3.5 Would this be a balanced encounter?

[Trandir]

I was thinking of throwing at my 4 3rd level party some undeads. Since they will face them in a swamp I thought hey why not make them bloated copses (e.i. zombies that explode dealing 2d6 acid damage, ref save with 14 DC to halve it, in a 10 ft radius after dying)?

I was thinking of throwing a half dozen of these at them in two waves. Would it be balanced?

[Evoker]

Balanced for what? Using up most of their resources? Using up a fifth of their resources (the standard 4 encounter day)?

[Doctor Despair]

If your question is "Can my party survive this?", that depends heavily upon what classes your party has and what tactics they use. What classes are in your party? From how close will the encounter start?

[InvisibleBison]

12x 2d6 damage seems an awful lot for a 3rd level party. A character who gets hit by half the splashes and makes all their Reflex saves would take an average of 21 damage. When you add in the fact that the undead are going to be attacking the characters, this looks like a recipe for high player casualties. I'd recommend reducing the damage and only having some of the zombies be explosive.

[Doctor Despair]

12x 2d6 damage seems an awful lot for a 3rd level party. A character who gets hit by half the splashes and makes all their Reflex saves would take an average of 21 damage. When you add in the fact that the undead are going to be attacking the characters, this looks like a recipe for high player casualties. I'd recommend reducing the damage and only having some of the zombies be explosive.

I mean, I suppose they could be 1HD creatures with huge penalties to hit, as they are bloated and decayed. Then it would just be 2d6 x 6 or 12 (I think he meant 2 waves of 3, not 2 waves of 6) with a reflex for half, doing an average of like 42 AOE acid damage if everyone always fails the save (probably more like 35 damage accounting for saves). That's assuming they all melee the zombies, however, and don't fight from range or use magic or something, which again prompts the question: what classes does the party have? It could be a trivial encounter if they see them from the appropriate distance, have the means to attack at range, and the zombies have low HP; it could be a TPK if the zombies get the jump on a bunch of unoptimized melees.

[Trandir]

Party: barbarian, warlock, binder, wizard (playing as a GOD wizard)

I thought of this being the whole adventure day so maybe two waves of 3 (half dozen would be 6) is a bit low. And I planned ok making them emerge from the waters close to them since they would wait for the party to walk by before trying to attack

Maybe 1 to warn them at the beginning would be a good idea. 3 out of nowhere can very well kill them

[el minster]

Party: barbarian, warlock, binder, wizard (playing as a GOD wizard)

I thought of this being the whole adventure day so maybe two waves of 3 (half dozen would be 6) is a bit low. And I planned ok making them emerge from the waters close to them since they would wait for the party to walk by before trying to attack

Maybe 1 to warn them at the beginning would be a good idea. 3 out of nowhere can very well kill them

let them find out what they are via knowlege checks or some other way first.

[tyckspoon]

Party: barbarian, warlock, binder, wizard (playing as a GOD wizard)

I thought of this being the whole adventure day so maybe two waves of 3 (half dozen would be 6) is a bit low. And I planned ok making them emerge from the waters close to them since they would wait for the party to walk by before trying to attack

Maybe 1 to warn them at the beginning would be a good idea. 3 out of nowhere can very well kill them

So the problems I would expect here are that the party does not appear to have a natural source of healing (Binder can access some with correct binds, IIRC, but it's slow and they may not have that bind selected), and the Barbarian may well not have a ranged alternative (no reason mechanically he can't, but a player that just wants to rage and hit things with a big axe may not have bothered.) This means unavoidable attrition damage is potentially a pretty big threat, especially for the Barbarian, and suffering those explosions is probably going to make him pretty paranoid for his health.

Now, tactically speaking, your party can probably control and kite the zombies with ranged attacks, especially with a God-style Wizard. The only real problem here is it's likely to be super boring to do it that way, especially if the Barbarian doesn't have a ranged alternative. You don't want the Wizard and Warlock to spend ten rounds picking apart Zombies with ranged attacks while the Barbarian player spends the whole combat going 'I move away from the Zombies.'

[el minster]

give the Barbarian a sling to hit them with strength bonus to damage its also dirt cheap

[Trandir]

give the Barbarian a sling to hit them with strength bonus to damage its also dirt cheap

I mean free is a bit more than cheap
The barbarian choose 4 javelins so for a couple of rounds we would have everyone covered.


But none of that matters since the barbarian is dropping and the warlock alone can't deal with everything. Time to look for another player

[daremetoidareyo]

The difficult terrain of the swamp compounds the problem too.

Maybe mix 1 or 2 acid bloater per wave with normal zombies (or skeletons for greater contrast)

[Trandir]

The difficult terrain of the swamp compounds the problem too.

Maybe mix 1 or 2 acid bloater per wave with normal zombies (or skeletons for greater contrast)

Yup. So no 5 foot step to cast and avoid AoO easly.

[Quertus]

So, skimming back through your created threads, this would be the party with:

A half elf barbarian 3
A dwarf wizard 3
A dwarf warlock 3
A changeling binder 3

Correct?

Hmmm… 42 acid damage, R DC 14 ½? Yeah, that sounds fatal.

If the zombies have absolutely no attacks, "waves" doesn't matter, because the party has (seemingly) no healing. So, if the zombies have absolutely no attacks, that's hitting the party for an abstract 42 acid damage, DC 14 against expected +1 reflex save, so an estimated 35 damage each, on average.

Not knowing your party's stats… a 3rd level Wizard with a whopping 18 Con has an average 21 HP. Dead.

A 3rd level Warlock with a whopping 18 Con has an average 25 HP. Dead.

A 3rd level binder with a 14 Con has an average of… 23 HP. Dead.

All you have to do is give these 6 zombies enough DPS against the Barbarian, and you've got a TPK, no problem.

Best you can do, if you want the party to survive, is

A) have them fight one, roll the explosion dice in the open. The players do the math.

B) have all 6+ zombies of wave two shamble at the party at the same time from the same direction, from great distance (like across a large (200'+ across) shallow (2' deep) lake or something). The players do the math.

B') if the players have not done the math, set 12+d6 asside - clearly visible to the players - for the acid damage.

B'') if the players are *still* clueless, muse out loud about wondering how much damage these will do when they explode.

C) then one of…

C1) the PCs run

C2) the PCs kill the zombies with ranged attacks. And the exploding zombies kill each other.

C3) the players are incapable of collecting clue tokens, the Cthulhu monsters spell TPK, see if they learn from *that*; otherwise, time to pull out the clue-by-four. (This assumes that you have telegraphed "this is a dangerous world, not a fun 'beer and pretzels' game". If you have *not* sufficiently telegraphed that fact, *do not run this encounter*!)

Play it as a puzzle encounter, rather than a combat encounter. As a combat encounter, it's a TPK.

[Trandir]

So, skimming back through your created threads, this would be the party with:

A half elf barbarian 3
A dwarf wizard 3
A dwarf warlock 3
A changeling binder 3

Correct?

...Zip...

Correct. But the barbarian left the party so it would be an absolute slaughter with one less party member.

I did make them get the equivalent of 20 potions of cure moderate wounds to make up for not having any way to heal.

I will use just some CR1 plant monsters instead.

And I will recycle the idea for more of a puzzle encounter. Where the party has to trigger a chain explosion. I would increase the number of bloated from 6 to 20+ scattered alone, in pairs or at most in groups of 3. If they manage to group them then killing 2 will most likely kill all others near them.

Also thanks for the answer.