FATE (Dresden): Weaponized Blocks

During one game, the PCs had to work their way through a horde of zombies to get to their target (a necromancer).  I didn't want to run a battle with a hundred zombies, so I came up with another way of handling minions, the weaponized block.  This was a modification to the normal idea of a block, but it worked as intended: it brought the cinematic element of having to fight your way to the bad guy, without drowning the game in combat rolls.

You are not just moving through a blocked square, your having to fight your way through.  The PCs could perform two actions:  attack the block or fight their way through.

Attacking the block:  for this example, the zombie horde had a block strength of 5.  It was not as simple as breaking through a wall or pushing away crates.  These were zombies, and not easy to take down.  Each round, the attacking character would try to overcome the block by attacking it.  If they succeed, the block strength went down by 1.  If they succeed by 3 or more, the block strength went down by 2.  This way, the PCs could weaken the horde, but at the cost of time.

Fighting through:  The zombies are not passive; they are attacking anything that tries to make it though.  The PC trying to make it through rolled Athletics (or parry) to move through.  They had to take 1 physical strain to do this (just like a wizard has to take 1 mental strain to cast a spell).  This was to simulate the dangers of trying to plow through the zombies.  If they failed, they were prevented from making it to the next zone, and they took additional damage based on how badly they failed the roll.  If they succeed, they made it through that zone (they made it past the horde).

This was the set up:

The PCs had to make it through three zones of zombie hordes to get to the necromancer.  The first zone had a Zombie (block) Strength of 3.  The second zone had a zombie strength of 4, and the third zone had a strength of 5.

At first, all of the players tried to make it through, but some did not roll well, and backed up.  Those with armor (one supernatural and one wizard) started working their way through.  The others backed up and started opening fire.  They were able to weaken the first zone to help other make it through, while the armored people started moving through zone 2.  (due to the landscape being flat, they did not have a clear shot to shoot the necromancer; none of them thought about getting on top of their cars).  Eventually, the fastest, most athletic character made it to the center, but they were alone.  The wizard had gotten blocked at zone 3, and had to wait until the support fire weakened that zone.

Could they have driven into the zombie horde?  Yes.  I would have increased the damage that they could have done to each zombie block, but they would have needed to back up and get speed to try it again.  As an alternative, I would have let them try to just drive through the horde, with the car taking the damage, but it would have been much slower (have you tried moving a car through a horde of people?  Now try it with zombie bodies.).

The end result, it was an amazingly cinematic scene of them trying to get to the necromancer before he finished the ritual.  And, the scene did not get bogged down in rolls (it was fast paced).