I would like zombies to take penalties!
One good way to handle it, I think, is a chance of zombies to “transform” into weaker zombie subtype as you injure them, based on how much of a damage threshold you pass (amount of damage dealt in one hit), maybe buffing their overall HP and base armor (1:1 resistances on normal zombies, for instance), especially for the weaker zombies, to compensate.
A lot of these debuffs should also apply to natural animals, and most of them should seriously damage their combat morale.
Last pre-list note: This list is mainly just for flesh and blood (or goo) species.
Low threshold (low chance on weak attacks at high health, high chance at low health or with stronger attacks);
Flayed:
-The zombie has had it’s natural armor torn up by abrasive attacks, and parts of it’s flesh as well. This cuts their armor by a few points, depending on how much natural armor they’re deemd to have (more effective against brutes, hulks, fat zombies than soldiers, etc)
-Higher chances of incurring this status effect if the weapon in question has a cut (not pierce) component, however small or if it’s acid or fire damage. Said damage has to damage the zombie directly to cause it though (so you’re not likely to make much progress here hitting a zombie soldier with a 2-by-sword).
-Creatures affected by flayed are drop a slightly damaged corpse when they die (stacking with any overkill damage that went with it.
-Animals afflicted by this should bleed for several turns, can receive the debuff multiple times (each debuff after the first only causes an additional bleeding effect, doesn’t stack armor losses (which should be at 0 with this debuff anyhow), and drains morale based on bleed dealt.
Jawed:
-You shattered or otherwise messed up a zombie’s jaw, crippling it’s ability to bite effectively. Their amount of hitdice on their melee attack when making a Bite attack is halved, rounded up (assuming a zombie’s bite attack rolls 2d3, for instance, a Jawed zombie of that type will be reduced to 1d3 instead). They will still attempt to bite, being relatively stupid zombies, their jaws will regenerate after a few hours anyway (when they leave the reality bubble or resurrect).
-High bash damage, on a critical, gets extra favor (beyond the normal damage thresholds) to cause this injury.
-Should induce a flat morale and aggressiveness penalty to animals afflicted, moreso against animals which actually bite (wolves, cougars, dogs, etc).
Sensory - Hearing/Visual:
-You damaged a zombie’s fragile eyes, eardrums, et cetera, making it worse at sensing things.
-A zombie with damaged hearing has very significantly reduced sound sensitivity, reducing it’s base aggressiveness (harder to enrage to kill something if your body can’t quite identify it fully, if that makes sense), reduced sound tracking range, and impaired pathing.
-A zombie with damaged sight recieves a -2 to melee skill, a -1 to dodging skill, and has reduced vision range.
-Damaged sight can be caused by bright flashes and criticals to the head, as well as much more reliably with something like pepperspray (or for the enterprising survivor, spray-on acid). Damaged hearing can be caused by extremely loud noises, and head criticals, with piercing weapons favored for such damage. A flashbang has a chance of inflicting either.
-A zombie with both damaged hearing and sight is a pitiful sight, especially from the perspective of it’s infection, vector, and such damage will kick regeneration up a notch. Specifically, zombies afflicted by both sight and hearing loss at the same time will have a random chance every ten turns to automatically heal from one of the two at random.
I’ll think of some more later, because I’m not plum out of brainpower for thinking these up, but seems pretty neat. Not sure about simple at this point though, hehe.
