Cyberhawk
Community Supporter
Greetings,
In one of the other threads "Does enervation turn you into a wight?" the conversation began discussing Undead that spawn (wights, shadows, vamps..etc.). The potential problem is that some of the spawning could create an exponential increase...2 wights creating 4 wights creating 8 wights and such as they munch on the local villagers.
With this progression you can lose towns in one night! That is a lot of fun if you're playing All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but it might be a bit much for a DnD game.
So I was thinking about how do you handle these situations? A few thoughts follow:
1. Pure exponential increases look good on paper, but wouldn't happen quite like that in practice. People will be missed, hide or fight back. Unintelligent or animalistic undead will do incomplete or repetitive searches. Intelligent Undead may have other goals than just creating more minions, such as looting valuable homes or gathering togethor to take out the local wizard.
2. Intelligent Undead might stop themselves. This is especially the case for feeding undead such as Vampires, if there are any leaders in the group they may stop the spreading of the contagion so that the 'food supply' doesn't get wiped out. Vampires need fresh blood, Ghouls want fresh (non-moving) bodies..so the creatures themselves might restrain themselves.
3. Having entire communities wiped out is a pretty big thing. Any local Diviners should get wind of it before it happens if they do any future scrying. Also, becuase of the large nature of the event clerics may begin to get prophecies and warnings.
Anyways, that's my rambling thoughts on it tonight. It does make an interesting intellectual exercise tho...
Cyberhawk
In one of the other threads "Does enervation turn you into a wight?" the conversation began discussing Undead that spawn (wights, shadows, vamps..etc.). The potential problem is that some of the spawning could create an exponential increase...2 wights creating 4 wights creating 8 wights and such as they munch on the local villagers.
With this progression you can lose towns in one night! That is a lot of fun if you're playing All Flesh Must Be Eaten, but it might be a bit much for a DnD game.
So I was thinking about how do you handle these situations? A few thoughts follow:
1. Pure exponential increases look good on paper, but wouldn't happen quite like that in practice. People will be missed, hide or fight back. Unintelligent or animalistic undead will do incomplete or repetitive searches. Intelligent Undead may have other goals than just creating more minions, such as looting valuable homes or gathering togethor to take out the local wizard.
2. Intelligent Undead might stop themselves. This is especially the case for feeding undead such as Vampires, if there are any leaders in the group they may stop the spreading of the contagion so that the 'food supply' doesn't get wiped out. Vampires need fresh blood, Ghouls want fresh (non-moving) bodies..so the creatures themselves might restrain themselves.
3. Having entire communities wiped out is a pretty big thing. Any local Diviners should get wind of it before it happens if they do any future scrying. Also, becuase of the large nature of the event clerics may begin to get prophecies and warnings.
Anyways, that's my rambling thoughts on it tonight. It does make an interesting intellectual exercise tho...
Cyberhawk
