Zombie Question

[Jasper]

Simple question: How long do Zombies naturaly last before you can't realy call them zombies anymore? I was going to throw some zombies in a short adventure Im running but the adventure is set in a mine that has been left undisterbed for over three years. I started thinking if any corpses would still have enough flesh on them to be called a zombie and not a skeleton.

The mine is open to the air at several places and both animals and small scavanger monsters now inhabit the mine. A small river of cold water runs through the lowest part if that helps answer the question.

[Joël of the FoS]

IMHO, you can assume that the magic animating a zombie is helping keeping its flesh on the bones.

Joël

[Lord_Pruitt]

At least part of the flesh, muscle tissues and such would magically remain. It might also be disturbing if some of the zombies had maggots crawling in & on them.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

If you go the maggot route, there's that vermin host special quality in VRGttWD, I forget the exact name....

[Hell_Born]

I'm positive I read somewhere, it might have been in VRGttWD, that the same magic that animates a zombie magically "preserves" it in the state in which it was animated. You could have a home rule that zombies eventually worsen, their states of preservation altering due to time/environment, but I'd say that unless you dispel the zombie and then animate it as a skeleton, it always has at least some flesh on its bones- albeit putrescent, mould-riddled and vermin infested.

[vipera aspis]

i would make them visually akin to ancient dead or wights.

[Lord_Pruitt]

or you could go straight up old school, and use a blast from Greyhawk - the sons of kyss, type of undead with worms crawling out of it

[Luke Fleeman]

or you could go straight up old school, and use a blast from Greyhawk - the sons of kyss, type of undead with worms crawling out of it

Which have been featured prominently in the Age of Worms adventure path recently- so the info should eb easy to get.