It never struck me until recently how few Undead are actually featured in the cemetery of Roslar’s Coffer and Roslar’s Tomb. The Book references a “massive uprising of Undead”, and the Loci Spirit tells the PCs that they’ve been holding all the Undead in the cemetery, preventing them from entering the town. However, upon actually counting the number of Undead the PCs must deal with, there are only five. Five! The Bone Golem and Living Walls represent the “spirit” of Undead, and the golem itself likely is meant to account for a fair number of the corpses that had once been buried, but it really feels like the “massive uprising” was more like a light trickle under this scrutiny.
I’d like to add more Undead to this part of the adventure, but I’m also aware of what doing so would mean for the balance and pace of the adventure. I was thinking of adding a couple Haunts to the graveyard, but the bulk of the Undead are reportedly inside the tomb. I was thinking of simply adding a trivial number of Skeletons (CR 1/3) and/or Zombies (CR 1/2) to each encounter inside the tomb - something like 1d3+1 - which wouldn’t increase the CR by much, if at all, but would potentially make them more interesting, and also satisfy the feeling of an entire cemetery-worth of bodies being reanimated.
I’m looking for feedback for this idea, as well as any alternatives that might accomplish the same goal.
Thanks!
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It never struck me until recently how few Undead are actually featured in the cemetery of Roslar’s Coffer and Roslar’s Tomb. The Book references a “massive uprising of Undead”, and the Loci Spirit tells the PCs that they’ve been holding all the Undead in the cemetery, preventing them from entering the town. However, upon actually counting the number of Undead the PCs must deal with, there are only five. Five! The Bone Golem and Living Walls represent the “spirit” of Undead, and the golem itself likely is meant to account for a fair number of the corpses that had once been buried, but it really feels like the “massive uprising” was more like a light trickle under this scrutiny.
I’d like to add more Undead to this part of the adventure, but I’m also aware of what doing so would mean for the balance and pace of the adventure. I was thinking of adding a couple Haunts to the graveyard, but the bulk of the Undead are reportedly inside the tomb. I was thinking of simply adding a trivial number of Skeletons (CR 1/3) and/or Zombies (CR 1/2) to each encounter inside the tomb - something like 1d3+1 - which wouldn’t increase the CR by much, if at all, but would potentially make them more interesting, and also satisfy the feeling of an entire cemetery-worth of bodies being reanimated.
I’m looking for feedback for this idea, as well as any alternatives that might accomplish the same goal.
Thanks!
Just wrapped up running Book 2 a few weeks ago. Here's what I did:
1 - use the random monster encounters in the back of the book. have your players roll for them and throw those guys at them as they are exploring the town. If they are exploring throughout the day, that's like 3 rolls a day, which is almost certainly going to give you one or two encounters. I also added a horrifying encounter in the middle of the night in the woods while they were sleeping [those undead ogre barbarians ... they'll get ya!]
2 - if you have players from the town, or with relationships in the town, well, guess what... those guys are now some sort of fun undead monster that you ordinarily would not encounter. I used two UNRISEN as the resurrected bodies of a PC's bullies. While they were fighting them [not easy] I had a zombie horde slowly move in on the PCs ... it was a memorable encounter, as they had to kill the tough undead quick or be swallowed up by an endless horde.
3 - Don't use cultists at the jeweler's shop. The cultists are boring. Use something else - I had an undead ogre and 4 wights instead.
4 - I removed the 3 NPCs from the tomb and attacked them instead from the outside w/ three level appropriate undead - a mummy, a wraith, and something else [that did not go well, as the something else had DARKNESS and the PCs had no way of seeing through it; I just stopped the encounter when I realized it was going to be nothing more than an unfun slog].
Long / short : there's a TON of great mid level undead monsters which can be added to either substitute for existing things or add to Book 2. Have some fun with it!
I also cut out the tomb exploration entirely after the xenopterid... didn't think that what was there fit with my conception of an abandoned, unfinished tomb.
