Zombies 5e
Guide by Sam West, @CrierKobold
When you want to mercilessly bash something's skull in, but don’t want the moral implications of murder, seek zombies. They are unapologetically evil husks of humanoid remains hellbent on ending life via cannibalism. They’re slow, stupid, tough monsters whose entire identity is based on shuffling forward aimlessly and eating anything in their path.
This article is a deep dive into the humanoid zombie stat block; how to run them, combat them, and more. We’ll also touch on making other non-humanoid zombies, and what benefits and drawbacks that come with you may want to account for in your encounter prep. Time to dive in!
Running Zombies
I think there is a disconnect between the fantasy a lot of people envision with zombies and their 5th Edition stats. Zombies in media tend to come in waves- their threat isn’t in their durability, but more in their quantity. Sure, they can survive getting chopped and half and hit by a bus, but a single zombie isn’t posing much of a threat to any apocalypse survivor worth their salt. It's the horde of zombies that gets them.
D&D zombies are terrible horde monsters to run because they take far too many hits to go down and are so slow that no group of them, no matter how large, can reasonably trap something with a base speed of 25 or higher.
Their Undead Fortitude traits are miserable to track when you’re working with large quantities of them, making them more headache than they are worth for the epic encounter when you slam a hundred against a well-armed group.
Player Level
Zombies make great early and low-tier encounters on the way to the big bad, or as sacks of hit points the players need to chew through or workaround to attack the main villain during a fight. Independently, they’re as standard an enemy as you can get.
1st to 3rd level players will have almost no issue dealing with these things- they rarely drop a creature when they hit it, have horrendous AC, attack modifiers, and damage modifiers, and are dumb as bricks. They are the perfect low-tier enemy for giving your players some opportunity to take out their boredom and frustrations.
Defining Gameplay to Work With
The defining trait zombies carry that makes them distinct from other creatures is their Undead Fortitude and 22 hit points. They are durable buggers designed to take a few hits and die. It’s what they do. They are more about highlighting their weaknesses than their unique avenues of attack- their low AC and speed can give players plenty of opportunity to feel powerful when laying into these things with hit after hit.
Upping their difficulty is challenging, as adding more of them doesn’t add to their challenge- it more adds to the length of the encounter. Because they pose so little threat, have such a tiny speed, and have a large chunk of hit points for early-tier characters to manage, stacking even six or seven together can lead to encounters that feel pointless. Nobody is worried about going down or dying, and nobody tends to feel they need to use their special, limited-use abilities on things with an AC of 8.
Four players can reasonably chew through dozens of these things with patience, room, and any a tiny bit of tactics and focus. That encounter is going to feel stale quickly as they rinse and repeat the same turns over and over again.
Mentality and Tactics
One of the big distinguishing factors zombies have against other smarter monsters is their lack of tactics. These do just aimlessly run at things until they’re put down. They have no regard for their body's health. They have one goal- end life.
This helps define zombies' purpose that much more and sets players up with varied kinds of encounters. Against smarter villains fighting in their home turf with setup and planning, even the humble kobold can bring a new level of fear to your group. Zombies can be used to contrast that level of thinking. They don’t think about the damage they’re taking from the Spike Growth- they’ll plow right through it, even if it kills them.
Zombies as Hazards
Competent creators still want to give their lackeys as good a chance of getting a kill as possible. This usually means sticking them in tight, hard-to-maneuver places where several can get on top of a single character easily. They’ll be stationed directly inside a locked door, waiting for the first sign of life to turn from their aimless shambling to murder mode.
Adding in mechanisms to release zombies behind and in front of players to pincer them will remove the speed problems from the equation, forcing the group to reckon with one side at a time. In narrow hallways, this can pose a threat to lower AC characters with few hit points that rely on their paladins, fighters, and barbarians to protect them from melee attacks.
Combating the Monster
Zombies come with no shortage of built-in weaknesses. Any group of three or more players will have no shortage of methods for handling these baddies with ease.
Methods of Engagement
If you want a zombie to pose little to no threat, have a single, moderate to high AC party member sit inside however many there are while dodging over and over again. Then, you have your ranged allies pick them off from a safe distance of at least 45 feet.
With only a +3 to hit, a character with an AC of 15 dodging has a 20% chance to be hit per attack. If you bump that AC with a shield to 17, you’re now looking at a 12% chance of being hit. Shield of Faith can drop that further to a 4% chance of getting hit by a monster with only +3 to hit while dodging. As long as the zombies keep coming at the dodging creature, they’re going to have a bad time.
Rogues with cunning action and a base speed of 25 or higher can run and gun against these things infinitely. Having a base speed of 40 can provide the same effect- even when they’re dashing at you, you can match or outpace them while firing back shots round after round so long as you have enough room to move.
Damaging areas also will make quick work of zombies- a Cloud of Daggers automatically shredding whatever zombie it was placed on will drop it fast, and can even result in others following directly in its predecessor’s path, walking directly into their demise with no concern for their health, only with the drive to kill.
The World Around Zombies
Zombies present an easy, iconic threat. Undeath is rarely something that people can get behind- it usually involves murder, grave robbing, and enslaving the bodies of the deceased to perform horrific, vile rituals. Zombies are the natural consequence of necromancy, the very embodiment of evil that detests life for the sake of it.
The problem is that D&D’s zombies don’t pose a threat to any competent force without having massive numbers. Their best use is to defend enclosed spaces efficiently for their necromancer overlords, or at best, terrorize a small hamlet whose hunters are out for the season, leaving them completely defenseless. A handful of town guards with some crossbows will tear apart an army of zombies before they break through a front gate should ammunition be abundant.
