Limitations of the Zombie master

[hcobb]

The Zombie spell (along with Drain Strength) seems to unlock infinite actions per turn by a single wizard. She doesn't command the zombies, she is the zombies, seeing through all of their rotting eyes at the same time to disbelieve, etc.
So how do you overthrow a despot who is on every street corner at the same time? What tactics would you use?
The only thing that occurs to me is to ambush with instant squish or Remove Thrown Spell before your force was sighted.

[phiwum]

I wonder how tough a zombie master could realistically be. Once you have, oh, a hundred zombies, you're topping them off on a rotating basis of, let's say, 10 a day minimum. As this increases, there must be a point at which a single wizard can't handle it. He'll have to have lieutenants, each with the Zombie spell. There's a limited pool with the required IQ and I don't see him seriously making an army of zombies larger than a, you know, army.

Don't get me wrong. A powerful necromancer is a great enemy. I just don't see that they necessarily become unbeatable.

In any case, your own bad guys are only as difficult as you want them to be. You don't have to assume that every power-hungry necromancer wants to build a huge army. After a while, maintaining that army would just be tedious. Even a zombie master wants some down time, an occasional mint julep or an afternoon watching the little ones play flag football.

[Skarg]

As phiwum replied, the suggestion is not how necromancers usually work out. Zombie is a useful spell, but the few IQ 19 wizards have access to many other useful spells, and tend to have other things to do besides maintain the decaying ST on a large group of zombies.

If you have 100 rotting zombies, they lose 100 ST per day. Recharging them doesn't just cost 100 ST, but 100 ST + 5 per casting, plus any ST lost to failed rolls. That's all ST that isn't being used to do other things. I'd tend to be more worried about an IQ 19 wizard foe if they were using 150-200 apprentice-ST per day on something other than maintaining zombies.

An enemy necromancer who spreads out zombies to see a wide area will be able to see many places, but if the zombies are spread out, they can be destroyed one at a time.

As a GM, I tend to say that while in theory a wizard can see through the eyes of any of their zombies or summons, that it still takes some attention to do so, and even an IQ 19 wizard probably can't really pay attention to or make sense of very many of those at once. And they certainly can't study everything and everyone 100 zombies are seeing at once. Maybe they could check a dozen or two per turn to see if anything's up, if they aren't sleeping or doing something that requires their full attention. They would probably notice if they were awake and someone did something violent near a zombie, or something the zombie was told to alert to.

As for the presumed scenario where a despot is watching through the eyes of zombies spread all over town... my tactics might be to try to learn about the despot's OTHER forces and powers, and whom they'll grant an audience to, then assemble a strike force dressed as a diplomatic party and go get an audience, and be glad that the despot is spending so much of their energy and attention and zombie force just to watch every street-corner.

[larsdangly]

I love the open-ended nature of what an ambitious wizard with a zombie-centered lifestyle can do, so I wouldn't want to start stacking up further barriers to entry. I'd say the best way to limit simultaneous observation through multiple zombies (or multiples of other created or summoned things, if you happen to have those) is to say each one you are simultaneously attending to contributes 1 die to the IQ roll you must make each turn to take it all in. Thus, the first one is effectively free (as per standard rules) and the next couple are no big deal, opening up opportunities for a necromancer who seems to be several places at once (a fun concept), but beyond 4-5 the whole thing starts to get impractical.

[larsdangly]

On a related point, I am into the idea of wizards with teams of bound elementals and/or demons (perhaps stemming from my love of Michael Moorcock stories). Demons are tricky in ITL (at least played RAW) because you have to either bind them into a single-use gem or use their service immediately. But it is plausible a high IQ wizard could keep a few elementals kicking around, particularly if you have enough apprentices around to help with creating new ones to replace those that get away (1 in 5 will escape per day if you are IQ 20)

What do people think of the idea of casting a Geas on a demon as a way to force it into long-term service?

