Hey all, I apologise if the following questions have already been answered but I would appreciate some clarification on the following. Having only recently acquired the rulebook, I am a little uncertain how everything works.

Zombies

"Destroy the Brain": Some of the zombies have the special effect "Destroy the Brain", which states that doubles rolled on uncancelled positive dice mean that the creature is immediately destroyed. But does the attack have to hit them first (ie. do you still need to have rolled at least one number under the characteristic/attribute in question)? What happens if you roll doubles but no positive die result is equal to, or under, the attribute?

Stress: If a zombie with the above quality, or even one without it, suffers 9 physical stress (after resistance is taken into account), is it then destroyed? Or will it continue to be a nuisance until someone rolls doubles on the positive dice?

Recovering from Trauma

At the end of the "recovery" period for a trauma, you perform a check against the relevant defensive attributes. If you have negative dice left over, do you take on more stress like in a normal test? Also, do you have to count rest periods for each trauma separately, or could you, say, rest for a week and then perform a recovery check for two Severity 2 traumas?

Any help would be appreciated!

Bump.

RE: Destroy the Brain; As written, I think it's pretty clear that there doesn't have to be a success. If as ZM you decide that's too common/easy, it wouldn't be out of line to require at least one success, or that the paired die have to be successes even?

And I think that, as the entry talks about dieing "regardless of its current Stress", that implies to me that it can be killed normally too. If you don't want that to be the case in your campaign, you could consider it just disabled. They've blow a significant enough chunk(s) off that it can't attack anymore, or maybe they just put it down for a few seconds?

RE: Recovering from Trauma; As written, it is implied it's a "norma"l Test so, yes, I think you can acquire more Stress just from attempting to Recover. So I'd make sure conditions are as favorable as possible before rolling a Recovery Test.

And as the rules just specify the time must be spent, then yes, multiple Traumas can be "worked on" simultaneously, so long as the healing methods of the multiple Traumas don't interfere with each other (say, maybe a Physical Trauma sever enough requiring bed rest could prevent recovery from Mental Trauma of Claustraphobia, which would require you to get outside?). But also, every one of those Recovery checks is gonna be penalized by all of the applicable Traumas, so it may be advantageous in some cases to work on one (per Characteristic) at a time, like the shortest duration ones first, so you don't blow your Month long Trauma (and have to wait another Month before trying again) due to these other two Weekly Traumas.

Thanks for your thoughts!

So far, I've been running it where a survivor needs to succeed on the test in order for doubles to work. However, survivors can still kill a zombie by filling in its stress track - they finally manage to severe the spine or shoot the brain, thus destroying it after some effort; whereas a double represents they hitting the brain far faster.