Hey all,

New to the site, usual stuff. I've just gotten Zombie Apocalypse, really looking forward to running it for my group, it's something different from D&D and Deathwatch, and I just have a quick question in relation to the Stress Tracks.

Let's just use an example of a PC being catch looting by a soldier, the soldier opens fire, gets two successes, the negatives are all cancelled out, etc, and with the +5 damage, that is a total of 7 damage. If the PC has taken no stress at all up to this point, there will be the -1 for all the damage on that first track, so it is down to 6 damage, that track is filled up, so there is 3 damage left. As this is all from one attack, will the damage now go into the second track, with that additional -2, meaning they only take 1 point of stress to that second box, or does he get the 3 damage because the -1 has already been applied?

I quickly scanned through that section of the book again, but it seemed a bit unclear on that. If anyone could get back to me on this, it would be great.

Thanks.

The negative stress only happens once a tier has been filled. As per your example 7 stress "hits" 3 hits in the first tier leaving 4 stress left to add to the second well, filling the first tier then adds - 1 to the stress being added so it is 3 stress added to the 2nd tier filling it up. So the next time that PC is attacked or gains stress - 2 will be deducted from the totals from that point forth till that stress is converted to a trauma.

Tier 1 filled = -1

Tier 2 filled = -2

Tier 3 filled = death with a chance to be revived.

Resistance only applies at the time of the attack. If an undamaged character took 7 points of damage in one attack then he would be damaged into the third tier and have 2 points of resistance after the fact but none before. If he already had 3 points of damage then his first tier would be full and he would have resistance of 1. Stress resistance only factors in at the beginning of the attack's damage.

As per page 31...

"Regardless of what source deals you stress, reduce the amount you receive by your resistance in that category before you record the stress on your stress track."

Im with Mouthymerc,

you only get resistance at the time of the attack, so if they took 7 damage then they would fill 7 stress boxes and have 2 in the third tier remaining. They wouldnt get resistance from the first or second tier filling up because its a single attack. If they were damaged by multiple sources though, resolve each one separately, and if the first attack fills a stress track then they have resistance for the second attack.

Merc is correct I remembered the wording wrong.

Ditto... I read the first post and really started to doubt my understanding. So when I reread that section I concur with MouthyMerc... 7 boxes filled because no pre-existing resistance was in place for that single attack. Any future attacks are reduced by -2 due the 2 full tiers.