Anyone know of any *Free* downloadable adventures infested with undead?

[Arkhios]

I'm kind of in a bind, and need some framework to work with. And quickly, too. I've got time until saturday evening :S

For what it's worth, I know of merricb.com, but I was hoping that maybe some playgrounders would know of any adventure and save a lot of my time searching and instead focus on reading and preparing.

Thanks in advance!

[Herobizkit]

Take any adventure.

Change the monsters to equivalent CR undead.

Or...

Check p. 282 of the DMG. Use the adventure as is; apply Skeleton and Zombie templates as you see fit.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

I recently finished running an adventure Dralnu wrote called Army of the Damned. He posted it over here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?425679-Army-of-the-Damned-Free-lvl-1-5-adventure-set-in-Magic-the-Gathering-s-Innistrad) and there's some solid feedback and commentary in the thread too.

The adventure is set in Magic the Gathering's Innistrad setting which is kind of a gothic horror world, but it's easy enough to adjust to your table's preferences. For one thing, Innistrad doesn't have any elves, dwarves or other non-human races besides monstrous ones like vampires and werewolves, but they're easy enough to add if that's something you want; the first post also links several variant human subraces based on the setting that can add a bit of variety if you did want to keep things human-focused.

Overall, my players really liked the campaign. I started them at level 3 and increased the difficulty a bit to compensate. (The adventure advises starting at level 1.) Chapter 3 went over especially well. It involves the party defending a walled town besieged by an army of undead and uses some cool mechanics borrowed from 13th Age to give it a good mass combat feeling without needing to run dozens of enemies and NPC town guards and such. I liked that chapter enough that I ran it as a one-shot for another group that wasn't involved in the larger campaign and everyone had a blast with it then too.

[Arkhios]

Thanks for the suggestion. Do you think it would be easy to adapt into a large metropolis being the scenery of the campaign? There's little to none wilderness exploration in my campaign.

[Hypersmith]

Planning of running this at some point in the future

Seems to fit the bill. Sorry I need 10 replies before I can post links

[Hypersmith]

Almost there, really hate doing this

[Hypersmith]

I think this should be fine now:

http://frothsofdnd.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/download-free-5e-adventure.html?m=1

[Arkhios]

Sorry I need 10 replies before I can post links


Almost there, really hate doing this

Yeah, that requirement sucks balls (sorry for using such strong words). I think there could be better ways to accomplish what they're trying to with it.


I think this should be fine now:

http://frothsofdnd.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/download-free-5e-adventure.html?m=1

Hmm, it's still a bit high level for the group, but I'll try to keep that in mind, since I plan to continue as long as the players want to play their characters. I'm in no hurry to end this campaign. Might be pretty decent next chapter for their careers to start with that adventure. Thank you.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Thanks for the suggestion. Do you think it would be easy to adapt into a large metropolis being the scenery of the campaign? There's little to none wilderness exploration in my campaign.It would depend what you wanted to do with the adventure. If you're just looking for a one-and-done adventure, I don't think it would be hard to adapt the zombie siege part. You do kind of need enough area outside your city that a necromancer could have built up an army and be marching it toward the place from some distant or remote location, but your players never have to go out into the wilderness to go there if you don't want to go in that direction.

My top-of-the-head stab at it:
A number of refugees arrive from some nearby (presumably smaller) city that has just been overrun by the undead. None of them knows where they came from, they were suddenly just marching into town, killing everyone they could get their hands on. The refugees are the only survivors, the ones who managed to get horses or wagons and get away. The horde will arrive at the gates of your metropolis in two days. Give the players some time to plan defenses or get ready. If you have a big city, there are going to be more resources available so be ready to improvise around what your players come up with (cauldrons of boiling oil, trying to make a truce with the local thieves' guild to get their help with the defense, whatever.) As the sun is going down on the second day, sentries on the city wall see the horde approaching. Run the siege basically as it's written in the adventure, scaling enemy groups and stats appropriately.

