Plague Zombie — Bite in Place of Slam?

[Luke Styer]

From a pure balance perspective, would removing the slam attack that damages as one size category but adding a bite attack that damages at existing size category mess much with the Plague Zombie template?

[Megatron777]

Nope, there's no real change in damage done, unless you were planning on adding new things that affect bite attacks. I don't know what sort of balance issue you were worried about that could happen. Were you going to also make them fast zombies that dual wield swords or something?

[MrCharisma]

Well a slam is bashing damage ...
... while a bite is piercing AND slashing damage.

So If your players have damage reduction it could change things.

Other than that nothing inherently gets changed, but as Megatron777 said: It depends what else you're changing.

[Luke Styer]

The DR issue is all I was foreseeing, though i didn’t expect it to amount to much because I don’t often see PCs with DR that depends on damage type. But I figured I’d see if anyone foresaw a problem I didn’t.

This is literally the only change I was thinking of. Bites just strike me as far more thematically appropriate for Plague Zombies. For “regular” Zombies, the image of a bunch of them just slamming into people sort of works for me.

[blahpers]

Nah, should be fine. Certainly nothing to a degree that would affect CR.