Undead Apocalypse - How to handle clerics and paladins?

[harpy]

I've always wanted to do an undead apocalypse type of campaign, where the overall theme and backdrop is a land overrun with undead. What's always held me back though is how, if undead are so pervasive in the campaign, what prevents a group of players from just stacking up the party with clerics and paladins, and I guess rangers, and then just rolling over encounters with all of the advantages those classes have with undead. If a bunch of clerics can just pump out positive energy bombs or turn undead turn after turn, it'll make for very uninteresting encounters.

Have people come up with ways of dealing with this in their own games? I'm trying to aim for 50% of all encounters involving undead. The end goal is to be able to do a fantasy zombie apocalypse, but with all the other undead trimmings mixed in, and so there really needs to be a frequencies to undead.

 

[Starman]

Why not just artificially restrict how many players can choose to take one of those classes? You can justify it by saying there's been some sort of religious upheaval or something if you want. Maybe whatever caused the rise of the undead also took out a number of churches.

 

[harpy]

Why not just artificially restrict how many players can choose to take one of those classes? You can justify it by saying there's been some sort of religious upheaval or something if you want. Maybe whatever caused the rise of the undead also took out a number of churches.

The challenge there is that I play with kind of a large player base. It would almost be like organized play in that people would be rotating in and out depending on schedules. Thus it's hard to really shape the party around the campaigns needs.

 

[Crothian]

A party of 5 clerics might be able to channel energy what 25 times a day? So, you just include lots of undead encounters and have them be spread out. Also, the channel energy just does damage. The average skeleton will not be killed by one channel energy. And each channel energy they use to attack the undead is less healing they have for the party.

The only change I'd be tempted to make if I felt there were too clerics would be to just give all undead an additional +2 or +4 to the save verse channel energy. Also, tactically I'd have intelligent undead specifically be attacking anyone that can channel energy. Also, give the undead really good initiative bonuses. So, the 12 skeletons are seen and the cleric gets ready to Channel energy but first he gets attacked as all the skeletons are specifically be directed to attack him. And they are going first.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

Embrace it.

Frankly, the various and sundry players who choose to play clerics and paladins are probably among the last Divine characters in the world, barring living traitors and some weird nutjobs out in the woods who've gone around the bend. Let them have their moments.

Among other ideas, you can throw waves and waves of skeletons and zombies at the clerics to soak up their turnings until they run out. And then the intelligent undead show up. You know, the ones most likely not bothered much by a good turning anyway.

This way, they get to do the fun thing of wading through the ash-heaps of their defeated foes, while still being able to be challenged.

Brad

 

[paradox42]

If it's a true apocalypse, then maybe that means fundamental laws of the universe are changing. That was the approach used by WotC in the 3.5 Elder Evils book; the entity Atropus causes an undead apocalypse upon the world it visits. As it approaches, the power of its negative energy field messes with the way magic works, according to "Signs" of its approach:

Faint: Necromancy spells and SLAs are +2 caster level, and any living creature that dies for any reason has a 20% chance to spontaneously animate as a Zombie 1d4 rounds after death.
Moderate: The chance of spontaneous animation is 40% instead of 20%. The entire world is effectively under a Desecrate spell: an area under Consecrate is not blessed as it would normally be, but instead is just no longer desecrated.
Strong: Spontaneous animation happens 80% of the time. Creatures that died long before the apocalypse also begin to spontaneously animate. The entire world is effectively under Unhallow, which can be removed/suppressed (as above) by casting Hallow. All Healing spells require the caster to make a Spellcraft check (DC 20 + spell level) or the spell fails to work.
Overwhelming: Spontaneous animation is automatic; 100% of living creatures that die animate on their own 1d4 rounds later. All previously dead creatures animate as skeletons or zombies. All Undead gain +2 hit points per HD, and gain Turn Resistance according to HD total (1-7 = +1, 8-15 = +2, etc.). Turn Resistance was the 3.5 version of Channel Resistance of course, but the correspondence isn't one-to-one, so that would need to be tweaked for PF.

The "Overwhelming Sign" is of course what's happening when the entity Atropus is about to crash into the world and destroy it utterly, at the climax of the implied campaign that comes with it.

Every entity/Elder Evil in that book has a similar series of "Signs" associated with it to ratchet up the tension as the campaign progresses; depending on what sort of campaign you want you may use that idea as-is, pick one Sign you like and keep it on constantly, or just discard the whole notion and do something else. I merely post to present the option.

 

[Anguish]

Embrace it.

Bingo. There's nothing wrong with running a dragon campaign where the PCs know what's coming and kit out dragon-hunter characters. So too there's nothing wrong with running an undead-heavy campaign and your players get to pick classes that are actually good at dealing with undead.

"Your catfolk bard / illusionist multiclass character... might not fit well in this campaign."

If everyone plays Paladins, so be it.

 

[SkredlitheOgre]

If it's an 'undead' apocalypse as opposed to a 'zombie' apocalypse, you can use stronger and intelligent undead. Vampires. Liches. Devourers. Intelligent undead, like vampires, can also recruit/dominate/enslave human followers. Yeah, the Clerics, Paladins and Rangers will be effective against the undead, but what happens when the human followers of the undead, say made up to look like zombies, are hit with multiple healing bursts during combat? The group suddenly has to rethink their strategy.

Intelligent undead will also make plans. They won't just attack all willy nilly. Send in a bunch of zombies and ghouls. Then who's going to notice the vampire in gaseous form? He plops down in the middle of the group and reforms. "Here, guys, have some energy drain."

If there's some intelligent reanimating force at work, use templates or the Monster Modifier by Adamant Entertainment. The leader will make alterations for better undead. Give the players something with a different look. "Well, it looks like a zombie, but it's got four legs ending in cloven hooves, it's fourteen feet tall, and it's third arm has eight fingers."

Also, Clerics and Paladins can only channel so many times a day. Paladins only get Smite Evil so many times a day. Hit them in waves. If the land is 'overrun' like you said, then they aren't going to be having many 15 minute work days. They're going to be harried the whole way to where ever they're going. They'll have to conserve resources. Make sure to play up fatigue and exhaustion. And concentration checks.

Honestly, I don't think it will be as bad as you think.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

As everyone else has said, they can only channel so many times per day. If they build for channeling, then send the undead at them in waves, and don't allow for the 15 minute workday. Make them exhaust their daily uses and don't give them much opportunity to rest until they do if you want to give them a challenge.

 

[Xorial]

Clerics & Paladins are in their forte in an undead campaign. Why in the world would you even consider taking that away from them? That would be like telling somebody you are playing a High Magic campaign, only nobody is allowed to play a magic user. You NEVER look to limit the players, unless you are doing so by restricting things like gunslingers. If you have no gunpowder, then no gunslingers. Here is a campaign that should let your divine players shine. They are the Big Guns in this thing. You need to come up with tactics that challenge them, not come up with ways to make them feel useless.