Undead Armys

[Burn_Boy]

I'm designing a Wizard turned Lich main boss for an undead campaign I'm running in a homebrew setting. At the end it's supposed to culminate in a Minas Tirith/ Helm's Deep style siege with the Wizard/Lich leading his undead army. I'm making him level 15 and his army is mostly comprised of normal basic undead, skeletons and zombies. And if I did my math right, at level fifteen the most undead he could animate is 160. An impressive number but against a well fortified city even with only basic town watch defenders, that's not going to be much of a fight. And for the PCs, it's nothing.

Now in mass combat scenarios, PCs should not be foot soldiers. They should be off doing other stuff to help the battle, destroying enemy siege equipment, taking out a bridge to disrupt reinforcements and, of course, fighting the Lich general.

Anyway, I want this undead army to be in the thousands, but I also want to follow the rules. Is there something I'm missing through all this or should I just hang the rules and say he's able to mentally command thousands simply because I say he can?

 

[enrious]

Never let the rules get in the way of a good story.

After all, who's to say he doesn't have some sort of unholy cauldron available that's responsible for the army?

 

[udalrich]

Since you are looking for an army anyway, the natural solution is to form a heirarchy. Instead of controlling 160 HD of 1HD skeletons, he controls something like 16 10 HD undead clerics (his generals). They each control a bunch of 6 HD undead clerics (the lieutenants). They each control a bunch of 3 3 HD undead clerics (the sergeants) who intern control the 1 HD zombies or skeletons.

I'm not sure what base creature the intermediate clerics should be; you probably want something with intelligence so it can be reasonably independent (and justify the class levels) and a low number of undead hit dice and turn resistance, so that it can have a lot of cleric levels.

This also provides a couple of minions to be a buffer against the party.

 

[Salthorae]

Similar to this, you control the one shadow/wight/spectre/vampire who has created spawn that it controls... who then control the lesser created spawn, etc.

Or you give the Lich a Macguffin device as suggested above that helps him control undead beyond the norm (which is what makes him such a threat in the first place)... one of the PC's tasks can be the destruction of that device which would free many of the undead, but not necessarily end the siege as there would still be a town for the undead to devour/turn/etc it just wouldn't be as coordinated an attack any longer.

You could also give the Lich-Wizard the Leadership feat, have his cohort be an undead controlling/spawning creature. Followers could also then be intelligent undead who have come to the Lich for the promise of much soul devouring to be had in the future... get your leadership score high enough (say 25 which may be hard to do I know, but dont' forget that score for Cohort and score for Followers is calculated with slightly different modifiers) and you've got another 164 other creatures to add to your army!

 

[UHF]

There is an excellent book by WOTC for 3.5 on Battlefield adventures in your campaign. If you want, its certainly a way to go. It discusses how to make the adventuring exciting, and how the goals can be integrated into the adventure. It may even offer some ideas on the types of activities you can toss at the players.

Its called "Heroes of Battle".

 

[enrious]

Or you give the Lich a Macguffin device as suggested above that helps him control undead beyond the norm (which is what makes him such a threat in the first place)... one of the PC's tasks can be the destruction of that device which would free many of the undead, but not necessarily end the siege as there would still be a town for the undead to devour/turn/etc it just wouldn't be as coordinated an attack any longer.

This would work really well if the Macguffin is stolen by a third party, resulting in the PCs (a scripture-spouting assassin who later has a change of heart, a swashbuckler recently returned from far away lands and with many tales, a spy who has infiltrated the third party, and bard who specializes in dancing) having to first reclaim it (describe it as simply a bag of holding that glows when someone looks in it) and then deal with the fall out of their actions.

Oh, sorry, got carried away creating Path Fiction.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Hmmm, you may want to look at Encyclopaedia Arcane: Necromancy - available on the Grand OGL Wiki A few very high level spells might be worth looking into.

The Auld Grump

 

[UHF]

 

[Fooly_Cooly]

Well if you are willing to throw in a little 3.5 then undead leadership would be great. Get Improved cohort so you can have some awesome undead only 1 lvl lower than you and a +! to leadership. If all your followers are undead you also get another +2 to leadership. And I would honestly recommend taking the old dread necromancer class. They are the original undead army spawners. If your worried about the carry over to pathfinder for that class I could walk you through it. It would be fairly simple.

 

[jonesy]

Never let the rules get in the way of a good story.

After all, who's to say he doesn't have some sort of unholy cauldron available that's responsible for the army?