An army of skeletons against a 9th level party - dumb?

[Number47]

Have them in a sunken room and chained in place. If the PCs want to get to the other side, they have to come in and fight. The farther ones from the center path can have reach or range weapons. The water provides, say half concealment or maybe quarter cover. Try different sized skeletons. The bigger ones are fairly dangerous. Tiny ones might be able to move through the water in total concealment. That would be a nasty surprise!

EDIT: Undead are utterly destroyed if less than half the cleric's hit dice.

 

[s/LaSH]

I ran a similar encounter (the Sixty Zombie room). It was helped by the fact that the zombies were stupid and kept flooding in towards the PCs, one of whom was a scythe-wielder with Whirlwind Attack and Great Cleave (a truly frightening prospect for fighting mook swarms). I believe his Strength was sufficient to mean he didn't have to roll for damage - if he hit, he did more damage than the average hit points of the monsters, so we just gave him a pile of d20s each round and said 'If you roll lower than 3 you miss and it doesn't die this round'. We also had a cleric, who'd spend every round blowing a bunch of zombies to dust with turning. I kept track of zombies on a tally board.

The PCs loved that session. They were eager to enter the second Sixty Zombie room, and rather dissappointed that they couldn't find the other two that logically existed. Perhaps it was the realisation of just how stupidly powerful they'd become - they took something like 2hp damage in those 2 rooms, and they weren't even 9th level.

Just one battle story...

 

[Tortoise]

I suggest some subtle visual clue changes.

Don't have them obviously look like skeletons.

Have them wearing masks, full robes with hoods, gauntlets, in darkness or dim lighting to start with. Unless something else like an active detect undead spell is in use, or another clue gives it away the party isn't likely to know they are facing undead until engaged with them.

Maybe have some of their masks or shields marked with glyphs of warding of different types.

Use the water and reach weapon suggestions others made, and also have them in a desecrated area which helps reduce the effectiveness of turning attempts somewhat.

Tha party should still beat them handily, but the first couple of unexpected surprises and the added toughness caused by the situation will definitely give the party something to think about.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I might try to implement some kind of law of averages rule. Like, the skeletons need a 20 to hit, and if 20 of them are attacking, 1 of them will hit. That kind of thing.

Good idea. I recommend you get a die roller program and run it, either at the table or before the game.

To make things more interesting:

1. Add water. Or poison gas. OR spooky mist (the miss chance will hurt the players more than the skeletons). Or magical Darkness. Or a floor riddled with caltrops. Change the environment.

2. Definitely have the skeletons rise from the ground/water, burst through the walls, or drop from the ceiling. Put the players in the thick of it, immediately surrounded. You might want to drop the players into the room via a chute or pit trap.

3. Have the skeletons grapple or attempt to disarm. Instead of having each one try individually, have one make the attempt with all the other skeletons in reach Assisting. It'd be pretty scary to have the cleric haul out the Holy Symbol to do a turn attempt, only to have the holy symbol wrenched out of his fingers and snapped in two.

4. Don't forget circumstance bonuses and penalties. I'd say 100 skeletons all pressing against the party would grant the skeletons a +4 bonus to grapple and disarm attempts, and give the characters a -2 penalty on medium weapons and a -4 penalty for large weapons and Concentration checks.

5. Let the skeletons crowd. Have two skeletons share a space, giving each one a -2 penalty on to-hit and a -2 penalty to AC. Hey, they're skeletons--they're thin. But grouping them this way will really make the characters feel that there's a HUGE amount of undead clawing at them. And remember that Aid Another only requires a successful attack against AC 10.

I'll leave you with this quote from the SRD:

Several characters can be in a single grapple. Up to four characters can grapple a single opponent in a given round. Opponents that are one size category smaller than a character count for half, opponents that are one size category larger than a character count double, and opponents two or more size categories larger count quadruple.

Additional enemies can aid their friends with the aid another action.

