The Sealed Graveyard- A Survival Challenge!

[ondonaflash]

This is a campaign/adventure I've thought about running, its very straightforward and very simple. For it to be played there are a few things that have to be accepted.

One round is six seconds.

One Minute is ten rounds.

One hour is 600 rounds

the night time can be assumed to last about 6 hours.

6 hours is 3600 rounds.

The premise is simple: "You were told not to enter the graveyard at night, you were told that whatever treasures lie withing simply weren't worth the effort. You were told to leave now and never return. You ignored the warnings, and now you're trapped. It will be six long hours until the sun comes up, can you survive?"

And after that its just undead. Wave after wave of undead. With experiences earned for each individual kill. (Eschewing the standard rule where xp is divided by party members, each individual gets full xp for each kill). Players may be any class, any race, and any number. They start at level one, and they start by fighting skeletons, and weak zombies. (It works with 4e as minions.), and as they level the encounters scale accordingly.

The challenge is straight endurance, and it should be assumed that mortalities will be high.

Thoughts?

[Mongoose87]

Could be good, could get monotonous. Could be boring for the spellcaster by the end of the night, when he runs out of spells.

[Kurald Galain]

...so are you looking for builds that could plausibly survive this? Or are you going to actually play this and looking for DM advice? Or something else?

[lvl 1 sharnian]

Sounds like a good idea, Ive thought about doing this before. However, you might not want any spellcasters unless their a dedicated Necromancer

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Warlocks and Dragonfire Adepts.

[Kesnit]

Could be good, could get monotonous. Could be boring for the spellcaster by the end of the night, when he runs out of spells.

You could rule that every time they level, spells are refilled. Or every X rounds, where X increases in some way with level.

[kestrel404]

Hmm, I'd say a party should include:
A warlock. Absolutely. Possibly more than one. At least one should attempt to get into the Repentant warlock prestige class ASAP, so that they can generate at-will healing.
A paladin - on the condition that their lay-of-hands abilities refresh at level-gain. Otherwise, not really worth it.
A dragon shaman. Absolutely vital for their fast-healing aura. Even if their lay-of-hands does not refresh, they're a good choice.
Any class from ToB. Crusaders are probably the best choice, but the others are also quite good at this sort of thing. Perhaps count 'level gain' as a new encounter and allow maneuvers to be swapped/refreshed at that point.
Any class that can manage unlimited healing.
Also ranger, if they focus on one of the spell-less undead-slaying prestige classes.

[Dixieboy]

One cleric is all that is neccasary, that is if you can persist "Hide from undead".

[Kurald Galain]

One cleric is all that is neccasary, that is if you can persist "Hide from undead".

Or one wizard, who can cast Rope Trick and pull up the rope afterwards. Problem solved. But I assume that the OP wants something slightly less anticlimatic than that.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Which edition? You seem to indicate using 4E minion rules, so is this 3.5 with houserules? In 4E, wizards running out of spells isn't an issue, because they'll always have some.

[kestrel404]

Or one wizard, who can cast Rope Trick and pull up the rope afterwards. Problem solved. But I assume that the OP wants something slightly less anticlimatic than that.

Even with precocious apprentice, a level 1 wizard casting Rope trick will only keep you safe for an hour.

However, a rogue who maxes out UMD and rolls well for starting gold (or pools with another party member) can buy a CL6 Rope Trick scroll for 150g. That would work.

[JeenLeen]

One cleric is all that is neccasary, that is if you can persist "Hide from undead".

This would only work until sentient undead (Will negates, IIRC) start showing up, but it should give a few hours safety. But then you have sentient undead with the past few hours' waves of undead.

Same problem with Lichloved from BoVD. Although, honestly, maybe with that one you could kill mindless undead and they wouldn't fight back, at least as a group.

