Created Undead and Experience.


Rules Questions


I have a bit of a rules question. So in our game last night, we arrived at a tomb, and when we opened it up, there were 52 Skeletons inside the room. The party is composed of 8 level 3s and we managed to form a rather effective means of killing them thanks to two uses of Grease and our fighters holding the line.

After a few turns [once again, we're level 3!] we heard chanting in the background of an Undead Cleric preparing buffs to fight, but due to the waves [it was essentially a 4x20 room] of undead, we could only hold our line. Eventually, we thinned the herd enough for the Undead Cleric to finally have the chance to get in range of us for his Channel ability which did 3d6 damage. Once again, aside from our bow users, no one could really do any damage to him due to the horde of skeletons and later zombies that were being added to the mix from urns.

After another two rounds of taking the Channel damage, our party was in pretty bad shape, so we had to abandon our defensive perimeter. As we spread outside in an attempt to lure them, it was revealed that behind all of the various undead, there was an actual door that we had missed. Seriously, eight sets of eyes on the table couldn't see the door that was drawn, we just assumed it was part of the stair case in the room. So, the Undead Cleric closed the heavy door, and went back to create some fresh undead for us to fight.

We took two rounds to heal up since almost everyone was at 10 hp, and made our way through the grease perimeter that we had made. We opened the door, and found another 24 Skeletons. Once again, we started our slaughter. Once the Undead Cleric was able to get within range of us, he once again hit us pretty hard with his Channel. After four and a half hours of combat, we finally managed to clear the room.

The DM has stated that we aren't going to get any experience for the skeletons since they were part of the 'class features' of the Cleric and that the Cleric had sunk almost all of his money into the creation of them; however, I contend that since the skeletons were made prior to, and in such large numbers, that they should certainly count, or at least have an adjusted CR for the Cleric.

I understand that there is a rule about Summoned Monsters being part of the CR; I also am aware of a Dev response that states that not even that is a cut and dry experience situation since if players are being harassed by a summon, but not the actual caster, they should receive experience, and so forth. It just seems wrong for a party to fight 76 skeletons and not get a single hint of experience for it after playing for four hours. How is it fair to kill 10,260 experience worth of skeletons and only be awarded the experience for killing the Cleric which was a CR 6, thus only 2,600 experience?

Sczarni

I'm not sure you're going to find an answer here. Bringing up your frustrations with the GM, as a group, may be the better way to go.

Your GM may have other thoughts to reimburse you in the future, with treasure, or story XP, that simply haven't come to fruition yet, or maybe he/she is limiting XP in an attempt to keep you within a certain level range for future encounters.

We'll probably never know, here in the forums, but I know one person who might.


Honestly... The Cleric should at least have Ad Hoc for the highly advantageous combat area. But creating them ahead of time is indeed a part of his challenge, which means that they don't award experience, especially if the cleric did pay for them.
Personally speaking though I would likely heighten his challenge rating with a +1 or +2.


Nefreet wrote:

I'm not sure you're going to find an answer here. Bringing up your frustrations with the GM, as a group, may be the better way to go.

Your GM may have other thoughts to reimburse you in the future, with treasure, or story XP, that simply haven't come to fruition yet, or maybe he/she is limiting XP in an attempt to keep you within a certain level range for future encounters.

We'll probably never know, here in the forums, but I know one person who might.

I do agree, but at the same time, he likes to play things by the book. He's stating that the experience rules state that we wouldn't get anything from the Skeletons, even though they are worth so much more experience that the actual Cleric that summoned them due to the amount that we had to kill. I cannot find such a rule that would support him, since Created Skeletons are not Summoned creatures.


How does this work on the flipside?

In our home campaign, a friend of mine is playing a Cleric who is going to concentrate on creating/animating dead and use them to fight with us.

Are the undead worked into our APL? And if they are, what would be their ‘level’, their CR?


Hobbun wrote:

How does this work on the flipside?

In our home campaign, a friend of mine is playing a Cleric who is going to concentrate on creating/animating dead and use them to fight with us.

Are the undead worked into our APL? And if they are, what would be their ‘level’, their CR?

The created undead would be part of the cleric's power and as such should not be considered when considering APL.

Sczarni

So, wouldn't the created undead be a part of the encounter's EL?

It's kind of like, what if the Cleric instead spent those resources making scrolls, and used them all against you?


Talk with the DM, not us. It won't affect your campaign if we all stand around opining on one side or the other.

That said, my general rule is that stuff created or summoned or bound or whatevered before the encounter starts is part of the challenge you face and that you get experience for; stuff created during it isn't (it replaces something else the person involved could have been doing). But it's not a hard-and-fast rule, it depends on the situation.

Your GM does have a point -- if the undead cleric had had (say) +1 full plate instead of 2650 gp worth of undead, would it have been a harder fight, or an easier one, or about the same? Admittedly, gp value is not perfect (compare "I hit you with 2500 gp worth of jewelry" instead of "I hit you with 50 skeletons each throwing a vial of alchemist's fire").


Nefreet wrote:

So, wouldn't the created undead be a part of the encounter's EL?

It's kind of like, what if the Cleric instead spent those resources making scrolls, and used them all against you?

Yup. It would be. But the room seems highly advantageous to the cleric. I mean creating a room full of undead as a shield, limiting the groups ability to get to the cleric and then use channel energy on them... That seems like an inordinate challenge for the cleric's challenge rating.

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