Horror Help

[Burn_Boy]

I'm running a horror campaign, which means a ton of undead and such. I have a good premise set up. A long ago defeated necromancer wasn't as defeated as people thought and now he's back and trying to hunt down the tools to help him conqueror/ destroy the world.

Eventually he's going to assault the town my players (a paladin and a cleric) are in and I had a thought. My PCs will be level 4 or 5 by the time this happens and I was thinking of sending, literally, a hundred skeletons at them. Now, you should run from this encounter, but if they have to fight, as paladins usually will, I'd give every skeleton just one hit point. Even with their DR, a paladin and cleric at level 4 or 5 they'd be a high enough BAB and strength score to do more than six HP a turn. This way they'd get to hold off the skeletons with relative ease and come on, who doesn't want to seem that badass. Your players could probably catch on, but with something that epic would they throw a wet blanket on things.

Your thoughts?

 

[xXxTheBeastxXx]

I'm wondering just how "horror" this campaign is. I mean, yeah. Undead are often used in horror campaigns, but they aren't what "makes" a horror campaign. I would assume that a horror campaign (having never run one) would be about ambiance. How the world feels and acts around them. It would be about vivid imagery in the setting and the action. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it's near-impossible to actually scare your players. But making them feel like they're in a horror story...no offense, but that's less about feeling epic facing a hundred skeletons and more about vivid setting and mystery, in my opinion. Tension and suspense.

But back to the topic at hand. Would minionizing the skeletons make your players feel epic? Maybe. I did the same thing with zombies once. Ran a little over a hundred and threw them at the party in a gauntlet-esque fashion. It felt like tedious work, cleaning them all up, rather than epic slaughter-fest fun.

My suggestion is that you give them something to do while they fight off the skeletons. Maybe they have to guard a cleric (or two, or three) who's putting up a giant circle of protection from evil around the local church/inn/whatever. Maybe there are children inside and the skeletons are hungry (constantly chanting "fresh meat" or some such thing).

If you want to actually build tension over the course of the combat, then maybe use something I call the "compounding interest" strategy: the first wave has 1 HP, the second has 2, the third has 3 and so on. Yeah, your players will feel awesome fighting off the first few waves of skeletons with one swing each, smiles on their faces as bones fly. But when they start surviving the hits? When it takes two hits to kill each? Or three? Or four? When they're forced to retreat deeper into their defenses because the enemies are just becoming too much to handle?

Also, when it comes to horror/tension building, I find the idea of undead grappling your characters and attempting to bite them or scratch out their eyes fairly useful. Maybe one of the skeletons grapples a player, then another grabs hold (I can't recall whether this is allowed in the standard rules, but in this case, who cares?). Then another and another until he's completely surrounded, being chewed on my six or seven walking skeletons, flesh still hanging off their pearly white bones. What then? The other players have to save him. But that means abandoning the clerics (or the orphans, or whatever) while they fight off the invaders. What do they do? What do they do?

Get it? "Compounding interest." At first it seems easy, maybe even fun. Then slowly it gets harder and harder and harder until you're neck-deep in clawing hands and gnashing teeth.
It works for credit card companies...they scare the crap out of people all the time, and all they have to use is a piece of paper with some numbers on it. Just imagine what you can do if you used the same tactic with skeletons.

Regardless of how you do it, good luck and good gaming,

-The Beast

 

[Kaisoku]

Well, hundreds of minions is good as a horror environment, but rarely good as the "goal". They should be in the way of the goal (getting somewhere, doing something, protecting someone, etc).

If you decide you want to make them scarier or more effective, remember that Aid Another bonuses stack, and when you have a bunch you can surround players and have one grapple or attack roll being assured of landing (+14 bonus from 7 others aiding the 8th).

Or, you could run the skeletons as a swarm. Mindless undead (as shown in most horror shows) tend to not care about defending themselves or fighting space... they'll pack right in next to each other to get at things.
This is better represented as a swarm of medium sized creatures.

It also helps with running tons and tons of creatures at once. They would have an AC based on armor (natural or otherwise), but no dodge bonus (hitting fish in a barrel situation). Damage might destroy an individual skeleton or so, but that just means the other skeletons move in to replace it.
The swarm itself attacks anyone inside it's area or one square next to it. Those inside the swarm are attacked with higher attack bonus and damage over those next to it (to indicate the strength of being surrounded and being pressed on all sides).
The best part is you can have it grapple victims, preventing movement (or forcing them to move with the swarm), causing even greater damage from the force of attacks. Going prone in the swarm should have some major effect as well (or getting pinned), such as a DC fort save or be staggered from the weight of bodies pushing down on you.