For flavour and challenge, I would recommend banning necromantic and cleric-type classes. Adds to the horror feel, I think, and limits complete bypassing of everything by turning.
I'd also have a lot of elements of hiding and tactics, instead of just waves of enemies. Do you go into the mausoleum in the middle of the graveyard to hide, but risk fighting whatever dwells within?

[OMG PONIES]

Rope Trick will keep you safe, but the point is the sweet l00tz. Warlocks and Dragonfire Adepts are good for infinite ammo if you actually want to fight through the undead, but one cleric/rogue could probably turn/hide from the majority of the baddies in there, sweep the treasures into a Handy Haversack or Bag of Holding, and be at home sleeping on gold in two hours' time.

[Zovc]

So, how do the zombies restock? Do more come at each interval (x rounds, etc), or to they "respawn" when killed? If the latter, it's practically a good idea to hack off the current enemies' legs and wait.

[Dragon Elite]

Is it 3.5?
It it here, Post by post?

[Kalirren]

Yeah, which edition? A party of 4E laser clerics would probably work just fine in 4E. Plenty of damage, decent stamina, plenty of healing. You'd have to worry about healing surges though.

If we're talking 3.5, though, things could get hard, especially if you ban the anti-undead classes (of course, who would go -into- the graveyard besides the anti-undead classes who thought they stood a chance in the first place? So I wouldn't ban them...) This an interesting challenge, mostly because most builds are based around a different encounter system and reward novaing on major tactical threats instead of stamina. For instance, builds based on Ranger would be interesting, because you could potentially do a lot of mook-slaying with favored enemy, bane weapons, etc.

Classic casters would probably fail through lack of stamina unless there were some method of refreshing slots. You only -get- so many spell slots otherwise.

A cleric would run out of turning attempts if they needed to use them; an evil cleric with strong enough rebuke might be able to subdue a young vampire and get that template real quick, but that's about all I can think of.

I'd probably run with a party of 4 consisting of a ranger, a cleric, a warlock, and a dragon shaman just to see how far I could get.

Of course, one could use an army of 1000 novice clerics, saturate the spawn rate of the graveyard, have no one level, and come out quite unscathed at the end of the 6 hours.

[OMG PONIES]

So what about a party consisting of the following:

1. A properly thieving rogue with either the feat that allows partial SA damage against undead or a wand of Gravestrike (or whatever the spell is that allows SA against undead).

2. An evil cleric with as much rebuking as possible (Extra Turning, Reliquary Holy Symbol, Nightsticks) as well as Quicken Turning

3. A warlock for ranged damage against undead that isn't piercing, with as many ways of boosting Eldritch Blast damage as possible (Hellfire Warlock, that one rod that boosts it) for targeting any big baddies.

4. A Dragonfire Adept for breath weaponing mooks (maybe with some metabreath feats) as well as auras.

Your rogue conducts the proper treasure hunt (assisted by your warlock where necessary) while your cleric commands some of the baddies to fight for you and your Dragonfire Adept mops up the little guys on your trail and provides some basic support to the party. The cleric could also rebuke the undead you don't have time to deal with.

[ondonaflash]

As for edition, its wide open, it could be played in most major D&D editions (thought it might get shudderingly hard the earlier you go). As for what I'm specifically looking for: Advice, input, opinions. The tip that you fully refresh at level up makes sense, or maybe something Diablo esque, where you collect orbs, or something that refreshes your character.

I like the idea of enemies that go down in a hit, because there's going to be a lot of them, and if they all survive to make an attack it will be a very short challenge.

I don't feel the need to ban any clerics because they can only turn (in 3.5), a set HD of undead, and they can only do so at so many intervals, and from what I've got in mind, there will be more undead in the campaign than they can turn.

A few issues I might run into. Assuming that there is nearly constant fighting, the PCs won't have much time to go around collecting loot, or memorizing new spells.

I think the idea of Mausoleums, and Tombs, and possibly even crypts and catacombs has merit, of course, the undead will be pursuing you, and trying to bash through doors, also the monsters inside my be stronger, or sentient, but that's where the magic weapons and armor are.