And a diagram (S=2 skeletons sharing a space, X=party member):

SSSS
SXXS
SXXS
SSSS

With three S's per X, and two skeletons per S, that's six skeletons per character. Using the circumstance modifiers above, each skeleton is at a net +2 to grapple. Assuming two skeletons aid a third, that's two grapple checks per character per round, each with a potential bonus of +2 to +6. If a character is grappled the skeleton moves into his space and another skeleton moves up, meaning the grappled character has 7 skeletons (6 in front of him, 1 on him). All the surrounding skeletons will attempt to join the grapple, and soon the character will be overwhelmed (6 skeletons around him, 4 on him). That's bad news.

-z

PS: for extra fun, but some creatures or traps with Str-draining poison in an encounter before the skeleton encounter.

 

[F5]

One thing you can do is make the skeletons irrelevent to the actual purpose of the room, but more of a distraction. A 9th level party, especially one with a cleric, will blast through skeletons without blinking an eye. But a 9th level rogue who is surrounded by a frenzy of bony claws might be distracted enough to blow the DC of picking the lock they need to get through to reach the rest of the dungeon.

Maybe you could assume that the skeletons will be annihilated quickly, and put some sort of clue in the room. In order to find it, they have to dig through the knee-deep pile of shattered bone.

But whatever you do, don't force the players to play out the whole fight. The fight will be over in a few rounds if you have access to Turning, or some area effect damage spells, but if your players don't have that, just play out a few rounds, and when they get the idea that it's a cakewalk, fast-forward to after the fight. An hour of whack-a-skeleton is not fun.

 

[D'karr]

Well, turning doesn't destroy undead unless you have the Sun domain.

S'mon, actually the skeletons just exist in large piles on the floor - which is made of stone. Not that it matters much...

Sir Osis - how does one create an exploding skeleton? I'd prefer to just keep them as ordinary skeletons.

It seems to me that, just because you're 9th level, doesn't automatically make you immune to having to deal with all the CR 1 and CR 1/2 crap in the world.

Well, Clerics with twice as many levels as the undead have hit dice will destroy any that they would normally turn. See the PHB p. 140. It is not domain dependent. So your 9th level cleric could easily clear this room of skeletons in record time. Medium sized skeletons have 1 HD and even huge skeletons are only 4 HD.

I would make this encounter challenging by not revealing the skeletons until the characters are deep into the room. The water idea or the breaking through the floor are both good ways to do this. Make the room unhallowed and give the skeletons Turning Resistance +2. In combination with the unhallow that will make the skeletons much harder to turn. Maybe even make them hardier skeletons by giving them Max HP. Make the environment dangerous to the characters so they take damage even if the skeletons are not hitting them. Have the skeletons gang up on characters and grapple them.

Skeletons unfortunately are hardly ever going to hit 9th level characters. 9th level characters will be killing one skeleton per attack (on average). If you have additional environmental hazards this room can turn into a death trap. Like someone said if this is not interesting it will be very boring.

 

[The Sigil]

For more fun, mix in Bone Fiend (I think that's it) from Bastion Press' Minions. Carries a constant "unhallow" effect around with it and can absorb and spit out skeletons.

Throw in a couple of "trick" skeletons, too... maybe a bone golem or something to that effect.

Use a boatload of Tiny skeletons and use the Swarm rules from the FF.

Or, to make it even more fun...

Give all the skeletons the following special ability:

Regeneration (Su): Holy weapons, holy water, and other forms of positive energy deal normal damage to a skeleton. All other types of attacks deal subdual damage. A skeleton regenerates subdual damage at a rate of 3 hp/round.

Of course, describe how the skeleton gets knocked to pieces when it drops under 0 hp... and then describe the bones pulling themselves back together as the skeletons regenerate.

And for BONUS fun... add the following to the above:

Reproduction (Su): A skeleton reduced to 0 or fewer hit points collapses into a pile of bones. The bones magically multiply, stretch, and otherwise morph into the materials needed to create two skeletons. Each of these skeletons has the same number of hit points as the original.

