| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
In the Ravenloft adventure "Feast of Goblyns" there is an encounter that includes 180 skeletons.
For some reason, that's always stuck in my mind.
In my first outline for Carrion Crown I included a note for the author of this volume to figure out a way to really capture the feel of hordes and hordes of zombies. 180 zombies, maybe?
The thing is, that with the game's tactical nature - not to mention the power level of the PCs at this point - asking the GM to throw 180 enemies on the board and roll and roll and roll every attack (especially when probably only 20s are going to actually connect) is madness.
So the zombie horde element went away... or, at least, elsewhere.
Anyway, if you want to make the second half more "zombie apocalypse," you might want to try big groups of enemies. Don't know how effective it'll be, but you know throwing a few dozen minis on the table is going to be memorable. And if the PCs blast through them, well, turns out they're badasses at this point and should get the occasional chance to feel like it.
Alternatively, although it's not a perfect system and we've never adopted a similar deal in the Pathfinder RPG, you might one to check out some of the rules for mobs (essentially "people swarms") pioneered back the Dungeon days with Shackled City and elsewhere.
|
Well Wes I do appreciate you taking the time to respond. Not sure I want THAT many zombies...but I am curious if you think perhaps mass combat MIGHT work better IF I count the PCs as just one army and the zombies as like...maybe 3,4,5 separate ones? Maybe? (I figure I can swing in Kingmaker this way...)
Otherwise I might take your ideas. I just felt the entire premise of "zombie apocalypse" in D&D hasn't been done enough. This might work out though with your suggestions.
Thanks!
You could always try using the mob template from the 3.5 Wotc dungeonmaster's guide 2, it basically takes a group of 50+ small or bigger creature and makes them into a gargantuan swarm. Should work pretty well to get a horde feel. I'm not sure if it's open content however.
Edit:
Found THIS on the Giantip forums
Mort,
Like I told Wes, I'll consider that option and the former. I just wanted to know IF I should instead try mass combat rules instead.
Based on my understanding of the Kingmaker mass combat (we looked at the rules but didn't actually use them; our party launched a commando strike and took out the enemy ruler immediately) -- Mass combat rules will put the PCs at a disadvantage. While their unit would have good defense and offense, it wouldn't have crap for HP, and a couple lucky rolls by the zombie hordes would flatten them.
It would also very much downplay whatever special abilities the PCs are bringing to the table, like walls of fire, channel energy, etc.
Treating the zombies as a stupidly huge swarm creature (like, takes up most of the battle map huge) could be much more fun.
Otherwise I might take your ideas. I just felt the entire premise of "zombie apocalypse" in D&D hasn't been done enough.
Stay tuned.
And good luck!
Hi, nosig! If you were looking at what some of the people earlier in this thread talked about when it comes to making Feldgrau more of a "legions of the undead" wandering the blighted post-war countryside, take a peek at the new troop type that you can use to represent zounds of zombies and scads of skeletons.
Have any of you tried skeleton or zombie troops? They feel like they could get pretty overwhelming pretty quickly (which I suppose is the point).
Great adventure, Feast of Goblins. Indeed the troops mechanics might be the way to swarm the pcs with zombies.
A zombie or skeleton horde is always fun! No matter how many you destroy, there is always more coming... Escape!