Weird Pathfinder game

[mehs]

Im joining this campaign a bit late (first and only session since i joined we leveled to 3), and there are a lot of homebrewed things related to the setting. For one it is about a dc 25 knowledge religion check to pray well enough to get the personal attention of a god. The other is a very prevalent type of monster called a reshared (ri-shard) which is an undead demon. They are pretty much meat shields with (maybe i misheard) 140hp but nothing else going for them. they have a -3 to will and no real special abilities that i know of. They die in sunlight, they auto catch on fire if you hit them with fire damage, and count have having 0hd. Though they have +11 to hit and do somthing like 2d62d4 damage on a hit (d4 is a zombie virus disease ability.

The party is in a town that sacrifices newborns by dropping them off the city walls to be safe from the reshared zombie plague that has been going on for the past 20 years. We accidentally interrupted the sacrifice (a party member who became a ghost possessed the baby and sent a dying prayer to earth goddess, the ground the baby ghost dropped on then became soft as air and the baby ghost didnt die).

So the main thing that is happening. An army of 1000 reshared are about to attack the town, I don't know how much time we have, and the party is level 3.

We have a few options which are mostly ask for a deity to intercede, fight them all, or run away. Fighting them all actually sounds plausible.

To repeat, they have -3 on will saves and an effective 0hd.

I am a necromancer wizard with the feats Spell focus (Necromancy), Command Undead, Improved Channeling, and Undead Master. Because they have 0hd, there is no limit as to how many i can control with Command Undead (feat, dc 13) and I have 7 usages of it per day. This means if I get it to work, i can take control up to about 80 Reshards with one usage. I can also cast web about 3 times.

I did not expect it to play into my hands this well, but here we are (I made my character without any real knowledge of the setting). Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do?

[Geddy2112]

Hmm.

Personally, I would be hesitant to play in such a system, but let's say I did.

Another option to necromancer wizard is gravewalker witch. Simply spam the bonethrall hex and get an unlimited army of these undead things. Necromancer wizard is a good second bet, but both involve getting dangerously close to these things that will likely one hit kill anyone they touch.

0HD and weak wills are not the best when being undead makes them immune to color spray, sleep and other spells that would normally exploit this.

Since you are a wizard with good int and knowledge (religion), maxing it out until you can hit a DC25 religion check is a good idea. With skill focus at level 5, max ranks and 20 INT you would have a +16, needing a 9 on the dice to pass. By level 10 you can have a +24, meaning you can simply ask deities to do all your work and you have basically won.

[mehs]

DC 25 is to ask a Deity. They would still demand a price.

God of order (to ask the supreme god about what created the reshared (though this is pretty much equivalent to using a nuke to microwave an egg)) demanded 4000 dead reshared, 5000 new followers and 500 gp

God of undead (for a safe zone around a city) demanded "more than once every nine months" human sacrifice.

And such and such. DC 25 is just to get their attention.

[Florian]

That's a rather strange and extreme setup.

I rather doubt that a mechanical solution is key here. This is more like some kind of "puzzle encounter" where you have to find out the right buttons to hit to please your gm.

Basically, you can outlast them bei either finding a way to watch them all burn or use delaying actions until the sun rises and they will automatically perish. I doubt that you're meant to actually fight them mano-a-mano with those hp and damage output values.

So, burning barricades and alchemists fire should be your first choice of action.

[Geddy2112]

DC 25 is to ask a Deity. They would still demand a price.

God of order (to ask the supreme god about what created the reshared (though this is pretty much equivalent to using a nuke to microwave an egg)) demanded 4000 dead reshared, 5000 new followers and 500 gp

God of undead (for a safe zone around a city) demanded "more than once every nine months" human sacrifice.

And such and such. DC 25 is just to get their attention.

DC25 to commune with a deity? That spell costs 1K, only allows you to talk to your deity, and has limitations on what you can ask. That is still a busted ability well worth investing in.

As far as price, you are getting the ability to early cast miracle and the like, well before 18th level and without the 50k cost. At worst, you don't buy the services but have the option.

[Andor13]

It depends on how stupid they are. If they are bright enough to work out a deal with the town, and organized enough to stick to it, you might have a problem.

If they were regular zombie stupid, then the solutions would be really easy. (Prepare a walled off section behind the town gates, when they eventually break through, keep them trapped in that until sunrise. Set up a bit of terrain with tar/oil/alchemists fire, lure them in and incinerate them. Fire arrows. Etc.)

