A New Kind of Undead Army - Apocalypse In a Sack

[g3taso]

Beren's Sack: It's a lovely sack, masterwork leather and beautifully tooled with horrific art. And completely nonmagical. And yet, Beren's Sack means death. Inside the sack are 50 coins, enough for a good handful to be thrown. Each one has a Xill Dread Wraith inside courtesy of Haunt Shift. For 6 or so minutes a day, 50 Xill Dread Wraiths with 4 touch attacks per round each and up to 200 negative levels per round to spawn with. It's a death sentence for a castle or a city in a single night.

The Mechanics: Get control of a Dread Wraith (a charismatic commoner, if you can arrange it) and have him create spawn out of Xill you summon via Planar Binding into a convenient kill room. Bind the spawning undead somewhere safe via Haunt Shift after he arranges for them to serve you without question. Bind them to this handful of coins, and supplement their service liberally with chained Command Undead.

How It Works: Instruct them that when you remove them from the sack, they are to feed on as many people as they can in the six or so minutes they will have once they manifest. Even an area with lots of high-level clerics and stuff would be swept away by a tidal wave of incorporeal undead, or left in shattered pockets, trapped in havens. This could be coupled with a Bestow Greater Curse that their spawn would not prosper (aka they and any other spawn cannot survive the night). This is the undead equivalent of a Neutron Bomb, where even a large city could be depopulated in a single night, and someone could move in the next day unopposed knowing all the undead had been unable to survive.

So... are there any weaknesses or precautions that should be taken? How might someone foil this? Looking for feedback

[noob]

The only way I see would be a crazy blaster near enough from the Wraith to react right when they get out but far enough for not being killed in the same round then the crazy blaster proceed to blast those wraith.
here the blaster needs to be unknown and to know you also if you spread the coins appropriately then the entire "blast problem" is solved.

[Molan]

Not a lot of ways to kill it.

You'd essentially have to figure out what the hell was going on after the first few cities fell and then take out the guy doing the city killing.

Depends on the size of the settlement though. Without allowing the UD to prosper, a large city with 50,000 inhabitants would see a massacre but wouldn't be conquered.

[Inevitability]

Even better, craft a spell trap that looks like a coin, and is able to cast Mage Hand to open the sack (and release the wraiths) for you, but give it an onset delay of one year. Drop the sack off in some major place, then repeat the process but with reduced delay. If you get one such bomb ready every month and time them right, you'll remove a dozen cities at once from the map.

[Stegyre]

Each one has a Xill Dread Wraith inside courtesy of Haunt Shift. For 6 or so minutes a day, 50 Xill Dread Wraiths with 4 touch attacks per round each and up to 200 negative levels per round to spawn with. It's a death sentence for a castle or a city in a single night.
I do not see how this works, by RAW.

First, even Dread wraiths only create other wraiths from "humanoids." Xill are outsiders.

Second, "Wraith (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wraith.htm)" is not a template, and it is not the body that becomes the wraith but the "spirit is torn free from its corpse and transformed." As a consequence, "They do not possess any of the abilities they had in life." Thus, even if Xill could be made into wraiths, they'd be just the same sort of wraith you would get from draining human commoners.

[Urpriest]

Yeah, you'd need to start with a templated Wraith, not a Dread Wraith, and it wouldn't qualify because the template only works on humanoids.

[Segev]

To be fair, an army of wraiths with only 1 attack/round is still horrifying.

[Flickerdart]

You don't really need more than one attack per round, since most people will only have one HD.

[noob]

In fact the thing is that all towns who are not wraith proof(with tons of high level characters able to beat tons of wraiths) should be already dead because of naturally occurring wraiths and their spawn creation ability.
So to sum up every city have super powerful heroes or they would already have been destroyed by wraiths independently of people carrying armies of them.
This is why I see cities with tons of epic level adventurers way more realistic than cities with only heroes of level 8 at most because the latter can not physically exist more than five years.

[Cruiser1]

50 Xill Dread Wraiths with 4 touch attacks per round each and up to 200 negative levels per round to spawn with.
Wraiths (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wraith.htm) and Dread Wraiths give CON drain, not negative levels. A 1d6 CON drain attack does 3.5 average, so will take 3 attacks on average to drain the average CON 10 individual to death, and that's assuming the victim fails all the DC 14 Fort saves.

[Zetapup]

Doesn't Haunt Shift have a limit of 9hd undead? Dread wraiths have 16 hit dice, so they couldn't be affected by the spell, unless I'm missing something. Regular wraiths would be fine though, since they only have 5 hit dice.

[g3taso]

I do not see how this works, by RAW.

First, even Dread wraiths only create other wraiths from "humanoids." Xill are outsiders.