I’d treat zombies like evil guard dogs- they aren’t the pressing threat, but a sign of a villainous presence. They aren’t directly bringing about mass ruin, but signal a far more evil force is about, and is using these to cheaply weaken anyone trying to interfere with their grand plans.
As the Main Antagonist
I’ve run a full zombie apocalypse campaign where zombies were the main villain. Sure, there was an undead angel involved at the top of it all, but they weren’t controlled by her- they were a consequence of a plague, a force of nature that shook the world.
I didn’t use the stat block of the zombies presented in 5th Edition a single time for those monsters. They didn’t have undead fortitude, deliberately had fewer hit points, had adjusted speeds to be a viable threat, and had added vulnerability to radiant damage. I mixed in a lot of varied zombies to challenge the players in different ways with disease-on-hit effects, exploding bellies, and lines of acidic bile.
These were functionally different monsters. As written, I can’t advocate for trying to use this version of zombies in that fashion, as they’re kind of plain and pitiful by comparison.
As a Supplementary Monster
This is where zombies shine- as lackeys littered in somebody else’s dungeon. Animate Dead creates them, and the caster doesn’t need to reassert control if they’re cool with the zombies shambling about and killing people they run into.
They are the bread and butter of any early-tier necromancer villain. Alongside some skeleton archers, they can make for a decent support team for a 2nd or 3rd level confrontation with a moderately powerful undead villain like a Specter.
Black dragons have a poison breath that these ignore, making them fantastic hurdles for players to deal with while being unaffected by the area of effect damage their overlord dishes out. Monsters that weaponize large areas of poison can use zombies as cheap monsters that will function as effectively agnostic to the toxic environment they’re within.
Beyond that, I imagine most villains recognize how ineffective these tend to be, and will usually prioritize other lackeys who can competently complete a variety of tasks over husks of humans that waddle around and smash their heads into walls.
Environments
Some environments can make up for zombies' weaknesses. Their immunity to the poison condition makes them thrive in poisonous gasses, which you can run as hazards in swamps, sewers, or other nasty places. Swamps also can incorporate difficult terrain or restraining liquids, setting lurking zombies laying face down in goop up to get the drop on the unmoving player.
Sticking zombies in areas players can get sucked into or beneath also can work- they don’t need to breath, so having them trapped within a sinkhole adds an extra layer of lethality to the hazards.
Non-Humanoid Zombies
The Monster Manual doesn’t do a great job offering you tools to take any monster and turn it into a zombie, nor does the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The MM does outline non-humanoid zombies, though, and using those stat blocks, we can extrapolate some basic tools to turn anything into a zombie.
Our two options for comparison are Ogres and Beholders.
Ogres lose ten speed, lose two from their Dexterity score, gain two to their Constitution score, have their Intelligence reduced to 3, their Wisdom reduced by one, and their Charisma reduced by two. They lose the ability to make Javelin attacks and otherwise hit exactly as well as they did before with their Morningstar.
Beholders have their hover speed unaltered. They similarly lose Dexterity, but also lose a bit of Constitution (from eighteen to sixteen). Their Intelligence is reduced to three, their Wisdom is reduced from fifteen to eight, and their Charisma is reduced from seventeen to five. The last major note for Beholders is they keep some of their eye rays, namely the undead-related ones, and lose their antimagic cone. Beholder zombies lose a ton of hit points, whereas Ogres gain a bunch when zombified, and this is relative to their intended Challenge.
The last element that turns them into zombies is their type becomes undead (which tends to come with undead passive boons from outside their stat block), and they gain Undying Fortitude.
With all this established, we can now make a step-by-step list to turn any monster into a zombie!
Making Anything A Zombie
The following steps can take any monster from its current form to a zombified version based on the changes presented in the Monster Manual.
Adjust Ability Scores: Reduce the creature’s Dexterity and Wisdom scores by 2. Reduce the creature’s Intelligence score to 3, and its Charisma score to 5. Increase the creature’s Constituion by 2.
Adjust Hit Points: For monsters intended to be weakened or strengthened by zombification, change their Challenge and hit dice to match their intended CR, then recalculate their hit points using their new Constitution modifier.
Remove Ranged and Non-Undead Magic Options: Remove the creature’s non-magical ranged or thrown weapon attacks. Remove spellcasting from the creature, and abilities that don’t paralyze, frighten, reduce maximum hit points, or deal non-radiant damage.
Undying Fortitude: Add Undying Fortitude to its abilities.
Adjust Speeds: Reduce any non-magical climb, burrow, ground, or fly speeds by 10.
And just like that, bam! You’ve made something a Zombie!
As Player Companions
Animate Dead gives some player characters access to groups of zombies. Usually, you’ll prefer animating skeletons, as they can use shortbows and function as artillery support. If zombies call to you, though, having a plan to use them can help.
Their speed is their biggest issue- supporting them with area lock-down that restrains or slows creatures can enable them to get in the way and take hits. Alternatively, you can set them up as a wall with the explicit goal of grappling anything that tries to pass them and get to you. This method sets them up more like bodyguards- you’re still likely going to need to dish out the damage, but at least they can potentially prevent monsters from getting on top of you.
This, too, leverages their hit points better. If they can take three or more attacks, you can be pretty happy with how they’ve done their job. That creature is wasting its time killing a zombie instead of you or other party members.
They aren’t particularly powerful, but if you’re determined to animate your own squad of zombies, these tips should help you empower them.
Zombies: the Perfect Hit Point Sack
Hopefully, this guide has everything you need to run these low-tier minions at their best. They can be fantastic tools to give players room to experiment with their abilities with low stakes, all while hinting and a bigger evil elsewhere they’ll need to take on. Alternatively, get your own pack of zombies to protect your necromancer, or use the Build-a-Zombie section to turn whatever creature you’d like to Zombify into its zombie form!
Thanks for reading, and happy apocalypse!
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