[3.5] City of the Dead

[Thurbane]

So my group is heading towards the City of the Dead (Sandstorm p.56) for tow reasons: chasing a bad guy who has stolen a relic of St Cuthbert; and also so the Sandshaper in the group can access the touchstone site and activate the Higher Order Ability.

Not that it matters, but in my game, the city is located in the Bright Desert (Greyhawk).

Anyhow, my group are all 8th level, and may hit 9th by the time they get to the city. In the book, the city is EL 7. I need some ideas to beef it up and make it more challenging.

Party is:

Human Warmage 6/Sandshaper 2
Human Ranger 8 (spell-less variant)
Aasimar Paladin 8 (spell-less variant)
Human Favored Soul 8 (NPC, mainly buffer/healer)

I've already designed the final guardian of the touchstone site (Scorpionfolk with Dread Necro levels), but was looking for some interesting encounters they can have in the city. I'd like to throw some groups of interesting undead at them.

All ideas welcome.

Cheers - T

[Boggartbae]

A bard with the Requiem, Necromantic Might, corpsecrafter, and, Destruction Retribution feats and access to animate dead as an at will SLA. Then give them a bunch of low level minions, and every time a minion drops, they animate it as a skeleton, that then explodes when destroyed.

Then figure out a way to have the bard protect themselves, so that it’s a challenge to kill them.

Sorry if this ain’t soecific to city of the dead; it’s just undead themed, which might help.

[Boggartbae]

How About 3 Mummies, one of whom can cast Wall of stone, and the other two are melee guards for the caster. On the first round of combat, the Caster waits for the melee characters to charge in, and then casts wall of stone behind them to separate the party. The casters then have to fight a bunch of skeletal monstrous scorpions, snakes, or other weak, desert-themed, undead animals, while the Melee have to survive against the three main mummies, but either team can try to break through the wall to have better chance of wining.

An idea for a cool monster they could fight would be a Tombstone Golem, refluffed with a desert/sandstone theme, and also the Skirr, which is like a giant mummified vulture. Both can be found in Libris Mortis.

[Thurbane]

Thanks for the suggestions.

My group has also indicated that they like "mass combat" encounters with large groups of low CR enemies, so I was thinking maybe a mixed mob of Wights and Ashen Husks...

[Boggartbae]

Ooh! The PC's could escort a bunch of 1st level humanoids through the desert, when they are set upon by Ashen Husks. If you Accelerate the reanimation rate of the Ashen Husk to 1d4 rounds (same as the wight) then they start stacking their dehydrating aura to kill the NPC's, and you have a situation with exponential enemy creation.

Another Dehydration-themed undead is the Desiccator, on pg. 94-95 of Libris Mortis. There undead made up of the dissolved mineral content of water elementals.

[Fizban]

If you want to mess them up, consider a Dust Wight from MM3. It's not quite as insanely lethal as the Drowned on the previous page, but it does have petrification and armor damage. Not that you couldn't use a Drowned anyway, they have Environment: Any. And drowning in the desert is great. Vulture themed monsters include the Deadborn Vulture in MM5 (it leaves a zombie when it dies), and just a bunch of Dire Vultures from Sandstorm itself.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Something funky, like a living sentry ooze animate dead/uttercold cone of cold mashup? Engulf, deal cold/negative energy damage, animate the result as skeleton, heal skeletons by engulfing. Kind of mean to animate the PCs, but you can animate anything it rolls across as well.

[AlanBruce]

Salt Mummies from MM3 are a favorite of mine, but given their CR and HD, you could nerf them by halving their HD or even dropping them to 4HD, so you can send a decent sized mob of them against the PCs.

As a leader to this pack, have a Mummified Sand Giant (same book as the salt Mummies) with a few levels of Crusader using White Raven Tactics to make for a very deadly but ultimately winnable encounter.

[remetagross]

You could also use a pack of Marrut, which have low CRs, from Sandstorm too.

[noob]

Of course Voidwraith is quite cool.(everything adventurers hate about water but without water.)
You might try it with creatures that grapple(because else people can just walk away).*
Or make one who is invisible and follows an adventurer without attacking.

[Thurbane]

Once the party level up to 9th, would an encounter consisting of a Vilewight (BoVD), Dust Wight (MM3) and Slaughter Wight (LM) be too much for them? EL 11.

[Fizban]

That sounds like a nasty encounter. The Vilewight has free action 8d8 blast every other round in addition to the 2 negative levels on a natural weapon, but its hampered by needing to hit with either a single +5, or chain through Improved Grapple while only medium size. The Dust Wight is potentially more dangerous, but the first petrify save is the only one: either you fail, or you succeed and are immune for the day- it's the +50hp with DR, two solid slams, and armor damage. The Slaughter Wight has similarly inflated hit dice, with a single slam carrying a single negative level and augmented crit.

I think it comes down to weather you count the Vilewight's negative energy as healing undead: if you do, you've got a full party with two tanks and a combined blaster+healer and should be pretty dang threatening. If not, the only big combo they have is trying to drop negative levels around before the Dust Wight moves in to petrify, but since the Dust Wight is the best tank that's not a good strategy and it's basically just a gang of non-synergistic monsters.

Compared to your party: if the warmage and favored soul deliver comparable blasting and healing, then giving the monsters the same trick is probably the whole point of the fight. You should get a good few rounds of scrum on the front line, which may threaten the Paladin's armor. If this caused them to rout and leave a path open for the Dust Wight to get in petrify range of the Warmage, that would be amusing. Otherwise the PCs will have greater numbers and wear them down eventually, with some negative levels and armor damage on the front line to heal off and leave them afraid of a second Dust Wight or other armor damaging foe.

[ShurikVch]

Note: the Sandstorm, actually, have some awesome monsters: Forlorn Husk, Death Scarab Swarm, Crawling Apocalypse...

Also - what's will happen if somebody casts firstly Black Sand, and then - Awaken Sand?.. :smallwink:


Once the party level up to 9th, would an encounter consisting of a Vilewight (BoVD), Dust Wight (MM3) and Slaughter Wight (LM) be too much for them? EL 11.How about the Time Wight (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20030620a)?

[Thurbane]

How about the Time Wight (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20030620a)?

Cool, that's a Wight variant I wasn't aware of.