[Skarg]

I think Geas could work on a demon, but there are several things a GM might want to rule on, and/or develop more, if they want to get into that:

* Are demons able to remain for more than a minute after summoning, if they want to or have a geas to do so, or do they automatically return to their plane after 12 turns, like many other summons do (unless maintained)?

* Are there specific demons who remember what happened to them when summoned, and could be lastingly affected by a spell like geas? And if there are specific demons, what determines which one appears when a wizard summons a demon?

* It's said demons are highly magical, but they only use a bit of their magic in this plane... so what can they do when in their own plane? How easy or hard might it be for them to remove a geas or other magic cast on them?

* If hostile demons sometimes appear when people conjure illusions of demons, can demons also show up by themselves? If they're particularly annoyed with certain wizards who summoned them, can they arrange to drop in, and if so, what are the limits on that, how does it work, etc?

All of which questions, are probably left up to each GM, so PCs need to find out by research or experimentation, rather than meta-magically knowing exactly how they work because their player read about it.

[larsdangly]

Agreed. The main 'nuts and bolts' question to address is whether a demon stays beyond 12 turns if it has a compelling reason or desire to do so. The spell descriptions are ambiguous: the most concrete statements are that you EITHER fight for 12 turns OR perform a service, which includes things that sound like they might take more than a minute. On the other hand, it says that if it has to fight or search for 12 turns (as part of performing a service??) then it disappears before the job is done. On the other, other hand, what if its service takes more than 12 turns but doesn't involve fighting (or searching, I suppose).

Also: the Bound Demon magic item includes a description that makes it sound like a demon is somehow accessible/interacting with the caster throughout the 18 weeks it takes to bind it into an object (because a failed roll during that time will cause it to attack). That suggests the bond or connection between a wizard and specific demon can extend indefinitely, provided there is some magic process like an enchantment or spell that sustains the connection.

None of this is worth arguing about because, as with many such issues, the author didn't leave super rigid, clear instructions that cover every instance. We'll all have to decide for ourselves how we want this to work.

[Skarg]

Yes, good points!

The open-endedness seems intentional to me, as the author begins the section of Demons with, "Not much is known about demons, except possibly by the highest circles of the Sorcerer’s Guild."

Not knowing exactly how a very dangerous thing works, is one of the most effective deterants, and is a key feature of almost every fictional story about dealing with demons and other wish-granters.

[DeadParrot]

While you may have 100 zombies at your service and 100 sets of eyes to see through, how many CAN you pay attention to in any particular turn? A real world example would be 100 small security monitors on a wall linked to 100 remote cameras. In a busy town, each image would be constantly changing due to random but non threatening activity on every street. Is that group of people just a family doing shopping or a band of enemy adventurers on their way to your stronghold? Is that fuzzy image of an armed person a town guard or an armed robber? To bad that zombie monitor was horribly near sighted in life.

As for taking them out, assuming the townsfolk aren't real happy about the rather smelly things standing on every corner, a coordinated attack by simple townsfolk armed with a couple of molotails for each zombie would likely do the trick. "When the church bell strikes three times, light and toss." Any surviving zombies would be low on ST and probably easy to kill by the same town folk throwing rocks.

[tomc]

Originally Posted by Skarg

Yes, good points!

The open-endedness seems intentional to me, as the author begins the section of Demons with, "Not much is known about demons, except possibly by the highest circles of the Sorcerer’s Guild."

Not knowing exactly how a very dangerous thing works, is one of the most effective deterants, and is a key feature of almost every fictional story about dealing with demons and other wish-granters.

As a GM I didn't have a problem with one of a kind powers for villains. Maybe they're using a different zombie spell, or maybe they have a completely different way of making zombies.

I guess it depends on the players expectations of how the game should work. If everything is always compliant with the rules as written, then it's not fair for the big bad to have unexplained super zombie powers. If the players have little idea of how the world works outside of their expertise, then home brew abilities can happen all the time, and don't have to be consistent with each other.