Night of the living Dead

[hongrybuffalo]

Hey guys, new to the site as well as dungeon mastering. Anywhay, wanted to do a town seige against waves of undead. The party will be lvl 11 to 13 and I was wondering how best to go about this. I want to give them the option of setting blockades, several of which will be attacked at the same time. I'm looking for undead to fill the ranks as well as "seige" type tatics, but I'm openforany suggestions. Thanks

[DevilsAttorney]

I've always been a fan of the Necromental types (Libris Mortis p.112) (Sample: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/iw/20041015b&page=3). If you apply the template to an earth elemental (see sample), they have Earth Glide, which allows them to bypass the blockades by gliding around/under them. I feel like this could be an interesting addition to the pressure of their blockades being smashed to bits by waves of undead.

The Mummified template also comes to mind (Libris Mortis p.110, yes, I am a big fan of this book). It can be added to pretty much any creature you want.

[Synvallius]

I can't offer much help in regards to what kind of undead should be used (I rarely go by the standard Monster Manual creatures), but in siege tactics there are a few possibilities.
1: If the town is walled, the defenders are going to be much harder to overcome, as they'll be able to defend the gates two different ways (behind and above), so an attacker will have to subdue the wall defenders while also putting enough men into the gate offensive to mount an effective assault on the defenders waiting behind it. For assaulting walls, you can either send cannon fodder weakling undead onto the parapet to try and overwhelm the defenders and then when they are weak you can send in the tough vampires or ghouls or whatnot. Or, you can try it the other way around, have stronger undead surmount the walls first and clear an area for weaker ones to climb up after. Either one can work, depending on the defenders, if they're weaker (the characters, as you said, are fairly high leveled, but if they're working in concert with city guards or militiamen, they NPCs may be fairly low-leveled) send in the stronger undead to establish a beachhead first, as the assault will then be to difficult to repulse as the parapet will be swarming with far too many undead. If the troops are more powerful, send in waves of weaker undead to soften them up, then, when they're weak and tired and demoralized, send in the stronger undead to clear them off the walls. In most cases, a siege is over for the defender once the walls are lost, as the attacker is then able to control the flow of their own troops into the city (although, depending upon how the city is set up, the defenders may be able to make the attackers pay with buckets of blood [or negative energy] for every extra inch of the city they take), so if there are walls, the walls themselves are the main problem to overcome, as most defenders of walled cities will focus their powers of defense on the parapets and once those are dealt with the rest of the city is easily taken.
2: On the other hand, if the city has no walls, they attacker has an easier job, as they don't need to assault walls, which are generally death traps, but they have to consider the timing of attacks. The best way to assault an unwalled city is to attack numerous positions simultaneously so that the defenders do not have time to transition their forces to other defensive locations. For undead troops, attacking in concert probably is little difficulty, but nonetheless, depending on the number of troops you have for the assault, the locations should be carefully chosen so that they are widely spaced enough that the defenders cannot easily support each other, divide and conquer seems to be the appropriate maxim (quite frankly, this could also be used in addition to the walled assault, but it seems to me that its harder to attack various parts of the walls as you'll inevitably lose a very large amount of men, and it's possible that spreading your forces too thin in order to attack many locations may very well lead to not having enough men to actually assault the defenders, so for the most part, when attacking walls one or two concentrated attacks, with ladders or towers, is probably going to work out better than several weaker assaults would). If they have barricades in the streets, depending on the type of barricade, it would be best to use fire to burn them up, or even to just start fires in the town, so that they have to contend with fires and undead soldiers at once. Otherwise, assaulting the barricades would likely be much the same as assaulting walls, climbing over them would be just as dangerous as clambering over walls, but once the top is secured it serves more in the favor of the attacker than the defender as the barricade then becomes an obstacle to retreat (if necessary) and also allows the attackers to regulate the flow their own troops, although this could be used against you if the defenders are quick enough, as they could immediately press the attack once you've gotten troops over the barricade, forcing you to either abandon it or commit more troops to the defending of it. Regardless of that, when dealing with multiple barricades you mainly will want to try to overwhelm them on all fronts (this contravents the normal rules of various small assaults, as most of the time, if they're erecting barricades, they cannot control as large a perimeter as they could with a wall, and if they try to do so, they will likely be stretched thin, so it shouldn't make as much of a difference), then to continue to press the attack on all sides which will tax their own men, and preventing them from escaping.
There are obviously many variables involved in a siege but those should be some solid tactics to employ, however if you have any more questions or more relevant information (or if what I said made absolutely no sense whatsoever, as that seems to often be the case as I both ramble and garble what i actually mean to say), I'd be happy to offer more help.

[DevilsAttorney]

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[hongrybuffalo]

It will be a small hamlet, maybe with like five or six roads into town. Absolutely no walls aside from buildings. I like the necromental and got a descent stock of undead. I guess I need things for the PC to defend with. Thinking of alchemist fire and exploding spikes (MIC). However that's all I got

[mr_odd]

It will be a small hamlet, maybe with like five or six roads into town. Absolutely no walls aside from buildings. I like the necromental and got a descent stock of undead. I guess I need things for the PC to defend with. Thinking of alchemist fire and exploding spikes (MIC). However that's all I got

I'm assuming that the PCs will not be alone in defending. Setting up blockades with spikes would be neat. You could have the PCs focus on particular jobs or a particular area.

Also, I would suggest looking at various video game mechanics. For a battle occuring in a city, I used a mechanic from Star Wars Battlefront where the PCs had to pick various "Control Points" to fight for. The different control points gave them various benefits and had different stats (ie, easily denfendable, extra resources, etc.)

I would have every area of conflict to roll for defense (excluding the ones with the PCs). Maybe the villagers are able to hold on their own, maybe they aren't.