Populating a ruined battlefield?

[Milodiah]

I'm currently designing a dungeon with some thematic elements to it; the owner of the crypt, a necromancer cursed with undeath, built it to tell his story to those going through it as well as the obligatory attempts to kill them, so by the time they confront him they'll at least know what he's gone through to make him what he is.

Part of it is featuring his wounded father being slaughtered on a battlefield strewn with the dead and dying. The wife being hanged for necromancy by the authorities was simple enough; Dread Guards made of City Watch armor (extra sting because my players are semi-retired City Watchmen), a trap designed to lynch the person picking a lock, and of course the obligatory Hangman Golem. Now I'm having some issues selecting enemies that fit in the theme of a post-combat battlefield. Obviously ghouls and other scavengers, but what else could I throw in there? Especially as the one final 'boss' creature? I can't do the huge things like charnel hounds because my players are still single-digit levels, but at the same time they punch well above their weight without being powergamers, which makes me proud.

CRs should preferably cap at about 9 or 10; party has a ranger, a (pretty hilarious) Tiny fairy cleric of destruction, a warmage, and a (homebrew) dragoon, along with a beguiler who shows up sometimes.

[Bronk]

Ragewalker?

[Psyren]

Cadaver Collectors (CR 12 golems, MM3) love battlefields because they walk around picking up the dead bodies (and the PCs, in a fight) to impale them on their body spikes. They also breathe paralyzing gas; they follow this by picking up any paralyzed enemies to, you guessed it, impale them on their body spikes. You could have one wandering around the final chamber while the ghouls are trying to climb it and eat its prizes.

[Milodiah]

Yeah, that sounds pretty good actually. I can tweak it down just the slightest bit for them, but at the same time it'll be a great challenge for them.

Check that, I recalled there will be three NPC fellow dungeoneers that can help/be cannon fodder.

[PraxisVetli]

Dragon Compendium has Ghastly and Ravenous templates for undead, those might be useful. In case regular Ghouls got boring, now you can turn all sorts of things into ghouls!

[Hazrond]

I'm currently designing a dungeon with some thematic elements to it; the owner of the crypt, a necromancer cursed with undeath, built it to tell his story to those going through it as well as the obligatory attempts to kill them, so by the time they confront him they'll at least know what he's gone through to make him what he is.

Part of it is featuring his wounded father being slaughtered on a battlefield strewn with the dead and dying. The wife being hanged for necromancy by the authorities was simple enough; Dread Guards made of City Watch armor (extra sting because my players are semi-retired City Watchmen), a trap designed to lynch the person picking a lock, and of course the obligatory Hangman Golem. Now I'm having some issues selecting enemies that fit in the theme of a post-combat battlefield. Obviously ghouls and other scavengers, but what else could I throw in there? Especially as the one final 'boss' creature? I can't do the huge things like charnel hounds because my players are still single-digit levels, but at the same time they punch well above their weight without being powergamers, which makes me proud.

CRs should preferably cap at about 9 or 10; party has a ranger, a (pretty hilarious) Tiny fairy cleric of destruction, a warmage, and a (homebrew) dragoon, along with a beguiler who shows up sometimes.

Murder of crows from ToM?

[Bronk]

There are also the regular (CR3, could be advanced) and greater Fihyr from the MM2...

[Thealtruistorc]

As I recall, there exists an undead creature that is literally a swarming mass of corpses that comes down on people like a tidal wave. If only I could remember its name...

[Extra Anchovies]

The corpse gatherer (MM2) is a literal walking graveyard, tombstones and all. It's also Gargantuan and CR 18. Definitely wouldn't work as a combat encounter, but maybe it could just be wandering around picking up dead bodies, and either just contribute to the atmosphere of the location (it's intelligent, and thus probably hard for the necromancer to control) or be something the PCs need to occasionally hide from or keep out of the way of. Might not make much sense if it's supposed to be long after the battle, but if it's a recent battle and there's still bodies around then it might be an interesting piece of scenery to add.

ETA: I second the Fihyr suggestion, and also that one monster from Expanded Psionics Handbook that's essentially a bunch of ghosts mashed together into a psionic entity. I forget its name, but I think it's CR 11 or so (I'm probably way off the mark, though).

[Milodiah]

I concur that corpse gatherer is too big and bad at the moment, and I feel like I should also add it's a somewhat enclosed space, so a Gargantuan creature would be...well, scrunched up. But a Fihyr would be perfect, I just happened to chance upon an explanation of it in another thread a few minutes ago and figured it'd end up here eventually :smallsmile:

And I'm currently keeping psionics out of the game, as in 'it's not a thing the playable races possess or are familiar with.'

Because I'm going to screw with them using Mind Flayers in the endgame...it's marvelous, too. After they do some investigations of a minor clue drop I did, and successfully eliminated both arcane and divine magic as an explanation, they were totally puzzled. They suspect noooothiiiing!