If they are organized and reasonably smart however, then those won't work.

Plus as tough as they are, fire isn't terribly effective. If they really have 140 hp then at 3.5 hp per round, it well take about 40 rounds for one to burn to death. That's 4 minutes. Which is not terrible in terms of a siege, but is plenty of time for them to stop, drop and roll.

[NamelessNPC]

How about just praying for an early sunrise to the sun god. That doesn't sound like an expensive miracle

[mehs]

1) There is no sun god and 2) the actually possible version of that would be a true sunlight effect because moving the planet/sun would be bad by almost any standard.

The Reshared do have 140 hp with no actual HD. The GM has told me we are using the mass combat rules so the Reshared army has 2240 hp. The town we are defending has 1 hp by the mass combat rules. the reshared army has +24 to hit and the the town has an ac of 28...

Im going to have to pull aggro. So, so much aggro.


On other news, one player got irrationally mad and left the game (apparently he misinterpreted a sentence i said to mean that absolutely no one else in the world was killing the reshared. The actual sentence was just saying that since the zombie plague hasnt ended or noticeably been reduced, it is probably a safe bet that civilizations are all on the defensive so the reshared are effectively infinite.) and another player left because of work. So we are down to 2.

[mehs]

Ok, I stand corrected, a nat 20 to pray to a god gets them to personally appear and the half orc god of valor would very much like to fight. Albeit he is restricted to act through a champion. Random NPC in the caravan is now his champion.

[Andor13]

Ok, I stand corrected, a nat 20 to pray to a god gets them to personally appear and the half orc god of valor would very much like to fight. Albeit he is restricted to act through a champion. Random NPC in the caravan is now his champion.

lol. Well that should work well. I would just go ahead and assume he's gonna go full berserk and you'll need to not let him see any NPC soft targets once the superzombies are down.

Also I have to question a mass combat system that gives a walled town 1HP.

[mehs]

I've been making deals with the various gods who dont like the reshared. The fun bit is killing 1000 reshared is a price most of them would accept just in and of itself. Got 24 hours. Random NPC is an avatar of a war god. If i kill 100 Reshared I get 100 years of immortality (did not expect that) and a spellbook. And apparently a life aura of 250 ft (The Reshared now see me very well and i now pull aggro) is a price and i got a skeleton warrior for 24 hrs for that.

[mehs]

@andor, in pathfinder mass combat an army as hp equal to its acr multiplied by the average result of 1 hd of average unit in the army. A commonor has 1d6 hd so an average result is 3.5. The ACR is average CR of a unit in army affected by number of people, and less than 100 people there is a penalty to ACR. There are only 50 people in town so the penalty is -2. This puts the ACR of the town army at less than 1. About 1/3 to be precise. 1/3 times 3.5 round down is 1.

[mehs]

I used the 24hrs to be able to take control of half the army. Prepped the battle field and had them be split into armies of 35 flanking groups of 70 (2v1 checkerboard). Then I rested for 8 hrs, prepped spells again, and laughed. I was essentially doing double damage compared to them (we were both auto hitting). My armies each had 540 hp compared to their 840 (but i had 2x more armies than they did).

so 7 battles of 2v1. I won easily. A group of them broke into the town but I command undead -ed them.

[mehs]

The party is now level 7 with the wbl of level 2, an army of 54 reshared left over, I am immortal for 100 years, a random npc in the caravan is a champion of honor/war god, we found out another is a champion of god of contracts, i have a spellbook full of spells (but the god was salty about it so it is 28 cantrips, 72 1/2nd level spells), and all uncontrolled Reshared within 250ft know im there and will try to attack me (and ive proven im capable of taking control of them pretty easily).



So it turns out he was right, making deals with gods is op as all heck. Did not expect half of the good deals that I got. This is shaping up to be one hell of a campaign.

[Psyren]

Well, if you're having fun that's the important thing.

You didn't mention if those homebrew things are immune to mind-affecting or not, but if not a bard could've locked down a bunch of them.

Anyway for the scenario, it seems like you cleared it but I was going to say I agreed with Florian's take, it was a DM puzzle.

[mehs]

The homebrew monsters (Reshards) are undead demon things so they have the immunities of both (though no resistance to fire) so mind control wouldnt work on them.