The battle itself has basically three components:
1) A fight at the gate to keep it from being breached by two giant zombies. (For my game, I reskinned Ankylosaurs instead of using Zombie Ogres for the heavy hitters of the horde to make them a bigger threat.) This is a good chance for ranged characters to shine since the party on top of the wall should be out of reach of the zombies and to give an idea how huge the horde is. (Make it big enough that it feels like a credible threat to the city/district/whatever your players are defending. If it's a big city, there should be guards and soldiers and such to help in the fight so it's not like your players will have to take on the whole horde themselves.) If the party station themselves on top of the wall, they might take a little damage from skeleton archers, but they won't be in much danger; the main risk is the giants breaking down the gate if they aren't killed in time.
2) The wall somewhere else in the city has been broken (by more giant zombies or by magic if that makes more sense in your setting/for your city and its walls). The players race through town (fighting a couple waves of zombies along the way) to the breach and fight another giant or two (with a few more vanilla zombies to keep them from being able to focus fire too much) who have come through the wall, this time having to go toe-to-toe with them without being out of reach on top of the wall.
3) Either after defending the breach or during that fight, the necromancer in command of the horde arrives. Stat her however you like to challenge your player. I think that as printed she's a Cult Fanatic (from the Monster Manual NPC section) but I buffed her spellcasting a bit to make her a threat.) With her defeated, the horde looses direction and the guard/army can finish off the stragglers.

If you want it to create a direction for the rest of your game, you can tie on various plot hooks (the adventure as written has the necromancer was working with a Dr. Frankenstein-type figure who made the giants for the army, but you could also have her working for/with an established villain in your campaign or use her to steer the game in various other directions.) Not knowing what level your party is, it's tough to say if the challenge will be right, but you can adjust the number of zombies in each encounter or give them better stats (like I did for the goliaths) as need be or mix in a few other undead (ghouls or ghasts would be easy but you could justify some specters, shadows or even a wraith as a sub-commander or something if you wanted to mix it up).

Edit: Wow, that got long fast. Sorry for the wall of text.

[Lord Il Palazzo]

Another idea if you want to keep things more urban focused is to turn Army of the Damned inside-out: a necromancer or cult found their way into the catacombs beneath the Cathedral of [insert relevant god here] and have used all the bodies entombed there to raise an undead army. Encounter 1 can be the zombies (having overrun the cathedral) trying to break down the doors out of its grand courtyard and get out into the streets. The players can take up positions on the wall (via ladders or rope) or on nearby buildings. Encounter 2 can have the zombies breaching the walls of the cathedral instead of the main door and starting to spill out into the streets and encounter 3 can be basically the same as in Army of the Damned, just with the necromancer emerging from within the cathedral instead of coming in through the city walls. Maybe you could map out the catacombs as a dungeon to use in a later session, mopping up the last of the zombies or cultists and discovering some other evil ritual or something that they were working on down there.

[Arkhios]

Another idea if you want to keep things more urban focused is to turn Army of the Damned inside-out: a necromancer or cult found their way into the catacombs beneath the Cathedral of [insert relevant god here] and have used all the bodies entombed there to raise an undead army. Encounter 1 can be the zombies (having overrun the cathedral) trying to break down the doors out of its grand courtyard and get out into the streets. The players can take up positions on the wall (via ladders or rope) or on nearby buildings. Encounter 2 can have the zombies breaching the walls of the cathedral instead of the main door and starting to spill out into the streets and encounter 3 can be basically the same as in Army of the Damned, just with the necromancer emerging from within the cathedral instead of coming in through the city walls. Maybe you could map out the catacombs as a dungeon to use in a later session, mopping up the last of the zombies or cultists and discovering some other evil ritual or something that they were working on down there.

This approach would be more appropriate. As it happens, there is an emerging threat that comes from within, rather than from outside the walls. The city is almost as old as time itself, at least older than the entirety of humanity, so there's indeed an abundance of bodies to be risen. It's built layer upon layer, much like Ankh-Morpok, as I learned only recently, and somewhere beneath the currently inhabited surface, an ancient threat is awaiting to be released. The threat itself is not exactly related with the undead menace though, only indirectly.

Anyway, I digress. There's a looming threat that is raising the dead by the hundreds, if not thousands. The first waves might not be felt immediately though.

[zeek0]

Here is an updated version of the Army of the Damned, which I understand to be of high quality.https://www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/471epf/an_update_to_my_free_5e_adventure_army_of_the/