before and lowered its SDC, it would become weaker and weaker and you'd be able to splatter it.

Although... that would mean if you managed to reduce the SDC of any zombie to 1 then 3 damage would kill it regardless of how much HP it has... meaning the rule about a zombie's brain having as much (and SEPARATE) HP as its main body would only come into effect in letting it survive hits which do 1 or 2 damage.

3x0=0 though so that would mean 0 damage could splatter it if you depleted the SDC...

What I would probably do is put a cap like "3x as much damage as the current SDC, stopping at 1/5 SDC"

Or just count damage. And ignore a rule that makes no sense. Palladium does this every so often, and Dead Reign has its share of them.

The intent of the rule is clearly to have a mechanism for a singular high-damage attack being able to quickly kill a zombie rather than the same damage being inflicted by a bunch of 1 damage attacks adding up to the same amount. It has good intentions.

OR have zombies have no HP or SDC and ONLY an AR. The Basic zombie has an AR of say 12 and called shot to the head is -2 so effectively raising the AR of the head to 14. Shots or strikes to the body can't kill it only cause "critical" damage like severing a limb and reducing speed if it is a leg or attacks if it is an arm. If all limbs are severed then it is completely immobile. If the head is struck with a called shot and the AR is penetrated then it is an automatic kill. Some of the tougher zombies would have SDC because you have to break through the skull or mass of flesh in order to cause it damage, but that SDC would then act more like armor SDC rather than a creature's SDC, once the SDC is gone the "armor is broken" and the next strike causes critical damage to limbs or a kill if the target is the head.

Zer0 Kay wrote:OR have zombies have no HP or SDC and ONLY an AR. The Basic zombie has an AR of say 12 and called shot to the head is -2 so effectively raising the AR of the head to 14. Shots or strikes to the body can't kill it only cause "critical" damage like severing a limb and reducing speed if it is a leg or attacks if it is an arm. If all limbs are severed then it is completely immobile. If the head is struck with a called shot and the AR is penetrated then it is an automatic kill. Some of the tougher zombies would have SDC because you have to break through the skull or mass of flesh in order to cause it damage, but that SDC would then act more like armor SDC rather than a creature's SDC, once the SDC is gone the "armor is broken" and the next strike causes critical damage to limbs or a kill if the target is the head.

This is almost exactly how I run it.
Just makes sense.

I'm starting a campaign tomorrow and I plan to do a horde mechanic that the more zombies there are, the less health each zombie has. Also doing multiple of each zombies including some weak ones.

If yojlower the common zombie body/head numbers from 14/17 to 12/14 what will the body number be for flesh eaters? They are already 12. To 10?