Just look at Act I variant. 3 HP, brown defence, 1 mov. action only with 3 points.

May be I'm missing something but even if you own only core set you should think twice or thrice before using zombies as open group. And with expansions zombies become obsolete, just a waste of plastic and storage space.

So what you guys would suggest as a homerule to fix zombies from cannon fodder to something interesting and fitting zombie theme? My suggestions is below but I reallly want to see what other people think.

I'm planning to try and use one of this abilities or a combination of few abilities, removing Disease or something else:

- Restless: at the beginning of OL turn restore all damage to this minion

- Head only: when this minion left with 1 HP, a hero must spend surge after succesful attack to kill this minion

- Swarm for every zombie

- Reanimation for every Zombie

- simply add 2 HP

- simply add brown die to defence pool

The thing about cannon fodder is that it has a purpose.

It is undeniable that zombies are underwhelminng even in the core set, moreso with expansions. While not a strong open group pick, they have a role in a number of quests as a set group which is intentionally flimsy and intentionally slow. For the objective-based quests, balance is not just a function of power- numbers is a big part of it, too.

Game design aside, zombies are pretty good, thematically. Slow and non-threatening alone, but can quickly become dangerous in a group.

May be I'm missing something

To expand upon what Zaltyre wrote: yes, you are missing the fact that Zombies are not supposed to be used as an open group (except when the Overlord wants to make it more difficult for himself, which might be an option when you play with children or beginners). They are used by the designers as a purposefully weak group for specific reasons in certain encounters, like:

1) As hero action-wasters at the beginning of certain encounters, like in the first encounter of Shadowfall Mountain or the second of Prison of Khinn for example;

2) As a group that can be reinforced in great numbers every turn, like in Blood will Tell;

3) As means to accomplish specific missions, like in Army of Dal'Zunm or Dead or Drowning.

If you make them stronger, the balance of such quests will be thrown off, and hero players might rightfully complain.

If you throw them away, you'll soon notice that you won't be able to play a third of the quests any longer.

They are used by the designers as a purposefully weak group for specific reasons

That's actually a point I totally forgot about.

Just look at Act I variant. 3 HP, brown defence, 1 mov. action only with 3 points.

May be I'm missing something but even if you own only core set you should think twice or thrice before using zombies as open group. And with expansions zombies become obsolete, just a waste of plastic and storage space.

So what you guys would suggest as a homerule to fix zombies from cannon fodder to something interesting and fitting zombie theme? My suggestions is below but I reallly want to see what other people think.

I'm planning to try and use one of this abilities or a combination of few abilities, removing Disease or something else:

- Restless: at the beginning of OL turn restore all damage to this minion

- Head only: when this minion left with 1 HP, a hero must spend surge after succesful attack to kill this minion

- Swarm for every zombie

- Reanimation for every Zombie

- simply add 2 HP

- simply add brown die to defence pool

There will always be one bad choice in every game like this. It's how the campaign handles them that really defines them. Unless you choose as an open. That's probably just a bad idea.

Like all others said, I would NEVER pick Zombies as an open group, however it's fun to realize how useful they can be in some encounters. They often respawn, and often do that close to the action, meaning they´re never completely useless due to travel distance, even if they´re essentially the slowest monster in the game.

But Heroes do tend to underestimate them, thus allowing Zombies to tail them, which can be lethal when the group stops moving due to monsters lying ahead. The master zombie in particular can be useful thanks to its Grab ability.

I´m glad they exist, I´m also happy they are included in many quests on top of my open groups, and I´ve come to appreciate them more often than not.

I particularly like the act 2 master. He has weak def, so he is simple to kill- but he has 9 health, so that's generally at least 1 action, sometimes more. The cost of ignoring him (saving the actions), however, is a BRY with a very likely surge +2.

He's one of the monsters it is debateably worth it to kill even when you don't need to- and that makes him useful bait.

We accidentally gave Minion Zombies Grab once. Those were some very nasty zombies.

I'm planning to try and use one of this abilities or a combination of few abilities, removing Disease or something else:

The best thing they have is the disease condition dealing. It's kinda rare a hero with a high willpower value. I got a warrior once (but it depends on the hero) the whole act diseased, and unable to get ride of the condition ► RIP.

