Zombies have undead fortitude which reads thus:
Undead Fortitude. If damage reduces the zombie to 0 hit
points, it must make a Constitution saving throw with a DC
of 5 + the damage taken, unless the damage is radiant or
from a critical hit. On a success, the zombie drops to 1 hit
point instead.
So If the zombie has 22 hit points that means there is at the very least 22 points of damage taken. 22+5 is a 27 dc. Zombies have a 3 con mod and a 2 proficiency bonus so the max they can get is 25. Even if you alow them to succeed on a 20 it is still stupidly rare. Why is this a thing? Or is it the damage taken on the immediately previous hit? Which means this zombie has a chance of just never dying.
Thanks for your thoughts.
... You can do more than OHKO an opponent. Maybe, and this must be a strange concept, the zombie takes damage multiple times?
Ctwilliams1990 wrote:
Plaguescarred wrote:
Yeah, not being able to kill those damn' zombies tend to slow combat down 
Undead Fortitude really fit the zombie well IMO. It makes me want to run a zombie apocalypse scenario with tons of them!!
I love the way Undead Fortitude works.... Radiant damage kills them outright, as does a critical hit that reduces them to 0 (head shot). Otherwise, it comes down to if you can cut them into small enough pieces to stop them moving (saving throws).
During the last weeks of the playtest, I had a group of PCs run into a room with 4 zombies. All 4 of the zombies made their saves for several rounds, which made for a pretty intense combat when they could have all been killed 4 rounds sooner without Undead Fortitude.
I really like the 5E zombies for the reasons described above. They are a bit more dangerous than they first appear.
yeah, the DC is only off the dropping hit, not all damage taken ever.
Ctwilliams1990 wrote:
I'm thinking a cool evil DM thing to do is to take the zombie off the board when the player drops it to zero.
Then, if it saves, on it's turn put it back...
After the first combat my players had with zombies in the play test I explained their rules. From then on when they damageded a zombie they rolled an extra D20 of a different color. If they killed the zombiethen they look at the D 20th. If it is higher than their damage +5 they kill the zombie outright.
I ran my first fith edition zombie encounter Saturday and it was really fun for me as DM (and terrifying and fun for my players). It was awesome to hear them scream out "How can that thing still be going after we've hit it so many times! These zombies are unstoppable!" Finally they figured out they could "trigger" a save each time they hit the remaining zombies that had 1 hp each, and the cleric thought of using his Religion skill to learn that a blow to the brain (a crit) or radiant damage, or chopping them up to bits (hitting them until they fail their save) is the only way to take them out. My players have a healthy respect for a hoard of zombies now.
As others up the thread responded, the save is based on the damage from the triggering blow, not the total damage done in the fight.