Is this the Wight town?

[Graysire]

So, if you're a part of Module 3.5, shoo, no spoilers, otherwise, read on

So, recently one of my players decided to Energy Drain someone, specifically a level 1 commoner in the middle of the night,
it's a day later and they've discovered the town unsurprisingly overrun by wights, they haven't been attacked by the wights yet, and in character they only kind of know whats going on and they don't know why.

My problem is thus: they intend to try to at least partially clear the town (one of the players has a wife and kid in the town) of wights,
but at this point there are a LOT of wights, and only 4 of them, negative levels are dangerous, and I have an unfortunate penchant for rolling 20s, I'm not really sure how I want to handle this, any suggestions you guys have would be helpful

Party Composition
Succubus 7//Scout 1/Warlock 6
Human Ranger 6/Bear Warrior 1//Barbarian 7
Necropolitan Sorcerer 6//Wizard 6(NOTE: not playground levels of optimization with spells)
Elan Psychic Warrior 5/War Mind 2//Monk 7

[Draconi Redfir]

Zombie survival scenario, but with wrights.

get some commoners to set up fortifications, others become bandit gangs, all sorts of things that can distract the wrights from the players.

Basically try and treat it like walking dead but with magic:smalltongue:

[Hugh Mann]

It somewhat depends on how the party chooses to act. I have seen players in similar situations choose to stealthily fortify a building, climb to the roof, aggro the undead, cast movement limiting spells, and then just fire arrows for the next dozen rounds or so without every getting hit once. I have also seen players rush in stupidly.

For your party, it depends on whether they have the ability to fly and if they think of using it. They could simply just fly 20 ft in the air keeping them safely out of range of the slam attacks.

Assuming that they dont just bypass the entire scenario, you may want to show the party that the scenario is too dangerous to rush in, maybe by having other dead adventurers around, then have an NPC suggest a more cunning route. Maybe have some of the commoners try to escape the town in a classic zombie movie fashion.

[Matrota]

At 14th level your party shouldn't really have much trouble with wights if they're careful. It's almost trivial for someone at that level to deal 26 damage in one hit, let alone one round. The only issue here is numbers. If your players start having trouble, have some commoners and random adventurers in the town help them out to funnel the wights through a bottleneck and pick them off. Worst comes to worst, they stick it out in a fortified household until word gets out and other adventurers/military come to solve the issue.

[XionUnborn01]

At 14th level your party shouldn't really have much trouble with wights if they're careful. It's almost trivial for someone at that level to deal 26 damage in one hit, let alone one round. The only issue here is numbers. If your players start having trouble, have some commoners and random adventurers in the town help them out to funnel the wights through a bottleneck and pick them off. Worst comes to worst, they stick it out in a fortified household until word gets out and other adventurers/military come to solve the issue.

Just so you know, they're level 7 gestalt, not level 14

[Matrota]

Just so you know, they're level 7 gestalt, not level 14

Ah, I must have missed that. My bad.

[XionUnborn01]

Ah, I must have missed that. My bad.

For future reference, when people use "//" between class levels it's to indicate the different sides of a gestalt character.

[Graysire]

sorry, I could've been much more explicit about saying it was a gestalt campaign

[Feantar]

This is one possible way to solve this, but it requires 2 things to function correctly. 1, that no wights have been destroyed yet, and 2 that your wizard knows command undead (or can get their hands on it, which is not as impossible as it sounds in a town).

See, the wights all come from one wight, the one one of your player's characters created by accident. Hopefully, that one isn't destroyed. Let's call that one Lord Wightastic. Lord Wightastic controls his spawn, which control their spawn, etc. Assuming commoners didn't manage to kill any wights (which is somewhat unrealistic) the chain is unbroken. Thus, Lord Wightastic could command all the wights (by transfering orders down the chain). Now, your players need to get him to do this.

The party needs to organise a death trap - get a large building, fill it with barrels of oil or hay, make sure it can be sealed from the outside, etc.

Here's where command undead comes into play. The players need to track Lord Wightastic while avoiding destroying any wights (thus breaking the chain), then the wizard needs to use command undead on it, and ask it to make the others stop attacking his friends. That's a terribly reasonable request, I doubt you should ask for a Charisma check. However, the next request would definitely need a charisma check - here's where the succubus comes in. The wizard excuses themselves and goes out of sight. The Succubus changes shape into the wizard and, utilising their superior Charisma convinces Lord Wightastic to call his people to the deathtrap - the reasons might be multiple, from "I want to meet your whole family" to "There's an awesome party in that oven- erh I mean warehouse". They enter, the trap is sprung and the wights are history.

Yes, it's oversimplified and this takes many assumptions, but I think it's an interesting reversal of the standard trope of horror undead, specifically the head vampire trope. In this case you really need to be careful not to kill the head vampire(or Lord Wightastic to be exact) until every other minion is dead. It should be noted that, your wizard being a necropolitan might award him a chance to actually approach Lord Wightastic without a fuss, as he is not food.

As a plan B in case they fail, having the ranger send an animal messenger of a possible wight-bomb incident to a druidic circle they are aligned with would also be a good idea.

From a combat standpoint, the succubus is essentially immune since she can fly & the wizard is immune to drain(Undead) so they just have to get DR 5 or AC above 23 to be almost completely safe. The Monk and Ranger(Assuming melee) are problematic.

Finally, when succubi drain people, the fluff indicates that they essentially steal their essence and it goes to the Abyss. It is reasonable to assume that they are sometimes rewarded for this. If your players would need something to accomplish their task, you might use that as an excuse to give it to them. Check the sacrifice rules in BoVD for a guideline of what kind of reward you can give them (it's not overpowered if you choose for them). Yes, this is a bit of an excuse, but a well fitting one.