Death Troopers / Resident Evil rules

[TyCaine]

I've been on these boards for a little while, and have become as awed as others have by the greatness of the contributors...

One thing I've been wondering is has anyone come up with rules for Resident Evil type creatures, or rules in a similar way to cover a Death Troopers type scenario?

[Lostboy]

Deathtroopers?

[TyCaine]

A noval that recently came out, a malfunctioning Imperial prison ship stumbles across a Star Destroyer adrift where they hope to get help or at least find parts, however, it turns out the Star Destroyer is devoid of human life and is, in fact, filled with zombies created from a Resident Evil-esque virus...

wiki page for Death Troopers

[Lostboy]

Well... there you go.

[Gamer]

Without giving any real spoilers away those "zombies" cannot survive very far from the source and will die if they go too far from the source itself.

These zombies also know how to operate their weapons, shipboard weapons -used a tractor beam, speeders, x-wings, shuttles, light freighters, and are slow movers and constantly wail and screech.

Nothing was said what happens with the Derelict star destroyer or prison barge and all the zombies that were left aboard.
I've heard that the star wars Galaxies mmorpg has a region with the Death Troopers in it.

[jmanski]

[TyCaine]

Assuming stats would be based upon whichever race the creatures were spawned from, with some increases and decreases depending on the genre. (For instance, Death Troopers retain some technical and mechanical capabilities, whereas the zombies of the Resident Evil genre for the most part cannot even open a closed door, resorting to trying to beat it down by themselves or through weight of numbers...)

I guess the main thing that is confusing me and that I am looking for assistance with would be how to handle damage. The RE infected can take massive amounts of damage, only 'dying' when shot through the head. And at that it can be anything from a 12ga shotgun blast to a .22 hollow point, as long as the brain receives damage.

From there, perhaps stats for the more powerful mutations of the RE genre or similar, or thoughts along such.

Also, I have only read snippets of the Death Troopers novel, and was wondering what everyone thought of this kind of genre added into Star Wars?


Ty

[hazardchris]

As I told my friend, "It's a novel about Han and Chewie fighting stormtrooper zombies! What's not to love?"
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[jmanski]

[TyCaine]

Thanks jmanski!

That sounds like a fair enough idea! So with that presumption you could slow them down by pumping them full of blaster bolts until you could get a clear kill shot...

From there just figuring on a few other details which are mostly in the back story, what/who created the cause for them in the first place, whether HTH wounds caused by them have a chance of infecting the individual wounded or not, and so on...

Perhaps only expanding to say that certain wounds might slow them down (ie: losing a leg, or both legs), or make them less able (ie: loss of an arm or two) but until the kill shot they are still dangerous, even more so if they can spread the 'infection' (scene: Rebels backing out of a freighter firing off rounds at the undead troopers, suddenly one stumbles over a torso that only has a head remaining, no extremities, before the Rebel can get over his surprise, the 'trooper' rolls and bites the Rebel, later causing him to transform because of the 'infection' and turn on his colleagues...)...

Hmmm, any other ideas would be welcomed, but I think this sounds like a start!



Ty

[Esoomian]

I've been mulling over a few ideas for zombies in my games.

One of the ideas I've been favouring is giving them a set roll for soak (say they always soak 15 points) and then adjusting the damage table.

Beating the soak by 0-5 points makes them stumble they slow down, loose their attack this round or something. Any damage done while possibly graphic is largely inconsequential.

Beating the soak by 6-10 points maims the zombie, they loose an arm or a leg or something performance effecting but non-vital. The maimed zombie moves at half speed and has it's attack dicepool halved. Multiple maimed results do not stack.

Beating the soak by more than ten points destroys the zombie, it's assumed they're either vaporized, obliterated or perhaps a lucky shot has severed the spine at the neck or destroyed the head.

The zombies always loose initiative (strike last in all circumstances) with the automatic soak roll there is very little dice rolling so it's easier to have hoards of zombies without slowing down gameplay too much.

Obviously the soak roll might get adjusted for low level groups/smaller zombies or zombies in amour.
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[garhkal]

[Esoomian]

The players get all their actions then the zombies act. It gives the players a chance to heroically slay/knock back two or three zombies before they have to worry about getting hit.

I've been considering slipping a more advanced zombie in the mix for the drama but against the hoard then the players get all their actions first.
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[TyCaine]

@Esoomian so for the standard soak of 15, would that be instead of the STR roll, or in addition to?

For instance, a zombie with STR and armor resulting in a STR roll of 3D+2, would that become 3D+2+15 to resist damage? Or would it be 3D+2 or 15, whichever is greater?

This would allow spray fire to be able to take out some as you said with a lucky shot if it hit neck at spine or head, or allow for characters to target the head specifically with a penalty, but with an almost sure kill.


I agree about initiative though, at least for the run-of-the-mill zombies, in this genre the zombies tend to be slower, not as quick to react, but all but unstoppable against random fire...

[Esoomian]

It's instead of a strength roll. The actual number 15 may be too low if you want hardy zombies (or zombies in full stormtrooper armour) or too high if you want to represent ewok zombies or just zombies that are heavily decayed but the main reason for a static number rather than a dice pool is time saving.

Basically I'm trying to streamline the process as much as possible so the players can just roll a few dice and then allow the story to flow. If you're rolling soak on every one of the hoard then it gets tiresome.

3D+2 averages out to about 12 so if you set that as their soak someone with a 4D blaster pistol shouldn't have a huge difficulty in causing a zombies attack to falter but it'll take a good roll to maim or kill a zombie.
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Don't waste money on expensive binoculars.

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