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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7639302" data-attributes="member: 6696971">The present conversation about Monster Roles underpins the "fiction first" nature of 4e.Imagine a scenario where the PCs were just in a sort of "Race Against Time" Skill Challenge where they know that an undead horde are converging on a steading and will overwhelm it without the party's aid.They fail.The field-stone wall has been breached.  The Guard is nearly slain and the people of the steading and their few remaining forces have fallen back to the haphazardly fortified Common House.  The fallen souls now bulwark the undead legions.From a GMing perspective, you've got:1) A handful of beleagured men-at-arms already battle-weary and shell-shocked.2)  Waves of ravenous ghouls, reinforced by any who fall to their midst.3)  Trope-wise, we want this to play out like classic zombie-horror, with the undead like a mass of grasping arms and snapping mouths, dragging down and tearing apart anything in its way, absorbing it into its mass.Them getting through the barricaded doors or windows and into the common house would be disastrous (not just because they would murder civilians, but the positive feedback loop of increasing their numbers would increase the danger proportionately).Further still, the extra numbers of the steading's Guard need to help...but the fear of them adding to the numbers of the dead needs to be real.[HR][/HR]So this is the fiction we're looking for the mechanics to support.  Now we can look to the mechanics to bring this to life.* The 5 living Guards are of-level Minion Soldiers (so good AC) and a Trait that when they're adjacent to an ally, they get +2 Defenses.* The bulk of the enemy force will be Huge Swarms with a passive Aura 1 that (a) Slows enemies and (b) does 10 damage to the barricaded openings to the Common House.  If the double doors or a window takes 30 damage, its fortifications are lost and it can be freely traversed.* We'll have 10 slain Guards as of-level Minion Ghouls and the others slain will just be narratively absorbed into the Swarms.* We'll have 20 Minion Villagers inside the Common House.  Any Guards or Villagers that are killed "heals" the Swarm that killed them for 5 HP (125 HP total potential) and then they're reanimated as an of-level Minion Ghoul.* We'll have some kind of Elite Leader of the horde which buffs them and can Force Move them.* Now we just have to figure out the initial Encounter Budget based on how deadly and desperate we want the fight to be.  We already know we have 10 of-level Minion Ghouls.  We subtract that from the budget to determine (a) the level of the Elite Leader and (b) the level and number of the Swarms.* Obviously, things get more hairy if members of the Guard go down and significantly so if the horde is able to break into the Common House.  This creates a layer to the decision-points that each PC is making individually and the party as collective (in terms of protecting NPC allies and controlling enemy forces).* We'll want a covered porch that surrounds the structure that can be collapsed on enemies as stunt (AoE damage that Swarms are vulnerable to).  Perhaps some large firepits nearby that the defenders have ignited for visual purposes (this should be at night) and to weaponize (hazardous terrain for Forced Movement).</blockquote>

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