[ArqArturo]

Dragon Compendium has Ghastly and Ravenous templates for undead, those might be useful. In case regular Ghouls got boring, now you can turn all sorts of things into ghouls!

Ghoul wights?.

[snailgosh]

maybe some Swordwraiths from Fiend Folio

[Extra Anchovies]

Enclosed space? Then yeah, Corpse Gatherer is kinda out of the question. In games that I plan/DM for, I'm a fan of adding the occasional gigantic monster that doesn't do much more to the players than glance at them and look for bigger prey, which is why that one came to mind.

Caller in Darkness was the psionic one I was thinking of (CR 9), but it's definitely psionic enough that if you want mind flayers' abilities to be surprising then the CiD should probably not appear either.

MM2 has some other wonderfully interesting undead beyond the ones already named, too. Many of them are way out of the party's league: corpse gatherer {19}, deathbringer {17}, famine spirit {19}, ragewind {19}, jahi {16}, effigy {17}... MM2 is apparently big on high-level undead (how did I not notice this before?).

However, the gravecrawler is an odd one out as far as tough undead go, because in addition to being intelligent (int 16 wis 11 cha 11) it's also "always neutral". These Small, wormlike cuties feed by turning dead bodies to stone, and can talk to the spirits whose bodies they calcify, so they become repositories of local knowledge, gossip, and history. In the spoiler is some ideas for including one as a noncombat encounter.
Maybe one could have moved into the dungeon by itself (drawn by the numerous bodies), quickly made an enemy of the necromancer (calcified bodies can't be turned into undead), and could make for an interesting noncombat encounter from which the PCs could learn (if they played their cards and/or bribes right) a couple weaknesses of the necromancer and/or the local monsters. If the PCs threaten, the gravecrawler can tell them it doesn't want a fight, and if they attack, it can flee easily (turn resistance +6, SR 30, tremorsense, and a burrow speed). A whopping 25 HD (and a CR of 16) makes it wholly unsuitable for a combat encounter, but if you gave it the ability to suppress its calcifying aura then it could be a fun thing to add to the adventure. The gravecrawler wouldn't be able to take on the necromancer itself (its main method of attack is to deal Constitution damage via the aura and/or its bite, so the necromancer's golems could rip it to shreds), but would see the PCs as potentially useful allies.

Heroes of Horror stuff:
Bane Wraith (CR 8): "Bane wraiths are incorporeal undead, similar in many respects to wraiths or spectres. They result when someone dies a violent and gruesome death, accompanied by the deaths of his family, friends, and everything he loved and worked for." It has detect thoughts and disguise self at-will, so it could initially appear as someone close to one or more of the PCs (or maybe as the necromancer's late wife...). Also creates normal wraiths out of the people it kills, so it could be accompanied by one or more of those depending on how tough you want the encounter.

Bloodrot (CR 7): looks like an ooze made of blood (Medium-size), but it's actually an undead. Its attacks can inflict a magical disease (deals Con and Cha damage), and it splits in half instead of taking slashing or piercing damage, similar to some oozes. It can also know the distance or direction to anyone infected with the disease it carries, to a range equal to the bloodrot's HD (usually 10)

Taint elementals; you haven't mentioned using the taint system (from that same book), but maybe one or two (or a group of smaller ones) could be included. Maybe the ability to increase targets' corruption scores could be replaced with giving one negative level on critical hits; they also have a 3/day dimension door ability. CR 3/5/7/9/11/13 for small/medium/large/huge/greater/elder.

Cadaver golem (CR 8) is sort of like a flesh golem, but it's intelligent and its abilities can vary based on who/what each of its body parts came from. Also it can replace one or more of its body parts with equivalent parts from living or recently dead humanoids. There's a table accompanying the monster entry that lists what abilities it could potentially gain from which body parts (spot, search, and darkvision from eyes, listen and blindsense from ears, faster movement from new legs, etc.). Great fun, because they're easily customizable.

Tainted Minion and Tainted Raver are templates for making creatures that have accrued too much corruption, whether physical (tainted minion) or mental (tainted raver). Again, you haven't mentioned the taint system, but the only point at which taint factors into these guys is how they're made, so they're easily adapted. Minion is undead, Raver keeps its base type (either humanoid or monstrous humanoid). Adds +1 to base CR.

[Milodiah]

The gravecrawler does sound rather interesting, actually.

The necromancer was a rather talented artist in life, and has spent the last ~20 years of undeath painting out his life story on the walls of his crypt (the parts that aren't made of bones, naturally, that just seems hard); it could hint at the significance of all that. Plus the last door is opened with a fairly obvious puzzle (there's a hole for a sword and an amulet on a statue of him, go get the sword from his father's sarcophagus and the amulet from his wife's sarcophagus and stick 'em on there) but if they somehow miss it, it could also help them with that.