D&D Plants vs Zombies style – part 3

[There's part 1, and part 2] Before we start, my paladin player has a question. “How many nipples does a shifter have ?” Can someone please give an answer so my friend’s unwholesome obsession can be quietened? Of all the Monty Python lines, he chose to remember the exploding nipples…

Anyway, let me tell you how my first encounter went. Let me bring up the map again.

Now look at the actual map I drew (this was sometime into the encounter):

Note the sunflowers at the bottom right corner. They don’t match with the map I had in mind. Another thing I learned: If the terrain drawn or placed doesn’t completely uproot your story or the gameplay, let it go. And we come to…

The Tombstone

The tombstone is the spawning ground for my minion zombies. I actually didn’t plan out how the initiative was going to be like. I only had the stats for my minion zombies. Well done, Vincent…

Ok, I wasn’t that unprepared. I thought of launching zombies maybe 4 at a go, then 2, then maybe 3. You know, like 2 to 4 zombies at every spawning. Ok fine, I didn’t really think this through…

After the 2nd player on the initiative list went, a gut feeling told me it was time, and I just took 4 zombies and placed them around the tombstone. “Aarrghh… braainss…” I was very pleased with my portrayal of a zombie. Then my friend (who’s helping me keep track of initiative order), asked me what their initiative was.

“Oh *#$&!”

Of course I didn’t think about that. So I winged it, and said they didn’t do anything for that round. But I was to be told when a new round starts. At that point, an inkling of an idea came through… Zombie spawning happened at the start of a round, and initiative continued with that.

I. Was. A. Genius.

Combat continued, and they struck at the tombstone to see what happens. I explained that so long as you don’t miss, you’ll hit the tombstone if it’s a single direct attack (if you rolled a 1, I couldn’t help you… maybe you tripped while striking at the stationary block of stone). If it’s a blast or burst, at least one creature within that blast/burst must be hit and the tombstone was considered to be hit.

So how do you calculate hit points for a tombstone? I hand-waved it at 50 hit points. (there will be a lot of hand waving. It comes with improvisation.) I set 5 purple crystals around the tombstone, so each crystal roughly represented 10 hit points. Ahh… but my players didn’t know that.

Here’s a secret. When they did damage to the tombstone, I roughly rounded it to the nearest 10 if possible. If rounding to nearest 5 makes more sense, I described the tombstone to be “roughly damaged, but still has some aura”. Basically I didn’t really keep track of hit points… I let the crystals do it. Wahahaha… eh wait, my players read this blog…

Here’s another secret. When the round started again, and there were only 2 purple crystals left, I spawned, based on a whim and gut feeling, only 2 zombies.

“Oohhh… it spawns less zombies when it’s weaker”, remarked my tactician friend.

I. Was. A. Genius. I think I said that before… Alright, I didn’t really plan so much. I just let circumstances be whatever suits the players’ (and my) needs.

Amnesia

One thing I noted was that, taking pictures of the gameplay was very challenging when you’re also the Dungeon Master. That was actually how I helped myself to remember the almost blow-by-blow account of the combat encounters from before. I don’t have this luxury anymore…

This was also worsened by the fact that my brain CPU cycles were taken up by deciding what monsters to deploy, attack, position. Then there’s tracking of hit points. Then there’s narration of story (because I planned some story right into the combat). Then there’s determining whether a player hit my monsters. Oh yeah, there’s zombie spawning.

HOW DOES ANY DM KEEP SANE DURING ALL THIS?!?!

*takes deep breath*

Anyhoo, that is a long-winded way of saying, I can’t really remember much of the encounter. Here are the few snippets I do remember…

The kalashtar ardent, seeing that everyone was doing fine, nobody’s hurt, nobody needed buffing, so he decided to try the peashooter. And took out a couple of minion zombies.

The sniper rogue used his firestorm arrows and wrecked havoc with my minion zombies. When those arrows hit, adjacent creatures take some fire damage. A couple of minion zombies burnt to a crisp for no reason…

If the rogue was a problem, the wizard (wearing T-shirt and jeans) was worse, who locked down my zombies with his spells, and I almost couldn’t spawn zombies fast enough.

He-Man the warden took on my grave digger zombies with zeal. And just as efficiently dispatched them.

The masochistic paladin, seeing that everything was under control, decided to go after the zombie archers. (that’s him halfway across the ridge over the ravine. See picture above.)

The half orc ranger shot a zombie down with his bow, then dropped it immediately. In a smooth (minor) action, he whipped out 2 scimitars named Laurel and Hardy. And followed the paladin.

I have to admit, I had to look up who Laurel and Hardy were (as I did for my paladin’s obsession with mammary parts. That became a running joke throughout the session…)

The surprise

The moment 2 grave digger zombies were dead, I sprung a surprise on my players.

Actually, I can’t remember if 2 dead grave digger zombies was the trigger. I certainly planned it (see map notes). The paladin took out one of my zombie archers. Two grave digger zombies were down. The tombstone was destroyed. I think at that point, I felt “Yeah, bring on the surprise”. Yeah, I winged it…

The surprise zombies were actually Rotwing zombies. Meaning they could fly, and there’s a special attack when charging while in flight. But I never got to use it… I needed to take flight, then charge. Not enough rounds to do that. That’s the paladin and ranger we’re talking about. The rest of the party soon followed, using the umbrella plants to fly up to the other side.

My zombies flopped like the flabby rotting pieces of flesh that they were.

So after it ends, I went into narration mode.

“Aarrgghh!” sounded near where the destroyed tombstone once stood. A hand appeared, and grabbed the ledge of the ravine. With a mighty heave, Fillian pulled himself up, and rolled over onto his back. “That was close.” he panted.

Yay, Fillian’s back!

Up next in part 4: How a magic item almost completely undid my intricately thought out encounter… “By the power of Grayskull!”