It's kinda rare a hero with a high willpower value.

Willpower has been the highest attribute of every hero party of our last 5 campaigns. I really don't think it's rare at all to rank at least a 3 in it.

I got a warrior once (but it depends on the hero) the whole act diseased, and unable to get ride of the condition

Sure if he couldn' get rid of the condition because he had abyssmal Willpower, but he really couldn't find a way to counteract that thing during a whole act? No healer available to ditch the thing? No Curse Doll found while searching? No dice re-rolls to try to re-run that black dice? No gear he could purchase to enhance his chances of not getting it? No rest action to at least regain some buffer? If that's true then I wonder how this guy was playing

With that being said I also like Diseased condition, in general everything disrupting their stamina is good.

Willpower has been the highest attribute of every hero party of our last 5 campaigns. I really don't think it's rare at all to rank at least a 3 in it.

Mages, priests have a higher willpower more commonly, but like 50% (or more?) of the warriors and scouts tend to have 2 willpower or even less, it's just a general analysis. But like I said, depends on the hero pick.

This comparison works towards poisoned condition on mages/priests also (might tends to be low). It's just another way to look at disease. It's a very good ability in my opinion.

Sure if he couldn' get rid of the condition because he had abyssmal Willpower, but he really couldn't find a way to counteract that thing during a whole act? No healer available to ditch the thing? No Curse Doll found while searching? No dice re-rolls to try to re-run that black dice? No gear he could purchase to enhance his chances of not getting it? No rest action to at least regain some buffer? If that's true then I wonder how this guy was playing

With that being said I also like Diseased condition, in general everything disrupting their stamina is good.

ok, I didn't elaborate the case because I wanted the post to be short, allow me to describe:

Logan Lashley diseased at turn 1, he activated 2 turns and ended his 3rd turn with no stamina and partially wounded (like 3 wound tokens on him). I luckly dealt 6 dmg on him and left him to die on his next turn because of the diseased condition. And no doll, no rerolls, no items (not to enhance attributes), no skills to remove conditions and also no time to rest since diseased triggers at the start of turn.

As a side note, if a hero rests because of a diseased condition, I'd take that as a win. One less action to worry about.

From the perspective of someone in the middle of creating a campaign I can say that weak monster groups (as well as medium and strong ones) are extremely important to create interesting and variable scenarios. If I feel that a monster group is too weak in a specific quests, I can always alter that using scenario-specific rules, but that is rarely necessary. Just re-spawn Zombies on a regular basis to keep the Heroes properly under pressure. Plus: they are thematic as hell.

The same is true for rather weak monsters like fire imps.

The same is true for rather weak monsters like fire imps.

Fire imps are nice if you have to sacrifice a master monster for an agent deployment.

Zombies would be a must if they have the ability: 'brain eater' --> adventurers knocked out by a zombie or in his line of sight have their brains eated and cannot stand up.

Zombies would be a must if they have the ability: 'brain eater' --> adventurers knocked out by a zombie or in his line of sight have their brains eated and cannot stand up.

Heroes knocked out by zombies receive a "condition" that imposes -1 Knowledge but that is not removed by being knocked out.

Zombies would be a must if they have the ability: 'brain eater' --> adventurers knocked out by a zombie or in his line of sight have their brains eated and cannot stand up.

Heroes knocked out by zombies receive a "condition" that imposes -1 Knowledge but that is not removed by being knocked out.

Jokes apart, our idea is cool. They should implement something more or less like that on a next edition

Brain-eater sounds akin to the Ice wyrm ability "entomb", but with more brains.

Brain-eater sounds akin to the Ice wyrm ability "entomb", but with more brains.

You mean with LESS brains, since they were eaten by the zombies.

I suppose that it could be added as a home-rule:

If Zombies are selected as an open group for a quest, add following abilities to them:

(1) heroes knocked out by zombies receive -1 penalty to all Knowledge checks for the duration of encounter

(2) after zombie deals at least 1 point of damage to heroes, he recovers the same amount of damage

that way, they will still be balanced in quest where they are used, but OL will have incentive to bring them as an open group. If these abilities are too weak to make zombiec competitive, even more can be added