Undead town defense 2.0

[honorconner]

I'm setting up a campaign in which the party will defend a medium sized city from hordes of undead, mostly skeletons (and bigger skeletons) waiting two weeks for a large army to come save them.
This style of campaign combines several elements that my group likes.
Now my problem is how to make it interesting. How will the undead breach the walled city without just killing everyone? I was planning on making the undead not like the sun/ be vulnerable, this would make the attacks in waves.
In the days before the undead arrive the PCs most qualified would engage in espionage to find the smugglers tunnels, as well as the enemy spies within the city trying to undermine the towns defenses.
The PCs will be level 13ish, they will have a large amount of gold in which to fortify the town,which will have about 7 clerics and a few more paladins. A sizable militia, a few wizards, and several NPCs that will be very helpful; trapsmith, artificer, etc.
Ive yet to put any of this on paper, is there anything that would be interesting to this style of campaign? stories and ideas are appreciated.

[Jack_Simth]

From a practical perspective, you pretty much treat it like you would any other army, assuming no particular 'special abilities' such as flying or incorporeal creatures.

You build tall walls, arrange choke points, and seal off possible avenues of invasion. You park archers (slingers, primarily - stones are cheap, and as it's a simple weapon, your average peasant can be proficient) and pikemen on the walls to defend against ladders, climbers, and people getting close enough to spend the time it takes to actually damage the walls. Toss torches well away from the walls, to give yourself extra sight when the horde attacks at night. If you have people with low light vision (such as, say, elves) have them be primary on the night watch, as starlight is enough for them.

As an attacking army, it depends:

If the horde is essentially mindless with no real control, and doesn't have flight or anything, then unless it's a really big horde, it's utterly screwed by the above tactics if they can be implemented in time. Mindless hordes won't think to attack inanimate objects, they'll be focused no the people on top of the wall. They won't think to grab ranged weapons (although any that come with them should be primary targets by the defenders). If the horde is sufficiently large, the defenders will run out of ammo, and that's when the horde can win. If the horde is sufficiently dense, then they can't be killed fast enough, and the horde will get up onto the wall.

If the horde has a decent amount of intelligent direction, then it's standard siege tactics. Build portable roofs to protect sappers who tear open the walls, that kind of thing. About the only difference is that you don't have to worry about morale, and they can operate well at night.

[holywhippet]

You could have specific undead using their particular abilities to launch attacks which you need to investigate and counter. Things like having crawling claws coming up from the sewer grates to attack people (technically they are a construct in 3rd edition rather than being undead) or having spectral type undead or vampires coming in through the walls.

[Zanos]

Lead undead can be really terrifying. Jack_Smith covered the undead mindless horde, but you could also consider the much, much scary army of mostly mindless undead with actual leaders. An army with unbreakable morale that perfectly follows orders that feels no pain and has no upkeep is potentially terrifying, since it's exactly as good as it's leaders. A lot of effort in a normal army goes into the logistics train. While undead soldiers still need equipment, there's no concern about keeping them sheltered, fed, rested, or in good health. A good undead commander could defeat a force many, many times the strength of his own by playing to these strengths and making good use of attrition.

Regardless of the flavor of the horde, consider the size of the city. If it's a particularly sturdy city it might have multiple different sections of walls, so a breach in the outermost portion wouldn't cause a total loss for the players, but may cause significant casualties. I think the sunlight vulnerability is a good idea, but you might want to supplement the horde with some undead that can act during the day. If they're totally useless during the day, it would be fairly easy to evacuate.

[Fizban]

A few castings of Celestial Brilliance (Book of Exalted Deeds) and a wall or tower shield completely nullifies an army of 1HD undead. As a 4th level spell it's already on your PC's clerical lists. It lasts for a week and melts anything in range. Otherwise what Jack_Smith and Zanos said.

[ATHATH]

What's to stop the Wizards from just teleporting everybody out?

If they don't have enough spell slots, they could just cast Sending to bring in more Wizards to help.

[Dr. Azkur]

Make the commander of the horde a Vampire. Great reason for the attacks to be at night.

[J-H]

Go read SilverClawShift's first campaign journal.
Actually, read them all - but the first one is most relevant.

[Elder_Basilisk]

The skeleton/zombie horde scenario poses a number of distinct challenges vis a vis town defenses against more normal armies.

1. Damage resistance. All of those bows and crossbows the militia accumulated to defend against a normal horde. Nearly useless. DR 5/bludgeoning and /slashing means that they have a 62.5% chance of doing no damage even on a successful hit and even the max damage hits won't drop them in one shot. It will take 2-3 hits that do damage to drop a single skeleton or zombie with a bow or crossbow and only 1 in three hits will do damage. So, let's approximate and say 8 hits are required to kill one going through DR. They have a pretty low AC but still 20 1st level archers without rapid shot are only dropping one per round. If they were going against orcs, those same 20 archers would be dropping about five per round.

A. Equipping the villagers with slings eliminates this problem against skeletons, but unless you use non-core slashing arrows (which would probably need to be built for the occasion), you won't be able to mount effective ranged attacks against zombies with militia. Fortunately zombies are slow, but they are still going to be very resilient troops.

Holy water works but is too expensive to be practical on a wide scale and too short range to be an effective substitute for crossbows. A combination of lamp oil and alchemist's fire or boiling oil/hot sand to deal fire damage will be effective against either group (especially zombies due to their lower touch AC) but would only be effective against the undead once they are right at the bottom of the wall or right next to the gates.

