Undead Apocolypse - PC style

[Greenfield]

Funny story: A new player is running a Hexblade5/Scout5/Shadowdancer3. His character has a Wisdom of something like 6.

He sent his Shadow into a Solid Fog effect that was on top of an Entangle on top of a bunch of suspected highwaymen.

Normally the Shadow would be powerless in daylight, but the Solid Fog took care of that.

The Shadowdancer's only instructions to the Shadow were, "Go hunt mortals, but leave my allies alone."

Party heard screams from inside the cloud, screams that went on and on as they tried to figure out how to get rid of the spell. At that caster's level it's there for 130 minutes, isn't dismissible, and can only be dissipated by a severe wind.

Finally the Druid threw Control Winds to blow it away.

Now the Shadowdancer's player insisted that his Shadow knew better than to kill, he'd just leave them helpless. I pointed out that:

A) He had given no such instruction or limitation.
B) The Shadow doesn't necessarily know how much Strength a person has left, and his touch drains a random amount (1D6)

By the time the party got the Solid Fog lifted, several more Shadows were standing in there, and about ten men lay on the ground, too weak to move.

The Shadow Dancer ordered his Shadow to bring one of the new Shadows, but "release" the others to hunt down the remainder of the bandits.

The party hadn't known that they guy was a Shadowdancer, and one of the PCs has a Tongues spell up, with Permanence. He understood everything they guy said to his Shadow.

Now there's been more than a little debate about the Shadowdancer's pet in the past, particularly regarding whether they could Create Spawn (a specific ability of the Shadow, according to the MM, Page 121). The hard fact is that, though it's a bit broken, there's nothing in the class description nor in its description of his pet that says it doesn't have that power.

So he controls his own Shadow, and it controls all that it creates (unless, of course, it "releases" them.) In any case, he has no direct control over any but his own,and as soon as you get two generations deep he has no indirect control either, unless the intervening generations are present.

I'm considering having a band of Shadow highwaymen haunt a stretch of road, continuing in undeath what they did in life.

That would include the semi-fortified way stations placed every two days travel along major Roman roads. Like the one the PCs are going to be camping at tonight.

Now Shadows are a CR3 monster, and shouldn't even qualify as speed bumps for a 15th/16th level party. But a swarm of 20 or more, hitting that guarded place (think of a truck stop, with stone walls), could quickly turn into even more.

I fully expect the PCs to win, but I plan to drive home the foolishness of the 6 Wisdom Shadow Dancer in releasing any of those things. I observe, in fact, that Shadow Dancers aren't immune to the power of Shadows.

As a side note: At least two of the PCs are very unhappy with their new found companion. I expect the conversation to go something like this...

Player 1: "When were you planning to tell us you had a pact with the Undead?"
Shadowdancer: "Were you ever planning to tell me you had a pact with the Devil?"

I anticipate that it will go downhill from there.

* The game is more Law v Chaos than Good v Evil, and the party has gotten aid from Hell once in a while. A Devil recently showed up to inquire whether the Shadowdancer was a member of their group, and thus entitled to "aid and professional courtesy", or was he merely a temporary hireling. The party was, in fact, undecided on that point. The Devil actually spent an evening in their company, at an Inn, buying drinks for the house, in order to inspire excessive drunkenness and such among the townsfolk.

So, the overly long setup aside, what do you think of allowing a Shadowdancer's Shadow to create spawn?

 

[Greenfield]

Oh,I just re-read Shadowdancer, and it explicitly says that his Shadow can't create spawn. I blew it.

 

[Lwaxy]

Nothing says you can't bend the rules to allow it. The idea is wicked but cool!

 

[Greenfield]

I'm a rules guy, whether it's in my favor or not. Bending the rules can be fun, but flat out ignoring them isn't my thing.

Now I'll look in the dead-tree edition of the rules and see if that "can't create spawn" line is in there. If it isn't,maybe I'll run with it. Over all though, while it might make this particular scene work, the long term consequences in the game are too much. You're handing a PC of relatively moderate level the ability to wipe out entire cities.

I did the math once for a single Wight in a poor section of a city. (They have a similar spawn rate, with their dead rising up within 1D4 rounds). Undead enters a home, or a crowded bar or marketplace. Two or three strikes and someone is dead.

Presuming an average rise rate of 2.5 rounds (average on a D4), that means a new Undead every 4.5 rounds.

Now the Wight kills commoners pretty much every hit, but since armor works against him and normal weapons can affect him, I think it's fair to call his respawn rate as being similar to the Shadow, who needs three hits to drop the average person.

Allowing a brief spot of pursuit time between kills, let's call it six rounds between generations.

So...
Round 1 - 1 Undead.
Round 4 - 1 undead, one fallen.
Round 6 - 2 Undead
Round 8 - 2 undead, one fallen
Round 11 - 3 Undead, one fallen.
Round 13 - 5 Undead, two fallen.

To make a long story short, presuming it takes five minutes for the competent authorities to arrive with the right spells and weapons to actually do anything, by the time they do arrive they're facing over a hundred. Two minutes more and it's over 500.

In short, far more than the "competent authorities" of any given town can cope with. By morning, any major city in the world is undead.

The spawn rate of some undead makes them the "nuclear option" of the game world. It's one of those rules where we, as both players and DMs, have to simply say, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" The world only exists as long as everyone pretends that that possibility doesn't really exist.

Ironically, in the "Chain of Command" that would build in that scenario, the Greater Shadows would be at the bottom end of the pecking order. They'd be the result of some higher level type being taken, and those are the ones who would be the last to fall, hence they'd have more generations of undead ahead of them, able to exercise direct or indirect control over them.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

I just looked in mine and indeed it does say:

Summon Shadow (Su): At 3rd level, a shadowdancer can summon a shadow, an undead shade (see the Monster Manual for the shadow’s statistics). Unlike a normal shadow, this shadow’s alignment matches that of the shadowdancer, and the creature cannot create spawn.

 

[Nezkrul]

Awaken Undead his pet... let it take Rogue levels; SNEAK ATTACK STR!

 

[Greenfield]

I'd be dubious about that one. You can't Awaken a normal Familiar or Animal Companion, I probably wouldn't allow you to do it to a Shadow Dancer's "familiar spirit" either.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

If the PC in question takes Leadership, I think I'd allow that (but still without the spawn ability). And then the shadowdancer could get a new pet. (But only if your group can handle two extra creatures.)

 

[Savage Wombat]

It has been suggested before that this is why a good DM doesn't let undead wander around in broad daylight, rules or no rules. Spawning as written = World War Z.

 

[Greenfield]

The ugly variation is to prepare a very pretty aligned magical weapon, something slightly exotic, like a boot dagger. Lawful would work well. Gift it to some good PC and wait for the fun.

An expensive looking dagger in an available place like a boot will attract thieves. As soon as one grabs it, they take two negative levels. Since most commoners are level 2 or lower, that drops him dead.

1 D4 rounds later, he rises as a Wight. (That's the default undead that come from people being dropped to level zero, unless it's done by an undead with specific spawning ability.)

So someplace in a crowded marketplace a PC walks away, not realizing that his dagger has been stolen. A body lay there for people to wonder at. Maybe some greedy type grabs that expensive /fancy dagger he's holding, maybe they don't. In any case, the Apocolypse has begun. The Wight rises and strikes, perhaps even from prone. He drains two levels from his target, probably dropping them. Rinse/repeat.

Yeah, the Dm can't allow that.