Inquisitor Clint Romero and Warband

[krenshar]

I'm curious; why have you gone down the low-Toughness route for your warband?
I like how it combines with Regenerate for Romero and since he's least zombie-like, it's logical that he's already in pain before the injuries start mounting up.  But I didn't expect to see another low-T member to the warband - I'd have thought the subjects treated before the inquisitor would have more traditionally zombie-esque traits.  Inhuman toughness being one of those high on my personal list.

You mention playtesting but what other versions of the Zombification rule have you tried?  If you gave either/both of Romero and Fulci T60, for instance, and made Zombification grant +3 to System Shock, +10 to Consciousness and a +20% Resistance bonus vs gasses and poisons (on top of anything from those bionic organs) then you'd get much the same result so far as I can see.  I'd still consider a few points of armour as Marco suggests but it might slow the location injuries building up enough to keep them playable.

Though if you did go down this route, Regeneration would be much more powerful on Romero.  In which case perhaps replace it with an integral med-skull (or even two!) as part of Romero's life support system.

[MarcoSkoll]

Inhuman toughness being one of those high on my personal list.

I'd agree with inhuman pain tolerance, but zombies are rotting flesh, which is not known for being hugely damage resilient.

[krenshar]

Can't argue that but pain tolerance is a large part of the Toughness stat, or so I've always thought.

[Koval]

A simple solution would be to give them a high Toughness, but drop their BIV by 1 -- the Rotting Flesh mutation in the Alien Bounty Hunter generator is a pre-made match.

[MarcoSkoll]

I'm not sure that necessarily fixes the issue - as I discovered with Jax, simply taking a lot of injury levels can lose the appearance of the high pain tolerance (through sheer stunned results or speed penalties).
Here's her latest character sheet, so you can see how I re-engineered things such she can actually power through injuries.

If I were writing these half zombies myself, I think I'd perhaps give them a middling toughness (after all, they're not entirely flesh, even rotten flesh, any more thanks to all those bionics), Rotting Flesh, Feel no Pain (as per Jax's character sheet) and something a bit radical...

...testing toughness against all Immediate injury results (with the obvious exception of Crippled head wounds - I'd really call dying a persistent effect, myself), taken separately for each level of injury inflicted.

This would let the wounds rack up without them constantly falling prone or getting stunned by injury, and the reduced speed penalties from Feel no Pain would mean they could keep fighting, even if their bodies might otherwise be falling apart from the damage they'd taken. I think that'd be fairly representative of half bionic zombies.

However, I know I can sometimes layer on the special rules a bit thicker than other people think is simple - to me, the above isn't that complicated, but I don't know what others think.

The other thing is I'm not sure I'd keep True Grit (for all of them, at least) under those circumstances though. They'd already be pretty resistant to going out of action due to FnP and an average toughness.

[Alyster Wick]

Came a bit late to the conversation but I must say I'm enjoying the background, rules and models. Your constant nod to the masters of the zombie genre are also well appreciated.

Marco's most recent suggestion on how to deal with the zombification issue makes sense. I don't think it's overly complicated and adds a good amount of character. As an alternate (if you really want to keep things simple) you could adapt some of the NPC rules from that old campaign article (Architect of Hate I believe?). Much less character but the NPC damage system was simple and let characters be relatively resilient before being taken out (although you certainly wouldn't want to do this for your actual Inquisitor).

That really goes to taste though, and again, I emphasize that you would want to adapt the rules, definitely not use them straight.

The premise around your Inquisitor is fantastic though. I have a good corpsish head sitting around waiting to be used, I'm tempted to steal the concept (though I'd probably make my version a psycher corrupted through a zombifying warp virus and give him a handsome acolyte to serve as his "face").

The one overall critique I'll add is that I'm not sure I like Clint overall. His various components are intriguing but it just seems like a little much. I feel like he could be split into two separate characters and be more compelling, one a more patient master and the other an efficient killer. That's just me though. Either way, you've inspired me to at least cobble together some parts I otherwise wouldn't have, regardless of whether or not I get around to writing up rules.