I'm planning an encounter where my players are fleeing from large packs of zombies hybrids. But similar to the movie Aliens, these zombies are working for a queen who is going to either consume the victims' life essence or use them to incubate her larvae (Stargate SG-1).

Would you have the Zombies do wound damage or strain/stun? AND WHY?

They will be fast movers like 28 Days later and I have given them Ensnare 1 quality to try and make some cinematic moments where possibly the slowest runner in party may need rescuing.

Heres stat block so far. I plan to use mainly use 2 packs of these, a 4 and 5 minion pack. As the group thins some of their ranks, new ones will come out of the woodwork to replace their numbers. Possibly a third pack of 3 if encounter is going too easy.

I think regular wound damage makes sense. In fact, if you're having long chase scenes, those will inflict strain. Having combat also inflict strain damage makes it more likely that they'll go down too quickly, if they don't get enough opportunities to recover strain. It could even make the game more tense (but survivable) if they are able to keep track of Strain from fleeing (and occasionally need to turn and fight) along with the damage taken from fights. Standing and fighting can net them some advantage to recover strain.

Thanks Stark, I came to the same conclusion when I laid out all of the chase rules, both on foot and also a Mining Tram available. I'll post it after I run the game

How many PCs are in your game and how many of those are "combat class" characters?

I recently ran a story arc that involved Walking Dead style zombies. The group had two dedicated combat types, two that were alright with a weapon and two that should usually be helping in ways other than using weapons.

For that group, six minion clusters of 4 zombies each were a significant challenge. Mine didn't have feral strength, but instead had a custom trait I made: Zombie Resilience - zombie gains +4 Soak as normal injuries don't phase them, this bonus is negated for attacks which use an Aim maneuver to make a called shot to the head.

I gave them Brawn 2 and 1 in the rest of the characteristics to model them off the source.

Their skills used the minion rules for Group Skills... which I recommend after looking at your stat block (which seems to just assign set dice pools). The Group Skills rules will make the groups more formidable at first but weaker as your players whittle down the numbers.

So my zombies had more staying power but less killing power than yours. For the damage I agree with GM Stark that you should go with Wounds. Since you gave them Ensnare as well, I would have used less (like half to 2/3 as many) than 24 of my zombies I threw at my group since the damage and fatigue would add up faster with your version.

Hard to gauge without knowing the party comp you're dealing with, so you're in the right direction with your plan to start small and add more if needed.

Group has a hardcore melee and a decent pistoleer, the doc & droid dont do much in combat besides support. They all have looted Heavy pistols though, and the pistoleer picked up a Desinigration Pistol from the 'Trouble Brewing' pre-canned adventure.

However to help fill the gap they decided to take on my Bounty Hunter character (who will be my PC when GM's alternate) that I play as an NPC for them (take orders for them, occasionally give them suggestions if they ask or need to get back on track)...hes a killing machine but I am trying to not have him steal the spotlight. Plus if things go really south for the group, he can always pull a Private Hudson to give them more time.

Basically they will not be able to kill all the Zombies. If they get below 3 per pack I will have new ones join them, so it will FORCE them to run. If someone gets ensnared, they'll most likely need help.

Prior to my current ongoing game, I ran a three session one-shot game with a group of personal friends. One of my friends played a wookie marauder with a vibro axe... aka. melee death machine.

If your hardcore melee PC is anything remotely close to that, they can reasonably be expected to single-handedly wipe an entire minion group of 4 or less with a single round's attack action easily.

In that case I would begin with 3 groups of 4 zombies... then have TWO more groups show up the next turn each time the melee character finishes one off. Each time the rest of the party finishes off a minion group just replace it with one group. Have your bounty hunter NPC focus fire with the rest of the party to make it easier to execute this.

If you want the "oh crap we need to run" feeling to happen, let the melee character be badass for a couple rounds but play up the sounds of more zombies in the distance so they KNOW there's plenty more than they can handle just off screen. Then as those endless numbers start to show up they'll already have been primed to withdraw without the melee character's player feeling shortchanged of having some spotlight time mowing down some zombies like their skills and talents imply they should.

If it seems like it's going too easy for them by the third turn, then throw in a base of one more group of zombies showing up into the combat each turn in addition to the replacement groups.

All this talk makes me want to do more zombie combat in my game... but I think my players would stage a violent revolt if faced with more zombies after dealing with it for 4 game sessions (even though the number of sessions it lasted was really more of their own doing).