B. The combination of the skeletons and zombies will create problems for the defenders since no single main armament will be able to attack both opponents effectively. The cheap combination would be heavy wooden shield and club/battle axe or heavy wooden shield/club plus glaive, but in both cases the anti-zombie armament requires martial weapon proficiency which militia commoners won't have. Sickles are the only simple weapon that is effective against zombies, so trained troops like town guard, nearby caravan guards, retired soldiers, the local nobility and their armed retainers, and the PCs will probably be needed to counter zombie units once they break into the city. Since clubs are effective anti-skeleton weapons, can be found or made with ease, and are simple weapons, militia/commoners will be more effective against units of skeletons.

2. Being mindless, skeletons and zombies will require leadership in order to use ladders or rams. This means that defenders may have more time than usual to attack them as they group around the bottom of walls or gates and batter at them and that targeting underclerics or other leaders may provide a way to weaken the undead attack. However, it is probably very fair to let zombies aid other on their attempts to break through a wall or barricade even without deliberate coordination since a mass of pressing zombies would be better at breaking through a wall than individual zombies so a wooden palisade or barricade (such as would likely be made in order to seal a breach in a wall) would eventually be pushed over or broken down.

Stone walls and buildings will be much more resistant to this kind of attack so a stone keep or temple may make an effective fall-back position for when the undead break through the city walls and whatever barricades are established behind the initial breach. The (likely) hallow effect on a temple would make it a more effective fallback location than it would ordinarily be against foes who are largely neutral or have a mix of neutrals in their composition.

A. Barricades will likely be highly effective against undead hordes since the outer walls will obscure leaders' view of the situation inside the breach and will require the leaders to either expose themselves or let the undead mindlessly respond to the new situation.

This suggests that 1. maintaining reserves and aggressively counterattacking at breaches may be more effective against undead than it would be against non-mindless forces
2. Using magic or other abilities to obscure vision inside a breach and thereby prevent rear echelon commanders from giving their mindless forces intelligent direction may be an effective tactic.
3. Providing counterattacking forces with the means to effectively target subcommanders or commanders in the breach may be an effective strategy.
4. Constructing traps and funnels in barricades may be more effective than they would be against non-mindless foes. Obvious traps aren't obvious if your opponents are mindless.
4.5 For example, a barricade built from two wagons that left a one square gap in between and filled that gap with a swinging pendulum trap might be so obvious that intelligent foes would attempt to destroy, climb, or push over the wagons rather than funnel through the trapped gap, but mindless foes might well charge through the trap and destroy themselves.

[Zanos]

What's to stop the Wizards from just teleporting everybody out?

If they don't have enough spell slots, they could just cast Sending to bring in more Wizards to help.
Well, it's a city. The wizard can only teleport himself and 4 other people per cast. Even over the course of a week, that's not nearly enough to get everyone out.

Of course if the party doesn't care about the city or it's people, that's a viable solution.

[Hamste]

Consecrate is also important for defense. Animate dead is an insane combat spell. A fireball may kill a few people but animate dead can refill an entire squad if the necromancers can get to the bodies of the defenders.

Incidentally assuming the PC don't have time to consecrate the whole area a necromancer sneaking in and animating a bunch of uncontrolled undead in the middle of town (either stolen from the cemetery or crypts towns seem to insist on having or carried in a bag of holding) can be quite valuable.

[SwordChucks]

If the players do defeat the leaders of the horde before the reinforcements arrive the surrounding area now has to deal with wandering mindless undead. With a large enough horde that could lead to an even more difficult task: defending multiple towns simultaneously.

So even if the players "win" there's still plenty of campaign to play.

[honorconner]

I was going to discourage too much use of celestial brilliance, a radiant servant of pelor would destroy most of the army singlehandedly.
Additionally I would limit the number of clerics and bards to 1 (a bard could give every level 1 in the fight +4/hit and damage) as well as probably 2 paladins.
One of the problems im having is keeping other characters involved. perhaps a ranger would be in charge of archery divisions, however im having trouble thinking up what some other classes would do.

[ATHATH]

Well, it's a city. The wizard can only teleport himself and 4 other people per cast. Even over the course of a week, that's not nearly enough to get everyone out.

Of course if the party doesn't care about the city or it's people, that's a viable solution.
Have them commission a Scroll of Teleportation Circle from a nearby Artificers' Guild. Or, teleport back some Radiant Servants of Pelor and annihilate the incoming horde. You could also just use a Locate City Bomb, with the citizens all hiding in a completely sealed area. Sure, the Necromancers will still be around, but their armies won't, and you can just use Divinations to find them.

[Zanos]

Have them commission a Scroll of Teleportation Circle from a nearby Artificers' Guild. Or, teleport back some Radiant Servants of Pelor and annihilate the incoming horde. You could also just use a Locate City Bomb, with the citizens all hiding in a completely sealed area. Sure, the Necromancers will still be around, but their armies won't, and you can just use Divinations to find them.
The trick to playing a wizard is to avoid the DM's ire, not draw it to you. :smallwink:

[Fizban]

I was going to discourage too much use of celestial brilliance, a radiant servant of pelor would destroy most of the army singlehandedly.
Additionally I would limit the number of clerics and bards to 1 (a bard could give every level 1 in the fight +4/hit and damage) as well as probably 2 paladins.
One of the problems im having is keeping other characters involved. perhaps a ranger would be in charge of archery divisions, however im having trouble thinking up what some other classes would do.
As is my favorite topic to spam nowadays, go look up the town generation rules in the DMG to find out how many PC classed townies there are. Spoiler: it's not very many, and their levels are not high enough to matter unless you've got a large city or metropolis. Enough to hold down some smaller fronts while the PCs take the fore, but that's about it.

You can always just ban Celestial Brilliance. It's clearly more powerful than any other similar spell printed afterwards, as long as you aren't using Damning Darkness on the DM side it's fair. I just like mentioning it because hardly anyone else ever seems to notice it :smallbiggrin: