Workshop this nasty Undead Plague rule with me...Ghoul Fever

[zarathustra]

So I am not running many "standard" C&C (or D&D) monsters imc. I want a type of undead, kind of horror movie zombie/ghoul like that getting bitten by can slowly turn you into "one of them". I'd like to recreate that tension where you don't quite know who is infected or whether they can fight it off.

So I was thinking these things have 2 grab/claw attack & if they both hit, then they get an extra automatic bite. It is the bite which is infectious.

Once bitten, save vs con each hour or suffer -d3 cha. Losing charisma represents your descent into flesh craving ghouldom as Ghoul Fever takes over.

The first save is made at CL3, every time you fail a save, +1CL is added to thenext save. Make 3 consecutive saves and the fever breaks & cha returns 1pt/hour.

Make 1 save & you have held out for that hour but must still save againt the next. If Cha reaches 3, then you have become a ghoul.

XP can be earnt (for this pc if he survives, or your next if he doesn't) by roleplaying this descent. Your personality slowly becomes ghoulish & your looks slowly become sweaty, clammy & drawn (but the whole party will likely be sweaty, wounded & haggard looking after adventuring anyway muhuhuha).

Any ideas to improve this? Too complicated? Good as is?

[Go0gleplex]

Typically Cha would have to reach 0 for the character to roll over into "undead" status. It's major downfall is merely one of needing to track all the rolls and cumulative CL's. Otherwise it seems workable.

[Lurker]

It looks like a good idea (and fun game) to me.

XP can be earnt (for this pc if he survives, or your next if he doesn't) by roleplaying this descent. Your personality slowly becomes ghoulish & your looks slowly become sweaty, clammy & drawn (but the whole party will likely be sweaty, wounded & haggard looking after adventuring anyway muhuhuha).

I like that, I'm always a fan of exp for good role-playing and have even given exp to a players next character for a good swansong ending.

If you like role-playing the tension, I would track the decent yourself. Have the players roll their saves (and other meaningless rolls) at random and then hound out notes with what they feel etc. Again this will feed the role playing etc. You can even have other characters that aren't in danger of being infected (only been clawed and not bitten, or got not been hit but sprayed with infected blood from the nat 20 they rolled in the attack) to further heighten the tension.

For the "rules" I would say that the bite attack isn't automatic. Probably at a bonus to hit but not automatic.

Once bitten, save vs con each hour or suffer -d3 cha. Losing charisma represents your descent into flesh craving ghouldom as Ghoul Fever takes over.

The first save is made at CL3, every time you fail a save, +1CL is added to thenext save. Make 3 consecutive saves and the fever breaks & cha returns 1pt/hour.

I think that will work.

[zarathustra]

Ok, I suppose it works just as well with a straight CL3 each save, less fiddly too.

Not sure yet if I am having them be "real undead" or just a disease that makes on aggressive & flesh hungry (human, non-infected only)...

[Rikitiki]

If it were me, I'd not have them slowly degenerate into the Ghoul state --
too many tell-tales could give it away as they role-play it, I think.
Then again, I'm a fan of those horror movie scenes where a
character who was bitten by a zombie or vampire "goes over" from
one moment to the next and starts attacking. If played well, even
though I as a viewer expect it to happen, it still makes me jump!
And, yeah, extra XPs for a well-played 'crossing-over' (the more
they make the other players creep-out/scream/jump/etc, the more XP)