Encounter Design--these monsters seem too tough!

[darkadelphia]

I would appreciate if my players would not read this thread...I'd do spoiler tags, but I don't know how and apparently that doesn't belong in the faq ;-)




So, I'm designing an undead themed encounter and decided to do a controller with some soldiers protecting him--level 6 encounter for 5 level 5 PCs. I decided on Chillborn Zombies as fun soldiers and a Mad Wraith acting as control. This encounter seems impossible. Unless the PCs can keep the monsters apart, it could mean as much as 25 damage automatically every turn (20 cold, 5 psychic). The automatic damage chillborn dish out is ridiculous if you stack them together. Has anyone used four chillborn together? How did it go?

 

[Siran Dunmorgan]

Damage from auras of the same type doesn't stack. The maximum damage the zombies could generate would be 5; with another 5 from the wraith for characters that were near it; a character that was in the aura of one or more zombies and the wraith would take 5 cold and 5 psychic damage from the aura effects.

Edit: No, sadly, I'm wrong.

Auras from Chillborn are an exception, and do stack. That's rough.

If you think it's too rough on your players, you might consider having the encounter take place somewhere shot through with difficult or hindering terrain, such that the zombies have a harder time bunching up around individual characters and eliminating them with their combined aura effects.

—Siran Dunmorgan

 

[Jack99]

Damage from auras of the same type doesn't stack. The maximum damage the zombies could generate would be 5; with another 5 from the wraith for characters that were near it; a character that was in the aura of one or more zombies and the wraith would take 5 cold and 5 psychic damage from the aura effects.

—Siran Dunmorgan

Actually, the monster entry says specifically that the aura's of several Chillborn are cumulative.

Anyway. They stack, but only where they overlap, so there should be plenty of places where the players would not be affected by all.

If you go ahead, I suggest you make a real big room, so players can move around and such. Putting this encounter in a small room would indeed kill most level appropriate parties.

 

[Mengu]

If you're concerned the stacking aura's will be too powerful, scratch that part out and you are good to go. That's what I would opt for, as it's the easiest solution.

Alternatively, you could say whenever a Chillborn Zombie takes fire damage, their aura is suppressed until the end of the Chillborn Zombie's next turn. This would work well if you have a Scorching Burst wizard in the party.

And as one other option, you could place a +2 Cloak of Survival in a preceding encounter.

 

[James McMurray]

Only the originating creature is immune to an aura, and chillborn zombies only have resist cold 10. Four or more of them close together would kill each other (depending on if you read "cumulative" to mean "additive" or "iterative").

 

[eamon]

Only the originating creature is immune to an aura, and chillborn zombies only have resist cold 10. Four or more of them close together would kill each other (depending on if you read "cumulative" to mean "additive" or "iterative").

I'd read it as additive in an iterative fashion, just like any other damage - i.e. the resistances negate the various auras damage separately. This is also a potential strategy for mitigation if the player's can get some cold resistance from somewhere. Even just a point or two could make quite the difference.

 

[keterys]

Of course, 4 chillborn exploding may well thrash the party even without the stacking auras.

 

[That One Guy]

Chillborn are really friggin' scary. I only put 2 against my players one time in a group of things and they were pretty tough.

Our DM threw four against us w/out really reading their rules beforehand. We lit them on fire, closed the door, and backed off. I think 2 or 3 of us went down and got back up in that one round of contact (I mean, we went down to 0 or lower hp, but our dm put us down pretty often so everyone in the party could heal a little). We were level 5, I believe. Ongoing fire damage and the house rule that vulnerabilities worked w/ ongoing damage is pretty much all that saved us. What would I suggest?

Do it with caution. Give them fire and maybe something to help resist cold. Be aware that if the wraith is in range of the chillborn it'll be hurt (I think a Corruption Corpse or a Mad Wraith/Corruption Corpse statblock mix might be best). Let them have an open area to try and lure the Chillborns apart or a door to section them off (although tactically they'll freeze/kill one and then once that body goes down they'll focus on another target. Their aura will pretty much kill off anyone who goes down).

If you want to give them a reasonable nerf, have their aura reduced to 1 damage for a round when hit by fire. That way they still have the terribly scary frost aura thing, but it's not as incredibly overpowered if they can be nailed by some fire. We always took the damage as total = 20, not 4 sets of 5. If one considers it that way, cold resistant items would be quite useful... but the party cannot have too many because it would take the terror out of a truly scary enemy.

2 coppers. Who do I slide the plat under the table to?