Saves: as Fighter
Attacks: as Fighter
Advances: Special
Requirements: Special
- Zombies begin play with HP equal to their Master's Intelligence score.
- Zombies may wear no armor. They may not use shields.
- Zombies may use any weapon but they will use it gracelessly and receive no tohit bonuses with weapons except bonuses from magic items. They gain their full tohit and damage bonus with their bare hands.
- Zombies automatically Know Direction concerning a specific person, item, or building about which their Master has instructed them.
- Zombies may Hide in Shadows/Stealth as a level 1 Thief.
- Zombies may roll 3d6 whenever they want to attempt something bordering on supernatural, like choking someone with great strength, smashing through a wall, ignore damage, walk across the bottom of a lake, etc. Rolling a 1 means they have the gift of the Evil Eye and succeed for 1 round/partially succeed; use 1d8 to set damage/duration/extent of success. Rolling two 1s means they are gifted in the Eyes of the Serpent and super succeed. Rolling greater than their Master's Intelligence means they fail and the Zombie becomes Confused.
- Zombies confronted with their past lives, skilled rival mentalists, or who find their quest wholly interrupted (say they were supposed to retrieve a vase that gets shattered) must roll against their Master's Wisdom, with failure indicating Confusion: all orders are now jumbled and must be interpreted as broadly and disastrously as possible.
- Zombies advance normally as a Magic-User. Zombies whose Masters level up automatically gain enough XP to level up.
- At level 3 Zombies are immune to charm, fear, sleep, and paralysis.
- At level 4 Zombies improve their AC by an amount equal to their Master's Charisma bonus. They gain this bonus again at level 8.
- At level 6 they do not need food, sleep, water, or air.
- At level 10 they neither age nor burn.
- Zombies may advance to whatever level their Master may advance.
- Zombies do not speak unless they speak a short message delivered from their Master. They only understand whatever language their master uses to speak to them. They are +1 to saves against spells cast in other languages.
The idea here is to have a sort of Monster As Magic Item. Like say you find an amulet, what does this do? It binds one soul forever to yours and is otherwise worthless. The DM should use this sparingly and have fun thinking up genie wish/EC Comics ways of having this boon backfire. And of course the party aren't the only ones who can turn people into Zombies...
Zombies all have a Master, either a PC who knows the secret mesmeric, chemical, and ritual methods of zombification, or else some NPC. If it's a NPC then you get your marching orders from the DM and how you execute them is left to your interpretation. This has fuck all to do with flesh eating and while they may be a kind of walking dead these are NOT reanimated corpses. More gifted Masters are capable of creating more gifted Zombies.
Zombies can only operate with single-minded purpose according to their Master's wishes. This kind of character is really meant for a very specific kind of player, one whose main contribution to the night is not in the form of tactics but in the form of atmosphere. Zombies should do everything as brutishly, slyly, and creepily as possible. Zombies with another PC for a Master are programmed by that PC, and Zombie players with NPCs for Masters must submit their programming to the DM. A Zombie may be programmed with as many distinct nuances to their orders as the Zombie has Hit Dice. A level 1 Zombie may receive the order "Bring me Jessica." A level 2 Zombie may receive the order "Bring me Jessica and make sure she is not harmed," or "Bring me Jessica and kill Margaret." All commands must be 5 words or fewer. Zombies given commands that seem to conflict with one another must roll for Confusion as outlined above.
Zombies who awaken from Zombification are useless normal people unless they were secretly awesome before getting Zombied. A Master can allow his Zombie to wake any time the Master wishes, with no memory of what they did as a Zombie. A Zombie who drops to 0HP or less does not ever die, they just lose all animus and all resistances/immunities...a Zombie who is dropped to 0HP and thrown in a river will lie at the bottom of it drowning forever until they dissolve. They are sustained in this way so long as their Master lives. Likewise, if a Zombie's Master is killed then the Zombie must make a save vs spells. On a success the Zombie simply dies, assuming an appearance consistent with being dead for weeks or months. On a failure the Master's mind inhabits this Zombie body, possessed of all the Zombie's abilities but with the full mental faculties and skills of the Master. Though they still cannot speak these are deadly creatures called Revenants.
