Undead: help making a threat for higher levels

[slithas]

Thoughout the campaign I am running undead have been a constant thorn in the side of my players, and as such they've gathered plenty of stuff to help deal with undead (including an intelligent crossbow that is completly anti-undead, it's all it talks about all day).

A problem I have come up with is that some villains- one main recurring villian in general- dreams of building an undead army to take out opposition. Over time the PCs have naturally grown stronger and found that the threat of zombies and skeletons even en masse has become little more than a slight delay as they easily wade through the hordes of undead sowing destruction while being untouchable themselves.

What I want to do is make the zombies and skeletons a threat to them once more.

Currently my party is made up of 3 lv11 characters soon to level up, including a Cleric (whom after putting on a Helm of Opposite Alignment actually serves Nerull now), a fireball-thowing holy-hammer weilding sorcerer-fighter-dragon deciple, and a rogue with the aformentioned intelligent crossbow with Undead Bane and Ghost Touch.

I just want to know what people think would be a good way to go about making the undead horde a threat again. I don't just want the undead to all be massive creature's skeletons and whatnot, because the army is mostly made up of farmers, villages and fallen enemies. With the armour they're wearing the characters can't even be hit by the base human zombies and skeletons anymore.

Thanks in advance for anyone's suggestions for making this a fun challenge again :)

[docnessuno]

Two words: Destruction retribution
The whole corpecrafter line in Libris Mortis seems very appropriate, but destruction retribution can turn a small groups of harmless zombies into walking bombs, dealing area damage to living creatures and healing nearby undead upon their deaths.

Also, try mixing more problematic undeads. Incorporeal ones are always handy, moreso when they attack from the floor or from a wall, with full cover. Intelligent undeads can either have a few class levels or some megic items so set up ambushes and direct/enhance the other ones. A simple ghoul leading a group of invisible human skeleton/zombies (invisibility sphere), and your party will be in the middle of a suicide bomber attack.

[AntiTrust]

Poison use I've always had fun with, there's no chance of a skeleton or zombie poisoning themselves and its always a kicker when players have to make that fort save. Bonus points for covering them in contact poison and wading them into melee

There's a template for undead that make them explode in negative energy with ref save for half when they reach 0hp. This makes killing them in melee a threat and the negative energy will heal any other undead in the area.

[Feralventas]

Have you considered updating your undead? A lot of advanced undead are still shambling corpses of some sort, but have additional abilities to make them more deadly. Bleak-born, Angels of Decay, Boneyards, and Blasphemes in Libris Mortis can help bring your baddies into the realm lethality you're looking for.

Additionally, while corpses are always useful to a corpse-jockey necromancer, don't forget that you can make atrocities out of their spirits and emotions as well; ghosts, specters, shadows, Callers in the Darkness and Dream Vestiges can all make even a hardened adventuring party quake in their boots (though admittedly the latter two are quite large and might not be what you're looking for.)

You might also consider checking out the Ghostwalk supplement for other undead and spiritual creatures, as well as the Eidalon and Eidaloncer classes; these can be used as Voluntary converts who decided to join up willingly to try to keep their own minds and souls even if they're losing their lives.

[Mystral]

There are some really strong undead that are way, way beyond anything resembling zombies and skeletons. They are right in the monster manuals.

[Maquise]

If all else fails, don't forget the ever-terrifying wight.

[Blightedmarsh]

Undead do not breathe. Use this to have them come from unexpected angles.

From underground/snow/sand/rubble

From underwater

Strange Thoughts. How would your players react to:

zombies covered in pitch, set on fire and trying to grapple them to bunt them to death?

Skeletons with decanters of endless water/alchemical fire/poison/sovereign glue built into their mouths?

Grapple zombies covered in sovereign glue?

Undead baby/skull bollas/catapults?

Undead with portal rings on their chests that casters shoot spells though?

Fighting whilst in a magic mist or total darkness and your not sure if what your hitting is friend or foe?

[Ranting Fool]

Also the "Mob" template can work on undead as well :smallbiggrin:

[pyromanser244]

apart from the corpse crafter feats you can always spellstitch some of your meatier minions for nasty surprises.

also, if I'm remembering the skeleton and zombie templates don't reduce HD. so lets say your necromancer takes a road trip to the site of some epic battle from long ago and raises the skeletons of the mid to high level warriors that fought and died there. boom now he has a large number of tougher skeletons without them going up in size categories.

[slithas]

Thanks for the help! :)
I'll be looking through the Libris Mortis for somethings to bolster/alter the ranks shortly then.
Flaming zombies sounds like fun, and if they're in an unhallowed area with Resist Energy attached to it they'll be able to move unharmed by the flames, and by fireballs too (as well as all the other nifty undead boosts that can give :) )

Thanks all! :)

[Wookie-ranger]

the Lord of utter cold necromancer (wizard) build is always fun. Buff/heal you undead while harming the living.

have a look at the book "sand storm". especially Black-Sand; you can create infinite amount o it with the name of the same spell.
It is sand that creates darkness (please tell me you are using the 3.0 version of darkness, and not the 3.5 version that can RAISE the light level!) and everyone that steps on it get damaged by negative energy.
It would make that cross bow of yours rather useless, cannot ht (well) what you cannot see, all the while healing undead and harming the living.

Combine this with some means of making your undead see living thing (there is a spell for that)

[hex0]

Vampire Lord? (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20021018a)

[Coidzor]

Well, you could crib an idea from the redeemer of regrets (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9994058&postcount=14), giving expanded capabilities to the undead and retention of things, so that they stop being as much of a shambling mindless army and start to more resemble the undead army from Army of Darkness.

Or just make him have Bone Creatures and Corpse Creatures instead of zombies and skeletons, making minor modifications to take them from 3.0 to 3.5 as necessary. Especially if they get put into intensified training to get converted into something other than commoners since they need not sleep or eat.

Pair these as necessary with the mob/unit template fix (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=143.0) and supporting bards and martial adepts and marshals and the like.

Taking a page from Szass Tam and using Animate Dread Warrior can also work to an extent.

[Kelb_Panthera]

apart from the corpse crafter feats you can always spellstitch some of your meatier minions for nasty surprises.

also, if I'm remembering the skeleton and zombie templates don't reduce HD. so lets say your necromancer takes a road trip to the site of some epic battle from long ago and raises the skeletons of the mid to high level warriors that fought and died there. boom now he has a large number of tougher skeletons without them going up in size categories.

This one doesn't work. Zombie and skeleton both strip the raw materials creature of any class-based HD it had. A human skeleton always has just one HD and a human zombie always has just two.

For the zombie/skeleton hordes, you can't go wrong with the mob template in DMG2. I know it's already been mentioned, but it's just that good for this purpose.

Sticking with the classic undead, you could use the karnathi skeleton and zombie creatures. They're not impressive in and of themselves, but they're intelligent; which means they can have class levels on top of their racial HD.

I think all the other good options have already been mentioned.

Two more things though; one of the best classes for undead minionmancy is the dread necromancer from heroes of horror, and practically the single worst is the True Necromancer PrC in libris mortis and BoVD. If you haven't already settled on a class seriously consider DN if it's available.