[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

[snip] I'm planning on using slow zombies, but I'm having some difficulty on figuring out how the players will actually be able to kill these things.

Of course, The Walking Dead makes it look a LOT easier than it would be in a fairly realistic game, but is it too difficult?

Let's assume a slow Zombie that doesn't Dodge or Parry and only attempts to get into CC and perform a grapple/bite action as the opposition. Also, let's go with damaging the brain as the only way to actually "kill" them.

You could quickly and easily make it a lot easier for unskilled people to kill them by not requiring damage to the brain. Just sayin'. If you want to encourage it without ruling out things that will blow the body into hamburger or squish it into bacon without destroying the brain, IT: Unliving + IT: No Vitals is a popular build.

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

[snip] So you want to use a crowbar to smash a Zombie skull? Okay, that's an improvised weapon and is probably Axe/Mace -1. You don't have the Axe/Mace skill? Well, it defaults to DX -5. Add all of that up with the modifiers I listed above and your DX 10 Cab Driver is at an effective skill of 5.

I frequently give cab drivers and other appropriate recipients Dabbler (Casual Blunt Weapon User: +2 Default for Axe/Mace, Broadsword, Flail, and Two-handed Axe/Mace) [1].

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

I wouldn't want killing zombies to be quite as easy as it is in The Walking Dead but damn...with the numbers above, it's so hard, only the people with real melee combat skills have a reasonable chance of doing it.

Is it important to the game that the PCs be able to wade into melee with the zombies and win? If the zombies are really tough but slow and kind of dumb, you could make zombie-killing more of an exercise in detecting them, running away, using tactics and distractions to herd them into booby-traps, sniping, running them over with a hot-wired school bus, etc, which some players might enjoy. Sure, their melee defaults might come up if they get surprised by a horde and overwhelmed, or screw up badly, but those will be disaster scenarios they probably wouldn't survive even with melee skills, not their standard operating procedure.

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

Has anyone had any experience with this in games you played or GMed?

A little.

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

Were zombies that hard to kill or did you/the GM give the players some leeway?

Depends on the specific game.

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

How did it work out for the enjoyment of the characters?

The characters had a terrible time, every time. Some got eaten, some went mad, and one guy lived but got his eyes put out by skeleton thumbs. The players always seemed to have fun, though.