The juju oracle I think its called makes neutral undead, no smite evil I suppose, I think everything else would still work. Maybe an entire area or continent that is desecrated to give bonuses on their effects?
All in all you have to allow for players to play the undead slaying clerics/paladins.
The classes do get bonuses vs undead and are very good against it and in a lot of campaigns there are not a whole lot of availability for them shine. and I'll be completely honest in a game like that I'd absolutely love to play a cleric/paladin in this type of game to finally get some use out of turn undead/channel positive energy besides being "haha your our healer do your job" >.< and you also got to keep that in mind. As the zombies do damage to the party, the clerics are going to want to use there CPE for healing rather then murdilation of undead.
You have to keep in mind that most undead have a turn/control resistance. And both are a will save. so not every time will you have your undead encounter's wiped.
HOnestly If it were me i'd like to play a cleric undead lord and laugh as my army is constantly replenished. :)
If the entire campaign is about a creature type, and it's meant to elicit horror, then I'd ask players not to make divine undead-slayers. On the other hand, you could let them, and give the undead 1.5x more hp or something.
If the campaign requires it, you can always do a soft ban. Or you can switch out some of the undead slaying tools (giving the players knowledge you're going to do it, of course).
It depends on the mood you want for the campaign. Are the PCs supposed to fear direct confrontation with the undead, or are they supposed to slay them with wings of holy light at their back. Or another mood.
Then you just double undead HP or something.
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I'm currently running a Zombie Apocalypse campaign, and I was worried about the same thing...but I'm over it. Yes, those classes get bonuses, but the sheer numbers of undead cause them to run out of channels and elites pretty fast...plus, many unread have channel resist and a good will save, do they rarely take full damage.
The biggest threat in the party by far has been the alchemist with his bombs...devastating to a group of Zombies because they have bad reflex saves.
My advice from experience...don't worry about it. Overwhelm them with quantity, and those little tricks won't matter much.
you could give the undead a group bonus say if 5 or more undead are in the same area they all get a +2 to turn resistance if they have 10 or more they get +3 ect... make the fact that they group mor powerful almost like a swarm...
a off the topic example is this : i once wanted to make a family wrestling kobolds and i had to make them challenging for my players so what i did is give them a bonus to str and grapple cmb when they were in 15 feet of each other the more of them the more strength they had and that is how the were the best kobold wrestlers this side of cheiliax i would do something like that for your undead
Also, you could decidedly NOT tell them they're playing in a zombie apocalypse.
Just have them roll their toons as normal, have them start in a regular ol' D&D world, then maybe have them take a ship or boat somewhere, and get shipwrecked for a couple levels(weeks/months, or a year or so could pass) and when they finally manage to repair the boat enough to escape, they come back to... GASP!
Zombies are overrunning the world!
Also, you're the DM.
You could say something like "I'm only allowing 1 cleric and 1 paladin in this party."
Give them turn resistance. Give them max hitpoints. Or, give them a mob bonus. Say for every 3-5 beyond the first in a crowd, their negative energy is so vast that it ups their turn resistance, and grants them 1 +1 to hit/dmg. If they encounter a mob of 20, that's a +6 or a +4. That stacking starts getting nasty when there's 20 rolls against them every round.
You could do all sorts of nasty stuff.
Make the zombies have Filth Fever on their claws, teeth and in their blood. Make clerics have to spend spells to cure poisons and diseases, etc.
look into raven loft's plague zombies they have like 42 hp a pop and a fort save not to get sick and become a zombie.
Go crazy!
-Von
I say give a good reason why NPC clerics and paladins arent crushing the undead hordes by making it an environmental reason.
I say do it through the planes. Perhaps some terrible cosmic event knocked the planes out of alignment and now the material plane is closer to the negative energy plane adn farther from the positive. This weakens the channeling abilities of positive energy clerics.
From there you ahve to think in terms of mechanics. I would say knocking the dice down to d4's. That's really all their is to it. It's not a big nerf but it does make them slightly less explosive.
Have the fodder undead go in and burn up resources, then the intelligent or more advanced undead follow up. Attacks at all times as well since undead dont need to sleep, makes being prepared less easy and hitting paladins and clerics without armor easier too.
MeleeMonster80 had a whole thread about this here:
http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz4xzt?Zombie-Apocalypse
Basically, several people did number crunching and found that channel isn't a deal breaker. Also, if it's a true zombie apocalypse, they might have way more than 3 encounters per day,there could be dozens of zombies in each, and they might not be able to sleep or replenish abilities every night due to safety. If you really want to horrify them, let them build their supposed "Undead destroying menaces", and then laugh as they burn all their abilities before they even kill the first horde. Simple probability says even a few dozen zombies can seriously mess up a mid level party. Now imagine how many there would be in a city, where all the food and magic items are >:)
I'd also let the undead have an inherent ability to sense the presence of those with the ability to channel positive energy and then let them respond accordingly. Zombies naturally move toward the cleric and paladin in never-ending waves; vampires attack them preferentially, as these characters are just tastier; and so on. The undead will not ignore everyone else, but they'll beat them down to get to the tastiest morsels.
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Also, you're the DM.You could say something like "I'm only allowing 1 cleric and 1 paladin in this party."
-Von
+1
This is the best way to minimize divine-power overkill. Limit the number of classes to one of each class in the party. I usually do this, anyway, so that everyone feels like their contributing, and not fighting over loot, etc etc.
Anyway, I agree with the majority here. Have the undead get bonuses. I particularly liked the idea of unholy ground. Buffs for the undead, debuffs for "good" characters would work...it'll keep the balance a bit more, but still give the pallys and clerics (and even life oracles) a sense of their "DIE EVIL SCUM!" powers still being effective.
That, or just throw in more undead per encounter, with higher HP. And have the hard-hitting undead specifically target the divine casters once they see that they're the ones quickly destroying the smaller undead.