Moving through the swarm requires some kind of effort (limited to 5' movement with a Strength check?, or use overrun or acrobatics checks instead/to move further, etc). Damaging the swarm down to 0 health causes it to "break up", so that it's only a normal skeleton in each square of the area it original took up as a swarm.

The main problem I see with "undead for horror" is the whole Channeling aspect. How scary is a swarm of undead if you can let them get close and then just annihilate them with a 30' burst, multiple times a day.
Limiting that in some way feels too much like deus ex, or a contrived limitation, but allowing it trivializes the combat quite a bit.
Or it can... I guess if you have multiple waves, and they are actually capable of hurting the PCs, the cleric might keep them on hand for healing.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You might check out post #5 of this thread.

Given your plan, #5 could be adapted to ramp up the horror vibe. The PCs are in the traveling party as guards or some such. Their job is to keep the pilgrims alive. And as pilgrims fall, invariably, they must rise as the Standarbearer commands. (And not as skeletons, either.)

This means that mission #2 is to break the spell cast by the bloodied Standard.

Another thing: if there are tougher undead in the horde, inevitably, the PCs will be forced to retreat and regroup. THIS will let you do things along the lines of the Phantasm movies. As the PCs regroup, the Standardbearer's forces advance, scouring the countryside of life.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Another option - instead of a hundred or so skeletons have the ones who are cut down gather their broken bones together and get back up, perhaps as some of the higher up undead move past them. The bones don't knit, the broken pieces just sort of float together.

The dead whispering things like 'kill us, let us die'... only to rise again, still weeping, might be a nice touch. Let them know that the dead are suffering, a slow trickle of blood from the eyes in lieu of tears....

The Auld Grump, I might also have the 'risen' necromancer be found nailed to his palanquin, also weeping tears of blood, unable to die... just another puppet in an army of marionettes.

 

[gamerprinter]

My last custom undead creature put a real 'scare' into the players. Basically it starts as a large undead humanoid - a lesser giant with the 'wight' template, with some ability damage strikes, great strength. After the undead creature is killed, it falls apart and its constituent parts activate as multiple undead beings in component parts: a giant skeleton, a boneless muscle mass with a slam attack, an acid spewing animate stomach and esophagus, a death shreaking flying set of lungs, and a psionic attacking floating brain and spinal cord with a psionic blast effect. The sum of the parts, in this case greater than the whole.

The party knew something was coming next, but the last thing they expected was the undead monster they just destroyed, would reanimate into a crowd of much viler undead - it was a fun encounter.

GP

PS: can't remember if from a thread here or on the Paizo boards, got inklings of the idea for this - it wasn't completely my own idea, but it worked!

 

[Kaisoku]

Heh, I remember that thread.. Waste Not, Want Not; 8 undead from a single corpse.

Set (the original poster) had some great descriptions on the process (and some unique spells to aid in the creation).

Basically, you could end up with the following creatures made from a single corpse (most having non-standard attacks):

1. Skeleton This one is the only typical creation resulting of the process.
2. Blood Weird An ooze made from the blood that tries to drown it's victims. Unique grappling/suffocating idea (forcing down throat), with damage sharing with the victim it's grappling.
3. Viscera Another ooze made from muscles and organs, that tries to envelope (grapple) someone to attach veins and drain blood, and spews acid from the stomach.
4. Skin Wight Another grappler, this one made from the skin and slithering along the ground. It causes constricting damage to kill without crushing bones or draining blood (leaving a victim perfect for use in a full set of undead, of course).
5. Vestige A flying brain that trails it's nervous system, which lash out when it senses living creatures nearby. Dazing and Fear attacks from this one.
6. Blood Eagle Flying lungs that can emit a sonic damage death cry that also causes fear.
7. Dark Heart A heart slithering along a mass of arteries and veins, trying to grapple and "attach" to drain blood. It also emits negative energy pulses (uses return per Con point drained), that can heal undead or hurt the living.
8. Gutsnake A length of bloated intestines that try to grapple and constrict, and can also shoot a jet of stomach acids.

Most of these were in the CR 1/3 to 1/2 range, which gives a lot of neat non-standardl attack options for first level combat (stealth, grappling, flying creatures and blood drain or damaging your friend as you try to kill the thing, etc).

Very good find on that one gamerprinter. I had totally forgotten about this one (even though I posted in that thread!).