Second, "Wraith (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wraith.htm)" is not a template, and it is not the body that becomes the wraith but the "spirit is torn free from its corpse and transformed." As a consequence, "They do not possess any of the abilities they had in life." Thus, even if Xill could be made into wraiths, they'd be just the same sort of wraith you would get from draining human commoners.

Sorry. Spectre, not wraith.

[Molan]

I think the general idea behind monster levels and the type of NPCs you would find in a city is simply that, wraiths aren't everywhere....they're mostly at graveyards and stuff, or in the wilderness. Those settlements that DO wind up with an undead outbreak sometimes die off and those make spooky, uninhabited adventure settings too. So you wouldn't need epic level heroes in every hamlet or city.

Aditionally, 3.5 CON damage deals 1-2 actual damage because of HP loss do to CON reduction. If the Commoners have 4 HP and 10 CON, you're seeing them go down in 2-4 hits, not any more.

Multiple undead would likely gang up on each commoner, so a pair of wraiths attacking one commoner can kill said commoner in a round, and even one wraith attacking a commoner will kill said person in under a minute, at the very worst.

The outbreak starts slow. Some anti-undead type characters or PCs could stop it, particularly depending on the circumstances of where the bag is dropped. But, if the Wraiths are allowed 1-3 rounds of doing nothing but murdering commoners, you'll suddenly have a bunch more wraiths. They can quickly disperse from their central location so if a Priest shows up on Round 5, he may not be able to do enough turning to take them all out because some may no longer even be present. A few more rounds of looking for even a single wraith allows said wraith to kill a commoner, create a copy and move on.

There are situations where, I think, if the rules were examined a little more closely (since some of the above points mentioned were pretty solid), you could make a nuke like this and it could, situationally, work. But 1 or more decent clerics or even PCs standing at Ground Zero could stop it.

[Jack_Simth]

Sorry. Spectre, not wraith.Same problem (/comic/our-super-mom-chapter-8-page-28/), humanoid only.


Beren's Sack: It's a lovely sack, masterwork leather and beautifully tooled with horrific art. And completely nonmagical. And yet, Beren's Sack means death. Inside the sack are 50 coins, enough for a good handful to be thrown. Each one has a Xill Dread Wraith inside courtesy of Haunt Shift. For 6 or so minutes a day, 50 Xill Dread Wraiths with 4 touch attacks per round each and up to 200 negative levels per round to spawn with. It's a death sentence for a castle or a city in a single night.

The Mechanics: Get control of a Dread Wraith (a charismatic commoner, if you can arrange it) and have him create spawn out of Xill you summon via Planar Binding into a convenient kill room. Bind the spawning undead somewhere safe via Haunt Shift after he arranges for them to serve you without question. Bind them to this handful of coins, and supplement their service liberally with chained Command Undead.

How It Works: Instruct them that when you remove them from the sack, they are to feed on as many people as they can in the six or so minutes they will have once they manifest. Even an area with lots of high-level clerics and stuff would be swept away by a tidal wave of incorporeal undead, or left in shattered pockets, trapped in havens. This could be coupled with a Bestow Greater Curse that their spawn would not prosper (aka they and any other spawn cannot survive the night). This is the undead equivalent of a Neutron Bomb, where even a large city could be depopulated in a single night, and someone could move in the next day unopposed knowing all the undead had been unable to survive.

So... are there any weaknesses or precautions that should be taken? How might someone foil this? Looking for feedback

Let's see... how many ways can this go wrong...
Specific choice of undead, and specific choice of 'feed' for more, have already been covered.
What happens when strong enough people act quickly enough has also been covered.
The logic that suggests there's a hidden reason why this doesn't happen naturally has also been covered.

So....

Greater Bestow Curse does not explicitly give the option you're after. You want the spawn to persist the night, but not the next day - you're wanting them all to just drop dead with no save on a timing of your choosing. Moreover, you want said curse to be inherited - the spawn of the spawn (to the nth degree) must also drop dead on the same timing. This may or may not be in the range of 'no more powerful than these' specified under the spell description of Greater Bestow Curse - it depends entirely on your DM. You may find it doesn't work at all, you may find it only works for 1st generation spawn, you may find it only works for 1st and 2nd generation spawn, you may find that each spawn gets a save... but any of these 'not 100% working' options don't leave you with a salvageable city, they leave you with a Spectre Apocolypse.

[g3taso]

I have had some feedback, and wanted to throw some fuel on the fire for consideration.

The template in question that I want to use is the Pathfinder "Dread Spectre" template located at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/dread-spectre-cr-3

The template in question states that "“Dread Spectre” is an acquired template that can be added to any living, intelligent creature killed by a spectre or a dread spectre (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A dread spectre uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.". It goes on to say:

"Create Spawn (Su): Any creature with a Charisma score of 16 or higher that is killed by a dread spectre rises as a dread spectre in 1d4 rounds. Any other creature slain by a dread spectre instead rises as a normal spectre in 1d4 rounds. A spectre or dread spectre created in this manner is under the command of its creator (as dominate monster) and remains so until either it or the creator is destroyed."