Remember, when they reproduce, they'll start at negative hp, but then in a couple of rounds, where you knocked down one skeleton, two pop up. Sorcerer's Apprentice and brooms, eat your heart out.

Couple this with water or poison or acid or lots of simple CR 1 tripwire/crossbow traps (skeletons don't care much since crossbows are piercing weapons) and you have a recipe for mayhem.

Basically, pile up a bunch of "little things."

---

 

[blackshirt5]

And for BONUS fun... add the following to the above:

Reproduction (Su): A skeleton reduced to 0 or fewer hit points collapses into a pile of bones. The bones magically multiply, stretch, and otherwise morph into the materials needed to create two skeletons. Each of these skeletons has the same number of hit points as the original.

Remember, when they reproduce, they'll start at negative hp, but then in a couple of rounds, where you knocked down one skeleton, two pop up. Sorcerer's Apprentice and brooms, eat your heart out.

There is only one way to win: THE ROBOTO GAMBIT!!!!

Don't get it? Watch He-man.

 

[d20Dwarf]

I like the idea about making the skeletons irrelevant, and I'd actually take it a step farther.

Say the skeletons are limitless, they just keep coming back. So your characters can only move 5 feet per round, suffering one successful attack per 10 feet moved (8 skeletons per square, averaged out to one auto hit, more or less).

Give characters their normal # of attacks per round without feats. For every skeleton they hit, they can move 5 more feet. Same with task resolution, they have a -1 to any skill check per skeleton around them, so people will have to be batting around some skulls if they want to pick the lock, climb the rope to the treasure, etc. Give the room multiple goals and/or temptations for extra fun.

Whatever you do, don't worry about action types! Just let people swing and do whatever they want, keep the action fast and furious, and in no time they'll be beating back skeletal hands and lopping off chattering skulls while moving toward their goal. Keep the skeletons coming in, no matter how many they turn, hit, whirlwind, spit on....it will give the room some tension and flavor even though they know the skeletons are no match for them.

Sounds like fun just typing it.

 

[MarauderX]

Some ideas, perhaps kinda covered aleady but expounded ---

Give them a brain so they know how to operate as an effective team, i.e. 2 go for grapple from the sides, 3 in front (or any behind) attack. They might have the team mentality of 'so what if i miss the PC and hit my skeleton buddy, it's not like we have emotions.' Apply that to some skeletons with ranged weapons too, say on top of some pedestals.

Split them up to prevent casters from taking out huge swaths of them or funneling them into a 'conga line' as mentioned above.

Add traps, plenty of regular ones as well as ones that might just affect the PCs (gas, poison). If there is a falling block trap, and the PCs can noticably see the skeletons avoiding certain colored blocks in an area, then the PCs might bull rush (or something else creative) to make the skeletons activate the trap for them.

Have lever activated pit traps (controlled by the skeletons) to split up the party. When the PC cleric falls in, you know everyone will strive to save him, but what about the cocky fighter who things he as this fight all wrapped up? Add some reach weapons for the skeletons at the top of the pit and you can have one chewed up PC in a round or 3.

Try to keep them off balance by having all of the PCs constantly in melee with them. Have the skeletons rush them so that everywhere they look they see skeletons. Don't worry about an AoO, just charge them in to fill up all available 5' squares. THEN they attack whomever is next to them. The cleric will only be able to 'clear' one area at a time really, so when the PC arcane caster gets surrounded he might get scared and ineffective if he can't cast anything...which is also a means to splitting up the party.

How about inflicting subdual damage on them with some monkish skeletons? It makes the PCs think you are aiming to capture them or just one of them, but really you are just trying to throw them off so that they think the boners aren't going to kill them. After all, a 9th level party is probably going shrug at a room full of skeletons... make them wince instead, especially if they don't know how many there are by means of magic.