| xman720 |
Currently, zombies are permanently slowed 1, making them lose an action at the start of their turns. Combined with the minion trait, this means summoning zombies as minions makes them only gain one action when you command them. Paizo has confirmed this is the correct interpretation of these rules interactions and says that one action zombie summons is RAW.
First, I want to say that I think running it this way as a DM totally makes sense and I support Paizo for making this call. If the choice is between giving zombie summons one actions or two actions, giving them one action is better as they are still useful in some situations but not overpowered like they would be if they got their two actions as normal. So this homebrew is not made out of frustration or as a "fix" for something "broken", but just as an alternative if you want to get more power from zombie summons in a way that changes the rules a bit.
The homebrew consists of two changes:
- Instead of slow all zombies get that rule replaced with zombie slowness which states: Zombies cannot use reactions and the first activity they do on their turn takes an additional action, if available. (So the first activity a zombie does on its turn can either be a 3-action activity, or if it's a 1-action or 2-action activity, it takes an additional action. This rule can be stated more robustly to account for more edge cases but I think this statements gets the intention across.)
- All zombies get a 2-action activity called zombie shamble, which let's them stride and then strike or strike and then stride.
With these two changes, let's examine the difference between RAW zombies and homebrew zombies in each case.
Standard circumstances
This is identical. Any zombie that acts uses at least one activity, which means it loses one action to zombie slowness, which is identical to being slowed 1. The only difference is homebrew zombies can use a 3-action activity wherewas RAW zombies can't. But since no zombie has been written with a 3-action activity, nothing changes.
Slowed 1
Homebrew zombies are weaker. RAW zombies ignored slowed 1. Homebrew zombies which are slowed 1 effectively have one action. However, they can also do a single two-action activity. This means a slowed 1 zombie dragon can still use its breath weapon, and every zombie can still zombie shamble to stride and then strike, but it can't stride-stride or strike-strike
Slowed 2
This is identical. RAW zombies and homebrew zombies are both limited to a single action.
As a minion
Homebrew zombies are stronger. RAW zombies can only take one action. Homebrew zombies effectively get one action, but also could do a two-action activity, so a zombie dragon can use its breath-weapon and all zombies can zombie shamble to stride and strike.
As a slowed 1 minion
This is identical. Homebrew and RAW zombies both get a single action.
Quickened
Personally I would run this simple so that the quickened action can't contribute to any other activity and can never be taken away by zombie slowness. If you do that then nothing changes between the homebrew and RAW. If you allow the quickened action to be eaten up by zombie slowness things get more complicated.
In my opinion, this is a way to make zombie summons a bit stronger and makes slowing zombies work which I think is nice. But this is acknowledges that zombies tend to have more health and damage compared to creatures of equal level to compensate for the two actions making them pretty strong as two-action summons.