Maybe make zombie type that (occasionally) loads wielding melee weapons or tools? Seems like there’s a niche for a high-damage but low-health melee type. And would give a slightly more visible benefit for all those “disarm” weapons and martial art techniques.
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I like the idea of that, and it’s been noted in the descriptions of various different zombies that several do have more mental capacity than just wandering and attacking anything living. Science zombies are a good example, with its description of having a certain amount of awareness. I believe that zombies necromancers and zombie masters have something like this as well.
As such, it really wouldn’t be all that unrealistic for certain zombies to do that kind of thing. Or maybe just have a chance that a zombie might spawn using a weapon.
I’m not sure about making new zombies just to use this kind of thing, at least not for the most part. And if it is as such then they’d probably be effectively rarer variations of existing zombies for the most part.
Two examples of new zombies that wield/use weapons might be:
Gunner zombie - It’s form has mutated and folded over a gun that has now become one of itss arms.
Medic zombie - Wields a scalpel as a weapon
And some changes could be made to existing zombies, like the scorcher actually uses its flammenwerfer. For balance-sake regular military zombies won’t use guns though. Science zombies might wield some sort of weapon, and perhaps necromancers wield some sort of quarterstaff or similar.
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Tool using zombies already got removed from the game once so I’d be surprised if they got added back in, if it’s tool using enemies you want to see you might be better off looking towards one of the netherworld factions or even creating a new one.
Be prepared for some salt though.
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Well I don’t want or think it should be a common thing, it should work the same way that there are rare zombies, where it is explicitly rare.
Most zombies would be too stupid to understand using a pointy stick to hurt someone is more effective than punching someone.
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Thing is, we already have some zombies that make use of tools and/or pre-zombification enhancements: Grenadiers, scientists, shockers, bio-operators, etc. And it doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable to me at least that a certain entity might preserve or create enough intelligence for them to be able manage a club, rock, or pointy stick. Do you have any idea as to what reasons were behind the removal of weapon-wielding-zombies?
Tool wielding zombies have been removed since zombies aren’t supposed to be intelligent enough to use them. Grenadiers were replaced with robots, scientists lost all their tools, shockers are going to lose bionics in the future. Bio-operators are the only ones you could try to make an exception for but they don’t actually control their bionics in any real way, it is more like the bionic is controlling them in combat.
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Grenadiers - gone from base game, replaced with a robot
Scientists - Tools removed, all special attacks moved to experimental lab robot. Now ordinary zombies that can open doors.
Shockers/bio operators - malfunctioning bionics that aren’t under the zombies control.
The reason they got removed/changed is because zombies aren’t supposed to be smart enough to use tools.
Like I said though, there is no reason you couldn’t look at something like this for another faction, grenadiers and old scientist behaviours both got moved over to the robot line and they added what is essentially a gun using mi-go to the mi-go faction.
Edit:
Woops, replying without reading the rest of the thread. Sorry @Junknown
if i remember there are so called ferals in the lore. they are essentialy humans that have zombified without actually dying first. they retain a higher level of intelligence than all other zombies and for about 1% of the zombie population. i won’t tell more for spoiler reasons but if you want to know more than read the design document: https://cataclysmdda.org/design-doc/#story