New to GURPS: Zombie Apocalypse

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

(Did anyone mention that taxi drivers are likely to be the best suited for vehicular zombicide?)

Some of us even have a ram bar, if the company leaves them on when they buy the Crown Vics from the cops! An EMT in a 6000# ambulance is probably even better-suited to vehicular zombicide, though...

Originally Posted by Stripe

Injury Tolerance (No Blood, Low Empathy; No Eyes, No Vitals, Unliving)

They were immune to the worst form of injury of them all... a broken heart...

[martin_rook]

On the zombie-stat front, I would recommend going with Injury Tolerence (Unliving) and (no blood, no vitals) and add a Vulnerability to headshots, or just negate the Injury Tolerence when hit in the head or skull. The primary effect is that it reduces the damage from bullets but not most melee weapons (and even though shotguns have the damage of individual pellets reduced by 1/5, hitting with lots of pellets still does a fair amount of damage compared to a handgun). This means you can put a zombie down with gunfire, but it takes more shots than a living person... unless you shoot them in the head. On the other hand, if it gets to melee attack range, your PCs having to use a fire axe or baseball bat won't be at such a disadvantage.

Personally, I'd go with a zombie type that is easy to destroy or evade when by itself (if you're careful) and make the horror come from the large scale of the problem. That also contrasts them with living adversaries who would be more dangerous one-on-one but easier to kill with firearms.

[Kromey]

Originally Posted by martin_rook

On the zombie-stat front, I would recommend going with Injury Tolerence (Unliving) and (no blood, no vitals) and add a Vulnerability to headshots, or just negate the Injury Tolerence when hit in the head or skull. The primary effect is that it reduces the damage from bullets but not most melee weapons (and even though shotguns have the damage of individual pellets reduced by 1/5, hitting with lots of pellets still does a fair amount of damage compared to a handgun). This means you can put a zombie down with gunfire, but it takes more shots than a living person... unless you shoot them in the head. On the other hand, if it gets to melee attack range, your PCs having to use a fire axe or baseball bat won't be at such a disadvantage.

I really like that, and it's going in exactly the direction I want to take them: Yes, you can kill them with straight-up damage, but far easier/faster to use headshots. And I like the extra perk here that melee weapons end up being more effective than bullets. Which makes sense, when you think about it: most melee weapons do their damage over a much larger area than a bullet does, meaning they can more quickly destroy/disable the body and, while maybe not technically "killing" the zombie, putting an end to that immediate threat.

Might even go so far as to add an effect equivalent to Fragile(Unliving) to head shots, putting them down the moment a headshot results in HPs less than 0. Sure, the fire axe got the zombie down to -30 HP, but the headshot is what destroyed the brain and thus killed it.

Originally Posted by martin_rook

Personally, I'd go with a zombie type that is easy to destroy or evade when by itself (if you're careful) and make the horror come from the large scale of the problem. That also contrasts them with living adversaries who would be more dangerous one-on-one but easier to kill with firearms.

I do intend to have the zombies be slow, not very strong, and noisy enough to avoid, but scale is the real enemy: There will be times when the PCs simply can't avoid a fight, and in those cases the biggest threat is sheer numbers.

Well, aside from the "special" zombies and the living adversaries, of course...

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by martin_rook

On the zombie-stat front, I would recommend going with Injury Tolerence (Unliving) and (no blood, no vitals) and add a Vulnerability to headshots, or just negate the Injury Tolerence when hit in the head or skull. The primary effect is that it reduces the damage from bullets but not most melee weapons (and even though shotguns have the damage of individual pellets reduced by 1/5, hitting with lots of pellets still does a fair amount of damage compared to a handgun). This means you can put a zombie down with gunfire, but it takes more shots than a living person... unless you shoot them in the head. [snip]

It's very much worth noting that a build with Injury Tolerance (No Blood, No Vitals, Unliving) already lacks anything special to protect the Brain (it is Homogenous that includes No Brain, and if they had that they wouldn't need No Vitals because it comes with that, too). Zombies with the above advantages will go down to headshots as easily as a normal person - We had a large boxer type consistently one-shotting similar creatures with his bare hands in my Halloween game a few years ago.

[Dobb]

I like to pitch in as a zombie and GURPS fan.

The thing about jobs is that, they're positions you filled based on your technical training, it's a title. A surgeon may very well be a great shot because he has great hand-eye coordination. But with high skills comes great compromise, so you have them have quirks and disadvantages. Anyone can be anyone in my opinion, you will find skills useful in dire situations if you so manage to coerce it to occur, as a GM. What good a garbage man can do in Z-Day? Well, you may allow him to have good sense of scavenging skills.

The beauty of GURPS from what I've read and tried out is the zany way of making a character, what the OP wants is a believable set of character in a zombie apocalypse scenario. I like to suggest your players to write a backstory and then stat for them or if they're actually interested in the skills, let them do it as well as the backstory.

[Danukian]

Originally Posted by Dobb

I like to pitch in as a zombie and GURPS fan.

To clear things up, are you a fan of both zombies and GURPS, or a zombie that is a GURPS fan? ;p