So, if I am reading this right, the Dread Spectre template can be applied to any critter without reservation. However, when spawning a critter needs to have a CHA of 16 or it just becomes a standard spectre. So no standard Xill Dread Spectres raised from spawn unless they happened to have CHA 16, although they would be normal spectres. It remains unspecified in RAW but presumed that I could still make a Xill Dread Wraith from a "stock" Xill, but I would have to create it via Create Greater Undead. Does this meet with general agreement, or am I missing something?

[Segev]

For whatever reason, undead do not in general seem to feel driven to seek out inhabited places and murder the people therein, even when the undead are described as having an insatiable hatred of the living.

Those which feed, even, usually only seek to pick up stragglers in odd places. (Shadows, wraiths, specters, wights, and the like don't feed; they just happen to drain stats and levels as much as or more than they deal hp damage.)

A wraith or wight who decided, "I am going to be a lord of a vast undead army," could do this sort of thing, and would be a reasonable big bad for a moderate-level party, based solely on the horrific damage he would deal. But it seems that most don't think that way, for whatever reason.

Maybe most do go through a phase like this, when they're first "born," but the fact that the older master-wight who made them restrains them keeps them from going out into the world to spread havoc. The older, master-wight doesn't do it because he's realized that having minions is...less interesting...than one might think, when one has no physical needs.

In traditional stories, most undead are brooding sorts; they loom over the things they valued in life, reminiscing and regretting. This keeps most from going out and doing much, unless they're the vengeful undead sort. And even those are...focused...in their goals. It's unclear whether most forms of undead retain who they were in that respect.

Liches, vampires, and ghosts do.

I'm not sure about anything else.

[noob]

Do you know liches lords in PF? "For every type of undead, there exists an undead lord" so they surely exists.
They can create lich under their control when killing people.
That is crazily awesome basically they get to create spawns with all the powers of the base creatures and they are all its slave.
one plotting lich lord can do crazy things and become master of the world.

[Segev]

The concept of creating liches-as-spawn is...really rather silly. I would reject it from any game I was in. Liches are far too specific in their creation methods for that to make any sense.

[Flickerdart]

Those which feed, even, usually only seek to pick up stragglers in odd places. (Shadows, wraiths, specters, wights, and the like don't feed; they just happen to drain stats and levels as much as or more than they deal hp damage.)
According to Libris Mortis, all the undead you list have an inescapable craving. Every day they do not drain, they must make a DC25 Will save or take WIS damage, and when reduced to 0, they become mindless monsters whose only desire is to satiate themselves through draining the living.

[Segev]

According to Libris Mortis, all the undead you list have an inescapable craving. Every day they do not drain, they must make a DC25 Will save or take WIS damage, and when reduced to 0, they become mindless monsters whose only desire is to satiate themselves through draining the living.

Not the best thought-out rules in Libris Mortis, sadly, but even accepting that, mindless monsters aren't going to be able to formulate schemes to seek out mass populations and avoid detection.

And, if they DO have cravings, they're going to be in the same situation as vampires: sure, they can make spawn, but those spawn become competition for food!

[Flickerdart]

Not the best thought-out rules in Libris Mortis, sadly, but even accepting that, mindless monsters aren't going to be able to formulate schemes to seek out mass populations and avoid detection.
Oh, for sure. An intelligent undead that doesn't feed for long enough will make a beeline for the nearest populated area, regain its senses as soon as it's drained someone (not even necessarily to death, though it's possible), and then probably flee back to its haunt. The few spawn that are created would still need to feed in the same way, creating more creatures until the village is completely converted or abandoned. Then those undead will go hungry, wander off, and start the process again...it's not a wightpocalypse, but they still spread hella fast.


And, if they DO have cravings, they're going to be in the same situation as vampires: sure, they can make spawn, but those spawn become competition for food!
They don't actually get a choice in the matter. They might exercise their control to banish the spawn they create somewhere far away, though.

Conscientious wights (formerly Good creatures cursed with undeath and unable to end their new existence) are probably best off kidnapping a scorpion or some other mindless vermin with multiple HD, but shadows and other incorporeal monsters may find this difficult.

[Segev]

Nothing prevents a wight from destroying its own spawn. Which is what I think one that's trying to unlive under the proverbial radar would do in the face of its inescapable craving.

[Stegyre]

They don't actually get a choice in the matter. They might exercise their control to banish the spawn they create somewhere far away, though.
Don't they? I don't have LM before me, but my recollection of the general rules are (a) spawn are only created by killing the victim, and (b) "feeding" consists merely in draining (or otherwise attacking) the victim.

The smart undead farms its people like sheep, occasionally fleecing them of a level, rather than slaughtering them like hogs for the bacon. (One could probably even make the case for a rather capable undead defender for a community.)