Also, I don't think I'm going to scale the loot. I'm just going to place gear of varying strengths around the graveyard, and if they happen to stumble across the +3 disrupting holy greatsword (hypothetically), first, then more power to them.

[jiriku]

Also, I don't think I'm going to scale the loot. I'm just going to place gear of varying strengths around the graveyard, and if they happen to stumble across the +3 disrupting holy greatsword (hypothetically), first, then more power to them.

Random loot is always fun. However, if you assume one encounter's worth of undead can be slain in 10 rounds (generous), and if the attacks are continuous, then the characters are going to be approximately level 27 by dawn. Which means if you seed the zone with full WBL for all those levels, it's a +10 disrupting holy greatsword you're going to stumble across.

[Myrmex]

DMM cleric would pwn. Persistent fast healing ftw.

[Tavar]

Really, Crusaders would do really well in this. I'd probably go for 2 crusaders, one skill class, and one dragonfire adept. The adept does control/mass damage, the crusaders focus on healing and defending, and the skill dude does skills.

One thing, have some choke points, and make sure that while the first couple rounds it always works in the Players favor, but as the undead get smarter/tougher, have them use it as well.

[ondonaflash]

Okay, now what about a final encounter? In the last, say, 10 minutes of the night (60 rounds) something big and nasty should show up. It will probably be the source of the treasure that will bring the party up to level appropriate wealth. (I guess level 27? Assuming they survive, I mean resurrection probably won't be happening in this adventure, because none of them will be a high enough level to start with it, have time to memorize, or very likely, and opportunity to cast it)

I have this idea that he should be unkillable, and that the goal should be to survive the sixty rounds he's in play. Like the final rush in any timed mission in an RTS. Maybe there's away to render him unstoppable for a set period of time?

[Doc Roc]

The core issue is two-fold:
Combat is slow.
Awarding points by kill is.... a good way to bone half the party. That said, if you run it, I'll be happy to throw down. Been a while since anyone proposed anything that I felt might be a fun challenge.

[Flickerdart]

Dread Necromancers would obliterate this, no? Just run in there with an undead army of your own, when your guys fall then control some of the enemy. It's a graveyard, so animating the stuff in the dirt is fair game. Tomb Tainted Soul means infinite healing, too, and then the spells come into play.
60 rounds is too long. I'd say 10 rounds is good for a boss creature, 20 tops.

[Tavar]

The core issue is two-fold:
Combat is slow.
Awarding points by kill is.... a good way to bone half the party. That said, if you run it, I'll be happy to throw down. Been a while since anyone proposed anything that I felt might be a fun challenge.

A good way to do this would be to let the players know about it before hand. That way, you don't end up with casters who are useless most of the game.

[Myrmex]

What level do you enter at?
Any level under 6, and I don't think you can do it. Anything too low that lags behind in the killing will then suck for the rest of the game, and then everyone will get overrun.

I like the idea of tracking individual xp, though.

[ondonaflash]

Okay, sounds good, I'll set up the play by post over on myth-weavers. Anyone interested can sign up here. Also, feel free to discuss, advise and opinionate. I'll draw up maps, and "bury" loot. I should have it up and running by either sunday, or monday.

Rules for character creation are: You are level 1.

Standard Point Buy.

Standard Starting Wealth.

**Edit**And we'll do it 3.5, just to give you guys the chance to use those builds that are usually overpowered**

[Myrmex]

I'm going to enter with a Warlock.

When you say standard PB, you mean 25 points?

[Tavar]

Possibly interested. But I'm not sure about the level...
Level 1 is really too random for something like this.

i'll make a crusader, if it's allowed.

[ondonaflash]

I'm going to enter with a Warlock.

When you say standard PB, you mean 25 points?

Yes, Standard Point Buy is 25.