'Holding off the horde' encounters

[Anthony Jackson]

There is a fantasy staple encounter which I call 'holding off the horde'. The basic idea is that you have a functionally unlimited supply of monsters which, however, only appear at a limited rate, and the job of the PCs is to prevent the monsters from breaking through for a relatively small number of rounds, until some other event happens which permanently solves the problem. Typical examples would be holding a demonic portal until it can be closed with a ritual, holding a gate until the drawbridge can be raised, holding breach in a wall until reinforcements can arrive, and so on.

The question is, how do you run this in a way that's balanced and interesting? One obvious method is to, for example, have one monster per round come through the portal, but the net effect of doing that is that the PCs either reliably slaughter each monster as it comes through (in which case you have a boring slog-fest) or the PCs fail to kill monsters as fast as they appear, in which case they rapidly get overwhelmed.

One possible solution is to base the rate at which monsters come through the portal on what's already through the portal. For example: Set aside 6 monsters, plus 6 minions, and assign each one a number. At the start of the combat, two monsters come through. Every subsequent round, roll a d6. If the monster with that number is not currently on the board, it comes through the portal (at full health, with all encounter powers refreshed). Otherwise, a minion comes through.

That option seems potentially interesting, but I haven't tried it, and I'm not sure how strong each critter should be -- I'm guessing the total of all monsters should be something like 150% of a normal encounter, but that's just a guess.

Thoughts? Better ideas?

 

[Rith the Wanderer]

This is one of my favorites too. Back in 3.x the way it was usually run in my group was just by feeling out how the encounter was going and adjusting accordingly with only a basic list of enemies beforehand, usually with a boss type enemy near the end. I'm not sure if this would work as well in 4.0, but the method you posted seems really interesting to me, and I think it would work.

 

[peterparker18974]

Having a decent amount of minions come out of the portal will the give the appearance of holding of the flood gates. Also you can control the amount of damage that pc's take this way a little better as minions have a static damage. Then run a few play test. I have been running playtest on all my encounters to see if they are too easy or difficult for the party.

 

[Stalker0]

My group (2nd level) just ran something exactly like this.

It was a hold the gate scenario. A horde of undead were outside (minions) and every round several more would rise up. In addition, every so often a non minion would appear on the scene.

We had the group and a small army of halfings that we had control over to help. We had to close the gates, but we had to manually close the gates at 3 points to bring it down. Meanwhile once during the fight a necromancer rose the halfings that died during teh fight into more undead.

The fight went very well. We trashed through hordes of undead, and more kept coming. At teh end we got the gate down with a small horde right outside, and most of us out of second winds and cleric healing. Another round or two could have been the end.

 

[James McMurray]

You have to be careful using minions if the party's defender has a high enough attack bonus to reliably hit them, especially if he's a fighter with polearm gambit. Our paragon level party had an encounter similar to this.

It wasn't actually a "hold them back" thing, but we had ~20 minions come pouring out of a church to try to kill us. Because of some lucky positioning, our polearm gambit-using paladin killed most of them on attacks of opportunity. If he had been a fighter he wouldn't have missed them.

Because of the setup, only a few could get next to him, and the rest had to go around. The ones that did died 3 times out of 4.

You could have a similar problem if your party's wizard has the at will AoE and a good attack bonus. The ones that don't die to OAs will die to fiery bursts.

 

[IanB]

I do think it is important to include some non-minion monsters so that the strikers have something to do.

 

[Ahrimon]

I've been kind of itching to do a Night of the Living dead type scenario with a good mixture of zombie minions and regular zombies. Or better yet a Resident Evil: Apocalypse scenario in a city. That would keep things running and gunning for numerous encounters. =)

 

[Anthony Jackson]

I've been kind of itching to do a Night of the Living dead type scenario with a good mixture of zombie minions and regular zombies. Or better yet a Resident Evil: Apocalypse scenario in a city. That would keep things running and gunning for numerous encounters. =)

I notice that most of the monsters that in previous editions of D&D created new copies of themselves when they got a kill don't in 4e. Wraiths seem to be the exception, thus meaning releasing one wraith in an area filled with human rabble is probably sufficient to destroy a city (that should probably be a Daily, and new wraiths don't get that power charged).

 

[chaotix42]

First person to stat out a hungry zombie with an infectious bite complete with zombification disease stats wins the thread.

 

[Anthony Jackson]

First person to stat out a hungry zombie with an infectious bite complete with zombification disease stats wins the thread.

Infected Zombie * Level 2 Brute
Initiative -1. Senses Perception +0; darkvision
HP 40; Bloodied 20; see also Zombie Weakness
AC 13; Fortitude 13, Reflex 9, Will 10
Immune disease, poison
Speed 4
(melee basic) Slam (standard, at-will)
+6 vs AC; 1d10+3 damage
(melee) Zombie Bite (standard, at-will) * Disease
+6 vs AC; 1d10+3 damage, and the victim contracts Zombie Plague. Can only be used on grabbed targets.
(melee basic) Zombie Grab (standard, at-will)
+4 vs Reflex and AC; (Hit Reflex) target is Grabbed; escape checks are made at a -5 penalty (Hit both AC and Reflex) target is bitten, as per Zombie Bite
Zombie Weakness: any critical hit to the zombie reduces it to 0 HP immediately.
Alignment chaotic evil. Languages as in life
Str 14(+3) Dex 6(-1) Wis 8 (+0)
Con 10(+1) Int 6(-1) Cha 3 (-3)
Zombie Plague * Level 2 Disease * Endurance Stable DC 17, Improve DC 21
(target is cured) < Initial Effect If killed while at this level or worse, victim rises as an Infected Zombie after six hours <> Victim feels an insatiable hunger, and cannot recover healing surges except by eating the brains of sentient creatures <> Victim goes mad with hunger, and is considered dominated; he will attempt to attack and kill any sentient creature who approaches, then rip off the skull and devour the brains. After devouring the brains of one sentient creature, he recovers his sanity until his next extended rest > Victim turns into an Infected Zombie.

Infected Zombie Minion * Level 2 Minion
Initiative -1. Senses Perception +0; darkvision
HP 1; a missed attack never damages a minion. Also, see Zombie Durability
AC 13; Fortitude 13, Reflex 9, Will 10
Immune disease, poison
Speed 4
(melee basic) Slam (standard, at-will)
+6 vs AC; 4 damage
(melee) Zombie Bite (standard, at-will) * Disease
+6 vs AC; 4 damage, and the victim contracts Zombie Plague. Can only be used on grabbed targets.
(melee basic) Zombie Grab (standard, at-will)
+4 vs Reflex and AC; (Hit Reflex) target is Grabbed; escape checks are made at a -5 penalty (Hit both AC and Reflex) target is bitten, as per Zombie Bite.
Zombie Durability (no action, encounter, triggered when hit by damage): zombie gains damage resistance 10/all for one attack. This power is expended even if the source of damage was a miss. The zombie is considered Bloodied after this power has been expended.
Alignment chaotic evil. Languages as in life
Str 14(+3) Dex 6(-1) Wis 8 (+0)
Con 10(+1) Int 6(-1) Cha 3 (-3)