[Urpriest]

I have had some feedback, and wanted to throw some fuel on the fire for consideration.

The template in question that I want to use is the Pathfinder "Dread Spectre" template located at http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/dread-spectre-cr-3

The template in question states that "“Dread Spectre” is an acquired template that can be added to any living, intelligent creature killed by a spectre or a dread spectre (referred to hereafter as the base creature). A dread spectre uses all the base creature's statistics and special abilities except as noted here.". It goes on to say:

"Create Spawn (Su): Any creature with a Charisma score of 16 or higher that is killed by a dread spectre rises as a dread spectre in 1d4 rounds. Any other creature slain by a dread spectre instead rises as a normal spectre in 1d4 rounds. A spectre or dread spectre created in this manner is under the command of its creator (as dominate monster) and remains so until either it or the creator is destroyed."

So, if I am reading this right, the Dread Spectre template can be applied to any critter without reservation. However, when spawning a critter needs to have a CHA of 16 or it just becomes a standard spectre. So no standard Xill Dread Spectres raised from spawn unless they happened to have CHA 16, although they would be normal spectres. It remains unspecified in RAW but presumed that I could still make a Xill Dread Wraith from a "stock" Xill, but I would have to create it via Create Greater Undead. Does this meet with general agreement, or am I missing something?

First, be aware that that's a third-party template. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that your assumption that we would know what you were referring to without even the actual name was fairly implausible.

If that was what you were thinking of from the beginning, then you would probably have noticed that a Xill has five natural attacks, not four, and that Dread Spectre gives attacks equal to the number of natural attacks, not the number of limbs. This also means you'd be better off with a more common creature that has five+ natural attacks, if available.

Regardless, Dread Spectres are not on the list for Create Greater Undead, so you couldn't create one that way.

[Jack_Simth]

Do you know liches lords in PF? "For every type of undead, there exists an undead lord" so they surely exists.
They can create lich under their control when killing people.
That is crazily awesome basically they get to create spawns with all the powers of the base creatures and they are all its slave.
one plotting lich lord can do crazy things and become master of the world.
Taking a look at The template in question (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/templates/undead-lord-cr-1-or-2-tohc) is:
A) 3rd party.
B) Explicitly an inherited template.

A) Is moderately annoying; it means the template isn't available at all tables, and what it says does not always apply.
B) Is just plain idiotic. With the vast majority of undead critters, an inherited template simply cannot apply, as the template that made it undead to be viable for is an acquired template, and inherited templates must always apply first... but undead lord must be applied to an undead.

While it's a great template... it's also got some problems in the writeup.

[Bonzai]

I want to thank you for this post. I had never really read haunt shift before and didn't realize what it did. This spell is amazing! Better yet it brings an old trick of mine to the next level. The Pale Master Zombie Bomb!

Step 1: Pale Masters get animate dead as a spell like ability. In addition 3 times per day they can create a zombie that doesn't count against the maximum they can control. In essence they can have an infinite amount of zombies for no cost.

Step 2: get destruction retribution. Any zombie you create explodes upon being destroyed. It deals a d6 plus a d6 per 2hd of negative energy in a 10ft radius. Reflex for half.

Step 3: animate an army of fine sized creatures. It doesn't matter what. I need to do some research to find the most common option, and what their hd are. Assume they are 1/4 hd like a toad to be conservative.

Step 4: cast haunt shift and bind them to coins. Maximized and empowered you can get 120hd of zombies per casting max. With 1/4 HD a piece, that is 480 zombies per coin each casting. Put them in a spell component pouch to draw them as a free action.

Step 5: throw the coins at your opponent so that they scatter on to each square in a 10ft radius. Including his square, that's 25 squares assuming it's a medium target. Out pop the zombies. 480 zombies per coin (again assuming that they are not less than 1/4 HD each). That's 12,000 zombies within 10ft. Who cares if they are squeezed or piled atop each other. Follow with a quickened fireball or some other area of effect spell. Not only are you dealing the spells normal damage, but 12,000d6 negative energy as well.

Haunt shift solves the issues of storing and moving that many undead. Of course it would take the pale master the better part of 11 years to make that many zombies, and evasion makes it useless, but I find the idea hilarious.

[g3taso]

I want to thank you for this post. I had never really read haunt shift before and didn't realize what it did. This spell is amazing! Better yet it brings an old trick of mine to the next level. The Pale Master Zombie Bomb!
...
Haunt shift solves the issues of storing and moving that many undead. Of course it would take the pale master the better part of 11 years to make that many zombies, and evasion makes it useless, but I find the idea hilarious.

Or make a Simulacrum of an Ak-Chazar Rakskasa, and have him case the various animate undead and create undead spells at it's command. Heck, have him make spawning undead like wraiths out of those frogs!